minutiae

so a change. one of middle size. an array of paper cartons, a few broken glasses, spoons and single socks evaporated clean out of existence. new keys, new doors, new quiet.

fortunately, the walks will be the same. in fact, i've taken to them almost desperately now; stimulating the lymphatic system, putting weight on weight-bearing joints, canine sanity aside: these meditations have also undergone a change. of a more considerable size. in this one the role of moving is tipped slightly, put under light and glass. if there are going to be many tracks made on open land |marks, no?|, whose rhythm and weight vary |as line quality|, whose trajectories are honest, organic, and deliberate |and conceptually sound|, then, seemingly, they are drawings in their own right.


this is a kind of vast and dramatic unhinging. a hatching from a vessel that, for a long time, has been thwarted. baked down hard. brimming with stasis of many kinds. don't misunderstand- i don't mean i've come away with a vast stash of monochrome brilliance. nothing so dynamic as Reinhardt, nothing so resonant with intention as Rothko, nothing even as formally basic as Stella. just nothing. when previously things flowed more easily

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so now, with the above mentioned water jars, granola-leaking rucksack, occasional shears and sodden boxes of matches i am also equipped, when i step off the smooth road for the coarser one, with an unspoken box of implements of a different kind. granted, the problem remains that there is little, if anything, that can be pinned up, pointed to, smudged, talked at, flipped over, scrubbed with gesso, jabbed at with pencil butts and finally put to rest in a flat file. but the problem of finished product as it pertains to conceptual drive is an old one. usually though, with enough thought, the entire problem of 'making' can be distilled into a single, one-worded solution.
sometimes it is simple.
jam. dough. wool. bone. salad. haste.
other times more esoteric.
nomenclature. opacity. relentlessness.
and this time is neither simple nor esoteric but very literal.

catalogue.
as in the verb. read: reinforcements for the obsessive collection, recording, filing and labeling of everyday life. it is a kind of incoherent haze, suspiciously without angst.

and in honor of a recent poring over of the esteemed Anne Carson- a poet whose profundity stems directly from her electric ability to pin down all things powerful and omnipresent with the most concrete and apt nouns- the walk down into the draggy dusk of midsummer was a simple catalog of smells.

we know that smell is an infinite language and one to which humans have very little access. we know that most living things- especially, brilliantly so, plants- seek to emanate false smells with the direct intention of camouflage and deception. and we know, with streamers of longing as we lift our noses, that the thing that so enraptures us about smell is its simultaneous ability to confound our human urgings to name, by being at once fleeting and long lasting. we struggle to name smells for the simple reason that we cannot keep them for very long. and so it was, walking through a settling of light and a sifting of noise, trying to cull and record all the smells that registered.

at some points the links between a scent and its Name was easy: "anise," "mint," "verbena," "clove." and at other times it wasn't clear if the smell rang because the pheromones actually hung in the air or because they triggered that secret bulky olfactory nerve and were only smell memorie: "ice," "egg shell," "sleep." not surprisingly, with my eyes open, the signals blurred slightly and the words that came out to pin little flags on the smells were colors, "chartreuse," "dusk," "wine." it was a convoluted list, and it was a wandering list, but it was most especially a tangled list. for the list reflected not the simplified task of setting things to name, but, after re-reading it, the task of parsing out all the ways a mind could race after and pursue a single verb, like catalogue. what, i imainged, would be a streaming column of nouns ended up punctuated and peppered with questions, asterices, small drawings, ven diagrams, bits of plant, sample droplets of mossy water and a small tuft of headache behind one eye. but, because the walk ended before the cataloguing was over, i had much more of a handful of words than i anticipated. which is a welcomed bounty. which is a low foggy banner of relief. and which, as far as i can tell, makes this new drawing exercise infinitely promising.

the list

oil

cinnamon

paint thinner

sarparilla

lemon balm

spruce

gin

sawdust

empty rooms

rot

mint

ice

strawberry jam boiling on the stove

chlorine

burgundy

wood plank

wool

sulphur

peach

paint drying on withered apples

oregano

charteuse

vanilla

spun sugar

egg shell

dusty screen

dung

flesh

swimming pools

algae

scum

lettuce

apple

honey

paper

flat ground

paper

burned wheat

paste wax

myrrh

flight

soreness

sleep

quietude

pastry

brine

nervousness

sandalwood