It’s like … being a single mud-hen on a still lake with other little mud-hen friends far away in the distance. There is solitude except for the water that is reflecting everything you ever needed + wanted to do + this is a constant reminder of not doing those things + it’s all blurred by the moving sky because there are always clouds being reflected into the water interrupting these thoughts w/ scattered caprice + when it rains it’s even more obscured, making doubtful the here + now. 

Very random thought:

i have a hard time remembering words so i make them up as i go along.

Todays distractions encompassed;

- Looking for where i wanted to be buried.

- Heads touching + comparing your half of the sky, w/ my half of the sky.

- The memory of someone at an art opening saying to me:

You write like you just got out of prison.

i understood, + thanked him.

i beame very very tired + began making mistakes:

Forgetting which way a J points + spoke words sideways because i was trying to compensate for showing someone a book as i held it upside down…

i sewed my finger into the material…

i said something to a client that even i didn’t understand…

i wrote these things down now so i’ll believe they happened later.

A memory of living w/ the circus; the kids yelling from the kitchen table, i’m setting up for supper, mom, so i’m moving the tiaras! i don't think this was from this lifetime. But i’ve lived so long, or so it seems, that i may have had a chapter in a circus at some point. 

Dream of a mandatory submission:

What type of dog does not like pizza? 

The answer has to be submitted in a mathematical equation.

Sometimes i don't need to look back, as some are still in my life — frozen  in time as they always were.

Oh go(o)d, please don’t let me waste this second wind on bad poetry.

Finding solutions to everyday living design problems, i vest in the every-man-for-himself design. i build the next challenge, reminding myself once + once again at how well i cover up the last mistake with the next process.

Starting with music…

… + a calm center … waiting briefly for the flood that will run through me, running feral as if to organize a chaotic universe, a multiverse where no level ground exists + there is nothing to equalize. That is a poor way to describe what happens inside the space between molecules, between the football fields of space between atoms. The creative curve is never as clear as in this slipstream ending w/ an image conjured out of thin air. i take intention with a point in time + then i walk away. Only when i’ve gathered up my bravery, i come back to see what the moment has rendered. What was dropped in the dance?

i find myself too old for either ennui or angst, but i get sucked into it every time.

Rest on that.

  

Like most, i’ve had partitioned + gated chapters in my life. Though i’ve crossed over these low fences w/ ease, sometimes, sometimes not - i forget that all the people i care about do not know each other. i fall victim to thinking they do, how could they not?

The feeling is that i have the same group of friends, reformed in every place i’ve lived. Each group mimicking the next. Sort of like in the film synecdoche ny, where there are players doubling the original people. So, when i share a story to a friend it becomes an introduction to someone - not a shared memory. 

i forget you weren’t at the eagle dance on a zuni rez that summer. i had to explain that no matter the why or whose doing it, sometimes all you can do is pray. Not with words but with action.

i forget you weren’t in hong kong experiencing the law brothers + andreas vollenweider’s kitaro. When you punch that music on it sends me back into hk elevators, the smell of acetone + sweaty chrome.

i forget many things, namely if i’m driving on a coast road i’m lost in the not knowing if i’m traveling north on the west coast, or south on the east coast. i need to force myself to consciously observe which side the water is on + remember.

They say it takes a minute to find a special person. An hour to appreciate them. 

A day to love them. And an entire life to forget them.

I want to ask you, as clearly as I can, to bear with patience all that is unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves, as if they were rooms yet to enter or books written in a foreign language. Don't dig for answers that can't be given you yet: you live them now. For everything must be lived. Live the questions now, perhaps then, someday, you will gradually, without noticing, live into the answer.

Worpswede, July 16, 1903

Rainer Maria Rilke

Letter to a Young Poet

You’re not afraid of death? 

It doesn't help to say i’m not because you don’t feel that way, 

+ it doesn't help to say i’ll die for you, because i cant.

i know all this, that but we can still talk about it.

