A moment of reprieve...

How quickly things can change in little or no time + the devastating/wonderful consequences that can result from those changes.

You want to know what i feel is one of the coolest things about life?

That you can figure + plan to the unth, but usually what happens is something you never counted on or dreamed of.

73/74

He became what she feared.

This could have easily been an illustration of something scary-scary, rather than funny-scary. Masks show us who we are. Horror is much stronger when you are expecting it. 

WITHOUT IMAGES THERE IS NO PROOF THAT A PARTICULAR FEELING EVER HAPPENED AT ALL.

-jahh / Parallel Chances Tend to Neglect

It is one thing to have a bolt of inspiration, quite another to have a sharp pencil to wrangle the story. 
Jeff over at his Irre(2x)  blog seems to have both quite often.

A while ago i offered him a choice of inmates from Asylum Notes, a WIP, asking to lend his voice as character vignettes.

Being up for play, he chose all three.

 

What's pulled below is from Jeff's forthcoming, The Hidden Conversation: In Abstract, a different angle on the same illustrations. Up on his blog mid-December.

 

Just go with it. Like a river. Life's a river. Why fight it? The currents only stop when there's a need to.

Until some engineer invented the dam.

 

Creations, creator. Sort of a banal combination of words. Repetition sucks, but such is life. We are doomed to repeat history.

Then again, some good things happened in history. Does repeating those constitute doom?

Why be picky? It all winds up in the same place. 

The toilet. 

Or maybe the dirt. Or, heck, the pavement. Depending on if anyone's looking. Funny how manners are dictated by who else is around. Isn't anyone well-behaved for their own sakes these days?

STONE is what it’s made of.

We found St. Peter’s square to be a rock growing out of the water. Settling on grand, but undecided as whether or not to fully emerge.

Pause for a blur of ingenious riot of costumes.

The Venetian Carnival trip was couched around shooting long exposures w/ a 120slr. We dressed as dark whirling Dervish + spun on top of a canal bridge at midnight under the hazy street lamps.

We awoke on a stone bench in the morning mist lost on the island of St. Peter’s. Carnivale was over. KB looked great in long johns + a tux shirt w/ the collar up + the french cuffs down to accommodate his lengthy arms. He carried himself like a dancer + when he stopped he always looked as though he were posing.

Those images are vividly burned into my mind because the film had not advanced.

There isn’t proof any of it ever happening.

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace.   -Victor Hugo

I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood. If it does need additional interpretation by someone other than the creator, then I question whether it has fulfilled its purpose.  -Charlie Chaplin

…If you're anxious for to shine in the high aesthetic line

as a man of culture rare,

You must get up all the germs of the transcendental terms,

and plant them ev'rywhere.

You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases

of your complicated state of mind,

The meaning doesn't matter if it's only idle chatter

of a transcendental kind...   -Gilbert & Sullivan / Bunthorne in Patience 

In temple today, in zazen, no one notices (good) that i smuggled a small book to get down notes thoughts that fly by to be wrangled momentarily, + then knocked aside so that i can attempt to see the clear void.

Sometimes Buddha, some times the other guys.

It is truly amazing what the mind jumps to, what it remembers, what it can not let go of. W/ compassion + grace we accept some souls we know only a fleeting time, + that others are here to stay. It is interesting that the fleeting stay w/ us in memory longer than anyone else. It is hard to let go of the physical form + even harder to let go of the memory that remains.

jahh / image from When Sword Swallowing does not Impress -codex

 

My task is to fit together model plastic brains.

There are numerous sets, but each missing different parts. i am not aloud to cannibalize + mix pieces around from different sets to make a few perfect, + so, each is missing some part of it's own brains. The saving grace is that all the skulls are complete, so once they are placed over the deficient brains no one will know they are lacking.

Below a high window harsh daylight tumbles down shaft-like mixing w/ dust rising. She pauses to enter the slipstream before diving into the daimonion. Her silhouette sets off a harsh, abrupt shadow as she secures a promise by commencing to dance.

In this transparent essence, she madly spins w/ the intensity + reverence of a Dervish. Her head is thrown back to belie ecstasy + invite delusion. W/ one hand to the small of the back, the other to her chin she sends the brief chiffon flailing, seven veils flying into a luminous smokey blur sending dark oblique fluid shapes rocking on the rammed floor following her every course. She glances in + out of the late sun's spotlight unknowing if her shadow follows or leads her. Perhaps it does both. The jealous shadow seems to pull her repeatedly into the focusing light as if needing to be seen.

     

The dance becomes her. Her feet scrape the dirt + then seem to hover. She hides her face + then bares teeth. Bucking + writhing w/ the allure of a feral cat.

