He really was so very nice to sit and chat with. You’d never know he was a sociopath, and was ever so slowly climbing the 18 rungs of the Painted Ladder (do not sit), having to restart over again three times, like a charm.
-from Some of My Best Friends

A random memory just flew by.
Years ago I knew a woman selling fabric goods at a hip store named Poppies in Berkeley. She told her roommate at home one night that...
"Geee it was busy, we sold so many notions today."
“You sell Notions?"
"Why yes, we do."
"Notions."
"Yea."
"Wow... you... sell....Notions..."
Obviously he was thinking on the lines of Sometimes a Great...

Why yes, It is a burden to carry other people memories.

Okay, so here's what I wanted to ask.
Am I the only one who saw the movie Where the Wild Things Are, and turned it into an Ingmar Bergman film? It really was not that big of a jump.

So, I read into things. It’s one of my faults.
It’s not as though I shoot smack.

I introduced the kids to Limelight. Synopsis: A young ballerina is a mess because she can’t get her career started. Cavalero, an aging train wreck of a vaudevillian, is at the end of his. Every line seems to have weight to it, reading as Chaplin’s essay on how to live without regrets. It is an autobiographical bittersweet movie spoken in such a lyrical voice.

The kids had seen it three years ago but understood more this time around.  

The coming of age as a blooming metaphoric understanding. The year you realized that the scarecrow, tin man and lion ARE the farm hands. (Sorry if I just blew that for some of you.) It happens to every child and there is a proverbial line drawn at that time.

At the end, and as an aside: Chaplin was awarded an Academy Award for composing the theme from Limelight twenty years later in 1972. The boycott against Chaplin in the US by his right-wing political enemies was so successful that his film never played the required two weeks in a Los Angeles theater to be eligible for consideration at the time of its original release in 1952. But while he was banished, his theme song was not. Even today people who never knew who Chaplin was still recognize its haunting melody.

For the sake of shedding a bit of light on the numbered plates from
‘Minotaur: There is the Shadow of a Monster on the Front Porch’
I show every now and again...

The Minotaur is used as the device in this work. Mythos’ son is mentally readying himself for the Athenian youths destined on their trek into his home labyrinth to view his art work installation. We find him part victim, part inmate and part monster who will always cast a dark shadow on our psyche - but he is innocent of all these pre judgments. His dreams, hopes and experiments are self chronicled for his light amusement.

Since this is built as a graphic novel, in 37 plates, it stands as it is.
This work will seem less random to some of you. It is stream of consciousness, yes, and some
free-style association, but not haphazard when read strung along, as it should.

Ok, I know some of you are thinking — oh, I knew that!
But, in my mind, I’m clarifying, so now I know that you know.
If you got this far... Thanx!

Minotaur plate #11
Somewhere...There must be an exchange program for inmates.
How nice.
But I would much rather be a toll taker subject to transfer.

My marvelous pictures would be chalk drawings of Buonarroti masterpieces on the marble sidewalk for loose change.
I would not scare the pedestrians.
I would not look up.

Prison tattoos - I invented them.
As a pedigree that is obsolete, let me be quoted in saying that shape shifting can be learned if you are willing to chance it.

Pygmalion quickly unscultped the female nude
that was coming to life...


















...what he really needed was a fast horse.
-My apologies to Sir.

From series painted by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones.

When snow is part of a memory.

... Walking up through Central Park the following Saturday you would have merged with other overwhelmed city dwellers. Talk became hushed tones. A bitter cold was blowing in. At the band shell Imagine played, and a memorial silence obeyed. Afterward, the paper had Yoko saying she had seen John’s face smiling down from the sky. She can see things like that. On the walk home it began to snow and a lightness filled the air.

... You’d remember the night. That day, the snow had started falling, and by the time we finished our homework to begin our city walkabout, it had built up to our ankles. All was quiet as we headed down toward Soho around midnight. Pink snow danced from the sky. hushed magic filled the city air. Hours later we were numb from the wet cold and exhausted from walking and talking. We headed toward home as the street lights began to fade into morning gold. Ahead of us, an underground bakery door opened miraculously. Out came a long belt conveying beautiful golden loafs into the back of a delivery truck. As we neared, the warm savor hit our noses and triggered the saliva thing. Out of the silence we heard someone from below holler up,
“Do they want wheat or white?”

