Painting is made of a variety of languages yet no singular language is used. At a certain point nothing can be used. At another point we get lucky. And we look upon our work with unbelieving eyes. It wasn’t our hand that did it; we don’t know who did it. This work was certainly not done by us. Our legerdemain grows as desperate as we do when what we’re trying doesn’t work. In part this is why one looks to painters such as Fragonard or Velázquez for inspiration. Look at the ease, the nonchalance, flick the wrist!

Day to day begins to feel like no new country exists. Or the countries you’d wish to travel to are too much work. The whirlpool of your own, patterned invention begins to deceive you. That feeling of knowing sneaks past you from already-developed regions in your intuited systems. You may use yellow out of desperation. You may use black out of desperation. Or it may be that ephemerality which so impressed… who? Was it you? You can’t remember, can you? Yet it must’ve impressed someone. How trivial it seems. But you know what you are not good at. You see your limitations.

How far will we grow? How far did our emulation take us? What is this land? It is strange, isn’t it?  Nothing seems familiar. There is a tree which looks like someone else’s tree. It isn’t mine. Is it yours? You’re not talking. Look at how that distance was made. That blue is so thin. This brown at my feet is so dense and thick. And what in god’s name is that? In the middle. It isn’t human. It’s some amalgam, some loamy thing. You see it don’t you. You see it too? I’m not going crazy, am I? Because I think I am. I think this place doesn’t exist for you. No one feels it. I’m not even sure how I arrived here.

I am a part of all that I am. A dell. And that thing.

I like feeling effulgence. An upswelling. Do you feel that? It’s like an earthquake. Only… only it’s something else. Someone over there farted and now they are laughing at me. I’m holding the pink book again. Héloïse. Yet I laugh too. No one is safe.

A still life. You must paint a still life. To make a still life snap is an occasion of harmonies. A dance. Ballet. A series of learned positions. All coming off in some way. A way which may not be perfect but is that in-between-place. We’ve spoken of this before. You know. But the difference is that the language is difficult. You are not just moving your arm around in varied and frenzied ways. And then removing marks of varied frenzy. You remove them frenziedly. And then add them. Maybe slowly. But it’s not the same. At least at a certain point they are not the same. Eventually, yes, they are the same but you have to engage the glass with water and make it look like a glass with water in it. You know, I find it so frustrating when someone can do this and judges me. I’m just telling you.

I am lonely. You see, because I’m lonely… you don’t see. I don’t feel like being realistic anymore. I want to love what I do without thinking. I want to be… to be in a tree. I wanted to jump into a lake today. I thought about the Pantisocrats. And I thought that maybe they’d just pull their car over on the 280 and run through the woods and jump into the lake. The car wouldn’t matter. Only the moment, that moment when you hear that hollow sound of the lake. When you lie back and feel the depth beneath you.