Fast Food
 I feel betrayed. The Art League of Alexandria gallery at the Topedo Factory, which has always been one
of my preferred venues for showing art, has decided that each monthly juried show should now, in addition, be a "theme" show.
Last month I came in to submit art, bearing my new and wonderful picture of Mirra, and found I should have read the newsletter.
The theme was "The Artist's Garden." This doesn't please me. Now, in addition to the vagaries of different judges each
month, we have to paint to a "theme." May's theme is food. I couldn't resist. I started a small painting at the workshop last night which I hope to have finished and framed by next tuesday. You get the first look. Maybe I'll call
it "Fast Food".
Conversation
Yesterday I had a wonderful long conversation with a truck driver who delivered
the boxes I'd ordered to ship paintings in. Lots of boxes! I had them delivered to the office (a commercial address) to avoid
the considerable surcharge for delivery to a residential address. He told me that truckers don't mind (all of them) people
getting in front of them because they knew themselves what it was like getting behind a truck. They did worry about people
in cars riding beside them because they had to keep some attention on them. He helped me load the boxes into the back of my
van — very helpful as they were in bundles and quite heavy. Anyway, it was a nice chat and a big help ... and I don't even
know his name. The world is full of good and interesting people!
The cause of stress
I came to work this morning to find an agreement had been broken. This disturbed
me, not primarily for myself, but because I think it will be bad for the company. The company, however, is "counting beans"
and doesn't recognize that I am right. And am I? I think that what I currently do at this job I hold (which I will be
retiring form shortly) is diversified enough that 2 months should be allowed to train my replacement. The company thinks that's
double hatting. The failure to train a deputy is a common failure in organizations. It can cause their failure. We'll see...
In the meanwhile, here's another recent painting.
Morning after the rain
Heavy rain last night as I traveled home from work. Sort of nice, like being
wrapped up in a world apart, in my ghost of a car, on the highway, with a tape on.
This morning it is sunny and fresh and the birds are racketing outside.
In the distance, the sounds of traffic.
And another new painting
 OK, here's another one I completed recently. This little painting I call "Shack in the Wood" because
I haven't the faintest idea where the original photo was taken. In fact, this and the swan represent a deviation from my usual
routine, which is to work from photos I've taken myself. Because I've been providing photos for the students at my Wednesday
workshop to work from, I have actually run out of photos that I like. But I had some photos from a commerical CD that I thought
would work. I like this painting for its sense of mystery and reclusiveness. It's painted in oil over a thin base of acrylic
color.
Swan and art magic
 Today I will unveil to you my painting of a swan. I am proud of this painting. I painted it over an oil
sketch of a chubby young woman, using the underpainting as a starting point. I painted it during an evening when I was also
teaching a workshop. I may do some more work on it, but if so, it will be to make the bill lighter so that I can then glaze
a sheen of alizarin crimson and lemon yellow over it. One of my students gave me the best compliment. She said: "Wow,
I didn't want to paint a dumb swan until I saw what you did with it!" Art is magic.
Is there a poem in it?
Well, having been urged to "write about my sister", I did try, in my daily
journal, on Sunday morning. Wrote several pages, as a matter of fact. But here's the upshot. My first opinion held good: there's
not a poem in it. Or maybe there is, but I'm not sure that anyone wants to hear it. I had an "autistic" sister, so the first
10 years or so of my life contained this sort of strange "secret" from the world. She survived until the age of 32 but I didn't
have to do much about her. She died, perhaps tragically, of a pulmonary embolism. My feeling was that she was well out of
it. Her life must have been pretty dismal, as, after shock therapy failed, she was heavily drugged with anti-psychotics for the rest of her life. She could never have taken care of herself. She was a burden on my mother. And as to whether I have
any personal emotional turmoil about her, no, I don't think so. She happened. That's life. People have different things happen
that are "important" or "formative." Dede may have been. But she was long ago. I grew up. There were other influences that
were more important. Possibly most important: I happened onto Scientology, and I found out who I was and grew up. (Well, I'm still in the process, but you know what I mean...)
The vampires
Now that's a blunt if not cruel title when you hear what I'm going to write
about, and it's probably a misnomer, but it seems apt to me. I took a poem to a poetry workshop today. Now I know it wasn't
a very good poem (why would I take a poem I felt was polished to a workshop?) But at the end of my reading of the poem, some
said that they thought there was "another poem" there. They thought I should write about my autistic sister.
Well, I could. But hell, she's been dead for 30 years and was hardly important
to me for many years before that. Her death was, in fact, freeing — not only to me but to her. No. I sensed, rather,
that those who wanted me to "write about my autistic sister" live on an emotional plane where they appreciate a poem more
if it's tragic.
For what it's worth, here is the poem I presented.
Darkness
One might see darkness as
The Dark Ages, unenlightened,
the shadows under the wings of the devil,
the realm of evil.
It might be the warm blankness
of a midnight bedroom,
fumbling for the watch’s LED dial
so as not to wake your lover who,
sleeping beside you,
suddenly feels
awake,
or, as when I was a child,
born sighted and sprightly,
an experiment with blindness
trying to understand
my handicapped sister,
(consigned to a life
of incomprehension),
labeled autistic for want of
a way to help.