It is a mystery, that somehow the patience department has gotten compartmentalized.
We may have patience for teaching kids, but not for threading a needle... patience to cook for 20 guests, and none left to talk to them... patience to read a novel, but not for any learning curve...

“I’m too impatient to do it right,
but too stubborn not to have it be perfect.” -kb.

My understanding of being a twelfth house sun sets me adrift near the knowing just enough to be dangerous category. Everyday occurrences can become much too much to process. There is a constant need to disappear. Fortunately, my dearest friends accept my habit of excusing myself from social to-dos to be left to function within my own mental climate. Since I dislike having nothing in common with someone, small talk is not my forté. I do enjoy living vicariously, though, and since one can’t know everything, that must be what friends are for. You may have figured, there just HAD to be a reason. 

Maybe not.

I had finally made it, and there was KB, smoking violently and  leaning up against the wall. He saw me coming. Stomping out his cigarette, he rolled his eyes and asked,
“What took you so long?” And we pushed open the pearly gates and entered together.

I am hoping, of course, that the line of questioning is to our general advantage. How much we enable others... not what we gleaned for ourselves. How wonderful a friend we were... not how many we had. How much we gave away... not how much we ended up with.

The good Samaritan makes to-do lists for escapism. When the chances arise be ready for any level of miracle. Leave expensive jewelry at rest stops in impoverished areas. Pay the toll boother one hundred dollars for you and the next ninety-nine cars. Store priceless marble statues in the trunk of a stranger’s car for ballast.

Contemplating on the meaningful takes much longer. I fall asleep wondering if I’ve done all I can do ... The favor is returned with an uncomfortable dream. I am lying on a rug and friends are encircling me taking turns with a talking stick. Passing the token, each verbally digs at what they really think of me. Even in this dream state I knew their reason didn’t rest on bedrock. I still became emotionally stripped. I awoke thinking this dream was so hurtful it must satisfy one of the prerequisites of the twelve steps.

A friend not only tells the truth, but leaves unsaid the obvious at an opportune moment.
It’s been a day of allegories.
Some better than others.

William Blake 
 The Four Zoas 
(excerpt)

"What is the price of Experience? 
Do men buy it for a song?
Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price
Of all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his children.
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy,
And in the wither'd field where the farmer plows for bread in vain. It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer's sun
And in the vintage and to sing on the waggon loaded with corn.
It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted,
To speak the laws of prudence to the houseless wanderer,
To listen to the hungry raven's cry in wintry season
When the red blood is fill'd with wine and with the marrow of lambs.

It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements,
To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughter house moan;
To see a god on every wind and a blessing on every blast;
To hear sounds of love in the thunder storm that destroys our enemies' house;
To rejoice in the blight that covers his field, and the sickness that cuts off his children
While our olive and vine sing and laugh round our door, and our children bring fruits and flowers.

Then the groan and the dolor are quite forgotten, and the slave grinding at the mill,
And the captive in chains, and the poor in the prison, and the soldier in the field
When the shatter'd bone hath laid him groaning among the happier dead.

It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity:
Thus could I sing and thus rejoice: but it is not so with me."

She stared out the window minute by minute, hour to hour, day by day watching the sun rise, traveling up out of the window for an entire life time. Never questioning where it had gone when it was temporarily out of sight.
She must have known.

“Working without the right tool and what-ever-you-need is bad timing in a black hole....”
-Acquaintance (who only worked with the correct toy for any given chore.)

It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say "I don't know." -Somerset Maugham

5
I remember being late to class again.
Running into the room I hear an announcement of the ‘pillow test.'
“Today you will either sleep or take the test. But sooner or later you will have to take the test.”
Presently, the bell rings and everyone leaves as a new group of students queue up to file in - some wanting the test, others wanting pillows.

Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. -Jean-Paul Sartre

Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.
-Mark Twain

random miscellaneous
My advice is...no longer insult the feelings of an exasperated people.
-Samuel Adams
Admit something and there’s nowhere a critic can go. If you run and hide, they will follow.

Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more. 
-Mark Twain

In this dream we were all ready. everything was staged for the big install the day before opening night. When I went very early morning onto the site. I found anote in the green room. A note saying everyone had signed up for a group vacation to Hawaii.


If this be treason, then make the most of it!  -Patrick Henry.

Puppet are happy to be puppets if the puppeteer is a good puppeteer.  -Fellini

It has been said, many times, by me, that the future isn’t what it use to be, and furthermore it never was.  -Lee Hayes.

Swatting the shadow of a moving fan above my head.
There is a disease for every profession.

... She stepped from the cab onto the pavement, adjusted her muffler under her chin, threw her stub cigarette onto the pavement and viciously stomped it out. She proceeded toward the bright blue awning where the dandy held the open door.
Those who say something cannot be done should never interrupt the person doing it.

Leading a charmed life, being everywhere and everything to everyone at the turning point of their lives. She had launched a thousand careers, some of them her own. She had been the one with the right label, correct recipe, or spot of money to get things rolling. This left most of the world in her debt in some quiet, desperate, blackmailing way.

Do you remember a time when payoff was not rampant?
She imagined some real, some imaginary faults.
Is it raining in here or is that my energy field?
It was apparent she loved RED.
I want this place to look like a garden, but a garden in hell.

This was a woman whom could simplify most abstract and hard-to-cotton ideas. For instance, she believed the only Deadly Sin was the 8th, which was bringing to list the other 7.

When spotted on the street, fellow New Yorkers wondered what dynasty she was from. Preserved, or, conserved. Which adjective to use. The consistency of her appearance over the decades helped make her an instantly recognized figure, and hid her age.

I went blind from looking at so many beautiful things.   -Diana Vreeland

from THE PAPER DOLL STORIES: life profiles & confessions
A peek into Cabinet of Curiosities, current installation at MOA Denver.

3 
The tide had just gone out. Walking down to the shore I noticed a gorgeous, colossal sand castle someone was obviously living in. I took a self guided tour and found it had been designed and outfitted by sculpting sand from the overhead lights down to the tile and fixtures in the bathroom. The designer was dashing about rearranging sand that had drooped and shifted from the ocean seeping in. I asked her why the place was so heavily decorated, when the tide moves and removes things daily. She explained that the owners wanted to learn the art of letting go, only slowly.

I hiked under a full moon along the beach, and lay down for a nap near the sandy villa at dawn. The sun was awhile above the horizon when the tide awoke me by sloshing my toes. I looked over in time to see the great mound of sand crumble nobly into the sea. A moment later the face of the woman appeared behind the huge pile, as she raised a shovel and prepared to rebuild.

You’d have to know me better, but this dream seems appropriate just now.

Retreating Angel -painting from many 30 minutes works of Hanzon / Harnett over the years.

from: The Truth is Still Being Made Up

She had done horrible things to every pet she had ever owned.

And she would do horrible things to you, too.

Some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity...  - Gilda Radner

When fear steps in, there are no boundaries.

NEVER trust a talking bug. - Chloe Mae

a few Random / Thoughts
We need to release all of the marginally insane.

four kinds of adults
-the kind that were teased as kids.
-the kind that were not teased as kids.
-the kind that teased.
-the kind that did not tease.

Bing EFFORTLESS I've been reading articles about Zen to Houdini, all of them emphasizing the need to be effortless in your work. Regardless of the hard work you put into your writing, the reader must sense it's easy for you. Is this idea important?

Star Wars: There is a war going on for chrisake, why doesn't anyone lock up the flight machines? Everyone seems to be taking off in whatever vehicle is the most convenient.

Never wear your Bulgari or Prada to a charity meeting.

When in a museum, when you know from the map that around the next corner you will be seeing a Rembrant... does your head trumpet,
Ta Ta Ta Dahhh.

lood i palms... ? 
I reckon I write to get down ideas, not to be able to read it later.

