I opened the box and began taking things out. In a notebook with brittle pages I read some words which Gottlieb and Rothko wrote in a letter to the Times on June 13, 1943.

I had copied their words in the notebook with a fountain pen. When I read them, I remembered that day and our bedroom which looked out over the battleships in the Carquinez straits.

"...only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless".

Their words, not mine.

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