Requiem for the Silver Lining

"And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea."

T.S. Eliot (The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock)

We roll to the sky then dip to see the water, the 5.0 liter Cummings diesel engine wines as Flathead Lake bounces in and out of view. I notice silver lining on the fur and pines along side the road, the light doesn't look this way but only in the spring. Something todo with being washed by winter and reflected with both the cold and the recreation of spring. And the clouds tower in cumulous mass trailing showers over the Rockies.

"This is more like a roller coaster ride than a road!" Dennis states flat and Fig and I laugh and agree. A new road is going in and it will be easier to reach our destination the next visit we make. That and for who ever else wishes to go and that is the bitter sweet part of a new road. I spot sheep up the rocky slope and we slap into the ditch to pull binoculars from the center counsel and watch what was lighter specks of rock become Big Horn's. There aren't a lot of them left so there is always general excitement when they are spotted. We cot site of four more little clusters and counted up wards of fifty altogether, for any of us this made the drive worth while and we settled back for more "roller coaster" action.

The Symes Hotel in Hot Springs Montana still feels to hold the belief of the mystical healing power of the Thirties, when it was built. The Spanish never found El Dorado nor The Fountain Of Youth, they packed their armer from one end of the country to the next and down into the jungles of South America. They were to be eaten alive by worms, never finding everlasting life on earth or unquenchable wealth. By the time the nineteen thirties rolled around Percy Fawcet had disappeared into the Amazon, never to be seen again, totally convinced a lost city did exist. By the time they got done looking for him, the searchers had ether died or found nether Fawcet or the Lost City but had pretty much been over the entire region. By the time the Symes was built W.W.II was just getting kicked off and W.W.I had shattered the belief that the industrial age was going anywhere special. So I guess the investors of this new resort, in the middle of nowhere, must have thought that the sacred indian hot springs and their bubbling waters would be an irresistible draw to the disillusioned but fabulously wealthy cattle, mining, and logging barons of the new state. If they couldn't find El Dorado or The Fountain of Youth then maybe they could believe that some bubbly water could heal their gout.

As I sat watching the little bubbles attach themselves to my leg hair I felt I maybe understood why they would feel healed. People spoke in whispers here and those whispers felt like echos in a vast space. It was early afternoon by the time we had arrived and there were few people to disturb the soaking. Rain showers filtered down on all four sides of the valley yet our island of bubbles sat untouched. A gentleman of the late nineteen seventies/early eights sat beside me and made a comment on the massing rain clouds. I said how much I enjoyed them and he whispered back "oooooh, yaaaa". I felt happier, strangely, that I could share a moment were some one else was enjoying the clouds as I. Then he started to talk, a little louder with each sentence. There was Fig, Dennis, man with smudged skull with rose tattoo on his arm, chubby wife, empty eyed local indian woman and white toothless boyfriend, me and my want-a-be Jimmy Buffet talker getting baked and fizzed. The silence being broken, the speed of acceleration is a wind fall. Through the gate walks two women in ripe early twenties with a bearded man who might be the same but looks early forties. I scoot closer to Dennis as much to get away from the enlarging mouth of Mr. Buffet as to be polite to the new arrivals at my back. They slip in, giggle, two day old booze oooozing from there smooth round skin. "Don't look!" I tell my self but the peripheral is to close and you see with out seeing. The Faded look at them with envious eyes, I feel sick from the contrast. Conversation is moved to the Mandan Indians, El Dorado that was mountains of corn, and Karl Bodmer's paintings. A speech for the new arrivals ensued, moving to what is truly art; he looks at me to agree. Or maybe at the breasts behind my shoulder, his sunglass block the movements of his eyes. I overheat and sit back up on the ledge, ask Dennis if he wants to go. He nods yes but doesn't move. Her pink toenail brushes my leg slightly as she swings her long legs out. "Shit" I think "I should have made eye contact, and then she wouldn't have done that." To not accede to beauty is a personal affront to the holder, it is cruel and punishing to them, for their beauty tents to be all that they have and Ponce de Leon never found the Fountain of Youth. The three move to the cooler pool and Dennis says he is ready to go. I ask him if he had used the shorts, he had lent me, as an oil rag as we move clock wise around the bathers. I make a fateful glance at the pool as I leave, she stares holes in me. I wonder who is profaning beauty more; me for refusing to notice or her acknowledging to flaunt it?