Traffic conditions.
Conditions for traffic.
You need a lot of cars.
You need too little road.
You need loss of time.
You need a driver fishing for a cd on the floor of the truck, some one opening a pack of Fig Nutons, someone who can‘t put down a book, or a cell phone, etc...
You need at least three thoughts, not on driving, for each behind the wheeler.

21
Driving to me is about watching things go by, not necessarily about watching where I’m going.
Chloe notices that,
“The blue mountains are closest to the sky.”
As we do because we can, on another level I was thinking of how painterly the clouds seem. But if painted this haphazard on canvas it would look contrived.

...And thinking about when to paint the return. What if the return is already painted another color and thus the returns begin to argue over which is the real return? Return to forever? Return from where? This implies that we got there safely. After tagging the wall do we turn and head back?

...And, also regretting not being able to write something down, since I was already reading while I was driving.
‘Drew’s voice wafts into the front seat. He heralds seriously to Chloe how it is going to be.
“Well, I have some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that the Earth is going to blow up. The good news is that we’re all going to be gone.”
Always eager to up the wager, Chloe responds,
“Yea, well, I learned how to speak Spanish today. I can say corn! Cornalito!”
“I am so over you, Chloe!” ‘Drew blasted, frustrated at her lack of obeisance.




















from a WIP book image, above: Chance Neglected
She hailed a cab by using obscure hand gestures.
The cabbie zooms by a costume shop named Just Decide. A restaurant called Food. A leather place run by Hell’s Angels that touted a teetering lineup of hogs on the front sidewalk. Tiny, the tallest Angel, wore boots covered with retablos, buckles and buttons. Scraps scavenged from the shoes he repaired. This layer, in turn, was covered with the dust of his exploits. She saw memories in every shop, on every corner, every greasy spoon offered a fleeting tease of an image, color, or conversation, until the collective experiences blurred and flew by as a giddy roller coaster in suspended animation.
A painted tin votive rested on her kitchen altar. It was her attempt at visual gratitude to those who have interceded on her behalf. When she half prayed, she also half wondered if this ex-votos stuff was effective.

This was indeed a traffic meander, but it’s what I do.

Heroes do not mistake apparent changlessness in time for the permanence of being. Nor is he fearful of the next moment, as destroying the permanence with it's change. -Joey C.

“You write like you just got out of prison.”
(The most interesting compliment of opening night.)

Inner drafts and outer climates.
...Food went in, art came out.
Usually austere in the face of her Saturnine humors, when she felt them creeping up she could be bitterly sarcastic, giving way to a melancholy that left her wondering if the black bile came from one’s mind, not gut.

The images in the corners of the intellect remain.
I never flinch at what is produced in the cryptic dissolve of my mind.

In isolation she met with psychosis, from time to time, which led to intense hallucinations.
Complex, intricate and intense. The deranged mind is sitting inside a howling cyclone. Turn the music up to calm thoughts and focus.
They say very articulate things, very strangely.

Apparent horror vacui. A suffocating atmosphere and clutter are shown by filling every space with drawn imagery. Yet, every sheet contained an empty hole known to her as eggs. Open for spirit’s escape. She entered into the art through the same device. Ghost signing her name with a 8H pencil. Progressing herself by transforming from a child to Knight to Emperor and finally to Saint.
Life planned as escape. I can’t die yet, I haven’t painted my Danaë.
She had been busy for years backing into a corner nest. Hatching escape plans and not getting caught, yet. Nor freed.
The stress of not moving only exaggerated her minds eye flying out over the fabric of the earth.

Purely decorative images held deep iconoclastic and idiosyncratic meaning.
Of course she was usually the only one looking.
Go ahead, ignore me...

From THE PAPER DOLL STORIES: life profiles & confessions.

from Book of Days

174
Glancing back to photos from this time I looked poetic.
It has always helped me to leave the country. There isn’t a better remedy than seeing my puny life on the other side of the world to put things into perspective. Long distance vision will anchor on what is amuck.

I broke the bit this time by going to Central America. First leg of the trip included a white knuckle flight from San Francisco to New Orleans. The pilot announced that we were in the eye of the storm and would turn around and have another try at heading it off. The pilgrims were getting drunk in their seats with the complimented hospitality that says give ’em free booze and they won’t realize what's happening. Every time the plane pitched and hawed the clients whooped ‘yah-hoo’ as though they were riding the most exciting roller coaster ever. In sober distraught my silent mantra went on uninterrupted. We are all going to die.

