Fakery and the fire of life

I strove with none; for none was worth my strife,
    Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;
I warmed both hands before the fire of life,
    It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
-Walter Savage Landor

I don't know, man. Sometimes when I'm writing these posts I feel like a total fake. They take too long to write. They're overwrought and overthought. I feel like I can craft something until it's writerly, but that is not the reason I sat down to write in the first place. After all the rewriting and rereading and massaging here and there, it feels like I'm looking at a corpse on a table. I've got all the parts of something genuine in front of me, but the fire's gone out of it.

It's more important to me that something clear and truthful and human in some way than if the writing is writerly. I just think things are best when they balance themselves out, body and brain, natural impulses, reflections on those impulses. It would be just perfect if you could write and write and arrive somewhere that is as much a revelation to you as it is to the reader. That's sort of how I feel about expression in general. I don't think you have to be able to draw to draw a beautiful picture or have a nice voice in order to sing. It's not the voice it's the song. To me anyway.

I talk about this all the time, how to find the right way to express yourself that's thoughtful and readable yet isn't overwrought and doesn't make you feel fake when it's over. I wanna write the way I want about the things I wanna write about. But I'm not even sure what that means or how to do it. There's no reason you can't try new things and write in different ways, given that this is a blog, given that this is the internet. There's so much noise you can let wail and be assured, for better or for worse, few will see or hear what you have to say. It might even be a gift, for a while.

Still, I struggle between thinking I have something to say and thinking everything I make is awful. Some days I write something or paint something and it feels right. Other days I'm 35 and...what is it you're still trying to do again? But I know that you're entitled to the process and that is about it. The thought, the idea, and the joy of seeing it through. That's all you get. You're not guaranteed anything beyond that. So to make the very best of it. I try to keep that in mind, but I can't always.

Sometimes I feel like I'm only writing to myself, only making pictures for myself, and that is less than fulfilling. Sometimes I feel no better than someone who's never tried to do or say anything at all. I'm trying to figure out how to write and make a life from it somehow. I wanna play a part creatively. Actually, I need to. I can't sit in an office writing about something I'm not interested in though. I'm trying to write on this blog as much as possible. Sometimes it hits, sometimes it misses. I guess it's just one giant work in progress. But I have to find a way to write that works for me and doesn't leave me feeling fake after. I've been writing for a while, but I haven't really been blogging seriously for very long. Maybe fluidity comes with practice.

I have to try.

New painting: A monkey looking at an elephant and a goose and thinking about a shark

A monkey imagining a shark, looking at a sleeping goose and elephant

Acrylic and oil on paper

3ft by 2ft (1.5m by .5m)

This is a picture of a monkey with a giant ear looking down at a goose and an elephant, both of which have their eyes closed. The monkey has a thought bubble coming out of his head and inside the thought bubble is the partial body of a shark with fin swimming in the ocean. There are also two birds in the top left of the picture as well as a fish and a boat to the left.

I feel like people are disconnected from the animal sides of life. I think that animals probably think. I think they've probably seen things and remember things that we have no idea about. I think they understand comfort and love and peace. I think they can go places in their minds that we don't know about. In general, I think we treat animals like they're inferior. But I think there is so much we don't understand. I think there are ways of communicating that we don't pay attention to because we can speak and listen. But animals understand sound in a different way. 

This weekend in the Czech mountains. I always feel like I learn something when I'm up there.

We spent the weekend up at Pavla's parents in Nova Ves v Horach, a village about 2 hours north of Prague, near the German border. There was a heat wave in the capital. It was all anybody talked about in the city. The heat the heat. I thought I might stay in the city though. I thought I might work on some paintings, write some blog posts. But it doesn't really make sense to stay in the city like you normally would when you have the chance to go out to the country. So we decided to get away for the weekend. Up there at least you can sit under a tree or cool your feet in their Koi pond.

It's easy to forget what the majority of the world looks like when you live in a city. Glass buildings that stand immense and glistening in the city lay on their sides in the country, become shimmering lakes and ponds. Asphalt roads that criss-crossed the heart of your every day slough off their black skin and slither between trees as barely trodden paths. There are very few bright colors out there. Everything seems to blend together. The sky is blue but not very. The fields are yellow but it's a soft yellow. Very little stands out, unless by contrast. A black butterfly hanging upside down on a white clove of garlic. The stars at night.

