everything merges..

the meaning of life

Every morning I walk to work and today the sun was actually visible as it rose above the distant mountains and I found myself singing this song in my head. Really, it's better that way since I can remember Eric Idle's voice and not listen to my own or have anybody staring at me or dialling 911 on their cellphone.

I also remembered a talk I had with a doctor friend a few years ago when he was stressing the importance of stability. Easy for him to say. At the time I couldn't help but point out the fact that although we tell ourselves day and night follow one another in regular patterns as the seasons change that what is really happening is this: The earth is spinning around fast as hell and also wobbling back and forth while our entire galaxy is heading for an eventual tug of war with another that will cross our path in a couple of billion years. So where's the stability? The only place I can think of is in our hearts.

I used to be disgusted

now I try to be amused. My wings have gotten rusted and the angels have stolen my red shoes. Elvis Costello is surely one of the best song writers of our generation and his "Shipbuilding' explains much about our common history. I thought about posting a link to it but it's easily found on youtube if you're interested.

The picture posted here is part of our collection and was found during the last presidential election. It seemed pretty apt then and perhaps even more so now since a lot of my American friends have expressed interest in moving to Canada - including us considering moving back someday. The problem for us and for some among our Canadian friends is that most of the country - global warming or not - is so damn cold most of the year. The islands of British Columbia are lovely and the weather is milder there than anywhere else but it's not Orange County. Toronto is huge and has spread like a fungal infection of housing developments and strip malls across the remembered farmland and woods of my childhood. Imagine, if you can, Los Angeles with snow and ice seven months of the year and you'll have a close approximation. Montreal is great and even has underground access to most of the downtown buildings but the only French speakers most Quebecois will converse with are native born ones. I don't even want to think about living in any of the Prairie provinces since winters there make Minnesota and N. Dakota look balmy. The Maritimes can be compared to Vermont and New Hampshire but colder, damper and darker by the time November rolls around and the ice doesn't break til May. Brrrrr

Therefore, I think we should start a petition to switch around some of the unnatural lines drawn on political maps. After all, a map is not a landscape. The problems of having an Electoral College decide the presidency would be moot since we'd have a parliament and as many 3rd, 4th and 5th party candidates who felt like climbing on a soapbox (what's a soapbox?). The Canadians could enjoy a warmer retirement and we could all use some free health care. Anybody feel like contacting Michael Moore?

in case of emergency

Okay, holiday parties are coming so here's a story that's worked for me when the conversation lags or turns to uncomfortable subjects like - "Have you gained more weight?". If you've already heard it..

A duck walks into a bar, hops up on a stool and says to the bartender "Got any grapes?" The bartender says "No" and the duck leaves. Next day the duck comes back, hops on his stool and says to the bartender "Got any grapes?" The bartender says "I told you yesterday we don't have any grapes and we still don't have any grapes". The duck left. The following day the duck comes back again, hops on the stool, looks at the bartender and says "Got any grapes?". The bartender gives the duck a long stare and says "I keep on telling you we don't have any grapes and if you come in here one more time asking for grapes I'm going to nail your bill to the bar". The duck left. Next day the duck walks back into the bar, hops up on his favorite stool, looks at the bartender and says "Got any nails?" The bartender says "No, I don't have any nails". The duck says "Got any grapes?"

what next?

Some days I can't help but make unfavorable comparisons of this little blog I've been playing around with the past couple of months with others I've got into the habit of visiting. My early posts were an attempt to show the best of my artwork done in the past decade and since I work slowly, deliberately and intermittently, the gallery show aspect came and went fast. So what do I dedicate this blogging time towards? I wish I could rant to great effect like Fairlane and his friends at Jones Town but I'm no ranter and worse, unless you get to hear me at work, I'm not very funny. It would be wonderful if I could cartoon like Seraphine at Encore Seraphine or Kathie at Crazy Irish Chick but those talents aren't part of my repertoire much as I admire them. Scarlet at Nvisiblewmn is hilarious when she gets on a roll and although I've had my own semi-disastrous dental appointments I've been too traumatized and angry afterwards to write anything amusing that everybody could relate to. Gary at Withinsight has a gentle and lovely way with his blog where everyone is welcomed and praised. How I admire that. Kalyan with his Heaven's Garden blog shows some of the most beautiful pictures and descriptions of India, its places, people and customs that one could hope to see. I used to travel a lot but was too intimidated to go that far on my own and there were too many stories about people who never came back. There are a couple of other blogs on my favorites list (and some I look at that aren't listed) and all are worthy of attention but what's my contribution going to be?

