July 8, 2023

Heard a bear passing through my garden gate last night. I leave it open to make just such passage easy, but you have to jangle it a little if you’re not going the right way, and he wasn’t. He gave a little whuff of impatience. This led to a night of bear dreams. One featured a narrow upright range, such as you’d find in an apartment. When it appeared, it was known that a bear had killed that night, except the person it had killed would be there, reborn, and unwilling to talk about the experience. 

It’s a new world painting and writing in the same room. I analyze and critique my painting with the side of my head while I’m writing. A bad passage in painting can be redeemed by as little as smearing it out with your thumb and realizing the smear is exactly what you want. This does not happen in writing.