It had been storming for 48 hours when Chloe suggested to Drew,

Sing a sweet song so the sun will come out. 

i do believe they have seen too many old musicals.

-Chloe / chalk image

+ who didn't feel that impulse to run out heater skelter when the button-eye sewing was introduced in Neil Gaiman's Coraline? 

i was thinking, that’s why a parent knows how to push their youngsters buttons ... because they sewed them on!

In the studio there is a batch of antique jet glass buttons in a small grass basket. i have not really meant to assemble a collection, for each button was acquired for a specific duty. Then, the excitement of seeing the perfect button faded + was replaced w/ dread memories of small defenseless glass broken carelessly before its time.

What i learned today:
Never throw a sweater down a ladder with jet buttons.
Never put a garment w/ jet buttons with dryer.
Never swing a bag of jet button around + around.
For a little button never (tried to) hurt anyone.

Wasn’t it Sam Levenson who something about making sure to press the up button, 

if you die in an elevator?

Now i will mash the publish button (too soon); it's next to the placebo-panic button.

Budai’s button. Popular folklore maintains that rubbing his belly brings good luck. 

But you already knew that.

Random thoughts. Ephemeral words.

The word ‘thwarted’ is only used in novels.

Vampires ARE real! I saw a vampire interviewed on the National Geographic channel, and they don’t lie, do they mom?

Water tanks + the wayside shrines.

End of a limerick never written
...for she can balance quite well w'out it.

Got to admire Aubrey Beardlsey, a man who in this ninth hour destroys some of his life’s work on the grounds that it is obscene + reckons he wont make it through the inspection gate of heaven w/ it in his satchel.

+, J. Adams, who in a huff would jump up on the board table throw his furry wig at his peers.

Lying down is like standing on your side.

We have hit upon the Baroque of cartoons. i believe Flapjack is a good example.

Today's rainy day to-do list;
Build a fishing rod for Chloe-
Make NY pretzels with kids help-
Disperse dye a red cape-
Repair a chenille fabric coverlet-
Make dog shade cover for the deck w/ scrap flag nylon-
Go to graveyard in the rain-
Remember to take pic of mossy crumbly green-

What’s the big idea, again?

i was in Quan Yin’s dream. She came to me + said,
“Time has passed, you should know these things.”

55 i dreamed someone was calling me to hurry up. He was high on a hill + moving fast, w/ head turned back, painfully watching my progress. i needed to cover my feet + was lost in a mountain of shoes. None would fit. No two would match ...

It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it's the pebble in your shoe.  - Muhammad Ali

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.  -Charles Spurgeon 

We harbor sorrow inside of the body. We have to expect a leak. Maybe i will learn to wear sorrow on the bottom of my feet, like an ancient Egyptian, drawing a likeness on the inner soles of my sandals, symbolically crushing the enemy w/ every step. i’ve tried + tried again + again to work through it. Over it, around it, in front + behind it. Now i’m going to work beside it + see if I can manage it.

I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, - and the stars through his soul.  -Victor Hugo 

Space is vast the road is limited. Have you seen the shoe tree? It is somewhere on the north-bound side, heading up Route 44 in the Mohave desert. Along near, but after Amboy, and Needles. W/ its boughs bowing + swaying w/ the weigh of sneakers, pumps, sandals flops, a louboutin stiletto, a golf shoe, a fuzzy chartreuse slipper, an ice skate, manolos, it become the texture of shoe ... You hit on wondering if there is a sister tree wearing the mates to all those brogans. Such an incredible landmark is wasted, seen as a mirage, you don't stop for photos. Thinking only when the tattered image is a pinpoint in the rearview mirror that perhaps the wayside shoe shrine really did exist. 

How strange, when your father's wearing women's clothes and platform shoes, that a pair of loafers looks incredible.  -Moon Unit Zappa

You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in.  -Arlo Guthrie 

Those who restrain their desires, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.  -William Blake

I went on, all over the States, ranting poems to enthusiastic audiences that, the week before, had been equally enthusiastic about lectures on Railway Development or the Modern Turkish Essay. -Dylan Thomas 

I call everyone 'Darling' because I can't remember their names.  -Zsa Zsa Gabor

No good deed goes un-punished.  -jahh

Theater of the mind.

She concluded her magic by ringing up a few quotes from Victor Hugo. Grinning to herself, she rehearsed an abbreviated reenactment of Fontine’s death. Still smiling at the mirrored audience, she shut out the light and exited stage front door. Indeed, she had possessed a bit of this character as a younger woman. The uncertainty of each day. The working really very hard through every single detailed accomplishment that some people take for granted. Toasting bread while getting the pin light to hit her cheek bone correctly. Brushing the bird’s teeth. Zipping up a wind-breaker. Now, she simply skipped to the ending of each life she portrayed. Trying on different finales to get an idea of what felt most natural...

