From Andalusia to Zagreb

Breeze blew ‘cross Byzantium

   ages ago,

passing passion along from ancient souls

   o’er peninsulas and shoals.

From Alexandria to Andalusia

   it blew the Medi stirring of our arcane East

   by westward winds past the European feast.

So it drifted between Aranjuez and Zagreb

   in periodic flow and ebb

   with rhyrhmic ebb and flow

   through passionnata on stringéd bow . . .

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g91kQyy4G7E.

   . . . at providential and the muse’ behest,

   and set in sculpted stone: eternal rest;

   portraying Piéta Jesu through Michelangelo,

 

   as still the women come and go

   ‘cross Eliot’s wasteland scenario.

From Ave Maria in Madrid

   this opus we/they did;

   even SaintSaens’ secular Swan

   summons that age-old bond:

   reflecting melancholic tension

   in existential apprehension

   again and again and again;

   the passion passes

   through striving laborious hands

   in colored or melodic strands.

On moonlit nights;

   sonata strains reflect the light

   from hand to frantic hand

   and back again.

Did history require

   two world wars

   and a string of smaller frays

   to say

   our living legacy dies daily?

Yet does our living tragedy thrive daily,

   in this human soul of frailty.

Why even a saintless ’60’s Superstar

   drove our anguished digression,

   our zeitgeist obsession,

   as passion passed through

   rejected hands again

   as passion passed through

   conflicted lives again

   as passion passes through

   immigrant pathos again

   and again and again

   to reveal those nail-scarred hands again

Again.

   Must be something to it;

   we should not eschew it:

Those despiséd and rejected ones of men--

   again and again and again:

   the passing man of sorrow,

   yesterday, today, tomorrow—

   the woman acquainted with grief,

   through death that steals in like a thief

   the stranger and the strange,

Again and again and again.

Must be something to it;

   we should not eschew it.

Glass half-Full

what Original artist did

While universe was expanding in all directions, Creator chose one lump and began working with it, rearranging its underneath mass so that water could rise to the surface. The hydrogen/oxygen element would move in a purposeful way instead of just sloshing around.

Creator spun that world into motion so that the sunlight which struck its surface would brighten half of world for a day while allowing the other half to return to darkness during the same interval.

Thus did this division between the lightened side of world and the darkened side establish a cycle which would become known to us as day and night.

Then Creator used the interaction of sunlight and water to introduce an earthly cycle by which water could morph between two different states: liquid and vapor. The liquid would generally flow on, and within, the surface, while the vapor would rise to celestial functions.

This was a heavenly arrangement, although it was happening on crude earth—pretty cool, definitely an improvement over the old lump. Let us just call it day and night. Makes sense to me. You?

Creator was inspired, and so, kept going with it, stirring the flowing waters, gathering them together and thus separating the water from a new thing that was emerging—dry land.

Thus did we have earth and seas. Once again. . . pretty cool, and btw, cooling; by this stage, progressive processes had definitely been set into motion to produce something worthy of a good narrative.

But Creator didn’t stop there. Next thing you know, from out of this developing earth—this interplay between light and dark, active and passive, wet and dry—here comes a new kind of stuff having the coding wherewithal to sprout new stuff never before seen or heard of. Long story short—plant life that could and would regenerate itself on a regular purpose so that Creator could go on to bigger and better things. Awesome!

Through the veggies and their seeds, it was obvious that things were getting better on earth, through the continuing interplay of this very predictable, dependable alternating cycle between light and dark, day and night, active and passive, living and dying.

All in all, not bad for a day’s work, as we say out here in flyover country.

But, hey, that was just the beginning. . .

Glass half-Full

The Patchmaker

Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a match.

That’s the opening line in a song that Barbra Streisand sang in the musical movie, Funny Girl, back in the day, 1968.

She was addressing her request to  a matriarchal lady who used to perform a certain cultural role—pairing up a young woman with a young man for marriage— in the subculture of Jewish immigrants in New York City, sometime back in the early 20th-century.

I thought about that line while we were strolling through Valencia, Spain, yesterday. But my remembrance of the phrase was a little off the mark. I was singing it in my mind this way:

Patchmaker, patchmaker, make me a patch.

The reason is: everywhere I go in the world—and in life, generally— I see gaps, where there is space because something is missing, something that should be there, or that used to be there.

Here’s an example of a gap I saw yesterday:

Apparently this problem of missing stuff is nothing new. The dearth has been going on for a long time. There are gaps everywhere, and going way back in time. A few days earlier, we came across this church structure in Madrid that had, indeed, been patched.

This phenomenon of filling spaces goes much farther, I have noticed, than just plugging physical gaps in buildings.

There are many, many gaps of all kinds in this world—many pieces missing from the puzzle.

Something is missing everywhere you go!

Everywhere we go, we find blank spaces that need to be filled with something—something appropriate, something—or some message—that is thought-provoking, or profound, or at least cutesy.

Consider this profound message that was filled in by some anonymous enterprising patchmaker.  I noticed it this morning on a wall in Valencia while we here having brunch at the Brunch Corner:

Pretty heavy stuff, don’t ya think? What a message!

Also notice, above the painted message, the broken-off walls in the background which certainly do need some patching or repair. I bet the owner of this broken-off building sings Funny Girl’s song:

Patchmaker, patchmaker, make me a patch!

