By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The page moves from Van Gogh, art, and blindness into a stripped meditation on perception, where loss comes from not having a chance to listen FEIRCE before crawling earthly things settle between moon and sun.
The handwritten note beside Van Gogh makes the problem of seeing also a problem of listening: being lost by not having a chance to listen FEIRCE. Night is taken out of the stars and given back, swimming becomes difficult without depth perception, and the earth is suddenly full of crawling mediators between larger celestial forces. Fragmentary surrounding annotations are omitted, but the retained notes sharpen the page's concern with damaged perception.
Van Gogh and blindness: the painter 'swirls for all of us' so the blind speaker becomes 'so meaning so what.' He takes the night out of the stars and gives it back; depth perception only arrives when resting on the earth.