meaning that adding photographs...which you want to have that synthesis that includes the ability to produce a photograph in keeping with the intent of your writing...hermmmmhumphhh...somehow some of the relatives got into the mix...in a picture that was merely recording the nephew's high school graduation...not talking about the topic here, nor intending to promote it...which, if truth be told, hasn't been arrived at yet, but could revolve around the fact I need to get out to the backyard and build a fence that keeps the dogs in so my neighbor isn't calling me while I'm away to tell me they've been rescued from the highway...yes, I can do that, but as with art and other pursuits, you can't get all the chores done before it hits you and you have to act on it...and being a multimedia artist, I find that jumping into an acting skit is about the easiest, fun thing to do, limbering and liberating, allowing the spirit and soul to speak freely in a place where all is encumbered by other people's feelings relative to your own...'you said that about me??' well I didn't did I? and I wouldn't...because I spoke about that in the earlier post...what it means in terms of family...here it is about what it is that you have to do when it comes on you to do it...and nice that I live alone for now...because there isn't anyone to tell me something else is more important
like the last long-term affair...that never stopped being inefficient on many levels...talk about sponged-bob with square pants...square as in I will join alcoholics anonymous because I drink beer...not 'because I drink beer in a plastic cup on the way home from work' which he did, but because he had so much of it around that he was drinking it because it was there...and he didn't soul search about it either, he was not using it as a bandaid that way...but rather joined AA so he could meet women...hehe...now THERE is a goofy prospect...I'm a mess so I'll find someone else who is also a mess and see if we can be messed up together...so he went off and I have three dogs instead, and somehow they're getting out of the backyard and I have to make sure they don't, because the highway is right out the front door...so that's the project for today except that I've discovered I can write today...talk about having a block on it...it's like, who'd want to hear about your exploits, sucker? and then boom, you don't care if they do or not...rather interested to see if it's saleable material actually, because what I've noticed is that when you write about something other people relate to, like how much mustard SHOULD I put on that baloney sandwich...people read it..and frankly, the minutest details..I put my foot on the floor after having it cramped up against the base of the chair for the last ten minutes...they think that's neat because they do that too...whatever it is..riding the subway on a really hot summer day and the heat in the car is enough to make grit of your sweat sitting there bumping along...what I wouldn't give for a hot subway car about now...and how far am I from a subway car right now...quite a distance, but I've been on them...
so, the timeframes and such, like being up in Vermont for New Years and getting snowed in with friends in Bennington, now that's a very quaint White Christmas sort of experience that doesn't relate at all to what happened this year with the nursing home piano recital and most of the audience in wheelchairs, drooling. I brought along my canary because he wouldn't have fared well in the chilly house. I played Hungarian Dance #2 by Liszt and by the end of it I was playing with one finger (terrible terrible stage fright). The canary entertained the elderly nursing home residents and cocoa was served, along with cookies, tea, coffee and punch, I believe. The other performers were all much much younger than I and they all played Christmas carols. I rather thought the 'God Whose Giving Knows No Ending' sounded like a Christmas carol and perhaps at the drizzling out of this inspiration of mine, I might go play it, but I think I'll tackle the dog fence instead and be sensible. It's after noon, 12:28 and so that would be productive of me but having gotten up so early after going to bed so early my schedule is off so I feel a little tired now...deflated somehow that I was able to write and write and then went off to Mermaid's Reef and got the place warmed up a bit..
Seems strange to have a studio but I knew when I painted that last canvas that this is what the Reef is..and though I may live there at some point, what it does for me is conduct art...I can see a nice piano in the front room by the window (don't you know I tried to take photos when I was just there and the batteries were drained so I couldn't)..Murphy's Law of relativity...functional computer ethic is logic put aside due to random access memory heh heh heh...
Those batteries went in the camera last Thursday and every picture I took was so wiggly you can't really tell what's up...well you can, but eh, you can't...
So I guess I gotta go do that again..maybe that's what I should do first...put in new batteries, go take pictures of the Reef and THEN after it's loaded in here..do the dog fence...right...like I shouldn't be plugging away behind the cash register at Walmart or something..
Never had a cashier job, other than the one I had in the French Restaurant that wasn't really a French restaurant but a satellite of the Kansas City Stockyard Company which employed a chef that had learned his trade in Paris...that place in Paris that turns out the luminaries..well, Cordon Bleu? perhaps that was the joint. I shouldn't be disrespectful because his were the only poached brains I ever ate and his name was Pierre Pluminage. The authorities had that place on their regular rounds for routing illegal immigrants and every so often we'd have a new set of dishwashers and carrot choppers. A couple of the hired help fell in love and grew an avocado together. They were reverent in their mutual adoration of one another. It was touching and they didn't speak English, either of them, so I didn't know the particulars but I observed how they behaved with one another and it didn't surprise me at all that she turned up pregnant and he got carried off to Mexico in one of the sweeps. Dang. I didn't find it heartbreaking because even then I was kind of innoculated against real life and real people. What I did know was that somewhere in there, maybe a year or two later, 'Orlando' Letellier and his assistant Randy Moffitt got blown up in a foreign-make car, maybe a little BMW..going around Thomas Circle. On that same circle is GW Hospital where, riding the bus to work one day the driver swung into the emergency entrance at the hospital because my friend and neighbor was in labor and also a passenger. I came home from work that day and she was on the deck of her apartment waving to me with a new baby in her arms.
