Dragging around some miserable wife
on a real hike, straight up a cliff
of corn, holding onto silk husks
for dear life—it’s a little odd
to vacation as your mistress, and as
the only one licensed to drive, but
no one seems to mind. A little
disturbed but making it through
Swelling up before noon, I dreamt
my abalone ring came apart
Live fish and shell peeled off
my finger, in a retail store
of which you were the owner.
This day smells like toast.
Maggie Nelson, “September 2”
“What is art? It is not decoration. It is the re-living of experience. The artist says, ‘I will make that event happen again, altering its shape, which was disfigured by its contacts with other events, so that its true significance is revealed’; and his audience says, ‘We will let that event happen again by looking at this man’s picture or house, listening to his music or reading his book.’ It must not be copied, it must be remembered, it must be lived again, passed through those parts of the mind which are actively engaged in life, which bleed when they are wounded and give forth the bland emulsions of joy, while at the same time it is being examined by those parts of the mind which stand apart from life. At the end of this process the roots of experience are traced; the alchemy by which they make a flower of joy or pain is, so far as is possible to our brutishness, detected. What is understood is mastered. If art could investigate all experiences then man would understand the whole of life, and could control his destiny.”
Rebecca West | Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
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