Van Gogh's ghost

clouds hang grey and heavy like bad memories, and the sunshine of perfect clarity burns strong and yellow straight through to the unbelieving ground. rain is the stuff of hungry desire, when memories become too great to contain and they collect in a weight too great to be held by the mind, come flowing forth, flowering like a California field in April. the shards of memory fall to the lowest possible point and flow down to the streams of consciousness, overflowing the banks of comprehension in dreams. the ground is like the canvas our mind chooses upon which to splash the gaudy floodwaters of the dream state, and as the artist knows, any canvas can only hold so much color. Van Gogh already tested those limits, and his own canvas was one severely overburdened with dark clouds and skewed visions. when, in his or any case, the palette no longer has an outlet in the dream world, colors begin to spill over into the waking life, a flood of image with no discernible boundary between creation and creator, life imitating art imitating life imitating art.

dreams and feelings settle upon the base of our brain stems like rocks on the ocean floor, and accumulate over time, filled in between them are unrecognizable fragments of other dreams and feelings, the dreams and feelings of others, spoken, told, remembered from stories, an unrecognizable slurry of minute memories that serve as a supporting cast to the larger and more immediate memories. this conglomerate shifts with time and tide, bearing with the ages the incomprehendable weight of the ocean of life, and form one solid sedimentary block of a life lived, dreamt, and felt. it stays under the sea, unseen for millenia, until the inner workings of the Earth configure to make the sea rise and make the ground the masses walk upon one day, the solid and unquestionable foundation of all of life that comes subsequently. Van Gogh (or Van Gogh's ghost) knew this phenomena all too well. he collected sediment and great polished and jagged stones for years, while his life probably felt like it bore the weight of all of the oceans combined, and eventually succumbed to drowning or intracranial pressure of aeons. now the images created during that time adorn walls of museums worldwide, walls of humble homesteads, books on the beauty of life and nature, and postcards bolting from coast to coast, continent to continent; a foundation upon which to stand and not question the creation of, though during the time of creation it all went by unnoticed like the cementing of pretty stones within the ocean floor, like must be happening right now somewhere, everywhere, on Earth. the tortured artist and the churning sea bed going unnoticed, until one day hence to be held as magnanimous displays of life, as the only prototype we have to judge all subsequent works of beauty.

12/26/2010

saw the Panamints
covered with snow
and smiled

a hollywood story (longevity pt. II)

i was sent to hollywood
by god
to give a dollar
to the poor elderly lady on fairfax

in front of canter's jewish deli
which has been around
since 1931

and my uncle said
"now that's longevity"