so, another year! and i'm feeling reading 'crime and punishment'at age twenty, lying on my family's living-room couch for several days, has left a stronger impression than love-making or traveling. which goes to say, art is an experience which may be more powerful than anything else we do.
i can't say why. maybe it's the intense effect of form, missing in most parts of our lives. or perhaps it's the fact we fill in the blanks. a great story becomes our story, our possession, or our being possessed.
on the way to mexico we listened to the story of a flyer over africa. i can barely remember the real road we traveled.
and this xmas last summer's obsession with the painter francis bacon met one of his paintings in the berkeley art museum. suddenly, i felt inside it - and the paint so beautiful.
how vividly art expands our memory, our desire, even our dreams. at times i don't know what was 'real' and what i imagined, and i'm not sure it makes a difference.
i'm posting some photos taken at a graduation ceremony several years ago. the pictures seem to me to have this indeterminate quality. yes, it really happened. did it happen this way? darned if i know.
these thoughts come during the last hours of the old year. and on the other side of the earth it's already tomorrow.
