a newer year, still in sequence

I used to walk and never get tired - I clambered over mountains in North Carolina and Colorado - I've jumped gaps in beaver dams and waded across streams - I slowed down, but didn't stop

When I was very young, I would spend hours playing in our dirt and gravel driveway digging holes and burying toy soldiers and cars - there I discovered that when I placed a magnet in the soil all these filaments would organize around, tiny speck of iron - who knew! I began to draw lines of filaments back and forth across the driveway - I was proto-magnet

If we chose to, the lives of others proffer no end of material to judge - the comforts afforded by this material are deceptive; it is better and healthy to examine the lives of others for material to love, to find connection with.

My family stories don't go further back than my grandparents and their childhood reminiscence of perhaps older family - who were most noted for not having teeth or for being very feeble. The census reveals lots of farmers with some military service - people dedicated to doing nothing special and not talking. Following my great grandfather through the census (a notorious drinker and womanizer) I think the census captured him in a brothel in Griffin - which the census taker refers to as a boarding house, where most women are in their 20s and the men are older. My ancestor left with three other men "before information could be obtained." Which is circumstantial, not proving anything, only that the process of elimination says this could be him, who otherwise would not show up in the census at all - not entirely outside of possibility

I notice two kinds of people who approach me as an artist: there are those spurred by paranoia who are suspicious of what I could be doing; and there are those, many more, who are curious, who seek to engage imaginations and connect

What glorious fun, where life just grabs and carries me along for a bit, without analysis or critique, only delight

a picture story at bed time

stories I tell myself

When I was seven, I embodied the pop ethos of the day: Batman on a bike with boxing gloves - I had only begun to face off with the army of signifiers that "want to stuff the subject" in Lacan's terms. Inherently I understood the truth of Tao - to do without doing - that the very act of attempting consciously would be defeat. Taoist Batman doesn't use violence to fight, instead acting deferentially he undermines the kingdom of violence through strong kindness and moral imagination

my great great great grandfather was crossing the Atlantic when he was swept over board in a fierce storm. When he regained consciousness he discovered himself in a house in Philadelphia - being cared for by Quakers. He had forgotten his family in Devon, forgotten the wife and infant son left on board the Intrepid (which eventually reached Savannah). He grew up trading in dry goods - eventually marrying and raising a family - the first 25 years of his life a mystery he never penetrated

I developed a method of test taking where I ceased studying at some long interval before the test; I realized that anxiety took energy I needed for thinking and recollecting. The answers were always there when I let my mind relax. Frenzy, obsession and worry are too often credited as studying - I found staying clear of people psyching themselves out to be helpful. Finally I discovered that I could love any subject, no matter how foreign, and loving it helped my mind embrace even the obscure and difficult elements, so called. It helps to stay away from people who complain how they hate a class or a teacher. At test time, take a moment, breathe, listen for the first seconds of frenzied scribbling and paper shuffling, close your eyes and descend with pencil upon the page like a swallow landing on a sill

I wait and move the brush along; waiting should not preclude painting, making marks; waiting moves even as I wait - that I should find something more than a mere answer. Blanchot's remark that the answer is the malady of the question obtains now more than ever: the world is full of answers for questions only half understood; we are fountains of answers for people we only half know. Alexander's answer to the Gordian knot cut short the beauty of the knot - why people in all their problematic existence find in the problems beauty? Stroke after stroke, wash upon wash, lines hatching thoughts.

visiting Cezanne again today to see what he has to tell me - last week this watercolor told me of its life on the wall, how it tried to translate the state of nature into broken planes of color with slight over laps and gnawing fissures - it alluded to something Deleuze said about sense and surfaces - and non-sense. I was reminded of a time in my youth, alone in the woods behind my great grandfather's farm - an odd path where the road went before it was re-routed and paved: and it told me that we're always having to learn to see and how important translation is in that seeing - to find the proper sequence, the tonal phrase: so that I might describe what I see, not vaguely repeat what some ancestor said

he describes himself as flowing from the promitories of habersham to the diversionary canal of the intercoastal waterway in glynn gary glenn ross

This morning I put on a beige sock and a brown sock; when it was pointed out that my socks were mismatched, I responded, "yes, I believe that they are on the wrong feet."

On the way to the farm in Tennessee, aware that we'd need bloody Marys during the holiday, I surmised that the Krystal we stopped at must be near a liquor store. My intuition proved correct. When I was telling my sister-in-law, she remarked that Krystals seemed to be located near liquor stores in Nashville. So it could be that I have this intuition because for whatever reason there is a symbiotic relationship between tiny hamburgers and vodka - still, correlation is not causation: or so I tell myself after a bloody Mary or two

Washington was famous for chopping down cherry trees. The story goes that valley forge was clogged with cherry trees, wagons couldn't get through, people were trapped - starving, whole families - and then Washington, like a beaver with his wooden teeth, buzz sawed a path to freedom for the beleaguered forgers. No lie

after many years I can sit in a room full of people and the thing is loneliness is not even a factor - instead I feel a satisfaction, a completeness; Part of that is the realization how weak anyone is, myself included, as a placeholder of personal validation: most authorities hope to weld power over the child in us - in the end, as imposing as they seemed to us when young - they can send no one to hell, their sweaty, arm around your shoulder in confidential manner was scant cover for the seething impotence birthed inside them - and that is your principal, your preacher, your scout leader, your first boss, the dean of students et al - even as they're "bringing down the hammer" they've got nothing. Grave on their tombstones - "this is going on your record"