There are many chores to do up there. We try to help when we can be of help. For the most part, her parents know what needs to be done and how to do it. But as they get older they're more open to help.

It doesn't rain quite enough up there, so just getting their garden watered sufficiently is a production. They set out plastic buckets and barrels to gather as much rain water as possible and there's a rusty old bathtub beneath a rain gutter that catches whatever water comes off the roof, but it's not enough. Her father also takes a 20 gallon plastic jug by wheelbarrow once or twice a day to fill with rainwater that comes out of a runoff spout from the hills around. I've done this before. The grass around the spout is as high as your chin. To get at the water you have kneel down and fill a small bucket and hand it off to the next person to pour it through an old metal strainer into the big jug. Crouched down there out of the sun, waiting for the bucket to fill, it's another world, an entire ecosystem in front of your face. Snails with white shells the size of your pinky nail climb weightlessly up single stems of grass in front of you. Out of nowhere little black squirming grains of rice are swimming in your bucket. Flies of a different sort are picking at your legs. Horse-flies I believe they're called. Mosquitoes with tails an inch long buzz around your face and eyes. You imagine just what else is living in the dense thicket around you. If I had to survive here, you think for a second, I couldn't. I'd drink the water, I'd get sick, the temperature would drop, I'd freeze. End of story. But these creatures, with brains the size of grains of sand, would be fine. They'd out nature me.

The main thing I come away with being up there helping with the garden is how hard it is to actually grow your own food. It's lovely to be able to reach up and pluck off a piece of fruit from a tree and eat it. But a lot comes with that. Every step of the way, something's threatening your food source out here. There are worms in the apple trees, caterpillars laying eggs in the cabbage patch, and birds with a nose for when your cherries are ripe. I never really thought about what it takes to protect something to the point where you can eat it. But basically, if you want an apple, you have to insert yourself between the worms and birds and the bugs and the deer that come out of the woods at night in order to preserve it until the time comes when you can eat it. I watch the way her father does it. To preserve their cherry tree, he rings the trunk with adhesive so ants don't eat away at the leaves. He sprays the tree with pesticides when the fruit is near sweetening to keep the bees from biting. Using a homemade ladder, he hangs tin cans from the branches to scare off the birds (and keeps a bb gun handy if that doesn't do the trick). Once the fruit ripens, he'll pick what he can. What's left will rot. But for the tree to bloom as fruitfully the next season, even the rotten fruit must be picked off. On a tree that's two stories high, by homemade ladder, just imagine.

For me sometimes I question why they still grow their own fruits and vegetables, given their age, given how much time and energy it takes, given the chance that if it's a particularly dry year a tree might not produce at all. Both her parents have decent pensions from working their whole lives in the coal mining industry. They don't live exclusively off the land. Some things they buy at a normal supermarket. From what Pavla's told me, the garden used to be a lot bigger. It used to wrap around the house. Now it takes up half of one side.

I think some of it is they need to work. They need to feel like they're accomplishing something. It's ingrained in them. I understand that. They've worked the land in some capacity their whole lives. I'm not sure of their reasons for doing it, but I'm glad they do. There's something special to the harvest time. I've seen it. When a fruit tree blooms, neighbors and relatives are invited over. Everybody is welcome to the fruit. There is more than enough for everybody, and if it's not enjoyed it'll just go bad. It's a reason for people to come together. I think there's probably a lot of satisfaction in that. I know there is.

The hard part

I was working at a pretty good pace this morning but at some point hit a wall and decided better take a break. I can sort of identify when the clouds are rolling in, when I'll be stopping work for a day or two. Some days it's easier to accept than others. The hard part is keeping those days from becoming weeks. I really do believe that so much of doing anything consistently is mental. You can do something every day, but at some point you're gonna be made to sit for a spell.

