Sep 21 21
In sunlight, the warm way the tiny hairs on a dog’s face trace the beautiful contours of their skull.
The hopeful sweetness of a dog laying on the floor, slightly raising its eyebrows when you enter the room, but not lifting its head, knowing you won’t play.
Watching a storm approach over wetlands — seeing the first white caps on the black water and the tall green grasses turned spectral against the dark clouds.
Intimately chatting with a friend across a table in a serious restaurant where they are attentive but simultaneously leave you alone.
The sole sound of your foot crunch on the hard-packed gravel of the desert, the massive silence when you stop, with a sun so strong you can hear its heat.
When you’re by yourself, far out bounding among boulders and you scare a jackrabbit out of hiding and the jackrabbit’s jump scares you.
The way creosote bushes smell of circuit boards.
The cozy calm of Catena’s Jerome in his Study (the wide-brimmed periwinkle hat on the floor, the strange sleeping lion, the flightless bird by the neatly placed clogs, the sap green wainscot curtain… lost in his dream of harmony and intimacy).
The red of the jackets and tights in Ucello’s The Hunt in the Forest.
The dark in between the trees of Hopper’s Seven A.M.
A stranger’s response to the question “Have you ever seen a ghost?”
The uncanny aye-yah sound of an unseen peacock.
When you’re on a hill with wind blowing strong and crossways, and a bird is flying right in front of you in the opposite direction, floating perfectly in one spot — lightly banking up and down.
The crooked, lichen-ed teeth of unkempt cemeteries and the way the ground of the graves spongily and suggestively gives way under foot.
The point in a psychedelic trip when you are still in it but you’re over the hump.
A well packed dusk picnic after a swim.
A cold beer after a swim, with bare feet in cold sand, wrapped in a towel staring, tired, mercifully thinking of very little.
Any distant, high, solitary slow blinking light at night.
That transcendentally awful time when his warped and feedbacking eros reached its apotheosis, and you finally had to draw a line in the sand. But only an hour later, and alone, were able to enjoy some sailboats enough to think that they looked like albino shark fins — and realizing (with a slight smile of inner strength) that this scenario was going to be common to life.
The slightly down gazing stare and general poise of that 10th century, Chinese Luohan at the Met.
The way a newsstand cat kept its eyes closed but constantly and subtly changed its body position in relation to your movements in the store — the way that it was ready even in sleep.
Doing tarot readings completely alone.
The other person initiating a meaningful embrace.
All meaningful embraces.
The hopeful sweetness of a dog laying on the floor, slightly raising its eyebrows when you enter the room, but not lifting its head, knowing you won’t play.
Watching a storm approach over wetlands — seeing the first white caps on the black water and the tall green grasses turned spectral against the dark clouds.
Intimately chatting with a friend across a table in a serious restaurant where they are attentive but simultaneously leave you alone.
The sole sound of your foot crunch on the hard-packed gravel of the desert, the massive silence when you stop, with a sun so strong you can hear its heat.
When you’re by yourself, far out bounding among boulders and you scare a jackrabbit out of hiding and the jackrabbit’s jump scares you.
The way creosote bushes smell of circuit boards.
The cozy calm of Catena’s Jerome in his Study (the wide-brimmed periwinkle hat on the floor, the strange sleeping lion, the flightless bird by the neatly placed clogs, the sap green wainscot curtain… lost in his dream of harmony and intimacy).
The red of the jackets and tights in Ucello’s The Hunt in the Forest.
The dark in between the trees of Hopper’s Seven A.M.
A stranger’s response to the question “Have you ever seen a ghost?”
The uncanny aye-yah sound of an unseen peacock.
When you’re on a hill with wind blowing strong and crossways, and a bird is flying right in front of you in the opposite direction, floating perfectly in one spot — lightly banking up and down.
The crooked, lichen-ed teeth of unkempt cemeteries and the way the ground of the graves spongily and suggestively gives way under foot.
The point in a psychedelic trip when you are still in it but you’re over the hump.
A well packed dusk picnic after a swim.
A cold beer after a swim, with bare feet in cold sand, wrapped in a towel staring, tired, mercifully thinking of very little.
Any distant, high, solitary slow blinking light at night.
That transcendentally awful time when his warped and feedbacking eros reached its apotheosis, and you finally had to draw a line in the sand. But only an hour later, and alone, were able to enjoy some sailboats enough to think that they looked like albino shark fins — and realizing (with a slight smile of inner strength) that this scenario was going to be common to life.
The slightly down gazing stare and general poise of that 10th century, Chinese Luohan at the Met.
The way a newsstand cat kept its eyes closed but constantly and subtly changed its body position in relation to your movements in the store — the way that it was ready even in sleep.
Doing tarot readings completely alone.
The other person initiating a meaningful embrace.
All meaningful embraces.