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April thoughts

Constantly organizing and reorganizing, getting and throwing things out, deciding what is valuable and what is not, trying to get to the essential, which is where the clarity is, the current, the flow, the where we are, not where we want to be. Too much stuff and it’s hard to see? What if there’s too little? What is valuable? What is essential?

Pine Hollow Spring, Charles Burchfield, 1917


It’s all right to look at a poem, painting or person a second time. When I look again is when I begin to see it. Sometimes I look a hundred times and still am not finished seeing.

Springtime in the Pool by Charles Burchfield, 1922


Song of the Telegraph. Charles Burchfield worked on this painting in one way or another from 1917 until 1952. It can take a long time to finish something, a lifetime. The Roman poet Horace said that it took him eight years to finish a poem (it was a time of great sculptures so even the words had to be carved out of stone) and I think it can even take longer than that, a lifetime.

Song of the Telegraph by Charles Burchfield, 1917-52

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