That's a graph-paper canvas soaking in water and a mix of yellow and red calligraphy inks. As I type this I have not touched the canvas or disturbed the water or added any addition colors or ink in 36 hours, the longest I've been able to withhold myself from touching a curing ever and until the next time. This is wash number four, the first three wet washes, only five, six hours drying each. This is driving me fucking nuts, I'm going to try to not touch until the water completely evaporates beneath the paper, held up by seven columns of four pennies each. I suspect I need either break my resolution to wait for evaporation (UPDATE! Ding!) or break my religion of permitting myself only one curing canvas at a time.
- And that's today's Blog Days of Summer Saturday Bleggalgaze.
- There was a Thursday Night Pints, yesterday's High Holy Day postponed the usual Friday schtick. D graduated BA from Penn State in 1952, it was the day - it was two days now, now being Saturday morning; I know, a lifetime ago - Louie Freeh released his report on the Paterno scandal. His family is Butler/Sharon-based, many - all if they could get in and afford it - went to Penn State. Most of them, D said angrily, condone everything, defend Joe Pa, defend the university, say, Look at the library, Look at the works. We talked about power and money and powerful fine metaphors abounding. D said, what jackasses (I saw that Seinftein column Friday night) people are who think this is just about football: This is an opportunity for presidents to do something other than preen. They should take steps to ensure that no coach can ever again have the absolute power Paterno wielded. They should stop giving coaches multimillion-dollar contracts. They should stop building statues and naming stadiums, arenas and basketball courts for them — especially while the coaches are still active. They should also stop asking them to raise funds. Tell them to coach their teams and try to see to it that their players graduate. Period. Period, yo.
- For example.Watch, I said, Penn State with be ideological state apparatus-ed, made an example of and then paraded as the self-correcting moral instinct of corporate power while business goes on as normal.
- The weaponization of economic theory.
- From welfare state to police state.
- Fifty shades of capitalism.
- The American model won't work for Europe.
- LAPD takes on Chalk Bloc.
- The phony war on cops.
- Oh look, the $2B JP Morgan said it lost is now $6B. Oopsy, yo. And sheeyit, it's only $6B.
- Capitalism's boundless war.
- Priorities.
- The original lesser-evil.
- Neverland.
- The writer, not the words.
- Mutual hack-scratching.
- I rarely go to Virginia but I hope this happens, would go at least once, via White's Ferry.
- Fiorentina's home purple is gorgeous.
- Big scare, good news.
- Hungary wins European Penis Olympics.
- A reason the literary crowd is smitten with Hungarians?
- Akhmatova tumblr.
- Fucking shoot me.
- Collecting sounds.
- You realize this blog is always seconds away from a GbV cascade?
THE PAINTER
John Ashbery
Sitting between the sea and the buildings
He enjoyed painting the sea’s portrait.
But just as children imagine a prayer
Is merely silence, he expected his subject
To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush,
Plaster its own portrait on the canvas.
So there was never any paint on his canvas
Until the people who lived in the buildings
Put him to work: “Try using the brush
As a means to an end. Select, for a portrait,
Something less angry and large, and more subject
To a painter’s moods, or, perhaps, to a prayer.”
How could he explain to them his prayer
That nature, not art, might usurp the canvas?
He chose his wife for a new subject,
Making her vast, like ruined buildings,
As if, forgetting itself, the portrait
Had expressed itself without a brush.
Slightly encouraged, he dipped his brush
In the sea, murmuring a heartfelt prayer:
“My soul, when I paint this next portrait
Let it be you who wrecks the canvas.”
The news spread like wildfire through the buildings:
He had gone back to the sea for his subject.
Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
Too exhausted even to lift his brush,
He provoked some artists leaning from the buildings
To malicious mirth: “We haven’t a prayer
Now, of putting ourselves on canvas,
Or getting the sea to sit for a portrait!”
Others declared it a self-portrait.
Finally all indications of a subject
Began to fade, leaving the canvas
Perfectly white. He put down the brush.
At once a howl, that was also a prayer,
Arose from the overcrowded buildings.
They tossed him, the portrait, from the tallest of the buildings;
And the sea devoured the canvas and the brush
As though his subject had decided to remain a prayer.
