9/11 BLOOZ

diana toma

30"x 48" mixed media on canvas

It has been September 11 all day. It's a day I don't pay attention to the news. It's all 9/ll corporate news-speak. I'm sympathetic in my heart for everyone concerned who survived or left the body by surprise one morning at work. I'm sympathetic with everyone in NY that day and soon after. I have no patriotic feelings around it. I don't believe anything we're told about it. Don't know what happened and will not know in this lifetime. I only see it as first day of American police state. It miraculously gave birth to the Patriot Act, the virus that deleted the Constitution. After WW2, Remember Pearl Harbor justified perpetual war thereafter. Now Remember 9/11 justifies police state and eternal war on poor people around the globe. Keeping Wall Street booming. It's been a major disappointment in my life to see the American people throw away democracy with such a popular zeal. Even in the most jaundiced moments I'd have never seen it coming. In hindsight, it's clear as 1-2-3. 9/11 makes me question why I pay attention to the news at all. I do, however, see certain progressions acting out step-by-step giving a sense of what's coming and explains much of the noxious malaise in the air now. It helps me understand the senselessness that seems to be in the air. It's everywhere. What was bad before, like poverty and prisons, is worse now. I've not seen a single honey bee this year. Have seen some bumblebees, though so much smaller than usual they look unhealthy. A lot of flowers that seed this time of year have no seeds. I saw a relative few butterflies this year. The Joe Pyes in flower used to be covered by shimmering halos of butterflies. This year I'd see one butterfly, sometimes two. We're in serious trouble. The television has kept us asleep while Capitalist excess swept us aside. We'll lose hi-speed internet soon, as Comcast and Time-Warner are spending millions on lobbying to take what democracy is in the internet away from us. It will happen. USofA is about money, not us.

everyman

This is where 9/11 takes me. I can't get any feeling from the incident having to do with flag waving and memorials. It's too serious a matter for me. It's not something to celebrate. I know, three thousand plus. It makes the event all the worse. I don't even want to go into it. It's too dark and murky a place created by mis- and disinfomation. I must let this go, must separate self from concerns about it. I've come to see 9/11 a moment in a country on a downhill run that kicked in the nitrous oxide, NOS. I'm glad to be in the last years of this lifetime. Maybe next time I can turn up in the mountains of Romania with parents who play traditional music of the region, a place that hopefully has nothing America wants. My greatest disappointment with Obama is that he did not charge Bush, Cheney, Rummy and Rice with war crimes. He symbolically accepted their war crimes into American infallible exclusionism. It wasn't like he really had a choice. He, too, is a corporate marionette. I must concede that what I wanted for the USA all along has been its own ideals, the ideals we're taught in school. Like much else we're taught in school, it must be unlearned to function out here in the world, so to speak. I'm naive of what is going on. I live in a world that I see diminished day by day so fast it makes the head swim. On the one hand, I would like to be like my friends who aren't interested in anything on the news, pay no attention to politicians, don't vote, just live their lives at home with the family bringing up kids, work, hunt, grow a garden, have a riding mower and a pickup and ride the economy's ebb step by step. On the other hand, I like having some insight into the "big picture." I didn't realize before today what a gloom 9/11 brings over me. So much died that I thought was good with the falling men and women and others who didn't make it. The planes did not implode the buildings. That's the beginning and the end of it for me.  

photo by constantine manos

Swing down sweet chariot stop and let me ride, Swing down sweet chariot stop and let me ride. I hear George Clinton in my head and see him on stage with the Funkdelics, Swing down sweet chariot stop. The world would not be real without George Clinton and his beautiful song, Fantasy Is Reality In The World Today. Just keep hangin in there, my granddaddy used to say. Something like that. I'm ready to start calling for a chariot to pick me up and take me to what's next, be lifted up like Ezekiel into a ufo and zoom away at light speed to a place where people have evolved past conflict and killing, and die there. Sounds like Costa Rica. I'd rather die on my mountain. I could not leave my mountain. I could not leave my culture or my friends or Caterpillar without dying. The corporate takeover of our government sideshow is in my mind. Lord Have Mercy. Why do I want all that shit in my mind? All I have to do is turn off that channel in my mind, switch channels. I have control. I could change my focus to the Paris Surrealists, look at pictures and read the writings, read books about the Surrealists. Were I to give as much attention to them as I give to our DC government, I'd have something a whole lot more interesting in my mind after a year. Yesterday I ordered a cd by Boubacar Traore, a singer and guitar picker from Mali. It's the lope of the music, the walk of a camel, a long walk on foot, that pulls me to this music now. He's from a city in the desert near the Niger river. His music flows into me from another world, from outside the world of my experience, foreign, exotic to my ear as a one-string violin. Something new. A new musical experience. I could take myself on my own light-speed flight by switching channels of my focus of attention. I could be reading a biography of Constantin Brancusi or the new biography of Vincent van Gogh. Or have a funkathon listening to George Clinton. 