But back to the painted message below the broken wall, next to the stacked chairs—take a look at it. Doesn’t the style of the lettering ring a bell somewhere in your mind?

Haven’t you noticed that, anywhere you go in the world, as you notice the messages posted in out-of-the-way places—places that need some kind of patch or profundity—there is always a graffiti written there, apparently written by the same person who has a very consistent, blocky style that he(she) displays on walls everywhere in the world?

You see this guy’s work everywhere! Check this out. I snapped the pic while rolling along in a Spanish train somewhere between Valencia and Barcelona. Don't be distracted by the reflection of interior train space at the top of the photo. Concentrate on the message!

Whoever this artiste is that’s doing this work, I don’t know, but I think we oughta give him(her) an award, because he(she) really gets around, and does an incredible amount of work wherever he(she) goes, because (s)he always seems to get the message posted in the most unlikely places. (S)he must be the same person that Paul Simon was singing about in his song, the Boxer, when he patched into his Boxer song this phrase:

“When I left my home and my family, I was no more than a boy, seeking out the poorer places where the ragged people go, looking only for the places only they would know.”

I have noticed, you see, that this patchmaker person—whoever (s)he is— really gets around. Everywhere in the world, everywhere you go—her(his) work is displayed in out-of-the-way places.

You know what I’m talking about. You’ve seen Paco’s work. (I’m pretty sure his name is Paco.) I saw a bunch of his stuff today, painted onto concrete walls that line the railway, a place where no  regular people would go to, a place where only “the ragged people” would go to.

Looks like this:

Wherever this guy Paco hangs out, I think the Academy oughta do a search on (s)him and give him an artiste award for patching in all the blank space between everything else that exists in the developed world.

Gracias, Paco! for all the work you do, and have done.

And as they say on Laugh-In, Salut!



King of Soul

The Deep

As we grow older in this world, we gain a deeper understanding of  what is going on here. But it can be discouraging. In many ways, what we find is not pretty, and it makes no sense.

The disconnect between the way the world is and the way we think it should be becomes an existential crisis for those of us who are sensitive to such issues.

Attached to this dilemma we find a long historical trail of people attempting to deal with the problem. Along that path we find tragedy, depression, pathos, melancholia, despair, existential crisis, schizophrenia and a myriad of other assorted travesties.

But there’s a favorable output that sometimes arises through this conundrum. It’s called art.

And music, and literature.

I’ll not get into the specifics of it; but we discern, threaded through our long, strung-out history, an overwhelming human opus of emotional and soulful profundity. It  has been woven through the sad, dysfunctional and tragic tapestry of our apocryphal struggle for meaning. It has been sounded forth and sculpted continuously even as our very survival is perpetually  called into question.

The depth of this existential crisis is expressed by the poet when he desperately cried out:

“O my God, my soul is in despair within me;

therefore I remember you from the land of the Jordan,

and the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.

Deep calls unto deep at the sound of your waterfalls;

all your breakers and your waves have rolled over me.”

From the mountaintops of human awareness, and from the turbulence of many wanderous shore epiphanies, we homo sapiens somehow manage to  bring forth as offerings a cornucopia of creative endeavors; they are birthed in desperation, and they are often borne in desperate attempts to somehow attain hope.

You catch a hearing of that struggle to which I allude, in this music, composed in Spain in 1939 by Jaoquin Rodrigo:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9RS4biqyAc 

You can catch a glimpse of it in Picasso’s mural, composed in Spain in 1937, after the Luftwaffe bombing of Guernica:

 

But in my exploration of these matters, the most profound expression of the pathos curse is manifested in the life of one person who, by his laborious struggle, imparted the purest and most enduring message of love ever etched upon the parchment of human history; but his great gift was rejected through our judgmental travesty: a sentence of crucifixion.

Yet out of that most extreme humiliation there arose an even greater opus of creative, persistent love : resurrection.

If you can even believe it.


Smoke

Peering through windows

Whether through windows of time

or a window of glass

we peer through,

maybe through the windowed pane

eyes of the artist who is

long gone yet

lives on

displaying legacy image for us

to view

through our window of time

into his memory of love

through her yielding to the pangs

of love

the pain of love

Yeah, windows golden with memory

they are

moments of love so

dear to him and her and now

to us

golden memories they are

images of what carried them forward

into future or carry us

backward into reflection

backward into history

where precious intricacies of the human mind and hand were

crafted for us or 

assembled for us

to see,

to view

through a glass darkly

through barriers of time

or glass

or gates of iron or the

gates

of Vienna

when the invaders had been turned away

and later where

the artist lived and breathed and

loved

and left a gift, their moment of prescious love

which came to be their

golden moment,  and later his gilded

memorial of love for us to

peer into,

before the gates could close again.

