THANK YOU FOR THIS DAY

 

raoul dufy

Day 4 of blogathon, the prompt is lists of future artistic goals over the next five years. First thing to mind was McKenzie Wren's opening to Day 2, the chorus from David Bowie's song from the early 1970s, "We've got five years." The other association that popped into mind almost simultaneously was the Soviet Five Year Plans. Through the 1950s and 60s, American propaganda was fixed on evil Communist Russia such that it became reality: Communism = Evil, Five Year Plans are stupid. It's what Communists do. You have to be of a certain age to remember that time, like in my generation you had to be of a certain age to remember the Depression. Nobody bothered to notice what the Soviets were doing was not Communism, but that was neither here nor there. Actuality has no role in propaganda. Calling orange juice ketchup doesn't make it anything but orange juice. This is where a five year plan takes my head. It doesn't mean I agree that five year plans are stupid or Communism is evil, only these are my associations. The language of propaganda. It's not that I mean it really is, only that it's my historical association. It's a bundle of personal and historical associations that makes it an unreality for me to say I want to make the world a better place or I want to spread joy or I want to be an ambassador for good, whatever that is. It doesn't even mean I disagree with people who see the good as something laudable. This is illusion, good is not always "good." Uplifting is not always elevating. I'm getting into splitting hairs territory; it's time to abandon that line of thinking. It leads ultimately to the brain is a universe of atoms floating in spirals through nothingness, which leads to looking out the window at the snowbirds hopping about in the snow the other side of the glass picking up their daily seeds. Caterpillar just now appealed to me for attention, Mao. Took a moment to rub the top of her head and her neck, tell her I love her from the heart. I took the moment to bring my own head back to the world of perception where seeing is believing, leaving off that believing doesn't have much to do with reality, and reality is different from individual to individual. I mean the reality we collectively agree upon, like gravity keeps footprints off the ceiling.

 

raoul dufy

 

My entire childhood was spent in a church where I was told several times a week that I might not be alive tomorrow. Any moment may be my last. It stuck. I've never been able to imagine a future for myself. I've seen too many variables flying about every situation and have lived long enough to see that even Noam Chomsky doesn't know the future. One unforeseeable moment can change everything. Like the assassination of Archduke (?) Franz Ferdinand with an improvised explosive device set Europe into a "World War."  The rings that go out from this one splash in time will continue to the horizon. I have a really strong feeling such an unforeseeable moment is around a nearby corner. 911 was not it, because it was foreseeable and seen coming. "We didn't have any intelligence." Duh. A child raised believing the Truth in the likelihood of not waking up in the morning, plus we might get nuked any day, I've lived with "no hope of tomorrow" as evidence of the importance of living my life today. I've also lived long enough to notice that it aint necessarily so. I woke up a lot of mornings. The last thing I had to say to that argument was to an old preacher's wife, one of the really old-fashioned kind, of which we have many today, a haughty old thing pretending humility, the worst gossip in the church and kept a smokescreen of piety about herself obscuring the inner bitch, the self her husband and kids knew well. She was on the verge of feeble when, going out the church-house door, I assisted her descent of the four steps. She thanked me. I said, "See you next time." She said, "We have no guarantee of that." I thought, Lord have mercy, don't I know it,  and said, "I'll pretend I do, and if I don't it won't matter." She didn't even give my clever young frivolity an harrumph. It was the last time I saw her. She wasn't able to leave home soon after, then hospital and nursing home. She was steeped in a lifetime of old Calvinist, Puritan mind of post-medieval northern Europe and Britain, like her husband and her daddy, believed anything fun was the devil himself, the kind of thinking that pushed me toward atheism. The moment with her on the church-house steps was after my awakening. I don't mean awakening here to mean enlightenment, only the kick-start of awareness. The awakening turned me away from heavy serious thinking to a more light-hearted attitude toward experience. I don't mean Boca Raton Barbie, nor do I mean System Of A Down.

