The great debate.
i am a cross trained artist. That means, out of necessity, i'm trained in the fine arts, theater arts + design arts.
Having used the terms artist / image maker on my vitae for the past thirty years, It is impossible for me to separate the doing + the being. i also use the word, designer, just as often. The word artist is not pretentious. It's just a word we turn over + into something in our minds.
101. Cross-training is important. There is no obvious path, + there isn't an automatically garnered paycheck. It is valuable to know what you are asking to be done. Know the execution of what you are asking of someone else. When others realize you have come up in the ranks, + you have put your time in, there is more allowance of respect.
We have a saying — whomever touches the project last, wins.
After everyone has taken off their stage makeup, + other, i’m asked to go celebrate the show. i decline. Thinking: let me simply enjoy you professionally up on the stage. i am not interested in what pills you take, what labels you wear, what animals you eat….
He chose the correct answer, but whether by luck or by skill I don't know.
2. Used to introduce a yes-or-no interrogative content clause (indirect question) that consists of a single possibility, and indicate uncertainty over it; if, whether or not.
Do you know whether he's coming?
3. Used to introduce multiple alternative possibilities, and indicate the irrelevance of which is the case; regardless of whether, no matter whether.
He's coming, whether you like it or not.
Learning x3:
Reflection / Experience / Imitation
IDEA: It’s an immigrant experience moving from coast to coast.
IDEA: Hebrew for sin meant/s missing the mark, mn or not being there.
IDEA: A gallery of ideas of my own mistakes.
IDEA: If catholics don’t believe that animals continue to exist after bodily death as human souls do, then why is st. francis teaching them?
Shuffling always brings the ace to the top.
Cannons
It's an engine of creation. If it works, don’t fix it. If it’s broken, don’t fix it.
About three-thirty in the nighttime, I came across a makeshift temple with a handwritten sign. Anyone that trespasses will be recruited for earthy employ.
I had gotten use to the brevity of the after world: the hilarium, the tediousness, and the dull.
Hearing I was drafted, I did myself the favor of getting real drunk in the classic off-to-war style way before headed off. In training I learned I was to wear a white uniform sporting red diagrams. Not understanding if I was to be read as information or stand out as a target, and before I could ask what the — I was sent back — back to exact locations on earth leaving notes to mortals. The letters were pretty little things wrapped in rags explaining luck of ominous intent, timing, and farewell. The receivers where to recognize the import of the kismet, or not.
……….
“Well then, how DO you work? I mean, in general.”
“Generally,” Kim answered honestly, “I agree to whatever the client likes, and then I go and do what I want to,” she rolled her eyes and shrugged, “You know, in general.”
They both climbed up on the tailgate and looked into the cooler. Kim discarded her thigh high lace-up sandals and rubbed at the tattoo marks left by the leather straps.
Les handed her lunch, and she immediately ripped open the hoagie and began digging through the sandwich to tossing out what she would not eat.
“I’ll take that,” he interrupted her arm in mid-air.
Ignoring a blinding shine winking a bit off in the distance, he tossed the pickle into his mouth and continued the thread he had been trying to get across.
“Like I was saying, that Buick/Opel ’76 is an ugly car, I mean 2 for 1 ugly. Ahead-of-it’s-time ugly.” His mood was all pink and baby blue, teetering on the fun Sagittariun/Gemini nightmare that he embodied.
Tiring of this conversation she sang out, “Got it!” extending the vowels. “Don’t you just love the way the desert is so VERY quiet.”
He smirked and communed with the sandwich, his jaw popping.
……….
It is all happenstance without much insight. There were neither names nor address on the small bundles. I began to wonder if synchronicity came into play. Does it have a pause button? What happens when the receiver is not looking or listening? On altered planes? What is an altered level? Are all levels altered? Are these, too, synchronized? Interesting questions without practical experience. I was back puffing and theorizing, walking the halls of middle school. The problem with this job, is too much time to think. Better to dwell on those impossible koans instead of the thwart factor. I set again to working fast in the dimensions and under conditions they gave me, sprinkling notes across a vast area. I Hurried to get finished, but also felt dread in getting back to home base.
……….
Thinking of nothing in particular but hoping for a thought to catch hold, Les hummed Canon alla Ottava slowly, a short fugue he had known since he was 7 years old. His fingers absent-mindedly moved to hit cords on an invisible harpsichord.
Kim was reminded of her earlier chapters, processing her life in five minutes the way brains do because they can. It read like a Herman Hesse novel, edited with a multitude of breakfasts and trips to the bathroom. She could count her life throwing curves at the right time — but there was always the whiff of anxiety just before a shift. The doubting that something will fall into her lap, just before something falls in her lap.
A piece of trash looking strangely like a rag spat out of no-where on no-wind and gently settled on red metal, looking like a burned paper scrap from a far off fire.
“Why DO you like the desert?”
“Well,” she simplified, “It’s a large blank canvas to me.”
