i wrote this letter from Crete a few weeks ago. But then Helene happened + much more pacing began than action. + it became irrelevant to what was happening back home. Back in the U.S. now + able to get distance from this writing + also able to dissuade the initial guilt of not being home, i will send this into he wilds of whyfi + trusting it will find distant screens to light up.

i do love packing up + leaving.

i believe my favorite part of my tiny life is viewing it from the other side of the planet. i like people not knowing who the hell i am -  that, assuming i'm anyone at all. i like not having to plan. i like not taking care of a lot of things, not having much to keep up w/. Having experiences that were not on any list. The uncomfortable-ness of it. Of really not knowing what + where. A denominator perhaps. 

The older i get, the more  i understand the paradox of choice + having too many. 

It's getting heavy in here. Your turn if you want to take it. 

The more time i use up the more i believe time doesn't count. 

But i need more time to be sure.

Difficult to explain how beautiful it is here, just now. Saying that, knowing there is beauty everywhere. There are vultures in the mountains that surround + trap this village to the sea. You can see them circling  every now + again. i hear goat bells from in the hills, + mistake them for far off church bells. The frèska froùta kai lachanikà man visits coming in a blown up open bed red Toyota red mini truck tented w/ a tarp w/a bullhorn strapped to the top of the cab. i name him the ice-cream man because he uses music to call out to the village upon his approach. Thing though, that gets me to come out onto the balcony, + eventually head down to buy, is that as he is drifting down the ziggy mountain cliff road, w/ his the greek hurdy-gurdy music blasting, as gargled it is, ricochets back + echos trapped between the cliffs + sea. there is a resounding reverb inside this cavernous bowl traveling up + then back down in a beautiful answering to itself. 

Working the relative into the absolute. i need to practice that. Like a friend described in the process of writing. Same in visuals. Always, always pulling away the web looking for the eternal muse that comes to play. Some days i look way past it, neglecting that it was in front of me waving frantically all along. Ah, that true quiet profound excitement.

Feeling the pull home. Just a bit. If i concentrate. 

i have that familiar feeling, as though i need to be where i’m going to end up, so i can be there a while. 

Sending love.

When it's ‘ok’ from both sides…

 it reminds me of those cartoons where you put your foot out there + you get flattened by traffic.

i don’t watch the news at night. Because strangers faces will taint my nighttime dreams. i will dream a wall of confusion. + already i awake not knowing if my dreams were partial films i have seen recently, or in fact, where dreams. Sometime it all seems like the 42nd dimension.

If only it had some deeper meaning. Sometimes a dream is something so obvious it becomes embarrassing.

My realization upon waking this morning is that i EVER loose my mind, i want an unknowing bliss to transfer  w/ it’s absence + so to not to realize i’ve lost it —  because waking + knowing you have lost your mind is very frightening.

Life is such an add on…. my greatest relationships have been w/ other artists. Working. Collaborating. That’s always been my true quite profound excitement. 

Off-book sometimes means that i unknowingly forget to drag the playbook along. It’s then that i’m really listening to another + find it easier to give back + communicate in a bona fide way … not planning + composing an answer before i know what is needed.

We are older we need to permit ourselves to be off-book. We have worked at this life + have the last 40+ years of push behind us - if we allow ourselves, yes, we know what to say in the next 5 minutes. As to any craft any, it took 40 years + another 5 minutes to complete. + that’s my pep talk to you + myself. 

-above+ below practicing the back-to-basics

 

 What are we suppose to steal? 
+ what to give freely.

Such a nice Costa Rican memory. Thumbing for rides, + the kindness of being picked up. He-hawing + pitching along the road in the back of old trucks w/ the work men. Paying them back by impressing quick pencil portraits. Caricatures nearly. Parlor tricks really.

Dissociative fugue - imbued w/ inspiration. i remain an unreliable narrator.

Paying in cryptomnesia arrears. W/ me, cryptomnesia wins most of the time. But i may have figured that before now. + i have probably said it before now. + even before that.

Many have said in many different ways that repeating something over + over again, + expecting different results is a sign of madness.

i’m looking for the poetry in that…

Wierd.
Where DOES this shit come from?

i don't mind rocking the boat. Don't mind constant change + unexpected spinning backward + love nothing more than to adapt. i know i’m dizzy just now. Tattoo reminder that we’re all in this human condition thingy together. Some things we really +honestly cannot take personally.

no pressure…

Last week i was in miami till tomorrow. 
Squirreling around. 

But, you know, i live in a dream world.
 
Yea.

 

A crop rotation of odd thoughts; 

Logos + logic involved.

i unpack the strings to start the engine.

Blues leaning over to wag.

The creative thrust of a head turner + briar rose. The iconic ending of all endings.

How shall I defend the wax fortress of my love? An undiscerning gaze took in all that is simple and inconceivable and I understood life had slipped from my grasp. -from the film / the color of pomegranates

i remember the warm fuzzy of tea at an outdoor cafe in autumn, steaming into the air + mingling w/ cloud-like breaths from bodies rushing by.

Reaching for + not noticing the slip back. 

The anguish of slowing down to a stop.

Stupefied at love taking a back seat to the overwhelming work at hand.

The innocence of  playing records + falling in love in an afternoon — seeing it happen.

i wont say blind, but it’s devastatingly romantic. It’s dark + tormented w/ the furor of passion, the despair of an unattainable idealism. 

yes i’m a romanic; kill me now.

Reminded of Yeats + Spiritus Mundi. 

The collective memories of the universe of all time.

Tapping into spiritus mundi for the first time ever. 

While in kindergarten.

Rest on that.

Another meandrous. 

It’s tough when you can’t imagine your artwork hanging above a couch.

When in art school i wanted to do a visual essay. i planned a photo shoot. We’d push a chesterfield couch underneath along the wall of the exquisite impressionist’s room or the riotous blue rider collection w/ friends socializing, drinking + carousing + napping (passed out) on the furniture - snapping photos along the way. Well, the folks at the Met absolutely refused to budge on this thesis. Rats, impending the creative process, i thought. Much later i reckoned i could do this all in photoshop - but i felt the immediacy was lost in that second generational process.

Extreme consequence  usually are.

Agape is the highest charity of love. As if charity needed an outing. 

i wake very early because that is the time of day when i am most optimistic. 

By nightfall i’m done in. 

It’s like watching the 1.5 hour film requiem for a dream stretched out over an 18 hours. A film that in the watching you slowly loose the will to live. + having undergone loosing the proverbial will to live, you must take the 6 hour break for sleep to let your dreams work + rearrange your priorities. + hopefully one of them is to live on. 

It never bothers me to know how the film ends up - it’s the telling that interests me. Actually knowing the end keeps anxiety of the the telling at bay.

This brings me back to the couch.

Yes?

-from Green Wood Cemetary / brooklyn nyc

 

It’s like i'm … being a single mud-hen on a still lake w/ 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 w/ 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 w/in. 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, reforming 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 w/ words but w/ action.

i forget you weren’t in hong kong experiencing the law brothers + Andreas Vollenweider’s Kitaro. When i 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. + 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 may not.

i know all this, 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 buoys

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 knack

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. + 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 has 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 + a line up of art - who could match them?

 

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.