For me, air travel is too close to astral flight. I spin out easily, so I ground myself at the first feeling of deliverance. When sentenced to a mandatory air transit I usually end up thinking,
The pilot is going extremely too fast!
No dare devil me in the sky at this time or ever.

I have thought, though, being a trapeze artist would be a real kick. It would be fun to wake up one morning and be on a flying team. But I’m certainly not willing to train for years and years to be able to do it.

175
Layover in the Nicaraguan wilderness.
We were waiting for the six seater to drift over the hills and collect the next group to be flown into Costa Rica. Fuselage lined both sides of the rough short rural landing strip. I remember looking hard and imagining that THAT piece was still smoking! We were several people with diverse accents. Someone casually mentioned the most beautiful beach in the world. Then each in turn told of their sanctuary. Very specific places, on the other side of the world, on the fifty-five degree parallel, south of Bombay, second sand arch on the left. People pulled out paper pads and took down obscure directions to hideaways as though they were going to travel there next week. The scene had all the flavor of a group of Dead Heads scribbling down concert notes.

Travel is a bug that, once bitten, becomes an addiction.

One Head, Two Necks and Three Hands

I reject your reality and substitute my own. -Adam Savage

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.
-Lao Tzu

Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn't insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.
-John Lennon

Reality is a sliding door. -R. Waldo Emerson

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. -Albert Einstein

“Give me a museum and I’ll fill it.”
It figures that Picasso said that.

Turn on the inspiration.
As a designer you don’t always have the luxury to wait around for this nicety. Yep, it is great to be able to sit and veg out in your cavernous studio aimlessly looking about and have a body of work fall on your imagination in its entire form all ready to be realized and manifested into unth detail.

Of course, this is the MUST-DO art work of it all, not the quick hysterical stuff; but the true quiet profound excitement stuff.

I’m in consintratio.
That’s a component to the alchemic recipe, I reckon, in my world.

The installation-cavalier-conceptual artist Ann Hamilton talks about Making a Condition for something to happen. The 4th dimension. Inclusive of the visitor, indeed depended on the voyeur for the out come.

Again...I do the best I can... the yen is to, by not getting in my own way, without hesitation, draw an inspiration and write something enigmatic. Too often I’m writing while driving, scraping into the dust, or drawing hits with only a bad pen and a ripped receipt.
Art, then, sometimes seems an elaborate dance around something you can’t make.

Add a muffled boom and a ring of smoke appearing at the bottom of the cartoon canyon.

Yes, she thought she was something else. But never figuring out what. Neither did her attendants, who tried every type of elixir in her drink. She was impervious to change.
Somewhat like an evolving roach resisting DDT.

This is not Sisyphus.
He’s not pushing something heavy. But I figure,
he’s carrying around something heavy,
and that counts.

Over The Hill
First, let us talk of being at the top. There needs to be a conscious pausing at the crest of each hill. You can see the most from up there and judge the total veranda of where you’ve been and grasp choices of paths leading you down. Repeat.

Stopping to think and forgetting to start again. Beginner's mind, as Buddhists say — we all will say.

The bear went over the mountain, the mountain, the mountain. The bear went over the mountain, to see what he could see. He saw another mountain, a mountain, a mountain...

Sisyphus was the son of a Thessalian king. He was a street thug who passed the time robbing and murdering travelers. He even betrayed secrets of the gods, which is never a good thing. He chained up Thanatos, aka demon of death, so that no human needed to die. Hades, god of the underworld found out and got POed.
Sisyphus’ punishment is legendary.
He was forced to roll a boulder up a mountain, when he reaches the top, the stone tumbled back down. And that’s what he’s doing right now.

Camus reckoned Sisyphus as the absurd hero who lives life to the fullest, hates death, and is condemned to a meaningless task.
Lets just take that with a grain of salt, shall we?

A whirring slowed down to a recognizable slapping of playing cards stuck in bike spokes, and then stopped at the studio door. 

