Barbara Rosenthal Writings, Famous Sayings, Quotations and Blog

Barbara Rosenthal: Writings

I. 21 FAMOUS QUOTATIONS From Clues to Myself, Sensations, Homo Futurus, Soul & Psyche, and Performace & Persona.

II. for BLOG and CLOG: scroll down.

1. "The present is a time of intense anxiety in which we suffer to interpret the past in order to create the future. This is as true for an hour as it is for an eon."

2. "Artists and derelicts are often hard to tell apart."

4. "All history, documentation, journalism, diplomacy, thought, art, culture, etc., serve only to influence behavior of single individuals at single moments."

5. "Only that which exists is 'perfect' enough to break into Reality. What is truly perfect, therefore, is what truly exists. Our old notions of perfection were ony of illusion, of ideal. (Everyone knows the Ideal is always fraught with flaws which cause its foil by Reality.)"

6. "God is the Idol of Science." "God is the Icon of Science." "God is the False Prophet of Science." "God is the avatar of Science."

7. "Shaping a work is the most exciting part. The truth of a thing lies in its delimits."

9. "Light particles fill this room with plasma, but I can be certain only of those which enter me directly."

10. "I suppose, if the life of an artist were too easy, too much mediocre art would flood the culture."

11. "The paths through the construction of a work of art are all enticing. Beware the quicksand! Beware thin ice!"

12. "It is as if the book already exists in its entirety and I must only listen for it."

13. "How much margin is there between a person's conception of their future and its eventuality?"

14."It was that April week when very few buds have yet to burst, but few of those burst are yet open."

15. "When the perfect social system evolves, it is certain to follow the identical rules/patterns as individual cells, organs and organisms."

17. "Artist-Activist meetings: subversive, diversionary tactics to keep artist from studio."

19."... giving way, in art as in sex, to the all-consuming breakthrough into form, into the other side of the work, being through, full into it, the work itself pulling you, once you know the shape of it."

21. "I sit at this keyboard and make words like notes on a piano or synthesizer."

Tuesday, Day after Memorial Day, June 1, 2004, 6:40 a.m.

      Chilly, gray sky, seeing only trapezoidal wedge up through courtyard, sitting low here, tall window above left shoulder angling soft cold light onto keyboard. Writing journal straight onto web today, first day, bypassing Typewritten Journals stage, bypassing blank black Journal Volumes. Reached for current one, nearing end Vol 50 now, thought when soon begin Vol 51, but this morn thought, No, type, then, No, Blog! Thought about for months, but could same persona come through in blog as in books? Would entries be good enough without dozens shuffles and revisions? Would I be prone to make them, anyway?

     Had a few things think about: 1- application that writes html, which page to post on, how file acumulating entries, 2- establishing protocol (same rules Journal: no apologia, no memoir, no ramble, lean syntax, little said elsewhere, write from one part mind other), and 3- possible reader/predators. Have less to lose, though, these days, than earlier years, and prob, perhaps some things won't post (though very little didn't publish, and almost nothing I don't write).

     Can't actually type words directly onto web, though, great idea that be, immediate communication writer-reader letter letter finger eye, not only no editing, but less than: the real time of the writing would be there, the fits of typing and the stops, the tiny editing of words and phrases, the decision to continue sentence, or place comma, or end sentence, or change tense, adjective, repetition, trivial thought, unclarity. Reader could see whether sentence suddenly starts up again w/ insertion above to continue an earlier thought. (Note: even today, June 2, I'm inserting here and there an edit in yesterday's blog of June 1. And new note, now, once again, June 3.Time has less truth here than in the black vols.)

     So, if see letters go up, what would be like read, in real time, great at beginning but boring after while, good maybe short time here there: IDEA FOR VIDEO - Real Time Writing could put on reel with Whispering Confessions, maybe also Words Come Out Backwards. Recently invited XX look into trunks and archives at old vols and letters and such, preparing for Death, getting my leavings in shape, but still, alas, making more.