Anyway, i love you + that’s all i needed to say, hear or wanted to know.

This was a dream.

Sometimes i’m sharp when waking in the morning, sometimes i cry w/ dread trying to remember who i am + whose body i’m in — what i’m suppose to do. i always come back, but the psyche gets so far out, that it takes a few to register into this world.

What i learned today:

• Don’t eat cranberries in the morning.

• It doesn't pay to pour out all of the paint at once.

• There are two reasons to keep the phone on overnight; - family may call about someone in trouble, or someone on the other side of the world is calling, in which case you need to answer because it’s convenient for them.

 

Somewhere in Atlanta. Here's an example of hotel art that looks a though the photographer jumped out of the window to take the shot:

When staying in the tiny cliff trapped town of Tris Ekklises there were three women that intrigued me so very much. i’ve begun picturing them into illustrative paintings - here is the beginning draws over three grounds on 300# paper. Only a mere. 

Three stars flared + died in daylight

my shaded prying eyes so very curious

as they wiled at tris ekklises

floating on the water 

like three amused bouys

with hats + not much else

they whispered greek + cackled

sisters that met daily 

those infamous triplets

landladies of the beach that knew them so very well

shaking w/ laughter dabbling in the Aegean

with the might of a million years 

repository of the human nack

the surf revealed them as human

wading up onto the detritus shore

+ each pulled damp fabric cocoons 

over a worn satiable body

sentient breathing animations

but who am i to say

perhaps a disguise fooled by some

to me still

they were three graces

just hanging out

Odd, i’m thinking i never feel totally completely awake in the winter.

6pm winter is not 6pm summer. Summer at 6PM i'm thinking ah - 4 more hours of daylight.

i can feel winters work coming to an end. 

The internal begins to move outwards, more + more.

Doing good work, on a plateau. But working towards an ascension piece. It’s fairly obvious. A push through piece. And then another plateau. i can always point to those works in retrospect. The art has a deep resonance. They wipe me out … but i always seem to be chasing that high - ever since i first felt it. It’s times like these that i rely on imagination, more than intelligence. 

My greatest relationships have been with artists. Working collaborations. Ensemble work. That’s always been my true quite profound excitement.

i do love the idea that artwork comes from a deeper place than personality. If there’s a line up of people and a line of art - who could match them up?

 

i have figured a few things out. Thanks for all the clues.

Random thoughts: 

The skin of the place that separates is very thin. 

New / Like-New; In the theater world when a contemporary garment is built the best compliment you can receive is that it looks store-bought-new. A warm hat + watchcoat may be seen for 15 seconds in the dark. As the tenor dashes onto the stage + into the aria throwing off the winter garments - the stage lights glow on + the prize for 30 hours of studio work is seen in a pile on the couch.

Still: i am humbled + amazed at the energy that flows through + what is created by hand.

Tip your hat w/ a knowing of an outcome already done — if you're asking, this implies it does not exist. 

In standing still one can be in fashion every 12 years - or so, without ever having to change.

When anger leaves what has been fueling you — that is when honest reckoning begins.

Honest Reckoning - unlike absolute change - is not always dynamic immediate and unchangeable. 

I couldn't believe it to be. i like that immensely.

i was just wondering if - when a rabbit gets out of its coop she’s thinking she’s leaving the free world + getting into a cage. 

And remembering when i was a kid, i thought small talk meant you use short words.

One more. Just when i thought i was down —  the soundtrack at the A&P spills out Jackson Browne. 

Still thinking … but that's the wonder of the thinking.

-images and details from the shard corpus.

 

Revisiting - friends come + go, move away, you exit from theirs. Some you barely know - but cant forget - just walking into a room. Some remain your entire life. i know that times change, people change, relationships evolve + come back around in ways that we never expect, in ways we have no way of imagining.

