Untitled (Tools), Jim Dine, lithograph, 2008.
Dear Opposable Thumbs,
There is a large stack of books where I work; it's all detritus, really, and it doesn't belong to anyone, so even the spines don't get a glance. The world would be a better place if some of them were never looked at, but a few of them could be useful to raise up a too low television set, or to chock up a short leg on a table. Thinking larger now, perhaps combined into a solid stack of 'how to' art books, maybe painted, in say palest pink? Illustrated on the outside with delicate red handwriting and gentle blossoms?
Well, you know when someone says to me, "good idea," I always respond "I have a million of them!" And you do too, which puts me in mind of a little spontaneous poem a fellow* sent me in an email. You know how messages and letters can generate these kinds of things- a person says this, another replies that, all that thoughtful responding suddenly leaps, jumps beyond quotidian communication and becomes a gleaming poem:
Tools for the soul, or is it, a soul full of tools?
Always measuring, always fixing.
*Thank you, D. Prochaska, for the poem!
