March experiment—day seventeen— Today has been a strange day, in a sense, full of subtle contrasts, not as I expected it to transpire, but the nets of artistic progress are full to the bursting point. I haven’t spent so many hours in a deeply intuitive mode for a very long time. The relentless momentum of decision making set the stage for many days of labor, and I was able to preserve that orientation, even though I took TV breaks to watch four different closing contests between men’s NCAA basketball teams, including one that almost went into triple overtime. All the way through this, I felt the tension born of knowing what I wasn’t doing, and, piled on that, the awareness of how odd a vein of aesthetic ore I’m mining, for God knows what reason. The more I get into this, the more I wonder what it’s all about, what part of myself I’m paying tribute to, what meaning or lack thereof I bring to others. On Saint Patrick’s Day, there isn’t a beer in the house, just the words of William Butler Yeats scratching at my soul—
The Choice
The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.When all that story’s finished, what’s the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day’s vanity, the night’s remorse.