She walked down and around to the corner on Main Street. As she handed a derelict loose change, his cell phone rang from deep within his tattered pocket...

A performance at a Bowery outdoor cafe theater of life in late fall. Coffee steaming into the chilly morning air. A tense tête-à-tête discussion about life on the edge and horrible deaths. The audience is hanging on every word.

Two mongrels tumble across the screen in front of the protagonist and prophet. The miniature terrier is ripping the hair out of the larger wolf, as he has a death grip on the smaller one’s neck. Engrossed in the importance of their own words, our two heroes never glance up at the riot of commotion. The device obliterates the seriousness of the message. The importance of the words are knocked aside as if being effaced from a huge tablet in the sky.

... Inhabiting strange places reminds me of the winter i were lived in the costume shop of the church flipped Acoma Theater. i slept under the huge cutting table + i knew when the third act of Macbeth was about to begin because the players would come in to retrieve the swords, which fell on me, every time.

... A really great opera review might include, ... And as for the cast, none of them offended me greatly.

... At the SF oper's old gigs, when still in the tenderloin nieghborhood, i remember opening a box, revealing an archival monkey mask of the thinnest open cell foam. The lifelike skin wrinkled + folded years ago by a perfectionist. The Image of the delicate mask turning to dust as it was being lifted out of it’s nest of wrappings, has never left my mind's eye.

None it matter a rats ass if there’s not butts in the seats. -jahh

Another stream of conscious post.

It says right here, don’t aggravate the door.

Nosfurato / just forgot to

Vigilante visual antics individual acts more into the Grand Gesture than the blind hem these days.

She was a veteran at carrying more than her share. She had the knack to gather up an odd pile of things sitting throughout the car, picking each up as though she had auditioned for the role. Using all the usual holding places of the under the arm, over the shoulder + in the crook of the elbow, she also implemented, behind the ear, clenching of the teeth, under the chin, hooking finger, available pockets, stuffing into the sock, balancing on the head, + a lesser known keep named the Women’s Purse. None of this meant a rat’s ass, of course, unless she still had a free hand for keys to unlock the door. She was forever on the lookout for a game show that would celebrate this talent w/ a cash money award.

It’s the telling of the story. already knowing the ending of a story has never been a disappointment to me. It dosen’t ruin a tale by someone slipping-up + divulged an ending. There are so few endings, + so very many ways to tell it.

Detail from Chance Neglected, work-in-progress graphic novel.

Truth is Nothing More Than a Feeling that Something is True.
True or False?

(circa 1983) 

i am listing 14 things people don't know about me. The custom is such that there is a bit of kiss + tell. Of course there is the minor problem of not knowing me at all. So, i’m going for acquaintance status so as not to have to start w/ complete basics. i’ll keep it light as i head toward that ambiguous bottom of the screen page. 

i am not use to digging for things folks may not know of myself. Usually i feel peoples eyes glaze over either in confusion or feigned respect. But since i can not see your eyes i'll throw out these lines — a few up close, mostly a few steps back.

First: In real life i tend to qualify everything i say (something about my dreaded conversation remorse) which makes it a bit tedious to listening to my own mind, because i'm forever returning to a conversation coming up w/ what i should have said. 

Second; i have a few very dear friends. i don’t tend to collect people. i never realize there is room for another, until a new friend finds me. + there's others i'll always love that have never given me a second thought.

Third; i think Toshiro Milfune was really cool. 

Fourth; Having recently gotten out of storage, again, i found a few things i had been collecting. Though i don’t tend to amass … here i found collections of obsolete library cards, springs, dice, S hooks, + smashed souvenir pennies. 

Fifth; i believe if there were a mandatory reading (or reading to) list for being human there would be an enormous influx of compassion capacity + collective genius. List to be compiled. 

Sixth; i cry easily. Soda commercials, dead poet recordings, recitals, roadkill, orphans. You name it. 

Seventh; i do not fluster + i wont buy into drama. i like only the drama appropriately placed on the theatrical stage. 

Eighth; i believe in having at least one work venture going in each of the project groups at any given time.

Ninth; i have climbed barrier fences, in this, + other countries to visit unavailable art.

Tenth; i do love a well-designed ampersand. 

Eleven; i am an olive oil + chocolate snob. This brings up the questions of compared to who? Only stating.

Twelve; A well timed spider-check around bedtime is always necessary. 

