Out here in rural Kansas
When it is dark
And very cold,
I sit on my porch.
The stars shine brightly,
My hands hide in my pockets
While the last leaves on trees
Have quiet conversations.
Monday, November 30, 2015
Sunday, November 29, 2015
Gingko biloba on the mind
After a recent walk across a carpet of golden gingko biloba leaves, I began a new project last night. Let the paint fly! And it has...
I like it a lot, but still a lot farther to go... It's good. Keeps me occupied when I can't sleep or when the mundane daily shit Accumulates too much.
So much has happened the last year. Damn.
Got a long way to go, but that's cool. I will kick ass... Eventually, but inevitably. Thank the gods for art!
I just can't get rid of gingko biloba, or this gobekli tepe pain in my heart. Damn myself for my stupidity, my over romantic emotionalism. Damn her for not being unreasonable and illogical... I wish on every shooting star I've seen that she had fallen in love with me just as much as I had fallen in love with her.
Son of a bitch. Not cool.
Nope, not at all.
Saturday, November 28, 2015
Lessons from Antigone
Read some Sophocles today, Haemon in Antigone has good advice:
Considering how many times I can sometimes change my daily outfit, I'll give this a conservative interpretation... But I like it. (:
Strive for the golden mean... Elegant balance.
κομψές ισορροπίες
(...As if I knew Greek... Latin, yes.
Ancient Greek, no.)Friday, November 27, 2015
Kansas fields
Silent Kansas fields
An old farmhouse,
Broken windows, roof fallen in.
Gray skies and quiet rain,
Blue beams of a metal bridge
Dark river that flows.
The tree has a stark profile
Winter a pale face,
Branches are black against empty sky.
Divinest Sense
As Emily said...
Much Madness is divinest Sense -
To a discerning Eye -
Much Sense - the starkest Madness -
’Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail -
Assent - and you are sane -
Demur - you’re straightway dangerous -
And handled with a Chain -
Only artists can understand artists.
All others... Be merciful.
Stop worrying about what they think.
Fuck the bullshit.
You're not crazy. You're just different.
So just flow!
Innocence and experience
http://youtu.be/_JXcWwHxCBE
Sometimes there be can innocence even when there is usually none.
Very cool.
I did contemplate that the next visitor might not be a photographer or writer but an engineer contracted out by an oil company. Then our primitives would be fucked. Most definitely.
The only social contract they have is with Trees and sky. They have no protection against the pretenses of civilisation.
Thursday, November 26, 2015
Hook
Perfect movie for midnight thanksgiving.
Here in the last good homely house, lost cool kids. It's raining and cold, but it's warm inside, and we have leftovers and pie.
Deep down, we all just want to find our way home.
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
Girl with bird
Quick chalk piece. Why? Who? What?
I don't know!
Roughly modeled after my daughter Emma... Lol
Revel the swan... Ride the waves solo.
Oh yeah.
Happy Thanksgiving...
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Gold
Fall comes slow & tinted gold
Waves of air that glow.
October paints the sidewalk
Leaves, red & yellow line the road
Wednesday, walking home.
Each step, a gentle crunch,
Mild spice from Autumn leaves
Hints of wood smoke,
Drifting with the evening breeze.
Monday, November 23, 2015
Something Small
The sun shone brightly,
Sky was beautiful.
Something small,
Usually busy, was still.
My looming shadow touched it,
Then my sight.
A small bird without eyes,
Red stripe on his head
Silent little bill.
Somehow,
Simply,
It was not right.
The sun shone brightly,
Sky was beautiful.
All birds fall,
Yet still,
For me,
This was not right.
Saturday, November 21, 2015
Thursday, November 19, 2015
A Guernica
When life called
I did not go gentle,
You could not easily answer.
We were not prepared.
Between broken answers
Shattered times
We spoke few words
Crossed too many lines.
I could not ask
(Do you love me?)
You never answered.
Recursive logic failed computation
Underlying assumptions were wrong.
Love is not a social utility
It goes beyond time and space.
Loved you once,
Perhaps.
Once and forever,
Maybe never.
Disparity of Emotion
The existence of small legitimacies
Create a disparity of emotion.
Purely on the baseline of an ear lobe or a name,
Tribes kill and Neolithic hunters maim.
Yet absence of motion generates the persistence of lack.
The empty cup stands still because no one will drink.