 

Smoke

We all live in a Blueish Bussarine

It's amazing what we humans have done with techno throughout the ages of time
Way back in the mists of anthropological mystery some Croation CroMagnon got a bright idea to knock off the angular faces of a stone. He kept chipping away at it until the thing was more or less round; it looked so cool he decided to make another one. Then he got the history-rocking idea to punch a hole in the middle of each stone and then connect the two together with a wooden pole.
Next thing you know he's wheeling his stuff around on a cart, gathering his food a la cart. This was definitely an improvement.
Human history rolled along at a quicker pace after that.
Eons of time went by. Then a while back ole Isaac Watts put mind and metal together with the the potentialities of heat and water. in an advantageous arrangement. that became know as the steam engine and so it wasn't long before we homo sapiens were using the thing to power everything up. Some guy came along and slapped that steam engine onto a cart with a set of wheels and whammo we humans had ourselves a powered vehicle for purposes of transporting ourselves and all our stuff.
Wow!
Henry Ford happened along and he paired up assembly line strategy with mass production productivity. Next thing you know, everybody and their brother is out driving around on Sunday afternoon in a Model T or Model A.
Soon afterward, some other folks come along and did their version of Ford's world-changing whirligig, so then we had wheeling around not only Models A and T but also models GM and MG and model GTO and BMW and model '57 Chevy and '65 Mustang and so forth and so on.
All along the way, these fossil-fuel-powered motorized mobilizers were extending their influence into the other elements such as air and water.
Airplanes in flight, Boats on water, millions of them puttering along with their enginary cousins everywhere here there and yon and all over the world.
In 1966, a scant year after the historic '65 Mustang made its mark on the prairies and the dusty deserts along Route 66, the Beatles came up with a new idea, the yellow submarine.
"We all live in a yellow submarine," they sang.
This is a fascinating concept. The Beatles never stated it blatantly in their song, but the idea is this: in our evolving 20th-century consciousness we can surmise that this planet--even as huge as it is--is nevertheless a closed ecological system, not unlike a submarine.
Another expression of this idea is seen at Disney World in what the Disneyites call "Spaceship Earth."
While our ancestors thought of the earth as somehow infinite in its distances and its capacities, we 21st-century world-dwellers are understanding that what comes up must come down. Pollution up, pollution down. Carbon up, carbon down, and everything (as the stuff spewing from our exhaust pipes) that goes up eventually comes down. All that stuff we spew into the air and all that stuff we bury in the landfills, it doesn't just magically go away.
"Out of sight, out of mind" is a fallacy that perpetuates our fantasy of an earth that possesses infinite capacity.
We the people who inhabit the so-called "developed world" are now starting to take this emissions stuff seriously. Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, the so-called "third world" and "developing nations," those folks are trying to develop their economies and their infrastructures under the constraints of our post-modern enlightened consensus about us all living in a limited-capacity closed ecosystem--a sort of yellow submarine.
In our present world, India seems to be in a developmental category that is somewhere between "developed world" and "third world."
As I was strolling along yesterday on a high-tech promenade of Disney's Animal Kingdom, I lingered to appreciate this old disabled bus.

It used to be a carbon-emitting transportation machine in a third world country, but now it has morphed into an ice cream booth in our hyper-entertained theme park of USA inc.
I would like to thank the Artist(s) of India, whoever he or she was who decorated this bus. Nice work!
And I would like to commend the Disney person(s) who saw the historic value of this work of art. To me, it represents the idea that we all live in a blueish bussarine, and not everything that wears out must be thrown away.

Glass Chimera

from Ridiculous to Sublime

A couple of nights ago, I briefly tuned into that greatly over-hyped debate. Donald was blathering about Hillary's emails and she was going on and on about his failure to release tax returns.

Nothing new here, just more of the same old same old blah blah.

So I ditched it, and went back to what I had been doing before, because, I thought, this is ridiculous.

Well then a day or two rolls by.

This afternoon, while listening to WDAV on the radio, my soul was stirred profoundly by the hearing of an amazing selection of music. And I found myself wondering, what is it about this music that moves me so much?

I don't know, but I can tell you one thing. This music it is sublime.

What is sublime? you may wonder. I cannot adequately explain to you what the word sublime means, but I can show you where the meaning is clearly demonstrated if you will listen to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOofwWT3Edc

As the changing drama within the music builds up, pay particular attention to these minute-time points in the video: 2:58, 4:00, 5:55 and 8:32.

I recently read something about how or why this artistic dynamism moves us so much. In his book, A Secular Age, Charles Taylor says . .

". . . such art can serve to disclose very deep truths which in the nature of things can never be obvious . . ."

This music is, after all physical analysis is said and done, merely a pounding of wood and metal beneath the orchestrated hands of trained men. How can it be, then, that it moves me so?

To try to understand why or how, you might as well try to comprehend how or why, over two centuries ago, some men and women like you and me had a luxurious building constructed and then walked around on its mosaic floor like they owned the place and then later a bunch of other stuff happened and things changed and it got covered up for a long time and then one day some other people came along and dug it up and said . . .

". . .well, gollee, what do you know about that?"

"Gosh, Jeb, it's a mystery to me."

Glass Chimera

Art

I remember when we went to the Louvre.

Strolling down a long hallway of Italian Renaissance.

Here was a viewer viewing.

There was a person looking with wonder.

Here a person, there a painting

Here a painting, there a person

Here and there along

the hallway.

Interesting.

Arriving at the end,

we entered a large room.

Over on the other side of the room:

maybe a hundred people

looking at one painting.

Go figure.

Mona Someone.

That's art for ya.



I read something the other day,

whether 'tis true or not I cannot say.

When the British were pulling out of India

they were upset, and they had gone

daft.

Some potentate gave the order to

destroy a sacred building, you know,

like blow it up. But

at the last minute, the Viceroy issued an order:

Don't do it.

