Suspicious Magic

Perhaps most artists have rarely used more than a little of this suspicious magic. Yet it is the key to any work of art, for if in your mind’s eye you cover it, the composition goes flat. It is certainly most difficult to use, yet for those artists whose primary interest is in announcing a remarkable moment, a time when light stood still, it is a small price to pay for the expression they are searching for.

Maybe while no work of art can be expressed with out a hint of the mystery of it, it is only visible in its beauty in moments of high vitality. Alive and thrashing, in picture form it is almost but not quite completely pinned down. As the outside creeps into the inside, it is difficult to see where it begins and where the work of art ends. It often sneaks up on the viewer unawares, and floats in a space like a magic carpet, unsupported by anything banal.

https://www.abbothall.org.uk/exhibitions/winifred-nicholson-cumberland

Adventures in Fiction

Perhaps a man spends each moment worrying about the next. Living is like running in place, a motionless motion. Panic is a sound behind a wall inside him, as moving is the only way to keep down thoughts of what he sees as what he sees becomes one unpleasant skin growing over another, growing another ignominious version of himself.

Maybe, with such sudden seizures of tormented manhood flooding upon him, he rushes to gather himself up. And although storms of anxiety grip his heart, he fights with the feeling. He once believed in common sense, yet his eyes have a strange glare in them. Big, hot, blue eyes set far apart. He bellows in a foreign, airless language, trying to keep some sense of purpose, but the compass he conjures in his mind has only a single arrow pointing to a direction the rest of us don’t recognize. This results in, well.....you probably already know.

Notes on Abandon

Perhaps as the past has left me and moved on, so too have previous versions of my body left me. My naked body, the days sweet and long. My entrapped body, I look at you and try to start a conversation but it is difficult for you to say anything. My ‘in love’ body, when I hear sweet songs and think of you I want to see you so badly but you don’t call. My relatively certain body, the elements so mixed up.

Maybe even as nature might stand up and say It could not be otherwise you still don’t believe me, body, as I wander through the garden that brings us together as one, fertilize seeds simmered in sunshine and smiles that I will always remember.  The lettuce is good, although everything else is sort of dying. You thought you’d seen the last of me, but here I am, in air that is warm and grey. Am I so alone? Here we go again. And what if I don’t even like the new you, here waiting for me?