ALL IS WELL

I am hugely affected by the weather. 

The Spring here in the middle of the world was largely rain interrupted by

a little less rain. 

Then suddenly an onslaught of hot, humid wretchedness where sweet, sweet Spring should be. My old air conditioner is hanging in there and my old car is hot as Hell as I shrivel under the cruel, harsh sun and the haze and the sweat.

Enter this weekend on tiptoes and dancing shoes and temperatures in the mid-seventies and low humidity and blue skies and crisp shadows and smiles on the faces of passerby’s and angels floating on the soft breezes that tickle the roses out front.

I move out onto the porch and sit with wine and a light meal and the New York Times and all is well in the universe.

Driving New

Driving.

Forty years of it for me.

Today I found myself once again in the passenger seat while my daughter drove us around on errands. She takes her test in two weeks. 

I was fairly calm today...actually enjoying not being the driver and not having to get my blood pressure elevated over potential problems coming from my left.

She did well. Again. It’s a relief.

Still, it’s driving. Cars. Today on the highway my “child” steering this machine through miles of madness and dimwits in oversized, overpriced, over-shiny vehicles talking on the phone while tailgating and speeding.

My girl taking the reigns. It’s scary as hell.

She does well. I pray she continues to do well and remain safe. 

Out there....

in the barbaric madness of the road.

1954

I was born in 1954 and I remain transfixed by the 1950’s in America. I get the feeling that I’m not alone in this fascination. What the hell is it?

In this photo I’m posting I am so dapper and the furniture surrounding me is completely au courant for the time. I have that marble table in my living room today. It’s completely cool. 

I try to fathom my obsession with things of the era, like Peter Gunn, New York painters of the 50’s, jazz of the era, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Route 66, Marilyn, Tennessee, Jack.......it goes on and on. My hindsight sees an explosive innocence fused with revolutionary fever and poetic intelligence raised on the streets of New York City.

In my little Middletown it was the drip, drip, drip down of culture causing my mom to put that tie on me, to buy a white leather couch and Danish chair and sleek, minimal marble coffee table. I love it all.

The snobs who prefer the centers of culture do not understand that the universe vibrates in large bands of experimentation and accumulation and transformation and that even in the hinterland of America the bee-bop bing-bang of earthly metamorphosis arises in ways unexpected and unknowable.

Hard Times

The rich get richer and...well, ain't the story always the same, in different eras and places and among different kinds of people?
The struggles of the long-suffering and the newly-made poor aren't stories for entertainment or validation of national greatness. It's tough out there. Maybe it always has been.
The top guys at Goldman-Sachs and Fannie Mae made hundreds of millions of dollars in personal profits by devising schemes they knew would probably ruin the lives of many - many people who only wanted to fulfill a dream of owning their own home. These guys remain unpunished and in fact retain their seats at the table of government regulators.
I spend 50 bucks at the grocery store and come home with little to show for it and I wonder how my daughter will make it out there.
I sometimes work for millionaires who quibble over the price of my work, even though it pales in comparison to other baubles - like the $5000.00 built-in coffee maker.
Recession or Depression or Compression or Transgression...it's tough out there.


photos by Ben Shann and Dorothea Lange

BUSY!

Busy, so busy, phone, return number, call back, busy, call, ring, message......i'm busy, will call back, leave number call busy number, return, where?
Busy, no money but busy, return huh? can't reach phone who called, what?
Busy, still busy, oh forgot to call you sorry was busy, hmmm? say, how busy it is yes now I am in the midst of.............................................................................................

FREEDOM

In high school I discovered the writings of Jiddu Krishnamurti. I’m thinking now of his book titled Freedom From the Known. Great title. I haven’t read his work much in the past twenty-five years but his influence has never waned.

Lately I’ve been doing small paintings whose primary subject is a house image.

I’m working in acrylic now, after decades using oils. I know how to use them fluently now and they suit my need for hyper-activity - speed painting. I don’t think it over, don’t ponder, peruse, wonder, worry, meditate. None of it! I paint. That’s it.  

I have no agenda and don’t care about what others may think. More than anything I’ve done in a while these paintings seem to be about: freedom.

To be free from the known is to glide along the pathways of existence without the burden of thinking about the experience. Thought thinks thought and we get wrapped up in the sticky web of thought. It takes a certain kind of trust to get through; trust that your accumulated knowledge (and wisdom?) will present itself without the need for thinking into it.

This kind of freedom is such joy. It is like flying.

That doesn’t mean that it is all positive, wonderful, smiling Buddha-stillness. The dark blob in these paintings is the ever-present Negative, Death, Misfortune, Pain, Sadness....that accompanies all of life by necessity. I welcome it!! Don’t give me cutesy-pootsie!! There is no state of utter Happiness devoid of Suffering. That is fantasy. 

Guest Writer: Poet Edward Grayson

WORD

Somehow my word 

changes meaning

from mind to hand

to another

brain.

Solid and easy thoughts

get tilted, adjusted,

twisted and

distorted

along this pathway.

Somehow

my word mutates,

escalates

then explodes

uncontrollably 

in the reception.

Here

my word

remains the same 

as

always.

There

it is 

no

longer

even my

word.


Edward Grayson is the author of Plane Field Sightings.