ON THE ROAD TO THE WILLIE NELSON CONCERT

 

 

It's been a string of lazy days here. I let good days go by that I could have been doing some necessary outdoor chores, and let the time slip away. Got a Willie Nelson show coming up tomorrow night in Roanoke. I'm resting toward the drive. I'll be driving total of six hours probably. I'm not taking the interstate, but the highway from Galax to Woodlawn to Hillsville to Floyd, where I'd like to stop for dinner, then on to Roanoke. It's a beautiful drive. Beautiful country through there. It's the region where the events of the movie LAWLESS took place. None of that will be there, but the landscape. Southwest Virginia is beautiful mountain scenery, mountains you can roll with on the highway, flow this way and that, up and down, fenceposts, cattle, horses, old farmhouses with gingerbread along the edge of the roof. I want to leave in plenty of time to relax in the drive and enjoy the ride. Kathryn, who will be with me, loves this part of the world too. I've driven the highway to Roanoke in the mid 1980s many times, know it well. The road will not have changed much except for through the towns that grow more every year. Thought I'd take the Parkway to 52, 52 to 221, 221 to Roanoke. Interstate would be faster but on interstate we could be anyplace in USA. Interstates and malls are the same all over the country. Might take interstate on the way back when it's dark.

 

 

 

My mind went to work looking at the driving in a time when my energy isn't what it one time was, then walking no guessing how far from parking space to door, then from door to seat no guessing how far. The sciatic nerve in left leg is acting up. It will be as far to walk back to the car as from car to seat. I decided to take a cane, in case my energy gives out inconveniently. I have Jr Maxwell's cane I bought him to replace one he ran over with the car. It is one of those lightweight shiny aluminum canes, adjustable in length with a good rubber tip for grip, and a foam rubber handle. It will look like I just left the hospital. With Kathryn's white hair and my white hair with Farm Bureau ballcap and the hospital cane, we'll get every senior privilege there is. I'll hear "Sir" a dozen times. This is, after all, the South where older people tend to be regarded with respect. That's changing, of course. It's all right. We won't be the oldest ones there. Willie is ten years my senior. I won't be the only one with a cane. A cane makes a good martial arts weapon too. It tears me up that Steve Lewis will be playing in Woodlawn that night. When it comes to my preferences, I'd rather go to a Steve Lewis show than a Willie Nelson show, but the tickets are in hand and it's basically a gift to Kathryn, who has loved Willie Nelson's music about all her grownup life. I never paid any attention to him until I heard an interview with him on NPR about his 80th birthday, and took an interest in him. This show will pump me full of appreciation for Willie Nelson. Gonna see a lotta Jack Daniels and Harley Davidson tshirts. Maybe I'll get Kathryn a Willie Nelson tshirt if she'd like, you know, for been there, done that, bought the tshirt.

 

 

 

It's the kind of place they might ask Vets to stand up and be honored. I'd hate it, but I'd stand and be embarrassed seeing people nearby gaping at me in admiration and clapping like it's participation tv, a white-haired Vet, Lord Have Mercy, and I'd be thinking, Don't ask how much I hated it. At the time. Since, I've come to see it as one of the most valuable times in my life, perhaps it. The draft took me out of my life and provided time to look at my life, look at it with distance and a cold eye. I came out of it very different from when I went in. Looked and acted the same, but something major had changed inside. A change of direction. A change from unconscious to barely conscious.  It was a time of making some major life decisions I've not regretted since. Came out of it a little bit educated in Existentialism after reading so many novels, plays and essays by French Existentialist writers. Their books were like feedbags for me. I had found the philosophy that accorded with who I am. It started with Camus, who pointed me to deBeauvoir, and Sartre. They turned me on to Jean Genet, who could only write in prison. They turned me on to some pretty heady writing. By the end of those two years of reading every spare moment, I was able to read with comprehension, had learned a great deal about WW2 in France, the French Underground, had developed an interest in French writing. From there I started college. Came out of high school a moron, not by IQ test score, but certainly by lack of understanding how to live in this world. I felt like I was in prison the whole time. But I needed it. It was better than land prison. They let me ride the ocean and paid me to do it. The intimacy with the ocean was worth everything that got me there, like intimacy with the mountains in this time of the life is worth every experience that made my path to these beautiful hills that Ralph Stanley calls the hills of home.  

