More than Love

What can matter more than love? What about someone believing in you? What about knowing that you belong, that you are one, you are special? I think everyone likes that feeling.

Great Minds Look in the Same Direction

The picture in my previous post, what did I know? It too was facing due west.
The site below is one my favorites on the entire web. Whenever the world gets to you, visit the site linked below, and your worries will be gone, or at least put to scale.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050127.html

Early Morning Over Texas

Early morning over Texas, the full moon takes my attention. Everytime I see the moon I think about how rare it is for the celestial equivalent in millions of years of existence for earth--to exist and support life. The rarity is beyond astronomical; distance from the sun, speeds, matter, the moon, the planets, the chance of it all. And we are mini-anti-entropy machines. How'd that happen?

What Did He Mean When

What do you think Picasso meant when he said when Matisse died he had no one to talk to?

An Image

What is it I am missing here? An American cancer causing product with images of Muslim Mosques? And $3.29!? For one pack? To make me sick? And it is a pleasure? Why would a camel make me want to smoke? People become condtioned to images, ways of seeing, ways of creating.

This is why people have a hard time being creative or finding new ground for their art--they can't break the spell of the old.

Poetry on the Wind

...and how often is that poetry comes your way on the wind? Really, this paper came along on the wind and of course I had to read it. "The things good lord that we pray for, give us the grace to labor for." (1478-1535) Sir Thomas More

Today the wind blew a piece of paper on the sidewalk...

Texas Antiques, Roadside Junk

or goodies and treasures. This was just the other
day up 281, which is the North South road through
San Antonio. On occasion, this store has good things,
but like many antique store now adays, good items
are hard to find to sell. Interspersed are things made
over seas, faux art, fake antiques. But at least it isn't
snowing.

Cold Stuff on TV

Well, is it snowing where you are? Some of your neighbors are moving to San Antonio soon. All you need are three t-shirts and a pair of jeans. Sometimes it gets cold, but all you do is sit in Starbucks and wait for it to pass.

There are 30,000 home sites in planning in San Antonio. Where is everyone coming from? Up north. Builders build no matter what, whether there is any water supply or not.

Small Players

When godly freedom finally is yours, you are invisible and on your own. At first, you mimic ramblers sold in stores, and then, you hear a cheesy undertone.
You seldom find a treasure if you wait for bulls to piss a ring around manure.
Self-centered smellies full of smelly bait are piles that make their author happy. Sure. Old nibbler scribblers stab their blotter and cannot let an honest image be a fluffy feather on glassy water. The words are sad if someone isn’t free.
Small players blather beauteous designs, and think they toy with tigers, mess with lions.

One Step Out of Art

I am continually amazed at how much time and energy poets and artists give over to politics. I've seen a few of them slip out to the ball game. I hear the arguments coming my way, but the arguments do not disprove the point. All politics leads, sooner or later, to a man standing somewhere with a gun. Power and control, greed, religion, etc.

One step out of art in the direction of politics and the art is gone.

If you are not writing or painting, (or being creative your way) you are not doing anything.

Sometimes, in Texas, its just a drab day.

This is the future. From the Mexico border to Canada, if you look to the side of the road, this is what you will see, a sea of development, cement and shopping. Think what you would do if there were no stores of any sort for you to go into for a week. Try it. You may or may not like it.

Trying to figure out the picture thing. This is at the McNay Museum, here in San Antonio. Several rooms of the museum are infested with mold,* one with a couple Picasso's. The photo is not good, but aren't folds interesting?

*Mold is a big problem here in San Antonio. It's the AC systems and the lack of conscientious maintenance.
Ghastly stories soon, but not too soon.

Driving, driving

.
It was Saturday, and me and the boy went driving.


And then, the nice relaxing drive home. (Notice the
car to the left cutting into my lane? At least he has
his signal on.) (the picture is Route 281 directly left
of the San Antonio Airport. The long bridge thing
across the road up ahead is a structure for landing
lights for the main landing strip. If a passenger jet
was landing when I took the photo, which I had
hoped for, the jet would appear about 175 ft above
the highway, and would be clearly in the picture right
above the large green highway signs.)


Isn't that what guys do on Saturday?

It's about driving, isn't it? How many hours a week do we drive? Driving is fun? Is it possible that one of the reasons art today lacks substance because our brains are being burned out with the stress of dangerous roads, the waste of time, the cost of getting here to there?

My dream is to live without driving anywhere for years. Roads are long ribbonous parking lots, aren't they? The matter is that you sit in a chair and steer the wheel through the video screen, and if you are skillful or lucky, survive.

Why can't driving be a subject for a poem?

Super-Gods

We spin the wheels of super-gods
and shade our eyes to shiny fame.
Our skill and power over mortal odds
is a defiant and impatient game.

Beloved winners and dead losers
earn magic-marker memories
on plastic-flowered crosses,
like flimsy warnings of unease.

The chancy highways leave little said
since everyone is a gazelle
who romps away while blood is red
for beasts and news reports as well.

To drive a car is one big video—
the windshield is the screen
where thumbnail views are what we owe
for time on the machine.