     Helicopter whirr overhead in this low burnished matte stainless steel sky, not much overflight usually of this riverside building, although many helicopters commute over the water itself. Been like this, chilly gray, most week, but not Sunday, warm, sunny, dry, beautiful, so drove Poppy and Mollie and their aide Jeannette, in his Dodge Neon, tying down wheelchair jutting out of trunk, Poppy directing me down sidestreets and getting lost and making 3-pt turns in people's concrete driveways, their German shepards barking through ornate open aluminum screen doors at us, to Eisenhower Park, Nassau County, to picnic among the multicultural working classes riotously barbequing in celebration of Memorial Day. Bright and sunny and warm and calm, and dozens of children raucous, sweet, polite and all dolled up playing with cousins, helium balloons rising from sectionsful of tables reserved for ecstatic extended families and their jolly radios, but Mollie too far Altzheimer’s to notice, and Poppy, hunkered in fully braked wheelchair on lawn next to picnic table, too self-absorbed in inflatulate pontification, and too mindful of every unpleasant iota he could find in the present or remember from the past or imagine for the future, to notice either, let alone enjoy. But at least I got them out of that tiny house with the curtains drawn in Franklin Square, into the sunshine of Garden City. Both 90, the aides adequate but shot down by Poppy if they try to improve his lot. He sours everyone around him. Cost: $70. Travel time by subway and bus to/from his house: 2 hrs 15 mins each way. Call every day but don’t go too often. When left, Jeanette kissed me warmly, but Poppy just waved me off.

     Bill’s waking. Time bagels and half decaf/half espresso, and spend day updating Catalogue Raisonné, then bring 35mm eq't clean adjust before photo expedition w/ Sena Clara in July, then swim, then errands, then, if not raining, bring vodka tonics in thermoses to pier for sunset cocktails.

Took long on the damn computer this past hour: had things to say, words in journal-tone coming out an hour ago when returned from bagel coffee pier bright sunshine Manhattan side, lowlying haze over Jersey City and Hoboken.

Wore 3 of the Button Pins, Usually wear all 7 on small denim jacket or oversized black cotton sweater. First time wore all 7 was evening Not Myself prototype finished, wore w/ rag dress to MoMA QNS opening Fashioning Fiction in Photography since 1990 April 16–June 28, 2004, still up. (Web wow for fact-check!) Wore Not Myself Button Pin to MoMA party as a little secret opening of my own for it. (Besides Conceptual Art, it is probably possible to construct a complete Conceptual Career.) (A completly Conceptual Life = Fraud or Multip Personalit.) Wore patchwork rag dress to mid-calf (and SC’s old motorcycle boots) because knew everyone else would be in black, which they were. Tiny purple orchids were served floating in martinis. Had an invitation for 2, so took Sena Clara, who also came dressed in some kind of rags.

IDEA: Add rags to the Pittsburgh piece. Rags/saving/dregs of utility. Rags bag. Mother's, mine.

     Write about MoMA Photo Fashion show later. Ideas directed by/for others.
     J G said good morning twice to me on pier, eye-contacting Button Pins. Usually speaks to Bill. J’s dog.
     Our (dead) dog(s).
     Julian Schnabel on pier sunset few days ago noticed Button Pins. Works spreading to the consciousness of other workers, randomly. How will affect.

Pier bfst 2 wks ago w Paul Zelevansky wore Not Myself pin, discussed “well, who are you?” He said my work “simplicity.” Discussed John Kerry throw away ribbons keep medals tempest: I said, “Difference is that of public vs pvt: Ribbons publicly worn decorations (on chests and uniforms) Kerry repudiates, therefore chucks; Medals private keepsakes (in drawers or boxes) of one’s own acts under duress.” Paul said too subtle for Americans to get. Sent 6 emails to diff Kerry addresses offering to help write comebacks to his critics, but I guess he doesn’t check his email either.

Still haven’t brought camera eq’t in for tune-ups: 4 Olympus OM-1 and OM-1 MD bodies, motor drive, 24, 35, 50 1.2 and 50 macro, 175 and 2x tele-extender. SC bringing medium format. And the underwater. She may even buy a large-format for the trip and then sell it again after. Had long talk re upside-down, backwards, lenses/mirrors. She says “you get used to it.” For me, no, can’t stand it; very uncomfortable. On Vermont photo hunt w/ Rosalind Moulton, shot her 4 x 5 on bluff above railroad yard, nearly fell off cliff. My photos mostly scenes; 1- come upon, then frame with camera like portal 2- manufacture w/ lens, f-stop, shutter speed choices, and choice framing by physical stance and how position camera like snake-head in hands. Must be in physical balance w/ scene. Don’t want “imagine” composition. What imagine, when shoot trance, is that scene magic revelation. Reason reality made notice; must translate.

Car rent NYC-Louisville (+ gas) much more than fly rent car there. Left msg Sena Clara re exact dates. Her photos open NYU tomorrow.

