Verdant thoughts

The sun in my eyes, I flip the visor down. No effect. I tilt my head to one side and discover that, in addition to successfully positioning the rear view mirror between myself and the sun, it relieves the morning tension pent up in my neck. I slowly roll my shoulders back and forth as I listen to the radio.

Committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world.

Verdant? Green. I can't help but feel that this is a very ostentatious word to use. The word hangs in the air. How does a company BUILD a more green world? Plant an acorn? Plant a field more likely. I think about this for a moment. Can you plant a field? A better question is, perhaps, can a corporation? I think about this again, would they? Finally I ask myself the question that has been bugging me the whole time: What is this commercial talking about? Terraforming?

I picture settlers slowly rolling across the South Dakota prairie, the tall grass springing back beneath the weight of the wagon wheel to conceal the path behind them. There is no where to go but forward. The past is behind us.

I have this idea about a novel. A weather machine is invented to deliberately modify the atmosphere, temperature or ecology is bent to the will of man to make the world a better place to live. “Committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world.” I imagine it like an Arthur C. Clark novel, Childhood’s End perhaps. Where too late you realize that by manipulating the weather you are manipulating the fundamental laws of nature. People are affected at some core level. Change begins to happen.

Clark's Novel deals with the evolutionary changes to mankind, manipulated by another species, the Overlords, to transform mankind into fodder for the Overmind, a cosmic mind amalgamated from ancient galactic civilizations, freed from the limitations of ordinary matter. The Overlords are not themselves capable of joining the Overmind, but the Overmind has charged them with the duty of fostering humanity's transition to a higher plane of existence and merger with the Overmind, mankind's offspring evolved to a higher existence, requiring neither a body nor a place, so ends mankind's childhood.

Problematic. So if you manipulate the weather and discover that mankind is tied to existence, bound by the same laws that control the weather, and you break these laws, how is that manifested in humanity? Out of control birth and death rates? Overpopulation? Brain powers or brain Tumors? I find myself getting discouraged and I haven't event written the first sentence. No one is going to read this book.

I turn my attention to the road. I find myself driving a lot. It occurs to me that this is time spent alone. Is this modern alienation? How much time are we really alone? For that matter how are we ever really with someone else? When we are in the same room? When we are talking? When someone else listens? This idea of separation grows in my head.

I begin to feel lonely. I think about the girls. About S. putting on D.’s old Tigger costume. How cute she looked. I think about all of the costumes D. has ever worn. How they have changed. How she has grown. I think about the excitement that has been growing for the past few days. The allure of candy, the chance to don a costume and go out into the world, to team up with friends and family members and go out on this kind of scavenger hunt. I find myself smiling. The answer comes simply: When we play together.

I pull into the parking lot. The little medians between the rows of the parking spaces have been bulldozed clean. Velvety layers of freshly mown grass have been peeled back to reveal layers of dry earth mixed with bits of construction debris: chunks of cement, nails, twisted plastic. Hidden by the pallets of sod that had been lain down, the flotsam has been exposed for unknown purposes. Making a more verdant world no doubt.

Something has happened in Candyland, the king and his castle are no longer where they are supposed to be. “Oh cheer up!” says the ever hopeful Gramma nut, who lives in the peanut brittle house. Gramma believes that a very special little girl and boy can find the king and his castle at the end of the rainbow trail- if they look hard enough!

Compulsion

Little conversations keep bubbling up out of my subconscious, some real, some imagined. At one point I found myself revisiting my friend Oleoptene’s recent post on her “Crazy Mind reaction to [her blog] comments, getting them, or not getting them, not knowing what it means either way,” compulsively hitting the refresh button to see who had read her blog. My first thoughts were of my own coming to terms with posting, and receiving comments. But the more I thought about it, the more the meaning seemed to change for me.

My temples are pounding and I keep closing my eyes and lowering my chin to my chest waiting for the pain to pass. I walk into the kitchen, pour myself a glass of water from the fridge and drink it on one long draught. I like to drink water this way. No little sips. I like the feeling as the water floods my mouth, seeps out around the edges of the glass and dribbles ever so slightly along the sides of my cheek and down my neck. I like the feeling as I roll my head forward and lower the glass, the cool feeling left in my throat already subsiding. I sit back down and begin typing.