 

 

 

I don't believe they'll ask Vets to stand, but wouldn't bet against it. Don't expect it. But know better than to expect anything. I know better than to expect the concert will even happen. I know better than to think I'll wake in the morning. There are so many hundreds of thousands of variables between here and there, I don't even attempt to think about it. One thing living in this world has taught me, do not expect. Just don't. Expectation never works out. It's always something else. And then I'm so disappointed I miss what's happening. Kathryn has raised four girls, two husbands, and is now taking care of her mother. She's not overrun with expectations either. We're both in a good place in that way. We're free enough of expectation to allow the show to be what it is. It's a legitimate expectation that it will be a really good concert, but it's not certain. No worries. We'll both go open to the moment and receive what it has to offer. For me, it's about being with Kathryn, who I don't see often enough and haven't seen in awhile. I'm looking at, for myself, six hours with Kathryn, Willie Nelson the turn around point. I want to give Kathryn a break from the caregiving responsibility that after awhile becomes something like dragging a cinderblock tied to one ankle. It feels good to let go of that cinderblock for awhile. No problem putting it back on, but it feels so good to simply have a break. Mama will be watched over by granddaughter and great granddaughter. It will be a fun time for all concerned, I expect.

 

 

 

 

 

*



 

DONKEY JACK UP CLOSE

 

Donkey Jack gives me a surprise every day. Today when I went into the meadow with his carrots in hand, he came loping from his hideout and danced a brief jig in front of me, moved against me sideways and lightly swung his neck around me. A donkey hug. Yesterday, he came loping to me, put his nose out for my scent, and that final confirmation of what he thought he saw brought light to his eyes. The day before, he ran a short gallop of maybe five yards and swung to my right directly in front of me. It was a swift turn like a polo pony that blew my mind with the grace. He approaches me as a friend every time. His eyes light up when he recognizes who it is. We have passed into a zone of trust in the last few days. Today, after the carrots, after petting and talk with him, I sat on the ground and he grazed around me. Every time I have sat, he has come around to put has backside to me and I got up to move. I didn't know that he's not getting ready to kick. I've never felt like that was his reasoning, but didn't know. Today he turned his backside to me, backed up until his back knees were touching my shoulder, kept on grazing and moved forward a step at a time, keeping an eye on me. I've wondered what that was about. I felt like Jane Goodall with her chimpanzee friends.

 

 

A time when Jack's face was close to mine, I looked into his eye and told him I'd like for him to teach me donkey. I want to learn donkey, how a donkey thinks, what it is that makes donkey besides what I see with my eyes. I want to learn donkey behavior. He put his nose up to my face and felt my face with his nose. I exhaled lightly into his nostril to let him smell my breath. Breath that is rank to me smells good to a four-legged. They still like those smells we humans turn away from. I told him I would help him understand human too. I've seen enough indications he has understood what I was saying, that now I talk to him like I talk to any person. Jack listens, pays close attention. Yesterday while I was talking to him, he put his forehead to mine and we touched foreheads four or five seconds. I feel like I understood why he ran at me the day he played like he wanted to scare me. Herd animals run in fear. Predators run in pursuit. I felt like Jack ran to me in a game of trying to make me jump, because he was afraid. We were still somewhat apprehensive of each other though we'd already connected as friends. He ran to me that day and stopped with his nose just a couple inches from my chest, a sparkle in his eyes like he'd just done something fun.

 

I suspected that would be the last of his running to me. I felt like both of us broke through the apprehension we had of each other. A couple days later he ran a short spell and has not run to me since. My feeling is that his fear of me is fading away daily. Now, he walks to me or does a little lope, a fast walk and a happy dance at once. Now that he is trusting me, he has no need to run. Or so I suppose. He heard me when I said I wanted to learn donkey. I felt like him backing up to me, touching me with his back knees, was consciously telling me something about donkey. I wondered, since four-leggeds tend to claim their territory by various methods from their backsides, maybe Jack was symbolically claiming me, knowing I don't want him to dump on me. A way of saying, I like you. We're friends. I know when he takes a dump, he backs up to one of his toilet piles. He backs up to it just right and they fall where he intends. You can be sure I watched to see if that might be his intent, to mark me his territory. No. He was so close that when he switched his tail back and forth it sometimes hit my face. I watched his leg muscles to see if I could see in advance if he might want to kick. Never once. He kept an eye on me all the time his back end was to me. One thing I know is they don't see shit the way we do. They stick their noses down in it and take a big whiff like it smells good. It has meaning for them that we have lost calling it nasty.