I read a lot - books as well as news and science articles - but if I want to do book reviews I can go to Amazon or Epinions (something I've been known to do). It's the same with movies and since we rarely watch first run that would be pretty boring and irrelevant. I do have a job but spend too much time there already without writing about it too. The family is very small at this point in time and members distant in the physical sense so there are no big in-house events to plan for and gifts get mailed at appropriate times. Visits are a rare delight.

A lot of the news upsets my tendency to find equilibrium but I find a need to at least witness the events of our time. Lots of times I find hopeful and challenging ones like this man who is planning to walk from Boston to Washington to convince Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats to begin impeachment proceedings against the administration immediately. Why else were they elected in 2006 if not to do that?

Yes, I tend to get as irritated as anyone else about our consumer society and the especially relentless and desperate advertising that goes on at this time of year. December has become the least likely time for us to browse our favorite bookstores, gamestores and moviestores. We've been known to have soup on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day just because we either forgot to go shopping or just couldn't bear to stand in line with people buying tons of processed junkfood. See, I'm opinionated and not always very nice. Nevertheless, I do have hopes that the current mess can be ameliorated if not completely turned around since it seems to be a natural fact that if so many people in the country are aware of the illegality of the Iraq war and all its byproducts that perhaps something will change. It would be nice if television went away so people would talk to each other, wouldn't it?

So I'll go on posting when time and inclination permit. It's never likely to be a particularly focussed blog although the idea of doing one from the point of view of someone who has been kidnapped from a sane world and dropped off on Earth at this particular time is appealing.

Stay well, everybody.

there ain't alf been some

Here it is - end of the week - end of the month - days getting shorter in every definition and yet.. here's somebody who always makes me smile. It's Ian Dury and the Blockheads!

I'm still processing the fact that the media seems to be deciding for everybody that Hillary and Rudy will be the presidential candidates next year... and we know who owns the media or at least we know it's not us.

Good night all you clever bastards.

Utopias big and small

As far as the big literary Utopias go there's nobody better to describe a brief history than Margaret Atwood in her article published this weekend in the London Guardian. In our longing to have everything, and to have it all be perfect, human beings have a strong tendency to build imaginary worlds. It could be argued that most creative activity, albeit some with much more skill than others, is based on our individual visions of a better world. In the article she discusses the diverse possible futures foreseen by two of the 20th centuries better known authors: George Orwell's '1984' and Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World'. Both of them wrote about future Dystopian societies growing out of the industrial and war profiteering cultures that were burgeoning between two world wars. As the Utopian dreams of the 19th century were being made irrelevant there were many who saw limitless expansion as a Utopia yet to come. Orwell and Huxley both provided excellent forewarning of the price to be paid for allowing optimism to overcome understanding.

It's always a little too easy to imagine the past as having been better than the present simply because we can't go there. It's over but since we can look back while wearing any style of rose colored glasses we choose we can make any time period into one that would have suited us, as we know ourselves now, quite admirably. We like to daydream and there's nothing wrong with that but we should keep in mind that life is always imperfect and our real choices are few no matter when or where we live.

So far as small Utopias are concerned this is one we've been enjoying for nearly two years. The story was written by a young Korean and is from one of the game pages my husband frequents. It reminds us that the best presents don't have to be real in the physical sense and that the only true Utopia is the one that feeds your heart.

Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Holidays to come.

