Things and not-things

My whole thing with writing is not that I do it, but that I get to it, pause on the edge of it, and just dwell there. I think about the mystical “how” to do it. Which then makes me think of the “how” in painting, and the way that this “how” gets pulled through the entire painting process for me. (Heavy air quotes should be added to “process,” since using the word seems to imply more knowledge about what’s going on than I have.) The painting “how” (How do you make a painting?) is not a how that I jump off of or let go of as I get started, but is a question that sticks around even as some vague semblance of an answer gets formed. (How much is the “answer” that gets formed always just a guess?) Also: What happens when you bring a question right up to and then into a possible answer? What does the space of question and answer overlap look like? And, what is an answer that still asks the question that prompted it? Fallen flower and receipt paper touch ever so slightly Thinking about “how t...

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...

Exhibit A. Mr. Krabs existing with my favorite state of his eyes: somewhat normal.                                                                    I wasn’t going to write about this Mr. Krabs, but I think I have to. I wasn’t going to because I feel that I’ve been hyperfocused on it--at a place that overshoots words. But I think I have to because it’s completely filling up my mind’s eye. Especially so since this “I think I have to” thought. Every so often I’ll hit on something that I have a sort of visual infatuation with. It’s this feeling that I can’t stop looking at the thing, or, I can’t see enough of it. Like, when I look at it, not enough happens. It’s a feeling of wanting to be able to see more, maybe more intensely. Or, rather, a feeling of wishing my eyes took up more space of me...

I've been thinking about a kind of pathway that I’m going to describe as outside —> inside. The focus here being on what may be a shape or flow or directionality. Somehow, what I want to pinpoint with this framing is the exact feeling I get when I read “2 > 1.” The movement that takes place from the 2 to the 1. (The greater than sign functions as a kind of arrow?) Whatever this is, it feels like a particular category for me right now, a mode that I've taken up--bringing something from the outside in. But it also occurred to me that this is how I understand stacks , which is a term Rachel Yanku put into my mind when we had this little exchange about her work. This is where we started: (One of us had never thought about stacks before. The other: living a life immersed in stack thoughts.) Rachel then defined stack for me: I liked that stacking was a way to see, while also being a way to act on something you were seeing. This is where I relate it to this outside/inside thi...

I’ve been a little bogged down by all of the everything that is right now. Bogged down in the sense of somehow having to figure anew how it is that I take place (the present moment seems to require a lot of reevaluation), and how I can continue to take place in the midst of, alongside of, and in opposition to the ruptures and sludges of it. I could describe “it,” though I truly think the pronoun speaks for itself, and in a way stands for and describes this moment's own confines by remaining only as “it.” Anyway, I’ve been kind of inundated (or something) in feeling the impossibility of articulating all that I take in (in a day, for instance)--facts, thoughts, ideas, sights (some mine, but mostly others’)--and find myself walking around with all this undigested stuff (I’d like to put a heavy emphasis on the static sound of the word “stuff”) in me. I can feel the unusable excess in myself. I have often felt that there is an act of weaving that needs to be done to bring my personal ma...