So they didn't.

Tajma somethingorother.

That's art for ya.



Then there was the time some Brit

archeologist or whatever he was, took possession of

a Greek statue, a lovely lady she was,

or had been, back in the day.

Well this caryatid lady had five sisters

back in Athens, and she really

missed her sisters, so the Greeks tried to get her

back from the British Museum where she has been

imprisoned all these years, and still is but

The Brits won't let her go,

a captive Carytid.

That's art for ya.



Streamin' through some flix

on the Net

I stumbled upon a story about a

Woman in gold.

A precious portrait of this lady

was stolen by the Nazis when they were taking were over

the world, or so they thought,

and they had the pic hidden for a long long time but then

it was found.

The Nazis didn't own it any more, but a museum did and

they were not inclined to

give it back to

the rightful heirs.

But then a judge in America got it back for the family.

So the Woman in Gold came home,

'though it was not the home she had known; it was

a new home. She had never been there. May she rest in

peace.

That's art for ya.



The men come; the women go,

looking for another Michelangelo.

That's art for ya.



When I was young man, and I didn't

know much about anything

there was a fella who made a big pic of a

Campbell's soup can and

they called it. . .well

that's art for ya.



And somewhere in my memory there's cave art,

that I learned about in school or somewhere

where they found these caves in France.

Neanderthals or somebody kin to them had painted

these animals on the cave walls.

I guess this impulse has been with us for a long long

time.

That's art for ya.





This morning I wandered lonely as a cloud

into a little gallery, to see

pictures at an exhibition,

as it were.

I saw a photograph:

a wooden dock upon a calm pond

with large polka dots painted on the little pier

in an orderly way. Beneath the the image was

another photograph; this time one of a

a similar boardwalk with the same

large polka dots on the boards,

extended not upon a watery pond, but

out upon a desert scene,

like, no water in between

or underneath.

How clever these spots seem.

Well I just had to laugh;

I saw a photograph.

That's art for ya.



Now as I was saying before.

So there we were at the Louvre and

we were strolling around a big room where

Marie de Medici had commissioned--or maybe it was Catherine--

some special painting to be done.

It just so happened that I glanced

up at the ceiling and

there I noticed a big clump of pink flowers--or maybe they were mauve--

painted in the middle of

a blue sky background.

Then my eye wandered across the sky blue to behold

a muscular black man extending his hand down

to me.

Who me?

He was smiling.

As if to say. . . come on up. It's okay. Your time has come.

And as I took in the rest of that ceiling scene there were other people

around him. Upon closer inspection I discovered they were, like,

baby angels, and so I suddenly realized

I was at my funeral.

Someone had thrown a pink bouquet on me.

Or maybe it was mauve. And the smiling man was offering me

a hand up.

So shall it be for me, someday, as it was for Marie.

That's art for ya.



Glass Chimera

The Wind

I don't remember the first time

I ever felt it,

or saw or heard it, but

I know it is there.

I mean I know its here

or at least it was a minute ago.

And before that I saw a picture of it,

evidence that it was there

or here or somewhere.

It was in an art gallery where Mr. Wyeth had

done something or other that

moved me, really moved me although

I don't know why.

This involved brushing paint on a canvas.

It was a wistful scene but then a few minutes later

I saw another work that some artist had left behind

about a shipwreck, and it looked pretty severe.

So it works both ways.

Don't know how or when

but I remember too, some poet or his

singing about it, and he said the answer was

blowing in it,

the answer to what I don't know

maybe how many times must the cannonballs fly

or the winds of war blow or

the winds of change rearrange

everything that is or ever was or ever will be.

A few days ago I was in that windy city

where stuff had happened

long ago, back in the day,

and I remembered

part of what had happened

but I wasn't sure if it had happened to me

or if I just remembered it from some

news report I saw or some

painting I viewed or collective memory from

my g-generation

and then I remembered that ye must be born

again. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear

the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from

and where it is going; so is everyone who is born

of the Spirit

and that's enough for me.

You feel it?

I'm not making this up.



King of Soul

Allies in History

The Charger rides out upon a cusp of history's advance

with zeal that flashes in his hand,

brandishing our great weapon of destiny

that had earlier been forged

upon the anvil of progress.

He's duty-bound on pushing the envelope of change

through yonder canyon of chaos, or mountain of

justice, whichever comes forth first.

His steed, chomping at the bit to yank upon the seams

of troublous times,

rips out the evil twins of lethargy and lies, and

by opposing ends them

for a while.

Yon Paxateer, on the other hand,

is methodical and principled.

He summons forth coalitions of belief,

taming methods of madness,

crossing rivers of patient sadness.

His armature has accumulated in the crucible of time

from the residue of our Charger's blood,

and the aggregate left behind when women toil

and men do sweat

for all the progress mankind can get,

although we are not there

yet,

if ever shall we be.



Together, between them,

among them and in spite of them,

the wisdom of the ages settles in,

if there is such a thing.

For history is not yet written,

nor the evils that beset men smitten

until the sands of time

are deposited on this body of mine

and yours.

King of Soul

Try to keep some perspective on this

It's All About Your Perspective.

While wandering on the National Mall in Washington DC, I chanced upon the National Gallery of Art, so I went in there to have a look around.

What a beautiful place.

