i've always sort of cultivated the minimum except with certain substances and objects and periodic physical passions. i was or am something of a collector and exhibit some tendencies and behaviors that are considered addictive and hardly minimalist. that being said i've always thought small and not grand. though i have had notions that may be considered grandiose by some or many. i was going to add that i might say in a more gentle mode that my aspirations have been generally quite modest though secretly i've thought about having my own island, or forest, or meadow but with a humble shelter with a gentle love gardener, but not even a house. i once had a brief ambition of entering the art world but stalled in the art market even though my aspiration was humble, just maybe rent and food and beer at the time. before that time a passing partner asked where i saw myself in five years and i gulped with some shame and indignity and fear, i knew that was the sound of the death knell. yet many years later, after my brief attempts to gain credence and a few jacksons in the art world, and after mutual rejection, i think i was right, at least for me, and i don't miss the market one whit, nor one jackson. which is what i get for one standard doug dog walk. i have changed in some ways hard to quantify, and impossible i would imagine to the one who asked that blunt question so long ago for which i still have no answer.

i don't know why i say these things here and now but it occurs to me maybe this is the answer i'd like to give in that mute space following that airlocked question i was never ready for at the time.