Within a harbor
subject to tides but hidden from waves dwells true devotion.
Desert rain is measured as constraint,
Much moisture, a restraint.
Old bones float like broken sticks along a broken stream.
Pain can be a pleasant consistency
Yet, brilliant joys, like falling stars incite a fatal gain.
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Two roads diverged in my life...
Every day I walk to and from school. There are many reasons why I do this, but the unavoidable fact is that I can't drive my car right now. At first, I was mortified. I acted arrogantly, but inside I was filled with shame every time a car passed. There I was, a Major, walking to class because I couldn't afford to fix my car during a tough divorce. Every day, I castigated myself for all of my mistakes. During those 2 fifteen minute increments of time each day, I beat myself up mentally into a bloody pulp. "Walk! You stupid idiot! Walk!!", I screamed like a drill instructor inside my head. "You did this to yourself, so just TAKE IT! You earned every second of this." Those walks lasted forever.
However.
Over several months, something happened. First, I really began to enjoy the walk. It was beautiful, and I saw amazing small things like brilliant fall leaves, the sound of wind, a dog running magnificently along the golf course while his master in a riding mower followed... The morning light through a spider web.
Second, I got tougher. I began to think iof the walk as nothing. Modern life tends to measure value in terms of time and efficiency. Granted, my walk was a slower way of traveling, but the qualitative effect on my life was significant. I simply started my day a little earlier.
It also put things in perspective. What would have been an enormous inconvenience to the pre-existing divorce "maze-runner" Mike suddenly became a welcome daily event to the calmer and more thoughtful post-divorce Michael. I had dedicated quiet time to think and reflect every day. I actually looked forward to this time. Once, I got soaked in a sudden downpour, but that became just another adventure and a funny story.
Today, as I walked, I realized that as I am close to fixing my car, I will have the option to drive. As I mulled it over, it didn't take long for me to concede that I still plan to walk, even with the car fixed.
As I strode along in the crisp November air, I slowly came to the following understanding:
A person is forced to walk in humiliation. It is imposed externally and stems from shame. However, the person ignores the root issue, and instead chooses avoidance and denial. While a walk of humiliation may end with a respite to pain, it is only temporary. The root motive and cause remains intact. It may not happen immediately, but that person is bound to meet that pain again.
A person CHOOSES to walk in humility. While external forces may force them to walk, their attitude of acceptance has a transcendent effect on the whole situation so that it becomes a positive learning event.
A walk of humility may start out humiliation, but a person always has a choice to accept reality and submit to the pain of consequences willingly. Their cooperation helps transform the defective part of their personality, usually an extension of ego, so that they learn to overcome the root cause of their mistake. What started as a cringing creep of shame blooms into a positive and restorative journey.
Their pursuit of responsible behavior rescinds the sting of shame and replaces it with dignity and respect.
In time, the walk of humility becomes the path to victory.
🚶 🚶 🚶 🚶 🚶 🚶 🚶 🚶 🚶 🚶 🚶 🚶
Resurrect Annabel Lee
Green velvet and silk sheets
A man alone, dying in bed.
A hand may hold the blade,
But the mind cuts instead.
Only one man,
Made of molecules
Ten ounces of Toynbee strength.
Journey to Jupiter
Seek resurrection
A girl Poe loved-
She's been long dead.
Life for Annabel Lee,
A worthy campaign.
If Annabel may live,
So may Poe,
Then for all of us,
There's hope.
Only one man,
Made of molecules
Ten ounces of Toynbee strength.
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Francesca Woodman's Bicycle
Glacial yet weightless
A vision of blurred figures
Luminous air
Still Providence afternoons
Ancient and peeling RISD rooms.
A slow progression like a drifting balloon.
Traveling Infinite spaces between
Clumps of paintbrushes
Stacked like silent spears in big tin cans
Crumpled toothpaste tubes of oils and acrylics
Laid out on weathered wood
Semblance of linear order,
Bodies of disaster victims, faces covered.
There is no blood
But adjacent to memory
Spattered paint speaks to a distant Pollock violence.
Curses on your back, you who broke that lock.
Shame to you who removed the chain-
When you stole her bicycle,
You killed her just the same.
We will never know your name,
But we shall remember hers.
Francesca,
Every day I think of art,
You live in me again.
Monday, November 9, 2015
Friday, November 6, 2015
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