 

raoul dufy

 

In the past I attempted to make some plans, but didn't believe them. In late-Twenties I bought a two-volume set of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, to save it for old age. It was something I wanted to read in my later years. I have two sets of the two volumes. I've never opened any of them. They are preserved on my bookshelf. In the mid-1980s I discovered Australian writer, Patrick White and read him, one after the other. Came a day I did not want to read everything yet and be done with him. I wanted to save the rest for my later years for something I know I will enjoy to the max. Neither White nor Proust appeal to me now as something I want to read. I want to finish a couple books by Chris Hedges I'd begun at the same time. I want to finish a history of China that calls to me. I want to find a good history of the Persian Empire. I'd also like to find a history of Kazakhstan before it was broken up into the -stans. I have a wonderful history of the Ottoman Empire that I want to read again. I'd like to reread Diana Eck's beautiful book, Banaras City of Light. And there are so many I want to read again. I want to read more poems by John Berryman. I want to finish the four volumes of Andre Gide's Journals. I want to read more in the discourses of Upasni Maharaj. I want to reread some plays by Harold Pinter. I don't have time for Proust. He's too far down the list. There's no way this body will hold out that long. A few days ago I was thinking I want to take Julio Cortazar's novel, 62: A Model Kit, off the shelf, not to read all of it, unless I choose to, but to read a few pages at a time randomly. The novel itself is in 62 sections or chapters to be read in any order the reader chooses. Thought I might read a few, I love his writing, for the joy of reading his sentences. I went to the shelf and took it down. It's nice to see it again. Too many years have gone by without reading him. It may end up in a stack on the floor, but it was a good feeling to touch its cover and flip the pages. I don't dare say I will indeed read in it. Tomorrow I may say tomorrow. And I may take it as soon as I'm finished writing to the reading chair, put on the reading glasses, have a cup of hot chocolate, feet up off the floor, and read for an hour in bliss with sunlight to read by.

 

raoul dufy

 

As you have accurately guessed by now, this mind doesn't do well with goals. I could plan a goal today and next week it will be something that was important a week ago. For appointments I write in black or red on a wall calendar with inch and a half by inch and three quarters rectangles for each number. If an appointment doesn't get written there, it's forgotten. I've never taken to goals, goals being a sort of plan, the carrot on the stick to keep the donkey going. I can't even conceive imagining one goal, certainly not five, and then five more goals for this year, in addition. It makes my psychic bodies explode. Goals are motivated by desire for success. I'm recalling in ninth grade running around the football field track at a tournament chasing the guy running in front of me I had to beat to win. I never liked that feeling, having to beat somebody to win. It didn't feel right then, doesn't feel right now. It's the winning I have no desire for. I don't want to win a lottery because I don't want the trauma of overnight unlimited wealth and every snake on earth having a bead on me. I like my life on Waterfall Road where I have a hard time finding the money every year to pay property taxes you'd laugh at in awe for being so little. I never wanted to climb the ladder of success. Soon after high school I tried to go against that thinking by reading Atlas Shrugged and Think and Growä Rich. It all made me gag. What do I give a shit about a bunch of rich people needing to live underground because they hate everybody else. I'd rather read Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums. At least reading Dharma Bums made me feel cool. Think and Grow Rich made me feel poor and worthless. I could not give my mind to continuous meditation on money and/or success. Robert Lowell was an uber-successful American poet with plenty of money, his name in perpetuity on his chair in the inner sanctum of American Poetry, and he went *pop* that's it cat shit. It evidently didn't mean all that much to him. John Berryman too. Randall Jarrell jumped in front of a car on the interstate at night. They had caught the carrots on the stick they started out wanting, fame, to be well thought of, and in some cases money. Like, Wow. I don't want to find my life so regrettable I need to bail out and see if I can finish saying Geronimo. I'll just take it a day at a time and play like I'm doing something spiritual.   

 

raoul dufy

 

 

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PAINTING THE LITTLE RIVER BOYS

the little river boys by tj worthington

oil and acrylic on plywood, 5'x3'

Day three of the blogathon, first question: What is my favorite of my creative work? And how would I describe my feelings about it?