"Only in the hospital an hour," she said.
"From the time you got off the bus?" I asked.
She nodded.
"Wow," was all I could say, either about the infant or her delivery.
So that's some of the ancient history of life back east but that's now the Reef and what goes on in and about art. You can wear your little painters' smock, put on that beanie that's your thinking cap...hold a palette in one hand and brush in the other, stare dead ahead at a blank canvas and all the time be wondering...if I let the dogs outside are they going to run around the neighborhood because I didn't secure them...or what?
Meaning that distractions from the point in hand, that you have this overriding need to express and communicate some kind of idea...be it something about a child born in 1972, making him thirty some years old now or Allende's attempt to bring rationalization to Chile (not sure if it wasn't Argentina but the Movie Missing with Jack Lemon bothered me forever after, not to mention the Life articles about the soccer arenas, that really got me upset)...which I wanted to do something about but rather thought the instantaneous birth of my neighbor and fellow passenger's child had more than a little to do with all of it...which art would explain...as only it could and reason would persist and justice would prevail
I don't know if we can justify Pinochet or Samoza or El Salvador or Guatemala and I had a terrible falling out with someone from Honduras so I should leave that stuff alone other than to say that a friend of mine went to Nicaraugua and became the house guest of a family with a 15-year old daughter. Didn't hear anything from him other than that. Didn't think it was odd either, we just thought, hmmm 15 year old daughter, hmmm... He didn't say if the banana plants were growing in cracks in the sidewalks like they do down Brownsville Padre Island way (where I've been and noticed)...he didn't say if his patrons had running water (he'd gone there to help put some plumbing in place in some communities)...I don't think I've ever run into him since he went to Nicauragua and I better look on the map and see where that is because I'm thinking it's somewhere around Mexico and maybe it's not, hehe...
Meanwhile...it's nearly one and perhaps the bloom is now off the rose in terms of writing and writing. I don 't have any current information to share other than the Reef is up and r unning and I should be doing this from there but I've only done one painting there and Lord knows writing takes a bit more courage not to mention internet access but I co uld do it on a drive disk and plug it back in, the attic is full of computer rejects that dim the lights when booting up, hehe...so be it...dog fence to the rescue
It's like three or four days since Christmas and the last few years have been rough: the poodle died two years ago and broke my heart...last year the foster kids threw their turkey dinner in the drain and I had to call the cops because I thought they were going to beat me up ...that was funny, the cops told them to behave and told me to make them something else to eat, which I did but I had a flame of anger in my heart and eventually that fanned up into a blaze when they beat up the dog..I guess you can't be nice to everyone but those guys, well, I miss them this Christmas and didn't put up a tree because they weren't here. Didn't light up the tree outside either, nor did I get to do a shopping extravaganza but things change...the dogs had beef jerky and toys in their stocking, I got to hold my granddaughter in her beautiful white gown and wipe her nose when the snot bubbled. There's something about babies, they have a personality all to themselves and while they trust you to care for them, there's this invisble force there as well that's holding the fort. Not like you could drop them on their head and they'd bounce back but that they integrate with you on a level that is symbiotic and what you do cares for their needs in a way that cares for yours as well. They don't communicate through their voice as much as they use their entire body, like a sort of macro unit, toes, eyes fingers, hair, diaper, the whole schmeel and they know when you don't dig it as well. I saw several kids scream at the sight of Santa this year, and my granddaughter was one of them. Not that Santa didn't dig her, but it was Christmas Eve and at Silverdale Mall and imagine how many kids he'd already listened to. I think she was giving him a break..
"Ok, you can pass over me because Grandma is here and I don't get to see her all that much so I'd just as soon she hold me because she listens to everything I say..."
Santa was a pretty good egg about it...they managed to take some shots of those kids without the little screamer screaming and they all got peppermint sticks and a coloring book. Somehow I ended up with Myah's.
MMM, now the thought of my only grandbaby makes me kind of teary and I should get on with other things...life included. All three dogs are asleep around the fire, which is where I wou ld be if I had any gumption but I'm a dedicated life liver and that includes keeping pets out of the road. Some two by fours, a hammmer, gloves for the weather..nails...ahh...nails have been pretty well purloined by getting the Reef up to snuff..hmmm, might mean cleaning up the garage to find some nails...gosh is it going to rain...who cares...dogs have to get out and they don't need to be walked if the backyard is secure...secure...what a word..
a word for another day...
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