Swam 3/4 mi. crawl w/flip turns non-stop but very slowly afternoon. No one else in lane. Water perf temp. And saw bottom clear in Bill's goggles, borrowed, mine lost again. Vision strange noticed recently granular, partic dim light. Like a grainy bw photograph, or TV snow.

Mon, June 7, 2004 Midnight:30

Just home from Chinatown. Ming Fay treated us wonderful Cantonese multi-course seafood dinner aft he came our studio drinks and chitchat. Made Martinis in glass coffee pot, w/olives or onions, served herring cream sauce, gorgonzola, b&w m&m's, seaweed rice crackers. Had enough small plates w/o chips. Usually drink vodka, gin nice change, almost sweet or floral. Good friend, aways very liked his alien humanoid vegetable sculptures. Fast cab rides back forth, fare higher now, noticeable, but garages, not drivers get the increase.

Tues, June 8, 2004 Transit of Venus

Bright round sun in hazy sky. Will be 89 degrees today, but dawn cool. Went to rooftop I-20 Gallery 5:30 a.m. aft 1 hr sleep see Venus pass over sun (in reverse, right-left, projected from telescope onto screen). Walked north 8 blocks along river, watched 8 geese, 6 goslings wade, feed, preen, protect, nudge; good ocean smell in Hudson very strong: high tide can bring saltwater up far as Albany. At W. 17th, crossed West St., then stamped red rubber stamp over washed out papers and other graffiti walls and lampposts.

About 2 doz people came and went, all white, all young, all thin, all attractive. Wore small denim jacket w/ Button Pins . No comments, very little conversation. Party at gal tonight, will prob go. Russian scientist-artists Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand installation of domed tent telescope and screen. Such nice thing for them do. Bright 1' disk red sun on screen, lightly glowing, wavy edges where boiling gas heat meets cold vacuum space, 1/2" Venus slow progress left and upward two hours until hit edge, mushroomed (the "drop"), appeared liquid instant, carving its way out to applause. Photos of group taken, but no names. Stayed on roof after, writing black journal pencil. Learned this week: Opposite writer's block = "hypergraphica."

Walked back very slowly, stamping. Red rub name stamp become signature in gallery guest books, projects, street papers since when? Since Kitchen show, 86? Stopped awhile, took up again for Pocketful of Poesy, not stamped on street several yrs. Stamp given age 8 by Uncle Mike his stationery store 5th Ave. Think maybe like opposite of handwrit sig or oth graffiti tags: the illegibility of real sigs the mark of personality, like handwrit sig for title/author pg Clues to Myself . Also Handwriting Analysis video from carnival booth. Stamp affirms name, super-legible, substitutes for personality, or maybe forms new personality.

New intern Kurt began yest, working on DVD of Ola Writes the Alphabet. Just called me to look. Gotta go.

Wed Sept 1: Biked downriver NYArts pick up business cards from Holly Crawford to continue reviewing for Art Circles. AC reviews = 50 words. Kissed Abraham hello. AL: Would you like do something NYArts? BR: OK, something longer. AL: Whole page? BR: How about half this month. I'm packing to move across hall, & your deadline up quick.

Th Sept 2: Looked over mail decide what review. Emailed some galleries for schedules & images. Better finish open projects before starting more. Measured new space 3x, got 3 diff sets numbers. Try again tomorrow. Worked on animation DVD. Computer crashed. Try again tomorrow. Out of beer, out of wine, out of scotch, out of gin. Settled vermouth.

Fri Sept 3: Taught Writing Col Staten Island. Tues-Fri schedule. Freshman Comp = homophones & run-on sentences. Introduction to the shock of the C. Swam full mile instead usual 3/4, crawl w/flip turns, but have to let membership gym run out soon due lack funds.

Sat Sept 4: Best yoga teacher NYC= Joan Clyne at Equinox. SC came home w/recent boyfriend, caught by Plain Clothes writing "Bush" under "Stop" sign, got warning.

Sun Sept 5: By noon, very hard organize day. Tried prednizone left from July poison ivy: Finished animation DVD. Finished Holocaust testimony DVD. Finished clearing darkroom. Scrubbed frying pans. Scrubbed bathroom. Remeasured space 3x, very fast, 3x same, finally. Read Sunday Times. Emailed more galleries for schedules. Will go around Tues aft teach. It is 5am. Will now polish mirrors & picture glass, go river, watch sunrise reflect off Jersey.

