How I Feel About Painting Tonight, Through Duncan's The Brother's K (But Galeano Gets The Last Word)

"Justified or not, to sleep and read ones way through a foriegn country in a private, air conditioned cubicle is to be in no foreign country at all. That he might genuinely fear, at least physically, the very land whose literature and spiritual traditions he'd adored since childhood, that such a fear might imply a never to be assimilated core of foreignness-these kinds of thoughts did not yet occur to him. By reading and working ceaselessly, by emaciating himself physically and by increasing his theoretical knowledge of India even as he decreased his first hand experience, he was able to continue feeling that he belonged where he was. But the strain had begun to show: 'I am trying to live as a contemplative,' he wrote in his journal the last night he ever debated the sleeper compartment Issue, 'and a contemplative's work is to renounce worlds, not immerse himself in them."
-Duncan

There is hope...

"Hermenehildo Bustos, Indian of this town of Purisima del Rincon, I was born on 13 April 1832 and I painted my portrait to see if I could on 19 June 1891."
-Galeano
(written on the back of the painting)