Working

It's not necessary for things to be right side up for them to make sense. Sometimes the scene, the totality, is what matters, not the particulars.

To create certain visual poems, I move to the third floor, to my office, my studio, my library, complete with dictionary stand and over 1,000 dictionaries. To my personal floor and workspace that comes with a bathroom and a bed if I want it. But what I use most is the chaos of the place. As I work, I make more and more of a mess until I am wending my way through a maze of boxes, papers, books, and canvases (painted and not).

This is the opposite of my office at work, which is more than pristine. I have no filing cabinets, no shelves, just a few sheets of paper on my desk and a half-drawer of paper files within it. Everything else is electronic. I work in an office almost that is neat to the point of blankness. My walls are empty.

Last week when I was in Montana, a friend told me that I was strangely talented because I am both creative and logical, that it is as if I have two minds. A nice compliment, though I hardly believe, or if I'm of two minds I assume a battle is raging somewhere for hegemony over my mind. I do what I'm supposed to do when it's supposed to happen. Different points in time have different requirements.

Sometimes when I look at the mess I've made at home, at the inkstains on my fingers, I think that I am an artist. But I know I'm a scribbler. Visual poets tend to be outsider artists, though we might sometimes be real poets.

Tonight, I spent a couple of house putting ink to paper. Sheets of inkstained paper lie everywhere drying. The ink is palpable. Edible.

ecr. l'inf.