Notes from Purgatory

While the idea of Logocentric waits in purgatory, we at globatron find it appropriate to publish under the same pseudonym more of his older works.  This is not a navel-gazing tribute as much as it is an affirmation that he lived, and an indication that he may now permanently inhabit the circuitry of another dimension–one apart from the rest of us, though perceptible and possibly quite real.

This is Installment Number One of a series on and from the afterlife.

THE MET, NYC. WED, AUG 1, 2001
Staring at Charles Demuth’s “No. 5 in Gold.” Modern art purports to be nothing at all.  It is not a clear picture of an idea, but the product of a merely suggestive pathology.  It represents that which is merely tolerated in the modern mind. It is never “just adorable,” as an elderly couple nearby have described a painting of a church steeple-centered, hilly village.  It is ambiguous about the shape and nature of the author’s hands, about whether they are generous or careful or hideous or obscene, treading water in a Bohemian sea of waste and fear and lust.

Whether intentionally or not, the author abdicates authority by avoiding clarity of intent, and by indulging in apathetic symbology.  Yet the strokes and incisions they leave behind always lend themselves to ominous interpretations.

The beginning of August in the city.  Above, the air yearns for purity; and where it meets the entrance of this hand-thrown monument, it begins to reek of ornate confinement.  We do not notice it deep within the cluster of ornaments, but outside, you can smell it for miles and decades. . . .

Back to work.  Back to bed.  Back to food and the rediscovery of abundance.  Back to fulfillment of desire and the realization of its futility.  Back to pangs of loss–of meaning and desire and companionship and solitude–to the point that choice embodies an arena of terror and paranoia.  Back to divergence from your formula of purpose, to the drawing board of constellations.