August Macke

August Macke 1887-1914
Lady in a Green Jacket

When we were young, our embryonic critical acumen attributed to some of our art-making friends qualities they did not really possess or would ever realize. The monstrous harvest of the First World War culled artists whose early work we regard with especial grief (Gaudier-Brzeska, Macke). Artists who lived many years, Matisse and Braque are two, voyaged through periods and stages and styles, almost to appear to have become different persons.

August Macke presumes he’ll live for decades, and that on the other side of his many years of painting he may become an actor, or a wanderer, or a playwright. But here his spirit and gut clench, fearing that she will be run headlong into a subservient role, hobbled by weak men, and bound fatally to the cowardice that has been imposed upon her blood. In Tunisia he saw a street beggar, a girl of fourteen, pick the pocket of a British tourist, then swing the wallet in front of the victim’s eyes with a gay hoot, before scampering out of sight. In Lyon, Tsiganes rambled in packs, as on the high seas seeking sluggish clippers, rolling the drunks, in this way: with choral songs of pleasure and accomplishment. The breadbaker’s shop is burned to the ground by his one moment of negligence, after which he hies his family to Paris, where he learns pastries of the most delicate kind, destined only for the bellies of the plutocrats. In mines and pits souls wither into grease, scriveners rot, men pound rocks to gravel, women desiccate. August Macke brings the mallet down, beats a rhythm of forgiveness and betrayal, and frees the vassals, feet in the boulevards dance, the bellows of the throng can from a distance sound only like song. In 1913, August Macke foresaw Paris in May of 1968. He added the enzyme luciferase (from fireflies) to pigments, and,
so that girls could say to the boys in bars
who fan their feathers,
perm their hair,
glisten their muscles,
and swell their codpiece:
fuck you!,
August Macke invented green.

French football

Oddly, I was waking from peaceful dreams, in Ithaca, last week, and found that I had been turned into a zealous fan of European football, and since then have become warmly attached to the Fox Soccer Channel, on which I can watch numerous live and recorded matches from England, Italy, and throughout the world. I had been thinking that all I cared about was the New York Mets (since 1962), European cycling, and ocean sailing, so I had not expected that my enthusiasm would so quickly turn into that queer sort of dependence I have for the three other sports - if "sports" is what they are.
It then became what some people call incumbent upon me to establish a "side" with which I could park my aspirations for greatness and invest my remotest and least expressible strains of romantic energy. French, that would be; and a town in which I have spent some time. Paris, to me, means Metro exhaust and riding on the top level of RERs (I saw a baseball game being played in the Bois de Boulogne, but no football) and Fougeres, Tintineac, Carhaix, Villaines la Juhel, Mortagne au Perche, Belleme, and Nogent le Roi have teams too minor. Loudeac (my Onhava, my Ithaca) is too beautiful, just altogether too beautiful. Therefore Brest, a Second Division team with nice-looking boys with strange names, a town with exquisite bridges, and presently residing in a strong second place.
Now I feel safe.

Daisy Miller for our time

SOLVEIG DOMMARTIN

Charley is my darling....

One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug. If they were dreams, he was being chased by small, vile men who were sneering and barking and dripping bile from holes. He then realized that he was even smaller than they, and that all the margins of his bearings were locked in hopeless, oily quicksand. From a window above, a rayshaft of dim light upon his eyes descended. Into it he imagined that he climbed. As the last remnant of dream-awareness was lost, he lay upon his armour-hard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his brown, arched abdomen divided into rigid bow-like sections. From this height the blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place. His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his circumference, flickered helplessly before his eyes.

John Marino Open 1984

Exposed cables, toe clips, Bell helmets. 1984.
From the Far East we'd ventured to Hemet California to race in the John Marino Open, an 800 mile straight-through event. This image reveals the secret of my career: I am wee second in the draft, as often I was with Dan and David, gigantic Canada Geese first in the vee.

Geneseo 1966

KRYS POWELL, CATHERINE PREZZANO, BOB MOORE, and unidentified
Installed trees, raw landscaping, building without character.
Present tense.
Pre-cancerous.
Never afterward bored.

Kate

AKIBA, NADIA, and MIRIAM: Battery Park, NYC

I have mentioned that my friend Kate has been sending me long letters and emails for over 35 years. By these I have felt privileged.
Some years ago, she had taken some of her schoolkids on a field trip to the New York Stock Exchange, and afterward in Battery Park they came upon a model who was taking a break in the Park.

Yesterday, she made epical remarks that portrayed her being in the world, which she is, in about the way I imagine Neruda observing Santiago from the back of a taxi.