Simple Ethics

Clashing aspects. Not unlike other situations I've found myself in, where you're afraid to say anything, lest you rock the boat. My marriage was like that, teetering on the edge. Intelligence doesn't imply knowledge of the way things work, very bright people find themselves in dumb positions. I went for a drink with TR after work, and he was truly anguished that there could be such division in such a small staff. We were in Sara's office, TR, D, Sara and myself, and we were all laughing so hard we were crying. Sara had made a word-play off something TR had said and turned it into a Disney movie. Everything was only implied. I assume Kim knows to meet me at the museum. I assume, nine days from Sunday, you'd know what I'd mean. 4:01 in the morning. The process of paying attention. B came over in the morning, afraid I had died, as there was no sign of life. I was still asleep, having stayed up most of the night. He'd brought over an essay about friendship and solitude he wrote to present at the poetry conference. It's quite dense and very good. I had to read it four or five times to get the all the allusions. Not that I could get them all, but the ones that I could get. It's a treat knowing some of the best writers in the language, but it's also a challenge. Writing that has to be unraveled. A great day with the double-issue New Yorker, Science Fiction. I read SF, rarely Fantasy, then British Speculative Fiction, after which (maybe I was fifteen) I just read everything. It's been catch-up ever since. B and I had a conversation about a difficult subject this morning, difficult to wrap your brain around. Most writers write about something, some few just sail ahead, with spinnakers billowing, tap the well-spring and trust their technique. I prefer the latter, but it is, as Roy Blount Jr. said, 'hard listening'. As long as I continue to surprise myself, reveal my own underbelly, I consider it a serious act, and writing keeps me off the streets. Reading Peter Carey's new novel, "The Chemistry Of Tears", a lovely thing, he's such a beautiful writer; we don't actually see him, the writer, but we sense his presence, ghost writers in the sky kind of thing. Beat on your own tin drum. Gunter Grass, "The Flounder" is one of the great books, certainly his best. Life through the eyes of a cook. The person what (that) mops the floor. Thomas Hart Benton and John Curry are a joke, either you get it or you don't. What Carter does is around you, the actual environment. Those dead sunflowers are dead sunflowers, not a cartoon. I suppose if I was living in Cedar Rapids I'd be talking about Grant Wood, I love that painting "Appraisal" where two people are talking and one of them is holding a chicken. And Burchfield is a great painter. Regionalism. I chew on that for a while. Benton and Carter were both mainstays against Abstract Expressionism. Benton owes more than a nod to Rivera. Carter was the Master Sergeant. Just thinking. Magic Realism is a response to something. What was happening with art at the time. The way things morph.