Haptic Visual Poetry of Rubbeings--in the cold--& snow--& wnd

Note: I willl try and write a note of varying length here each day.
Thatway one may chart the voyages thrugh te winter monthsof m work--

Today we had the first snows here in Milwaukee. Tmeperatures to drop near
zero--while i was out working i was inffomred it was 16 degrees. Winds have
blown for days signalling changes on the way--and today they
arrived--swirlng gusts of full flaked snow--drastics drop in the
temperatures--
Since I work by hand directly pressing paper to the material to be rubbed
wth one hand--and then holding lumber crayon in other hand--touch and
temperature play a large part in my daiily work outside. The cold wil be
soon affecting the ways i work--i will keep a log of thsee.
Through time the hands learn to see and the eyes learn to touch--i
examing mateirals as they arise for possible rubbing--things that may look
good to the eye do not work by hand and vice versa--one has to go back and
forth in using both hands and eyes to tel lif a given fence or telphone pole
or raised letterings on dumpsters may be of use. The same goes for any
surface in which there are cracks and knots and the swirled lines made by
circling knots--
One learns that what may look good to the eye when rubbed by touch is
nothing much at all--and one may feel by hand someting that seems to be of
great beauty--and then when rubbed by eye sight--it is nothing at all--just
a mess.
Rubbeings are a haptic form of work--touch plays such a role--that i
have of late done much work in the dark or near dark literally feeling my
way--since it gets dark earlier, I have grown used to working by dimmer and
dimmer lights, fading into darkness--this is a fascinating way to work--one
has to use the hands as eyes--and yet one also knows that what may feel good
to the touch is unpleasing to the eyes--so this working by touch--one begins
to learn just how deep an impresion or inccision in wood or other materials
made by--numerbsr and letters on telephone poles for example, burdened into
the wood--or raisesd letterings--and then from this to being able to read by
hand the heights of raised lines of wood--how high they may be before
making truly a good series/set of lines on the paper--slwosly but surely i
find thatiican btuch find what wil be pleasing to the eye--it takes time and
patience and much running of the hands over surfaces--that one cannot see.
I find this a purely haptic approach--and that my rubBEings do feel
to the touch differently in the almost invisble differences in the heights
of the crayon wax on top of the paper--or the areas in white where it is
incised--
One may read sublty by the touch the crayon wax on paper--and see with
the eyes--the shifts in heights and shades and weights of the hands and
crayon as it varies according to the raisings and lowerings of the
materials-
The making and touching/reading of rubBEings are a way to introuce
thehaptic element direclty into visual poetry--a visual poetry in which the
visual may be by touch--and the touch may be visual--- The haptic
element is important in what i work with daily--and is another means by
which to extend visual poetry from the word/paper into the world of
materials.
Concrete--materiality of the word--physicality of letters and
words on a page--these namres and phrases remain removed from the touch of
the world and are abstractions. In working with the haptic, one essays a
finding through the working of a ways in which all these mere phraseas may
truly be a part of the world and visual poetry a lived experience, one not
only on the page alone.

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