Things and not-things

I have been realizing, or maybe just noticing, how much the things I see guide me through the day. Actually pull me through it. (They are what makes time pass at all--they feel like minutes?) And I was thinking of compiling a few of these things as I had done a little in Post 28 . There’s something about the casualness of this act that brings me pleasure, and it's a casualness that I have not felt in my recent posts, though is a quality I’ve been craving more of. Presenting these sightings feels reminiscent of jotting something down in a notebook. Though, I'm not sure if it's just the documentation here that feels like jotting something down, because it may actually be that the presences of these innocuous scenes already exist as the jotting down. I guess it comes down to how much I think of these things as photos I create that write the story of my own walking around, or objects within the city's notebook that I cannot help but read as I walk. Anyway, I spread out a de...

Peaceful photo of an almond that looks like a piece of wood. I’d quickly say that what I want to create is the negation of a painting, but would much more slowly (so slow as to effectively round down to never) reach an articulation of the status of or qualifications to the constitution of such a thing. More than that, I’d say working toward a negation is centrally about proceeding in a certain direction (not a forward one) than about trying to create a negative substance in the end.  The problem (that I face in confronting the idea of making a painting) is that “forward” is supposedly a known direction. Maybe not even supposedly. It just is. And when I think of a painting (something properly and recognizably known as one [which I guess is what is taken for granted when you refer to any term]), I imagine it existing out in front of me (“in front of” implying forward).* Which is not to say that making a painting is a straight-line pursuit, but just that I can’t help but think of a pa...