I begin thinking about David Sedaris’s short story “A Plague of Ticks,” from his book, Naked. In it, Sedaris describes the obsessive-compulsive behavior that drove his life during grade school. Licking light switches, counting each of "six hundred and thirty-seven steps" on the way home from school, "pausing every few feet to tongue a mailbox" and having to retrace his steps if he lost count, Sedaris was compelled to " . . . do these things because nothing was worse than the anguish of not doing them."

I begin making metal lists of the things I do compulsively. The making of metal lists is at the top of the list, along with counting miles on the odometer, and smelling the tips of my fingers. The further down the list I go, the more strange and bizarre the behaviors begin to appear. I refuse to make a list that pigeon holes my behaviors and ends up making myself out as crazy. I look back at the list. Are these behaviors compulsive? My eye falls on one item in particular: Closing cabinet doors.

Every morning I wake up with the kids and walk out into the still dark kitchen. Inevitably there is always a cabinet door or two open. Most likely because I was sleep walking a few hours before, getting a glass of water or a cheese sandwich and I forgot to close them. My eyes lock on the void between door and cabinet. It has to be filled. I quickly move to close the doors before the maddening chasm engulfs me. I am oblivious to paint chips that indicate the cabinets need to be repainted, the smudges of small fingerprints that need to be wiped along with the dribbles that streak the side of the doors from countertop to floor. The void must be filled.

With a sense of satisfaction I close the last of the doors. I can now turn my attention to more pressing matters like making coffee, another ritual that, while not requiring me to touch my elbow several times in rapid succession, nonetheless must be completed in several articulated phases if the process is to be complete at all satisfactorily.

Chip the glasses and crack the plates! Blunt the knives and bend the forks! That's what Bilbo Baggins hates, so carefully, carefully with the plates.

I stare at the counter several minutes later. There is a pool of water on the countertop beneath the coffee maker. “Where did that come from?” I imagine in my haste that I became oblivious to the water splashing from the coffeepot into the receptacle. Yet the sight of the water is so foreign I can’t bring myself to admit the obvious. The puddle is mine to own. I made that puddle. Incredulous. I reach for the sponge.

I am not compulsive. I am not compulsive. I chant over and over again compulsively. We learn nothing that hasn’t benefited us in some way along the line. Character defects surround us. We learn them in hard times. They are the behaviors that once kept us secure but have now long out lived their usefulness. Compulsion. A red badge of courage perhaps? I resist the temptation to file my friends into such tidy categories. They are my security blanket, my experiences, and, well, my insanity all rolled into one.

My temples throb. My eyes feel dry. Am I dehydrated? Time for another glass of water.

Nothing endures but change

There will be time, there will be time… a time to murder and create.

She stares at me with blank eyes. “You are failing my class." I say matter-of-factly. "You haven’t turned in any of the assignments on time, and while your test grades are improving you are still far behind.”
“I know” She says. “My boy friend is in the hospital…” I stop listening. All I can think is, what does that have to do with my class?
“Look, if you apply yourself, get A’s on the next two tests as well as the final two papers you might be able to pull a B. It is not too late, don’t give up.” I show her the math on an excel spreadsheet. You see her eyes widen, her expression incredulous as she realizes she will never make an A in my class. “You have missed too many points” I explain. Honestly I doubt she will make the B, but I am here to encourage.

A time to be born, a time to die… a time to love, a time to hate, a time for peace, I swear it’s not too late.

I can feel myself projecting through time and space. One moment I am sitting comfortably in my chair, my car, my bath, the next I am sitting in graduate critique listening to the professors "discerning judgment."

“You did better this time.”
“How so?” I ask, leaning over my chair.
“Well, for one you didn’t lose your temper.” It is odd, but when he says this I can feel myself getting angry. “Everyone commented on it.”
“What should I do now?”
“I wouldn’t do anything. Keep painting. Schedule more studio visits with the professors. Figure out what is working in your art. Make a list. Think about how you want to address these in the final.”
I make a mental check list. Don’t do anything. Paint. Talk to people. Be prepared. Sounds reasonable. Why do I want to run down the hallway screaming?