Driving is a seat and travel is a myth
of poster romance and sunset shows
that roll the globe to you and who you’re with
while belted in on passing roads.

Oh well.

People are so sensitive, and defensive. Where does this come from? Then, at the same time, people are reactionary to perceived slights. This kind of thing amazes me. I once heard that only poets hate other poets. Most people could care less about poetical scribblers.

Ego has little to do with art.

I love you, and...

There was a TV character who used to say, "Who loves ya, baby?" And why not? To be loved is very important, young or old.

And, and who believes in you? To have someone who believes in you is also important. Is it possible to know someone loves you and doesn't exactly believe in you?

Who believes in you?

Half of Creativity

Half of creativity is not doing other things.

There are so many things, chores, items, needs to be done, that if one does them all, creativity will never have time to exist. Hope the house does not fall down around you, as one might say, but at any time I can make a list of 100 things that 'need' to be done. Only one thing needs to be done, protect the minutes of value in your life.

Personality and Character

When a book of poems by one author is read, the personality and the character of the poet stay with you, then the subjects.

Artists

When do artists get respect? Why is an artist essentially, considered fringe? Why aren't doctors or stock brokers considered fringe? Does anyone think of poets as 'normal?'

Watch who you love.

So much is written about the arts, the hows, the whens, the artists, and very little is written about the people around the artist. Who does the artist love and why--and why do I bring it up?--because the people are half the art, there in conditioning, by influence, by emotional effects. I once wrote a poem about this;

Old Venetian Blinds

Venetian blinds add lovely depth to rooms
with charming, narrow bars of morning light
that scan your papers, books and heirlooms,
and dim computer screens to dull and trite.

The quandary is which string to pull.
A fifty-fifty guess clatters daylight in
or nighttime out. The choice is powerful,
decisive, like a TV power button.

Watch who you love. The messages and shows
and songs and words illuminate new kinds
new kinds of principles that faintly re-compose
old fusty light through old Venetian blinds.

One watches TV, one stays up all night,
the keyboard struck with lines of blue moonlight.

I wonder if anyone would see it, the 'watch who you love.' Because it is important to the art.

Pictures reveal.

Out the back yard. We only buy houses that face west, for the sake of light and sunsets. When the back of a house faces west, sunlight is maximized for light, warmth, and good cheer. The same house reversed can be gloomy and not even notice a single sunset. There are many variables. It is the same principle that one wants to buy a house on the lake at least facing south toward the lake, to see the sparkles, otherwise a lake can be as gray as slate on the prettiest of days.
As the poet in me says, "A house is made of light...."

Today is a good day.

Today is a good day because I wrote a poem about a subject which had lingered in my mind for many years, and I offer a resolution to a troublesome subject.

People are so sensitive to everything that happens to them, it is amazing. Discovering these events, however trivial, is fun, like archeology, or the study of gems. Each find is rare, unique, and when shared, valued.

Two kinds of Days

There are two kinds of days; the day I write or paint, and the days I don't.

Frustration in Art?

As I paint, I can hardly keep up with the creative curve, my mind is always ahead of the canvass in front of me and the rush is on to get to the next point. I think if one does not enjoy this kind of thing, never reaching the plateau, something like painting may not be of interest.About my previous post: Will anyone admit that most people they meet are boring? Are you?

Outside

Today I left the house for the first time in two days. Basically, I cocooned.Outside, the barren landscape was full of boring people.I soon rushed home.
The world these days frets over the tsunami. What is the real tsunami? Over-population. There. I said it.

Electronics, Clear Instructions

Electronics, Clear Instructions
Now I know I can't be the only one who has done this, spend almost the whole day trying to figure out some electronic device, such as a computer.Yesterday I spent all day hooking up wi-fi for the laptop. It is very easy to hook up, it only took about ten, fifteen minutes. But, if you are geeky, you know that there is no security unless you make it happen. Hours and hours later, what is not said in the instructions becomes clear. Your computer can talk to the wi-fi and set the code, and then the wi-fi talks to the laptop in the code generated.Then the disconnect problems started. More hours.Ever lose a day doing something you didn't want to do? Try to fix the water pump in the car, paint a room, change the hinges on the fridge?There is a great saying: If it is really important, you drive. If it is really really important, you fly. If it is extra really really important, you don't go.

Vacations

When you think of going on a vacation, do you think of going somewhere--which by nature of popularity--has people all day within fifteen feet of you?Ever go on a 'vacation' and then realize that there were people all day long within 100 ft of you? Clamoring and yacking?
Now, there seem to be two sets of time; living time, which is family time, drive to the store time, eat food time. And then, art time. The two realities do not mix very much.When I am painting, there are no stores, roads, cars, airplanes. There is no other world. When I paint, I am the center of the order. Order and beauty, beauty and order. More awareness, more assimilative intelligence infuses the second by second discoveries, the infinite minutae in nature and the mere fact that any of us are here at all.Earth, a globe covered by water, is an extreme variant, not the standard. Look at the other planets. And at this rate, it is temporary.Painting merely intensifies the experience of being involved with the world, time and matter, time and place.

January 4th, 2005

New Years resolutions? No, a list of ten goals for the year.