Especially interesting to me was the special exhibition on the work of the French artist, Gustave Caillebotte.

http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/exhibitions/2015/gustave-caillebotte.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Caillebotte

In the background of my unauthorized photograph, which you see here, is the canvas that Monsieur Caillebotte painted in 1877. The painting hangs upon a wall in the next room, beyond the room I was standing in while I snapped the pic:

Not visible to you is an explanatory placard that is fastened on the wall next to his famous artwork. Some art historian has explained therein that Gustave's work reflected a new influence on the painterly art. Photography, the emergent technology of that that day and time, latter-19th-century, had a profound effect on the artist's composition, perspective and use of focus in certain areas of the painting while rendering foreground and background slightly out of focus.

Now in my iPhone photograph, the whole picture is out of focus. I did this on purpose, imitating, as it were, the French impressionists, all of whom had rendered their oil-on-canvas opuses slightly out of focus, as if they had forgotten to put on their glasses when they went out to labor at the easel that day in 1877.

I can relate to this, because I am nearsighted as a bat; my profound appreciation for turn-of--the-20thCentury is perhaps related to this dysfunction in my eyeballs. I'm like one of those less-than-perfect persons you see in the Latrec paintings that came later.

So you can see here that I myself have entered into the gallery of impressionist phone-artists of the early 21st Century. And in my opinion this photograph is an artistic extension of the work that was pioneered by Messers Caillebotte, Renoir, Monet, Manet, Matisse etcetera etcetera.

The gentleman on the left in my etoîle image here was doing his job well; so he was obliged to tell me that I couldn't take pics in that room.

I did not know that (and I am telling the truth), I said to him.

"There's a sign at the entrance to the room," he said.

Oh.

Nevertheless, the image was already captured in my mobile device, so hey, what the heck, I thought I'd share my perspective with you.

Have a nice day. And remember. . .

As you travel through life, brother and sister, whatever be your goal, keep your eye on the detail, not on the whole.

Or maybe it's the other way around.

Anyway, try to keep your highest priorities in focus. As for the artsy stuff, that focus element is not necessarily essential.

Just please keep it in perspective, so that you know what you're looking at while you're looking at it, if that's possible.



Glass Chimera

You in America now!

While walking in our nation's Capital yesterday, my somewhat aimless wandering intuition impelled me along a pavement path that provided, perhaps unexpectedly, a sudden purview of the Fed. That is to say, I was suddenly standing there in front of the Federal Reserve, where Federal Reserve Notes, better known as dollars, are generated.

Since I like to capture pics of places that are perceived as power penumbras, I prepared to snap a picture.

But before I took the picture, I wanted to make sure everything was hunky-dory, because there happened to be a couple of federal police guys right there, where I had decided to pause and snap the pic. So I asked them if I could take this picture of the building:

The reason I sought their permission is because, a few months ago when Pat and I were in Rome, we were passing by an entrance that appeared to be some kind of official building of the EU, European Union. (I knew this because of the two flags, Italian and EU, which were displayed above the main entry door). In order to get a larger perspective for my anticipated picture, I crossed the street and prepared to snap the pic.

But while I was snipping it, the guard began gesturing to me quite frantically, really quite aggressively, so that I got the message that I shouldn't be snapping such a pic.

. . .although I did not know why. But I was nevertheless able to ascertain his prohibitory meaning, and so I immediately ceased and desisted from any further photographic presumptions. But that was after I had managed to snap one prohibited pic:

As a result of that experience I have been, from that day forward until now, a little bit inhibited to snap a permissive pic of any public place without official permission.

But yesterday, on this particular occasion, in Washington, D.C. yesterday, there was no problem, because when I asked the policeman, after explaining that in Rome they had shut me down, he said no problem!. He laughed and said:

"Well this is America, and you can take all the pictures you want!"

Boy, was I relieved.

Then later, when I thought about it all, yesterday's pic-snipping liberty seemed ironic, because the policeman's statement reminded me, oddly enough, of what the old guy, Fiddler, had said to young Kunta Kinte, in the 1980's miniseries Roots, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075572/

written by Alex Haley. When Kunta Kinte was just off the boat, a slave-ship, and bound in chains, writhing in agony, having such a hard time adjusting to life as a slave in pre-Emancipation America. That's when ole Fiddler had said to him:

"You in America now!"

Which is to say: You in slave-country now, boy, not like back in the old country where you was some kind of tribal prince or whatever you were there.

The very terrible news announced by Fiddler to Kunta Kinte was that now, in the Land of so-called Opportunity, the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, the black man was, sad to say, no free citizen, certainly no tribal cheiftain or son thereof, but rather a slave, a piece of property to be owned by some white-privileged slave-owner.

But when the federal police guy said to me yesterday You're in America now, it was a much more liberating declaration than the one that Kunta Kinte had gotten when he arrived here a few hundred years ago.

These days we have more freedom here, and less paranoia, than the Europeans. Take all the pics you want. And the great grandsons and great granddaughters of slaves also have more freedom than their enslaved ancestors did.

Viva Las Picturas!

Nevertheless, today I did wander, right here in the Capital of the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, into a situation that was photographically prohibitory. At the Art Museum, I was told not to snap pics in a certain room. But I had already, in my ignorant haste, snipped one contraban pic!:

So don't tell anybody you're seeing, in the gallery background above, this American photo of a famous French painting. That way we can continue to celebrate La Liberté, La Fraternité, L'Egalité.

