things are slightly askew currently. some mouthfuls of feedback were too vague and too brittle and too loaded with the baggage of someone else. it is like sustaining little secret bruises who refuse to bloom and bluely darken.
we are all in a rut of sorts.
this man, without regards for self preservation, crossed the snowfields in a delirium and cleanly razed a paring from his leg. it was a clean cut (a barbed fence? a smooth stick? a rock blade?) and i kept imagining, somewhere marooned, was a gleaming shaving of his back leg, bearded with fur and pooled in a slick of pinky plasma. then, shaking myself, Teamwork was done to haul him to the vet who said stitches were unnecessary, and so, like a stretched mouth, the wound has left little rosebud stamps of gore across the carpet.
i am licking my own invisible wounds, not pride shocked with a rash of gravel, but the wound to my compass which, i could have sworn, has pointed me due North very steadily. it is a shock to feel, after one's work is evaluated, that one has been completely out of touch with the reality of the situation.
notebooks abound. pencil shavings, coffee cups crowded with the white mold left over from the morning's cream. my whole brain feels like a crowded journal, dog-eared, gorged with to-do lists, reminders, calendars and outlines.
we are not often faced with the dilemma: "if you work hard you may not succeed." those of us with hysterical work ethics and lofty self-expectations are usually the most crushed by this. i am nearly flattened. but nevertheless keeping heads up and trying to glean what little seedy leftovers can be poured into apron pockets once the scythes have leveled the ripe field.
article 1:
: :
due
to an outstanding balance,
the
electric company was teasing
the
painter's house off
the
grid.
it
seemed to him very gradual.
not
as he had begun to brace
himself
for, all at once,
but
room by room, and only a night.
he
noticed one evening
as
he ate,
a
weakening of edges as dusk fell.
outside
his neighbor's windows
tipped bands
of light
across
the walks.
shadow
teemed and poured.
rinds
of orange light
brightened
along the
edges
of everything.
he
found he was bending
very
close to his newspaper
in
order to read,
and
looked up to see the lumens
sigh
out of the fixture.
methodically,
he changed
and
re-changed the bulb,
shook
it close to his ear to
listen
for the sandy sigh of
a
broken filament
he
took his meals at the
long
table in the dining room
after
that.
then,
off his lap in the
strobey
wash of his television.
--
gradually
the painter became
enamored
with weak light.
he
favored this kind of
second
rate, pawned
luminescence
in his practice.
as
subject,
as
protagonist.
he
would stop to bow his head
beneath
long fluorescent
lamps
and let
the
buzz of them bang,
numbly
around in his head.
--
by
now and by luck
the
attic was the only place
where
the light would come
on
he
had clumsily bumped his great
drafting
table up there
from
the studio
and
left a halo of cracks
spreading
over the doorjamb.
from
there, most days now,
shrieks
and grindings
let
themselves in from a stuck window
a
lamp post was being erected by
men
with luminous vests
this
reflection would go spangling across
the
attic much
to
the delight of the painter
he
tilted in his stool, looked around
--
lately
he would sheets of paper on the table
to
watch rogue light from
the
poorly hung aluminum blinds
cross
it and then exit
it
had been quite some time since
he
had made marks,
now
he left his palms marooned
on
his knees and stilled
himself
as
time and light and the painter
swelled
and then emptied from the room.
--
on
the last lit night the painter
dabbed
a kerosene lighter at
the
tip of a cigarette.
in
a hiss, the little petal of flame
drooped
and went out, spent.
the
painter let it aside,
put
his cheek on the paper spread over the table.
his
stillness was total.
above
him, the drafting lamp
shuddered,
snapped and failed.
--
the
painter blinked
through
his glasses
at
the single slat in the blinds that
hung
askew.
from
it, a wide powdery wedge
of
warm light came
from
the lamp post
and
in the silence, for the vests
and
sawblades had at last ceased,
a
beam of light shot
through
with gold
caught
the wide lenses of
the
painter's glasses and
poured
across the room
in
shocking brilliance.
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