Stuart Davis, After Mark Rothko,
After William Baziotes:
Sketches of “Max,” Mark Rothko’s “No. 19,”
and William Baziotes’ “Moonstruck” (1950)

"The fuzzy distinction between … won't become interesting until much later."

In Late January, Matter exists in one of two states: Sleeping or Not Sleeping. Not Sleeping Matter out-numbers Sleeping Matter several times, so much so that Sleeping Matter will sometimes seem a mythical state. Not Sleeping Matter often rests and might be easily mistaken for the Sleeping kind, but it differs in several ways. Sleeping Matter lacks self-consciousness, nor can it produce thumping noises like footsteps trundling down a hallway toward a bathroom. Sleeping Matter might snore, though it will deny that it holds that ability. Not Sleeping Matter tends toward grumpiness.

It's no wonder why Matter tends to bifurcate in Late January. There's little else to do then. The roads have grown slippery and unreliable. The weather becomes disturbingly predictable. Fog fuzzes even the crispest vision. Darkness still dominates the days. Everything seems far away and unreachable. Hibernation seems preferable to creation. The motivation to start something seems lacking. The urge to just leave that pot of breakfast bean porridge on the double boiler so it could also serve as lunch and supper approaches the inexorable. A distinct absence of color washes through the few remaining possibilities, blunting real potential. Consequently, Matter is only sometimes tempted to go anywhere, though its friends head off for midwinter vacations in the tropics. Matter hates the tropics more than he hates his home. He tells himself, "There's no place like home," without a shred of irony in his voice.

Sleeping Matter does not dream. It cannot afford to dream. Its shelves already seem too cluttered to collect fresh treasure. Sleeping Matter finds pleasure in prior accomplishments and former lives. Sleeping Matter lets lie. He does not even try to dredge up fresh meaning from his vast experience. He feels enough of a failure without rehashing his prior successes and failures and draws. He acknowledges that he might not have even been there then, when the memories were laid in for future reference. He most often feels that he's reading another's journals rather than his own. In mid-winter light, the pages seem pale, and the script faded. He struggles to remember names but never faces. It's as if he's lived in a portrait gallery populated with n-dimensional beings, each perfect, each frozen. Sleeping Matter doesn't know why.

Not Sleeping Matter continues to scheme. He's fully capable of planning but not quite able to execute those plans. Paperwork often stalls his forward progress to the point where he deeply questions the whole concept of progress and forward. He feels more frozen in place, in check but never quite check-mated. He can move within narrowing possibilities. Attempting to log in reminds him that he never knew the password. He seems to be surrounded by places he can't get to anymore. He imagined 1956 last week before realizing that almost nobody he knew then still exists. He notices how we pass our time on to the next ones in line without really mentioning what we're doing or either of us really knowing what we're doing. Seventy years hence, those distinctions will have ceased to matter.

Not Sleeping Matter dreams. Some days, it seems that's the only thing he's still suitable for. Sleeping Matter might still dream, but he never remembers, so it doesn't matter. For Not Sleeping Matter, it might be true that only dreams matter, for nothing else seems to contain substance: not breakfast, lunch, or, least of all, supper. If it weren't for the neighbor's yellow porch light, the view over the Center of this Universe would exist in shades and white, various grades of precisely the same substance, distinctly undichotomous. A self-sameness stands over Late January days and nights, rendering the distinction between them hardly worth mentioning. One morning, difference might rise with the sun. Surely not this morning’s and likely not tomorrow's either. The fuzzy distinction between Sleeping and Not Sleeping Matter won't become interesting until much later. Until then, the curious singularity of this season rules.

(This story has been a transcription of my typical internal dialogue from late January.)

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #iAlogue , #PureSchmaltz