Labor Day Sept 6: Returned films from eMediaLoft.org curatorial. Helped Bill edit client film; dialog: Muthufuckuh, muthufuckuh... SC & boyfriend came home drink bourbon lunch, then fall asleep. Took turtles to Hudson River Promenade. Rhodes burrowed grass. Colossus basked sun. Lots families w/small daughters: just wait till they start bring boyfriends home. Thought about NYArts: whether write column or straight reviews: thought log, in keeping w/my books & journals: thought of column-log. The CLOG was born!

Tues Sept 7: Took ferry Staten Island teach. Police boat escorts. Cops & police dogs gangways. Cops ferry decks wide-legged stance. After, went Chelsea.

Wed Sept 8: Big rainstorm, flooding. Hudson black & choppy. Shot 2 headshots: young man dancer try not look gay, old actor try comeback. Evening, Marian Goodman Gallery Richard Deacon opening. Met gent Jack Rubin! Jack Rubin name protagonist my novel, Wish For Amnesia ! Far out! This one looks old hippie artist, but actually works IBM. Will send him book.

Sept10. Chelsea season open w/bang. Many hopeful new hopes. Cartoon: Cockroach Funeral : Jim was really unique.// Sept11. 3 rd yr. Yoga usual; nothing said.// Sept13. Client: Photo-postcard "Miss Universe 67." Found carpenter, Ray Donoghue, 3 rd -generation neighborhood native & 2-pack-a-day man.// Sept14. Terrible morning: missed subway, missed ferry, dropped bagel, missed bus, running, petrified slip/fall.// Sept15. Swam full mile, 72 laps breathing meditation.// Sept20. Inside bldgs warm, outside cool. Chelsea Museum open w/New Museum videos.// Sept23. Finished redrafting 1 st 20 pgs Dog Run .// Sept25. Final Sat. @ Equinox; can't pay membership. Cartoon: Pigs @ Sports Arena : I always root for the Truffles.// Sept26. Cousin Joan Davidow called. Aunt Gertie plunged recent dementia. Horrible end coming all. Work faster!// Sept29. Herman Hesse, Peter Camenzind , describing bohemians @ party, "intellectual fervor...directed @ analyzing...society..., yet only a small minority seemed aware of the need to develop their own selves & to clarify their personal relationship to time & eternity."//

Oct1. On ferry, woman ripped coupon Daily News , man ripped editorial Times .// Oct3. In Artpool Budapest "Doubles" show: 2 performance videos: Colors and Auras ; Video Mirror .// Oct4. Fun meet w/Steve Clay Granary Books. Talked art vs commercial-political propaganda. Thinks can place Pocketful of Poesy .// Oct10. Earth verge mass extinction. Predict: 1- our species, too, wiped out (in pandemic) so Gaia can cleanse & restock. Or 2- Homo Futurus: The Son of Man -- genetically altered progeny inhabit Bio-Computerland. Or 3- Nuclear Winter.// Oct14. Marilyn Rosenberg 70 birth party. Felt strangely diminished: all guests my demographic.// Oct15. Was asked what maybe means God Cartoon: Big Bang : No God, if ever God exist, perhaps before physical universe, then blew himself up to create it.// Oct17. Client: Leon Siegel, 82, Romanian fable-writer here video.// Oct19. Uneasy about move. Fear good luck brings bad.// Oct20. Printed Matter took 5 DVD titles, including Words Come Out Backwards , & 4 Button Pins, including I Am Not Myself Today.// Oct21. Westbeth renovating courtyard w/jackhammers; workmen rhythms resound space.// Oct23. Political mixed bag @ Ronald Feldman.// Oct29. Bill Creston says his films are about "the underdog & the slightly less underdog."// Oct30. Red/Blue states = teams. Red = Royalists, Blue = Union.// Oct31. Halloween. Favorite costume: twins one overalls.//

Nov1. Lease now really in effect: wide expanse over river really ours.// Nov2. Election Day. Kerry better win.// Nov3. Post-election funk: spent whole day watch boats.// Nov4. Cartoon: Psychiatrist To Snake Patient : Good news is you don't suffer from low self-esteem. Bad news is you actually are lowest.// Nov6. "Action Causes More Trouble Than Thought." Jenny Holtzer word-banner planes downriver past window as I write.// Nov10. Neons are up, whole place glows.

