he describes himself as affable though sometimes painfully overly jocular; cautious with bouts of intemperance; sensitive in understanding while oblivious to social surroundings. he evidences a sense of experimentation in his art and theology, yet doggedly avoids chance and change. he needs to be more patient
he describes himself as someone who comes home from travelling 1000 miles and, no sooner sitting down with a beer, has a cat in his lap
He describes himself as an avid sportsman, expert in recondite and arcane manners of hunting, trapping, stalking, shooting, netting, arching, bowing, springing, lying in wait, sitting, standing, racing, procuring, detaining, hopping, jumping, skipping, dashing, crashing, anchoring, blasting, mashing, scrambling, basting, veronicing, lancing, dancing, maneuvering, gamboling, chancing, escalating, descalating, skimming, diving, squeezing, punching, laboring, finessing, hobbling, enabling, and dueling. In fact, he has been known to entertain his fellows and mates and interlocutors with repartee and confabulation well nigh into the nocturnal dawning drawn morningward noonish dinnertide.
"I am a process of perceptions and sensations generating memories and anticipations around a desiring self in concert and in response and relation with other embodied processes along a plane of physical description interlaced with mystery and numinosity; all finding its way into a symbolization of speech set over against intractable reality."
"He describes himself as ten feet tall, with nuclear hair and a spinal curvature that mimics the Gulf Stream; a husband, a father, a son, a lane hogger, a plane clogger and a sideman to a combo duo concerto. With the strength of ten ordinary men he has achieved over easy and below and above what few would dare: the circumnavigation of every shower drain in the city. He's just finished his eighth book which laboriously quotes his tenth - from which he'll be miming excerpts tonight.
"He describes himself as middle aged and balding, having fallen short of early promise and generally coasting along on modest talent immodestly through several failed careers. I met him as he was preparing for the bar."
knowing things without saying them, he describes himself as the shade dodging around the sun light in early autumn and memories of salamanders in streams and lizards in spring houses, visiting his great grandfather's farm across from the church, seeing the mules that still pulled a plow, and chickens pecking at freshly raked earth, acorn strewn
he describes himself as someone who likes buttermilk and cornbread - separate or together in a glass; the very peaty single malt Lagavulin; medium rare NY strip steaks - who likes movies where "nothing" happens; art that doesn't depict anything but the formal constructs of its materiality; music that disdains so called tonal centers and regulatory pulses
He describes himself as someone who might post too much on facebook, as someone who may have too much time on his hands - but a fortiori, it's merely an extension of the conversation he has with himself while he's drawing or reading: he's that guy who sits by himself in the dining hall immersed in his own thoughts, arguing with invisible interlocutors, confabulating with the shadows of light, as if, as in Wings of Desire, a Falknian angel might be listening, admonishing to enjoy this plane of existence while he has it
he describes himself as a collector of keepsakes and a keeper of collectibles ; a hoarder of hordes; a canvaser of canvas
he describes himself as inconsistent and contradictory, but still getting used to it
we all need people who build us up - friends, family or colleagues - when we are able to exercise kindness and listening with each other, we might discover the death grip of our egos loosening its hold on the greater part of our being.
he describes himself as someone who draws; who believes that the great temptation is commodification of ourselves and others. We are taught to believe that humanity and each particular human is valuable - but experience shows that most people are closet marxists - according to my college professor's paraphrase, "show your pocketbook and show your soul." When Christ asks, "what will you give in exchange for your souls?" the unspoken answer is that for most adults the answer is in the past tense. Perhaps a corollary to the kind of child we are admonished to become like - unlike the childish adults who always seem to yell the loudest.
he describes himself as a science fiction series that differs a great deal from the pilot: suddenly he is an orphan and clean shaven; my mother the car on mars meets the muppet show version of the invaders
"I remember my youth mission trip. We went to teach them, but instead they taught me: I learned what it was to be a pharmacological guinea pig for a large multinational corporation. I'll never be the same. Every time I look in the mirror and see that third eye looking back at me - What is it thinking? God's creation is mysterious and wonderful. The eye sees the stitching on a 100 mph fastball - and it sees the child who sews that stitching in the baseball factory. It sees the child returning home and it's already dark. She has only time to eat a bowl of stew and practice some rudimentary lessons for a school that is only sporadically open. At night the eye sees terrible visions and I wake in a cold sweat. I remember nothing: only that we are all running in the rain, it is cold, our clothes are plastered to our flesh"
I seem to have pulled all my books off the book shelves again, covering every available surface with paper and books, much as each shirt eventually attracts a spot of ink or paint.