New Painting: I don't wanna be white

I don't wanna be white. I listen to a lot of white people speak and I think they're up in their head too much. I wanna push myself. I'm tired of hiding from things I've been hiding from, feelings, fears, being shut off because how things are done has already been established. People say that way is educated, thoughtful, but it feels inhuman, missing impulses and those mean something. I think the brain can fuck you. What about being alive though? What about poetry and life and painting and color and traveling and physical touch and feeling and God or whatever it is? I believe there's so much out there and that we don't even understand, we're just trying to be careful and figure things out logically and we think that's civilized. But there's more than thinking. There's something beyond thinking. There's something inside us that's animal, that we're fighting, that's not logical. We want to push past it, but it's part of us.

New painting: Walking around and watching people

I'm walking around town looking at people. Everyone's got their things going on. They're on their paths. I'm off to the side, looking, waiting, wanting some of that, but I don't wanna be in those lanes. I wanna cross the road. I always look toward nature. I want to somehow live above what's typical and normal. I want a better life. I have to make it for myself. I know the pain and struggle is there to serve. I know it is.

I wonder if painting and writing is just redirecting a need for religious devotion to something. Does that make it mean less? What you're looking for is a universal thing, my man. You might not know it but it's balance you're after. Stopping, taking a moment, stepping back...is the right step now. Not walking headstrong in the same direction forever. The road doesn't end. It's about you. Figure out what you want and how to get it from where you're at. You're there already. It's not just about making what you want but about making a life from the things you have. There's people out there that understand that. You're outside looking in but that's okay, for now. Only you can't stay out there. You're on your own road already, but where you're at on it is far enough.

I know I gotta write. I just wanna make something with writing and painting that I've never seen before. I feel like art is full of possibility. Shape, color, lines, are simple things but can speak volumes. On the bus, riding through the city. A bus full of people in total silence. Everybody's somewhere else, distracted, but the hunger's still there. I wanna see more different things, not the same things over and over. I have to make that my reality if I wanna see it.

New Painting: This is your land

This is your land

4ft by 2ft (1.5m by .75m)

Acrylic paint and water color on paper

I just wanna express myself. That's all. I wanna make something colorful, express myself, feel like I did something today with my time, something light and colorful and hopefully with some sort of meaning for people. This started as a picture of two cows eating grass (that yellow and blackspotted grouping in the center is them) but the picture sort of morphed out of control into a mass of color, patterns, shapes and blobs, faint outlines of things that might be people, might be animals, might just be color patterns. Above is a bunch of thought bubbles or speech bubbles that are empty. People's thoughts, opinions, people talking. What's there to say? I don't know. I wanna say something. I have to try and say something.

The shape in the middle is supposed to be a boy standing in water with his arms outstretched. What's around him, below him, above, to the left and right, are people talking, colors, shapes, animals, living things, and it's all a mass, a mix, an experience. But he's missing something. He's not part of either world. He doesn't feel connected to either world. 

My thoughts on the confederate flag issue going on in the states right now

I, for the most part, don't pay much attention to the news unless something in particular grabs me, like the earthquake recently in Nepal or the ruling on gay marriage. Otherwise, I just sort of skim. I feel like most of the news is skewed toward grabbing eyeballs and you can't count on getting the full story about anything. At the same time, searching for the whole story on your own is too much work. That's not the healthiest attitude to have. I agree. I would probably feel differently if I were a minority and my rights and the rights of my children were on the line. I'm trying to have a complex thought right now :) Bear with me.

I was reading about the debate over banning the confederate flag. I wonder if it's not a distraction. I wonder if the real question isn't How do you stop someone who's mentally ill from killing people? Is it even possible? If you read his history, it was a road he went down, it was a point he reached. There were some signs, but it took some time for them to develop. I don't know. I don't think there's much you can do. Maybe what happens is this guy spends the rest of his life in prison, and the mental illness stops there because he doesn't go on to infect anybody else. And how do you stop racism? Is it even possible? And how different is it from mental illness? Maybe each new generation that doesn't grow up around racist people won't be racist. I'm not sure you can do much more than that. I'm not sure that banning symbols and words changes anything. I think the people who want to do it probably have good intentions. I think they're trying to close a chapter from the past they see as evil and hurtful, and that makes sense. But I think it makes certain symbols taboo, which then gives them power. If anybody can help me understand the issue clearer, I open to learn.

