Absinthe (May)

Café Table with Absinth, 1887

Visiting Van Gogh. What happened? In 1886? One day Vincent is working fine lines, pushing back darkness with some gold and white. Next day he’s cutting hundreds of colour hatchings into every space. The line hasn’t gone, darkness comes in hintings, but everything’s transformed. It isn’t the absinthe. What’s your poison? He’s too busy painting absinthe. January is suddenly May, an entire physical transformation, as well. The glass is full, its lemony-green shows off the glass holding it in, though it’s only oil paint. How does one paint glass so light shines through? How do you get them to see?

Personality (May)

 Re-reading Proust. We trust this is all about him, but then we’re told, “Our social personality is a creation of the minds of others.” Each one of us knows we’re not the person others would have us be. We live, certain we are not a type, even when every day we speak and behave true to type. We learn to live with the ideas we have of other people. The personality we have created for each one of them may be, but is not, their true self. We ourselves live with ourselves, a personality no one may imagine, like Marcel.

Creation (May)

Re-reading Proust. He goes to bed early. Although restful and peaceful his mind is restive and preoccupied. Personality is a creative source. People from the past come into his mind. Is it they who keep him awake or he who wishes to keep thinking about them? Proust’s sentences take time, saying more than they seem to say. They may detain us into the night, his invisible shifts of theme, place, time. “Our social personality is a creation of the minds of others,” says Proust, or Marcel, one of those, both of those. I ready myself for all his forthcoming personalities.