Perhaps if I stopped now I could make this feeling go away. I am comfortable teaching, and happy making art. School is just a distraction, I tell myself. I think about this for a moment. When have I ever been happy being comfortable? When have I ever grown? Growth happens when the pain of doing nothing becomes greater than the pain of change. My relationship, my job, they continue to grow and change because I have been willing, time and time again, to step up and make hard choices.

I am no good at this. Is it supposed to get easier? Probably not. But it does get better. After all, I would never be content being miserable all the time. Besides that gets old fast. I fight back the nausea of depression that struggles to pop out of my head like a new Athena. I don't let it. I have no interest in settling in, getting comfortable, and staying the same. I fight with J. less, I change jobs less often. I like what I do, and more importantly I like who I am becoming. Eventually, if I work hard, while I may not get it perfect, I may get there.

The food of Love

If music be the food of love, play on. What an interesting idea, The food of love. I wonder, what food would be the food of love? Lobster? Chocolate? Asparagus.

Driving home from work I was thinking about what dish we were going to take to the evening potluck. J. and I were celebrating the anniversary of our fifteenth wedding and decided to go to a church social. It was a potluck and everyone had to bring a dish. Potlucks can be a nightmare, potlucks and buffets. I always try to bring something that I can eat, that way, if there is nothing there for me to eat, I can always find comfort in a little home cookin’. The other problem with potlucks is the dish itself. It can't be too complicated, if can't be frozen or it will thaw. It can’t be a hot dish or it will cool. It has to be baby bear perfect.

Traffic is a great time for thinking. Thinking, that is, unless you find yourself screaming at the idiot that is parked in the slow lane, and the moron who just flew past you in the fast. Suddenly it hit me. Asparagus. I called J.

“Did you happen to pick up any asparagus at the store?”
“I did!” she replied gleefully.
“Cool! I was thinking we could take the asparagus salad to the party tonight.”
“Oh my God, that is so weird. I was just thinking the same thing.”
“Wow. That is a coincidence.”
“Great minds think alike.”
“Birds of a feather.”

She didn’t have to say another word. We were both thinking the same thought. Here on the occasion of our fifteenth wedding anniversary, not having seen much of each other in weeks what with school, work and shuttling the kids around to their extra curricular activities, we had both somehow managed to stumble on the exact same idea. That, or we needed a new, thicker cookbook.

Oh, but Love grows where my Rosemary goes And nobody knows like me.

As a child we used to hunt wild asparagus in our back yard in the spring. I planted some in the flowerbed in our backyard a few years ago. Now, D. loves to hunt them, though she isn’t tromping through an acre of German olive trees, nettles, and poison oak to get them, at least she gets her hands dirty.

At the party one guest asked me the ingredients. “Asparagus, red onion, red bell pepper, cilantro”
“And the dressing?”
“Coconut milk, lime juice, sugar, soy sauce…”
"Oh, it’s got soy? I can’t eat soy. I gave it up when I got pregnant.”

Later that night I was standing in the kitchen looking for a bottle opener when the host walked into the room.

“Great salad. But I can already tell I ate asparagus when I peed.”
“What?”
“You know, The way asparagus makes your pee smell.”
I didn’t know, but I understood. “Yeah, coffee does the same thing to me, I can always tell when I have had too much.”

He looked a little taken back, but then, he had already opened the door. Apparently producing odorous urine from asparagus was a universal human characteristic, whereas coffee was not. “Well, you know…” he trailed off and made a hasty retreat to the living room. I glanced around at the remaining bowls on the table, several dished picked clean, mashed potatoes with bacon, and kabobs of various meats. I picked up a plastic spoon and reached for the bowl of asparagus salad.

Cycles

The invisible clock ticks madly in my head. An e. e. cummings poem sits on my lips. Fragments of songs, a snippet from a short story I read twenty years ago, and the occasional ode are all in a queue waiting their turn.

At work I count the windows that line the long hallway, measuring them with footsteps, two short strides, three long, repeat. The walls are all white, virginal, while through the windows and below construction workers are putting the finishing touches on the massive refurbishing project.

In the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo.