BLOG below is full version of the
shortened CLOG: Column-Log #3
not appearing in NYArts Magazine
Barbara Rosenthal (Cassandra-on-the-Hudson)
Nov 10, 2004-Jan 10, 2005

LUMPY POTATO THEORY OF UNIVERSE, REFINED

Nov10. Cold damp. White trail smoke from stack across river.
Nov 11. Video Game Idea: Famous Car Accidents: Princess Di, Jackson Pollock, Tony Smith, James Dean, NC Wyeth, Isadora Duncan...
Nov 13. Everything tragic, but funny. Bill calls me relentlessly sardonic.
Nov 14. Visited father. House stinks. Aides took him to chemically induced stress test; now he's slurring. Lets medicine men do anything.
Nov 15. Spent 2 hrs looking for turtle Rhodes, hid closet. Other, Colossus, follows me like puppy.
Nov 17. Beginning Existentialist curatorial: crisis, fragility, transcendence, personality, divinity, intellectual purpose, existence, inner emotional life & individual experience within an outer historical period.
Nov 18. Re-reading Homo Futurus, 1986, culling pgs for Prentiss Hall reprints. Art serves my writings: perhaps only make art to form writing’s locus.
Nov 20. Film Words Come Out Backwards premier Nihilist Festival, LA. Hoped fly me in, but only accommodations paid, not air, so couldn’t go.
Nov 21. History of Atom as it Passes from Universe into Person, & Back. Zoroastrians have right idea: leave body on hillside be devoured by vultures; return earth faster, become more things, more efficiently, than by burial. Molecules de- & re-form. Made DUST TO DUST button pins.
Nov 23. Idea: MoleculeMeMolecule.
Nov 24. Ordered turkey dinners delivered to father.
Nov 25. Thanksgiving. Ola cooks vegan for us & Fishers. Squashes, nut puddings, berry sauces, pies, fair trade coffee.
Nov 26. Monthly Vitamin B shot for intolerable nerve damage incessant buzzing legs/feet.
Nov 27. Evolution Cartoon. 2 monkeys peering crystal ball. "If I'd known this, I'd have had a vasectomy."
Nov 29. Collecting all notes & images for new book & work-body. Everything = decay.

Dec 1. Marti for drinks, sunset: she lives house w/furniture, can't understand our place studio only.
Dec 2. New Yorker cartoonist party Dior 57th St. Several people drew caricatures each other, me too.
Dec 5. Documentary about life/art Bob Henry/Selina Trieff, artworld couple, not touch difficult apportionment of tasks.
Dec 6. View Of Universe: not one universe but many, a matrix. Ours is expanding, disbanding, carrying galaxies w/it. It is not expanding into forever coldness. Other universes simultaneously expanding, as still others contract. When a cosmic body from our expanding universe approaches one from another, the bodies will attract. As more bodies approach over great stretches of time, they form another contracting universe. When mass great enough, it bigbangs, & expands outward again. Many such events ongoing in multidimensional web.
Dec 7. Chanukah. Gave Bill binoculars spy across river.
Dec 8. Subbed 5th grade PS 41, "book reports." Suggested describe before opinion, & if opinion, cite evidence from text. They'd only been taught say how feel.
Dec 9. Showing up on good databases now: the-artists.com, artprice.com, etc.
Dec 10. Forgot Taylor Meade's Bowery Club soiree again.
Dec 11. Rain splash big against old rippled glass windows. Rain over Hudson fiercest in city.
Dec 13. Sent Edges & Margins to Dichotomy Architecture Journal, Detroit.
Dec 14. Jewish Yellow Pages called for renewal photo/video ad, but not one call all year, wasted $500.
Dec 15. Video Mirror stills on Artpool Budapest website, even though it was Colors & Auras, w/Hannah Weiner & Sena Clara Creston that aired.
Dec 17. Last college teaching day till Feb.
Dec 18. God Cartoon 6. Leans down over city from Heaven, dumping litter basket. "Now for the finishing touches."
Dec 21. Shortest daylight. First day winter. Missed Donna Henes solstice event.
Dec 22. Reumatologist x-ray bumps fingers.
Dec 24. Christmas eve. Polished fifth bourbon w/Jeffrey Lerer. Showed Helen Webster DVD, but skips & slowdowns = drag. Should have stopped it; said he understood, but criticized drag nonetheless. Can't ever learn lesson: Never show work not at best.
Dec 25. Books read this month: Lynda Schorr Appetites, Arthur Golden Memoirs of a Geisha, VS Naipaul The Mystic Masseur, Russell Banks The Sweet Hereafter & Affliction.
Dec 26. Marilyn Rosenberg here. Cabernet, prosciutto, melon, biscuits, cashews, dates. Like me, she's in hardbound Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes, but not in soft.
Dec 27. The corpse: that momentary shell between living entity & the elements it will disband to before re-forming as other things.
Dec 28. Relentless search for identity through universal connection.
Dec 30. Jeb Bush sent to show off for tsunami victims, as Big Brother positions him for 2008.
Dec 31. New Years Eve w/Jeffrey Lerer, Sarah Hauser. Sake, champagne, caviar, anchovies, mussels, linguini, spinach salad, nuts & chocolates.