With this and the gay marriage issue, I think it's interesting how generations of young people everywhere take steps to move further and further away from the past. I think it's somehow in our nature to look at previous generations and think How could they? I'm not sure how different we are from the generations that came before. I'm not a brain scientist, but I think we've just been born into a different time and have different issues. I think it's important to remember what normal average people are capable of though. I wonder if there are things that we do today that young people will look back on in the future and think, how could they? I suppose there will be. But it's in us to think those people are not us, whoever they are. Even when they are us, just at a different point in space and time. Weird.

New painting: Follow the white rabbit

Follow the white rabbit
Acrylic on paper
4ft by 3ft

New painting: Fear

Fear

This painting is called Fear. There's a farmer man on the right taking the hand of a woman with two kids around her waist and a baby on her knee. 

TV is amazing. 

I'm halfway around the world but get most American cable channels. I was watching a show on TLC about a boy in India inflicted with a horrible physical disease. He had tumors all over his face and a giant one from his neck he had to carry in his arms. They said he wouldn't make it out of his teens. Makes you wonder what you have to worry or complain about or be afraid of. It's all extra, isn't it? Whatever I do with day to day. It's all just a big fat bonus, isn't it? I've already won the human lottery. And one day it'll be over. So what's there to be afraid of? But it never sticks, does it? The perspective never sticks. I fall back into habits and routines, and there goes fear creeping back in.

We got free HBO for a while, part of some kind of promo. I watched Behind the Candlelabra. Beautiful movie. Watching a movie like that that was done so well was actually painful. I was jealous it was so beautiful. I've never made anything like that. I feel like I'm not anywhere close. I would like to contribute something like that, something creatively, but I haven't. It's practically impossible it seems. But I still believe that it's the way for me to at least push and try, to write and paint and make things. It's what I enjoy and love to spend my time doing. So that's the important thing, isn't it? But there's always the fear that it's for nothing and that I'm wasting my time. But I enjoy it, so that's not a waste of time.

I know whatever you feel someone's felt it before. That's why I love art and books and music. I like to see the things I feel written or expressed in some way, by someone other than me. It makes me feel close to that person, to people in general. I know whatever I feel someone's felt before, but I have to be reminded, and art is the reminder. I see hundreds of faces and bodies every day and they see me. We don't interact. I only imagine what their lives are like, what these people are into, what their fears are, what they've learned, if they know something, if, like the boy in India, their perspective can help me. I think that if more people made things we'd feel more connected and be less inclined to think other people are not us. Most people are closed off it seems, won’t let themselves feel what they really feel, deny it, push it away, bury it. They think it's dark or weird or crazy. But it's not crazy. Everyone everywhere has it hard and everyone wants to be ok. Everything is just an egg for something else. Everything is just a step forward. Fear, love, anger, Duck Dynasty, Honey Boo Boo, Kim, Kanye, they're all just eggs. That's how I see it. Something on the way to something else. 

Food (jídlo) and drink (nápoj) and other nonsense

I've made a commitment to writing every day for a week or so on the blog. I've realized from reading the great Hugh Macleod (more on his amazing book Ignore Everybody at a later date) that writing books is a fine idea, but writing and then putting your stuff up on a blog might just be a faster, more direct, easier, way to, etc. etc. blah blah blah. So for the next week or so I'll be putting up stuff every day. Perhaps a painting one day. Perhaps me rambling about what I think another day. Today's entry falls into the second category. Let's talk about food and beer and trying to be healthy.

