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.

baby days is up

The picture here is just so there's a visual from my limited electronic photo files to introduce baby days.

It took several years to complete the story and not because it took so long to draw and write but simply that I kept finding other things to do. What began around 1990 was finally done by 1994 and except for a few photocopied versions sent to friends it's never been outside it's portfolio.

If you go next door to take a look please remember to click on the entire archive or it will stop after 6. It's an odd and very sentimental piece so if you're prepared for such a thing I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did when I decided to look at it again.

No results yet but..

You probably weren't wondering how a silk painting gets done but I've had this one underway for the last couple of weeks and it will be a few weeks more before I know whether or not it was worth the time. The original inspiration was Tibetan thankas but there's no way I'm the least bit qualified to try painting a real version since the symbolism of every line and color is ruled by ancient tradition. I may not know much about it but I do respect the theory. So instead, I decided to try a tribute to the form.

We have little old lady (drawn from an old photo taken of one of my English aunts on a visit to the London Zoo in 1947) and a little dog holding a traditional Tibetan parasol. The words in blue are the Tibetan script of the great compassion prayer - Om Mane Padme Om and the working title of the piece is 'Going Om'. Okay, it's a bit corny but it's my painting so I can do what I like and I rather like the idea that Tibetan Buddhism is getting incorporated in the western world. I also like the thought that any of us can become realized - not necessarily enlightened but open to those indescribable moments of grace.

May all sentient beings know happiness and the root of happiness; may they be free from suffering and the root of suffering; may they not be separated from the great happiness devoid of suffering; may they dwell in the great equanimity, free from passion, aggression and prejudice.

The four Paramitas are a good meditation while painting or otherwise engaged. What an amazingly different world this would be if everyone understood we keep on coming back til we get it right.

there was a time..

A long time ago a woman who'd had a child almost an equally long time ago found herself reminiscing about just how wonderful it had been to be a young mother and just how beautiful babies and little children are. So she sat at her table one day and started drawing a book.. not a children's book but more like a grandmother book. Now she's thinking about a whole separate blog so that anyone who's interested can read the story and maybe have some good memories too. Or maybe this is just a silly idea that's come up on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

J-popping

Time for a little musical visual interlude.. mmm Cornelius... tonar

making friends

He's called Baba Ganoosh - a little guy who pretty much demanded a physical (although limited) existence a couple of years ago. He can't stand up because his legs are too wobbly but he can sit in full lotus position (which I never could). He also has a wonderful and enigmatic smile.

I won't describe the torture involved in manifesting his little form - sculpture wire, bandaging, clay, carving, hair, beading, hand sewing, leather boots, painting - well, okay, I pretty much did describe it and it took a long time. Difficult as the process was it's nothing to the time and effort it takes to make/keep human friends. I hardly ever know where my friends are but I always know where Baba is.

Books can always be relied upon to provide distraction, entertainment and instruction so I read quite a lot. Occasionally I read one written by somebody I'd really like to have as a friend and so on behalf of Barry Hughart I'd like to recommend his wonderful novel, 'Bridge of Birds'.I've linked to an old interview with him since he's a most elusive man and difficult to catch up with but you'll get the general idea. The book is a delight - hilarious and often profound - but rather than writing a lengthy exposition, I'll end this post with a few words from Master Li, he who has a flaw in his character:

"The world of men is a world of incomprehension. Our senses are woefully limited. Our brains are but tiny candles flickering in an infinity of darkness. Our only wisdom is to admit that we cannot understand, and since we cannot understand we must do the best we can with faith, which is our only talent. The greatest act of faith we are capable of is that of loving another more than we love ourselves."

We could all do with flaws like that. Happy autumn or sad, reflective autumn - whatever feel best, my friends.

Okay, that was boring. Why would anybody be inclined to read a funny book having read such a serious paragraph? So here's another:

"Well, beauty is a ridiculously overrated commodity. Over the past eighty or ninety years I have known a great many beautiful women, and they've all been the same. A beauty is forced to lie in her bed in the morning in order to gather her strength for another battle with nature. Then, after being bathed and toweled by her maids, she loosens her hair in the Cascade of Teasing Willows style, paints her eyebrows in the Distant Mountain Range style, anoints herself with Nine Bends of the River Diving-Water perfume, applies rouge, mascara and eye-shadow, covers the whole works with two inches of the Powder of the Nonchalant Approach, squeezes into a plum blossom patterned tunic with matching skirt and stockings, adds four or five pounds of jewelry, looks in the mirror for any visible sign of humanity and is relieved to find none, checks to make sure her makeup has hardened into an immovable mask, sprinkles herself with the Hundred Ingredients Perfume of the Heavenly Spirits Who Descended in the Rain Shower, and minces with tiny steps toward the new day, which like any other day, consists of gossip and giggles."

"That's part of it!" I cried. "Lotus Cloud hops out of bed and plunges her head into a pail of cold water, bellows 'Aaarrrggghhh! runs a comb through her hair, and looks around to see if there's anyone handy who feels like making love. If such is the case, she hops back into bed. If not, she jumps into whatever clothes are lying around and leaps out the door - or window, it doesn't matter - to see what wonders the new day will bring, and since shes views the world with the delighted eyes of a child, the day is bound to be marvelous."

That's better! Have a marvelous day yourself.