auspicious / suspicious
I have been accused of not liking blue.
Totally untrue.
I am the first to say we must be friends with all colors.
Though, now that I think of it there is a certain hue of blue that rakes on me like nails on a blackboard. It is the ‘awning’, or soda-can blue. Really, not to be confused with the potent cobalt that comes out of a tube, there is something different about that....
But, in design work (as LH may remember) I created a beautifully complete color story for an underwater installation with out touching blue.
I just thought this was interesting.

98
To my right sat a young business associate in a stiff navy-blue pant suit. She looked practically normal. That is, until she pulled a legal sized zip-lock bag out of her brief case. It was stuffed with half used lip sticks. I’m not good at the guess-how-many game, but I’m saying it was far too many for a lifetime use of one professional person. Staccato rhythmically, she grabs out a tube, pulled off the cover, screws it up to see the color, ‘tsks’ disgustedly, recaps it and clutches for the next stick. She does this over and over and over and over again, till she has seen and disregarded each color. She’s having an audible imaginary talking to with a peer.
You can’t make this stuff up.

Well, gee, it’s been a while. Enough about that. 

You know how some things keep coming around again? 

Well, prayer ties, of a sort, have been in my work for a long while.

I use to, and again, print them onto tattered fabric strips and cinch them around iron bars and tree limbs while on walks around NYC. Whenever I was visiting a museum, a library, a park. Places I felt needed a tie for someone to serendipitously find.

I do remember securing them to platform bars near subway artist’s work. Herring's early work was around at the time. The subways would blow by making them float up  sending the prayers into the tunnel system.

Here are a few below, as I’ve just been reworking them into a small folded book of flyers to be cut up. 

Cut & Scatter Prayer Ties 

If you don’t want it to be true, change it.

It’s not important to have reasons all of the time.  

Be prepared for cliffs and sharp moments. 

Response / responsible / responsibility. 

Be sure of distance, and space will become flat.

Truth can always be repeated, because it can never be stated once and for all. 

There you go, something to chew on.

The passengers were soaked by the time we had all queued up the stairs into the cabin. Plane guy hollered, “Everyone throw your luggage in a front seat, then move to the back of the plane and take a seat." That was the same flight that after finding a spot near a window I looked out over the wing and noticed a pink sticky note flapping on the top ‘do not walk’ area. I didn’t want to know why. The weather was in turmoil. I kept trying to forget that Noah's rainbow only promised no flood, not no destruction. It’s strange how the many-thoughts-at-once thingy becomes noticeable when we are in emanate worry. I was concerned as to why there were two seats on the left row and only single seats on the right, that the pilot looked under age, that it could be so drafty in such a small airplane, and what about that swarm of something in front of the propellers? A flashlight lit white sheet will render a rush of motley stupefied bugs as they fly onto the fabric. Bugs in headlights. Kind of like hunters paralyzing deer with the spot light from their truck. What does this have to do with philosophy? I don’t know. One of those days where every word sounds like a quote if it were just written down. What does this have to do with who's talking? I don’t know that either. I had a teacher in high school, whose standard annoying quip had been, “I don’t know, find out and tell me.”

Quan Yin told me in a dream, and not very patiently, Time has past, you should know these things.

(7-8)
He wasn’t nuts, he really was Nero.
He wove leaves into his thinning hair and oh so carefully sprayed his clothing dirty in the appropriate places. He developed a spewing hack since he sprayed his garment while they were on his person.

Make room for more WHITE paper and sharp pencils.

78
One of these December nights, I was awakened by the jazz station I listened to for white noise. The man behind the microphone was crying and stuttering. I couldn't understand what was happening. Was it a sleepy fog of twisted sound or a disaster at the radio station? I peered below, over the edge of my loft bed just as Guffrie jumped up from his cot to his 6’6” height.
“Oh, my god...” He reeled with his hands to his head as the TV crawler announced the assassination of John Lennon.

Walking up to 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 was 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.
from Script for a Practicing Artist & an Unfinished Life.

53/54
...and as a custom he always took an uncharted street home.
He was entranced with radio games and truck gimmicks. Colored glasses that turned the landscape into a novelty scene. What is most vague? What is most uninteresting? One late afternoon he rode half way across Kansas with a set and clear conscious. He passed that peculiar water tower with obscure graffiti. As it shrank from life size to a spec in his rear view mirror he felt himself mentally backing up.

Plan ‘C’ found him being assistant to an artist. Tedious. He was entrusted to stretch and make ready canvas. This yoga-monkey-man task left him mental time with cunning thoughts. While sizing fabric he would under paint geometric shapes with gesso. Perhaps a large X, stripes, or a single block letter. After the applied final coat of white paint was dry and ready for the artist’s paint, a hint of his mark remained. This was subtle graffiti at its most tasteful.
from Chance Neglected

I want to be the kind of artist that doesn’t
work for anyone. -Chloe


-He Spoke in Riddles or Not at All; We Tied, Neither Playing Fair.