Glass half-Full

Life cycle of Art

Oh, wintry flakes pile up on our dwelling place

while summer's green be gone with little trace

until one day stalactite ice gets a grip,

and another day begins to drip.

Soon the forest floor, laid with humus deep

will send up shoots and begin to peep;

from little bits and bites that life discarded long ago

life will resume its spritely show.

Then peeps pop up from forest floor,

their thriving purpose soon to restore;

with us inside our dwelling safe and sound

this man considers what is all around.

See, sprouting life is nestled in a natural place,

'though we have assigned unto it all some human trace.

And so, as if the real thing were not interesting enough,

we go and imitate life with our arty stuff.

And though we so cleverly form our stuff into some crafty work

to promote our art as masterpiece, or some other querk,

we really do just throw our weight around in this natural world

as bull in china shop, while shards get hurled.

That movement comes; this stillness goes

until living dies; then dying throws

its soulful cycle through an open door,

returning it to the earthen floor.

Selah.


Glass Chimera

SFMuni bus #48

Yesterday I took the #48 SFMuni bus ride from the Mission district over Diamond Heights to the West Portal.

I ambled around a bit, wandered lonely as a cloud through a corner of Golden Gate Park, then strolled straight up Haight, past Ashbury to Masonic, then northward through the Panhandle to Fulton and by n by took a long jaunt back to mid-town and the San Francisco Opera house.

This morning, Pat and I hopped on the #48 and rode out to West Portal. Now we are kickin' around, having taken a trolley(modern version) over to catch a view of the Pacific, which we had seen earlier this year, but that was down the coast a bit, in Costa Rica.

I like the #48 bus. I was surprised to see it depicted in this mural, which we were viewing yesterday afternoon on Balmy alley in the Mission:



At the present moment, early Monday afternoon Sept. 29, 2014, I am sitting at a Starbucks preparing to send you this little digital communicado. You may see the skullish fellow in the painting. He is is typing away on a laptop, as I am at this moment, and probably hoping to connect cyber-cytizens of the world to some idea or story that will lead them to hell or heaven or somewhere in between. I hope the artist did not have this old white guy (me) in mind in that detail.

That cannot be me in the pic anyway, because I am not wearing a black robe. I'm wearing a Carolina blue shirt.

As for the excellent painting jpg'd here, I recommend you study it closely. It is very well done. But somehow I feel not entirely empathetic to its angstish message. On the other hand I can tell you that the painting itself is evidence that not all is well in this present arrangement of things: this truth I acknowledge.

As for the worldy injustice that is alluded to herein, I could write a book (yet to come.) It would be a long book, the fourth I have written, a labor of love, an opus, although others have probably done it better than I.

Nevertheless, If I may offer one brief advisement with which to leave you, it would be: read Matthew 5, 6,7. The message there is, I believe, even more powerful than, say, Marx, Mao or Che. And even more revolutionary than this painting, but not as colorful.

Glass Chimera

The Memory of Wild

Deep down inside
it is there
or is it?
high above the green forest canopy
nearly hidden from our sights.
or hiding from our captive
civilizing acquisitive
sites.
Living high above our territory
it is there
or is it?
burrowing beneath the trod of human feet
cringing from electronic drumbeat
of civilizing man
beneath the artifacts
among fossils
fleeing us fools
flora and fauna
i wanna
u. I think therefore
am I?

Glass Chimera

The Interface of Light and Matter in Costa Rica

In my freshman philosophy class, Dr. Henderson used the word "anthropomorphic" to describe Man's tendency to form a notion of God into his own human image. That is to say, we make God out to be human, or like a human, because that's all we know.
After 44 years later of pondering this and living the wonderful life God hath provided, I prefer the Torahic approach to conceiving what God is like. Torah, or Genesis, says God made Man in His own image. God was expressing himself when created all things, including humans. If we see human characteristics in his handiwork, it's because God intended for us to see that he was expressing himself through creation, just like we do.
God is an artist, like me.
Those artistic tendencies that he developed within me are what enable me to appreciate the Artist that He is.
Here is an example:

Nice work, n'est ce pa? I like this better than, say, Mondrian, Pollock or Warhol. And it's almost as interesting as Wyeth or Monet.
Here's another, with a little more background, like DaVinci adding background to Mona's portrait:

Sometimes, God takes his brush and turns it downward with a little perpendicular slash, like Van Gogh:

Other times, God uses his electromagnetic energy to separate Light from Dark, like he did in the Beginning:

Every now and then, we see a microcosmic image that resembles a larger microcosm. Here's one that reminds me of an airplane view I got once, over Utah, or maybe it was Nevada.

Another good thing about the Original Artist: He like to use his critters to help make the work interesting. Here's one where the sand critters do their thing:

Pretty interesting, n'est ce pas? That's enough for today's gallery. Time for dinner. I think Pat's throwing a salad together with celery or broccoli, maybe parsley. (wacplnts)

But listen! What Victorious hailing rings from yon beach bar? It is celebration! Costa Rica has defeated Greece in World Cup soccer! That "V" in picture above takes on a new meaning here in Costa Rica. Viva Costa Rica!

