This is the new painting, To see the progression follow this link. Painting Progression: Forgetting and Remembering in the Same Instant

CoCA Seattle published a catalog of my work in 2010 which can be purchased through CoCA or Lulu

High Tide by Jorie Graham
She held a sign that said Emergency [nothing else].
Handwritten in pencil on the corrugated strip of boxtop.
Everywhere someone’s dreams are realized.
Everywhere memory slicks its pebble back and forth at the bottom of            
its riverbed,
like happiness drifting over what exists,
always “close” to its mark –always almost just-within           
the charmed circle of yes of
what happened–yes.
Over and over the same one spot, drifting near target, recreating the target,

what was it we were talking about, the circle, the circle of our                   
lost

x, forgetting and remembering in the same instant. I came ever closer. I                 began. I
wrote my name firmly. Extruded meaning––unmistakable
thing.


Where was I? It was winter. There where it rolls forward then
stops. The god or gods were not overt. The day [their habitation] veiled. [Gods disappear at night][One of the
mysteries]. She: a woman of sixty: long gray and
matted hair, many grays, also some blue in it: no light received or                      
fed back by
her skin: and talking all day to the forever-descending in-
                        visible, in the dome of listening, in hearing, in the invincible
ministering: talking as if tasting of something on air [frost, host] and always rocking slightly back and forth––until one is finally                   
alongside her––walking by––rags upon rags wrapping her––the whole city’s buzzing?code [the one that takes “forever” to transmit] around her,

her rolling and tossing her head, the steam from her lips–lifting blue off her tongue [you can see tongue][sometimes even?back of throat] and growing more silent as I
approach: two women: one holding one word {all caps} up [torn gloves, wool layers
frazzling][moving her eyes as I move away]: then street: then
abstraction of her: then her back there laughing once out loud,
me tossing a quick glance up at the sky, me crossing
the street. I feel scribbled-in. Something inattentive has barely
written me in.


Every day I walk by. She is a door with her inscription, I
go by. I look in as if I have nothing to fear, I?walk by. I cross her gaze. We lock in thought, of that I am
sure. Her face cants a bit to peer at me. There is
no identifiable cause and no identifiable
effect. There is no flexibility between hearts. There might be–between minds, I’m not sure. None in the linked-up–gaze. Much in the remembering [gaze on my back–
laid hard at first then weakening as I go somewhere I?am due]. All this is in this sentence. Also in–
the fractures where periods are placed. You the listener are or are not
expendable, I don’t know, I‘m not sure. A couple of–
days “go by.” It seems this could take forever. It seems this should take Forever into its garb, deep into its folds, and wrap and
wrap it, holding us firm. Firm enough to make?fear not so hurried, there at our faces, there a
t?our backs….So I come close to her.
It takes form and time. Who would have expected it?
would end this way. The journey out.



Once after high-tide along south beach I found a beachlong                   
scripting
of debris: seaweeds of various thicknesses and drynesses, all
intertwined, some wrappers, shiny, bleached––
strips of mylar, flimsier [translucent] plastic blues––yarn, twine––spines of                   
strange bits of
fish, and carapaces––pars of birds or were they shells––
actual glass and fishing lures that looked like glass––
all grained-up in the sand and clay that
swirled-up round in ground-winds––nothing extruding––
all woven tight and rolled and braided-up: that’s
what I was hang every morning around her head, but long,
and not just gray but taupes and browns––sometimes some shells,
and always strands that looked like wool. Nearby
her rolled-up sleeping bag and other bags. A liquid thing, ?her here. Yet also think. If I get very close,
I feel a wish between us like
a silver thin. Sadness, yes, in our
one gaze [at certain points as you
approach it becomes one][the ends of each long               
separation
knit][right there] also the scent of blue [oncoming snow] also                    
hard snow
already on the ground, also
wonderment also bafflement also still air.



Late November, five a.m., walking back from the emergency
room, prescription in hand, ice on the empty trees, I see her
sleeping there, her long thick grouped-up hair over the brick                    sidewalk,
the top fold of the sleeping bag flapped back
by strong ground-gusts. Her cheek, exposed, ?looks too much more than cold.
I cross the street. Bending, gently as I can, to fold ?the blue flap back over the freezing face, wind rattling wildly in my
paper sack, my face blown flat with cold––ache
even in the fingers, even in the eyes––accidentally
I graze her cheek. So far does the mind go, I fill
with the sensation of having
goodness––actual goodness
––fill with my           
thinking it good?out to the very edges of my hand––touching her cheek––feel love: it’s not?a cheek, it’s paste––or gum and some ad
mixture––
pull the hair back and it’s not hair, it’s wool and phloxed-up
random yarns, old woolen caps stuffed in a stocking
face, with gum laid on––or it is latex paint––onto
the cheek, making a chin: it is a puppet: it is a place
holding a place: it is an eclipse of: of holding
on: of on: or in: or what a here can be           
if what one is
is finally reduced to here: it is not “now”: that’s what’s ??been taken elsewhere now: strange splitting of this
atom: her in my mind as it bends down to
feel along: a seam in mesh near where the ear
would be: but running down the front, no mouth, no
hole––I seek a rip––a mark, a stitching-in––if only for the trickery––

moving back up it’s only crusted lacquer tells me?it is eyes––I feel with fingertip and it flakes off, what must be
pupil painted on: must find the words: no:
must find what sparkles here, what virtue is existing

only here: my self: her self: this holding-of-place: this strict
                    eight feet of
sidewalk in America: America: you witch: dreaming always of here from an
elsewhere, from a nowhere: I’m looking through a wind that’s like a wall for
a proper name: for identification: representation:

divine emptiness: it’s been 21 minutes:
crashing, the wave deposits its gift: difference: indifference:
and the long sepulcher: identity: open: meanwhile in the arms of
elsewhere: someone has pushed the rock aside: I see

the loan: I see its terms (maybe): I see the payable and
the unpayable: the open-ended credit: created: equal: look.