Let's Drop Out, Baby

If ever there was a sign that it's time to make art
the priority, the time is now.

A life inspired.

T'ai Chi, a little contemplation, a spot of tea,
writing, making art, a bit of exercise, an hour to read,
a delightful glass of wine, a cinq a sept, followed by a
delicious culinary adventure and a walk to the beach.

All the days ahead, the rest of our lives,
a love, a life fulfilled.

In a Deeply Troubled World

there is thought strangled,
manipulated and twisted to resemble something.
what? that doesn't matter. it isn't recognizable;
it doesn't exist. we go on and on about the issues
when the issues are dead. the mind is vacant.
the life has gone missing.

is mother dying?

i really can't ignore the plaintive cry of the Long Island Railroad anymore, especially in the middle of the night. and when i lose all patience, lose all sense, lose all focus, not for anything in particular but for the cumulative effect of life itself, i have to admit (unlike my parents) i know nothing. i do know...i know nothing at all.

gimmeabreak

have you noticed how people are really soliciting out there? doesn't matter what they're after--job, security, escape, love, the hereafter. it's all the same. the moment is all we have. if only...

i beg your pardon

we're not talking about belching here, we're talking
about the new president elect. can't obama wait until he's
sanctioned before he has to solve the world's crises ?
no. we're scared. we've had it. we're f--ked. we need to know.
so forget about all those scumbags Bush has pardoned.
let's move on. and up. there's hope in the world.

can the can can?

not sure how to explain what's going on here. it's moving around,
down and out. seeing with blurred vision. the crown, it weighs heavily,
the crown of love, of responsibility, of duty, of vision. the fucking thing
weighs a ton. want to set myself free, ya' know? take off.

hospital holiday

always seems those days are the ones in the emergency room. don't feel right. hot. spaced. having a hard time. who is thinking of me? who am I thinking of? who can I, how can I, think?

i keep saying, why am i still here?
what have you been up to?
no. talking makes me feel more relaxed. makes me feel safe.
what do you mean you have to go?
there's a perfectly good bed in the second room.
a TV, a computer, ice cream, vodka.
what else could you want?
i haven't heard from her in a long time. i keep calling. usually she answers.
i thought, no one would know if something happened to her.
how would anyone know? who would tell us?
what? yeah.
we talked yesterday.
i know. i was talking about today?
who would know? who? tell me who?

why does my world...

seem so skewed, so out of sync, so out of control. we're talking impact not addiction. family not stimulant. when the love is so big there's so much to lose. when the love is so skewed, it's out of control. when the love... the love... love.

Long Time No Write

What can I say? Life is an expanding universe that is so hard to keep up with sometimes you just give up. Not give up literally, just figuratively and then
one breath of fresh air, two, three, thirteen. Why is that number so magical?
Do you remember? I do. Everything about that age was transforming. New AWARENESS,
new BODY, new PRESENCE in the WORLD. I sat at a cafe in Nice and ordered
my first drink, a Cinzano. When the waiter returned and saw that I had not diluted the drink with water, he looked disgusted and I finally figured out why it had tasted so bad. The reason I was there was because Bea, the sister of
my foreign exchange sister Suzanne, tried in her very liberated yet respectful way, to say I have to fuck my boyfriend so scram. She was stuck with me in her apartment that summer. So I took to the streets, talking
to hookers. The pressure to wear a bikini was formidable and I painfully marveled over the rocky beaches with their amazing boulders that were so flat, all these sexy French women laid their nearly naked bodies across them to pray to the sun. I wondered why I couldn't be like them. Have their bodies. Know the love. Hunched over, I made my way across the boulevard, thankful to get to the other side, while trying hard not to expose myself too much. I was 13, after all.

what constitutes the end?

this is the question. one we ask ourselves over and over throughout our lives. always seems to come up no matter the circumstance. in this case, i'm thinking about the end of my novel which just doesn't seem to want to end, as if it has a life of its own and i have nothing to do with it. and then there's the issue of the end, what it means, death. so much death all around me. always the prospect. so i have come to adopt it as something i encounter in my every day life, part of what to expect and in the case of my novel SEPTEMBER 10TH, death keeps knocking on the door. it's where it started and it's where it all ends (eventually) but that's past the place i intended.

Using Our Groovy Minds

What a moving experience it was watching the election unfold and
seeing Jesse Jackson brought to tears, knowing how the years he toiled
to keep civil rights in the spotlight finally paid off. My faith has
been restored.

YES WE DID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

above and beyond

do you get the feeling that the universe is in retrograde?
have people lost their ever lovin' groovy minds?
can we not reason or relate or contemplate any more?

these are the questions.

NIRVANA

we fail to succeed, succeed to fail

gross national product?
measure not a value that is immeasurable.
a point
that is infinite.
a cause
that is just.

no ratio
can adequately explain
human behavior.

we try
we fail
we try again.
we fail
we succeed
to fail
again.

can we possibly understand what this is about?

ask all you want
the answer is an illusion
because there is none.

how can we tolerate the ignorance?
how? or more accurately, why?

