shower marsh
a Saturday morning poem +
This weeks feature includes: a poem and extra wisdom from and on the featured artist. Please don’t forget to scroll further, it would upset the humors. There is also a wonderful article on Bresdin, Victor Hugo, and all types of craft masters working in the shadows of their time (yes, even Hugo. just not on what you think.) Be sure to click Bresdin’s name, any time it appears. No reading list this week, it’s messy and I’m enjoying myself. Check back next week for weird finds.
There are parts of the bathroom that never dry. Paint that dissipates and is devoured by soap scum lining the basin tiles in bedsores. Crying. Febrile and trembling under the weight of the water, wishing on a well that refuses to empty, that fills to the brim with the tears pushed back into the wall. And though it rots; and though it stays, the drops never to be scrubbed or cleaned. It is still and it is dark, within that wall, to be even, ever, just slightly, blessèdly unseen.
Rodolphe Bresdin
Friends with the likes of Victor Hugo and Charles Baudelaire, but working in general obscurity during his time, Bresdin lived his life as a lithographer and draftsman in Paris and Toulouse. According to the lore, he lived in poverty after a fight with his family and embraced la vie bohème! He was even a mentor to a favorite of mine, featured in last week’s work (and others), Odilon Redon. How does this serendipity happen?
Because our interests make us hilariously predictable, patterned, and inescapably seen. Dare to embrace your own and you may be surprised at the paths presented.
Take care of yourselves, little ghosts, and pray for rain.