Jan 1, 2005. Beautiful warm day. Shirtsleeves on pier. Half-decade past since millenium. Get busy! Resolve: synthesize disparate projects. Think harder.
Jan 2. Sent work by me, Sena Clara, Bill to BoundLess, Oslo. B&W only for publication. OK for me, but SC's should have been color.
Jan 3. Head shot client so insistently directed shoot, I had to shoot extra 50 frames to ensure enough for what we were actually seeking.
Jan 4. Holly Crawford here for sunset drinks. Made Holly is to Crawford as Allan is to McCollum for her Adoption project. Don't usually collaborate, but fun.
Jan 5. Raining, but went Baldessari show Marian Goodman. Near subway, Capezio sale; bought new ballet slippers.
Jan 6. Emily Harvey memorial, sad but inspiring, everybody vocal. Circulated more than usual: Richard Kostelanetz, Barbara Moore, Frank Gillette, Ira Schneider, Charles Doria, Gracie Mansion, Carolee Schneemann, Arleen Schloss...Last time saw Carolee was at Leon Golub's memorial a few weeks ago. Jackson MacLowe's will be in March. Everybody's dying. Might curate Carolee into Existentialist show
Jan 7. Bus upstate Bob Schuler’s. He's helping w/ rubber pieces. Gave him DUST TO DUST button pin. Schuler doesn't like think death. I think it all time.
Jan 8. Slept better at Schuler’s than in years. Finished 2 beautiful rubber pieces before snow.
Jan 9. Banished from Westbeth Residents' Gallery for trying to show God Cartoons. Hung up on tirade of muscle-flexing.
Jan 10. Fog on Hudson coats all with silver gray. Turtles go their separate ways on floor.

A few notes to record the extraordinary week:
As I was giving a "Barbara Rosenthal Chai Dollar" to the young lady bartending champagne at the Franklin Furnace benefit hosted by Marian Goodman Gallery, a woman I didn't know exclaimed, "How smart," (my favorite adjective...), so I gave her one, and she said she would frame it clear on both sides. "How nice," I said, and shook hands, and, trying to maybe make friends, maybe, which I'm so bad at, asked, "What's your name?" "Agnes Dennis," she said. I very much admire her maps, and told her so, when recovered from shock.

Lively Tisch School of the Arts NYT Salute to the Class of 2005, (particularly good "lecture" about being or not being "a muffin person" by Jim Taylor) and the graduation with honors of babygirl Sena Clara Creston, who carried the banner for the Department of Photography and Imaging. Way to go!

Writing students at Staten Island turned in very good footnoted, appendixed, abstracted term papers on different aspects of herd mentality, groupthink, mass behavior. Both classes really came through. It's been a semester of great loss of their innocent biases, even moreseo than usual.

Exciting lecture yesterday by Shelley Rice about Helen Gee's Limelight Photography Gallery and Coffee House.

Looks like the venue I want will be hosting the "Existential Art Across Time and Media" show; had meeting tonight, but won't know to what extent until July. Then, walked fast fast from Chelsea to the New School for panel of Susan Meiselas, Duane Michals and Eleanor Antin discussing digital vs. film photography, and answering inane questions from audience. Martha Rosler was in audience and answered some. Duane gave me big hug at the end, said real nice stuff about my wild hair and 24-hour work ethic, a terrific boost. (All my great influences have been gay men: Oscar Wilde, Duane Michals, Robert Pincus-WItten, Arthur Tress...) Here are some of their pearls, jotted fast fast in white workbook:

Duane Michals:
"I do what suits me."
"It's not the chicken or the egg, it's the omelet."
"It's all about passion and expression."
"Storytelling is the greatest of all the arts."
"I'm interested in what something feels like, not what it looks like."