That one is easy to answer. I don't even have to think about it. This is it, The Little River Boys. They were the first bluegrass band in this area. I made the image from a b&w polaroid, the old ones that used a squeegee. The polaroid and the narrow ties date it circa 1960. I asked Jr Maxwell, the banjo picker, when it was and he had no recollection. The photo was taken of the band backstage after a show they'd done in Johnson City, Tennessee. My friend Milly Richardson lived in her apartment above my music store in Sparta. I used the back of the store for my painting studio. Painted this in the store, 2006 maybe. One day Milly came through with an old sheet of plywood she'd taken from the barn at the farm and wanted to use it for a temporary table to put paperwork on of some sort. Lumber had been stacked on the plywood, leaving vertical lines stained, 4 vertical panels, like a Japanese screen suggestion. The moment I saw the piece of wood, I fell in love with it. I asked Milly if there was any way I could get it from her. She said she'd be using it for a short time and I could have it when she's done. Great. I wanted to do a four-piece band on it, or maybe the Carter Family with one panel empty. The Little River Boys came to me right away, remembering the photo I'd seen in Jr Maxwell's photo albums. I asked him if I could take it to a drugstore in town to have a print made from it and replace the original. Sure. Milly brought the wood to me when she was finished with it. I needed that sheet of plywood. Initially, I wanted to put each of the figures in each of the vertical rectangles. Right away, that seemed stilted. I like having the banjo player leaning out of his panel over into the fiddler's panel. Jr's banjo played so closely with the fiddle, it seems right to have them shoved up against each other.

 

fiddler fred McBride

oil and acrylic on wood

 

I only knew one of them, Jr Maxwell, the banjo. Cleve Andrews, the fiddler, died several years before I came to the county. He had spent some years in a WW2 concentration camp. Paul Warren, who became Flatt & Scruggs' fiddler after the war, was Cleve's friend in the concentration camp. After the war, Cleve took up fiddle, I suppose from hearing Paul talk about it. Jr told me that years later when Cleve was in the audience at a Flatt & Scruggs show, Paul Warren saw him from the stage and called him to the stage. He asked Cleve to play a couple tunes. This moment was Cleve's self-validation. He could play a fiddle if he could play onstage with Flatt & Scruggs. Jr got his self-validation hired by Jimmy Martin to play banjo with the band. A month on the road, living on coffee and indigestion, Jr went home. Wasn't any money in it. Jr needed to make money, at least enough to live on with a wife. Having his moment in Jimmy Martin's band gave Jr his own credibility that he could pick a banjo with the big league. Jimmy Martin was his favorite bluegrass singer all his life. He liked Jimmy Martin as a man. Jimmy Martin was a coon hunter and used to hunt coons in this county with friends of Jr's. He was a hillbilly from east Tennessee. Jr Maxwell and Cleve Andrews were dynamic when they made music. Since Jr died in 09 I have found two recordings of them together playing at Galax Fiddler's convention as the Little River Boys in early 1960s. It was made as a field recording at the time, somebody there from Germany with a tape recorder. A fiddler friend who is active in making field recordings of musicians around in the hills who have never recorded, Kilby Spencer, emailed them to me after he'd found them. Those two songs are a treasure, all there is of the Little River Boys. I felt immense joy first time I heard the recordings. I never Imagined I would ever hear the Little River Boys.

 

cleve Andrews fiddle / jr maxwell banjo by tj worthington

oil on canvas

 

 

The two guitar players are Estal Bedsaul on the left and Paul Joines on the right with white hair. Estal Bedsaul used to sell used cars in the Choate used car lot across the road from what is now the Japanese restaurant. He is a face I remember seeing in my early years, but I never met him or knew his name. He was the guy working the used car lot. Jr praised his guitar playing. Paul Joines I never met before he died, either. I know his son Bill. Bill Joines is a good guitar picker and singer too. He can flat get-er-done pickin a gi-tar. Bill is a good man. These are good people. The best kind of good. Just who they are. The best compliment I had on the piece when it was done was when Bill saw it. He walked up to Paul and looked at him awhile. He said, "It's just like he's a-standin there." He blew my circuits. The day Jr Maxwell died, Bill blew my circuits again, "You get into any kind of trouble, all of Whitehead will back you up." I had taken care of Jr in his last year and round the clock in his last months drifting into dementia, keeping him out of a nursing home. He wanted to die at home. I wanted it for him. The very greatest experience of my life. I had known Jr over thirty years. He was one of the first people I met when I was new in these hills. I was getting Social Security, and I could not allow Jr to waste away in a nursing home staring at the ceiling day and night, eating mush, being treated like lumber. By the time he started getting feeble I had known for a few years that Jr was the only man I had ever known I could call wise without hesitation. Jr had wisdom that he lived by. For five years I stopped by to see him on the way home from work and had a drink with him. We are both sippers. Two drinks over two hours. 140 proof. Then I'd go home. In that time, he told me his entire life. Strangely, I find my fondest memories of him are from the time when his mind was gone, running around the house in the wheelchair in the middle of the night just riding, putting clothes on, taking them off, putting on others, taking them off, putting on others until he ended up with both legs down one leg of the pants and his head sticking out a sleeve hole in a tshirt and an arm through the neck hole. He'd bound himself so he couldn't move. I had to untie the knot he'd made.

