Half-Asleep Things

I usually wake up from sleep every night at least twice to make the old man's journey down the stairs. My dreams are as vivid, though probably more convoluted and complex, than ever, but I often can't get back to sleep right away. Sometimes I move to the couch and read for a while. Other times I lay there in bed and think about things, half-asleep.

This morning I went through an entire process of making a book about the friends and acquaintances I have in this neighborhood of Northside. I imagined a book with photos by Annie Leibowitz, featuring odd pairings of image and text, stories, self-defining quotes, shots of familiar places in the area. I know of no other neighborhood full of so many interesting people, often socially-involved, eccentric, caring, weird. So many non-traditional and same-sex pairings. Doctors and architects living next door to struggling artists and laborers. 

For almost an hour I reclined in the wee hours of our darkened bedroom fantasizing about this book. Black and white photographs. No bullshitting and no smiley-face setups.

Then, I think of the work involved. I remember how frustrated I've been for not having whole days for my own painting. I imagine trying to contact all of these people, coordinate the shoots and the interviews. I ponder the impossibility of getting Annie Leibowitz to even respond to the letter I send via some entity three times removed.

Yes, it ain't New York. So what? Even New York isn't New York anymore. I mean: Staples in Greenwich Village!? And the art scene there is dominated by Irony, with a capital 'I', stupid installation art propped up by pseudo-intellectual critical analysis. Where is Harold Rosenberg when you need him? I digress - Northside ain't New York City nor should it be. It is an anomaly within the ordinary.
Humans do their thing all over the world and culture often rises and falls inspired by the doings of the few rather than the many. I'm like so many other half-lazy slobs who dream of great things half-asleep in bed, in the wee small hours of the morning.

Further Menonaqua

this
rest, peaceful
solitude in such
sweet, breezy comfort,
in Menonaqua,
a cottage for all
times and 
everything we need
right now.
never mind what
wealth surrounds us,
we inhale
divine lake breezes,
we walk
these timeless sands,
we drink
the wine of life
and we
love
this
for always,
this place nestled so
perfectly on
Little Traverse Bay,
this shrine of 
peace
and
happiness.


8.21.12

Shh...

the Skipper had sage advice
for Gilligan,
as i have wise thoughts
to share with Curly:
you may have died,
but death can't stymie
ridiculousness.

as the anchor slips
through shallow waters,
we gather new scripts
based on old ideas,
modern as always,
locked into an eternal
struggle between
God and The Professor.

coconuts and striped
cabanas, Curly making
sand circles with his
body, this extended
mayhem endures,
not only for the
cameras, but up here
as well,
in the attic, silent,
stuffy, quiet.

shh...here comes
Ginger.



8.17.12

Lake House

sitting out here
at this lake house
i rented from friends,
the sun and sky
are glorious, the air
clear with wind
drenched by water,
the waves softly
whisper a restful
tone poem.

wealthy neighbors
won't know my
poverty and Doe's
new shiny car
will further conceal
my progressive tendencies.

this ruby red wine
in my glass
will also help
heal
some of the
inconsistencies 
of 
living.


8.12.12

Andromeda Coming

I rarely listen to the radio outside of my car.

Fridays on the way home from working there is always NPR's "Science Friday" with Ira Flatow.

Yesterday he was speaking with a science expert on the forthcoming collision between our galaxy - the Milky Way  - and our nearest large galaxy Andromeda. A spiral galaxy like our own, Andromeda is about 2.6 million light-years away. Andromeda also seems to be heading right towards us at 250,000 miles per hour. That's the distance to our moon covered in an hour.

There's obviously no avoiding this cataclysmic event. We're doomed.

The good news is that this will happen around 4.5 billion years from now.

Our sun will still be shining brightly in the earth sky, like it has for the last 6 billion years.

I have to wonder who or what will be inhabiting this planet then. How am I to wrap my feeble mind around this? It is so large, so grand, so far beyond the reach of this humble mind...that words don't quite match up to it. We think we're pretty big cheese, we humans, as we stride across the globe making friends and enemies, blowing things up and building things up, ranting and chanting and telling each other what to do. We make such beauty and such horror. I don't think we'll be around when the Andromeda Galaxy comes spinning into our territory, our tiny spit of territory that makes up the 5 or 6% of matter existing within all of this Dark Matter or Dark Energy or Dark Dark Dark.

But Something will be here. Something will be here under the same old sun.

Sunday Life

Now six weeks have gone by and no post from this old guy. I wonder and ask myself why. 

I get no answer.

Work has finally picked up with an entire house to work on....walls and more walls.

My client is three years younger than me and sold his business five years ago and retired.

Hmmm.

Today is Sunday. Memorial Day weekend. Three days off without guilt.

I do some real work then get at the easel. The paint works itself and I am with it.

No one else is home. Skip James playing on the mac.

In my old age I'm starting to find color. Some painters have it easily....color. Not me.

I no longer care what people think about my work. The world's too jammed up. Too much of everything. Too much really good painting out there, if one takes the time to look.

Things are up for grabs and I like what I'm doing.

This one is wet. Just moved away from it. Finished? Maybe.

It's blazing hot and humid outside and the window a/c is humming along.

Soon a glass of wine. The order of things is not pre-determined.

THE CITY: Part 2

Having not been in lower west side in 5 or 6 years, I have to say I was a tad surprised by all the new names floating around. I mean: Staples in Greenwich Village? 

I was happy to see the Blue Note still there. But it seemed like a lonely holdout in what some natives must feel is the malling of New York City. The Little Lebowski was closed - a bummer for this huge fan. Ground Zero was what it is - a mixture of emotions, politics, crowds, history, construction. The huge and compromised Freedom Tower spoke little to me. Rather, Doe and I were taken by the old Episcopal Church across the street. How - we wondered - did the trees surrounding the chapel and gravestone survive the tremendous destruction of the falling towers? We sat there for a while and as we walked out of there we saw a boy hugging his mother, his face buried in her chest. He was crying.