… a conversation with Paris Lee, trans woman…

… i envy men who make attractive women… it is the one piece of LGBTQ+ spectrum i could have inhabited under the right circumstances… i haven’t minded being male, but i have these very feminine parts of my psyche and wonder what it might have been like to be a woman sometimes… except, i am convinced i would make an ugly woman while i am a passably handsome man… the thought that J sensed this in me and didn’t like it…

… this chapter about Buddy Willard, handsome Yalie, whom she decided she couldn’t love… the chapter a flashback about when he asked her to some dance… these two sentences are highlighted 855 times…

_ I decided to expect nothing from Buddy Willard. If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed._¹

… a double edged thought… expect nothing, get nothing goes the saying… it might be better to be disappointed in the long run…

… so far, i am feeling this novel is not the work of a full fledged novelist, that it has, here and there, clunky descriptions, that the story is not especially engrossing, the kind of novel one might read on the beach in the summer… H says it is depressing… i haven’t gotten to any bits that are depressed, unless you count the general malaise of being a human in this book…

… slept well, slept in, slightly… Chas a little sluggish this AM… coffee, dogs, garbage, birds singing loudly…

… a productive day yesterday, many of the physical labor things done before the heat arrives…

… getting the hose bibs fixed today or tomorrow, need some more components to get the watering system set up and easy to use… i wonder if i can get the back stairs repaired before we go…

… mostly we need to gather what needs gathering before we go…

… i read twelve more Basho Haiku… frozen moments of universality, some more consequential than others… the best are the least consequential to human affairs… very few human beings really know what is important…

… yesterday, Biden telling the public he is powerless to do much about voting rights, two moderate Democratic Senators hold the power, so far, they refuse to act… last night, Joy Reed, talking about one of them, said they must be ok with what Republicans are doing, it’s not that she doesn’t understand it… today, H an i will cast an absentee ballot in a very minor race for judge in Beacon… a primary race, not sure it isn’t the only race on the ballot…

… feeling comfortable that we are on tract to leave next Tuesday…

… an early start gets me to my Pocket Road trail perch by 07:30 AM… the climb is equivalent to 45 flights of stairs… i stop a couple of times to let my heart rate slow… i sit listening to the stream flowing over rocks and into pools, still unable to precisely describe the sound… hiss, burble, gurgle is the best i can do so far… the water snake slithers by… are all paths through the wood vestigial snakes?… ouroboros, i think no, they are more linear in nature, but then, i think my thinking is too narrow, that water falls on the mountain, flows down to the river, then to the sea, where it rises up to the sky and returns to the top of the mountain to start again… i think for a minute that the snake is always going clockwise, but what is wrong with starting at the mouth and following the arc to the tail?…

… i have been thinking about this notes on attention paid effort as a daily collection of vignettes that adds up to something more than the parts… i like what i am doing even if nobody looks at it…

… it seems appropriate to follow up the last post with something on feminist artist Barbara Krueger…

Wielding the power of art, Kruger went on to address conversations around feminism, consumerism and individualism, challenging how we think and behave. She has never been afraid to push boundaries.¹

… as much as i try to be an enlightened man, the sexual lead in image hooks me most of the time… hoping being conscious of it will be good for something… i scanned the article for further sexual eye candy, found little, moved on…

… a line about learning short hand as a practical skill… i think about learning to touch type, way back in High School, the most useful skill i ever learned…

… an extended description of puking ensues… the whole chapter seems about puking… i am wondering in what way that moves the story forward… metaphor for how it sucks to be a woman?…

… i wake earlier than usual… lie in bed trying to relax my body, some success… up… let the dogs out… feed the cat… run water into the tea kettle, set it on the burner… grind coffee beans, a chocolate fruity smell… pour the grounds into the press… let the dogs in… treat the dogs… pour the just now boiling water into the coffee press… stir the coffee with a chop stick… stretching exercises… four minutes and the coffee is ready… press the grounds down to the bottom… agave and cinnamon added to my thermal cup… pour the coffee, elevating the pot and extending the stream as i go… screw the top onto my thermal mug… first sip, the coffee is just right… i climb the stairs to begin reading and writing…