'Drew's head pears around,
“I need one of those puppets on strings of an old man that I can make walk and close one eye to wink, and I need him dressed in black, with big funny clown shoes on. Do you have one of those?”
“No, but I have a Chinese dog parade head with closing eye lids and a yak beard.”
“Oh, that will be perfect!”

Dexterity or Deceptiveness.
Sleight of Hand is often used in close-up magic. It makes use of simple everyday props, such as cards and coins. The guiding principle is be natural. A well-performed sleight looks like an ordinary, natural and completely innocent gesture.

The hand is quicker than the eye is usually not the case. Along with manual dexterity, sleight-of-hand depends on the use of psychology, misdirection, and natural choreography to accomplish a magical effect. Misdirection is perhaps the most important component to the art of sleight-of-hand. The magician choreographs his actions so that the spectator will look where he wants them to. More importantly, they do not look where the performer does not wish them to look.
Two types of misdirection are time and movement.

Time is simple; by allowing a small amount of time to pass after an action, events are skewed in the viewer's mind.

Movement is a little more complicated. A phrase often used is "a larger action covers a smaller action." Careful not to make the larger action so big that it becomes suspicious.
This is worth more study...

I'm Going to Act Like I Don't Know What's Going On.

Wassily Kandinsky had rhythm.
der...
I’m only one day off...I thought today was Wednesday. I know we’re suppose to post on Thursday. I know I signed up. But now posting would be like homework.

I’ll see you on your rhythm.
Hey, I can pay a visit, I just cant pay attention!
Please no hissing and boo-ing...

In time lapse ... see from the ground as green sprouts, reaches upward, blooms, settles, and dies in seven seconds. Experiencing ideas that develop and pass in this way.
Before I can register and blink ... gone.
The only condolence, but none less frustrating, is that another is on its way. Always another.
It’s been a day of wicked deja-vu.

There is a rhythm to ever act. -Yagyu Muneno
Watch out, he’s just behind the shoji.

She dreamed of walking into the surf of the Libyan sea.
Stepping into the water her toes noticed a cold, smooth marble slab. She kicked at the rocky sand. It swirled up under water and materialized another step.
Below that one a step, and another, and another.
Going deeper out she knew she was walking the steps of the grandest home in the village now swallowed up and in ruins, magnified by the water just your under her feet.

The World Magician Kneels to the Queen Before Casting His Spell 

For if one is oneself one’s own god, then god himself becomes the monster. -Joey

Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler. -Al Einstein

God must love the common man, he made so many of them.
-Abe Lincoln

Begin now.
There exists a a very long, even for us, working title of a jargon dictionary Lonnie Hanzon and I are compiling. Here's a few extrapolations on beginning, the cycling of a beginning, or sort of...

• Acedia: "a state of restlessness and inability either to work or to pray,"
Discussed in Maisel's Fearless Creating. Seems to be the moment between the grounded plane and the flying plane. There is enormous energy trying to get the plan off the ground. Once you are in the air, you can react to being in the space, in the context to create something. Beginning is sometimes a forced exertion of momentum.

• Product; Product is not art, it’s the result of art. You can criticize product. Art, to whatever degree is a process. It begins in the heart and the mind with the eyes and hands. see- PROCESS.

• Now; As in The Now. The very now gets very old very fast and starting from scratch can be old news to begin with. So begin with something that is already on the designated design path that will get you there sooner than now so you can say you’ve been there later.

•Ready-Fire-Aim; The ability to start before you are altogether ready in order to initiate a beginning. Available in stores soon.

Okay, all right, I will now try something I’ve never attempted,
(do I hear a drum roll?) if the video doesn't work out, here is the link...

Centraal Station Antwerpen gaat uit zijn dak!

...and just TRY not to get a lump in your throat.
(so, I can't work this, are there easy instructions, anyone?)
I did it, I did it!

When the war of the giants is over, the wars of the pygmies will begin.  -Winston Churchill

Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in.  -Alan Alda

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.   -Wally Disney

Random thoughts getting clearer.

We are not here to point out their mistakes, only to appreciate them.

