I was thinking about dance, music, sculpture, having some interesting conversation, my heroes probably dropped in to watch, Durer or Michaelangelo, I think Van Gogh was surely there, was it also Frankenthaler? Rothko? Bacon? (I don’t care how they may phrase it, they obviously were reaching for the divine under the names of beauty and truth.) I was thinking about the german fellow who melted away the flesh and sculpted-plus-hardened the remaining arteries…how these arteries are the structure upon which all human life depends, these frozen red rivers and streams and trickles beneath our skin, giving our soul a park in which to roam. Air to breathe. Truthfully who could remember all that I was thinking! Obviously a lifetime of searching weighs into it…some cursory knowledge in energy direction, the flight of the eye around the points of focus, the connection with intuition, the desire to allow rather than create.
I’m typically having some conversations with some spiritual visitors too, dead friends or relatives…
These really tangy chips-what on earth is this flavor!? …my incredible luck to live here, in this time, born to this landscape
the incredible mind blowing beauty of the trees, how they grow into Art Nouveau arches, Rackham eat your heart out, “tree museums” are my refuge and church, how amazing the food and talent of the now defunct sandwich shop, that I honestly had a hard time telling people about because the name was hard for me to remember, but the quality of every ingredient in every thing I ever ordered there is a rare and valuable-sometimes even an award winning thing. And yet here, it’s lost. Lost in a sea of mindless mediocrity. Have you seen the movie by Wem Wenders “Perfect days” ? I shall commune with the trees and the light and the colors, the chefs who made my food, the friend with which I am sharing the beauty and who has brought me the beauty of water so that I can go on communing ruthlessly without stopping because I am so joyfully alive. The artists and friends who are all my heroes and my reason to live
How time bends
How much I am grateful for my friend, understanding and enabling me to paint with undivided vigor by bringing me lunch, (because while chasing a painting it’s hard to think of everything) keeping me in cheery company as I attempt to harvest all the juiciest bits of the scene in front of me, inspiring me more by making art beside me, the color of the sunset
The tones on the tree, the magic which I don’t try to shape as much as I mine, or even nourish as it appears in watery pools of color or bent by the bark or taking form like earth is carved. It’s movement sweeps me up and takes me along.
I just say Yes Yes Yes
And she had characters drawn long ago on her black book that she was embarrassed about but showed me anyway, and I often wonder where the stretching vastness of amazement and shimmery brilliance will ever end? Is it not eternal?
It is a moment I can’t get back, I won’t try to force or recreate later. It is actually happening right now.
I sometimes fancy myself a reborn Monet…except instead of fog in this currently female-bodied internally mid gendered no longer young but never old descendant of Aztec and Mayan and Celtic roots, am now interested a bit more in the paint on the canvas both becoming and unbecoming…so that it is showing you a now and a how now that is open to you, and to how it also truly appears to me. Because the painting is to capture the subject. When I feel I have captured what I wanted to, I stop. So if it appears unfinished to you, you really ought to just look at it longer, look at what is there. That is the subject that I wanted to capture. It is enough, it is enough. Don’t riot like Philistines to the Rite of Spring. Dont bemoan the absence of explanation. It is like silence in music, it’s necessary. In this case it’s nearly a frenzy or a mirage. Safety is sometimes overrated But I don’t need to offer any explanations.
Just look at it, just listen
The planets have aligned today.
Like my heroes I have a hard time putting anything above art, but then I find that it also raises everything to the same level of spiritual. Hilarity is also spiritual. And while I paint I love the feeling of it automatically happening. I’m in a trance, sometimes I don’t recall any of it. Or it will come back in pieces.
Sometimes I am visited by a creature or insect or human and it’s always a bit of forge fodder. I guess I’m just stoking a gigantic forge (god, sounds so ugly now) a raging fire? I don’t know, my Mercury is in Aries.
It doesn’t really matter, I am sure I like my paintings more than you, it’s not so surprising now. It’s clear that you have to, you have to love them all. If you didn’t love them you wouldn’t stick with them, nourish them…your gifts that is. And ironically these gifts are meant for sharing. Absolutely must be shared. So far I’ve learned that that is of equal importance. So no worries if you aren’t convinced to have my picture in your living room, bathroom, hall way, t-shirt drawer, fridge, above your bed, your mantel, your sofa or any other dark bend.
So far I’m not worried. Every picture isn’t for everyone but it most certainly is for someone. Some people have no sense of humor, or take everything literally, or cling desperately to self importance or familiarity. I get it…I ain’t even mad that UK refused to give me my degree because my painting instructor was insisting I needed to have a subject and hiearchy. Lady, last I checked art was not moved forward by people following rules impressed upon them by degrees! But if you insist on showing how backwards the university can be by allowing you to throw your presumptuous weight around, be my guest?
Oh that’s very old water under a long fallen bridge which I digress into only by falling out of the moment.
I was likely thinking about the importance of parks, how we really can’t have enough parks, how all the more my heart aches for the lost sanctuary of wild birds and beavers and otters and snakes, flickers and foxes and kingfishers and wood ducks and so much more that used to be a shimmering part of the legacy trail as it joins Newtown Rd. The fact that the city did not buy this once park from IBM, and sent Amazon packing off to a less beautiful and less curated outdoor space, perhaps anything closer to a wasteland? God I dunno where, next to Cosco?
God damn Amazon warehouse. And as insulting as that loss to all of us is, most people don’t even know about it, but even years later as I go to the Nandino post office occasionally I see them carting off ruins of trees. My heart sinks further. I already can’t face that once magical space knowing what we lost. It was my most favorite park (though that word falls so short) in all of fair, quaint, charming, grand old Lexington. But let us at least think about how we can make up for it (even though we can’t. Let us mitigate the damage) let us all care a little bit more about birds and trees.
Music, good sandwiches, friendship and art.
Here now, is a tree which is really a tree. Oh my god yes. This tree and all it’s surroundings. Just beautiful, just because. Hahahaha! Like you.
And not, unfortunately, that Amazon warehouse.
