Debriefing

Journal notes from Sunday, 27 December 2009
MOMA, musings and impressions
My love, Orozco with his network of circular forms, a diagram designed "to explain how things work, how objects behave."

***
I still smell the perfume on my own wrist
but it only reminds me of you
(Is it the perfume from her dress that makes me so digress?)

***
I managed to blog - that was a good thing
----- the songs I'm singing -----

***
the little boy in the wheelchair in
the elevator at MOMA -
he was so exquisite, so lovely, so sweet,
so innocent - but already so exposed
to something terrible -
as well to high beauty, and devotion, his
sister, or mother, or au pair, or some lovely
young woman wheeling him into the lift -
the lovely quiet boy, all smiles, self-possessed
keenly alive, and aware, modest,
charisma, modest loving sweet young boy.

***
the Tim Burton exhibit (mandala, star bursting, worms, snakes - Jung)
okay




really impressive - gallery
of fantôme images from the
19th century, esp. Paris
"photography was invented 1839"
I thought it was later -
those images are timeless -
yet everyone within them is deceased -
here I am -

***
Earlier that day I also visited the American Museum of Folk Art, next door to MOMA, which featured a small exhibit by Henry Darger, a (so-called) "outsider" artist whose work I've seen earlier at a large retrospective there years ago and whose images have stayed with me



What if Henry Darger had grown up in Burbank [like Tim Burton]? His visions are Blake-ian, cinematic. Why is he marginalized as an "outsider" artist?

And somehow, I suspect, or just feel, that R. Crumb - from what I've read (e.g., H. Bloom, in NYRB) is overestimated. I don't trust Crumb (or his vision)
Why are the women so resolutely ugly?
this is not a deeply felt vision


***
What do these people make of
E. Dickinson
It's a wonder she's not marginalized as "outsider"
A. Rich gets her wrong
E.D. was wronged (misunderstood) -
felt herself split -
It is very hard.




(And still the perfume on my wrist lingers -
I'm grateful.)









***
... I can't imagine what I'm going to blog about tomorrow.

Dawn write

notes from journal, written around 6:30 this morning

So many thoughts going through my head. I need to set them down like gathering up bits of paper into a handbag of a journal. Free-associating: in my dream a man - a stranger I think - asks me - or someone - can you go on vacation to a beach destination in 2 days. I leap at the chance. I know we will make love. [Portion of dream omitted for sake of decency.] I return from the trip. I meet up with [my girlfriend] X and kick myself that I didn't bring her a present. What poor form. We embrace and a Japanese woman joins us. She's so gracious that she's brought me a gift though we’ve never met - a sleeveless sheer white linen blouse edged in pale green. We sit down at the end of a long table across from each other. She tells me that she too had wanted other things in life for herself but parental pressure thwarted her.

Another thought. Last September - that is, in 2008 - I glimpsed a man one fine day at the conservation area. My heart and mind were just brimming with love & longing for John and I mouthed the words I love you. (Oy Scott would say right now…

[Totally illegible here, lines written one on top of another – that’s the last time I write in pitch dark! - so must reconstruct from memory. ]

… but when I think I’m totally by myself I can express myself in a little skip, a little step…

He had a purposeful stride like John’s marching up the path from the overlook bench to where I was just coming out of the woods. We passed each other & I felt shy, startled, and a little embarrassed. I suppose he reminded me of John – but now I’m wondering if it was one of the actors Foxx hires to don the grey suit and walk through various public venues such as parks. Only this man wasn’t wearing a grey suit – more, rather elegant, understated country clothing...