So why study the life and work of an artist you've never liked? Because you follow an impulse and do not question it, just move toward understanding. And over time you get why the impulse came - to hold up a mirror, offer a glimpse of self-knowledge you might not get otherwise. Readings in Charles Olson: The Allegory of a Poet's Life(Tom Clark, 2000):

[Olson's] dread of the blank page remained strong, a residue of his fear of the formal occasion of composition, whose challenges awakened in him old demons of self-demand. ... [H]e would sidestep the problem by doing his writing elsewhere, on quite literally any scrap of paper ... which came to hand at the moment of inspiration. (pp270-71)

and

"I have started so many birds of it [the Maximus series] not yet brought down I have to watch that the gun don't haul me up in the air, from firing itself dizzy." (p. 235)

and

his compulsive phobic relation to temporality: "I have been 'rushing,' sort of, stealing all the time I could get all my life.... It has always been a race.... [It] was compelling enough for me to continue along the same course even without interruption ... almost any time lost from the pursuit was more than I could stand." In his battle against time, family perennially lost out. (p. 274)

As good an example of Aspy obsessiveness as I have read. And on and on. Me hermano.

Speaking of brothers, artguyJim writes that he will visit us next weekend, driving up the 350 miles from Yolo to attend the annual Harvest Ball in Eagleville/Surprise Valley, 50 miles further on from here. Jim is a sculptor-in-wood of some renown, at least in California, and the person who throws the party is a former student of his, another sculptor of some renown, at least in New York. Oh but it will be very good to see him, who is like family to me in his kindness and camaraderie over the years. I own several of his sculpted pieces - mostly famously and beautifully a pair of carved rattlesnakes coiled around one another within a rattle-shaped box, a large piece I keep in storage because this house is too small to display it in.

Cool days and chilly nights. The light, the air feel and smell already of autumn. Big changes ahead, for certain. Tomorrow night we will be pleased to witness the Blue Moon of August 2012 rising over the Warner Mountains. It must be time to rearrange all the furniture ...