Competition is the bouquet of life. 
Akin to Mickey and Lenny spurring each other onto greatness through their mutual rivalry.

Note to myself for the kids. Use nary a discouraging word. Try to open as many window as possible. The generation of duck and cover and see the big light... ripped clothing blown up...
Law of diffraction. And attraction. Just for the friends not for the empire.
Or, perhaps for the empire, too.
If we were to reckon People by three things; would they be...
What was your favorite Candid Camera episode?
What was your favorite drawn cartoon?
How would you use your second chance?

Answers in the next installment.

Ephemeral balance of beauty, spirituality and ingenuity.

Someone (manyones) is approaching their;
Saturn Return.
Discard pile.

Start again, grasshopper. Only this time, at the beginning.

An odd chapter in a bad novel.
The type of therapy where you must review all of your past tragedies
before you can get down to business.

You must study your brand of evil to be able to identify it.
Time and change...through natural causes we loose.
Brick walls are there to show us how bad we want something.

Genius is eternal patience. -Michelangelo

Ephif-anys?

Each next quiet moment brings us closer to not saying another word.

"I am being quiet! 'Drew just keeps interrupting me!" 
 -Chloe Mae

Forever is a long, long time, and time has a way of changing things. 
 -Big Mama

Hello TT family,
So, and in my conversation remorse and pre-justifing way...
I realize this post is cringingly long for me. I tried to telescope it as much as I could. It’s not about a limo, but a Chevy '72 primer painted tuna boat with a 450. The type that when you tap the gas petal the engine nearly leapt out from under the hood.
And there is no pretty picture...

91 While I was in Maine the car I baby-sat had worn out underneath and developed infamous wheel berring problems. They’d have to be changed every few months. Eventually I had to find a new axle. I called around the Boothbay area and found a car parts place who miraculously could accommodate what I needed. I borrowed a truck and carried the cryptic directions inland, where if you miss a turn you feel you’re still making headway for a good half hour before noticing you're lost. Turning the last, I pulled through the derailed fence and up near a listing dilapidated barn. I couldn’t believe to be at the correct address.

Out sauntered a toothless angel in greasy overalls.

He looked up as he rubbed his hands with a dirty rag, motioning to me that this was indeed the place. Inside the barn he had a red Chevy sports car jacked up. He had already removed the axle for me.

“How much for this side?” I asked, Praying that the thirty-five dollars I fingered in my pocket would be enough. It was all I had to my name.

“Gotta git fifteen dollars for the right one. That’s fair.”
I decided quickly to take advantage of this unbelievable, once in a lifetime offer. I shifted my feet and 
tried to seem casual.
“Okay, well, I reckon I’ll take both sides, then.”

Less he take me for a fool, I asked him if he could press on wheel bearings. Amazingly, he had those, too. Packing the axles in the short bed I headed out thanking my lucky stars. I didn’t look back in case he had changed his mind.

I got one axle changed. As the crippled car and I were parked on the street we became the object of slowing autos and retorting snorts. As these things usually happen, cars would chance by at the blackest moments, just before a giant leap of creative engineering.

That would be the end of the story if I hadn’t taken the back seat out of the tanker car, piled in all of my belongings plus the dog and headed west toward the other coast.

92 The springs were shot so the weight lay entirely on the frame. Lucky, I didn’t crash when the rear end blew. I gracefully glided off along the convenient exit ramp, landing in front of a rest stop phone booth. Wasn’t that happy?

A Good Samaritan pulled up behind my disabled car. I had already jacked up the car, had the wheel off and was pulling out the axle. The end had reached a high temperature and in fact the metal looked like a mutilated screw tip that had broken off at the point. (I wish I had saved that) The guy's jaw dropped in astonishment. He managed to say he was a mechanic, but alas, too bad it’s the middle of the night and the car needs a major part. I confidently reached deep into the trunk, pulled out and held up a clean monkey suit while pointing to the spanking axle inside.

If he looked merely astonished before, he was now flabbergasted.
“Well, all we need is a good flashlight and we can operate.”
Just another major car surgery on the side of the road.

When we are younger solving problems has less to do with having courage, and more to do with not knowing fear.