SAFE HOUSE

A masquerade
a charade
a ball.
You have to have two
Who do you trust?
Not.
To whom do you owe your livelihood?
Paltry, so miniscule, you don’t even count
in the census.
And without a consensus
there is chaos.
I move a few dollars around to iambic pentameter,
in rhythm, to the change, in search of the logic when there is none.
Panic in disguise.
0-0=0, my lover says. Her computations are always right.
And for the first time in our lives, we’re happy to be artists.
If only we could make art during this tumultuous time
when fear Is no longer of death but of the mighty dollar.
Profit, interest, prinicipal, cash, chump change.
Hey baby...happens to the best of us.


Happy New Year!


9/29/08

AMERICAN DREAMER

survival of the arts

the current state of the economy puts a new spin on starving artists.
while it's hard enough to stay motivated in an environment
that condones profit over substance, the very survival of the creative
community is at stake here. one false move and a whole slew of artists
and writers will be out on the street. i'm not suggesting that anyone
should be subjected to this or being elitist about artists. i'm simply
addressing the state of the arts, where i live and breathe and on which i
rely to maintain a healthy respect for the passion and spirit of the arts,
art as sustenance as critical as oxygen, food or life support.
how many of you out there have been so distracted by this
threat?

Trust Me

Not

The End?

In his eighty years Martin Mercier had never experienced anything like this. In his eighty years he had never acquiesced. No matter what came his way he always expected it. “Le jeu, c’est fini,” he muttered to himself but when he looked at his failing wife Narcisse, he thought, les jeux…her life and his. With their fiftieth anniversary imminent he envisioned the waltz, the pirouette dizzying, her body so close it was indistinguishable from his. Unable to imagine life without her he felt the futile quest of the human spirit an absurd necessity he could now relinquish. As he peered into those chestnut eyes through the dark, endless tunnels that turned back on themselves, his fear returned, one he could not subdue through any amount of logic or discourse. The brain, he decided, was a painful organ, thoughts slicing through it like the jagged edge of a knife. Better to get past all this, better to move beyond it. He sipped from the fluted glass, the effervescence a deceptive reminder of what he would leave behind. The tightness in his chest made his breathing labored and the sweat of his palms made the pills soggy. His wife, on the other hand, was feeling no pain. On the morphine drip she’d been hallucinating a hot, white light surrounding her, evaporating like fog, through which swallows arced and banked off cliffs while the sea below crashed against the rocks with a virulence.
Martin twisted the empty packet of Gaulois, threw it on the floor and opened another. Chain smoking was a luxury he could now afford. “Just think, Narcisse…” He was grinning when he said this. “They will have to clean up this mess.” The ashes, the butts, the spilled champagne, the broken glass from the vial he emptied… By they he wasn’t sure who he meant. Who would be the first to find them? He didn’t want to think about it but he hoped it wouldn’t be the kids. He couldn’t imagine; it was too perverse.

Yes, his children would have to forgive but in time they would come to understand what happened. Especially Dylan, the costume designer. He envisioned the folds of Edwardian dress gathered and stitched for the adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Oval Portrait”--a painter so obsessed with the portrait of his wife he literally steals the life from her. Remembering the nature of the work made him shy away from gazing upon his dying wife’s face for fear he would hasten the end. At this point he simply couldn’t bear it.

More Radical Trust

time honored

i look around and my life is a strange place. not something i didn't inhabit but something i did. when all around me is death and destruction and reconstructionist attitudes and i think, how did we get here? and realize the collective "we" is a construct. that the "we" i thought existed never did. so let me go back to the beginning and wonder how we can connect in a meaningful way. this is a formidable aspect of writing, the collective "we." not about attitudes or adjustments or positions or possessions but about consciousness of a generation or two.

Tight Fit

He looks around at the flagrant display of Dior, Armani, Jacobs and Blahnik marching past like a fashion show and wonders why conspicuous consumers don’t wear money, stock quotes, bank statements and economic forecasts instead of designer clothes. At least it would be more honest and hell, they’d be recycling all that paper. That way no one would have to guess their net worth.

no time

I've been wrestling with tense. Tense about tense. Unintentionally when I started writing September 10th I was working in the present tense then somewhere along the way I realized what I was doing and had to question it. There's a reason for it. Time compressed into a single moment--a metaphor for the compression of Brian's life--how the magnitude of a single event can implode an entire life. In pursuit of anonymity the past doesn't matter anymore and the future doesn't exist.

The mechanics of doing this have been problematic. Like a cinematographer shooting live I was capturing it documentary style yet I (the omniscient narrator) was no longer present. So how can the conjugation change midstream, the tense reverse course? I go back and forth and in the editing find myself constantly adjusting. This is my dilemma. The dilemma of invention, I guess.

