Damion Searls

, the only French that stuck were a few expressions that I’ll probably always be able to rattle off, and as I stand there looking at the logs I think that I know so little, for example I don’t even know something as simple as why I’ve always signed my paintings with a big A in the right-hand corner of the painting itself and painted the title on the top of the stretcher on the back, always in thick black paint, why did I do it in that particular way? I think and I think that all the titles were
either in Norwegian, Nynorsk, or in Latin, and the ones in Latin were always quoted from somewhere in the Latin mass, because I prefer it when the mass is celebrated in Latin, I think and I can’t just stay standing here looking at the logs through the open hatch of the stove, I think, and it’s been a long time since I’ve eaten anything, so even if I don’t feel hungry I should probably go make myself a sandwich,

other paintings I’m not totally done with yet, that I’m not totally satisfied with, I just can’t, I think and I look at the easel and I think that when I look at the easel now, isn’t it like, the thought comes into my head, isn’t it like God is there too, in the easel? like, yes, like God is looking out at me from the easel? I think, and now I just have to not go crazy, I think, because it’s like God is looking at me from every single thing, I think and I look around and it’s like God is in everything around me, I think, and like he’s looking at me from every single thing, I think and I think isn’t the round table clearly saying with its silence that God is nearby? and the two chairs? and the one Ales always sat in, especially clearly, God is so clearly looking at me from that chair, I think, and I think that it’s when I’m most alone, in my darkness, my loneliness, because it really is lonely, to tell the truth, and when I’m as quiet as I can be, that God is closest, in his distance, and I really have, almost like a monk,

maybe well maybe there is a similarity, because maybe I’ve withdrawn from life too, a little like a monk, I think, into this wordless painting, yes, into loneliness, I could probably put it that way except it sounds so wrong, I think, but I really have withdrawn into the wordless prayer of painting, maybe it’s all right to put it that way, and it does sound wrong, I think, and it’s also the peace painting gives, I’ve also withdrawn into that, I think, but this is the wrong word, it’s too big a word, the truth is just that I stood there and painted, day in and day out, all these years, with all the humility I have in me I stood there and painted, and I probably need to keep standing there painting because what else can I do, really? but I don’t