Sean Sexton
artist
writer
rancher
journal drawings
journal writings
8/21/00
Sale Day Impressions:
Re: The scales on the morning before, w/Rob:
Its like a large, floating, enclosed platform (open-air room) with shifty inbalance, the feeling of floating, uncertainty.
[interlude]: Running for a bargain [used] tire at Mark’s Mobil [Station] (I walked in saying, “I want your ugliest tire!” (ugly and cheap for the [portable] loading ramp [borrowed from Buck Daniel]). Later to Mickey Rimes: “Tell Mr Buck Daniel I bought a new “tar” for the loading ramp...tell him we been maintaining his equipment!”
The big charolais calf throwing himself at the board wall [of the crowding pen to the scales] but landing back inside—doing it again and breaking through in another place as Sam arrived to block his first hole, and we coaxed him to the next pen, fixed the holes behind him.
[The] 5-man repair crew (“I feel like a board surgeon.”
Joe Clark to Will (shouting across the pen to him) “Lap it over!”
[My yelling] to Mikey and Brandon: “Come over here boys and haul off these splinters!”
The 3-man weighing crew made Jack [Tinsley] uneasy.
At lunch, telling Joe and Mark about Jack in the truck on the hot day [several years ago] calling him a “Cow Moses” [lifting and turning calves by their heads] and leading them that were all balled up in knots and couldn’t find their way out of the truck.]
Off in the distance: anvil clouds, sprouting or rooted in every sector of the horizon as if there was a kind of ephermal metallurgy taking place in the sky.
8/22/00
I was devastated all day Saturday by the loss of “Mr. Kick. My soul is in disarray. I could do nothing but menial tasks. It is like the sound that follows an event off in the distance—its effect on me. I had to take him out to the horse graveyard immediately after it happened. I knew it would become unbearable to think about and do that later. He was still warm when I undid the chain. What sadness, augmenting this season of loss.
Did I honor him, his beautiful body and spirit properly in life? I feel as though I’ve hurried through the whole time he was in my life, neglecting him and his beauty. Even now more hurries forth and I am faced with quickly finding another horse to buy and press into service.
Getting old has been the surprise of my life.
8/22/00
Somehow I find myself back painting, the summer painting coming to an end beneath my hands.(ie “Lament for the Last Fruits) I have struggled with painting in this season, between interruptions of travel and work and difficult weather. The inspirations of NY museums have been delayed in reaching the studio but none the less I feel inspired and capable of acting on much of what I gathered in (when I was there) even now! I could so easily go again. Would it be as if I hadn’t been? I must try and get upstairs to finish my first chapter of the book. (I thought more would be done by now, but at least something is underway.——(I am proud I read quite a few good books this season: “Cities of the Plain," "Blood Meridian," "Daughter of My People," Looking at Pictures," (by Sir Kenneth Clark).
Time washes over us, bringing and taking what it will. How small is human intent in relation to the world and its myriad forces. How small is what we would do in comparison with what we face, the responsibilities that surround us and demand our power and fibre. It is a miracle that anything at all has our stamp on it.
Osceola’s Response (read and copied onto this page in blue ink) “There remains nothing worth words! If the hail rattles, let the flowers be crushed—the stately oak of the forest will lift its head to the sky and the storm, towering and unscathed.”