August 12
It’s a beautiful August morning. The light is warm. The day gets warm. Eighty degrees.
I am unsettled. There is pain in my stomach. My stomach is pain. I am pain. Not strong. I noticed it yesterday afternoon. Lying down. On the floor. Suddenly it was there, the pain. A slight pain. In the lower abdomen. In between belly button and abdomen.
Well.
How many weeks ago was the operation?
Yesterday I remembered that as a child I often had severe abdominal pain. The parents called this “flatulence”. A situation in the mountains, during the summer holidays: it is a bright, sunny day. I am outside, somewhere outside the place where we lived in a holiday apartment. I stand. And I’m in pain. So-called flatulence. The parents told me to squat down so that it would pass. At some point, the pain ended. I don’t remember any connection between the end of pain and squatting. I remember the shame of squatting down. I felt the squatting and the pain and the announcement, the invitation, the command to squat down, as part of the never-ending ordeal of holidays in the mountains.
Now, this morning, the pain is not so severe. I’m not in the mountains. No one tells me, “Squat down! “
Is that better?
The parents are long dead.
I rarely go to the mountains.
I hated hiking in the mountains. Now I like it.
I like the movement in the spectacular landscape.
Let’s hike again on the weekend. Somewhere in the vicinity of New York. This is not such spectacular scenery. This is beautiful scenery. Flat, straight. A lot of sky in view. Blue. White, white-grey clouds. Green. Less brown. Harvested fields. Tall corn. We avoid the dead pine forests.
You don’t work on Saturday. We could go to Canadensis and take a holiday apartment for the weekend. At Skytop Lodge with its grey fieldstone in the middle of the forest. Silence. Nearby an old tower that used to be a lookout to detect forest fires. A slim tower in concrete. Now it is equipped with antennas for mobile communications. For mobile telephony and for mobile data transmission. A sturdy fence is drawn around the tower. Inside the fence are the aggregates with which the antennas are served. The antennas here in the forest are part of the worldwide telephone and data network. They connect my mobile phone to all other mobile phones in the world. They connect my mobile phone to millions of computers, computers where websites are stored. Websites that I can look at, here in the forest, on my smartphone. For this purpose, an air conditioning system runs inside the fence, at the foot of the old forest fire observation tower. A cooling machine. It cools the devices that enable the operation of the antennas in the network, in the worldwide data network. In the middle of the forest. In one direction is the community of Canadensis with its perhaps 1.500 inhabitants. In the other is a larger place, whose name I do not remember. And not far from the tower is Skytop Lodge, the grey fieldstone building, built in the nineteen twenties. It was not a short distance then for guests coming from New York. Probably nothing you did for a weekend in the country. But for a longer stay.
Today we drive almost exactly two hours from W 92nd Street, Upper West, to Canadensis, via Henry Hudson Parkway, George Washington Bridge, Interstate 80. Always straight ahead. At some point turn left.
…
Nonsensical writing about things. Because I can’t write about the “I”, about myself this morning. It would be easier to write numbers. Just as Hanne Darboven wrote numbers. Or to paint numbers. Just as Roman Opalka painted numbers. Or even less: simply make strokes on paper. Nothing but vertical strokes, line by line, from top left on the sheet to bottom right. So, Marcia Hafif painted vertical marks, line by line, from the top left of the sheet to the bottom right. Two of her paintings were in the exhibition at Parts & Labor, in Beacon, which we recently saw.
Just paint marks. Don´t think.
Write numbers. Instead of writing nonsense about any towers in the forest.
I’m going to do this now:
12345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910987654321012345678910
Writing numbers.
At the beginning it is interesting. Then it gets annoying.
Eventually, I stop watching. And I stop worrying.
Then there is only writing. Pure writing.
It flows.
Without thinking.
I move. I move by writing. I move my hand in writing the numbers.
Writing, I straighten up, in the chair with the red velvet upholstery cover.
I breathe.
I feel something.
I understand something.
I understand that writing of numbers creates freedom.
Freedom from thinking, freedom from thoughts.
Freedom from the will to create.
“It” writes.
The ME nwrites numbers.
It flows on paper. Without constipation, without considerations, without expression.
Without wanting more than to write numbers.
Just write numbers.
Write numbers with endurance.
Writing numbers is a switch-off. Maybe it’s like meditating.
Hanne Darboven must have been doing this all day.
It expelled the demons.
And in the evening, she was exhausted.
Roman Opalka must have been doing this all day.
It drove out the demons.
And in the evening, he was exhausted.
At the end of a working day, he made a self-portrait. Every evening.
The self-portrait of an exhausted man. Exhausted by the expulsion of the demons.
The self-portrait of a man with an empty head. Emptied of the circling thoughts. He had his head emptied of nonsensical words.
It is emptying the head by painting numbers.
It is art making to drive away the demons.
Making art to stop the circling of thoughts. To empty the head.
Making a work of art out of the expulsion of the demons.
Make a work of art for people who see how the artist drove away her demons.
The Operation: https://medium.com/@endurance0691/mid-july-80b9b5fc0193
Roman Opalka: https://medium.com/@endurance0691/august-11f911e30144
Freedom: https://medium.com/@endurance0691/still-in-july-6bedf5f2e5
