I
Things men have made with wakened
hands, and put soft life into are awake
through years with transferred touch, and
go on glowing for long years. And for this
reason, some old things are lovely warm
still with the life of forgotten men who
made them.—D.H. Lawrence
used to collect all sorts of interesting impedimenta,
some useful, some not. Books, teapots, Javanese
furniture and sculpture, ceramics, lovers and cats. My
travels, which were deep rather than wide, led, eventually,
to the Diaspora of all these things, including my human
furniture. If I still traveled, I would travel light, but where I
stay put nowadays, there is little to break my stride. I have
lived through a metaphoric bonfire of my own vanities,
a forced potlatch of all my things, still lovely warm. Yet
coziness was a shackle. I ponder its loss; I don't regret
it. I am content to write about Other People's Property
without coveting it; description is a satisfying substitute
for ownership.
A recent television program on the Donald Judd loft, at
101 Spring Street, now a house museum, caused me to
contemplate the twin poles of HYLAND: our celebration
of the layered, profuse interior; our more cautious acclaim
HYLAND
