Saturday, April 20, 2019

I Am Just the Decanter, You the Just Destroyer



The last time I was in Chicago was 1990. Hamster, his friend Rusty, and I traveled to see a three game series between the Orioles and White Sox for the last season of Comiskey. It will not be 29 years before I come back.

I did not know Mondrian made paintings like this:




until I visited the Chicago Institute of Art yesterday. There too, this Gerhard Richter:




  • If you follow me on twitter I sent you lots more yesterday
  • Wonderful museum, tremendous contemporary section, made me finally acknowledge that high modern is now as mummy to me as the impressionists
  • I am typing in the breakfast lounge of a Holiday Inn Express, formerly the Hotel Russ, on Wabash at Ontario three blocks from the Magnificent Mile, it's 6:30, my body thinks it's 7:30,
  • one last painting, someone new to me, Alma Thomas, her Starry Night with the Astronauts, my favorite colors, then some links while everyone else still sleeps:









AN AUTO-DA-FÉ

Kevin McFadden

I have nothing to recant, I am just
the decanter. You, the just destroyer,
have in faith become the role, recalling
for those gathered the noble fallen
with a prayer to his-grace-above-fire,
(“Turn me, I’m burnt on that side”)
St. Lawrence. Well done, I applaud.
And you: Well executed.
                                        
This is it. Not much else to await
when our fates touch: I’ve nowhere to be
but eternity, you’ve nothing to catch
but the thatch. Dry on dry,
we keep our wits about us . . .
no one to meet but our match.