Glass Chimera

The Possum

Nowadays, survival involves knowing how to handle modern inventions, like money and machines, electrons and data and car-washes and stuff like that.

But In prehistoric times, stayin' alive meant something totally different. It probably meant that somebody in your tribe was pretty deadly with a bow and arrow, or a big stick, or some such implement for killing animals so you could eat them. Hunters hunted, gatherers gathered, and life goes on.

Survival for cave men wasn't as easy as it is now.

We know a little bit about this from seeing cave-man paintings that archeologists have discovered and brought forth into the great legacy of human experience and expression. If you've ever seen-- in an encyclopedia, or a masters thesis or a coffee-table book-- a picture of a cave-man painting, maybe you noticed it probably involves killing an animal, like a mastodon, or a saber-tooth tiger or maybe, a possum.

Some things never change. Men still have, with their impressive array of implements, the power of life and death over most critters; this lowly slow marsupial is no exception to the rule of ultimate human mastery.

I thought about this when I encountered a possum this morning. He was suddenly displayed for me to see easily and up close, like a museum painting, or sculpture. But this was in no gallery. It was on a sidewalk where I just happened to be wandering, this summery Saturday morning along a shady avenue in Gainesville, Georgia.

He was not alive.

At first, I couldn't tell if it was a possum. It just seemed like a classic critter image, like . . .

like a cave painting. The sight of it connected in my brain with some Neanderthal artwork that I had seen somewhere.

Maybe it was the teeth that ripped this cave-art association right out of my neuronic imagery file. Those bared fangs just leaped into my primeval intuition, like a prehistoric reflex suddenly recovered.

And then, my mental odyssey back to the here and now was punctuated with a momentary stop in the 1950's, when I remembered vividly a bared-teeth image from Old Yeller, a movie about a very lovable dog that went mad with rabies and had to be taken down by his master's father. I remember so clearly seeing Old Yeller's teeth, bared so ferociously, so unexpectedly, by the onslaught of rabies.

Had this been a rabid possum? He looked like one.

Probably not. But he sure looked crazy with those teeth displayed like fangs.

Why hadn't someone, a city sanitation worker or someone like that, scooped this critter up after his untimely demise?

Maybe they left him for cave-art.

But that would be unlikely. Gainesville is a very civilized, lovely, genteel southern city, with magnolias and shady boulevards and classic old houses, and monuments to old soldiers.

Nevertheless, I encountered the possum in an unlikely place-- where a private front yard sidewalk joined the city sidewalk. The fanged critter was directly in front of this grand ole home, which is now an attorney's office.

So, obviously, this possum's once-smelly inclusion at the edge of such a serene domicile is not some Neanderthal statement. Probably just the City's oversight. I mean, who wants to mess with a dead old possum in the summertime? This sidewalk relic has apparently survived its stinky phase, to become an artful representation of classic southern culture.

Or maybe its a warning to the other critters: Watch out Pogo; the humans are takin' over!

We have met the enemy and he is us.

Well shut my mouth, it's probably a southern thing, this odd juxtaposition of images, the dead possum and the old someplace. You'd have to be there.

Southerners never cease to amaze me, even though I am one of them.

Now here's a joke to end with: Why did the possum cross the road?

To meet his Maker.

Smoke

The Work

I have worked all my adult life, beginning with that first job, at a Burger Chef, while I was in high school. After flippin' the burgers for awhile, I did the bag boy thing at an A&P, where I moved into the big time of running a cash register.

One high school summer I did an internship in an office at the Louisiana State Capitol.

Then moving on to LSU, I did part-time gigs: selling ladies shoes, dippin' ice cream at a little off-campus storefront from which I got fired for leaving the doors open one night; also, servicing vending machines at the Student Union building in between classes and chairing a committee of the student Union.

As chairman of the student National Speakers committee (a freebie job, but great experience), I introduced Dr. Benjamin Spock and comedian-activist Dick Gregory to our assembled student/faculty audiences. After that, the Young Republicans complained about the lefty speakers with no conservative balance. They wanted somebody to represent their side. I told them that was understandable, but we had, alas, blown the budget on Spock and Gregory. I told them we could go halfsies on paying William Buckley, if they could get him for us, which they did. I always thought that was mighty civil of them; maybe that's why I'm a Republican today.

I have fond memories of that time, which include hearing Dr. Spock talking about two Maoist girls who heckled him on some other campus somewhere, and Dick Gregory requesting a bowl of fruit be delivered to his hotel room and then making people laugh at his speech later but then impressing upon them the urgency of our racial problems. Then there was meeting Bill Buckley at the airport, escorting him to his hotel room and watching him tie his skinny tie as he smiled and talked to me like I was one of his New Yawk buddies. Bill had a very winning smile.

After a couple years of English and Political Science and intermittent cannabis distractions, I managed somehow to graduate, in December '73, I hit the trail with my "General Studies" sheepskin from LSU University College. Now this southern boy gravitated over to the epitome of southern exotica, a place called "Florida," where I sold debit life insurance for awhile in a black neighborhood, then moved on over to selling classified advertising for Mr Poynter at the St. Pete Times. But then I lost my license on points, but continued to drive and got nabbed by a highway patrolmen. When I went to court on the infraction, a judge named Rasmussen told me that if people disregarded the law in the way I had done, there would "anarchy in this country, so therefore I sentence you to five days in the county detention center."

