...regard everywhere a religion of sport, sacrament of alcohol, chants and ecstasy and altered consciousness.

In the Old Jewish Cemetery, someone says, "All I see are rocks on the ground".

Everywhere you look consciousness fragments into separate perceptions-- Hotel-- Restaurant-- Bar-- in a room in Prague children leap into a Greek sea, Mexican drug cartels battle police and thousands are killed, the idea of "leadership" is batted about, internet rumors influence elections, diamonds are sold to spite family members. There are drawings by children in the Pinkas Synagogue memorial, a picture of a hanging, a train passing in the night, one titled "Landscape With Black Clouds".

Events progress constantly in any context, intruding more clearly on awareness outside "normal" circumstances, the crossing of the zone...

One is expected to know who won the game; one is not necessarily expected to know of the murder of the Brazilian poet...

A ghost looks up at me in the subway.

Who can accept these challenges? A choir sings down the street. Traffic noise peaks and
grows placid. A white dog with black eyes and question mark tail and a red haired girl
make their way up the hill on separate sidewalks. Do they perceive each other?

Doppelgängers of two girls whose names you would not know-- subway-- bus station
color of hair and eyes, shape of eyes and mouth, resemblances-- contrasting
heights and physical presences. Do they think of you?

Phantom junkie wants money on the steps outside the train station-- we banish the spectre, ignoring twitching plaint. There are pickpockets operating in the metros. Surely someone else, some other writer, can portray them as heroes.

Ocean breakers on the wall, television news dawn-- the shadow is the home of the soul and must not be stolen-- better off dead, it is said, than the abyss that's left remaining inside your head-- muggers, hustlers, thieves look in the eyes of the old poet and change their minds...

In the mind of the transgressive artist there are challenges to overcome, powers to fight. The audience is mostly gratified with the common transgressive stances of intellectual children, satisfied to see expressions of an aesthetic they approve and the reactions and reproach of those who are offended. But the door is not kicked open; no soldiers are sent in. Vision turns on self-knowledge. Who are we? How do we live? Fundamental questions easily set aside for extinction. The merely transgressive does not approach the existential purposes of art in breaking ground, transcending limits, suggesting possibilities...