Thirteen; i swim in creative chaos. The peek of the creative wave dose not frighten me. i’m best suited to work on multiple project at any given time. Having something going, in all the basic project areas, is as it should be. A change of work, in the flux, gives rest + energy to the work sitting on the next table. 

fourteen; i have noticed that a conversation w/me is a bit like playing charades.

Sometimes you only know where your mind has been by writing down what it says between your ears.

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.  -Mickey B.

What does art do?

We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster's whim and the purest ideal.  -Bergman 

 Truth exists. Only lies are invented.  -Georges Braque 

Chloe gets into my Things-I-can't-Make box + builds -Bottle & Tornado Pouch Holder. 

My dear friends can attest that i scare easily. Hiding behind a tree seems very natural to me.

+ i tend to personify everything, anything.

It was an unusually gusty day even for the desert. Up on the hill road a titanic trampoline compete w/ safety net has jumped its retainer wall + is bouncing across the road. The weight of it’s own landing has bent the legs + formed knee joints that look like Pop-eye’s elbows. The aberration crushed on its weight + looking like a monstrous bogey spider scurrying as the wind skitters it across the blacktop + down the hill.

Ghost in the machine.
Give up the hallowed ghost.
The animating spirit of us all.

He hoped he would be able to mind his own business in the hereafter, she had made that very, very clear.
If you die before me, do not come back if you feel the need to tell me something, do not haunt me. I will not understand. I will quickly and simply say, go to regression. 

Ghosts before breakfast.
These mornings i wake up before the break of day. i’ll sit in this predawn darkness, resisting the impulse to do anything. It’s then that i remember people, their words, the sound of their words + the color of the sound. Each harkens back to a ghost of a memory, trips back, skips back farther + farther until there is no place else to go, except round to the now. + i like to wonder why, through this mental synaesthesia, i thought of them today, this minute.

I want to go to heaven without dying to hear Judy Garland sing.  -Chloe Mae

What i learned today:
Never sleep under a used pall w/out sageing it first.

At some point down the street there lived a threesome of grown bros that were Civil War reenactment enthusiasts. As though it wasn’t good enough the first time around. They were the classic, happy, Santa/biker ZZ type, w/ a home full of dusty American antiques + a ready musket leaned near every window. no kidding. The booby trapped barb wired back acre was decorated w/ litter + half organized w/ destitute VW parts, (we where expecting?) W/in that motley pile + wonder weeds, there stood a heavy black cannon they fired off every Fourth of July.

i imagine other neighbors knew the date + time + moment of the annual explosion. On the expectation of it hurrying willy-nilly to hold down the urns + nic-nacs, keeping the piano in place as in the scene from Mary Poppins when Admiral Boom blasts the canon on-the-dot.

There were gun shots shuttering over Oakland that would ring every New Year. As though everyone let loose w/ a hidden weapon + then, once over + concealed again, eyed each other suspiciously from then on. Starting one minute till w/ the final sound-off at five minutes after midnight. i’m sure, since then, the Vulcan motley units have become rather gentrified to a degree. When we lived there the inhabitants were working artists + artistic spirit types converting it into the groovy space we are allegedly known to occupy. Yet, as time passed it was inevitably commandeered by the popular yuppies w/ bigger bank rolls + small children. We looked on their actions as the courtesy of patrons instead of a hostel takeover. Whoa, where have i gone...

Anyway, yes, New Years Eve at the Vulcan ... of course most of this was during my white-out phase so i could be way off in recall. Also what goes around, again, so it could be totally trashed + on it's way back up in repeat by now....hey, Mark you think your murals still grace the Vulcan Thai Café?

 Words are indeed my second language, but, becoming an ever more closer second. i do believe it is easier to misinterpret written word far more than spoken, since the tone is left up to the reader. This makes for some lively, + sometimes misdirected comments. One thing is certain, though, everyone gets their say so on paper, or in this case, on the unlined screen. Even if it ends up being an unread paragraph for a nonexistent audience. 

There's a touch of the zen in writing. 

There is an artisté whose art took the physical form of post card invitations to art opening extravaganzas around the world. Each of these A6 pieces of chrome coat had the back story of a months + hours of processed art + the promise to inspire even the hardest of aesthetics. 

+, of course, there weren't any shows to open. 

i am hard to impress. Easily charmed, though.

Funky: The quality given to a person, place or thing having the ability to be unusually interesting unexplainably pleasing + entirely unique all at the same time.

Also: A groaty smell.

Oh yea, + that restless place between being blue + over-it.

You can’t make time, but you can create more space.