Spring has the allure of what’s next. Calling us outside + looking forward. Six months later, when the leaves turn their faces down + fall helplessly, there is a pulling back of energy. i notice myself going in + curling up to await the cold. Winter work is coming. i have been wading all summer in the warm sunlight, now it's time to dive deep + stay under for a while. Time to create one’s own light.

It is what we do - drawn by the entanglement of the scaler wave. As energetically connected we become whatever manifests itself on paper. Something manipulates the dance of letters. Images are a code to be cracked + absorbed back into life. The asemic prayer is always catching at the surface.

Whatever you fear the most, is probably your best way to go. -paraphrasing Joey C

+ so, i’ll say it again; i am fundamentally opposed to agendas. But, i love a tight deadline.

“Reason dictates that it would be a waste of effort creating something that does not at least try to be special. What wasteful force would strive to create the mediocre or even to rise toward the familiar; the comfortable past? Reason dictates that the act of creation should be approached as if drawing with infinitely valuable black ink across pages of fragile skin and that every line, every word should hold equal sway, each an integral part of the whole – a molecule in the substance of the page; a page in the book of everything.”  - Garth Erickson    

One looks, looks long, and the world comes in. -Joey Campbell

                                             

When I see a head from a great distance, it ceases to be a sphere and becomes an extreme confusion falling down into the abyss. -Alberto Giacometti

                                              

I have the feeling that I've seen everything, 

but failed to notice the elephants. -Anton Chekhov

The problem turned out to be that I was never that kind of artist 

-Todd Rundgren

- hollywood cemetery • VA / - biltmore • NC  /  - temple • Obama Japan

i kiss your feet + apologize, but —

i’m seeing businesses on line, in brick & mortar shops, in boxes; offering the commodity of creative. Selling being taught the craft of being creative.  Costing + tricking people into being creative. It’s yummy time - get those creatives juices flowing = GROSS! Creating is something you do, not something you are. i get that it’s a tribe. i get that some people need to be pushed into a directive. i get that some people may be busting numbers around all day, dreaming of being artistic. But, numbers + paper-work sound like a break to me! i'm looking for ways to get out of being creative.

                     

      Actually that will be my next gimmick. 

                             Ask me for an uncreative solution;  

                                        Break it completely + throw it away.

Whoa, did i just write that out loud?

Working for, working with, working through —  it's all the same energy. 

Just sometimes someone is looking + paying, sometime not. 

If i ever felt like i didn’t have a purpose … i would need to work harder.  Or, i should have chosen something i imagine to have more purpose.

We all chose what we do, and we pay for it … David Walker said something like, years ago as he calmly philosophized + drew beautiful illustrations via designing costumes in the opera shop corner — while i ferociously wrestled a hat into submission.
                                                                                                 

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?  

- Albert Einstein

   ... 

Never mistake a single mistake with a final mistake.      

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

   ...

Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.

- Peter S. Beagle / The Last Unicorn

Yay, for Non-Descript Robes Gender Neutral Color Bland.

A teacher in yoga-wear crashes the party in my dream. Gaining everyones attention, he begins to show us dance steps.

Soon, he becomes exasperated and angry, Don't you know this by now?

You haven't taught us this, so don't expect us to be off-book.

Then i realize he doesn't belong, and i told him so.

You are in the wrong dream, go down stairs + see if you belong there.

Angle primary. Costumer thinking single directive.

Walking down the street i cant help my mind. It just goes there. Lengthen for X-long sleeve there — hem up a half inch — long waisted / adjust pattern — tilt hat froward.

Settle everything by throwing it all away.  -Alan Watts

While dangling from a glacier, mapping her way up in to the clouds, she dropped a treasured trinket into the void of chasm. Her mind calmed, she would always know where it would be.

Rest on that.

Finding a logic that feels like trust.

N. Gaiman walks in + 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 + 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 + time, close enough if often okay with me.

Sometimes, i do not think people need tattoos on their faces. A face is busy enough w/ what’s already going on. Sometimes i do.

i’m hoping to have focus + something planned by the time the sugar spikes.

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

Un-pragmatic + 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 + about - but more or less. The shorter days call me indoors - to have longer sits + write meandering sentences with bigger words. 

… i’ve done a lot of installation work. i’ve been inspired by the work of great sculptors + their huge crafty ingenious works … then mentally backing up, remembering … i’m wanting to make something nice + smooth w/ the smell of ink. i’m hankering to make an object i can pick up easily + read w/out getting splinters. The dream is to simply allow myself to call up a moment, sit down at the same time everyday w/ a beautiful blank book. W/out hesitation i will draw an inspiration + write something profound. Too often i’m writing while driving, scraping into the dust, or drawing hits w/ only a bad pen on a ripped receipt.

i echo here...

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

+ the audible muffled boom echos the ring of smoke ballooning up form 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 + 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 w/ the binding bowed + pages stretching wide, liberating themselves, fluttering as to say I’m this free. Down, down to the pavement + crushed underfoot by a New Yorker who was sipping hot expresso making a guest list as he hurried to secure a newspaper + check into the weather for this weekend family holiday on his estate out on Montauk ... We focused nearer + 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 + stood there, before the door, listening intently to the quiet + what lie beyond thinking; who would have a plastic flower pot on Union Square?

• Oh yea, + setting something on the floor so it won't 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 I 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-