Sunset, Friday, 12 February 2010

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

The cat with eyes closed in the rectangle of sun on the carpet sits in a window of its own making.

Sunset, Friday, 4 December 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

So, what’s the written equivalent of doodles?

Cat’s eye, golden, through an opening in his carrying cage, yellow.

Cat thought balloon: I’m almost 18 and doing O.K. What could they say that would make any difference?

Man thought balloon: I don’t know ... veterinary marketing ...

Elton John Christmas song (the one they always play) on the waiting room radio.

Sorry to do that to you. (Meaning you, the reader.)

I’m supposed to be writing today about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Now there’s something: Elton John and KSM, together again for the first time.

Client flies 757s and 767s and although, thank God, he’s not into ‘911 Truth’, he also doesn’t think al Qaeda remotely capable of what we assume they did.

Not a pleasant thought. Makes the prospect of a trial interesting indeed.

Vet waiting rooms make me edgy, much more than if it were just me in a doctor’s office.

Reading Jane Kramer in The New Yorker on preparing all kinds of Thanksgiving dinners all over the world. Very good so far, as you would expect from her, although – this may seem paradoxical – if she had to do a blog, perhaps she’d become a little less focused on the first-person singular aspect of things. (Revised from: “ ... if she had to do a blog, I think she’d become ... ”)

Blogging, one can become painfully aware of one’s self-orientation. Can’t always tell, of course, how one is doing with this on a given day.

Client’s book is here. Again, keep in mind, despite all the wacky stuff Amazon puts on the same product page (“Buy this book together with I Was the Shooter on the Grassy Knoll! by Oswald Rabbit”), the author is not in sympathy with the sad indeterminate notions of so-called ‘911 Truth’.

Got to clean brushes as soon as I get home.

Sunset tonight: supposed to get cloudy, then rain, then snow. After so many hundreds of sunsets, I have an idea what that might look like. It’s odd to think, first, I can never know what my subject will really be, and then what the painting will be, in response.

A thought: Just make it count.

The vet comes in: Dr. Richard Freedman. A prince, an archduke – no, better, a knight among vets. Makes me happy we made the trip. He loves animals. In his hands, veterinary marketing is redeemed.

On the way home, on the seat beside me, through an opening in his yellow carrying cage, a cat’s eye, golden.

Sunset, Thursday, 5 November 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

All along the hours guardians are posted who would help me if I would let them, from morning through night they accompany me, in rotation, and on emergency call. All they want is for me to look up and let in light, a space of feeling and remembering – strangely enough they want to help me get grounded. I see them as sentinels posted at intervals, although I suppose any one is available at any time. They move in colors, like illuminated smoke, they walk with me, and they talk with me, I mean to listen. Everything alive and possibly even not alive around me conducts their messages. The cats cleaning themselves so nonchalantly here in our living room – what fakers, they’re antennae. Fakirs. All of us, the things we say to each other, you reading this now, any random person on the street, we’re informing and guiding each other. As difficult as it is to believe in a given situation, no matter what we say or do, we are each other’s guardian angels.