Saturday, October 30, 2010

SLSA 2010

Attending the 24th Annual Conference of the SLSA, Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. It is cold here in Indianapolis; besides the cold, the art panels are lively and crowded. I am presenting on Jean Dubuffet, Materialized Perception: Cubism of Material in Jean Dubuffet's Table Series in 1950s.



Clotted Table, Jean Dubuffet, 1951, Oil on Masonite



Friday, October 22, 2010

No matter what ...

The sense of belonging is lost!
The walk was shorter than I thought.
I was scared in that lightless narrow quiet street.
A vague autumn touch here and there, all manmade,
And nowhere near the trees, where I would have liked to see them; the leaves!

Some occasional walkers like me, but no sense of belonging or security, despite the fact that I have a social security number now.

Numbers are no good!

Numbers:
Seventeen houses on the side I walked on;
Two very large ones; I did not like them at first but then they were the only ones with a light pole on the front yard. I liked that; I was not scared anymore!
Many trees, I did not count how many.
Three other walkers; all were going the opposite direction. Or I was the only one going the way I was going!
Four bikers; three of them men.

I so much like to write numbers like numbers (17, 3, 4, … ) but I have been criticized for that. So here you are: Seventeen, Many (but of course finite), Three, Four and me.

This is not a poem.
It is not intended as one, not by me.
But I like to break the sentences here and there, as they come to me; not to my mind but to my body; that’s my lips and hands, as I read them out loud and type.
I type funny, someone said recently.

I had one glass of wine, thought of the wind, the sense of belonging, the color orange and how I will cope, no matter what ...

Mark Rothko, Yellow, Red, on Orange, 1954





Friday, October 08, 2010

A Haiku for Something Little!


Something,
Something little,
Something plain, unbroken and exact;
A little candid existence, like the dot at the end of this sentence, would be enough for me.



Kazimir Malevich, Black Circle (c.1923)