… i read twelve Haiku by Basho… these are my morning prayers… awareness of small exquisite moments… insignificant significance because Basho was there and observed and recorded… i am here to read and imagine what was observed, whole worlds rendered within three lines… the translation makes no attempt to hold to Haiku syllable structure, only three lines and the moment evoked… this sets me free to write Haiku in English if i care to… it sets me free to make assemblages of words that are minimal but open cosmic doors…

… what i learn from Basho… it’s the exquisite small moments that matter most…

… this article by Joshua Tait in The Bulwark reviews the history of Anti-Democratic conservatives… it is centered around William F. Buckley and the National Review… it is a long but worthwhile read… whether we retain Democracy or not is the defining issue of the next two to four years…

… this article by Ronald Brownstein in The Atlantic echos my feelings about the current state of Biden/Harris focus on voting rights… i consider this the defining issue of the next two to four years, because if power is handed back to the current Republican Party, i believe the game is lost…

… apparently people are flying again and they are acting like assholes in unprecedented numbers… as i read this i peg it to 45 and his complete disregard for anything that might constrain him… i view it as another symptom of the dangerous space we are heading into in this country… i wonder how we might stuff this Pandora horror back into the box… I look up Pandora on Wikipedia and immediately realize how misogynist the myth is, a woman responsible for releasing all of the ills of humanity into the world… well, the later day interpretation features an asshole man in the role… i speculate whether one could write a Pandora story with a man as central character?…

… paragraph upon paragraph about food and how the protagonist can eat as much as she wants and never gain weight… and then, this…

Physics made me sick the whole time I learned it. What I couldn’t stand was this shrinking everything into letters and numbers. Instead of leaf shapes and enlarged diagrams of the holes the leaves breathe through and fascinating words like carotene and xanthophyll on the blackboard, there were these hideous, cramped, scorpion-lettered formulas in Mr. Manzi’s special red chalk.¹

… there is something elemental about this paragraph, the difference between a feminine and masculine outlook?… she couldn’t stand the shrinking of things into letters and numbers… she couldn’t stand the draining of texture, color, life, from the cosmos… she couldn’t stand the reduction of qualities into quantities… she couldn’t stand the basis of capitalism, which is to turn everything in to quantities to be bought and sold…

… feeling a pervasive sense of frustration, particularly with my photography practice, which has been interrupted consistently for the last week… rain, things that need to be done in the AM… this morning the last of the need to be done, taking the car to be serviced… will be getting the drive shaft(s?) replaced, free recall replacement… then we have to vote… i suppose i will get a little bit of a photo walk in this morning, but will have to keep it on the shorter side… i also haven’t been able to get as many steps in my daily walking as i would like…

… yesterday K came up from the city… it was good to see her and spend time maskless together, we are all vaccinated… i cooked up one of the chickens we harvested on Friday, butterflied, marinated, grilled… mmmm, delicious…

… we finished season 2 of Top of the Lake… it left open the possibility of a third season, but there is no indication there will be one… it was an interesting show that focused on the variety of abuses women are subject to in a patriarchal world…

… wandering around the meatball pen on Thursday, harvested on Friday, spatchcocked and marinated on Monday…

… getting the marinade ready…

… K comes up from the city… we will cook the chicken over charcoal fire on the Green Egg…

…this is the recipe i am using

… very nicely composed photographs, about place, anchored by a river…

Dan Wood?

… the article attributes the photographs to Mike Gaynor(?) in their captions, but the book, and one believes, photographs are decidedly by Dan Wood?… confusion… i don’t know that there is anything exceptional about the book other than very well made photographs… there are many books about place anchored by a flowing body of water, Sleeping By the Mississippi comes to mind…

Liat Yossifor, “Water” (2021), oil on linen, 80 x 78 inches

… something about this abstract artwork… she is on to something… on view at Miles McEnery Gallery (520 West 21st Street, Chelsea, Manhattan) through June 19…

