NYC Bones.

My wife trained and prepared for nine months to run 26.2 miles across the five boroughs of new york city. The goal involved exhaustive fund raising, countless miles in predawn dark and countless more on the sleepy saturday and sunday mornings. Her preparation left her glowing and excited as she exited the hotel room at 5h30am on November 9th, looking strong and confident. Her eyes were clear and sharp, focused into the work ahead. And once begun, she smiled from the first 5k to the 26^th mile (a fact documented in dozens of photographs along the route). She savored the experience, relished the difficult passages as well as the vibrant neighborhoods and their various characters. She absorbed the goal and lived it and nailed it. In grand fashion in fact. An admirable feat.  Congratulations on a great run darling.  I am proud to be a part of your experience.

From there it was de kooning, chirashi, war horse, patsy's, nj transit, flat tires on airplanes, east village, soho, noho, coffee black as soot, orange brioche at maison cognac, katie holmes' black denali chased by guys with toenails for teeth, the grand spires and churches of manhattan, the smells of bleeker (cigar, espresso, pomodoro con aglio), 5th avenue diamonds, sunrise miles in central park, chinatown's smells of garlic & hot soy & glass noodles beneath inkbrush calligraphy, cattelan's entire oeuvre hanging like a mobile from the ceiling of the guggenheim. . . . artschwager, beuys, warhol, monet, modi, klee, miro, kadinsky, prince, (some shit I skipped), segal, serra, fischl, oldenberg, pearlstein. . . . rembrandt, rauschenberg, titian, tintoretto, sargeant, turner, steiglitz. . . twombly's sculpture (rustic implements painted white), les desmoilles d'avignon (picasso gets me everytime with that one).

the de kooning retrospect. . . the early figures, the ghostmen-- self-modeled, his hungry years, bubblegum pink furniture on acidgreen backgrounds.  next, a newspaper pushes through glossy black wrestling a flat black, powdery white grinding against form, against formlessness. his black and white paintings- the charcoal of a new york nocturne. the architectural build of ashy vapors from which a seated figure emerges. pastel choruses where breasts heave like labia or hang heavy like pale, velvet curtains.  de kooning's women: Blistered pink, scorned paint, a folklore of oilpaint flesh. Cats hiss through linseed teeth.  the sag harbor nudes. the massive, yearning canvases that came after the door paintings, pastorale with fields and beaches and skies.  the clean arias of his final alzheimer years.

small drawings by kiefer, basqiaut, close. The tear of a french cigarette package on a motherwell collage. The endless bakeries of manhattan, the delectable goods crowding windows. . .

Language of lionesses, sex of commerce. Tiffany's yellow diamonds. Wall street heels clog vivace, leather that matches a briefcase. Sex of tangerines, sex like tangerines. Mists of perfumeries walking in the upper 60's. bikes cruise the hudson with thumb-bells. ghost bikes off delancey ave (a visit and a remembrance, RIP rasha). Fifth avenue dazzles and haunts, the mix of armani empires, lindt chocolates, st. patricks catheral's squaring up against cartiere, the mixture of languages like a postmodern opera-- debase the verbal with cacophony. The rollicking admixture of grandiloquent churches and mirrored glass skyscrapers. Steam of morning sidewalks, the grates where subways roar like engines of time, swallowing a lone saxophonist's "take five" solo.

overall, a week in nyc.

 

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.