    

She’ll continue till forgetting what she wants, or when she is ready to receive what she has asked for.

As natural light dims + gloom begins to take over, the tender flames that have burned continuously now draw attention as they grow in proxy, their intensity becoming the brightest glow in the room.

    

The moon peeks into the clerestory window, nods its head w/ apology, + sinks again below the grease smeared marble ledge.

    

She divides the room. Her facing aspect lit up by a nervous flickering wall of candles. Her dark side lost in the cast of skipping, shrill, wild apparitions skimming the stone wall. The chamber is enhanced w/ the illusion that she is many, + lends a potency of the impending bizarre.

   

Shape shifting, yet ever constant.

On + on lost in the dance as dawn awakens.

Her shadow fades, pulling at her like the tug of sleep. Her expression satiated, the apostrophe of the night wanes.

   

She no longer knows or cares if it's she who’s in trouble, or those around her.

Attendees notice the conversation piece. A hand wrought pewter serving platter w/ a chiseled pattern of chaos w/in its symmetrical border. As mesmerizing as a mandala, + awaiting the gruesome prize.

 

7/8

He stirred his oatmeal, stubbed his toe, and had a nagging feeling of missing an appointment... years ago.

You can watch and wait for water to boil, it will only take time. You will need 3.10 minutes. 

Below is a recipe for ‘no time for breakfast.’

0 eggs

0 olive oil

1. Do not turn on an oiled pan to medium heat.

2. Do not scramble egg till frothy and pour into pan.

3. Do not flip over sink in case of error.

4. Do not fold in half.

5. Finished.

To turn a situation into a happy ending you may have to look at it a long time. Walk all the way around it. A big problem could mean a very long walk. Try it on without expecting it to fit. Throw it out and see how it lands. If it will only be just what it is, stubborn and unchangeable, then let it go. Sometimes there is not a happy ending.

-jahh / Parallel Chances Tend to Neglect

This work is neither, this work is both.

Creative disruptivness.

That what before was merely forbidden, is now utterly impossible.

Reasons to create are noticeable and obvious only because of their absence. A vocation

unquestionable but questioned often.

Have I tuned into an inappropriate muse? I have in mind to create a movie that can read

the audience’s lips. Lacking the media I am limited to silent pictures on walls.

-jahh / Minotaur - there is a shadow of a monster on the front porch  -pg 32

8 • Don’t move my constant. 

The solstice Maine heavens were held completely crisp + still, untroubled by electromagnetic waves. In the dead of night, a startling subatomic rumble echos through the dark, ending w/ a clutching the inside your throat. In forest blackness there lurks a claustrophobic dread. A rabbit cries for its life + looses. When all is quiet again the silence is ten times as deep + opaque. 

Field stones that were sled over decades ago became the low walls that are boundaries, trails + points. i believed through some keen higher power a mystery could be solved by backing up, up + away one could behold an epiphany in the stone lines created by the walls. With just the right aerial view some gigantic cryptic message would make known the secrets we have been asking for millennium.

     

Stalwart midnight treks revealed the snow turning silver under the spherical spotlight. The luster ricocheted through the bare trees, making birch shine. Surroundings became silhouettes plunged into the inky blackness. i imagined each soul down to the tiniest critter opening one eye as my shoe popped + crunched passed. Then closing slowly, feeling no threat.

     

i became mindful of the night sky while living in Damariscotta. Northern lights are big theater. The heavens shifted into their familiar winter pattern, sitting still long enough you'd be rewarded w/ a shooting star. i had won the a prize at the end of the day when i felt complete by looking up, + getting lost in the vertigo. 

     

When your choices are limited completeness is simple.

jahh / Script for a practicing artist + an unfinished life.

65/66

He had cats.

This sounds as though he had a disease, an inability to reason.

He simply preferred felines as pets.

Believing the novel idea that you begin to look like the pet you live with, 

she hadn’t decided on what type she wanted to epitomize. 

But, had narrowed it down to mammals.

jahh /  Parallel Chances Tend to Neglect

 An open mouth bleeds

Trick/ling down from branch to branch

Drumming out all time

The pale blue cloth turns deep plum

Blank shape, sanguine edged

Outline where a hand removed

From a white stomach

Still clutches a maché boat

Just as very well

Bleached fabric smells as though

It will explode any moment

&

One cannot bleed forever

jahh / When Sword Swallowing does not Impress -codex

Perhaps notes on moving. + building of momentum.

i’m wondering, for someone who so very rarely sits down, how have i managed to collect so many chairs.

Books; examine (once again) how many books you want to move the rest of your life.

