No.205. Birdwatcher.
Suddenly there are birds about. Yesterday he saw a robin. And a fluttering of finches. After which he went indoors and scribbled a grotty little poem into his notebook--a poem he liked well enough to make into a painting. Here is the poem:
Birdwatcher
his face is blue
like the birds
but with
two red irises
for the cardinals
he watches
No. 204: White Chrysanthemums.
Normally he found it irritating when his neighbor Abigail would slip bits of salutary and supposedly "improving" poetry under his studio door, but yesterday she had rather over-reached herself. She had given him a tiny, haiku-like poem by the Japanese poet Ryota (1718-1787), both in a translation by Kenneth Rexroth--that he didn't like much--and in a word-by-word transcription by someone named Harold Henderson. This he liked much better. Here is the whole poem:
not saying anything
guest and host
and white chrysanthemum
He liked the poem so much he decided to take the miniaturization of the poem's chrysanthemum blossom and make an enormous flower painting in its honour. The smaller the poem, he decided--rather perversely--the bigger the painting. For some reason, McDowell sulked through the entire procedure.
No. 202. Quartz.
Abigail from next door was surprised, in the course of one of her unsolicited visits to his studio, to find two gigantic hunks of quartz, glistening on his display table.
"What's the idea?" she asked him. "You didn't make the quartz. It's not art. Why this veneration?".
"It's better than I can do," he told her patiently. "It's better than anyone can do." "So what happens now?" Abigail wanted to know. "You'll probably just get depressed, won't you?"
"Probably," he replied...
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