He imagined a pressure cooker and arranged another smirk. Picking up on this mental image she added,
“Okay, a hot canvas. Something will happen. The white screen will in time burst and reveal something you didn’t imagine.”
“You’re are scaring me.” Les mocked, “Anita, white is for babies.”
He loved her, but loved to tease her more, keeping her from spinning out completely. Her triple Scorpio nature always lurked.
Kim palmed her chin and splayed her fingers, “Ha! You came with your mouth open. It’s immaterial. But it’s usually something cool, nothing scary about it.”
“Touché.”
……….
Delivering fate is like connecting the dots. A shattering and replacing of stars, to become an aerial view of a city map of manhole covers. Bright circles of the primary colored twister game connecting dot-to-dots. Of the 101 delusions maybe there’s only one copied over and over. This was all beyond my threshold of adventure. Mars in Cancer. But, who would be brave enough to say so? Not me.
……….
Les fell to patient waiting for the wide white screen to crack open with the missing piece. Patiently waiting for Kim to find a Godot.
“Ever feel like you’re looking for gold in a copper mine?” he offered. They both looked out, their gaze following a meandering gully left by a recent flash flood.
A yellow balloon drifted past them high up in the atmosphere along an escape route from an amusement park 74 miles away.
After another long pause, Kim seceded the campaign.
“Okay, let s get going, I’m not finding what I came here for.”
Jumping down, she stretched sideways with her hands on her head. She followed him into the truck.
“And, on the way back please, don’t desecrate Motown.” The engine cranked over and the stick pushed into first.
He raised an eyebrow, “Didn’t I show you my hall-pass?”
She was in control of the wheels as they spun a u-turn. Peeling away, what looked to be a delicate rag flew off the top of the red cab.
-30-
Choka #38
Bumped off of the plank
Into the deepest of depths
A perfect swan dive
Through the blackest of wonder
If a god’s in sight
An awing is not offered
Brave the brief transit
Powered by failing flashlight
White winging singing
Shadows on their high horses
Their drone of not here
Simply the orchestra’s wind
Section tuning up
Sounding like birds answering
Each other with riffs
Reading their mumbling lips
Don’t look in our eyes
And you will not discover
Their look of distrust
Turning heads as comets will
Then elegantly
Trail the sharp icy crystals
Of being stood up
It is the best they can do
Light bright marquee crawls
Across all human foreheads
Blatantly announce
Has Need to Get out Much More
With limp broken wings
I see the loathsome shadow
Dark is the hangman
He’s fumbling with the noose
Know that Surrender
Leads away from obvious
A powerful tool
For the love of your life call
And I kid you not
666-666-6
Recognizable
…
His left hand will be hidden
And his face will be bowed low
Jenny was a slight young woman intent on beginning over and over, with blunt feet and the posture of a stargazer. Wallace was studied in drawing an analogy between the macrocosmos of nature and the microcosmos of man, without much interest in between. He seemed never to begin nor end conversations, comfortable instead with a continuous inner speak that jumped out now and again. Like miniature articulating dolls they appear from the direction of the ten-foot cyclone barrier. They have used this cut through many times and were not so unimpressed as familiar with the sites.
They walked through the distressed junkyard tossing out famous last lines.
“This is not as dangerous as it looks.”
“Ha, if weren’t safe they wouldn’t let us do it.”
“We’ll be safe under here….”
“This rope will hold.”
Laughing came easily with easy company.
“Oh yea” he said picking up a thread of an earlier conversation,
“I got it; every religious conviction then, by nature, is half speculative.”
When her confirmation was not forthcoming he added, “Qui tacet consentire videtur?”
“Right, grasshopper,” Jenny offered with a quirky smile erupting.
With her forearm she wiped back her long boyish sweaty bangs exposing an impressive birthmark over her center eye. It was a vestige of a former life.
He egged her onto a story he had heard numerous times. Thinking herself as being measured, she straightened her small frame, gaining composer and height as she walked on passing two-story ball and jacks, and a nest of archaeopteryx. Wallace smiled for what was coming and also for the advantage of now having space for his own thoughts. A bit of harmless trickery.
She told what she remembered, though words could not capture the richness and mystery of the tapestries that bore her image.
“We were not treated as well as you would expect. By nature we were holy things. The few of us evoked a since of preciousness to man but we were warriors and had to defend. Our safety vanished when we became known. When you are rare and beautiful you do not need to rely on magic … only malice. Our lives where fierce winds. The hunters were studied in false magic. But, we were not touched by charms or caged by low fences. The men were cloaked in charity, holding nets of magic, uttering profanity under their breath at every defeat. They blamed us for attempting escape. They blamed us when their trickery did not land us and they only became more determined to incarcerate our spirit.”
Her face grew darker in the shadow of a ridiculous massive sea monster.
“When the secret weapon appeared — a glowing white symbolizing the comfort we sought — we eventually fell. We could not sway the Virgin for long. We were not so strong against Her allure. Who of the forest dwellers had the inner power to deny Her? We were caught and bred into delusion and ineptitude. Hailed as profane and spat with irreverence. Her bloodied white gown our embarrassing mantle. Mythosed into plastic pastel colored ponies.”
