all my pretty ones

Some days you get up and begin to walk in a direction and realize you do not want to be going wherever it is you find yourself going. You go home and change clothes and get in your pick-up truck and the dog comes along and you go sweep and clean and carry garbage to the county dump. The isolation doesn't bother you today; you wish it were more pronounced, farther away from all the senseless noise of pre-pre-pre-election three-ring circus media tricks and its players.

and later, you're back in this warehouse with brick walls and high rafters and plank floors and hundreds of paintings and these are all things you thought and felt and furthermore were compelled to express in some lasting form, and you wonder about them all -living their lives in this dark building and constantly squeezing over to make room for the daily additions. do they long to be out in the world?

You believe it matters, -because, as you tell your children you're that sort of bear; and perhaps it doesn't, but in the end that really doesn' t change anything either and you will find yourself here again tired after some random day of what most people perceive as respectable work. You'll work then, and it will matter again.

You contemplate that annual juried exhibition, or outdoor fair even though you work does not belong in some tent like a Bedouin. That's not who it's for, even if you have no idea who it's for most days. You only wish you knew. You only wish that audience could come forward somehow.

It's that kind of moment. You could step off into the familiar vortex of depression and its rash actions and poor judgements. You know the lay of the land, after all. But not today. The air is beginning to tease at Fall. you could stay here or you could go waste the afternoon in a movie theatre all alone and with no regrets. there's paint coming in the mail; one of of those delightful people in a big, brown or white or yellow truck will bring your lifeline in a stack of cardboard boxes. they are unaware of the power of the contents. it would be useless to explain, and they are always rushing about like the end of the world anyway.

and on the floor, there's some paintings you don't yet understand. They have languished for months and each day they seem different to you. you want to overpaint them, but not yet...not yet.