» Like Kafka's hunger artist, J. Mark's artistic expression manifests itself as negation; that is, Mark's art is the not-making of art.

» Some may ask, If Mark never produces art, is he really an artist?

» Mark asks in return (not necessarily rhetorically), If Bach or Joyce or Matisse had never produced a composition, would they no longer be artists?

» But Mark has not perfected his artform, for he often fails at not-making and produces a painting or a composition or a short story.

» Below is evidence of that failing, a parable written in the year 2002:

A mother leaves her child at the kitchen table while she goes to take care of the household business. Before going out of the kitchen, she brings to the child's attention a cookie jar lying in the middle of the kitchen counter and warns the child not to eat any of the cookies. When the child hears the vacuum being started in the other room, he naturally goes and eats some cookies. When the mother comes back to the kitchen, she questions the child, who admits that he did eat the cookies. As a result the mother sends the child to his room; the next day he is sent to school with some cookies in his lunch.

Later, while the child is playing with his younger brother, they decide to each make a gift for their mother. The older child makes a card with a poem inside; the younger paints a picture. The mother puts the picture up on the refrigerator, but not the poem. The older brother, upset, retaliates by destroying the younger brother's toy fire truck. The mother queries the elder son about the disappearance of the fire truck and he replies, "Am I my brother's toy-keeper?" The mother knows what really happened and tells the child that he can't break other people's toys, a fact he was unaware of.

A neighborhood kid comes to play with the son; while playing in the sandbox, the neighbor claims that he is actually the child's brother, that they have the same mother. The child doesn't believe his neighbor, so the neighbor goes away and will not play with him for three days. Later the neighbor kid goes on vacation, but says he will return and asks the child to tell the other kids on the block. The neighborhood is still waiting for the kid to return.