suchthing

 

all life is bathed in wavy particles except

that’s not right; words fail

“suchthing” might describe it better by not even trying to

for one suchthing allowed the existence

of the first and lightest few elements on the periodic table

enabling the energetic coalescence of stars

and a suchthing made the first of them eventually energetically die

and the deathpressure filled in much of the rest of the periodic table

and these such things eventually allowed the existence of grandkids

 

and in the spite of “the Big Bang” there is evidence that our “universe”

is but a localized phenomenon and thus “In the Beginning . . .” never obtains

no matter how far back we go

there’s no suchthing

 

 

 

 

mortality

too restless to rest in peace

too alive for it to press as an issue

i and my mortality observe what must soon come

 

these words are one thing thought another learned

 

the harshness of audio

in telemetry

in the swiftly-pulled zipper of a body bag

drive us to many distractions

 

“alas” is wordsister to “love”

 

and death unnoticed by those he has claimed

Cat on a Hot Tin Can

At long, long last I got my hands on some clay today. It has been many months since the last time. This is a little chunk from a bag of Dave’s Porcelain (bless Dave, wherever he is–I’ve been using his stuff since 1989) that is so dry from summer spent in my good friend Joy Riner Taylor’s garage that I’m having to reconstitute it in my kitchenette sink. GREAT to be One With Clay again!! Thanks to Joy for making it possible!

workplace portraiture

Just before Christmas I did an index-card portrait of my co-worker Michael. He liked it a lot, and so did his Mom. Since then I’ve tried two more, but I’m not too happy with them, and so I consider them “preliminary sketches.” That’s Garyspeak for “I didn’t go yet.”

haircut, etc.

My day off spent with brother and mother. Highlights were a haircut, lunch at Coco’s, and watching a David Bowie DVD with Brian.

Proto-Portraiture

This is a quick sketch/study done in preparation for a portrait. It belongs in a notebook and not in a frame. But 21st-Century technology enables us to “enhance” our visuals via cropping, distortive photography, and other manipulations, and this makes some of our images suitable for the screen as well as the notebook. I deemed this image one such.

 

Crystal and the Death Angel, featuring Crystal Cruz

Here is a 2010 outtake from a modeling session with Valley enchantress Crystal Cruz. I found it while searching in vain for the drawing “God’s Breakfast Table,” which I’d intended to enter in the Glendale 2016 annual juried show. It makes me nostalgic for the student Life Drawing days, but it also makes me happy and hopeful since I see many things I would do differently with this drawing–it could be so much better with patience and care.

the seeing things

 

the seeing things

the bulbs on the stalks that lead to our brains
are seeing things.

since they are things for seeing, why shouldn’t they?

they are light-admitting information gatherers, but
they are also display items and scanners.
blinkers? no,
the surrounding flesh does that.
perceivers? no,
the brain they feed does that.
cryers? no,

you do that.
so do i.
it is our souls’ instructions
that the lachrymal glands obey,
though there is often a tug-of-war, a struggle
between natures “better” and “base.”

some sights we have recorded
of heart-stoppingly striking moments
get replayed so many times
some glossive editing takes place.

the eyes
in thrall to the brain
never have it.

beginnings

2015 is over. It was a brutal, lossful year, beginning with the death of my beloved friend Karen Wilkinson and ending with bad health news in my family. I’m superstitious enough to think of years as separate beings, so I have a perhaps-foolish optimism that with the ending of the year some kind of slate is wiped clean.

I like to do things on the first day of the year that I hope to do year round. It therefore became important that I do a blog post today; but logistically that was a problem. I am typing this on the computer owned by Robert Ortega, son of my steady girlfriend Joy Riner Taylor. Bobby, Joy, and Bobby’s twin brother Tony have me over as a breakfast guest, after which we will see the new STAR WARS segment (I for the second time, they for the first). After that, they’ll drop me off at the Light Rail where I’ll work my 2-10pm shift and likely get home after midnight and too late to post on New Year’s Day. So I asked Bobby to lend me his machine, which he did graciously, and Joy gave me paper and pencil for the image, and the use of her Snoopy dancing doll and her keys as models. And so Problem-Solving, which I also love to do, and Blog-Posting are two loved things done. Movie-Going is soon to follow.

Happy New Year, friends!!