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Show 36 a water glass containing his splayed toothbrush-but actually a subject that posed an interesting problem, that of lines perceived through a surface which itself had to be interpreted in lines. There was also a useful distortion to deal with, in the part of the toothbrush handle which below the lip of the glass warped away from a straight plane. Unfortunately his first lines on the page had been too thick and had governed the density of every line that followed, so that in his sketch he had not been able to create the illusion of the brush inhabiting space inside the glass but on the contrary had made it appear superimposed over it and eventually, as he tried to reinforce thinner lines, glued to the side of it. He knew that the permanent feel of the book was forcing him to be definitive before he was ready to be definitive, but he had gone ahead over the next several weeks filling pages that were widely separated from each other with carefully-chosen exercises, resolving not to look at them again until they had cooled. He had not been going to look at them today until the kids by the bike racks had forced him from his purpose temporarily, but he had to admit, while flipping through them, letting the effect of half-seen configurations of lines wash over his eyes, that anybody seeing the pages flip past from even a short distance away would recognize what he was seeing as an artist's sketchbook. Not everything in it, of course, demonstrated an improvement over the toothbrush and glass. There were a couple of pages, for instance, of plump, knotted earthworms, which had originally been three girls in bathing suits lying on the sand at one of the Great Salt Lake beaches, where he had been at great pains to keep his sketchbook and fountain pen hidden behind the towel he had draped over his legs. He was not very good with bodies yet, he knew that, but in college you would have nude models and the leisure to study them for a long time, and that would help with |