| [_+'this means it's noon & we're inconsolable'_] |
[7 Nov 088:22am] |

The problem (if there was one) was not a problem of quantity, or structure, or change, or space. It was not a problem of figures, or of numbers, or even a problem of scale. It did not concern computation, denotation, figuration, lineation, divination, compression, ethics, poetics, devotion, luck, skill, intent, diligence, morality, philosophy, cartography, or even axiomatically defined abstract systems. Certainly it would come to that, eventually, but the problem, for now, here, at the beginning, the problem (if there was one, if there even was a problem) was quite simply a problem with the question. He wants to paint a bird, needs to, and the problem is why. Why paint a bird? Why do anything at all? Not how because hows are easy, series or sequence, one foot after the other, but existentially why bother, what does it solve? Be the tree. Solve for bird. What does this mean, could it possibly mean? It's a problem of clarity. It's a problem of precision. It's a problem of faith and doubt and just because you want to paint a bird, do actually paint a bird, it doesn't mean you've accomplished anything. Maybe if it was pretty it would be something. Maybe if it was beautiful it would be true. But it's not; not beautiful, not even realistic, it's sorta cartoonish: more like a man in a birdsuit, blue shoulders instead of feathers, another lie against an unreal sky of Cadmium, because he isn't looking at a bird, real bird, as he paints, he is looking at his heart, which is impossible, unless his heart is a metaphor, unless his heart is a metaphor for his heart, as everything is a metaphor for itself, so that looking at the page is like looking out the window at a bird in your chest with a song in its throat that you don't want to hear but you paint anyway because the hand is a voice that can sing what the voice will not and the hand wants to do something useful. Answer: be the tree. Answer: solve for bird. Render, render. Sometimes, at night, in bed, before I fall asleep, I think about a poem I might write, someday, about my heart says the heart. Answer: be the heart. Answer: be the hand. Answer: be the bird. Answer: be the sky.- Richard Siken
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