After having kids, what feels like courage swings away, giving to a complex backbone.

Make a picture and you expect a somewhat open interpretation. That's what I like in visual art. I like words direct and telescoped into pointed meaning. So the incantation is less questionable. But that rarely happens — Unless everyone is using the same dictionary.

One image seen and identified says something so very different than a wordy description. Everyone has a different relationship with their visual world. Not trying to pigeon hole, just musing. Everything I just said could be turned on it’s head, and still sound true, too. Using those limited words I so falter with.

Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.  -Bob Dylan

Jerry often says that Slam Bradley was really the forerunner of Superman, because we turned it out with no restrictions, complete freedom to do what we wanted; the only problem was that we had a deadline.
-Joe Shuster

The ultimate inspiration is the deadline. -Nolan Bushnell

Towards the end of summer tended gardens turn Wabi Sabi. Overnight the tidiness explodes with a last Hurrah! of summer. The closing afternoons of warm light trick the Cosmos and Nasturtium into reseeding by believing of an eternal summer. 

The twilight comes earlier and earlier as the day hours slip away. Early morning light-time in summer is used to garden, so when it fades in the autumn you haven’t really lost time. No garden, no extra time. It evens out. You just got the tilling done.

I do love seeing the trees turn into the crunchy withered russet and yellow hues of autumn. One can see a new depth in the landscape not noticed when everything is green. 

In Colorado sometimes a heavy snow falls in October before the trees loose their sap. There are many oddly misshaped trees around. When the snow storms at night I would wake up wincing at the noise of limbs ripping off trees. Unknown to the ways of nature, I’d get up, put on a coat over my PJs, pull on my boots, go out and hit the branches to loose the heavy wet stuff and avoid breakage. Eventually I realized my neighbors weren’t out saving the trees in the middle of the night and figured my actions were dorkish. I stopped my nightly tree carousing lest I be branded as the loopy lady and given the Native name Woman with Broom Beating Trees.

I guess what doesn't kill ’em makes ’em stronger.

Shadows are purple, except when they aren't.

Art is often like opera, some people just need the super-titles.

           -Lonnie Hanzon - in a frustrated moment.

Fall in love with something every day, even if it’s just a color.

          -Kyle Bradfield

Pulvis et umbra sumus

6
Punishment is not a great enhancer.

While hibernating dream; I am slowly pacing toward home. It will be dark soon and the road will become obscure and un-navigable. So, I effortlessly ascend into flight as dusk covers the area. I can still make out my winged shadow on the ground far below. I am limited in the air - I ascend higher reckoning faster flight, but my back feathers scrape against the sky Elysian. Shadows blend with the dark in time lapse.

I see a suggestion of the stone entrance. I know it is time to descend.
I tip, dipping down smoothly and with grace hit the ground running. Vaguely, I make out the gate ahead is closed. Not having the velocity to vault it, I stumble, crash over the key stone, tumbling and crumpling into the dirt.

I curse my luck at not dropping one gate later.
-from the forthcoming- Minotaur; There is a Shadow of a Monster on the Front Porch.














If he thought at all, but I don’t believe he ever thought, it was that he and his shadow, when brought together near each other, would join like drops of water; and when they did not he was appalled. He tried to stick it on with soap from the bathroom, but that too failed. A shudder passed through Peter, and he sat down and cryed. -Sir J.M. Barrie

Herculean tasks of the modern world.
1. Capture any solution and wrestle it into reality.
2. Kill a deadly snake with a blunt shovel and a strike-anywhere match.
3. Trap a butterfly with your bare hands.
4. Recognize a nihilistic response and remove the physical challenge that is begging to be violated.
5. Bend two wrongs to make a right.
6. Scare a murder of crows away with extraordinary music.
7. Focus your aggressive, uncontrollable humor on a mirror forcing it to reveal itself.
8. Take a group of nay sayers and change their minds.
9. Single out an enemy and the rest will fall.
10. Prove it takes only a gadfly to clear a room.
11. Save someone in anguish and then ask if this person has the knowledge you seek.
12. Use a gift as a great persuader.
13. (An alternative challenge.) To create a shore for Michael to row his boat up on to.
-30-