#498 La Gâcheuse

Strange to find such an image in 
a book on healing; but Magritte's
purloining of the anatomical 
illustration lacks the layering that
Dr. F.E. Bilz included, where the
face could be folded back to dis-
play a skull, & the internal organs
similarly displayed by a slight
manipulation of the body. None
of that shown here. Instead—dare
we say it?—a combination of
bare bones & bare breasts to offer 
up a simulacrum of age & youth
conjoined. Though left intact upon
the head some residual skin, a re- 
minder that memento mori might
sometimes come back to bite us.  

#497 Seasickness

I am bemused that the 1950s 
saccharine pop song A White 
Sport Coat & A Pink Carnation 
that resides somewhere in 
that ‘songs you grew up with’ 
drawer jumps immediately to 
mind. & yet what else comes 
close to a gaudy sport coat & 
a cut of ham laid out to fester 
beneath a burning sun. They
both provoke a nauseous re-
action, one intentional, the
other not. As Magritte says,
we “live in a very unpleasant 
world … that’s why my 
painting is a battle, or rather a 
counteroffensive.” So, no need 
to be all at sea even though 
the sea is nowhere to be seen.

#496 The Pilgrim

Decide on what faces 
to take along. Set out 
on the road to Zion 

or Mecca or Ayodhya 
or Lumbini. Which one 
you choose will depend 

on the face you have 
chosen for the day. 
Wear a clean shirt & 

a new tie — they will
be accepted everywhere. 
The best excuse to offer

for the hat is the old sun-
in-the-eyes routine. That
seems to work most places.

#495 Melmoth

I sold my soul for
150 extra years of
life; but after filling
much of that time
with a variety of

troubled wanderings,
this is where I end up —
riding a road bike tot-
ally unsuited to the
barren mountain trails

I’m fated to finish my
years trapped upon, &
all the while looking so
ridiculous that even the
owls seem sorry for me.

#494 Le Monde Familier

Place the bell, le grelot, firmly
on the ground. No need to
anchor it — unlike the artist’s 
elsewhere use of it, this time 
it does not float. A solid
reality keeps it where it is

intended to be. Then lower
the horizon & not only bring 
the cloud down with it but
also shift it forward so it seems 
out of place but perfectly posit-
ioned above the bell. Now, to 

ensure it doesn’t float away, 
flatten the sky behind & call
upon that peripatetic rock to
actually do something, anchor
the column from above, act 
as a counterweight to entropy. 

#493 The Lost Jockey (1948)

The surface of the Earth is
covered with overlapping
racetracks. Take the wrong
turn, & a jockey is likely to

find themselves in unfamiliar
surroundings, sometimes not
even on the continent they
started off on. & often lost from

sight, until a convenient cave
opening allows the invisible
to regain some visibility, even
if in a parched & foreign land.

#492 The State of Grace

What people see is the title,
not the subject. & the subject
contradicts the title. “I was
inspired,” said Magritte. “The 
subject to be painted: a bicycle 
on a cigar.” Or to put it even
more bluntly, a bicycle riding
roughshod over another object —
no state of grace in that. Ex-
cept . . .The objects float, & 
perhaps a belief hovers that 
the laws of gravity are defied 
when things are in a state of 
grace. Which brings in Simone 
Weill, who wrote: “All the 
natural movements of the soul 
are controlled by laws analogous 
to those of physical gravity. 
Grace is the only exception.” 
‘Analogous to’ is the escape 
clause that allows St. Thomas 
Aquinas to come on board &
point out that grace builds
upon, not contradicts, nature.
Then, once all parties are on
stage, lined up like ten pins 
in a state of grace, Magritte 
reappears, wearing his bowl-
er hat, & with a solid verbal 
cast, scatters the skittles
with his addendum: “A bike
sometimes runs over a cigar
down in the street.” No
gravity, no grace inherent.

#491 The Window (2)

This what we set out attempting
to do, the catching of a bird in
flight. So fast, so hard though.
Requires practice, patience, per-
sistence. Means starting in one
domain, which, if we fail with its
mode of manual dexterity, must,

then, move ahead to another, 
leaving some familiar forms be-
hind. Ironic, though, since many 
of those are classed as futuristic,
but the intention must be there to 
move forward, to invent the fu-
ture or re-invent it before our one

arrives. Observation: the painter
on the road, bowler-hatted but 
yet to become Mr. Everyman, 
still in the future. But the pre-
sent striding on toward the peaks 
& villages. & the past, Vincent 
van Gogh. The Road to Tarascon.

#490 The Gradation of Fire

The literal meaning of jan
ken pon, the Japanese equi-
valent of rock, scissors, paper,
is ‘beginning with stone.’ That

was the given. To go with it, 
various other items were
then subjected to a battery of
tests. This painting shows

some of them undergoing the
fire test, to see how easily 
they burn, how long for, &
how much is left behind. Only

one additional item survived
the testing relatively unscathed. To
choose the third, a handoff was be-
gun between the best of the

first round failures. Paper won.

#489 Le parfum de l'abîme

L'abîme est un band de Montréal in-
fluencé par le jazz, le rock, & le
classique contemporain. This isn't
them. More likely the painted
shape is one of those bits of 
bricolage, the detritus one finds 
rolling around the bottom of an 
abyss. Magritte, more concerned
with shadow than with shape, 
appoints it the head of a child. No 
jazz there. Possibly death metal. 

#488 Le Genre Nocturne

The woman hides her head.
Except she has no head. Is 
that what she is trying to 
hide? The wall is a dirty gray. 
There is an oval shape on it. 
Egg? Opening? Mirror? Is 
cracked, whatever it is. The 
presence of the woman's hands 

prevents us from looking past 
the cracks to see what's hidden 
there. The mirror stares back at
us. We raise our hands. The wo-
man hides her head before them — 
except she has no head to hide.