BlackPrintsSeriesNo.28

Conceal Me

Electro Shock

"There’s all this electromagnetic current," Gracie explains. "The kind you can test with devices that make skin contact. You know, like EEGs and EKGs and that sort of thing, but what I want to know is where does all that energy go when a person dies, the field around the body, the one that intersects and surrounds us, the vibrational field…”

She says, "People didn’t vacate lower Manhattan because of the toxic residue. They didn’t vacate out of fear. They vacated because of the massive amount of electromagnetism unleashed into the atmosphere by 3,000 dying and deceased people.”

MeAndMyShadow

she's gone

a major inspiration in my life has died. my shadow of 20 years. my cat, my daughter, my loved one, the one who taught me how to love, who slept on my desk beside me as i labored over words, ideas, structure, subtext. my muse... how to transcend the depths of despair? how to go on without her? writing is so insignificant right now. i remember another time when i felt like that. when my father died. to the spirit, may it soar.

Social Studies No5

that flawless image

Vanessa is probably better off without him, deeper in love with the prospect that he suffered a tragic demise, like the fate of all great artists who never enjoy recognition or the fruits of their labor while they're still alive. Yes, he decides, death brings with it all the benefits promised but undelivered in life. All the myths… pure, unadulterated happiness, unconditional love, charged flashes of memory altered subconsciously to make within the survivor’s mind a permanent place for that flawless image that never truly existed. And of course the ultimate advantage to the deceased, total liberation from the constraints of ordinary life.

don't point

If not for love or adventure, family or cause

what would be the point?

That is the point...that having one doesn’t matter,

defending one doesn’t protect it,

protection isn't necessary

nor is the point

because there is none.

Social Studies No.4

top editor

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BlackPrintsSeriesNo.27

when process is a luxury

i don't know about all you artists and writers, but i'm getting the feeling that "the man" (i'm not imposing gender here - it's just an expression) is closing in. soon art, the creative pursuit, a work-in-progress will be considered a luxury. you know you hit bottom when this occurs. it's all about work, concept, spontaneity, accidents, and after enough years, a certain lack of intention. it is not about art as investment. we can't expect too many people to understand this, i guess. it's the imperfect storm. time to step back, reassess and then let go!

unable to resist

"Instincts don’t fail you, honey." His mother’s refrain, as if she’d observed what transpired and is once again offering too much advice. These instincts spell trouble, what kind of trouble he isn’t sure but all the same he knows if he doesn’t protect himself no telling what will happen. A cackling seagull distracts him, circling the rooftops, dipping and diving as if silvery fish flicker in and out of the surf. As he reaches the next intersection he sees a heaping pile of paper, plastic and spilled Chinese takeout where more gulls have gathered to pick through the refuse. Prix fixe. Unable to resist, he approaches the next bin like a hungry account executive on his way to a power lunch. Nothing like a half eaten perfectly encased sandwich of mozzarella, arugula and sun dried tomatoes. He can’t help noticing the contenders, meals barely touched, the ones he would rescue from the garbage before they’re shipped off to the landfill, ones which rejuvenated his undernourished body when he has nothing but a cardboard box, holey tennis shoes and too much time on his hands. He has to stop looking through the trash.

fall from grace

The snap and crackle of the bacon grease doesn’t capture her attention but when Brian drops the jar of mayonnaise on the kitchen floor Gracie wakes up.

“What the fuck!”

He turns around and waves before unraveling paper towels to clean up the mess. She protests the disturbance of a good night’s sleep even though it’s 4:30 in the afternoon and she has the look of a street urchin after a two day bender.

love like you never loved before

a friend lost her daughter in a car accident. how did we survive all these years? how did i not lose a sister, a brother, a lover? losing a loved one, young, unexpected, in an accident, how can this be reconciled? you get older and think you've gone through it all and just when you think you've nailed it, the longest journey, the most arduous, insurmountable experience comes knocking on your door unannounced. how to help each other through this... that is the question. how to love like you never loved before.

SuperTuesday 08

I snuck my camera into the voting both today and took
a 16 multi shot.......

Blackprint Series No.22

relieve yo'self

there's some noxious fumes out there with the smell of politics in the
air. so take a break from art life. time is running out.
goodbye edwards. hello obama. hillary, give the phones a rest.
you lost my vote when you passed all those right wing bills in the senate.
pining away for kucinich, the raging liberal who doesn't have a chance.
as always, compromise in the air...but we can only go up from here.

in my right mind

Blown away by the read through, crippled after sitting for three days at my desk. SEPTEMBER 10TH is everything I hoped for, imagination at work- my raison d'etre, family as unpredictable as it is, love, true love and all its traps and trappings, compassion for our place in the world as precarious as it is, clinging at once to individuality, that thing that defines us and defies genetic imprints and to our collective identity, that singular force that encompasses everything, more than our individual consciousness affords. No escape. It's that big beautiful velvet stew of life on the edge. Of what? Time, meaning, existence. Even history can be false.

Tank or not

I have to read through my novel tomorrow. Okay. I don't have to but I do. I'm dreading it. It's the big kahuna. It's the road to nowhere, to nothingness and then and then... I want to believe it's going to work out. I have to admit I feel this way every time.

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