_ The exhibition’s title comes from André Breton’s 1932 book Les Vases communicants (The Communicating Vessels), which was partially inspired by Sigmund Freud’s writings about dreams and dreaming, and the connections between the interior imagination and everyday facts. By using this title, Yossifor suggests she believes that paint enables viewers to recognize connections between the imagination and the ordinary world without relying on the overtly pictorial._¹

Lilliana Castro producing “Temaquixtilitzli” (2019) (photo by Jesica Vasquez)

…this lead in photograph does pull me in, and apart from the fact that she is a young attractive woman, it is, for once, not my male gaze that pulls me in, but her earnestness… she is concentrating and creating and i fall in love with just that, a young, earnest woman creating a graphic, sending a message to the world…

… as i read the article, i realize it is by a woman, about a woman, creating artwork that is about the condition of women…

… all of the women in the article are LGBTQI… i don’t know what the I stands for…

… i wonder, to what degree is woman choosing woman to love physically about their rejection of the patriarchy?…

I don’t believe in baptism or the waters of Jordan or anything like that, but I guess I feel about a hot bath the way those religious people feel about holy water.¹

… those of us who don’t believe the prevailing mythology have to find sacred in other places… a hot bath or, in my case, a hot shower, is one of those places… we, the secular, find religion in what makes us feel good, feel ourselves, feel alive, and perhaps this is why we don’t transcend…

… i suspect this chapter is the beginning of descent, but it is a descent brought on by the external world, filled with girlfriends that are prettier than you and catch the man who gets them drunk to the point of throwing up at your feet…

… my first thoughts were that i don’t want to get up yet… but Chas went downstairs, i got worried he might need to go out… so, up i got…

… now, dogs have been out and treated, cat has been fed, coffee has been made and i sit at my computer typing, like the proverbial monkey, trying to arrive at some thought, some observation that unlocks the secret of existence… of course, i am able to write sentences and paragraphs that make sense, but none of them seems to open the door in the way i hope they will… every morning i sit down and write my first thoughts… could it be that i have written an understanding that is a key that unlocks the door, and just haven’t known it?… like the proverbial monkey, i am just punching keys, not quite randomly, but not with much knowing either…

… an article on Jasper Johns draws me in and i read it from beginning to end… drawn in because the paintings speak to me…

Jasper Johns, Green Angel, 1985

… the article solves the mystery of origin…

The page in question from Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion and Art, edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (screenshot by the author)

… fascinating… find out more about Torse de la Cenauresse et Minotaure, Auguste RODIN…

Because the price of living wholeheartedly (which is the only way worth living) is the heartbreak of many losses — the loss of love to dissolution, distance, or death; the loss of the body to gravity and time — and because loss leaves in its wake an experience so private yet so universal, the common record of human experience that we call literature is replete with reflections on grief:¹

… I Measure Every Grief I Meet: Emily Dickinson on Love and Loss

… it’s a novel, but reads autobiographical, written in the first person… it opens up with death, the electrocution of the Rosenbergs, the experience of seeing a cadaver, foreshadowing?…

… the introduction to Buddy Willard, who went to Yale, is that he is stupid because ”he didn’t have one speck of intuition.”, hmmm… i suspect that is right, true intelligence requires intuition, an ability to leap…

… in the forward, i read…

Plath’s suicide on February 11, 1963 brought her instant fame in England, where she had made occasional appearances on the BBC and was beginning to be known through her publications.¹

… how is it the world pays particular attention the moment an artist dies, especially if they were promising and commit suicide?… how does that work?… we become frantic to gather everything the artist ever did, to preserve it, because there will be no more?…

… my spiritual ritual solidifies, ring the singing bowl, read some poetry, write what it tells me, ring the singing bowl… the poetry i read this morning and last Sunday is the Haiku of Basho, which is perfect given that Haiku in general and Basho in particular, seek to find the universe in the particular… discrete, almost inconsequential moments, except that attention is paid, the poet moved and characters brushed onto paper…

… i make a picture of Fiona sleeping…

… earlier, i hear what i think is a cardinal, singing in the dark…

… i continue to be disappointed that the cicada aren’t numerous, yet… maybe it is too early…