of myth and miles: an essai of lung-distance-log slant.

June 6^th  

i. miles as excavation.

de kooning had translucent&papery teeth from a malnourished childhood and in new york while painting some of the most powerful art of the postwar america he survived on cafeteria packets of ketchup 'cause all his money went to color and bedsheet-canvas and midnight coffee. 

(fifteen cents and limitless refills made for many insomniac abstract expressionists.)  

kline was at the cafeteria doodling on napkins later folded into pocket for further development, his eyes and coalminer hands charcoal dark, his eyes and fingers yellowing. motherwell wrote eager ideas with a pencil from harvard and he was not hungry but he was struggling (columbia was expensive).  gorky had one good arm left, the wrong one, and he managed to off himself with it. meanwhile rothko was bleeding out in his studio bathroom, seagrams seven thinning the blood and rushing the deadlocked thing.  schnabel was not yet 

a boy and beuys was the new duchamp and freud was sipping schnapps with bitter, muscleless models.

i was crossing the wrightsville beach drawbridge at mile nine with the chorus in mind: de kooning had translucent teeth and meticulously clean brushes.

rage and its echo.  

pollock once punched de kooning. rauschenberg once erased de kooning. de kooning didn't give a shit either way. he was occupied.

Later de kooning would succumb to alcohol and elaine and alzheimers and his estate would be dredged through the legal imbroglio that makes even the purest painting a horror of assethood and de kooning (in flemish) means “the king."

to enunciate, van gogh's ribcage splintered into waspnest lungs beneath ironball shot, the fire of absinthe neurosis, the spray of ravens above sunflowers, impasto tracks of bristle in lemonyellow sun. beneath these things was the love of a perfect pigment and the god igniting it. 

ii

and right now its blueberry scones and gogol bordello with kyote in backyard, monday brunch, and i'm anchoring this narrative back down.

iii

y'day was a touch cooler and I was due a long run, 18 or 20, needing the mileage appropriate to the grandfather mountain marathon in 34 days but a sore throat and some mad sinus pain worked against me, dropping my mileage to a struggling 10 miler. wrightsville beach's wide loop (including the bird reserve and some incline/declines along the way to summer rest) seemed right and I ran it without haste as a white porpoise drifted beneath the bridge at mile seven but the white porpoise became a white buoy and the heat was working by this time and my pace was labored but obligated. Ruminations on the grandfather mt. 26 continued and de kooning was there too but considerations of running the asu track into the mountains replaced much dread with reflection on runs past. Runs on highwayside in tennessee, cold rain spitting into face wincing against early-evening headlights. Runs on unpainted asphalt roads across pennsylvania farmland rolling in neat mondrian quilt. Runs passing bridges over mayan ruins on red oxide bikepaths in cancun. 

then the infernal walks of earlier days, the miles spent walking beneath delirium and depression or chemical horrors or just searching for something different to endure, something worth enduring, and the idea of running boone's memory-laden streets forces a barrage of questions, a season of introspect, un saison en enfer. And  37 years pushes the introspect a bit deeper, pushes the drawing paper and running shoes and dead paint-tubes and gray paint and gray hair and gray language. Immersion in a thing:  it is the passion that is important. it is the faith to work that is important.  to be present in the work of the thing, the Work of the thing, its struggle, is what is important.  

thoughts of twombly on trail. . .

twombly's paintings move like ancient graffiti, jungian scribble, the blurred collective unconscious to reference the historic ruins of rome, prague, chichen-itzy, jordan. . . to reference gardens, incinerated homes, auschwitz or sommes or pompei, glimpsing Socrates, sexual energies, entropy, earth. . . a nonlinear narrative told in spare forms and private marks, an enigmatic language of characters bearing embedded meaning, associations. . . twombly makes paint and the act of painting envelope a moment's essence, makes mark an embodiment of instinct, a physical impulse, and the energy of that mark is the signifier, the key, the universal register.  (See Turner, Pollock, Motherwell, Beuys.)  twombly is the erotic and the sacred and the faith within the painter's work.  Within the painter's work. . . the painter's Work. Faith.

i say twombly is the blur of the woods in a fast pace, mind reeling mosaic thought, st. paul & foucault & derrida, the multi-layered mindscape as pushing strides in miles, milling it out. . . poetry of movement & mind in rhythm with body, to find external awareness in internal struggle, clarity in imbroglio, finding language in noise. duchamp knew that the finest art was a chess game with a fabulously naked woman in a montparnesse cafe.  art is a nineteen mile run with s. sunday morning, down to dawn via airlie road & wrightsville beach, mind cycling the emptiness and fullness of the work, the alternating psyche that correlates to an act. . . transcendence, the freedom to exude and celebrate.  the faith to run or be still.

Art is the invigoration of perspective, art is the reminder to Look, art is the education and refinement of visual thought.