he is pointing to himself in the tree... he is pointing up to his lover (yes, don't make that face, it is possible...but too literal)... he is pointing up to his sleeping self, his other self, his most perfect and desirable self...in the tree...he is pointing to the dreaming god of... dreaming...

maybe he is not pointing. the extended hand might be a friendly greeting. it could be a waving hand, inviting and calling him down. it could be an open palm - pay me what you owe me. it could be a fist - pay me what you owe me and take your damn tree out of my abdomen...but i don't think so. look, says the arm and the hand, look there...he is sleeping and i am his dream.

(i know i am probably violating someone's copyright here. i'm sorry...but not sorry enough not to use the picture... unless you or your lawyers politely ask me not to - on your classiest official letterhead.)

the artist is clemente...francesco i think. found it in a new yorker some years ago... its silence and weirdness caught me and i clipped it...scanned it. yesterday i set it up as (what you pc folks call) wallpaper. today i tried to think about it. i'm thinking about it now...don't know anything about f clemente...yet. don't know anything about what might be the conventions of asian/indian iconography... apparent here. do we need a jungian idea? what is the archetype? is there a legend of a man who dreamed a tree from his stomach? if so, why is he the one awake? what about the doubling? do we need to think about the doppleganger? the oppositions of up and down, earth and sky, asleep and awake, round and flat, active and passive - but, oddly enough, not male and female.

the trunk runs through him and roots drive deep into the earth below him. you can't see it here, but the blue of the trunk becomes branches up in the leaves like the venous blue of medical diagrams...and this nest supports him - the other asleep. any thoughts?

and do you know what i like best about the picture? that tiny strip of blue up top. it could be the sky...it could be the ocean.

my own day is bright and blue. so what am i doing in here at this machine dreaming about some stupid picture? i have circles to run and rosebush to clip and cat to brush and book to read.

Imagination is the voice of daring.
If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.

Henry Miller