I love this photo. My friend the art critic and Pulitzer finalist Jen Graves (yes, I’m boasting) took it last month at a preview of an exhibit at Seattle’s Frye Museum of Art.  That’s me up there on the wall — my words, that is — and she’s reading them aloud to him.

What she’s reading is this:

Write what you know, they say.

But I write what I don’t know,

led by stubborn desire

to explore,

to see what there is,

or what might be,

or could be.

I play with ideas,

with paradox,

conundrum,

and wrestle with words

— pin them down –

— lose hold of them –

— delete them —

until the right ones appear.

I recognize them

and then, startled,

come to a dead halt

lest they shift again.

They may not seem so right

tomorrow, yet here they are,

in the world,

suddenly solid.

The fire extinguisher seems a tad de trop.  As might be the show’s title, ‘Genius 21’, which surely runs the risk of begging the question.  It’s on through January.