How Do You Sleep?

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505

Fearing cows with serpents for teeth
we extend our hands psalms upward
into the dry air
the desert floor is littered with
cracked eyeglasses and shoes
the wind stinks of oysters and
ominous instinct
Catastrophe rules
shortly, we receive our answer
and we turn back to friends
whose ideas appall us but
in whom we still find life and
an unsurpassed world

506

Let me issue a disclaimer
let me stare sideways against the shade
Let me take wing and be the king
of flowers and telegraph poles
and drunken strings and
underjawed, art arising
from misunderstanding
let me fill my tomorrows with sparrows and
guitar music with
winged eyes rushing
to interview the morning
let me touch spring

the Designer

the Buddha gives you the finger
you know you're gonna have a bad day
the instructions to your your prayer wheel
are in spanish and a bunch of homeless guys
with shotguns are coming down the hill.

a coffee filter for a skull-cap (you hope the Rabbi doesn't notice.)
Someone is poking the manticore from behind and it hasn't figured out
where the problem lies. Yet.
once ahead of the rain the running never stops
the beasts must still be watered and fed otherwise
you may become the food-
(that thing you eat will eventually eat you, anyway.)

R.I.P. , Utah Phillips

Happiness

A Buddhist Monk writes a book on the nature of happiness- it reminds me of the magazine Tricycle- full of ads selling stuff so that one may better meditate, presumably. If I understand the gist of this book correctly- it speaks of happiness not as a state, destination or goal- but as a process- and I think I agree with that. Of course, this means that happiness doesn't always look "happy."

What I can't wrap my head (or my heart) around is the notion of some overriding and absolute "reality." First, and most importantly, I trust the idea that some things do come easily- when you stop trying so hard. For this reason enlightenment must be highly overrated. The ecstatic might be purely chemical and, thus, easily available. The notion that reality can be observed and appreciated objectively I find highly non-intuitive. The power of will is so limited in its effect so as to be largely useless in determining the course of a life- in relation to the scope of that life. Some will is useful in small ways- but it amounts to the same thing as sailing vs. driving. Driving will get you there- but you are really dependent on overcoming nature through the use of resources that aren't always available. Sailing is less precise- but the energy to steer toward a destination is always available and only limited by the navigator's ability see and understand the flow and drift of things.

Happiness might not be at the end of the journey- Merry Christmas!

We are the Hollow Men

Samuel Johnson said, " Where there is leisure for fiction, there is little grief." What this means to me is that art doesn't make us better, it helps us cope. In a perfectly harmonious and orderly society there would be no need for art.

John Cage said something quite similar - that he "could imagine a world without art and could see where it wouldn't necessarily be a bad place." (I'm paraphrasing- and probably have it all wrong.)

Suppose John D Rockefeller came upon the Buddha on a city street. I imagine they would become fast friends and have quite a lot to say to one another- both robber barons sharing a joke about the teacher who named a teddy bear Mohammed.

....Alas! Our dried voices, when we whisper together, are quiet and meaningless,...........

In comes December and I have a new page to share with you. I should also share some facts about my practice as well as something of the spirit behind my sketchbooks. First, I draw every morning, usually at breakfast. On those days when I am in the studio, (usually 2 to 3 days a week, right now,) I draw more. Often, I have no idea where I'm going at the moment the pen first touches the paper. I have no need to draw anything, any more- I just draw. Like breathing. It's quite apart, as you can probably tell, from "seeing."

Well, maybe I'm trying to see inwardly.

At the same time, I have no reservations about appropriating or "sampling" photographic material or even ideas from other artists. No particualr artist is of any more importance to me than any other- with some exceptions: Goya, Arnold Mesches, Jean Rustin are very much on my mind, right now. (There may be a few others, forgive me.)

I no longer need to remind myself that I'll always be a beginner.