I visit him a few times downtown
while he paints.
We talk about how he's going to Spain
for the fall semester
and he shows me a painting he did
and points to this one part,
a bridge, and tells me he thought of me
when he painted it.
It is so sad
how knowing something
so small
can make me so happy.

I cry and wonder
how I'm going to fall asleep
because sleeping means waking
and going through all this again

Even the pigeons are dancing, kissing,
going in circles, mounting each other.
Paris is the city of love,
even for the birds.

I am the cure and the disease.

That's when I feel really excited about a painting. When it starts to feel real, when it feels like it has a personality.

I'm never interested in the painting being a mirror to culture. I think that's really boring. What I'm interested in is painting as an affective space. The place where the hierarchies of the world can be rearranged within the space of a painting. And they can be articulated in different ways.