trees 

dog with ball 

Henry Gould points to an article in the NY Times re the therapeutic possibilities of art for Alzheimer patients. art doesn't need to be useful in this way, I suppose, but I can't speak against such usefulness. I do an occasional painting class with elders who suffer from Alzheimers. I've seen quite a bit of re-energizing in the people who participate. this Russian fellow, who spoke little if any English, would make these village pictures, the elements of which (house,tree, people) gives me, at least, in my ignorance, a sense of the iconic. a woman who imitially had zero interest and sullenly left midway thru the class came back another time and made 20 paintings in an hour, chattering happily as she painted. I tried to interest my father in painting. he obligingly tried but, alas, just did not enjoy it. he made a colourful design with his initials in the middle, which looked good, and I would've thought was a pleasure to do, but it was painful for him. which is sad, the kind of losses we can incur. Kenneth Koch has a book about his experiences doing poetry workshops with the elderly (I forget the title). it's a gloomier book than his ones with children, the resistances, sadly, are greater. but the successes, when people find their way into the activity and that connection, are encouraging, and I mean to underline the word courage in that word. sometimes it seems art, all this stuff we do, is so much farking around--I mean Jim Johnson and Kent Behrle in public can go to hell--but sometimes an enrichment exists beyond that sort of plopping sound. I don't mean to pick on those 2 (well, yes I do), just trying to remind myself not to worry about stupid things. it remains fascinating to me how art does connect.

I got Ted Berrigan's collected yesterday. I hesitated at the price, and knew that I won't for a while have a lot of time to read it, but acquiesced. I really like Berrigan but there's more to it than that. I admire his the dedication to complete process evident in his work as one reads it. Anselm writes somewhere (might've been a post to Poetics) that Ted read everything and anything, but you can tell that just from reading. his openness derives from his dedication. this dedication allows for an exemplary freedom to experiment and play. I could goon, into the bogs of blurbdom, but will just say that he remedies a lot of the capable 2nd rate busy charm school poetry that one finds so often.

the colour scheme is great here but it is the eyes that make this picture.

important financial update

I'm up to $0.00 already! (haven't lost money!!!). will keep you abreast.

odd reading day yesterday: Jung on active imagination, Pat Allen (an art therapist), Biographia Literaria, a Nietzsche critical bio by Alexander Nehamas, the 1st couple if essays in Poetry, Language, Thought by Heidegger (the boozy beggar), some Rilke poems and "Tintern Abbey". and I was following something, too. with the money (I won't say loot) pouring in from AdSense, I'll be able to have many more such leisurely days of peregrinational study!

look at that big blue banner: beauty! just curious what it felt like to step upon the slippery slope. supposedly ads are based on content. I'm hoping I get cool ads, one's that make hip statements about me. I mean, please don't give me ads for imitation flavoured vanilla ice cream product, or rubber bands, or your kid's 3rd favourite packaged mac and cheese. I want to dream the American dream. there's a great line in JR by William Gaddis, in which the boy JR says something like, you look at anything and someone's made a million of it, even toilets.

reigning cat and dog