Getting a/head of ones self. 

i have altered moments when i’m driving + do not know what coast i’m on. Or, the license plate in front of me refuses to be understood + continues to belie a foreign county.

Travel is good for the perspective, yes?

i love the act of packing up + LEAVING.

GETTING THERE + UNPACKING, not so much.

i saw Salvador Dali coming out of the laundromat. He walked past (a very pale) Bud Cort who was  sitting on the curb. 

Ct. Kangaroo was in the car next to me as Fidel Castro drove a Dolly Madison truck through the red light. He was eating a package of donuts that had ‘accidentally’ broke open. 

Dave Van Ronk was walking his dog. Actually i see Dave a lot, so he’s not even worth the surprise of mentioning, but it's always nice.

Tune in, turn off, drop out, drop in, switch off, 

switch on and explode.  

–Mr. Kite / Across the Universe 

More from the ongoing WIP/graphic work collab w/ Lonnie Hanzon.

• Houndstooth Check; A twill weave construction in which a broken check is produced by a variation in the pattern of interlacing yarns, utilizing at least two different colored threads. This is the weave that hides stains real well.

• mistake; Also called Spontaneous Expressions, and, they add uniqueness and expense to the work.

• 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. 

• hypomnemata; A material memory. A copybook, a notebook. A written permanent relationship between self and self. Memorandum, quotations, fragments of works, examples, actions witnessed or read, reflections and reasoning heard or have come to mind. An accumulated treasure for rereading and later meditation. Also, raw material for writing more formal work.

• Toshiro Mifune; 

A line left blank in his honor.

-This project is not angst riddled + smartassy, though it may seem, by this small slice. We are (way) over that part of our lives. Or, i am. Lonnie may need to speak for himself here. -jahh

From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.  -H.P. Lovecraft 

Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.  -Edgar Allan Poe

• If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.  -Friedrich Nietzsche

• Am I walking away from something I should be running away from?
•  -Shirley Jackson / The Haunting of Hill House
• 
  

• I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.
•  -Oscar Wilde / The Picture of Dorian Gray

These are two details from —

When Sword Swallowing Does not impress.

Together with the unrealized  inventions of man Vol. II

With notes on the impatience of man though out written history.

i show these to remind me of them after they have been covered, 

as they will absolutely be. Mostly.

It’s the type of visual subtext I love.

Title w/ subtitles always get my attention.

Telescoped writing, is the next best interesting thing.

i have been asked, so the answer is;

The first volume was never finished.

Dream; i am riding on a train that is in a perpetual right turn. i realize it’s on a wheel, of sorts, caught in going circles. i end up on my doorstep at a suburban sprawl house. Reaching for the door handle my male springs out of the door, pacing, totting in place + impatiently questioning.

“Do you want to go running?”

“No, I want to go eat.”

i worked in overtime + overdrive during my out times. i have had white-outs, but i never lost a decade. These white-outs have afforded me the knowing that if i have worked through layers + layers of emotional mud, i didn’t know about it. Sometimes + thankfully, the upheavals expected lay dormant through denial + have gone undetected.

It’s curious how things were, how they are, how they could be. People in our lives that aren’t there anymore. The way time travels. Simple twists of fate. Some times they happen in an afternoon, 
YOU CAN SEE THEM HAPPENING. 

Another time it takes years to pull your attention full circle.

At some point you’ve lived long enough to recognize the cycles in life. What folds back upon itself. What wheels around again, + again. It’s interesting to see the circles we chose to close, which are left open, what ones filled up + frozen solid w/ memories.

  Yet, we really never know what the next day will drop in front of us.

   i see a full circle, your circle.

  There is  a dismal attempt to put pieces back together again. i know that it is impossible.

   One of those wicked deja vu days.

One of those, you think you know how the day will go days —  then as simply as can be — someone phones up + rings into a time that you thought was past years ago. + thinking that it would never be, cant be, + will never be - could be here now. If you were only brave enough.

i wrote a lot more than i got down on paper. 

You know how things take flight + circle, spiral up  again + again so high up there that they become unimportant or evaporate until the next time around.

LEAP OF FAITH

FALL FROM GRACE

+ when all is said + done...

whom is know which is which?

jahh / image from When Sword Swallowing does not Impress -codex

 

Chloe-ism.

Chloe is running from clock to clock in every room trying to account for the lost minutes.

While ‘Drew is listening to a loop of the intro credits to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, staring into the you tube box figuring out how it was done pre-cg.

For three men the civil war wasn’t hell, it was practice.

Fucking cool.

Oh, i mean, it’s a well done movie, sure.

Remember, when you have lost your patience, stop, + wait a few breaths longer.

Title page for this work-in-progress + what lies herein.