March 24, 2013

Vicious blast of wind and rain against the eastern windows.

Pretty spectacular Saturday: Rose early, went to the café where, against expectation, I broke through conceptually in my Celestine V play, and wrote the second scene. Later, I felt I had to wait at home until the last of the carpets came, so I busied myself with sorting out tchotchkas and filling a box for the Goodwill truck. The carpets came before noon. Realized I had spent half again as much on rugs in Istanbul as I did on a down payment for this house. Life changes. I went to the studio and had one of my truly great days there. Pawing through drawers, I found boxes of slides that I’d taken of my own paintings long ago. Some of the paintings were quite good, and I have no idea where they are. But what I hugely learned is that I was on a path as a painter, distinctive and personal, from which I had been lured by something, perhaps Jason and his seductive notion that one could paint like Vermeer. It was a revelation. I went to the studio and took up the native path, and in a few hours I’d created one painting and altered another in a way that pleased me more than anything I’d done in a long time. I recognized myself again.

The Magnetic Field is gone. I knew it was going, but one would have thought I’d get some sort of notification singled out from the masses. What I know of this is what I read on Facebook, and it shouldn’t have turned out that way. One hears stories of how making it up as you go can lead to spectacular success. It probably doesn’t very often. One never reads those stories.

Holy Week almost ready to begin. Trying to find some way to make it meaningful, or to stand back and allow it to be meaningful, this year. I think that God makes me war on him. What God thinks I’ve stopped trying to guess.

The plumber’s restored wall collapses in the rain. I had a premonition that it would. Oddly, I don’t even care. He’s freed from further responsibility because I never want to see him again.

In any case, woke in the wall-undermining, window-rattling storm with a sense of well being, as though the doors were open, the lights of the way lit.