Or, darkness might be that feeling,
(having failed to help too many times),
that this is “all there is”,
that “it’s as good as it gets”,
when you open another beer or
turn on the TV.
Or,
darkness isn’t,
is a blague, a joke, a screen,
a way of not looking.
When, finding we can look, can help,
can see a way out
there is air and light and
more than shadows,
The world beyond Plato’s cave.
The miracle of life
 Perhaps
the miracle of life is that so many of us, despite all the ways that we could be done in, continually muddle through. This
morning on the news I heard the story of a cat in China who got inadvertantly packed in a container of bird cages:"Early in March, workers in China preparing a shipment of birdcages accidentally
packed one with a factory cat inside. This month, a cage retailer in Tampa, Fla., opened the package and discovered the severely
undernourished animal." That cat, in other words, survived from early
March to mid-April with no food. Man! Cat o' nine lives.
The why for the Suicide Bombers
 For those of us to whom the concept of suicide itself (even for a "good cause") is anathema, the "suicide
bombers" fall into the category of the incomprehensible. But consider: this has something to do with the concepts explored
by L. Ron Hubbard in The Tone Scale. When life is unbearable, when Paradise is unattainable, not only one's own life becomes unbearable, but that of everyone
else. After all, if one feels dark, shrivelled, small and hopeless, it is inconceivable that anyone else feels much different.
Then we see how it comes about that those who are physically dead or dying, spiritually most certainly dead or dying, have
no problem strapping on a bomb. What is life worth? Nothing.
A day of discouraging news
The question is: What should one do when there is nothing one really can
do?
The answer, in my opinon: Control what you can and don't get in a fret about
that which you can't.
I can't help hoping, however, that there will be some near term resolution
to the Iraq situation.
April showers
...are filled with promises. As I put on my sturdy shoes and my heavy coat
to once more venture out in bone-damp, 40-ish weather, through a fog of rain, I can sing that old song: "...will bring the flowers, that bloom in May, so if it's raining, have no regrets, for it's not raining rain, you see, it's
raining violets." And that says it all. Driving through rian in the early morning to my far-away office, I turn off the bad news on the radio.
May is coming soon.
Speculating on whatever
When I was quite young, summer afternoons lasted all summer. At the age
of 6, I ran around in a clean white pair of underpants. (Now I think, "Gee, they must've been really really clean if I was
allowed to run around the neighborhood in them. I wonder if I need to shop for new underpants.")
Speaking of underpants, I had a fatal encounter with the clothes dryer
recently. (Well, actually, it didn't come out too badly.) I had used the pocket of a pair of jeans to store rewrapped
chewed gum, thinking to empty the pocket when I got out of the seminar I was in. But the pocket got forgotten and the
jean got into the dryer with a lot of other clothes. The heat of the dryer caused the gum to melt (as the washer had not,
apparently) resulting in the inside of the dryer being coated with little areas of gum now coated with any
particle of fluff they could pick up. Most of the clothes survived. (I guess the walls of the dryer were a more attractive
vehicle.) I spent some hours with Goo Gone rubbing the goo off the interior of the dryer. (Who knows what all that exposure
to chemicals has done to my lifespan.)
But yesterday I noticed a little pink patch on a sock and another on a pair
of underpants. Time for new underwear shopping!
On Photography vs. Painting
 I
am finally happy with the painting of Mirra, my new Grand Niece, in time to submit it to a judged show. I may do a tiny
bit more work on the toes on the foot closest to us. I took a photo of the final painting and of the original photo with me
to a morning meeting today and got two interesting comments: (1) "Oh, your portraits are obviously your forte" and (2) "You've
captured her better than the photo."
Now, first of all, I don't think that portraits are necessarily "my forte."
I struggle with them. But I do like painting people. However, the individual who made this comment obviously feels more comfortable
with "photographic" or "realistic" art. I didn't say anything, but my opinion is, if you can take a photo of it, why don't
you? It is my belief that the existence of photography frees the artist from having to slavishly duplicate anything. The "art"
in a photograph that is done from a photo will often be in the "editing."
Secondly, how can you "capture her better than the photo?" I can answer
that. First, I know the child, and that's better than the photo. In doing a portrait of her, I'm not only capturing what's
preserved in the photo, but my knowledge of her as a person. And second, what's so great about a photo? They really don't
faithfully capture life. Really, I hate to say it, but they don't. Their colors are often blurred and "normalized" and muddy.
And they don't "know" the life of the person.
Our fascination with the human body
The news reports that a group of 4 American contractors were ambushed
in Fallujah, Iraq, their car burned, and their corpses dragged out and eventually hung by a mob. Of course, since they
were dead long before that, the act (bestial, says the news) is largely symbolic. The symbolism isn't lost on anyone. But
what about this fascination with bodies. If one gets the idea that we are not bodies but a spirit occupying a body, this little drama becomes a bit pointless. How outlandish is this idea? Here's
my viewpoint: I can't imagine a world in which I was not. Not convinced? (You don't have to be; it's personal.) What about
this: close your eyes. look at a picture of a cat. Where is the cat? It's in your mind. Who's looking at it? You are.
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