“No one appreciated Van Gogh until after he died,” they said, like it was a reason to keep going. I saw it as a reason to stop. I hadn’t painted in months. “What a shame,” I thought, “to be a modernist in a world already modernized.” I was evicted from my apartment. I had painted …
The Promised Year
I stand at the counter eating walnuts by the handful while the cookies cool on their racks. You are across the kitchen, shuffling papers, marking them with bright red ink. You are a million miles away, lost amid a sea of essays, sheaves of analysis, reams of fuddled words and muddied meanings. I stand on …