I've been trying to get healthy for the last year or so. I was surprised to find out recently my cholesterol is high. Since I've lived here in Prague my diet's included healthy portions of butter and animal fat. One particular favorite is rendered pigs fat with bits of cracklings (aka burnt pig skin). Spread it on bread. A touch of salt. You're good. Another favorite is Tlacenka, which according to wikipedia is "head cheese...generally bonded with brawn - thick pigskin and hock/trotters broth - with various combinations of meat cutoffs (i.e. knuckle, head), offal (tongue, heart, liver) and fat with seasoning". Good to know! Add a beer or five and you're on your way. I'm just rambling here. I don't have a lot to talk about but I have to write something. I've stopped eating most of those delicious fatty foods I used to eat. I've started up running again in the morning. The public park near the apartment is great. The other morning at 7 there was a group of Jamaicans filming a reggae video. No joke. They had a shoulder mounted steady cam and everything. There's usually almost no one running with Marshall and me there in the morning. The few people that you see are inspiring and motivating because they're usually really intense. I don't run every morning because my knees start hurting then. On days off I'll go to the hotel nearby to swim. Today there was a man in the locker room who couldn't find his bathing suit. A few minutes later I saw him swimming in his boxer shorts. No problem. Who cares. It's the same thing, right? Last week there was an older woman swimming topless. Why not. So I get a good amount of physical activity daily. I also started meditating in the morning. Only ten minutes but I like it. I heard Tim Ferriss talk about it on a podcast. He asked a bunch of successful people what they would do differently if they could change something from their past. A lot of them said they would have started meditating earlier in their lives. I thought that was interesting so I've started it too. It helps me quiet my brain and narrow my focus. And it's also a place mentally you can go back to throughout the day just by going back into the same breathing technique. It's amazing. I've been trying on and off for a long while to completely quit drinking alcohol. It's a tall feat here because beer is basically $1 or less and it's where people meet and talk. And that's hard because it's become too much of a thing, a habit I don't see much of a benefit from. I want to meet people, just I would prefer a different way. It would be cool to meet people who are athletic and have ambition, but they don't spend their time in pubs now do they? I spent 7 long years sitting at a desk around good people who were stuck at their jobs and knew it. It zapped everything out of them, the energy they had and their hopes for the future. They loved going to pubs. So, yeah, it's tough. Anyway, wanted to write something. Wanted to try and keep it light. Most of the stuff I write on here is deadly deadly serious. Wanted to talk a little bit about life here and my experiences this week and as of late. Ahoj.

Writing Exercise 1

I mentioned before that I'm reading a book about writing called Escaping into the Open by Elizabeth Berg. There are some exercises in it and I thought I'd do some of them here on this blog.

"Think of some event that happened in your life that made a real emotional impact on you. It can be any emotion - anger, fear, sadness, nostalgia - but let yourself remember the event fully, so that you can feel the emotion all over again. Set a timer for ten minutes. Write from that place of feeling. Draw on all your senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell. Do not work up to how this event occurred; do not consider what it meant or how any aspect of it might appear to other people; just jump right in the middle, with it happening to you."

Here's my exercise. I did clean it up a little.

It was my first time spending a summer away from home. We were on an island, a private golf club, 25 of us first time caddies. We'd seen the shirts on the older campers around the camp. It was the same white shirt with a pimply green monster on the back with the words  "I met the legend". When we asked what it meant. They said not to worry, we'd find out soon enough. There were whispers here and there of what that meant. Bear, a broad shouldered and freckled redhead from Andover, said he heard our belongings and our beds would be torn up and thrown out on the 10th fairway. Skeelo from Revere said we'd be jumped by the older campers. The only thing all the stories had in common was that it would happen at night. The night did eventually come, towards the end of the summer. Gomes, our short, round Latino camp director, called all first-years out to the flag pole. He was wearing aw dark rain coat and was carrying a flash light. The air was cool but dry. No sign of rain. Why the raincoat? We had just finished dinner. No one spoke. Gomes pointed his flashlight into the darkness off the 10th fairway. We marched single file through into the dark toward the scrub brush. We followed him to the start of a narrow path. The path pitched down into the dark and continued straight for a ways with scrub brush along both sides waiting to grab you. We'd all been in the brush before to shag lost balls and left marked up. Gomes shined his light down down the path and told us to walk, one at a time. I walked slow and to let my eyes adjust. The branches There were dark figures along the path. I picked up the pace. I was running now. They reached for me. I shook past them somehow. I reached the end of the path. There was a hooded figure carrying a pink drink pitcher from the mess hall. He handed me a cup and said drink. It was thick. Bitter. Sour. Spicy. Hot. There were chunks of something you had to chew to get down. When I was done I moved on to where the other guys were standing. Gomes led us all to the back single file toward the camp. As we approached I noticed it was quiet back at camp. As we got closer I could see the rec room was empty. The tv was off. The constant tick-tocking of a ping pong game was missing. Where was everybody? I expected our beds to be strewn across the fairway, but everything seemed to be how we left it. Gomes led us to the back of the mess hall. The lights were on inside and we could hear a commotion. He opened the door and told us to go in. The entire rest of the camp was sitting there. All the older campers. All the counselors. They stood up and clapped. We smiled. That's it? It was over. No beating. No destruction of property. They handed us our own monster shirts and we wore them proudly. We'd met the legend, and that's just what it was. It was our turn now to relay the story the following year, to build on it where we could, to scare the bejesus out of all those little bastards who'd be coming after us, and see them through.

