Kathy and Sarah do not care for this piece. Their criticisms start with how awful the baby looks and then spread out from there to the very edges of the paper. I was fully aware of some of the image's weaknesses while working on it, but I'm stunned to see an additional million-and-one mistakes suddenly revealed in reproduction. Yet, in my defense, if one starts correcting all of one's errors, then at the end of one's life there will be nothing left but an overused kneaded eraser and the faulty memory of a paper that long ago disintegrated beneath countless erasures and layers of frantic redrawing. Life is short and one has to decide what to cling to and what to let go. For a heavy-handed and moralizing example, wouldn't it be pathetic to waste a life fiercely clinging to passion yet abandoning compassion, to being swallowed whole in a crazy emotional maelstrom caused by transitory events and silly ego, to be "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" while rejecting that which is our eternal birthright: things sublime and noble? Wouldn't it be sad to think so little of ourselves that we give up on being humble, merciful, sacrificing, forbearing, forgiving and loving for... for what? Someone else still loves us despite and through all our failings. Maybe someday we'll grow up enough to be guided more by Him than by our own spleen.
Saturday, June 1, 2019
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Nadine
It had been a harsh and bitter year for her. All the ghosts she stored in glass flasks in the cellar had freed themselves. Then the monsters...
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Alas, I still can't figure out how to reproduce colors on the computer! There are some yellows that didn't reproduce at all, the blu...
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This is an old drawing, done in 2003. Kathy and I recently had an occasion to look at some of my old pieces and she mentioned she liked this...
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I casually tipped my cap to him as we passed each other on the narrow path in the woods. He smiled and whispered, "When I was young I e...