Monday, June 19, 2006

Say, I'm Gleeful about Paul Klee

Long long ago, when elephants gave birth to girls and boats could be crewed by two blockheads, I fell in love with the art of Paul Klee. I knew nothing of its context or the artist or even whether to say clay or clee. I was a fresh-freed college student about to become someone other than my pupa self, and damn it I was ready for a renaissance or a naissance or a seance, nuance, nonce, though not nuptual, no. I wanted to know how to apply color, why calculus, what is western civilization? But what I found out was that marijuana makes you: 1. horny 2. hungry 3. paranoid. I also discovered that there are no Cape Canaverals for jettisoning the self.
But here is Paul Klee off the internet and onto the internet where I want him, all blushing and blue with firm black lines that say to me, "I know what I am doing. I say what I am. Blue goes just here, here, here, two dots right here, this line begins with a curl, grows thick then thin as I command it."
Outside there are weeds pushing up between the bricks of the walk from the street to my doorway. They are green, but not the green in this painting. Someone uses a blowing tool to move dead leaves around down the alley. The noise comes on obnoxiously, flares, and silences. It has nothing interesting to say. A strange man came into our house on Friday, shouldering window glass. He replaced many of our windows but not the frames. While he worked he made impatient, exhausted, disgusted, world-weary huffs that distracted me at my writing table. He has not been wooed by the paintings of Paul Klee. The skylight above me shows a blue sky, which continues blue all the way across the section of the square opening that is visible to me as I sit here. No decisions. My iris violet wall wears a block of lighter violet where the skylight has invited sunlight in. This cheers me, but not like the painting. The lighter violet block is an accident of light and placement, there is nothing unintended in the painting.

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