New painting: "Boy Woman Reflection"

Boy Woman Reflection

3 feet by 3 feet (1m x 1m)

Acrylic, tape, water color on paper 

At the bottom of this picture is a woman with a pie. The smell is wafting up towards a kid standing in front of a reflecting pond. Across the middle of the picture is a blue picket fence. There are footprints all around between the woman and the boy and around the reflecting pond.

Painting "Continuum"

"Continuum"

Acrylic, watercolor on paper, yellow packing tape

4 feet tall, 3 feet wide (1.5m x 1m)

What is success? Love is success, isn't it? To love something. To have felt it and known it to be true. I love this, a small thing, but love it all the same, even before it was anything. I can't explain it but it's a true picture. I know it ends in the top left corner. We're out in nature with this picture. Color is a distraction. There's something beyond sight. I'm deeply fearful of not succeeding. What is success? Loving what you do. Having people see what you make and being excited by it. Is pursuing love and excitement the right road? It seems to be. But that road must pass through cities and past houses. It must be a known road used by people. It can't just be my own road. That's not love. That's not success. That's just fear.

Painting "Something death cannot conquer"

Porn actor on set on a farm retreating into his imagination, singing inhis mind, making music in his head, playing a fence post like a piano

The idea for this painting originated with a podcast I heard about bestiality. I had the idea for this picture a while ago and talked to my girl about it. She said that when I make something I should tell the whole story about it. I said this one is weird. 

It's not weird, she said. You used the energy of the idea to paint it. Use it also for the writing. You told me there's a naked man on a farm playing a piano. 

You gave me the base of the story, which is beautiful. If there is something behind it, you should write the whole story. Don't be afraid to write about anything.

In the picture, the man is escaping into an imaginary world to avoid the unpleasant memories of the incident. I think how in bad situations people escape into their own heads. I was at my last job for a long time trying not to get soul crushed, drawing, writing, painting, gluing shapes together, doing whatever was necessary to feel like I was pursuing something, an inner voice of some kind, using the time in a positive way. I was definitely escaping mentally for a good portion of the day, trying to use the frustration to focus me on making things. I could have left the job but I couldn't somehow. I was stuck. Hated it, knew it wasn't right for me, but couldn't leave. 

It's crazy because I've always been able to take big, bold steps to change situations knowing things would work out and that fear for the most part creates pitfalls where there are none. (Side note: there were moments at the job though when you saw something nice. People were plugged in for the most part all day, ear buds in, mice in hand clicking away, eyes devoted to their screens. However, when it rained, people gathered at the window.  There were human moments when u saw people naked, not as themselves, but as human beings drawn inherently to nature.) So yeah.

If that's what it's about, that's what it's about. I'm trying to break through limitations and fears. All the creatures and characters around on the farm are mostly like from cartoons or imaginary. It's not that they're there on set. They're there in his mind. For some reason Homer Simpson comes up a lot in many of my pictures. I don't know why, but I used to draw the Simpsons a lot in my notebook in school. Bart though mostly.

Poem: The skin of can

This is a poem I just wrote. It's about a a can of beer, but also Can (the verb).

