Finding a logic that feels like trust.

N. Gaiman walks in and has a sit. After thinking for a bit he councils me.

“You can’t do sentimental,  and you definitely can’t do horror. So don't reinvent the wheel; do your drawing-words gimmick.”

Literary devices, or, when projects list themselves;

• Non-sequitur - write a story of a man flip booking through a encyclopedia or switching the screen from channel to channel at jiffy speed.  

• Build a trilogy that goes together kicking and screaming.

• Arrange for someone to be in the next room trying to get all the attention. 

   My attention.

Random thoughts are misgivings.
Did you hear?

It all seems miles away.  

Life changes fast. Life changes fast.  Life changes fast. 

When it comes to date and time, close enough if often okay with me.

Sometimes, I do not think people need tattoos on their faces. A face is busy enough with what’s already going on. Sometimes I don't.

I’m hoping to have focus and something planned by the time the sugar spikes.

It becomes harder and harder to speak without a pencil and paper in hand.

Un-pragmatic and non-linear. I do that real well.

So, how far have I ever been able to throw myself?

I feel the pull of retreat, every time this time of year. Not that I’ve been much out and about - but more or less. The shorter days call me indoors - to have longer sits and write meandering  sentences with bigger words. 

I’ve done a lot of installation work ... I’ve been inspired by great sculptors and their huge crafty ingenious works, … then mentally backing up, remembering - I’m sort of wanting to make something nice and smooth with the smell of ink. I’m hankering to make  an object I can pick up easily and read without getting splinters. The dream is to sit down at the same time everyday with a beautiful blank book. Without hesitation I will draw an inspiration and write something profound. Too often I’m writing while driving, scraping into the dust, or drawing hits with only a bad pen and a ripped receipt. Train myself to turn on inspiration by calling up a moment.

Art, then, is an elaborate dance around something that can’t be made. 

Add a muffled boom and a ring of smoke appearing at the bottom of the cartoon canyon. 

Pie? Who cares about pie, when there is Russia? -DV

Burrowing into what matters. Or, what I learned today.

• Not much gets accomplished at 3am when you’ve already been awake for 72 hours.

• A tiny brush holds very little  paint.

• Bad things happen when you are trying to be very, very quiet.

• Making pancakes is much easier than how I make it look.

We were oowing & ahhhing over an acquaintance’s book of poetry that had been begrudgingly lent and was now being carefully handled. KB set it down on the papered work table near our 8th floor open window. In one very foolish elbow move, by me, it disappeared. There was a cursing of bad luck in twain. In our mournful anguish we looked out the window expecting to see the book free falling eight stories with the binding bowed and pages stretching wide, liberating themselves, fluttering as to say I’m ‘this’ free. Down, down  to the pavement and crushed underfoot by a New Yorker who was sipping hot expresso making a guest list as he hurried to secure a newspaper and check into the weather for this weekends family holiday on his home out in Montauk ... We focused nearer and saw that the volume had landed in the plastic flower pot in the window apartment just below us, 7D. Being less petrified by whomever lived there, than what would  happen to us if we reported the lost book, (Yes, stolen!) we ran down and stood there, before the door, listening intently to the quiet and what lie beyond thinking; who would have a plastic flower pot in Union Square?

• Oh yea, and, setting something on the floor so it wont spill — is not always a good idea.

RoM 07 - #9/9 This is Only the Beginning.

I had come a long way to claim what would have been mine. It’s an orphan’s prize and didn’t expect any competition. It has always been a long distance. It’s only one beginning lying somewhere on a horizon that does not look like this one before me. That calm is the line that separates way off on the horizon, not front and center. 

It is another smoke sky cloudy day. You can't see the sun traveling so it remains a vague daytime until it is dark enough to be called night.

I quit chasing the horizon today.

-30-

RoM 07 - #8/9 The Voice of Angels

Does it matter what sky I wanted yesterday? At this minute it is over the Atlantic. Tomorrow that patch will be on a latitude unknown to me. Daylight is easy time. Night is simply closing your eyes. It is the creep transition of twilight when the changelings sparkle in the barren mist, one has to watch for. Transition is a hallway, the next door is the opportunity — often opened with momentum. 

Winging through as the twilight grows deeper, I listen now to the silent accord of wings flapping — I notice that silence has become the cadence note coming around again and then again. I have a tough time shushing the angels’ voices that stretch out of the sky that is alway changing. 

As the dark finally did, Bug’s voice breaks the spell, I knew I should have made that left turn at Albuquerque. 

The  car’s headlights dropped out of site. I pulled blindly off to the side roadway, popped the hood, got out of the car, and walked to the front with sand stinging my cheeks and hands.