Letting out a slow breath, Jenny brightened tossing her head back.
“Your turn,” she queued loud enough to jolt him from his obvious private reverie.
“I was once and future primordial spec of which all things came to be and then the end.”
Wallace was whistling the preamble to the Superman Theme as they found the chink in the fence, maneuvered through, and were gone to the other side.
-30-
Prelude to the muse:
Under the Water's Surface, Heartbreak; The War That Follows
On second inspection the boy saw that the weapons were made of plastic and enamel. He noticed to his delight that the kit also contained a small female figure whose face seemed to be saying, “I’m in trouble here." Clancy understood with his limited ability to read faces, he could be dead wrong and he wondered if he was in trouble, or her. A hundred fiery winged horses came as an adjacent set along with other more domesticated animals. He had to have it, but he knew it would take a spell and a hammer to get his father to purchase it for him. So he did what any smart kid would do; he approached his mom. He knew from experience his mother could not resist a crocodile tear of want in her son’s brown eyes. Where his father would be a losing fight of wits, from his maternal half he could eke out an emotional win.
Clancy snowed his mother and they both traversed downtown toward the children's boutique. They neared a black haired street child spinning in circles allowing his shirt to flutter. The boy child didn’t seem to mind the homelessness as much as the boredom of this particular street corner. With a try at joie de vive, he played at Arthurian legends. When he eyed the boy pushing his mother along on an acquisition mission he saw an opportunity.
He stepped in the way of the eager Clancy, bowing low,
“Caleb; may I be of some assistance?”
The mere elder complied, with more hurriedness than want. They both ran toward the door held open by his mom, the youngest meeting her woman’s purse at full speed knocking her aside.
Clancy excused him with, “He is my assistant for everything.”
A sarcastic, too many children to save, was written all over his mother’s face, but the words "too cute" came out of her mouth. Her son’s panache of befriending odd boys would confirm her of his particular persuasion, if he were not so young himself. The black haired boy loosed the red silk scarf from his neck revealing it as a woman’s slip, grabbing the spaghetti straps he pulled it over his head creating a cape. The breeze accommodated and his pose-of-ages finished the devastating effect. Having composed himself, Caleb and the others made an entrance.
Clancy had an eye for the dramatic, as his head was so full of emotion that got in the way of wisdom. He discovered the faux metal armor hanging beside the weapons he came to admire. Caleb picked up a shapeless piece of chain maille as though he had left it by mistake. He took it and belted it into a vest around him. Clancy squealed and pointed to the dragon wings painted onto the backside of the short tunic. Their excitement met and a quest developed between them. They did not know that a dangerous journey waited, one that they didn’t need to plan. Clancy’s mother, Claudia, stood aside wondering what mountain they were planning on scaling. She thought to prepare them for the foes they would meet, real or no, but decided everyone needs to make their own mistakes. Besides, it was time to head on.
After the set-deluxe had beed purchased and strapped to his back, Clancy along with Caleb meandered downtown though the city, imagining it to be a dangerous rock forest. Everyone they saw became a character in the theater of life, every something a prop, every corner a challenge. The bike racks where their loyal horses. They saluted every elderly person, and got a wink in return as though the elder understood the language of these warriors. They would watch the boys pass, lingering on memories unrealized.
The boys easily swapped roles becoming the injun or the chief.
“Let’s get out of the way of this story for awhile and see what happens by itself,” Caleb suggested. He motioned for Clancy to sit down on the curb next to him and he pulled out a piece of chalk, drew a time-line boundary, then held it up in the air,
“Well, if sometimes I can’t draw fast enough, I can always eat it.”
“With wine? Or plain grape juice.”
They became impatient with the waiting.
“Double yuck! Let’s move off this street, it’s getting too hot.”
“Hey, I think I hear a strange voices and my mom whistling for me.”
“If there is a battle going on in there, we best investigate.”
Claudia had a radio talk show argument turned way too loud, and when they entered it seemed as though a courtroom brawl was going on. She looked at the two boys, fresh from a voyage with a hint of homesick for dinner.
They took the time to set up a miniature theater with major conflict and peril on the travertine den floor, discovering the players as they set them into action. Before long, Clancy and Calebs’ stomachs growled and they eagerly sat for victuals and regaled Claudia of their day, which grew bigger as the plates grew empty. Clancy knew the hour’s fortune was coming to an end soon.
Claudia invited the little rustic to stay,
“That is, if no one will be worrying about you.”
The boys settled down, dreaming of alternative days of traveling troubadours singing and living the rock-n-roll lifestyle. And, they never once mentioned the inappropriateness of it all to Claudia. Only the wind whispered back to each of them finishing the story they could not imagine.
This was a peaceful bliss, for tomorrow would be an altogether different kind of day…
(unedited - unfinished)