Stopping at the Tamarack in Lakeside we eat our fill, Fig and I share a pitcher of the newest brew on tap. Pulling out of the parking lot we stop to wait for a man with suspendered pants pulled to his armpits and three gallon size growlers clutched in hand. "He has got two!" exclaims Fig "No, he's got three." I respond. "Ya.......... we should mug him." says Dennis.

Walking On Egg Shells

"You can read the life your living but you can't change a word."

Leonard Cohen

"Creatures of mercy

Shoot me down

And set me free"

Bat for Lashes (the horse and I)

I remember thinking when I was in high school that as soon as I could I would get out of the troubles that surrounded me. I could go some where else and find peace and safety from these troubles. I went a many places, for quite a few years.

An Explanation For Cruelty

"The man who cannot visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot." Andre Breton

"If man no longer finds any meaning in his life, it makes no difference whether he wastes away under a communist or a capitalist regime." Jaffe'

Here is the numbing aspect of relativity, the grey shouting void in between the darkness and the light, and the plausible explanations that can't be explained. So why are we lonely when we have love? My friend Jimmy looked at paintings my niece and nephew left on the kitchen table yesterday afternoon. "You can really tell whats going on in a child's mind by what they draw." he commented "It is always smiling faces and sunshine......" We grow older and we gather shadows and we gather moon dust. Then we mix them together in a molotov cocktail and call it wisdom. Jesus said that unless you become like a little child you will not see the kingdom of heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is also referred to as having no shadows, only light. We connect reality with shade and shadow, as the years pass, and I wonder if this is only a reality we have made for our own safety. Even while looking at each other are we seeing the shadow before the light? I make a glance at beautiful eyes and as they return the look I wish to be a child and love openly with our reservations; to see the "Kingdom of Heaven" stretched out into eternity there. Maybe it is a lustful longing yet I hope my shadows grow less dense as I close with the quickening of time and life on this earth.

Quavor

"The pain had been too pleasurable, the pleasure too painful; so that I feared that in time my mind would no longer be the thing I knew."

-Gene Wolfe- (Shadow & Claw)

"The world just seems to be on wheels ------ going so fast I can't see the spokes ---- and I like it." -Georgia O'Keefe-

There was a panic once in the very back of my mind. A small shadow that would only grow large in dreams, leaving me gasping for air and wild eyed awake. A whispering shadow, madder still that the character Mr. Depp plays in "Alice And Wonderland". A whisperer of feeling not words. How can a seventeen year old have anxieties about how time is so fleeting and would be gone, he would be old and it would all be over? There wouldn't ever be enough time to do what I wanted to do, I was getting old way to fast way to quick! I think I was a lot older then, then I am now. I look at old photos, friends have sent me, and I see old troubled eyes. The world was a heavy burden then. Emotions are real and have wait, they ether propel you or sink you like a rock.

My life is busy now, busy with the swirling of my imagination and dreams. I have even gotten over being worried that my dreams might not come true. A dream in itself has a equilibrium and a thrust, you don't always end up were you think it will take you but believe me it is alway interesting! I think dreams are kind of like hot air balloons, you can kind of guide them but don't think you are going to land the f*^%$cker on a dime!!! Oh I have my anxieties and at times it is a battle to keep a level head. Jesus said "True love casts out all fear" and that "My burden is light and my yoke isn't heavy." He was always getting at something deeper, down there in the bowels of your psyche. The question isn't one we want to answer, it isn't one that we really want to look at. A passing glance is just fine, a complaint here and a grumble there should do it. Yet do we really want to look at the real reason we refuse a light burden over a heavy one? Lets admit it: we like our heavy burdens, we like our fears, for then what would be left to talk about? The wether? Could we get off the ground with the buoy up of our dreams, with out panicking and letting all the air out just so we feel in control? We can't take heavy burdens with us, they are thoughts that anchor our craft to the ground. Be warned though, that emptiness you feel with out them will frighten you. You will feel godless........

