I am on a train train I am on a train, looking out the window at a dusky sky. There is: bluish infrastructure, stark skeletal trees, puffs of smoke hanging still in the air.

Two things:

One: I am suddenly reminded of: I am in the darkroom in high school, developing, and I hear mr. C and J talking about J's photograph, and J explains the meaning behind the photograph and this emotional connection he has to the photo (of his grandmother). mr. C explains that an outside viewer can't really see or feel this emotion, and I hear (all the while rocking pans of developer and stop back and forth) J then explains that he understands but that he thought it would show anyway. and I remember thinking then that I liked that, the concept of an emotion soaking into the image, oozing out into the photograph, despite all possible odds and the likely disconnect that happens when you show someone a photograph of someone/something that matters to you. but can't you see? Afterwards I leave the darkroom into the light and J's standing there quietly, looking at his photograph, trying to become an other so he can look at this anew.

Two: more and more I feel: everything is in the meat of the thing, like the actual making process, the dirtying of hands in sawdust and powder and stuff; this is where things really happen, where the productive conflict between theory and praxis exists. Either they happen in a concrete cerebral process or they happen in a concrete tangible/physical process. Here is a preemptive new year's resolution: less input and more output, to privilege writing over speech, contemplative action over conception.