Ephemeral balance of beauty, spirituality + ingenuity.

Someone (manyone) is approaching; 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 + change... through these 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

So, + in my conversation remorse + pre-justifing way...

i realize this post is cringingly long for me. i tried to telescope it as much as possible. It’s not about a limo, but a Chevy '72 primer painted tuna boat w/ a 450. The type that when you tap the gas petal the engine nearly leapt out from under the hood.

Along w/ a random picture of a rear end, tho not of a car. i really can make anything fit. 

excepts from -Script from a practicing artist and an unfinished life.

91 While i was in Maine the car i baby-sat had worn out underneath + 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 to find a car parts place who miraculously could accommodate what i needed. i borrowed a truck + carried the cryptic directions inland, where if you miss a turn you’re still making headway for a good half hour before noticing you're lost. Turning the last, i pulled through the derailed fence + 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 w/ 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 + 
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 had 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 the bearings pressed on + one axle changed. As i worked on the crippled car parked on the street we became the object of slowing autos + 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 that tanker of a car, piled in all of my belongings plus the dog + 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 + was pulling off the axle. The end had reached a high temperature + in fact the metal looked like a mutilated screw tip that had broken off at the point. (i still 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 + the car needs a major part. i confidently threw open the trunk reached deep, pulled out + 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 w/ having courage, + more to do w/ not knowing fear.

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

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

One image seen + identified says something so very different than a wordy description. there is a multitude of relationships w/ the visual world. Not trying to pigeon hole, just musing. Everything i just said could be turned on its head, + 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 w/ a last Hurrah! of summer. The closing afternoons of warm light trick the Cosmos + Nasturtium into reseeding by believing of an eternal summer. 

The twilight comes earlier + 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 + yellow hues of autumn. One can see a new depth in the landscape not noticed when everything is green. 

In Colorado a heavy snow always 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 in the neighborhood, i’d get up, put on a coat over my PJs, pull on my boots, go out + hit the branches to loose the heavy wet stuff + avoid breakage. Eventually i realized my neighbors weren’t out saving the trees in the middle of the night + figured my actions were dorkish. i stopped my nightly tree carousing lest i be branded as the loopy lady + given the Native name Woman w/ Broom Beating Trees.

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

Shadows are purple, except when they aren't. -jahh

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

plate 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

Herakean 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-

i reckon most people remember what they were during Woodstock.
Kind of like when Mayor Daley died, or the assassination of JFK or John Lennon.

i was in a small town in New Jersey watching the news on a B&W tube. They played the aerial photography of the OD tents, + the masses in the mud. Wow, that looked like fun, + they even showed footage of Joan Baez singing from the last night!

i begged my dad to let me go by bus, assuring him that i would be safe.

Everyone seemed friendly enough.

He could not be swayed. His 8 year old daughter was not going to a muddy music festival out in the middle of nowhere. Are you joking, you've got to be kidding. +, he added, the NY through-way was closed.

Obviously my parents weren't the free spirited hippie type.

(Sigh) So, the pictures of Woodstock that were to be so vivid have been set the to music of other's memories. Sometimes it is a burden to carry others' memories, not this time.

Even anti-climactic memories are sweet.

It takes two to get one in trouble.  -Mae West

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.  -Groucho Marx

Education doesn't change life much. It just lifts trouble to a higher plane of regard.  -Robert Frost

For a while we had trouble trying to get the sound of a champagne cork exploding out of the bottle. I solved the problem by sticking my finger in my mouth and popping it out.  -Lawrence Welk

Just a reminder.

Excuse me while I kiss the sky.  -Jimi Hendrix

After supper they all retired into the garden at Gethsemane. That is when who's-it, having received 30 pieces of silver, did the decisive deed on youknowwho’s cheek + then the aforementioned got taken up by the Roman-what-soldiers, to eventually get whatsitcalled. The rest being legendary history + myth.

It is also said, by some, that Judas money bag Iscariot actually was Jesus' best friend as he did the favor of enabling Jesus to fulfill the mission — to die + to release the inner divine spark w/in himself + all who believe.

So, go ahead, accept that kiss, who knows the what-for in the end?

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.  -Buddha / aka that other guy. 

Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. -Albert Einstein (i wanted to put a car-accidents-kissing-while-driving statistic of distractions, but darned if i couldn't find any Ballard had to offer.)

A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.  -Victor Hugo

IDEAS:

Try to have a sit + not react.

Begin transforming through.

Happening - you soften, then the heart opens up + creates more space.

i believe Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet should be mandatory 6th grade reading.

Never underestimate the lack of critical thinking in the world at large.

i recognized two cars today from friends who are no longer around. i don’t put much interest or notice in cars, unless they are old enough to have that tsukumogami quality. After a certain make year they all start to look alike to me. But i do identify the car w/ the person. Having seen an auto pull up the drive numerous times triggering an anxious expectation of the an ally emerging from the drivers seat.

Spirituality (if its possible to put it) aside, i often have a sit w/ the dead people i miss. Sometime forgetting i’m not dead yet + that the tub is running over!  Knowing more people who have passed on makes it easier to sense the other side. To commune. + in doing so, becoming gm, ore use too the idea to follow over.

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. Whoa, where am i?

Funny how these things work out.
Coinkie-dinks + title-waves.