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(9/26/06) for Corina Copp. The times the sky looks like a painting helps me absorb paintings better, and I'm not talking paintings of clouds I'm talking ROTHKO, which some days is a cloud the battlefields of the Soul welcomes, and rains down, floods guns and soothes a few screamers. Or creates a screaming, a new one, the one we'll all finally HEAR and all finally respond to -- there IT is -- here we are -- what do we do? -- we'll figure it out -- we'll figure it out -- okay, let's do that. "when i do not write / i am experiencing / something i will write about later." --Kathryn L. Pringle (Kate). Magdalena and Kate were married yesterday at San Francisco's city hall. I took a couple dozen pictures of them filling out their forms, waiting for their number to be called. After $42 the certificate printed out. Before I even left Philadelphia, Maggie said the most important photograph for me to take would be of she and Kate holding their certificate in front of the Harvey Milk statue. We walked around city hall in search of his statue. No one knew where it was, every office kept sending us to another office. We wanted to share this beautiful union with our queer martyr, like Christians do with their martyr Jesus. Finally in the basement office of Building Control we found out there is no Harvey Milk statue, and never has been one. Maggie was sure of it though. She saw it, once, somewhere, at city hall. The three of us looking for her imaginary statue was lovely, my own mind imagining him twelve feet tall, bending down, touching our most immediate, external chakras as we approached, and I couldn't wait to see him. We settled for the Abraham Lincoln statue, another American homo martyr, but we wanted Harvey Milk, we wanted the missing one, the one still hidden in uncarved stone. Maggie and Kate were beautiful, even when Kate was grumpy because she wanted lunch and was tired of me saying Pose here, Kiss here, Just one more picture, How about you putting the certificate on the step and you rest your faces on either side of it while facing each other? Suzanne Stein joined us later for dinner. At one point I mentioned needing to see the ROTHKO at the SFMOMA, and she very generously offered tickets to the museum, which is where I am right now, writing this. THANK YOU SUZANNE! Before the museum opened I prepared myself with chunks of dark chocolate and hot chocolate for the altered state I was seeking, to see and feel the returning fins. Rothko reverses my evolution with #14, 1960. I hate the descriptive sign beside the painting. What a bunch of bullshit that is! Telling us how certain colors will burst forward when looking at it, etc., etc., and I wish now that I hadn't read it, it's fucking with my chocolate high. More than once I tried to encourage others to NOT read the sign, to step back and look at it on their own. Fine, look at me like I'm crazy! All I want is for everyone in here to LOOK AT THIS painting without the assistance of the so-called "expert" who wrote the stupid sign. I'm so sick of experts. But more than experts I'm sick of people seeking the advice of experts. "Oh, please TELL ME what this painting means, my mind's too feeble to understand without you!" I want to cover the sign with my own, "IGNORE THIS NONSENSE AND BE BURNED ALIVE ON YOUR OWN TERMS!" Why do we go to museums? Why do we bother with paintings if we're just going to be led around by our noses? Where is the expert who tells us we're our own experts at how we feel about this world? How does it taste? What do you see when you give yourself a chance to see on your own? Can you feel your own creative juices? How does THAT taste? Are we delicious? Are we delicious yet and breaking down the door together? I'm ready to break it the fuck down, with you! Are you ready? Can we do this now?