On Christmas Day, as in the song... (Christmas Day, oh Christmas Day...) Simple, earnest, even--well meant--like those Saturday mornings when I was a boy, and the easiness of a few hours of nothing to do (as in school or chores) just lying there in bed, warm, covers in a kind of tent--maybe listening to Big John and Sparky--wondering in some undefined way what that world might bring...
And here, the same figure from Kafka's Diaries--A man with his arms half-raised, confronting a thick mist as if in order to enter it... Abiding, yes, but now with a certain compassion (you can see this in the shoulders) or is it simply the pleasure of a good question--a step into the unknown...
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Tiepolo was always a problem --Venetian, yes, but late Venetian--and the color had ranged into the pastel--no longer the dignity of Titian's haunting blacks--they've become layered grays--like the banks of clouds over the upper Yangtze...
A life lived, then re-lived. How did Peter sometimes put it, "Not a bad thing..."
