September 8, 2006.
Oakland, night.

#1, September, 2006.

Where will I
go from here?
What’s it to you?
Where will you go from here?

Onward, downward a long
way on to, it’s true,
the last sunset.

Make farewell now,
ends aren’t nice.

Fred

"Daddy, Daddy, what does the picture say?”
“Well, son, see Fred’s name near the lower center and the sunset below it? Well, that’s Fred’s sunset. And see, up top left, the lighted place? That’s the new dawn. But it’s somebody else’s.”

 And afterward Fred couldn't help it, he put in the imitation Chinese chop with raw sienna for the gold for forever,
and one tiny seed for tomorrow.
 

September 9, 2006.
Oakland, late afternoon.

Make the dandelion seed, that’s what I am…
see the “dandelion” come from a water drop of raw sienna
at the center right of  #1, September, 2006.

Evening.
There is a time
to sow and grow,
a time to harvest and store
and this, alas, the storing
time for seed for tomorrow.

And different seeds have
different stores.

For me to
find the ways.

 

A Fragment from September studio notes,
copied from the plate of an unpublished 1981 drypoint
which was the first version of catalog #62, Self Portrait as Herm
in my 2003 Retrospective at the Oakland Museum of California...

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Spring and autumn, summer and winter, my names are the seasons. My breath is day and night, I have never seen my face.

The tangle of my nerves is the chronicle of the years. I am Be Beggar, I beg endlessly to be. And when I wake, a world arises; and when I sleep, another takes its place.

Through all the worlds, I am in the fire of those who lust, I am in the soul of those who dream. I have lain forever in the gutters of the world; I shine in the dusty windows of tenements everywhere. I am the herm at the center of the four fields. I am the Hesper Tree in autumn; I seed the earth with the stored riches of my year.

I am only a whispering in the blood, murmuring in the mind, speaking in the dream.

I am a bird perched upon the world’s high cornices.

And I will die, my body will be scattered and will never return. I will be in the body and the life and the dream of all who are yet to come.

My days are the leaves of a great tree in autumn, they fall in golden torrents.

I am a statue in an old park.

My life is a spiral, I follow the line.

I dwell in old  cities. My veins are clogged with ruin, my mouth is choked with dust.

Venus was my mother; Dionysus was my father. I take after both sides of the family: I am Priapus.

I am a bird in the sand. With every surge, the sea flows through me. I will last long, but then I will be gone.

I am the old post in the sand by the shore.

 

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Directory to all Fred Martin's Art.