“Have any of you ever seen this statue before?” Silence. I grit my teeth. There are some cultural icons that should not need introduction. “Anyone?” A girl in the back raises her hands.
“Why are her arms missing?”
“They were lost in antiquity.” She ponders this for a moment then asks:
“What was she holding?”
“That depends…” I hear myself speaking, but I am no longer listening. An apple, the story of Paris, then, a shield and the story of Venus and Mars, promises of love, illicit love affairs, I tick off the facts while my mind ponders the mystery of symbolism. When does an apple become only an apple once again? When do stories of heroes and goddesses, the birth of sin, or the discovery of the fundamental laws of the universe lose their luster? When the imagination can no longer encapsulated them in a single fruit? Several slides later I have moved on.

Driving home from work I am listening to the radio. “If voters in bellwether states or counties have been right in the past, maybe they'll be right again. But why should we trust them to predict anything at all?” Man is a cyclical creature.

Birth copulation and death, that’s all there is. That’s all there is.

Except it isn’t. We have been reinventing the wheel for ages. A dark age, followed by a rediscovery of the technology of the past, a renewed sense of self importance, an exploration of mankind’s greatness, followed by an exploration of our passions. Comfort, a renewed sense of self security, then disaster. Man is a cyclical creature.

“Do you want the chicken teriyaki?”
“What kind of sauce did you use?
“I mixed a little soy sauce and honey together.”
“Did you use the bottle in the fridge?”
“No.” I lied.
“O.K. But just one piece, and a glass of milk.”
I pour the milk. “How is it?” I ask.
“It’s O.K." she said, helping herself to more, "A little spicy, but o.k. “
“Great.”

Take only what you need

I am staring blankly at the ceiling. I have no idea how long I have been doing this. Did my eyes just open? Where is J? I feel the covers beside me. The familiar swell on the other side of the bed reassures me. It is morning.

“Have you considered Sol Lewitt?”

I can feel my muscles resist as I climb out of bed.

“There is a dead mouse outside the door daddy.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Tiger-Lilly must have caught it last night.”

My hand, wrapped in a plastic grocery bad swoops down to pick it up. Suddenly I am caught up in a moment of indecision. Where do you put a dead mouse? Dig a hole? Toss it in the alley? I glance over at the fence that marks the boundary between my house and the neighbors. She died last summer, and the house is still vacant. The back yard covered in overgrowth. Glancing one last time at the alleyway I arc my arm over my head and toss the mouse over the fence.

Morning ritual. I remove the reusable filter from the coffee maker and lift the lid of the trashcan. The fetid odor rises to greet my senses. My eye water slightly as I bend over and knock the contents of the filter into the chasm below then turn quickly for a breath of air.

“Help me get my socks on Daddy”

The coffee percolates in my stomach and I keep wiping the same grain of sleep out of the corner of my eye.

Time to go. I stuff the familiar tokens in my pocket. Wallet. Phone. Keys. Each one a statement about what I am doing and what I cannot go without.

When I left for college I had a suitcase and a guitar in the back seat of my car, and I had everything in the world I needed. When I moved from S.F. eight years later the car had turned into a u-haul, but the editing process had been the same. Take only what you need. Take only what you need. It becomes my mantra. The morning air is cool as I step outside the door. The coffee is doing the trick. The fresh air on my face is cathartic. Take only what you need.

I step outside and close the door.

Dallas Arts Review Knows Quality when they See it

"we were impressed by Lewis' update of the too many stripes we've seen in the past half dozen years. He's given them mass and texture and individuation..."

Click here for the total review

Divining the Clockwork

I am really sorely tempted to write yet another blog entry on the inane voices in my head. I think what has been keeping me back is the fear that people will think I am some kind of crazy. I was talking to a friend the other day telling him just this and he said “Are you kidding? I am pretty sure everyone has these voices.”

“Really?” I said.

“Oh yes.” He continued, “Just the other day I found myself thinking about the father of this girl I had been dating, he is a co-worker of mine, and I knew that he probably disapproved of that fact that I had stopped calling her. Before you knew it I found myself imagining the huge argument, the restraining order, and the so many hurt feelings that were going to follow if I ever had to face this guy directly. At the same time, I knew, since I worked with him, that a run in with him was inevitable. And while it is frightening how violent these images can become, the really scary thing is finding yourself imagining a bit of ultra-violence against somebody and waking up in the middle of the checkout line at Wal-Mart, and realizing that everyone else around you is doing the exact same thing and praying that they are able to show the same amount of self restraint that you have in acting against these impulses.”