It's odd how Schleiermacher has come to be my favorite theologian - reading him, he's nothing like what others have described ; when I was very conservative I used to read "the other side" on a slippery slope too. A slippery slope is no where to live. I used to point out how other people's ideas put us on a slippery slope - then I discovered that I was the person on a slippery slope. What if everyone's favorite fallacy used as intellectual bludgeon turned out to describe themselves more than their targets. This holiday season I'm using the "excluded middle" so I can wear my favorite pants again.

an entry

Some time ago I was reminded of all those reproductions of praying hands. For myself, I thought, I'd just as soon have an emblem of praying feet.  Praying feet is an alternative to the cliche praying hands have become. I would rather not say what praying feet mean or be satisfied with any meaning that might attach to them - other than "these are not praying hands." I hope one day that praying feet might become as much a cliche as praying hands.

he describes himself as a vessel, a container of symbols

he describes himself opening his mouth: like a pod expelling seeds into the wind

he describes himself as painting over there, sometimes writing, sometimes reading or staring out the window or across the lawn or at the clouds

he describes himself as the boy left alone in the woods, who got off the bus to a locked house, who walked through the rain down a dirt road when the bus ran in a ditch, who forgets what he's told to forget but remembers everything - who remembers the smell of sweat and cotton on a millworker's skin, who remembers air conditioning only in town (otherwise lots of fans, in every room), who remembers light bulbs hanging from the ceiling on cords with string pulls.

he describes himself as floating, separating, coalescing, forming, distilling and solidifying in a protean display of nuance

he describes himself as someone who thinks a horror movie set in a coffee shop called "save room for scream" would be a delightful freakish romp among the urban haute bourgeoisie

the human body is a canvas, a rollering body is a film - what movie do you want to project as you loop about, bumping banging grinding - and all for glory

he describes himself as making friends with his demons and the bitter angels of his nurture: it's taken years with many sing a longs, pool parties, outings, workshops - but all worth it in the end as well as the front

he describes himself with panache and elan, subtlety subtitles and sub rosa - which he's never understood and needs reminding, as a fluffy cat settles in his lap for an extended nap, the pledge drive enters its Nth day - like the Bach cantata, the pledge drive, which he heard performed in college - such a terrible bout of allergies that day - reveal to me lord your will - and sure enough Will did just fine - he, on the other hand, chased away rattlesnakes most of the night

he describes himself as an observation of time and the passing of space, caught up, rended, winded, cooked up, concocted, spun dry, folded, pressed and delivered with a slight bell tone vibrato beyond ear-range reverberating across the skin, settling into wrinkles and creases like a gypsy band

he describes himself as a ten-way intersection of three-way streets with a super-highway parkway overlook vista of the industrial park near the post-colonial village where children race their soapbox super tankers down the steepest hill for incredible prizes: matching socks, prescription lenses, and clip-on bow ties

he describes himself as a Finnegan's Wake style flow chart, not just Yes or No options but Why Not, What Difference, 20 Sided Die, Might, Both/And, Either/Nor, Ether/Noir, Yet, Noh, ... , Then, There, That, That'n, That'n'll - as I remember my grandfather saying, "that there'n'll there'll that'd then ull make a right smart'n'll there'n all" And we all knew implicitly his directions, even as drawn out on the back of receipts, over roads and down back ways, highways and dirt tracks - there there in a clearing was a stump near a mule grazing under the small clouds of summer with flies buzzing languidly among the bee addled pea vines. Here is where it happened as sure as I'm standing here talking to you as sure as you're standing talking to me.

he describes himself as a natural process: cell division, neural connections, consciousness shooting along pathways mostly embodied, filled with the legacy coding that informed life in semi-arid plains, glacial alpine valleys, and temperate zone estuaries

he describes himself as an orphan of orphans, an exile of exiles, a wandering one-off of wanderers, orienting himself with scraps, texts, images, snatches of tunes - birdsong and worm song - the feast of famine, the sage brush, the dogies punching back, the cattle rustling in the leaves, the deer baby sweeps

he describes himself as part of nature: not a force of nature, perhaps an off shoot, a tendril curving in a space-shaped human, like a mainspring in a watch, composed of odd tics

he describes himself as a constructivist composition, all diagonals and blocks of color with graphic elements, repetitions and active negative space

he describes himself as not knowing what to do - as doing things that don't work out; but still, witty, insightful, imaginative. Once there were millions of mules in the South - durable beasts, smarter than horses. I never see them now as I did in my very youth. In their place are orange pylons and high voltage wires. The river is a culvert now, the spring under a parking lot; the meadow where stills once glistened in moonlight is now a 24 hr pharmacy.

he describes himself as blue green, violet, pea green, pea red, sea foam black, burnt white, sky yellow, sparkling gray, flake red, tartan pink

he describes himself as caught between the opposed facts of "no one can tell me what to do" and "no one can tell me what to do"

he describes himself as stumbling, darting, crawling, striding, clambering, drifting, hastening: in a loop, a series of repetitions, like a satellite orbiting an invisible yet dense point of reluctance

he describes himself as a wanderer on the surface of the planet, through subtle terrarium vaults, along mountainous escargotments

bedrock boilerplate bouquet beaucoup

recent sketchbook pages

put some odd pieces of rock in a mason jar and leave it on your desk; explain it as a bouquet from your backyard rock garden

a small artist's book I fabricated one afternoon at the library

It opens from the left instead of the right.

It is composed of scraps of paper, usually preprinted and drawn on. On the first page I used watercolor and pencil, as well as ink.

There is no ostensive "tale told twice".

The content is simply figure studies.

And a poetic misquote.

Images bleed through as reverse palimpsests. 

It is signed and numbered on the colophon. It would fit in your hand; slide into your shirt pocket.