The skin of a can

The light of can, the outer window of a can of See-on,

of a can of high life, and a can (v) of life,

a can of my outer life, my fruit of,

the outer of, the light of, the moving of,

the jungle of, the eyes and ears of, the

hope and fruit of, the skin of, the my line of,

the true fit of, the wire of, or line around. My sure dip,

my taking taste, my numbing numb, my summer of, a line around,

my life and light, my single of, to thimble in or wrap around, to 

tumble into ten or so, a future of, and round and round, to develop a bit, 

to about C around my mouth, to someone somewhere, to carry a house, 

a home someone, a home something, somewhere, to about hurt or run away from. 

All my heroes is the out there. All heroes is the unbridled, the someone something 

who went somewhere. I'm about a man about, nearly, a house of, part of, a true fit of, 

the wire of, the wine of, the lifter of, the about fruit, almost a hole, almost a value, 

almost the water, the wine seed, the seal and the gas. And nobody no one 

but the gas and the broom and the push and the broke and the stroke.

Picture

A blog post about my time in Spain and some of the people I once knew

This is part of my continuing series of blog posts I promised myself I'd write all this week. This one is about my time in college overseas and getting my heart SMASHED (sort of), BUT about the bright future ahead for all involved (hopefully). Enjoy!

I spent a year studying in Spain in college. You could choose to live on your own or with a host family. I decided to live with a kind old lady named Loli and her son Antonio. Loli was about 5 feet tall. She had thick brown glasses and a perm hairdo. She dressed up whenever she left the apartment. She put on all her gold to go to the market. I'd never seen anything like it. She made sandwiches for us to bring to school. Sometimes it was dry tuna fish from a can on a fresh roll with a little salt and pepper. Other times it was ham and butter. It was simple food but it was delicious. Her son Antonio was in his mid-40s. He spent most weeknights drinking beer in his underwear watching football on TV in his room. On Friday night he went out and on Sunday came back in the same clothes. All the while Loli cooked and cleaned and took good care of me and Thomas, my American roommate. The first time I saw Thomas I thought he was from Sweden. He had blue eyes, blonde hair, and a sharp nose. But he introduced himself and said he was from Montana. He was four years older than me. He read a lot, had traveled quite a bit, and loved music. He'd talk to anybody. I met some of my best friends in the world over there because of him. I was sort of scared being in Spain at first. Loli's apartment was in an apartment block and there were bars on the windows. I didn't know then that most anything on the ground floor in Europe has bars on the windows. He took me around, helped me see there was nothing to fear. He introduced me to electronic music. Everything but the Girl's Temperamental. Great album. That album still reminds me of us sitting at the kitchen table studying for Spanish Syntax. Thomas had three beautiful sisters. They came to Spain to visit him once. They were all going to travel to Portugal, Gibraltar and Morocco and asked if I wanted to join. I said sure. It was great. His sisters were beautiful and fun and friendly. Morocco was a little touch and go. All of Tangiers seemed to have their eyes on the sisters, but fine. I hit it off with one of them and when I got back to the states we met again and things were amazing. But it was long distance and doomed though I didn't know it at the time. A year or so later I flew west to see her and her brother in Minnesota. I'd hoped all of us would pick up where we left off, but it wasn't to be. She had a new boyfriend and he was there hanging around the whole time. I didn't get the chance to talk to her once and eventually left without saying goodbye. Not that it would have changed anything. I'd look from time to time, but I never saw her straight on. There was nothing to see, I suppose. I spent most of the trip angry and awkward. One of the last nights there I spent drunk in a lounge chair rambling like a mad man. I didn't even really drink at the time. I remember seeing figures looking out at me in the window of the house, but not much else. The worst part of it all is I lost the friendship I had with Thomas. I wish I somehow knew then to play it cool and also how to play it cool. I still follow Thomas on Facebook. Recently he liked a photo album of his sister and it showed up on my timeline. Turns out she's celebrated her 13th wedding anniversary. She looks great in the pictures. Happy. I'm happy for her. I learned a lot from that experience. Mostly about expectations (mine) and perspective (hers). It's interesting getting a peek at what people are up to these days, the successes they're celebrating. It motivates me to work harder, to make something and get somewhere with writing and painting if I can. All those things were such a long time ago, but it's great where people are and where they're going. Things happen for a reason. I see that now.