 

fiddler howard joines by tj worthington

oil on canvas, 16"x20"

 

A month or so before Jr's mind went away, I told him, "Your county will never forget your name. I'll see to it." Before he died, we did not know there were any recordings of him existing. Soon after he died, old recordings made at jam sessions began to surface. Some of my friends involved in field recordings started finding old reel-to-reel recordings with Jr playing with different local fiddlers. I put together a cd of everything we'd found and had a hundred copies made, which I took around in one week, giving one to each of his relatives and all his friends. It was the best week of my life. I'd drop in on them at home to deliver it and we'd sit and talk for awhile. All his friends became my friends the day he left the body. One bit of wisdom he passed to me: Don't believe what you think. Another he gave me to live with: Stay away from important people. I took that for sound counsel. I had lived by that, but had never put it into words. He chose the path of suffering for this lifetime. He had five major blows, such that would put a charging rhino on its knees. He let all that stay in the past and kept a cheery attitude through it all. I am grateful with my whole life for the opportunity to have Jr Maxwell in my world. He was what I call a true human being. It's hard to explain what I mean. You just have to intuit it. Both Meher Baba and the Dalai Lama have said that helping others is more important than prayer and meditation. I felt it. It took a little while getting back into my life. Momentum in the house was shut down. I took my time and let my new life slip into place naturally, let time take care of it. And it did. I felt like I came into a new level of understanding, have felt like I'm living in my own flow for the first time ever. In the time his mind was going away, he said, "I wish I could pay you for all you've done for me." I said, "You done paid in advance. Five years of sharing with me the best liquor made on this earth is worth something. It's worth a lot to me. I'm paying you back." I didn't know where that came from, just heard myself say it, and meant it more than if I'd thought first to say it.

 

jr maxwell, age 86

 

 

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LOOKING FOR WHO I AM

eye am eye

The lead question for day 2 of blogathon: Who are you and what do you see your work as "being?" What I hear in my head is the Who: Who are you? Who-who? Who-who? The funny part for me is that I hold being-who-you-are as number one. Everybody seems to automatically know what it means to be-who-you-are. I take it for granted I know who I am. But, when it comes to answering a direct question, I don't know what to say. I like the Rasta answer: I am I. It sounds pretty, but it's a cheap shot. It's like defining beer by saying beer is beer. What constitutes I? Blake said the eyes are the windows to the soul. No doubt about it. Here is a picture of my window. This picture of my left eye was taken by a 5 year old boy, Landon. I gave him the camera to take some pictures and he took pictures of my eyes. I'd been taking pictures of him, so he took pictures of me. I'll start here, with Landon, the five year old. I've known Landon's daddy, Justin, since Justin was a baby. His mother and dad were my friends. Justin was my child friend when he was little, my teenage friend, my wild friend in his wide-open years, and now his kids are my friends. I like kids. I like it when a child shows me toys and dolls. I like to see a child smile and laugh. I like a child to show off for me; do a dance, sing a song, throw a ball. I feel like I understand a child is every bit as conscious as I am. My few memories from very early childhood are of adults who listened when I talked. I listen closely when a child tells me something, anything. The Justin I knew all through his childhood is the same Justin I know now. I'm glad to see who he is now at age 30 is the same as who he was when he was 5. What I'm looking for in self to answer who I am is that something that has been who-I-am since birth, the thread that runs through a string of beads, aspects of self.

landon, 5

 

For anyone acquainted with reading horoscopes, this tells who I am in brief; Sun-Taurus, Moon-Cancer, Ascendant-Sagittarius, 19May1942SanDiego8:52pm.  Taurus is my main drive. A Taurus is like a donkey in that if he doesn't want to do it, it aint gonna happen. I've got stubborn in abundance. I have no problem with it, same as a donkey doesn't have a problem with it. Somebody wants me to jump through a ring of fire, I'm not going to do it if I don't want to. Call me a wuss, call me a pussy, call me a jerk-off, I'll laugh out loud; you're just barking to hear your head roar. It really pisses off anyone I get involved with in any kind of way who thinks controlling me is the way to go. I dove into six years of psychotherapy to find out what was motivating my attraction to women looking for somebody to control. Bingo: mommy. That wasn't all I went through the process for. It felt like the next thing on my path. Know thyself. It took. I learned a very great deal. And now the psychotherapist is a valued friend. Still, it's difficult looking for who I am to put into words, instead of just feeling intuitive about it. Perhaps the most important part to me of who I am is a lover of God. And where who I am is concerned in the God department, I go my own way. I cuss, I drink liquor, I do all the things somebody who claims a spiritual path is not supposed to do. Who says? I cuss because I like the spice and music in language. I drink because I like the bite of straight liquor, not to get drunk. A church would not accept my refusal to give up my sins. They're not sins to me. They're everyday life. God doesn't want us to walk a tightrope over a pit of crocodiles unless you're Philippe Petit and want to do it for the fun there is in it.

