Unlike a pilgrimage to the Uffizi, Paolini’s installations ask for something other than devotion; his work occasioned in me a kind of wondering that was something other than awe. It invites conversation rather than adulation. The artist is relinquishing control rather than demanding attention.

In the garden, love is dirt and rain: through every wet blossoming Joanna hears children singing—

But what is wrestling

if not an embrace? It’s too dark to know
you have the same face

Paul Desmond was a famous jazz musician.
He could play altissimo, the highest register.
His tone was light as a soul leaving the body.

Everything inside a mountain

has the right to be forgotten, but I have
the right to know, to access, make the coal seam

public.

Relationships, she believed, were built not on loyalty but a system of material and emotional labor, wherein you paid a percentage of your valuable time and energy to receive a percentage of someone else’s valuable time and energy in return. She was suspicious of anyone who claimed purer motives.

so efficiently do quail become creators
of quail like God filling the
desert floor with quail for his

children

After watching him for a few measures’ time, I walk on. I have no interest in spying. I only look at the things that I am allowed to see from the sidewalk.

our hearts labor at salvation
despite our honest efforts to resist

I see my paintings and drawings as invitations to encounter a lived environment slowly, fully, and reflectively.