In the midst of all this life, what won’t die is the music

Alice Austen, “New York City, 1897. The organ grinder and his wife.” Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2013646372/. Contrast and detail restored.

Winter light: Baltic problem, Pacific solution

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Ingrid Thulin in Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light

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He took it all in, and the more he took it the more it seemed to suffice.

Born October 24, 1632

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

He discovered that to see is to find what has always been.

Triple footnote: the senses of sight, touch and silence

Fr442, “I see thee better in the dark.” Houghton Library, Harvard University. Emily Dickinson Archive, https://www.edickinson.org/editions/1/image_sets/235708

An outline is a realized discovery.

Shaping and coloring your perception, it informs you that you have thereby seen.

Face, portrait, poem

Thinking cap

See it happening: fabric and fur enwrap her like thought and she takes on thought’s luminance. Crowned finally with the feather, she travels light.

“Frau in Mantel von Maison Ch. Drecoll, Paris,” about 1914. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, http://www.smb-digital.de/eMuseumPlus?service=ExternalInterface&module=collection&objectId=879708. Digitally restored.

Self-portrait with bibliography

Folk text: “I’m part Cherokee on my mother’s side.” It’s one of the things that “white” people say in the South. They always specify the mother’s side.

Visual aids for the textual terms white, red, and black:

Generalization: because an image always exists in a real world, a real portrait is always a self-portrait. The silent brush paints word shapes that say, Look closely and you’ll see me.