I'm wondering why I even wrote about that right now. It's a personal story, a personal experience. I just wanna be able to write about everything. Especially now that I'm trying to write this blog every day, it forces me to sort of take the things I see and feel that day or around it and try to make something out of them. I'm not saying this is something. Just my observations and experiences. For myself, I wanna get through to someplace with writing where I'm just expressing myself without thinking too much about it. I don't wanna clean up everything I write, if I feel later maybe I went to far or said too much. I'm trying to be less quiet and shy. For myself. I wanna talk about more things. I wanna write my own way and that's it. Not write something then look at it from outside and question if it's acceptable. My only real goal was ever to say it right and true, whatever it is, right the way it came to me. I think that's where purity lives. People say you have to write and rewrite, tighten and craft. I get that. I'd rather put more posts out that aren't super polished and start working on new stuff. Anyway. Thanks for reading.

Some mornings I get a coffee and come to this place by the river, behind the enormous office buildings, and sit in the grass and watch the people going into work. I like that world, that working world. I like seeing it. It's a typical day for them and I'm here seeing it. The buildings are big and beautiful and I imagine the people in there are young and full of energy. 

New painting: Fire

Fire

I keep making these types of paintings where I trace my hands and make the picture around them. I'm sort of obsessed with touch, with the power of touch, with the idea of art that brings people in, uses more of the senses, involves touch somehow. I'll never forget going to museums and galleries and all the artwork being roped off and all the guards and how protected everything was. I think  artists want to connect to people. Some do. Maybe not all. I think if you can make art that someone can lay touch, it would be something special and different. Touch is so powerful to me. A while ago i went to an exhibition at a church and they had a section with a bunch of plastic replicas of the beautiful marble religious statues for blind people to be able to see what they had there. I was really touched by that. I thought, that's the way. That's a way. That's personal. That's intimate. Touch. Hands. The heat of the hands, reflecting off of a surface back to the hands. Energy begets energy. One honest action begets another honest action. I'm still so interested in that interaction, in making things that bridge the space (physical, emotional) between the person seeing it and you, what's in your heart, where you were at when you made it. Just wanna be honest about all this stuff. I wanna tell you guys what's real to me. I wanna be truthful with this and not hold back. I don't think, actually I know, that if you care about something you have to be open and honest about what it means to you. So I'm trying to do that more with my artwork. Trying to explain everything about where it came from and why. All that being said, hope you get something out of it.

New picture: Collage

Collage

I think about losing the people I love. I'm still just a kid.

Figure on his knees

Enchantment, wonder

In this picture, there's a man with a hat on and his arms are up in the air. He's excited. He's looking at his son. His son is playing with a toy airplane. In the middle of the man's chest there's an airplane (you have to look at it sideways to see it). It's a jet airplane, more sophisticated than what the boy has. I don't know what the picture is about exactly. I wanted to make a tactile picture for the first time. The airplanes are both touchable, meaning they're not flat, they actually come out of the picture. I'm interested very much in touch. I went to an art exhibition in a church once here in Prague and there was a section for blind people where the art that was hanging on the wall had been remade in plastic molds to the side so that you could they could touch and see what the picture was with their hands. maybe because it was in a church I felt this was special. to be able to use your hands, especially in a church where things are often times roped off or made of fine materials like gold and jewels or fine cloth, which I always felt as a kid cut off from, discouraged from interacting with. Especially on the altar if you've been to church. I always had the feeling that it was off limits, that you shouldn't go up there without permission. I don't know. I started to become very interested in color and materials and touch at that point. A few pictures I've made do come off the page in that way and are meant to be touched. I even made an entire set of pictures that really weren't visible and wouldn't be until they had been exposed to touch for a while. They were white on white, but once people started touching them, the oils and dirt from people's hands would bring out the picture, make it visible to the eye, or more visible. 

Jewel

Butterflies

New painting: Animals, birds, people, monkeys (the connections, the similarities, all flowing together)

I see myself in the shapes and nature of animals, monkeys and dogs. I'm trying to pull back the curtain for myself. So i can expose myself for myself. Outside is just buildings, apartment blocks. People are hidden away. Their souls are busy. They have their lives, but ill find sthg for myself, a peace somewhere. I'll look inside me to find sthg and I'll make sthg from what i have, whatever's there. I have to.