Slingshotting my self into my work, panicked that for some reason not one piece would be worth a fart in the breeze and pushing on!!! Somehow it comes together when you are willing to just let it go.

"I take a walk, pretending I am a detached mind." -Czeslaw Milosz-

Nov. 30th 2009, 5 am. I turn on the lights and walk in, check the fire, stoke the fire and wander upstairs to make coffee. It is my opening day of work in the new studio that has been my ongoing project for the last three months. Everything is painted white; I have shelves, brush hangers, adjustable easels that hang from the ceiling, benches, a large 4x8 ft. work table, a drafting table and a heated, dust-free room for drying canvasses. I have light banks that I can raise and lower from ropes and pulleys suspended from the ceiling. I have a Bose sound system (Christmas gift from artist Harry Anderson) that has a wireless feed from my computer library and, after I attached wheels to the bottom of a small cabinet, I have a rolling paint palette table!

I look around, think to myself, "Now what the hell do I do?" I have had months to dream up everything I could accomplish if I had the space, time and resources and now it is all here………. No!!! I have had years to dream up large projects! I have worked outside, in tents, on kitchen tables and damp, spider-infested, basements; anywhere I could find a spot to set up an easel or table and draw. Now here it is spread out before me, my brain child. It is hard to explain the goodness I feel, the light I absorb and the hopes I have.

In seven months I will have my first one man gallery show in Brownsville, Nebraska. "Why Brownsville?" I get asked a lot. (Anything east of the Rockies doesn't really exist for most westerners until you hit New York; everything else is corn or wheat fields and generally boring.) The answer is that next to Brownsville, the Missouri River flows by in brown swirls and where a year and some months ago I beached my kayak on the shore. I got out and wondered into town with my dear friend John Johnston. We made friends, one of them being artist Harry Anderson. Harry liked the sketches I made of my kayak journey from Montana down the Mighty Mo and invited me to keep in touch with him after I finished my trip. He later offered me a gallery showing there in Brownsville, one show at the Lyceum Cafe' and Gallery and another in his own Anderson Galleries. He asked for fifty finished and framed images to be ready by July 2010. After these shows, I plan on entering juried art shows throughout the United States and working to get into permanent galleries. There is a lot to be done and my idea tank is overflowing, so much ready to burst forth that it is clogging up the gates!

Same world-different planets.......

Did your mother or father ever teach you about what being fair means? You wanted another piece of sweet goodness that was so beautifully rapped in that pretty rapper and you got an answer such as "Now honey if I give one more to you, there will not be enough to go around." Then you grew up............... Or did you? You might be able to think back to that explicit point in time when you got hit by the brick flying through the window! It hit you in the head and when you picked it up, in perplexed anguish, the message tied to it read "life isn't Fair"!!! And the bricks just kept coming. You get a job, work hard, your never late and never take smoke brakes and then the ass kisser who does as little as possible gets the promotion, raze, or the same raze as you! It goes on and on and it sucks.............

I have two very good friends, which are both artists and mentors to me in my own work. Their work, as well as their lives, differ vastly, you could say they live on two completely opposite planets from each other. They both work very hard and are equally opinionated on the subject of what art is or should be. I hold a large debt of gratitude to both of them for all the time, patients, and energy they have invested into my life. When I show them each my work, in turn, they pick out almost completely opposite pieces; that they believe are my best. They then strongly encourage me to "go that direction". I will admit, it can be confusing. They both have great points and equal passion in their admonishments. You must understand something here though; Artists like followers and worshipers. They have learned quicker than most that "life isn't Fair".