 

I'm wondering, since he backs up to his places where he drops his apples. They fall exactly where he aims. I think of a child's game of dropping something like a clothes pin into a milk bottle from standing up. It's not easy dropping something exactly where you want it without practice. Jack has plenty of practice dropping donkey apples. It tells me he has as much control with his backside as his frontside. Of course he knows his body well. It's everything he has, his only possession. Therefore, I will take it for now that he was telling me something by backing up to me. One, he's not going to kick me. Today I showed him I trust he will not kick me. He even stamped one of his back feet a couple of times like he does over the nuisance flies. Since I've asked him to teach me donkey, I'm taking his gestures, his body language, to have intent behind them to answer my request. I know our minds are connecting now. Jack knows it, too. This means I will pay closer attention to a donkey's way of communicating. I want to learn to communicate with Jack the way donkeys communicate without talking. It's like trying to talk with someone of another language, like Serbo-Croatian with somebody who doesn't know English. It turns into the game charades right away. It can be done. Making no attempt to exchange information, sitting quietly can be an excellent form of communication, possibly the best form.

 

I talk with Jack and sit quietly. I talk to him while he chews carrot chunks. Today I was telling him I know he has an intelligent mind and I'd like to get to know his mind. I'd like to have some insight into what donkeys think about and how they think. I believe I've had some insight in seeing that his running was an expression of fear. This is an untrained donkey, so he doesn't know about running by command. I don't handle him, don't push him around, don't push him aside saying, Get outta my way ya dumb jackass!  I don't give him any sign that I believe I'm in charge of him. I let him know that I am not in charge of him. Jack is an independent autonomous being with the same rights I claim for myself. This is the Jack I want to know. I don't believe giving him commands and putting a rope on him will help our communication  unless necessary, and I can explain to him the need. I give him the same respect I give a human, making no special thing about it. I'm seeing his face now as he approaches me when we meet in the field, his conscious, intelligent eyes looking at me. I want to know the person in there. And I see the person in there wants to know the person in me. I can see Jack likes that I've taken an interest in the person within, who he is. We've connected. I must never take it for granted, but always honor it.

    

 

 

I've been noticing that Jack doesn't really like being touched. I don't blame him. Who wants somebody to walk up to you and start rubbing your face or petting your back? He mostly moves away from a touch unless he invites it. I'll pay attention to that. He likes to be brushed, but not every day, only when his hair starts looking scruffy. Then he likes it. Evidently the brush messes up his layer of dust he keeps in his hair inhibit the flies. He likes to feel my hand move over his back and along his ribs, but only after he knows that's what touching him was about. My hand doesn't remove his fly shield. After I'd brush him, he'd go wallow on his dust spot. I'll ask permission before I touch him now. More than likely suddenly being touched startles him. I'll speak to him about touching him first, see if that takes the edge off the natural instinct not to want to be touched. I am aware that he never knows what to expect from a human's hands, so I sometimes keep them behind me, mostly down at my sides. I am conscious to move my hands slowly and keep them in his sight. He's comfortable when he knows where my hands are. Even when they're rubbing his back and neck, he knows where they are. I'm getting the impression Jack is in awe of me, or donkeys are in awe of humans, for having arms and hands. I must remember to be more conscious of my hands with Jack the African Wild Ass. His donkey reflexes are instant.

