motherwell

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.