This conversation, as unsettling as it was, helped me a bit and I began to calm down. A few days later, at my men’s meeting, I was thinking about this conversation again, particularly about the aspect of violence associated with these voices. I realized that the violence is the manifestation of anger in my psyche, and that all of this fantasy was merely a way of anesthetizing the fear that was somehow building up inside.

Anger trumps fear. While physiologically similar, anger has the benefit of allowing the individual to physically respond to the emotions that are welling within by confronting them, while fear makes me want to ball up and hide. The strange thing is, as powerful as this anger makes me feel, as powerful as the imagery of violence can seem, it is totally imaginary. Fear makes me feel powerless and anger confronts that feeling head on. The problem is that the anger is born of fantasy and eventually dissolves while the fear can be very real and may linger for days at a time. Anger, my droogie brother, is a placebo.

(The more I read it the more I am sure that I sound crazy!)

I think the irony of the voices is that they conceal the very feeling that offers the solution to fear. Acceptance and mindfulness. Acceptance for me comes from realizing powerlessness in a situation and letting go of the possible outcomes. Not an easy thing to do, especially when one is caught in the grasp of unreasonable fears and illusions of control that border a scene from A Clockwork Orange, but then that is why I am working so hard on these voices right now, practicing to recognize behaviors as they form and dispelling them before that take control of my thoughts. Right mindfulness involves bringing one's awareness back from past or future events or outcomes and places the attention squarely in the present moment. As I gradually get better at recognizing when the voices are taking over, I see that the mind is continually chattering with fear and judgment. Noticing that the mind is continually making commentary, I try to observe those thoughts, seeing them for what they are. I get the feeling the root of these fears are old and probably go way back for me. Fear is ugly. It resists inventory. But if I am patient I can begin to divine their origins and begin to take back my thoughts. (Oh and now I probably have to start working on a blog about patience because that is another one of these “shortcomings” that stands in the way of spiritual acceptance.

Recharging the Batteries

Well, another week come to an end. Yesterday was “University Day” at school. Graduate students in the Art department were asked to come out and help with “Art Day,” a series of workshops designed to showcase the art program and introduce the faculty to prospective students. So I show up at 7:45 and listen to the office workers complaining about how there has been no advertising of Art Day so we are going to get about twenty students and what a monumental waste of time this is. On top of that, they said, the faculty are embittered by the low turn out and don’t even want to be there. “It should be turned over to the graduate students,” is the sentiment. “They don’t do enough around here anyways.”

Listening to people complaining is the best part of waking up, especially after having spent a week juggling a full time job, and school and family and then waking up early on your Saturday to drive for an hour to donate your time to a University that thinks you are nothing but a slacker. Needless to say I spent the better part of the morning bitching to anyone who would give an ear before sneaking off to my studio before lunchtime.

I came back at lunch and chatted with another office worker about the purgatory that is Graduate school. She recalled a conversation between two professor who were joking about one particular graduate student that wanted to move through the program quickly and how these professors were going to make an example out of him. My lunch sat in my stomach like a cold stone as I could only imagine that this story was about me somehow.

Afterward, I went back to my studio, thinking about every conversation I had ever had with a faculty member. Art School is largely a subjective enterprise, and one can easily make oneself crazy trying to divine a course though the quagmire of personalities. I know that my own expectations were, in large part, making me crazy. After all, why not try to make some kind of plan for graduation? Still, in trying to plan a life for myself outside of school, I have tried to figure out every conceivable way of shortening my stay at the University. Not so much looking for shortcuts, as trying to be expeditious about my use of time. I ask you, what is wrong with that?

In retrospect, working yourself into a depressive frenzy and then going off and sitting in an isolation chamber for 5 hours was probably a bad idea. They turned off the power to the building in the afternoon. Probably working on the electricity at the construction site next door. I cleaned myself up and jumped in the car for the hour drive home. The depression fairies were working overtime.

