Perhaps even the abuse was the best they could do. We are none of us prepared to shepherd a helpless life, to watch it grow beyond us while still needing – or worse, not needing – our guidance. I tended the fires of rage until my heart ran out of fuel, until in the ashes that remained I found a stone that was warm to the touch, and silent.
The new pope is an old white dude. I mean they’re usually old white dudes. He once said social media causes the gay. I’m paraphrasing. The new pope was born in Chicago. Might have grown up a Cubs or a White Sox fan. Eating deep dish, listening to the blues. Probably not the blues thing, though. The new pope looked kinda stunned on TV. Maybe he was thinking: “We’re still doing this shit?” He looked as good in the hat as anyone. His Italian sounded OK to me but then again I don’t speak Italian. The new pope is infallible now, I guess. That’ll make Vatican trivia night easier.
“Everyone draws – until around puberty, and after that for some reason they either announce that they can’t draw, or they keep drawing. Maybe the only thing that marks an artist is the presence of a double negative: an artist is someone who doesn’t claim they can’t draw.” – Amy Sillman, “On Drawing”
flipping through Patrick Heron’s paintings on my phone I think: perhaps these aren’t for me before I slap myself across the face of my mind and remember: I haven’t seen them yet
I’m reading Amy Sillman’s essay “On Color” in her book Faux Pas. Despite my issues with seeing color, the essay is drawing me in, largely in the way it opens a door to the tactile world of paint selection, something I was unaware of.
I have a strong desire to lead a more “artistic” life, although I’m not totally sure what that means. Before I started to write this, my initial thought was that it means a life very different from the one I have now. In the next moment, though, I identified my tendency toward all change being radical, and tried instead to push past that first reaction to instead see that art is close at hand.
I’m already a poet. I’m learning to sketch. I have fairly easy access to museums. I could make music. I could create the poetry album I’ve been meaning to work on. In short, I am already living an artistic life, and I have the means at my disposal to deepen that practice if I choose to. The readiness is all, as Hamlet said.
My copy (top) of Amy Sillman’s sketch (bottom) accompanying her essay “On Color.”
I’m not the man I was or the man I pretended to be I’ve shed that skin stepped into the new glory of self I was given a mouse’s moniker standing by the bus one afternoon my first glimpse of a world beyond the walls of expectation later still, one strap down, triangle pendant flashing, I danced to Erasure and felt a gate open in my chest it closed again but not forever
I love the way you type your PIN like it only works if you attack your phone as if the screen knows you want in but it would prefer you to leave it alone perhaps it’s trying to save your brain from Bezos and Musk and all their goons maybe it knows they’re such a drain it would rather you just watch cartoons I like the sides of you that I have seen on adventures or around the house right up until you break your screen I’m glad I get to be your mouse
a train is a good place to write a poem even a train that hasn’t left yet is full of possibility a train puts me at ease no traffic, no tolls no need to navigate just ride the rails until you get to your station it’s a terrible metaphor for life but my favorite way to travel
mayflies dead on the streets of Selma mayflies dead on the Edmund Pettus Bridge David and I are there to remember to pay our respects, to see but everywhere we look the streets and sidewalks are covered with drifts of mayfly carcasses heaps of translucent white wings uncountable numbers of corpses we try not to step on them it’s all but impossible we walk with a sickening crunch across that weighty bridge emerging on the other side two white people unscathed on a field of the dead
I have learned nothing about this place I know the route from home to work from home to Wegmans from home to downtown when my partner drives back to their other place I don’t know which direction they go most days I seem to be floating like Fenchurch in the Adams book never quite touching the ground today someone from afar told me I’m flourishing my sister says my life is stable my kids, well, I’m never sure about them but me? I’m here but not here like a main street façade built for a movie it looks real if you don’t get too close don’t peek around the back don’t see the beams propping up the illusion I’m a dusty western town tumbleweeds blowing through a short hop from the highway that goes everywhere and nowhere
no matter how many times I hear the magic trick that was Art Tatum I can never figure out how he did it how his mind leapt as if he’d never heard of the law of gravity how his fingers found all those keys with no eyes to guide them how he took songs everybody knew and blasted them into a million glittering jewels of sound he had an arm up each sleeve with miraculous hands at the ends here I sit, mouth open in wonder grateful just to listen
Black Saint Billy Harper is wailing 40-something years ago in some other city but tonight he’s filling the air in our bedroom in Charlottesville because earlier today at Melody supreme his record was on the wall and I remembered that time I interviewed him and his voice was so rich and resonant that it put mine to shame and that was already so long ago that I recall only impressions (not the Coltrane tune) and wow! this band is killing.
five decades collapsed in an instant black metaltail hummingbird