Welcome the human condition traveling w/out a map or controls - the rest is deva vu and cryptomnesia. It’s all we can do.

Watch those wicked desk vu days - mentors are not always obvious.

What i learned today:

• Hand signals are not universal. 

• Balancing the act is something we come back to again + again.

• Words have changed meaning.

• You never know who’s life you are saving with your work, + you may never know.

Meraki Issue #8 is out and about.

 To my patrons who make the Meraki Issues project happen.

Thank you for your supporting the art work at hand + my work in particular.

                        

 

Reconciling paintings. 

W/ irreconcilable thoughts. 

It doesn’t matter what color i put on the brush it seems to come off as putty, french blue or grayed violet. Those are the colors i work w/ the most at this moment. There must be something missing in my palette as i can mix anything + these three appear. i know color, + it’s not suppose to be this easy. Or so tragic.

If something is so very obvious perhaps it is a truism. But, are all truisms obvious?

What i learned today:

• Wing themes cycle.

• Fabric forgives.

• i only make mistakes when i know what i want.

• There is a potential for options at the quantum field of energy + so responding to energy is bridging the quantum reality as a new normal.

Above: An unfinished reworking of Icarus Descending.

i’m okay with people not knowing my side of the story. i don’t feel the need to prove anything. But all things being equal … 

i just had what i believe to be an identity crisis. Of the worst irrational sorts.

That my entire life had been in-waiting as an imposter. i’m the understudy + the lead has never broken a leg. 

Nothing stuck, i can blame it on moving around a lot, i could blame it on not focusing on one thing to get brilliant w/ it, i can blame it on always focusing on the next thing, the next bright shinny thing. Choices have been a big deal in my life. More directly, having options at any given time has always been important.

But it comes back to me. i made those decisions, every decision. i’m not the forever kind.

So in this morning mopping up after an identity crisis — sadly, all i could think of was to work harder.

i close my eyes, remembering i'm inside the human condition.

 It does become so much easier to run when we believe something is chasing us. But is that more important than waiting for the present to catch up? i’d rather hide behind my work than talk about myself.

Foot the bill + then pay for life as a side project. 

That side project will be a change of mind on the morrow.

Recently a friend forward this: That's me, below, during art school days. Tied to a NYC bank pillar. Early pirate phase, though i did not know it because the mass pirate phase had not caught up + named it yet. 

This seems appropriate to add just before hitting send + publishing.

 

Meraki - A word describing doing something with soul, creativity, or love  — when you put something of yourself into what you're doing, whatever it may be.

That whatever-it-may-be comes in infinite packages, everyone has one. Mine is building Meraki Issues. Each quarterly perzine is a deep blend on an overall theme. It’s also a challenging project that keeps me honest + on the rails.

From my seat, making mistakes, collecting images, drafting prose + confessions have always been an important part of what encompasses my studio work. This is the nitty gritty process stuff that may never see the light of day, never hit the gallery, or even become full blown finished. Some ideas are really never meant to leave the studio, don’t you agree? But i believe all the bits deserve a way out. The zine form accommodates.

i stop myself when noticing i’m beginning to fit into a preconceived template. i do think it is important to have a somewhat clear, yet fluid, vision as to what you want from life at different chapters, because life seems ultimately short + one can waste a whole bunch of time rattling around  rather quickly — i'm talking decades. i try to be content wherever i find myself in the process.

I was laying in bed one night and I thought, 'I'll just quit. To hell with it.' And another little voice inside me said 'Don't quit. Save that tiny little ember of spark. And never give them that spark because as long as you have that spark, you can start the greatest fire again.’   -Charles Bukowski 

 You live your life as if it’s real... The evidence accumulates that you’re not running the show. You still have to make choices as if you were running the show, but you make your choices with the intuitive understanding that it’s unfolding as it must... And if you can relax in that...if you can even touch it, or if it asserts itself from time to time, then the invincible defeat is transcended.   -Leonard Cohen