The battery wires resented being connected properly. After a struggle, the power caught me by surprise. The radio's loud fuzz was torture and the light so sharp and bright I felt like I should be admitting to something. Indeed, I’ve never enjoyed talking to the police because of an uncanny impulse to admit to something I did not do. This was not that. 

I stand on the outside. I’m no longer included in the maharaja effect.  

RoM 07 -  #7/9  Underground; Understood 

I’ve known people who have never left the state they where born into. As a soul may lay in wait underground, to understand the requirements to being reborn. I’ve known people that write themselves into corners. In life they pitch a tent in that self corner and become both the inmate, and the guard of the castle. QED. The second renews. Each second. Renews.

The lines barrel up and are swallowed underneath by the perpetual motion. My hands are on the noon wheel and the 4 o’clock shift.

Today I’m done with throwing something up on the page.

RoM 07- #6/9  She Wants Him Bad

Wait, perhaps a good confession is what I need just now. 

But it’s not coming. There is no back ground in the layout, it all springs forward as in one of those Matisse painting. Flat forward. Chaotic in color, demanding all of the attention — every thing is hollering ME FIRST impatiently. Everything of importance can be faced, figured and personified. And if you want this him bad enough, you can talk yourself into needing it. This face is wide and dusty, with an enormous mouth you are constantly driving into.

When the field is vast, I often do not know where I am. This no longer frightens me. In small spaces I only need to keep track of the nightlight that keeps the orientation of the room in check. Now that room is a cold front seat. The only thing between it and the grand open, was the map of the desert I was busy studying, imagining I knew what I was doing. We merge into the fogging light, but cannot stay in it for long.

As sharp as the non-verbal tack, and as cool as needs be. I’m not up on B-plans, and not following blue lines.

RoM 07 - #5/9  A Careening Rush

All next day and today, Bob-tee’s voice has been visiting me. What I had not heard before, replays clearly, careening and rushing around, banging within the confines of my mind. I have learned to conquer three things at a time. Five, if the tasks are not too onerous. But this is my limit. This  acratic character spoke out of turn, in riddles, in Shakespeare and in third person. This condition was a bit too much while driving. 

Keeping on the road was a picnic compared to staying on the mental track. He discussed magic levels and esoteric learning, while I pondered on the scar and what could have made it. While I passed ghost towns he was saying, You waste the treasure of your time. When I thought of even bad tricks having a strong imagination, his voice said,  There are no tricks in plain and simple faith. He played fantastic games by layering my thoughts and widening my mind … and he wasn’t even there. The rockets red glare will burn the dust in the atmosphere and choke the life out of everything. The leader must be able to send multiple messages to members. It is difficult to organize without this possibility.

Is he living inside a game? I’m past the age, that by just learning the multiplication table, my life will be made easier.

I hath no great devotion to this deed and yet he hath given me satisfying reasons.

I’ve given up confessing.

RoM 07 - #4/9   Painted, Printed, Framed, and Hanged

As dawn did the visual night tricks grew further and further apart. I sipped at the black coffee — it kicked at my teeth — but I accepted.

I’m guessing I picked up the stranger because I was a fan.

A Bob Marley tee, who would resist? I’ve never seen a Jamaican with a nervous tick. In that he did not disappoint. But looked as though he just came in from being struck by lightning, while wearing that inquisitive look of dying to tell secrets. Whatever lesson he had for me, I was not interested. I simply had a call for someone riding along to vindicate that I was indeed making  progress.

That would have been a quiet end of act one, if he had not taken up story telling. His logorrhea matched his meandering thoughts, as his voice trailed off and then rushed back with urgency as a memory strengthened. The meander and getting back on track was a visual component to his speech. Being born, moving around, finding something, re-born, moving around, finding something, re-being born again. It had the Barnum effect makings of every  life, but this was his own twist and sequence. He talked as if he had not talked in weeks, and with the urgency that someone would stop him.

Listening to the hurdy-gurdy drone effect of his voice, the story did not have the arresting property on me he wished. But I was able to look intrigued — while wondering if ants have the same misfortune of others’ memories crowding their  minds. Since, they say, they share a mind of one. 

By late in the afternoon, the heat that most dreaded was upon us. Seeing a Burma-Shave pointing toward a motel and grub. Wanting to retreat from the constant rumble of the car, I turned off aiming for the signs intent. He was asleep in back, in that heat induced comatose state we all know too well. I headed in for a wash up, food, and bearings. I found a child to take a simple breakfast order and took up a seat near the back, away from the swamp cooler dumping. Crayons and paper doilies littered the table and begged violation. I gave a half hearted attempt at a quick art career before the meal arrived. 