He read all the papers

and forgot everything immediately - clever boy. There are times when I really worry about all the things I have to remember - pin numbers, log-ons, passwords, names, addresses, phone numbers, friend's dietary restrictions etc. etc. You get the idea. Then we worry about getting senile the minute we can't remember where we put our glasses, or car keys, or did we turn off the iron, lock the door and where the hell did I park the car?

It seems to me that not too many generations ago we didn't have to remember so much stupid stuff to be able to get along in the world. You always knew where you lived and, so long as it wasn't your town's turn to be burned, raped and pillaged, you could be pretty sure of not losing your way home or getting killed on the way. Even senility probably had its advantages since everybody knows old people remember every little thing that used to be including where everything goes, when it's the right time to plant the crops and the names and habits of all the locals who were young when he/she was also young. These reminiscences provided a lot of entertainment on long summer afternoons and cold winter nights. People weren't looking at their watches and wondering if it was too late to get Grandpa signed up at the nursing home and still be able to catch David Letterman.

Although people didn't have to remember new log-ons every other time they signed on their computer at work what's really amazing is the things some of them did remember. The Bhagavad Gita, one of the oldest and longest stories in human history, wasn't written down until a couple of thousand years ago when it was finally transcribed in Sanskrit after about four thousand years of being memorized by one generation of priests after another. Until Gutenberg, if you wanted to know bible history or how to build a ship, you had to memorize it and even then you couldn't very well walk around with a fifty pound book.. or three. People, lots of people, remembered things. I sometimes wonder, if we lost all these high and low tech memory aids, if we'd revert to just remembering the important stuff.. like how to bake a cake for somebody's birthday rather than sending an e-card?

The picture here lives on our wall - a print by Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo - who really got it right with the following:

art for art's sake 2

Last year I was asked if I'd be willing to make a scarf for a long-time 'angel friend'. Now I really don't get the whole concept of that kind of friend since as I recall it was some weird market ploy developed by a company to sell base metal pins - but what do I know? My concept of angels isn't one that allows them to be anything other than enormous, magnificent beings totally beyond imagination.. frightening, in fact. Who in their right mind would want to meet the archangel Gabriel? But the lady who asked is a sweet woman who explained her friend was going through a very bad year and that she would dearly love to give her something special.

I must explain that I've never felt good about commissioned work - passed up an offer by Hallmark cards once because I knew I'd never be able to draw to order. I've never offered my services as an illustrator for the same reason but the lady talked me into it and so, in a fit of enthusiasm, I agreed. Right from the start I knew it had been a bad decision but I was stuck with having made the promise. The first scarf was so awful I threw it away after two weeks of salvage work. These are the two 'angels' that eventually looked okay enough and I handed the piece over with the promise to self never to make anything to order again. I've wondered if I'll see a stranger on the street and recognize her simply by the eight foot long silk scarf she's decided to show the world that day. It would be interesting.

Meanwhile it's much easier to work at a full-time job and save the creative side for when the time and inclination arrive.

an old favorite

Robert Crumb has always been one of my favorite artists and certainly one of the least appreciated American cultural chroniclers, at least in this country. He gave up on the place years ago and very sensibly moved to the south of France - nice climate, good cheese, great wine and a population who know how to treat a genius.

Of all his characters Mr. Natural is the most profound example of a practitioner of crazy wisdom. His perpetual idiot student is Flakey Foont who knows Mr. Natural has something special going on but is himself far too literal minded to actually get any of it. No matter how many times Mr. Natural whacks Flakey with a stick or shows him how to get along in the world Flakey always misses the point entirely.

When R. Crumb developed Mr. Natural a lot of people I knew were reading the Carlos Castaneda books about the Mexican mystic Don Juan and his attempts to teach Carlos to be a warrior. Carlos was much more successful than Flakey and in actuality probably invented Don Juan after stealing research done by other anthropologists but that's another story. I think Crumb understood that aspect as well as the basic misapprehension by naive 60's youth of just how tricky the tricksters actually are.

I think if more people had paid attention to R. Crumb's assessment of the state of American culture back then instead of writing him off as an eccentric cartoonist we'd be in a lot less trouble now.