"Detention center? What's that?" I asked the judge.

"That's the jail son," he replied.

"When does it start?" I queried.

"Right now," he said.

When I got to the jail, it was an alien environment for this university boy with wing tips, and so I decided to take control of my situation by getting involved in a poker game with these hardened criminals, but then I made the mistake of winning. I say "mistake," because my little stack of quarters or whatnot motivated one of the incarcerated fellows to ask me a for a dollar to get in the game, but I told him No.

So later that night, since he was in the same bunk with me, he punched me out.

I did, however, survive it.

Four days later, I'm out of the Pasco County jail, and I didn't get run over by a train or get drunk or nothin excitin' but I did happen to go to a movie filmed in the Blue Ridge Mountains; it was Where the Lilies Bloom.

The setting in that movie seemed so absolutely beautiful to me that I thought I'd like to just get the hell out of Florida and go to that place depicted in the movie, and so I did, and I've been liven' in these mountains ever since. That was about forty year ago.

After settling in Asheville, a place far more mountainous and wintry than this Louisiana boy had ever known, I got a job selling printing for a printshop. That turned into about five years of good work, but it came in two stints that were punctuated by a detour to Waco Texas in 1978. 'T'was there I got saved.

After meeting Jesus I returned to North Carolina and the print shop for awhile.

Then I drifted into the building trade and spent the lion's share of my working life as a carpenter building houses and a few other structures, including a bridge at Grandfather Mountain that completed the missing link of the Blue Ridge Parkway, which them WPA boys had left hangin' back in the '30s, either cuz they ran out of money, or the War came on, or the jagged mountain was just too craggy for a man to build a bridge on it at that time.

I married Pat; we had three young'uns, now grown. Which brings me now to the main point of this here blog: work. When a man gets a family, he manages somehow to motivated to go out in the wide jungle world and make a livin', by hook or by crook. And this is, I think, a very important part of what makes work for folks and what makes the world go 'round: Family. A greater motivator than ideology or guv'mint.

Last weekend, this mountain boy and my wife, Pat, were in San Francisco, at the upper end of Silicon valley where our son works amongst the high-flyin' v.c.-fueled startups of our day. I spent a lot of time walking through that amazing city, and on the last morning there I found this interesting sight in the Mission district where our son resides.

So I snapped it for you:

I found this really interesting. It's a great work of art, painted lovingly and precisely on the face of a small business, which appears to be a hairstylist's shop, probably a family business, but not run by Papa because it's more likely run by Mama, with Papa working over on Mission Street with his grocery or some such enterprise.

You will notice, on the painting, some great people--true heroes of working people. The heavy hitters among them include: Gandhi, Dr. King, Cesar Chavez. Also identifiable are a few whose legacy and life's work was questionable, tainted with revolutionary violence: Che, Sandino. Sitting Bull is in the very middle. I wrote this song, Sitting Bull's Eyes, about him a long time ago.

The other persons in this mural are worthy of historical consideration. I checked out all those names, which are written beside each face. I cannot remember them all, but perhaps you will visit the Mission in San Francisco someday and see this great work of art for yourself. Or you may recognize them from the photo.

Worth noting in the artwork is an omission: amongst this collection of lefty heavyweights, the two theoreticians Marx and Lenin are not included; nor are the bloody tyrants, Mao and Stalin.

Some of those leaders pictured are not totally honorable in my Christian world-view, but they are obviously heroic in the eyes of the artist, and that says something significant about the perpetual struggle between, in this world, them that have, and them that have not. As for me, I respect them that are willing to work hard for what they do get, such as I, by God's grace, have done.

Smoke

Video daughter eclipses text-dinosaur dad

Imagine this:

shoes backpack soldier with trumpet long wall with man and shadow head in leaves trumpet soldier thoughtful girl bride and groom dance wavy man saves drowning child traveling light runner on road art in progress mobile pix silly girls silly people man with tent man on porch tent on porch? man in suit pleasant lady man with smoke implements peeping pop child's play with dad, neighbor drop-in embarrassment true princess king of pink old-school type, times three, cafe makes four foundations of childhood dancing with child happy kid happy child yellow beret man with world in mind film crew exuberant leap mule wagon at sunrise or donkey cart at sunset bride gets ready clown guy tie tie dancer print job old style type hands tied block print coffee roastin' music sawman of seattle bride y groom goodbye girl

That's a lot of free-style poetic imagery for your Friday-evening imagination to comprehend. Maybe this would be easier, and it only takes a minute fifty-seven: http://vimeo.com/54586218

Glass half-Full

In the Moment

In the moment of inspiration,
in that potent encounter with
the creating inclination of the universe,
in that moment, say,
as Beethoven listened at his piano
while stark moonlight shine through
the frosty window,
and struck upon his keys--
his dark tones and light strokes
provoking
a sonata of exquisite beauty and
tender moonlit passion;

Or in that vibration
when the musician touches his bow
to strings;

Or when the artist brushes paint on blank
canvas;

Or when the writer flings his words
on electrons of exquisite power--
in that moment,
do you
attribute it to the withering I, me, my?
or to the source of all creation
as Handel did,
or Bach.

As for me and mine,
in that precious moment
we are so small
and trembling, that we draw back the curtain
to peek
beyond data-folding neo-cortex,
beyond eternity's veil.