coldhearted scientist وداد

I could do a series of interesting, mostly modernist paintings on this. One about being invaded, run over, chased across a field, cut down with a shovel (although in some dreams I make it across the border). A Cézanne, perhaps. Another about being in the Reeducation camp, perhaps by Klee (I would like to go to an art museum now). This would have a wavering rose background and two squares; a dark ball or circle inside the left one would be the subject, and the right one would rain questions, instructions, formats, pamphlets and forms.

The space of the left-hand square is the space of one’s worst experiences; one is imprisoned there for the sin of having believed these were not one’s only experiences. One is to be imprisoned until one accepts that these are in fact one’s true self; only after accepting this will one walk free. Communication from the right square involves interrogation on one’s past and attitudes, to which one responds in writing and then with an oral examination, as at school. Then there is instruction on how to reinterpret this material. One is learning the techniques of verbal violence one will use against oneself once freed.

This is interestingly reminiscent of the structure of the prison of St. John of the Cross, in Toledo, although I do not know that I will get a poem out of it.

Reeducation had other elements and was not just this experience but the elements all of its faces have in common is imprisonment and the exhortation that the world is not the world and one is not oneself. Now, however, I am not the dark circle inside the left square, but the artist painting.

♦

The other visual or physical element in Reeducation involves allowing oneself to be engulfed. That is of course my original trauma anyway but we had learned in school that we did not have to allow it. In Reeducation one did; one had to allow whatever anyone wanted to do or say wash over one. Before, I drew a circle around these things and kept them in their place, but in Reeducation the situation was reversed: I had to be in the circle and they got to occupy the rest of the space. Now, though, I am outside the game entirely, painting the paintings described above.

I could paint a Miró painting about this, drawing a circle and pushing it to the edge of the frame.

♦

The final question also has to do with space. What rights has one in relation to others? One does not owe them one’s own flesh and blood, as I feel I do, and one does not owe it to them to be the one they walk on, even if they require to walk on someone. I have great difficulty with the idea that if I can finally give away enough of my own flesh, the hungry will at last be satisfied and I can go on my way. I have difficulty believing that they are not that hungry, they just want to eat and they do not really care how much this inconveniences their victual — even if the victual is someone they love.

I could paint a Bosch painting about this. In the painting I could represent and analyze, but I would be the artist; I would not be in it.

Axé.