Eleanor Antin:
"I think of my work as still movies."
"There is a difference between Fact and Truth."
"I am committed to Truth, but not to Facticity."

Susan Meiselas:
"Reality is fiction."
This I don't agree with, though, but can see why a pre-eminent documentary photographer would think so.
What I think is that Reality is a confluence of unintentional things that occur outside of one's mind , and exists in an arena recognizable to many people simultaneously (even though it is subject to internal interpretation); whereas Fiction is purely a construct of an individual mind and does not exist outside it (even though it might be brought into Reality by media such as a pencil or camera, etc.).

Thursday, June 28 almost midnight.
Poppy's funeral. Age 93. I id'd body. Unexpected look so unlike himself, but feature by feature correct. Unfamiliar scents, not decay, not floral. Dressed him in his tux. Very very interesting simple mechanics method of stakes and ropes, not straps or machine, to lower coffin. Buried next to mother, two rows up from grandparents, two rows back from my own waiting grave. Gil and I spoke a few words about him; I said what I "got" from him: belief in equality between all peoples, intense ethics and fairness in decision-making, tremendous Americanism in the great Constitutional sense.

Sat. July 2. 11pm
Lenny Drozner came over. He's going to write a Russian translation of the 2005 edition of my 1983-91 novel, Wish For Amnesia. The new English edition will be published momentarily by Xanadu Press/Washington Street Press, NYC.

July 3, 2005 8am
Walked for two hours this dawn, seeking all-hours drug store for Aspercreme or something for finger-joint swellings and pain.
Saw bright green parakeet who had joined a flock of pigeons.

July 5, 2005 after 3am
Had a few friends for 4th of July, looking out windows to fireworks over river: Robert Morgan, Richard Kostelanetz, Jeffrey Lerer, Sarah Hauser, Filippo Sciascia. Made mussels cooked in coriander and cumin with fresh rosemary, served cold.

To celebrate the life and work of Carlo Pittore, pseudonym of Charles Stanley, Painter, Mail Artist, and Director of La Galleria dell'Occchio during the 1980's, I took the Long Island Rail Road to his funeral at his family's synagogue in Port Washington, NY, July 19, a few hours after opening an email from his friend and neighbor, Marianne Marrone Legassie, who lived near Carlo in Bowdoinham, Maine until his death from liver cancer on July 17 at the age of 62. He died surrounded by friends, and smiling.

Carlo Pittore, Charles the Painter, a name the little boys of Montecielo gave him during his student years in Tuscany, was an early mail artist, which is how I, and Mark Bloch who also came to celebrate him, knew Carlo since the mid 70's. We chanted the traditional kaddish of all our families, added shovelfuls of earth to his grave, into which Marianne tossed one item of mail, and chanted again with the Stanleys in their houseful of paintings by Carlo, his mom, and his uncle. Bright, hot sun at the cemetery turned into a thunderstorm as we reached the house. The Carlo Pittore Foundation has been established for his work and other art in Maine, and a memorial will be held at eMediaLoft.org in NYC this Fall, so watch website for details. Anyone who has received mail art from him over the years should bring it.

I share these words from euologies by his childhood friends:
David Tobis: "If you could accept yourself, then he could accept you." And when Carlo held the office of judge on their high school student council, he "arranged for Eleanor Roosevelt to visit, even though the principal opposed..."
Jeremy Ruskin: Carlo was "a force of nature not possible to be near without being swept into his comet...devoid of artifice...profoundly happy.... A sign on his bookshelf noted 'When I am dead/ Let it be said/ His sins were scarlet/ But his books were re(a)d.'

Saturday, November 19, 6 a.m.
Discovered that the cure for the buzzing legs of neuropathy may lie in drinking detoxifying tea. All month there has been much less pain, and even skipped the B-complex shot.

Sunday, November 20, 4 a.m.
Becoming more of a copper person than a silver person.

Monday, November 21, 11:41 a.m.
Had fun with the Performa05 First Biennial of Visual Art Performance. Always take form down to its basicmost premise, and then wait and see.

