Accomplishments are dead things, whereas possibility & capacity are aspects of the living being

Writers are people who can/could write in many different ways, who could make various types of works—who could potentially make any statement. But that’s in contrast to judging an artist by what he does say, has said—could write vs. did write.  How those writers, how the easy thing is to celebrate those writers whose works we admire, rather than appreciating a writer’s capacity. I’m not sure if there’s more to this. Maybe in that position I took that says that the culture appreciate accomplishments more than capacity because capacity can’t be seen or judged. Though, of course, accomplishments are dead things, whereas possibility & capacity are aspects of the living being, the living human person.

… I walked down in Oregon. So many old buildings—two signs on Route 2 for “Historical Ruby Nash House” (approximate quote) and “Historical Conover Square” (approximate quote)—and the brick buildings, with boarded-over upstairs windows. And now here I am writing about that place—writing about a place can start to create a mythology of a place, like H___ telling me last week that he’d gone to the McD (in Oregon), one I’d talked about in class.

6 March 2016, Oregon Coliseum detail

I stopped by Coliseum building to take pics of the fruit on the vines—grapes?—and details of the building—a white-framed window, two utility boxes near SW corner, south side. I took an “establishing shot,” too—but there are details there—details bring attention in to the particular, less than the mythic, I think.

[From journal of Mon., 7 March 2016, Journal 223, page 175-7]