“The daughter made herself an expert in the illness, to erase it on its own terms: still it stayed, it grew, and as you know the eraser soon starts disappearing.” -- Albert Goldbarth from “Not Sumerian”
Years ago I began an eraser manifesto for a collection of my erasers, all with their soft curves and rolling debris, all kinds of shapes and function, those perched atop pencils and novel, freestanding monuments.
The manifesto is short enough to be erasable and reads as follows:
Erasers acknowledge, accept and accommodate the idea of failure.
Erasing destroys the eraser. This has ramifications in social relations.
Corollary of above: to love an object too much renders it un-usable.
It’s fun to erase but also fun to resist erasing. And this too has ramifications in social relations.
Prompt: “write a poem about a dull thing that you own, and why (and how) you love it.” Quote from: https://www.vqronline.org/not-sumerian