Wednesday, November 23, 11:43 a.m.
--Windows cleaned this morning. Windowcleaner wants to comission Bill to paint a portrait of him cleaning a window.
--Writing note to Martha Rosler; sending her VHS of my CLOTHES/BOOKS video from 1988 as response to her current "Martha Rosler Library" show at e-flux, 53 Ludlow, 10002, 212.619.3356, t-s 12-6. Plan review for NYArts. Also similar to the poster of library shelves hanging at Bound and Unbound, which would be great idea for art-joke wallpaper.
--Sent RoseLee Goldberg the full set of PROVOCATON CARDS, reproduced version, with a note being glad of the Performa05 idea.
Sent MoMA, Whitney, and Bklyn Museum libraries pix of the trunks full of JOURNALS.
- -Had substitute for Yoga this morning, Teresa, and the McBurney Y. Excellent class.

Sunday, May 7, 11:25pm.
Tomorrow is the last emptying of the house I grew up in. The last sale of the least of the accumulated stupid stuff. Archives of my father's work (Leon Rosenthal) have been set up at both the -- can't think straight -- lots of piano music -- Janet Green, PhD, librarian, 44th St., General Society Libray AND the Nassau County Historical Society, by archivist Bronwin XXX. All his paintings, papers, army diaries, memoirs, love letters, and architectual office records -- for designing Long Island's boring housing, stores, houses of worship. WORSHIP, for God's sake: wouldn't God be embarrassed being WORSHIPPED for God's sake. Wouldn't He prefer his work just being PRESERVED!!! The whole idea of "doing God's work," it's a JOKE, cruel and ridiculous. There is no "god," of course, but I really like the METAPHOR. The only work work God would want, I think, for doing God's work, would be NOT UNDOING God's work, which was pretty good before greedy HUMAN came along. Fuck you all you Humans. Did God invent you? No. There is no fucking gods. There is only the beauty of Nature, which Human Stupido is undoing in God's name. The Human Stupidos who think they know what's in the mind of God.
At least I think we found a buyer who really likes the house AS IS, and only will renovate, not rip the Deco and Arts and Crafts to shreads and chop down the trees etc as the rest of the block had done. Even though Gil and I took about a 40,000 loss in finding this family instead of one with Cheap Taste. Everything is irking me tonight. I've been nagging Bill for a fuck, not just a hand job or blow job for him and a vibrator handed to me with an "Oh come, Baby," and he can't stand it when I try to find out what he really means when we talk about Perceptive Tolstoy and Obvious Dean Koontz, and the Da Vinci Code (which is MUCH better than I expected -- at least so far) , and Bill says something I can't follow because it's so general and vague that I ask him what he means by his word "it" or "they" or some too-inclusive pronoun, and he yells at me.
At least I convinced him to please ask Rip Torn to read the script "NIneteen For Frankie" again. Bill's writing partner, Carl Methfessel, wrote the part of Dr. Karl Meithe, ex-brain-surgeon, just for Rip -- who wasn't exactly obscure, but wasn't exactly a household name at that time, late '70's, BEFORE we ever knew him by coincidence, and then when we did, and he read the script, not just the one Carl brought over to his house in our neighborhood and left somewhere near the door so we never knew if he even ever got, but the one he took from Bill around 1986, then, when Rip said he didn't think he could interest anyone in it if Bill directed, it just sat in Bill's drawer for 20 years, especially after Carl died.
I don't know what I'm trying to write, my mind is a fucking mess of flat but chaotic shit -- like a pile of misc in a print file. Nothing ever comes of ANYthing. I'm going to China in 10 days to do the biggest solo show of my life and I don't even know how to buy a pencil there. Been studing Mandarin for almost a year and I can say "hello," (ni hao), and count to 10 -- at least on paper in pinyin, but probably not pronounce so anyone could understand, and I can say "no" (bu) -- at least in my NY American accent, but can't even remember the words for "good bye." (It's something likr"xian xio" or something I've been practicing a YEAR by can't remember. And all the x's and q's and z's like "dj's"... I can't even say a word in English if I can't SEE it in my mind, and everyting in Mandarin in my imaging-brain looks alike -- one syllable.
My language problem isn't exactly only Mandarin. I'm forgetting every word in Mandarin, and half of my vocab in English, too. Still swimming a mile every day, and counting my 72 laps in Mandarin (qi er, or chi er, or xi er), but words don't stick, and I gesticulate so much I might as well be speaking sign language -- only the system in REAL sign languages is much more obvious to the people who communicate in it.)
Well, what can I say? I'm so far behind now because BOTH laptops never arrived and fucking Apple wouldn't put the money back on Sena Clara's credit card so I could replace them and get GOING on this project for the Beijing show. It's at Pickled Art Center. Feeling pretty "pickled" myself. Freaking out, man, is freaking out in any language.