To France, or Not to France?

Small painting as yet untitled, acrylic & glue, 9” x 12”, December 2024.

So you want to go to France? Really Brooks?

Better perhaps to drive across Wyoming in a brand new Audi Q 5 with this message emblazoned across the hood and the rear end of the car: JUST SHOOT ME!

Having read the recent New Yorker story on current French politics (Lauren Collins on Macron, Le Pen et.al.) I re-establish my belief in Flaubert’s notion that “the whole dream of democracy is to raise…’etc. etc. still holds water.

Forgiveness is implicit.

I forgive water, the fiber of water, the notion of forgiveness is crucial. I simplify myself to the degree that I’m not wanting anything, I want nothing anymore and I want it now! And how poor I was then, how poorly too I thought of myself having very little money, enduring extreme amounts of penury, living on large cans of cheap minestrone soup mostly, and peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches sprinkled with sugar.

Happiness in those days always seemed to be opening another book, most often the classics! Including Flaubert. I am in fact, staunchly anti-desire, having been originally made of the stuff most likely.

I come to now adhere to a state of being I am calling, restorative togetherness in which I am able to couple alone or with another person of mutuality. Don’t ask me how I am able to do this, I just am, a kind of force of nature I presume.