Junk Drawer

Painters Painting (Poet) Painters

Albert Pinkham Ryder, Marsden Hartley, 1938, The Metropolitan Museum Of Art

Moonlightist, R.B. Kitaj, 1998 The Metropolitan Museum Of Art

From The Met's Entry On Moonlightist: The Title Of This Portrait Derives From Marsden Hartley's Poem, "Albert Ryder, Moonlightist." Its Composition Is Based On Another Hartley Work, His 1938 Painting Of Ryder (In The Museum's Collection). In 1995, When Kitaj's Own Pictures Were Exhibited Here In A Major Retrospective, Hartley's Painting Was Also On View. This Is One Of Several Tributes To Well-Known Artists That Kitaj Made When He Returned To The United States After Forty Years In England.

Albert Ryder - Moonlightist, Marsden Hartley (First Published In Selected Poems, Viking Press, 1945)

Moonlight, Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1887 Smithsonian American Art Museum

Portrait Of Marsden Hartley, Milton Avery, 1943 The Phillips Collection

Can't Tell

Can it be a memoir if I have poor memory?  Or if it’s written entirely too early, and I'm half-dead on the vine?  What if I break first person, to write about “The Subject”?  Perhaps no one will care about the subject or The Subject.  Really, what is there to say?  

What if there were no redemptive, affirming, uplifting, or inspiring content?  And if any turned up, if I weeded it gone?  If The Subject dragged through, fucked up, dicked over, suffered shame, and sunk heavier as the thing rolled along.  Is that a memoir?

And if fantastic events occurred for The Subject - if she got a standard poodle and together they opened a pest exterminating business that operated on college campuses and scheduled using Twitter, but pesticide exposure killed the dog and she developed Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS), what then?  And then if she became a bar back at Tracks Raw Bar and Grill in Penn Station for cash to breed standard poodles as a self-perpetuating monument to the fallen dog, but the cleaning fluids used backing the bar caused her MCS to flare up, which then littered her shifts with seizures, asthma, and dermatitis, naturally alarming staff and customers alike, resulting in her firing from Tracks, that’s probably starting to cast away from memoir, no?

I can’t tell, or remember.