The History of Modernism, as Ignored By Augustus John; or: Saying Goodnight Through a Cellphone, To The Future and Other Such Loved Ones

When nearer to each imaginary fact, as it is, laid bare, sensitive and unconscious, the chances, meeting where
they came from, increase their edges, for the cut.

What I mean is, I'm remembering, but also, I'm mellow, floating in a careful grade of happy.

The man, I even read his essay. Free time, and I became of it--Augustus John. A painter. Of portraits. And
look at me, I am too, one, in the studio of an exposed ear: in there, I've fit Nicole's chore-voice as it shifts registers.
Bathwater slogs in the background. Nieem ambience. Earlier he'd shuffled the living room around
surprising teal pantyhose she'd worn in a row, two days. Through the receiver and digital pulse, down from
satellite mediation heaven, a boy yells spiderman over the body-shaped exhaustion of his mother. A portrait.

Just with a touch John could turn a woman into a wishbone. Not even with a hand or sometimes minus
cold joy of whatever he chose, to exclude from his art. Different but equally forever. I watch from a windowseat
and wonder. Victorianism. Then Vorticism. Which is to say--people hardly change, it's not their habit, even though
style stirs the color of what they stave.

Happiness? Who wouldn't rather have people? The portrait receives transmissions. When I'm so involved I'm
not aware, but emanate like smiles and sudden drops, the chewing of lips and nails. I return from myself as
them, if only for as long as they're there. It's called love. And if not, or more complicated--at least the rarest
of someone.