 

 

 

 

*



PHOTOGRAPHS OF ROB COPELAND

 

rob copeland

 

 

 

rob copeland

 

Above are some of the first pictures I saw of Rob Copeland's on facebook. He was a friend of someone I'd recently facebook friended. He sent some b&w photos to friend that appeared on my facebook page. Next day others. Next day others. As I'm seeing these pictures, I'm seeing somebody with a Gary Winogrand kind of eye, but his own with no references to Winogrand. Very different minds, but an eye that appreciates detail in the New York cityscape. I even see some of Woody Allen's love for visual detail in NYC. Copeland's reflection pictures work with my eye on two dimensions at once, 2-D and 3-D. They have the flatness of a 2-D photograph like the one of the car glass reflecting rows of windows on a flat plane. The car glass in the foreground looks at the same time like it is on the same plane as the building behind it. These images throw my eye back and forth between the two dimensions. That's what I love so much about them along with his eye for b&w. I don't know if he's a noted NY art photographer or not. I'd prefer not for the freshness in the images. And I'd automatically think that I am not the first to notice somebody in NY making stunning New York pictures that to this hillbilly's eye are stunningly new. No matter how little experience I have in viewing contemporary New York photographers, when an image jumps in my face and says SEE ME by its presence that is also not flash, by the power of its presence, I call it art. His images have visual power for me. I feel them.

 

rob Copeland

The one with the vertical white light is reflection on right of image on left. It's like what is the background beyond the white picket fence is the flat, 2-D photograph, and on the right these dots come out of the picture toward the viewer, making it 3-D. I may be way off, but this is what I see. And I don't think I'm exaggerating, because this is the first time I have at least noticed photographs that carry the illusion no matter how many times I look at it. It might be something a thousand photographers in NY are doing and I don't know it, but I've never seen any photographer with this kind of eye. All his pictures don't do that, of course, but enough do that I see it is something he has discovered, evidently recently. He even finds images that are not reflections that suggest reflections. I've looked at his collection of photographs on facebook and saw in the past the occasional reflection, then more and more, and recently just about everything is reflections. I'm thinking he's getting his mind blown by this new discovery. I've seen a lot of pictures of reflections, but Copeland's are the first in my experience, which is limited, that play with dimensions at the same time. Whatever the case where NY photographers is concerned, I don't know. What I know is Copeland's pictures knock my sox off. I also know I'm not the only one to see the art in what he is doing.

rob Copeland

 

 

His photographs bring to mind a couple of films I've seen with dim to vague to vanishing recollection of what they were. I'm not even sure they were the ones. One is Kieslowski's BLIND CHANCE, a film so fine I want to see it again, and Takashi Miike's GRAVEYARD OF HONOR, another I want to see again. Just now ran them to the top of the netflix Q, both will be here Wednesday. It will be a film festival at my house that night, double feature of some of my favorite films. The Miike film is severely violent, but I appreciate it despite that, including that, beyond that. Overkill turns into comedy before long. Somebody blows away a room full of people, no big thang, just like evening news. Whether or not Graveyard of Honor is the one I was remembering with faulty memory doesn't matter. I do remember that when it was over I made a mental note to remember the title, because I wanted to see it again after a lapse of time, not right away. Ready to see it again. I'm excited already about Wednesday. Another of Miike's magnificent kill fests is 13 ASSASSINS. It's kind of on the order of 7 SAMURAI, but it's 13. Beautiful film. Beautifully made in every way a film can be beautiful. But, if you're into chick flicks, do not go there. And there is a Chinese film I'm recalling made I think in Taiwan. I'll go searching and see if it can be found. Soon. 

 

 

rob copeland

 

 

This is one of his pictures I picked up from his facebook collection from the past that I see the same eye that made the reflection pictures. This is a common NYC scene, the kind that wherever you walk, you'll pass a work zone of color compositions. Here, we're seeing the orange rectangles and lines horizontal and vertical, a rectangular patch of green, seen through a grid of vertical and horizontal lines, squares, a fence. My mind knows the grid of squares is the foreground and everything else is the background, while my eye sees the grid on the same plane as the background, like the picture was printed on paper that already had the lines on it. This is what I love about Copeland's pictures, the juxtaposition of the two dimensions. The perceived real and the perceived illusion together, side by side as one image. If I'd found the above scene with a camera I'd have wet my pants on the spot. Feeling my own excitement in his images gives an idea of what he's feeling framing the shots. Going by his notations in facebook with the pictures he posts almost daily, he is rigorous about his pictures. Goes out early in the morning walking with camera, searching for magic moments in reflections.

