I got lots of milage out of this one. What was I thinking? What was I feeling. What was I trying to express?

I had a pair of broken glasses. The right stem came off, and without the rest of the glasses to go with it, it seemed rather interesting. I dipped the part that wraps around the ear in a bottle of India ink and then spun the other end between my fingers allowing the irregular end to flop about on a thick block of water color paper. When the ink was almost dry, I ran a light wash over the background. It took some of the ink with it.

I wasn't thinking about anything. I wasn't feeling anything beyond curiosity. I wasn't trying to express anything. I was just wondering what would happen. I watched the stem bounce around leaving traces of black. It was spectacular for a few moments under bright light. I can see it happening at a distance of forty-eight years. I watched an image appear. Not an image, exactly. A something. Which I emphasized with the wash. I think of it as fake art. Perhaps a great deal of what we most love is fake. Perhaps by fake I only mean random. And perhaps by random I mean something done but not quite understood.

I kept it on the wall for a long time, before the urge to fake other things, or to watch them emerge suddenly as if from nowhere replaced it. Somehow it ended up in a box with other things, and somehow it persisted. I'm thinking how amazing that is, and feeling how wonderful it is to discover things in old boxes that aren't merely junk. I'm trying to express that now.