I got home J. had had the same long week I had, only hers was punctuated with a newborn, small children, shuttling our daughters to school and swim meets and grocery stores. Hers is the definition of grace under fire. After dinner she graciously offered to put the kids to bed. As I curled into bed, I vowed to sleep until noon the next day and recharge my batteries. (No T.V. and No beer make homer something something.) Does recharging your batteries mean you have to be wholesale selfish about your needs? I think I thought so going to bed, but work up in the morning with the two toddlers and got them breakfast and entertained them for a while before I realized that a little family time and a little, just taking it slow is really all I need.

Gods and Men

Sometime I feel like telling God that h/his little "life lessons" aren't so friendly.

Wouldn't it be strange if s/he played by the same rules as Men? What kind of and S.O.B. would s/he be then?

(and why won't the voices in my head just shut up when I ask them to?

This Just in

Joe Biden Cracks up:




and Sarah Palin is "palling around" with secessionists:



It is getting scary out there folks!

Mr. Anderson

The way my Mom tell the story, one sunny Sunday morning in the late 1940's at a church in Freeman Minnesota, the pastor climbed into the pulpit and began his sermon.

"Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envying, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God

Now, today I am going to be talking about the sin of demon liquor, like Elza Anderson (pointing to my grandfather) sitting there in the third pew willingly distributes."

Accounts vary on what happened next, Whether my grandfather stood up and escorted my mother and grandfather from the church that instant, or whether he waited patiently till the end of the service. Either way, the record is clear, we were done being Methodists from that day on.

tongue-tied and jibber jabber

Standing in front of group of teachers, graduate students and assorted spectators, I found myself tongue-tied when one of them put a very simple question to me. “How is this painting about unity?” It is one of those funny little questions that artists get asked whenever the audience wants to reduce the conversation to the formalist aspects of an artist work. There are the elements of design, the line, the color, the shape, the texture and so forth. Then there are the principles of design, unity, variety, balance, scale, and proportion.

Want to ask an artist a straightforward question about why they chose the color red? You are just as likely to get the proverbial cold shoulder, as you are to get an answer. Why? Because you are engaging in an age old dialogue of art that questions the use of the techniques of an artistic medium to capture the essence of a thing rather than its mere outward appearance. Which is more important. That it is red, or that it is Red? I know. I don’t believe it either.

Now, in usual fashion I would embark at this point in either of two directions, one, that the question asked to me was just wrong and would go one to whine about “How unfair.” Or two, begin a lengthy discussion on the difference between Plato and Aristotle and the evolution of the language of formalism in the twentieth century. However, I plan on doing neither. (Yes, you can breath a sigh of relief)

You see, as I sat there momentarily stunned by the professors question debating with myself the direction I should go, and, at the same time stammering something about composition and color, I realized that I was, in fact channeling the spirit of Sarah Palin. I suddenly understood why I hated listening to all the jibber jabber about her.

I guess I have been where Sarah Palin has been, tongue-tied and trying to talk myself into a job that I might not be readily qualified for. Not that I am not qualified to be an artist or professor of art, but that I am just starting out and still have much to learn. And President? Honestly, who is qualified for all of the things that the president is supposed to do? Who has the military, economic, energy, social welfare, etc. experience that would make them uniquely qualified? No one. (Incidentally the original job of the president in reality is only to Veto, run the military and enforce the laws of Congress. Not all this other crap, but I guess those days are gone.)

I am an incurable romantic. I romanticize painting, I believe in true love, and I love the movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington because it embodies the same romantic idealism about America that I share. You know, those ideas like the separation of powers, the idea that one vote can make a difference and that anyone can grow up to become president, no matter how humble their beginnings. (or how stupid their rhetoric)

Sarah Palin is no Jeff Smith. But like the Smith in the movies she gets a lot of bad press, she is inexperienced, and she appears pretty stupid at times. Still she should have her shot, as much as anyone should, I guess. Not that McCain/Palin will get my vote. I get really tired of the demeaning bad press, and I respected Biden’s restraint from indulging in this behavior during the debate. I, for one, am going to take my queue from this leader and follow suit. Hell, I will even vote him.