 

 

rob copeland

 

 



I don't know Copeland except suddenly in these amazing photographs that bring to mind some of the photographers I've enjoyed over the years like Joel Meyerowitz, esp the pictures in his book Cape Light. Gary Winogrand I see, though only in the cityscape and the way of using b&w with high contrast. I get the impression Copeland has not made a book of photographs. I can't find anything at amazon. A lot of his images have the quality of art about them that holds my gaze the thousandth time I see one. I can see a show in a NY gallery of his reflection images. It would be a beautiful exhibit. Extraordinarily beautiful. His images excite me because I know they're everywhere. He has opened a new dimension to my awareness. Walking through parking lots I look at clouds and signs on windshields, hoods, trunklids, chrome. In shop windows I look at the reflection first. My sort of logo picture for this blog is a reflection image. The difference between his and mine is that he is focusing on reflections, where mine was a found reflection, noticed because it jumped in my face with lights all around it that said SEE ME, FEEL ME. Now I'm seeing reflections everywhere when I'm in town. Out here in the mountain is clouds and trees in the glass of the car. Thank you, Rob Copeland, for opening up a whole new world for appreciation in everyday life. I don't have art museums to go to around here, so I look for art where I can find it. I see Rob Copeland keeps his eye alert for found art in his world as urban as my world is rural. I don't know how to tell you to find more unless you can look him up on facebook. I doubt he'd mind you asking to view his photographs.  

 

 

rob Copeland

 

rob Copeland

 

 

rob Copeland

 

 

 

rob copeland

 

 

 

rob Copeland

 

 

*

 

 

 



FOUND ART CONSTRUCTION

This is the nearly finished thing I've been working on a couple weeks and put the pieces together today. It's not totally finished, but the main part is there. What I do from here is structural, hidden braces to keep the plywood from bending. This picture above is as seen from the road. For scale, the yellow circle is four foot diameter and three-quarters inch thick. In the past, I used it for a portable table top to make picture frames on. When a painting was finished, I'd make the frame on this table top. The other plywood is scraps from figures and shapes I've cut out of half inch plywood with a jigsaw over years and haven't been able to throw away the scraps. Might find something to do with them. This project has been in my mind at least ten years. Laziness kept me from starting it. I kept my wood scraps in the shed that I built in my first year in the mountains for chickens. The chickens lasted about ten years until dogs started coming in and I let the chickens go rather than kill all the dogs. Wanting now to make the chicken house into a stable for two donkeys. No place else to put the wood scraps, I decided it is time to build the construction.

Here it is seen from my walkway between car and house. Its place is about half way between my walkway and the road. This side needs another piece to cover the black post sticking up. I'm thinking I have a smaller plywood circle someplace. Might put a circle there, paint it white and let it be sun and moon on this side. As you can see, the yellow disk symbolizes sun like all yellow circles do. The plywood scraps on either side are to suggest, and only suggest, sunrise in the mountains. I did not want to shape any part specific to this purpose. Only using scraps without altering them. I have a couple of extra pieces, but they don't work on it. There's no rush. One day whatever it is will come to me. This is good for now. Looking at from the walkway, it has a big stand of jewelweed behind it on ground that slopes upward to the road. The wall of jewelweed hide it from the road, so nobody has seen me working on it. When the frost comes and the jewelweed falls to the ground, there it will be. Where did that come from? I'm looking forward to seeing it in snow. I've beat down the foliage around it stomping about. It sits in a kind of grass that doesn't grow over two feet high. It's a beautiful grass. And a few different kinds of ferns I've planted in there over the years and a couple of young rhododendron. In summer, the greenery under the construction will look like a sea of green it is floating on. I made the bottom as high as the top of the grass. It stands in the shade of a maple tree.