 

caterpillar watches the birds

 

What I have found that it could be about the poor that God loves is the poor live close to the bone. They don't pretend. They want to say every forbidden word there ever was and they know how to do it. The poor are animated by their humanity. They have nothing else. Want to get drunk and sprawl face-down in the dirt, go for it, do what you gotta do. Nothing about social climbing attracts God's attention. Fake people God stays asleep to. God waits for the individual to come to the end of needing to fake it. God waits. I've spent my adult life wondering what it is about the poor that God loves so much. Meher Baba, when he was in the body, sitting receiving people who came to see him in a long line or individually, he always stood up when greeting an American black person. The very people the white people look down on so forcefully. I don't attempt to be God-like by imitating saintly behavior. Makes me barf to think about acting sweet all the time. By the example of King David I've learned it isn't being nice that God loves. It's being yourself, it's following your own light, it's allowing the people around to follow their own light, it's getting shit-faced drunk if I feel like it. Last time that happened was sitting at the kitchen table with my friend Jr Maxwell, who was 82 at the time, New Year's Eve. We decided to spend the evening at the table talking like we did over our drams of white liquor, the best on this earth. By midnight our foreheads were on the table and we were laughing because everything was funny. I believe God thought it was funny too. One afternoon I stopped by his house and saw, in alarm, the storm door open a little ways and his foot was holding it open, him on the floor. I went to him fast as I could go. First thought: heart attack. I saw his glass was sitting upright on the floor beside his hand. I knew he was all right. He went down slowly and sat his glass on the floor on his way down. I did the stupid thing, woke him up and tried to help him up. No. He was fine where he was. OK. I put some bluegrass on the cd player of fiddlers he used to play banjo with. He stayed on the floor and lay there with a serene smile on his face for probably an hour. He was where he wanted to be. When he was ready, he got up.

a recent painting of jr maxwell

I had to take a break. Went over to Justin's with Melvin to see the race at Phoenix. Good race today. Play time with the kids. I went with the question of who I am in mind, thought I'd observe self amidst my closest friends, people I would die for. Self was content and happy the whole time. I look at them in the line of the people I have been close with over years, people gone for many years. In each generation I have seen the waning of mountain culture from generation to generation. Yet the culture continues through very different circumstances such that the culture is still very much alive in the mountain people. I am a naturalized hillbilly. I came from flatland culture, but adopted hillbilly culture for my own. I'm still relatively comfortable with people of urban/suburban culture, but am at home among my hillbilly friends. I don't see their culture a lesser version of city culture. I see it unique unto itself with its own history. An individual's humanity is important among mountain people. We know each other for who we are. I came to the mountains as a monk going to a monastery. In my imagination I identified in the early years with Chinese poet Han Shan, known only for his hundred poems that make the book Cold Mountain. He was a monk who lived in the mountains of southern China. I don't tell this. It's just my own personal self-image. I live quietly on a back road and stay to myself nearly all the time. On Sundays I go see Justin's family and sometimes on Friday night drive to Woodlawn, Virginia, to hear some good music of the region. On trips to town for drug store or grocery store or anything, I'll stop in at the coffee shop and see who's there. Who I am looks for the god in everyone I meet and I like to connect with others in that way. Not by talking about God. Rather by simply being open. Several years ago, I don't know about now, I had the name all over the county of a "white witch." Word was that good things happened to people who spent time around me. I had a guy I didn't know come to my door at 7 one morning because he needed a change in his life, needed whatever it is. I've heard it in different ways from different people. The consensus is that good things happen to people who know me. I don't pay it any mind. If there is something coming through me, I would ruin it attempting to take control of it. I just leave it be and pay it no mind.

round and round

 

 