charles ray

I found the picture at the top, the angel painted today, September 11, on facebook by my facebook friend Diana Toma. She said she had been working on it, was dissatisfied, washed the image off and went after it to satisfaction. A friend who saw it said he saw the towers and the scene on the ground. Diana suddenly saw it. She did not know she had painted the towers, nor did she know she'd painted the chaos on the ground. She was painting an angel making no association in her mind with 9/11. She said she felt like she must have channeled it from the energy of the day, but her mind did not see it. I love the image without the association, but its way of happening without the artist knowing it, slipping around conscious mind, gives it a quality that makes it live. Diana's paintings and drawings have the spirit of life in them. As in the angel's face, Diana's faces are living, individual faces. First time I saw the image, I made no connection by association with 9/11. I saw it an angel between two worlds. The instant I saw the facebook comment about the towers, there it was, like a Rauschenberg silkscreen. I can still see it without seeing the towers. I see it back and forth, with and without, and see it both at once. The image on the one hand is independent of the 9/11 association and on the other hand could be a poster for the Oliver Stone movie. The quality of being both at once, yin and yang together in the turning circle, gives it life. In the angel's face I see a child's innocence looking to God in a beseeching prayer for her mother's life. It's a powerful image. Diana's images are so powerful with feeling they have a living presence. She can paint a cat such that I feel the presence of cat. This is her gift, the power of the feeling in her work. It's a feeling in the heart. The faces she paints show an individual face and an individual feeling. She has a website www.artbydianatoma.com. I found a variety of images googling diana toma artist and clicking on images. And there's a photograph of her favoring Grace Slick in the time of Surrealistic Pillow. Diana's angel painting that happened of its own lifted my spirit about the day. It shows such tremendous compassion, you know an angel like this was there.  

diana toma

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READING HENRY MILLER: TO LIVE AND BE AWARE

henry miller

 

Over the last several days I've found some remarkable insights by way of Diana Toma's prompt in the Daily Creative Practice, where the art impulse came from in self. It was quite a subtle place to go to. I danced around it, spiraling in on the core of it, finding much inspiration toward art and writing from Henry Miller. "Just happen to be" reading his Colossus of Maroussi, a little at a time, rereading by a whim. Picked it from the shelf thinking I'd like to revisit Greece with Miller and dip into his writing again. Pinned down to name a favorite American writer, it has to be Henry Miller. He speaks to me like no other writer has. I've read biographies, memories of him, a lot of what he's written. Haven't read any of his Rosy Crucifixion trilogy, Sexus, Nexus and Plexus. They're too long and I'm a slow reader. I've wanted to read them since they were new, but thick books turn me away on sight. I don't care who wrote them. I'd like to read From Here To Eternity, by James Jones, but it is about four times too long for me. I've been saying of myself in the years after high school I could not read with comprehension. I read Colossus of Maroussi age 22. I picked it up to read it again half a century later to see what I missed, to enjoy it again, to read Henry Miller again. This time around I have found I comprehended more than I thought. It even felt like I had almost memorized the book. I didn't remember a lot of details, but saw a way of thinking, of looking at the world, an attitude toward life I have gradually shaped into my own life. No other writer I've read has seemed like somebody I know, a friend of many years. I found at the end of four days of self-examination looking for the origin of the art impulse in self, it was Henry Miller's influence. I've retained so well what he had to say, I realize now I was reading much closer then than I thought. I see in retrospect I had adopted Miller's way of seeing, his attitude toward life. When I started writing the daily blog, I had reasoned for myself over several years that first person observation is closer to the reality of living in this world than third person, I instead of he. I is more direct, more experiential.

 

henry miller by kalman aron

 

I set out with the notion that this blog is a record of one person's point of view and experience in one place, in one time. I decided at the start not to make any attempts to promote it, just let it be a daily journal. I chose not to make it spiffy online journalism of short paragraphs dealing only in the obvious. Since I tend to long paragraphs naturally, I decided not to chop them up into USA Today speak. I said, I don't care. I'm not in it for money, nor am I in it for popularity and maximum number of viewers. Decided to go ahead and write long paragraphs as I felt like doing. Paragraphs are getting closer to one sentence every year, to one phrase: See Spot run. I decided not to honor that progression, or degression, whichever, and do what I feel like doing. I saw Miller wrote in long sentences and first person. The influence is obvious to me now, but it happened unconsciously. I would never set out to write like Henry Miller, nor would I set out to paint like van Gogh. If ten times as many people would read it if I wrote short paragraphs, I don't want ten times more. I don't care how many see it. First, it is a journal to self, made public because I'd never do it for more than 4 days otherwise. Online gives me a deadline, makes me do it. I don't know who's seeing it, except for some friends, and don't know what others make of it, except for a few friends. That's enough. Feedback is important in any art form. I need feedback, practical feedback, mainly to know if it is connecting with anyone and how it's connecting. I've learned from feedback that when I write with a certain intent, though not stating the intent, it comes through. I've wondered over that one for years, how to get intent across without stating it directly. Turns out, it simply amounts to: intend it. That's one I like to play with in writing, seeing how intent comes through without consciously willing it. I don't mean for you to think I take myself so seriously by calling myself a writer that I'd compare my writing to Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller. Not at all. It is only recently that I've allowed myself to refer to self as writer. I write every day, the original and only intent of the blog. It's been five years of writing five or six days a week. So I call myself a writer. It doesn't mean I'm writing for the New Yorker or the Nation. Just the act of writing makes me a writer. If I ran several hours every day, I'd call myself a runner. When I paint, I am a painter. The blog is my art form in this time. Learning by doing. When somebody asks if I'm an artist, I say, "Sometimes." Sometimes I'm just filling up blank space. Sometimes I may even touch art in a sentence or two.