Half way through soggy burnt egg toast, he sauntered into the cold damp air of the provisional diner and took the bench opposite me. Ordering only ice, he crunched it winching, and with annoyance. Feeling no privilege of complaint, I didn’t.  His thin frame — without the cover of Bob — was tan, knotty and sported a wicked scar looking like a left-over from a dull scalpel for a hasty heart transplant. He caught me looking a bit too interested at what might have gone on there. I made an indirect inquiry. It seemed the only story he was unwilling to share.

“I’ll be getting a ride from here…” His voice trailed off with a flurry of syllables I had become accustomed to in that short time he rode with me. He seemed embarrassed. As though he had done me a favor and wanted to retreat before I could compensate, retaliate, or thank him.

Without hesitation I paid, tipped and headed outside, relieved to be under the oppressive heat. I slid into the familiar seat behind the wheel. A car, so complex in design technology — so simple to use. Pulling out of the parking lot, glancing over my shoulder, I noticed Bob had taken up residence. A tee painting, hanging suspended in the rolled up glass, framed by the metal window, keeping the sun off the now invisible sleeper. 

Today is the last day for green Lifesavers and pulp fiction.

 RoM 07 - #3/9 The Wrong Side of the Road

I had stayed too long enough, and the sky was filling as I pulled the stolen’67 rambler wagon out from under the Pink Teacup. The neon flickered and died, looking like the bones of not what something is, but what it could be. 

With that turn out and down the wrong side of the road, the trip began begging mystery.

The bumper headed in one of  the ten directions. Each were all the same, a spinning compass one way or another; toward the snow, hurricane, or drought. Somewhere someone is falling from the sky, making a hot lunch, hanging from a cliff, opening a brown package. All situations are neutral. I am crawling toward it all, waiting for the universe to implode into itself and return to the state of emptiness — where time, space and matter are nonexistent.The great simple vibrationless original void. Not a spacial emptiness, exactly, but the un-manifested creative capacity. Light and sound follow, creation arises. And to that  creation eventually returns. Quite a simple cycle.

Each moment has an end, and bumps into the next new moment causing the scalar wave to ripple on. Anyway that’s what I felt  as I drove away from that single pointed universe. Sort of like.

Today I have given up on finishing my to-do work.

RoM 07 - #2/9 A Cop of Cafe

It was in the wee wee hour that I turned off the meandering highway toward a rest stop on a dead end. The other taillights faded and disappeared as I glided up into the glow of a neon drawn into a coffee cup. Time stood still under the illumination.

I made my way into the tiny rudy cafe. The dive was dimly lit, and it took focus to make my way to the low counter that glinted like a flattened sparkly bowling ball. The lowbrow concierge was a hybrid of south Asian, north Africa, tragic fashion, and a hand full of  3am drugs. Her eyes darted with an attempt at not blinking, as though shutting her eyes even for a moment, she would loose the reality she sought to keep. The spirit of the nine tailed fox moved with in her and I could feel that if one made the wrong move, it would jump out.

I handed over the Stanley sans twist lid, leaned against the counter to feel steady enough to look around in the dusky light. Turning toward the general dining room, a sea of orange knit caps turned to meet my gaze with a questioning manner. Under the orange were gristly beards and below that camouflage. There was a puffiness to the congregation that belied weapons under every jacket. I was too tired to be stricken, but wondered who thought whom was in trouble. In a corner too far for my comfort, a gaggle of local cops sat under their cone of silence, nursing  their own brand of instant café and cake donuts. 

Today I gave up breaking the silence. Or, not speaking  unless I can improve on the silence. 

For RoM 07 - #1/9 Clutch and Choke

Some made up genre.

I had come a long way to claim what will be mine. It’s an orphan’s prize and don’t expect any competition. A long distance so far. Seems more than half way, but I’m doubting that. The beginning lies somewhere on a horizon that does not look like this one lying before me. Calm is the line that separates way off on the horizon. No blips or bleeps.

But this has been the year of the rough draft. Rough as in cold pressed, spray glued, and sand tossed on. Beginning every project on shaky, uneven, rough ground. The inklings get massaged to rise like cream or sinking like rock into the turbulent depth where they become unretrievable. But, being down below - like grit the chickens eat - formless concepts will be silently bumping into other. Hidden unforeseeable ideas, working themselves clean and smooth. Next season there will be smooth river rocks, that life passes and meanders around easily. Rocks having paid the price by being born a chip from a large granite stone, and traveled into perfection.

I want the energy to run smooth; a steady, slow burn. Not the noxious fumes that are apparent with the start up and subsequent even-out of a clutch and choke. I want the slow burn of not running too hot, but never sitting long enough to gather cold.

Today I have given up being annoyed by tiny threads and miss spellings.

 It is one of those smoke sky cloudy days. You can't see the sun traveling so it remains a vague daytime until it is dark enough to be called night.