 

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LIGHTNESS IS LIFE

a truck load of wood gathered while I was inside writing

Today begins the blogathon I am reluctant to set in motion. I find I would rather sleep, would rather read, would rather make some coffee, would rather feed the cat, would rather watch a movie, would rather just about anything. I find myself in avoidance behavior like I do given an assignment. Time to get out the checkbook and pay bills, I start looking for something else to do. Went to take a nap a little bit ago, because considering the assignment, I wanted to sleep. We are to get a "prompt" daily. Today's prompt was six essay questions. I felt like I was facing a final exam with six questions to answer in three hours. GO.

melvin and gail saw the log

 

First question: Why do I exist? Only one brief answer enters my mind. Sexual intercourse. I take existence to mean with a physical body in a physical dimension. That's why I exist. A 21 year old guy and 19 year old girl doing what they're supposed to do, got married and had a baby. They were conforming, not long out of conformity training.

 

done for the day

 

Second question: What is my purpose on earth? To live my life. That's all I know.

melvin

 

Third question: What is the why behind my creative work? Necessity. It's like a beagle is bred to chase rabbits and finds its fulfillment chasing rabbits. Art has been the only subject of my interest since first memories. I suspect very strongly many past lives an artist. Never had an art class. It was like I already knew how when I started. The high school I went to had an art class, but looking in the doorway at what they were doing, it looked to me like a bunch of silly shit and I didn't want to do silly shit. Growing up I was told "take business administration courses, that's the only way you're gonna make money." I hated business administration class. Failed it because I hated it so much. All the adults in my life were telling me to make money. Money was the only purpose I was given while growing up for a reason to live. Then there was church making adult life look like the worst existence possible. Go to church all the time, never drink, suppress sex, believe stuff nobody in their right mind can fall for, and live in guilt calling it God's will. Parents, public school, church and military all taught the same thing: conform and make money. Forget art, it doesn't make money. All my training to the time I entered college after doing military first was make more money. Ya gotta make money. The kind of work that paid best was the kind that took over your life. I was coming into discovering my life my own and did not want to give it away to making money. When I flunked business administration, I settled with myself that I will never make money. I'll work low paying jobs and live on little. Low paying work does not require that I BE my job. No status, no problem.

gail

 

Fourth question: What do I want to be remembered for? I suspect I'll be remembered for tuning the people of Alleghany County to their own musical heritage they'd largely forgotten. Had a music store for four years that sold mountain music cds and a radio show for seven years on the local AM station of local and regional music. Helped put together a 4-cd set of musicians from the county. Gave my collection of regional music to the library. Have written some articles for Old-Time Herald magazine concerning local musicians, the most recent a fiddler named Howard Joines. Have worked with people doing field recordings and have done a few. My goal was to set in motion an appreciation that would take a life of its own, which it has done. I paint portraits of local musicians.  I'm known by the mountain people as somebody who came in from the outside and appreciated their way of life and who they are. I'll be remembered by some an asshole and by some a cool dude. How I'm remembered has never entered my mind before today. I have a name for being an artist, so that's probably the first way I'll be remembered. I don't even like to think about post-death, except for the tunnel of light and angels leading the way. The question was what I want to be remembered for. What I'd want would be something like, was good to animals. Anything that happens after the moment of my mortal frame's last breath, I care nothing about, except for my own celestial experience. Some will cry as I have cried in the past losing friends, and some will be glad, as I have been in the past. It's not my concern.
 

justin

 

Fifth question: Three or more words why I create art. Art is fun.
 

melvin, gail, justin

 

Sixth question: A tshirt message about my purpose or mission creating art. LIGHTNESS IS LIFE.

 

justin, melvin, gail

 

That wasn't so hateful. Turned out to be fun by the end. I never ask myself why I exist. Conception happens. Writing the daily blog for almost five years, it has become my daily purpose. Just the writing is the purpose. I don't want to write or make any kind of art with an agenda, attempting to convince somebody of something. I am the anti-commercial. I'm self-taught. Everything I do is the first time. That's what I like about art. Every time is the first time. My friends who hunt speak of hunting the same way. One says hunting is better than sex, because hunting is the first time every time and sex is the same thing over and over. The chrysanthemum is my flower, the late bloomer. This lifetime is a learning lifetime. Learning has been number one since my beginning. In the later part of the life, I'm weaving together what I've learned into my art expressions.

 

 

down south

 

 

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