Up a smidge early to type in quiet, I log-in on my 82 yr-old mother's personal computer (AOL just alerted me something needs updating - Later!). Post-it notes labeled with long passwords to various portals block the light along the edges of the monitor. I can see just enough in the center to hopefully piece something together.
My list of small things to do for my mother today is still long. Hang a towel rack, resolve a mobile phone issue (ugh), pull weeds, to name some. I am in the north, I think to myself, and up north things are tidy, orderly. Edges are crisp and leaves are raked. When I search for a wood screw in my father's toolbox, I find not even one at the bottom. No sawdust either, nor pencil shavings.
Control. I think of Franz Kline or Robert Motherwell first. Their paintings are a bold experimentation in black and white. No grey.
There are some fragments of art history lessons that have stuck with me. As a child I was told by the docent that these large abstract paintings were in fact intentional. That the artist labored with precision to achieve this splattered explosion. I sat there "indian style" on the floor of the Art Institute of Chicago and heard this and couldn't understand it. But I knew it was a mystery, and one of the better kinds because it was not only about painting.
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