Pictured here is the foundation. I took a mailbox post made of treated wood, which I've had for at least fifteen years, maybe twenty, planted the post for the mailbox in the ground good and deep, tamped it in good like a fencepost I don't ever want to wiggle. Half a dozen screws hold the disk to the post. The far end of the black post is held by a free-standing post that may get painted red. I like basic colors. That will be the only red. The middle post is standing there to sit the disk on while screwing it into place. The pieces of plywood screwed to the disk and the post give it good enough hold, I believe, to stand the wind. About once a year a fierce wind blows through here. The construction runs lengthwise with the flow of the wind, so I doubt wind will hurt it at all. I may look out one morning and the disk be a hundred yards up the meadow, too. Basically, it stands on the vertical black post. I questioned for days and nights how to fix the disk to the post without cutting it . I believe by the time I finished putting the parts together, the disk is firmly in place. It being symbolically a sunrise, I believe I'll call it Orpheo, (or-FAY-o) as Orpheus was called in Portuguese from the film Black Orpheus made in Brazil. It's one of my favorite films that never grows old. Orpheo plays guitar every morning to coerce the sun rise. Carnival in Rio. Infectious music. And one of my favorite film characters, Seraphina. I fell in love with Seraphina.

 

These are the parts getting painted. One side green, the other side blue. The idea is that looking at the mountains in the distance, the near mountains are green and the far mountains are blue. This is where I got the blue and green. It's suggestion only. No attempt to make it look like waves of mountains. I think if I had shaped them to look like mountain waves on the horizon, it would be terrible. That it is not the shape of mountains gives it another dimension, possibly somewhat expressionist. But it's not any of that. I have to call it found art. All the parts were found. They may have been mine, but I found them. They were not shaped specifically to this event. Scraps. Stuff somebody in their right mind would have taken to the landfill years ago. I have the heart of a junk dealer, can't throw anything away. I have a ridiculous amount of stuff that is useless, stuff I keep because some day I might find a use for it. That phenomenon of throwing something away and needing it within a week has bit me in the ass so many times, I only throw away trash that can't be used for anything. This construction is placed so landscape, greenery, trees around it are part of it. It's called site specific. Plywood has a way of bending over time. It will degenerate over years. I'm thinking about repainting it once a year to keep protective paint on it to slow the entropy.

 

 

 Here are the parts after their coat of primer. I'm looking forward to seeing it next summer with the greenery all around it. I have picked up scrap blocks of wood over the years and have seven or eight of different lengths, six inches by six inches and everywhere from a foot and a half long to two feet long, to three feet long. I want to paint them different colors, drill a half inch hole in one end of each of them, stick a two foot long piece of rebar in it and jab it into the ground, so the blocks of painted wood will stand vertically above the ground at least a few inches, to keep them from rotting. Also thinking about buying some old black used bowling balls from Alleghany Cares, painting them beautiful colors and standing them elevated on rebar in among the vertical blocks of wood, all placed randomly. I have neighbor Tom Pruitt's mailbox that is probably seventy years old, made of steel, rusted with two bullet holes in each side, entry and exit. The post is wood that old and very poorly constructed, but it holds. It is so poorly made that it is beautiful. I'll stand the mailbox post in relation with the construction. Tom had been dead several years before the road was paved. The bulldozer pushed his mailbox and post aside like it was just another rock. So I took it home. I couldn't stand to see Tom's mailbox buried by a bulldozer. It doesn't have his name or numbers on it. Only rust. The red has been gone from the flag for so long there's not even a memory of a molecule of red paint left on it.

 

 

This was the beginning, putting the post in the ground and applying the primer. I've been wanting to build an outdoor sculpture for a very long time. I've drawn out plans for two that were never built, due mainly to expense. One would take twelve eight foot long four by fours. Sixteen ten inch bolts with nuts and washers. Would have needed a powerful cordless drill. It became unthinkable for somebody living on minimum income. I don't care about selling anything anymore, so I don't think of something like this project for home as having money value. I fixed it in place so nobody could buy it. Justin brought up yesterday the likelihood that somebody might shoot it from the road. I don't care. The circle is so big it is certainly no challenge to shoot at. I think it would be fun to one day find a bullet hole in it. But I don't expect it. The road is no more than twenty feet away. It would be all the more fun if kids would sneak around when I'm not home or at night and commit spraycan graffiti on it like at the Air Bellows Gap Road underpass at the Parkway. If they did that, I'd never paint over it. It's even too good a dream to hope for. I wore myself out putting the parts together today, but it was a feel-good kind of tired. Next, I pick up the mess around it. The paint cans I'll put together in a box where I'll know where they are from year to year to repaint. Then I'll plant the blocks of painted wood to stand vertically around it, and the mailbox post. Fun project.

 

 

 

 

 

*