 

This was quite a revelation in self awareness finding how closely my early years were influenced by Henry Miller, to the point he has been a great influence on the way I live, the way I write. My artistic sensibilities were educated and inspired by Miller. My friend Jean used to tell me I am the perpetual college student, that I live like a college student. Part of what she meant was I live on the very least I can get by on. Like, again something applied from reading, Marcel Duchamp said, It's not what you make, it's what you spend. From reading Miller's writing and Duchamp's interviews, I learned the importance of living frugally. The less money I make, the less my contribution to the Pentagon, two-thirds of my tax dollars. I never felt right paying taxes to keep a war machine going, didn't like it, couldn't do anything about it, but I could arrange minimum contribution to the machine by living on the minimum. In retrospect, I learned that thinking from Henry Miller. Could possibly attribute same to Henry Thoreau. It was that kind of thinking I was drawn to, quiet civil disobedience. Miller had plenty of Thoreau influence. I think something in our society is nuts, I don't have to participate. The Sixties taught me the futility of political resistance. This time we're in now has taught me to stay out of politics altogether, don't even concern myself with pictures of politicians on facebook. Just keep on scrolling. I like the kind of civil disobedience that doesn't get me arrested and hit in the head with one of those cop sticks they get a cheap thrill out of bullying demonstrators with. I leave that to the players. I'm not a player. Lyndon Johnson and the corporate press made me a non-player the summer of 1968. Five years previously, he'd taken power by coup, the day the American dream of democracy died. I withdrew from all political activities. My only political act is voting, despite knowing voting is a joke on us. Pretend participation. Pretend having a voice. I divorce myself from concerns over American democracy. It is also from Henry Miller I developed and interest in American cultures, American history and awareness of politics. I've taken too much interest, just by paying attention. I see self withdrawing further from paying attention. I don't even care what Bill Maher or Jon Stewart are saying this week. They used to make me laugh. Now they make me think: stop making stupid people famous, the republicans they use for jokes.

 

Reading Colossus, I was in a time of wanting out of a screwed up marriage that didn't have a chance, two people didn't know each other turned out not to like each other. I was longing for the freedom to be on my own, no more being bitched at, gamed with, mother-in-law from hell. I saw too much of her in her daughter, realizing it would be a life of liking her less until it turned to living with miserable hate. I wasn't going to do like my parents and live in agony pretending we're all happy in Jesus. Her games got outta hand. I arrived at our address after six months in the Mediterranean. Some man I'd never seen was there with her. A friend from college days. It was a setup. She knew what time I'd be coming in. I walked in the door, saw him, knew her game and rejoiced inside like the young do now, pumping a fist in the air and hollering the Rebel yell, Hail Yeah! I had a lifetime training in keeping a straight face, not letting anything show but surprise. I went straight to him, shook his hand and said glad-to-meet-ya in the best cocktail party style I knew how. He was so nervous it made me feel mean, but I saw what was happening and it made me want to be mean. Didn't need to. This was the kickoff, I was on my way. No problem. Henry Miller saw me through that time. He showed me how to find my equilibrium alone without backup or being kept in line by a force outside myself. He was going it alone after a divorce, doing it well, revealing for me the interior life is the most important. Hooray for the freedom to have an interior life. Miller taught me to let go of concern over other people's judgment and expectations. Looking back to the time Henry Miller entered my awareness, I see now he became something of a lesser spiritual guide.  Since earliest childhood I knew I wanted to live alone all my life. That speed-bump was a mistake that needed settling. Miller was turned against religion, just like I was. He showed me how to live a life of self-awareness, self-education and fun. Enjoy your life. Live your life. Follow your own light. I did not know where that thinking started, and now it's spread out before me like a map on a table. I might want to read his book on Rimbaud again. I have to say, Thank you, Henry Miller, for my life. He's like a facebook friend; we never met, though we're awfully good friends. He didn't know it, but he ranks among the closest friends of my life. I didn't know it either. I have to say thanks to Diana Toma for the insight and to Ruth Schowalter for setting up this momentum called DCP that I have benefitted from in my interior existence and it's fun. Jerry Lee: a whole lotta fun goin on. Rock and roll all night.

 

 

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