all the rest is silence

I should say a little more about this, about not writing. A lot of people ask me about it, and I ask myself. And asking myself why I do not write inevitably leads to another, much more unsettling question: why did I ever write? After all, the normal thing is to read. I have two preferred answers. The first, that my poetry was- without my knowledge- an attempt to create an identity for myself; having created and assumed this identity, I was no longer concerned to throw myself into every poem I set about writing, which is what fascinated me. The other, that it was all a mistake: I believed that I wanted to be a poet, but deep down I wanted to be a poem. And to a degree, an unfortunate degree, I have achieved this; like any reasonably well-crafted poem, I am all need and internal submission to that tormented tyrant, that insomniac, omniscient and ubiquitous Big Brother: Me. Half Caliban, Half Narcissus, I fear him most when I hear him interrogate me, next to an open balcony: "What's a boy of 1950 like you doing in an indifferent year like this?" All the rest is silence.

-Jaime Gil de Biedma

via MentholMountatains

Finished Paintings, Vol. 2

These are a few of my favorite paintings from the past year. A few other selections are below as well.

Finshed paintings, vol. 1

Hello. I wanted to post some of my favorite finished paintings from the past year. It's been a pretty lousy year for me, painting wise, but I like each of these individually.

May Pictures

I started this painting and then the next day I found an old wood frame that looked like it belonged to it. Now I just have to finish it. I have been having a hard time finishing.

I'm Not Saying It Should Be This Way

Whilst [intelligence] is inferior to the natural instrument [instinct] for the satisfaction of immediate wants, its advantage over it is greater, the less urgent the need. Above all, it reacts on the nature of the being that constructs it; for in calling on her to exercise a new function, it confers on her, so to speak, a richer organization, being an artificial organ by which the natural organism is extended. For every need that it satisfies, it creates a new need; and so, instead of closing, like instinct, the round of action within which the animal tends to move automatically, it lays open to activity an unlimited field into which it is driven further and further, and made more and more free.

- Henri Bergson, quoted in Jussi Parikka's Insect Media.

mineral shards

animal parts