PAUL GARDNER

When Mark Bryan began cornering me into writing this
book, he had just seen a Chinese film about Tibet called The
Horse Thief. It was an indelible film for him, a classic of the
Beijing school, a film we have since searched for in Chinese
video stores and film archives, to no avail. Mark told me
about the film’s central image: another mountain, a
prayerful journey up that mountain, on bended knee: step,
lie prostrate, stand and straighten, another step, lie prostrate
...
In the film, this journey was the reparation that a thief and
his wife had to make for damaging their society by
dishonoring themselves through thievery. I have wondered,
since then, if the mountain that I see when thinking of the
Artist’s Way isn’t another mountain best climbed in the
spirit of reparation—not to others, but to ourselves.

WORDS FOR IT

I   wish    I   could   take    language

And fold    it  like    cool,   moist   rags.

I   would   lay words   on  your    forehead.

I   would   wrap    words   on  your    wrists.

“There, there,” my  words   would   say—