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-

Number nine...

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, and the masses and the mud. Wow, that looked like fun, and 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. And, 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 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

The customs are such that with  “The Honest Scrap” there is a bit of kiss and tell.
I am not use to digging for things folks may not know of myself. Usually I feel peoples eyes glaze over (I have a habit of justifying what I say, in real life…that can be #1) either in confusion or feigned respect. But since I can not see your eyes I will throw out 9 more lines- a few up close, mostly a few steps back -and keep it light as I head toward that ambiguous bottom of the screen page.
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 one friend finds me.
Third; I think Toshiro Milfune was really cool.
Fourth; Having recently gotten out of storage, again, I found that there are few things I had been collecting...though I don’t tend to amass…obsolete library cards, springs, dice, S hooks, and smashed souvenir pennies.
Fifth; I believe if there were a mandatory reading (or reading to) list for being humans there would be an enormous influx of compassion capacity and collective genius. List to be compiled.
Sixth; I cry easily.
Seventh; I do not fluster easily.
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, and other countries to visit the ‘unavailable’ art.
Tenth; I do love a well-designed ampersand.

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

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 and then the aforementioned got taken up by the Roman-what-soldiers, to eventually get whatsitcalled. The rest being legendary history.
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 and to release the inner divine spark within himself and 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

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.)

A child's kiss is magic. I've seen them hold back from adults who have not been proven worthy of the gift. Why else would they seem, at times, to be so stingy with them?
I always kiss my children goodnight, even if they're already asleep.
Bert, and Dick Van Dyke, understood this- "...Good luck will rub off when I shake 'ands with you. Or, blow me a kiss, and that's lucky too..."

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

She managed to say very strange things, very articulately.

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 an individual quality. After a certain make year they all start to look alike to me (sorry). But I do identify the car with 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 aside, (if its possible to put it aside) I often have a sit with the dead people I miss. Sometime I forget I’m not dead yet and that the tub is running over! I am much too phobic to have as serene a view of death. Knowing more people who have passed on makes it easier to sense the other side. To commune. And in doing so, become less afraid to follow over.

A confidant and I were talking. Perhaps you are right and you are...death makes us look at our own lives in a different way.
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 and title-waves.