Broken Windows
All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling.
The difference is spreading. —Gertrude Stein (Tender Buttons)
Stein and Picasso would sit by the window and watch the street scenes.
“Gertrude,” Picasso would say, “the windows are windows, but art is the
composition of broken windows—which only Cubism can capture in
multiple perspectives and no perspectives, only the experience of re-ordering.”
“Yes,” Stein would say, “language is like that, too, and all objects designed to
give information do not give information by the experience of knowing. That is,
if the poet knows that truth lies in the deconstructing of the information.”
“What is seen in language through broken windows?” Picasso asked.
“Frames of perception,” Stein replied.
“Fragments?” Picasso inquired.
“Fragments to be recombined. The permutations are endless.”
“All meaning lies in the permutations. That is the essence of Cubism.”
“Yes,” Stein replied. “And language is a broken window, too, in which
seeing is not what it appears to be.”
“Reality is always a re-evaluation,” Picasso said.
“It is indeed an agreement of terms. If we agree that eert is a tree,
it is for now and forever. Call it into question, Pablo, and the world
of agreement is transformed.”
“Shatter the conventional descriptions, eh?” Picasso said.
“To see what lies within.”
“Ah, that is if anything does.”
“Yes, most language is blind. There is no seeing into or out of.”
Stein reached for the carafe on the table. “You see this glass is blind.
It does not reflect, it is unto itself a self, there is no world there.
Such is reality, but we agree not to accept that emptiness and so
we fill the blind glass with images and call it Reality.”
“Shattering the glass reveals some truth, does it not?” he asks.
“Indeed. The fitting together of the pieces that is more
real than the pieces themselves or the original design.”
Picasso said, “I have broken the windows of art and created Cubism
as a way to show that wholeness in perspective is a lie.”
Stein said, “And I have done the same with language.
Objects are not objects, information is not information,
there is only the experience of the world,
and that is always open to questions and change.”
Stein poured red wine for Picasso from a dark green bottle.
“To broken windows,” she said.
“And fragments seeking never to be whole,” Picasso said.
“Oh how the difference is spreading,” Stein said.
“Ripped from context, freed of the taint of lingering definitions.”
“Ah yes,” Picasso said. “The difference is spreading, indeed.”
*Christina Murphy says she “writes primarily prose poems–many of which, if typed into paragraphs, might be considered flash fictions. That's good.”