One of the first things a person learns being an artist is that "life isn't Fair" and "life is going to kick the shit out of your pride". This could be one of the big reasons so many art students find other occupations after graduation. Take the music industry as an example, there are those who study classical piano from the time they can walk. They go on to be a genius in school, playing anything that can carry a tune, they work for years on a piece that few if any one can comprehend or even listen to and and if they are lucky they sell that piece for the elevator. Then there is the punk kid who can't tune his own guitar to save his life and couldn't tell you were the key of G remotely could be found. He gets picked up by a talent scout, before he is even legal to drink, and is making millions. Not to mention playing for millions just because he is good looking, has tattoos, girls like him, and he is cool. People sing along, people line up for his next record, people know his face........... "Life isn't Fair" those who we see work the hardest we believe should get the most but we still don't want to listen to that chaps elevator music. Wright and wrong be damned!

One of my friends that I mentioned above does sculpture work that takes him two or three weeks to complete. My other friend also works in sculpture but spends, at times, years to complete a piece that sells for the same price as my first friends pieces do. Then there is the kid that ran around the ghetto who vandalized local businesses and then went on to try to sell his work in a few coffee shops. He becomes famous over night and now makes more that both my friends combined at the ripe age of thirty. He was a vandal and now he is a famous artist. We quantify that this kid should not have this honor and we also might say that he really isn't an artist at all; if of course we don't take to his style of work. (Other artists tend to be the quickest in this game to pin that tail on that donkey.) "It isn't fair to all those who have worked and worked at perfection their art for years." They say. Yet "Life isn't Fair"!

Now that we understand "Life Isn't Fair" maybe we can go on, quit wasting so much time complaining about who got what and put our efforts into loving. A wise man said a long time ago "Judge not lest thee be judged, in the same manner you judge you will be judged." I think we all know who that wise man was and I think we all know that we are all guilty. I personally want to try to be to busy with loving to make judgments on who deserves what!

Time goes by

The first winter snow came in last night. Moaning like a cat in heat through the crack in the window. My good friend "The Sailer" came home on Monday and I cornered him for first coffee in the morning, and then beer in the afternoon. The catching up of a year an'some. We told about girls, love lost or found and his kind eyes contrasted with his ugly mouth. We like to pretend we are tuff. Ben walks across the field ducking through old barbed wire fencing, hat cocked to one side. "I woke up with a pack-rat sitting on my pillow last night" he spits for exclamatory impact "I jumped out of bed and grabbed a bayonet. The little guy scurried into the corner and I pinned it there, then I yelled to Sarah "Sarrrrrahhhhh, bring meeeeee my longsword" she said "what?" My longsword I tell her and she pulls it down from were it lays on those elk horns above the table, ya know? She hands it to me and I stabbed the thing with it!" He spits again and we laugh. Ben wants to drag the old-pickup, a gift from the sailor's adopted mother, up to his place after it wouldn't start. I tell the sailor we should drag him into town, we laugh red faced thinking about it. "Ya! He couldn't get out could he?" "Nope!!!" I say smiling so my face hurt. We only drag him five miles down the road until he puts on the e-brake and we watch the tires smoke. We had forgotten about the e-brake. "You like that you sons-a-bitches?!!!" he yells as he jumps out in smoke and dust. We start laughing again. "It is good to be home!" the sailor gulps. I walk to the bank of the road to watch the larch trees turn a glowing green.

I have been painting dirty walls white and piling boxes with long forgotten things I don't remember. I hang my lights from the rafters and look at the pools they make, pools of electric glow waiting for me to wade into. I can't go there yet, I have to go through all the boxes and decide, what is worth hanging on to; such a grueling dusty business. "Hellow Sneeze, good to see ya again!" Am I an old man? Why do I have so many things that look old? Did I forget years inside the years and collected all these? They are other lives, from other places and not this earth I swear!!! Right now is the truth of the new paintings floating in the back of my mind. They are ghosts of the future and they haunt me now. Just as these boxes haunt me with the past.

This damn eternal now, I am lost in this and that; white walls, dust and dreams all of these prepare me for the Everest in my mind to climb or concur with the ghosts paintings in floating futures.