Tchelitchew

Thomas Hart Benton became an anti-modernist, but early on he dabbled with the Expressionists, the various abstract groups, Jackson Pollack was his student. Artists move toward things, you can see the drift, less of one thing, more of another. Too much time in the tanning booth. Consider the name Tchelitchew. Both of the T's are silent, and god-damn silent letters to that last circle of hell. And what's with this modern style of wearing a baseball cap straight across the brim? I was good, generally, with the former family, this trip. Went out of my way to be, what? friendly, open. I'm a world-class conversationalist because I'm shallow, and cover a large field. Don't know much about anything but cover quite an expanse, a superficial knowledge. Kate, the former sister-in-law, noted, as I had, this particular characteristic. I'm easy to isolate, that last monad, covering his ass. Silence is an issue, solitude, being alone, how you deal with that. I conform the brim of my hat to meet the light of day, it takes weeks, that bend of brow. Nothing, nothing, nothing, then suddenly something. A straight brim seems to say you don't give a shit about anything. Tchelitchew (more or less Chilly-chew), brought to my attention by a Davenport essay, did some interesting paintings. Curators don't like him but the public does. The painting "Hide And Seek" is amazing. I take a book home from the museum library every weekend and am enjoying the tutorial. Ant attack. They infected the house while I was gone, ant traps and poisoned bait everywhere. Piss-ants, as my Mom always calls them, and they do smell like piss, if you crush one between your fingers, formic acid; pregnant women should eat ants. There's one in my drink right now, one of those large black ants, an LBA; I don't know ants very well. Who knows, if you drink enough insects, maybe you don't need any supplements. Walking down the driveway this morning, using a long-handled shovel as a walking stick, so that I could stop at various obstructing damns in the grader-ditch and indicate a path the water might flow. I flatter myself I could direct the flow of water. I'm lucky to stay in clean socks. There was a large beetle, a palmetto bug, and it offended my senses, struck at it with tip of the shovel. I'm not that good with a shovel, but it was a lucky shot, and I cut the insect neatly in half. Then I felt bad about being so accurate. Who am I to kill a beetle?