I'm not sure what I'm stealing from these people. I know it's not their souls. But I am taking liberties. I feel like I do when I look at my wife and children as they sleep, it's safe to be very very close.
This year, his grade six year, we enrolled our son Jacob at Avondale Alternative School. He loves it and so do we. They combine grades 6, 7 and 8 into one classroom and now he's got lots of older friends. The kids are all really sweet. Avondale likes parents to be involved so I did a 5 visit workshop teaching Jacob's class how to make a zine. It went well. They liked the project.
Jacob was in the school play the Music Man. He was part of the barbershop quartet. Jacob was offered a bigger role by the drama teacher but his home room teacher insisted that his participation be limited. This way he'd concentrate better on his studies. I thought it was a lame decision and I was disappointed Paula and I were not consulted. Nevertheless he has thrived this year like no other year before. To see your child eager to face homework, it stunned us. We never imagined that would ever happen.
It's easy to draw sleepers and readers. Everyone else is jittery as hell. The nicest people I meet on public transit are the ones sitting near or beside me when I draw. I get a lot of smiles and warm words of encouragement. Never had any outright hostility. It seems I don't offend much when I stare. Maybe that's because I find people so beautiful to look at, they're OK with my attitude.
The whole process of drawing in public is fun because my likenesses are so close that in a few minutes I can nail facial features while the train is moving and I'm standing even. People like seeing the accuracy. It's nice how time spent drawing turns into skills. Now I just wish I had a style. Something unique.
The baby in the stroller was from Israel. His Dad and Bubie were a little uptight with me staring at their child/grandchild. Until I smiled and showed them the drawing. Then they relaxed and the father chatted away with me about his long journey to Canada via Austria and England. He plans to move to San Diego to the warmer weather.
I'm not making abstract art. But this kind of drawing is making me dizzy because of pretending to be a bit Max Ernst. I am going to emulate my pretend mentor. I'm trying this out personally. It's supposed to be a good idea. He'd laugh.
His dad painted. And he lived in a mysterious forest. And the thing I had like him was fevered hallucinations as a kid. I got pukey and disoriented. The doctor gave me shots in bed at home to make them stop.
Does anyone not think Max Ernst was the greatest ever, ever? Are they nuts? Is their head off?
Who can have that much talent and not be murdered by it. Be completely killed by it. It would kill me. It could. Right? How could you survive it?
I can't believe he existed. It's like the bible. It's got to be made up. A team of fabricator's lying and lying. If not then I have to kill myself for being pathetic. Or go on a long fast to be purer. No food until I'm skin.
Why I ask you. Why? Why? Why? Why? I think he inspired artists too much. Now there's too many of us. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
Do you think he liked knowing how it would make me feel, looking at his art, wanting to tear out my nervous system and convulse like a spastic colon, just spewing. What a prick!
Where is a pillow. I want to hug my pillow and snuggle. And die. But also I want to have one of those long artist lives like Hokusai, Matisse and George Grosz and all those other great art guys.
See my art Balls! They have potent flowers that are coming!
I've been broken into little pieces by being silly and by wishing. Boo. Look out for my little pieces.
Max Ernst lived in Sedona and I did too. He liked rich women who were into art. Apparently they adored him. I like any women into art but I like to be the richer one even when I'm actually very poor which has happened often. And I don't know if any of them loved me very much.
Miro was cool too. I'd like to have some of him too. My wife was happy to find something new on my blog today. Then she came home and fought with me. I added this and now I'm sad plus there's an echo in here.
I like this drawing. I am starting to enjoy doing drawings again. I've been really hating it for about 49 years. It started in Kindergarten when I noticed how pretty everyone else's paintings looked on their easels. Mine looked like poopy mud and my classmates wore there smocks like artists instead of like a diaper like me, for being so sloppy. They mixed colors better and also knew how to use them alone, like green only as green without other colors piled on. Everything I did turned into a shit looking mess. That's what happens when you use all the colors. Not white light. It just turns poopy.
The first day we visited Roland in London there was a 50/50 chance he'd pull through, fight back from his coma like state. The waiting room was pleasant. A volunteer shepherded us kindly. Jacob jumped online the courtesy computer station. I drew as Paula commiserated with her siblings.
After visiting Roland for a 1/2 hour we all took a break and headed to the cafeteria. We caught up on family news and Paula and her brother and sister swapped sentimental Dad stories. I pulled out my sketchbook and scanned the room. It was hard to draw Mark. Impossible really. He's like a jittery ghost.
Amanda was easier. Perhaps because her features are so similar to Paula, that and her vanity. The food was horrible. Jacob scarfed up his plastic fries and colored fructose liquid.
My brother Mike has a new house in London. We visited him after the hospital and I coughed all over everything. His wife Ann got sick soon after. We agreed it was the worst flu of our lives.
Paula's eulogy moved both friends and family. Some close to Roland, intimately familiar with the Parris's tragic family history, privately shared with Paula their sympathies and respect.
After the union hall emptied the family drove in 3 cars to the Thames river, which briskly snakes through London. We scuttled over the icy ground carrying Roland's ashes onto a bridge. We dropped him into the cold rushing water. Some of Roland landed on the foundation of the bridge, most flowed northwestward. Goodbye. I think I liked him, but I wish he had taken better care of Paula, protected her. But it seems he could barely take care of himself.
James did a great job. Best grad show yet.
Stacey from corporate was the lowlight of the night. The highlight was my wife and son coming to the show! This executive bureaucratic marinated us in 10 minutes of canned cliche fulmination. I guess we were supposed to feel honored that she had flown in from the USA, but it was hard to overcome a nagging gag reflex throughout her, what can I call it, orientation lecture? When never-worked-in-the-industry types drag out old saws like 'the easy part is over dear student, now comes the hard part, the real world', it's the biggest crock. There's nothing harder in my opinion than being young, responsible for your own time, studying your brains out and for some, also going into debt for 36k. Excuse me, I'll take the real world over my student days.
I wish one of our graphic design grads had given the valedictorian speech. We have some really fun and witty personalities in the group who could have really roused the crowd. This gal officially kick started a snore fest. Which only lasted until our gang rose to receive their diplomas.
Your a nice man Steve.
Funny guy. I like his laid back approach to teaching. He's earnest and knows his shit.
Dapper elder statesman. His shirts are a little wacky sometimes, but I dig this guy's style.
Appears to have been the big sister to everyone in her program. Way too much hugging for GD. We're hardcore!
My buddy Anson. Very good illustrator. Hard working sonofagun. We play hockey together. He's a pit bull out there at the rink. Probably a little crazy from elbows to the head!
Well, what can I say, was this the comic relief? He should have opened the show right off the get to, to warm up the crowd as it fidgeted into comfortable seating and gossip. Sorry, not really ready for prime time as a speaker. Very sincere guy with lots of ego. Yawn.
Afterwards Paula, Jacob and I went out for dinner in Kensington Market. A cool little place where you custom put together everything in your dinner. The Rice Bar I think. It was really delicious and the waitress was super helpful when we bugged her about the myriad of choices we had to wrestle. Its got tiny chairs, tables that wobble and when the door gets opened you get icicles on your nose. Not nice. Jacob has some good rock star hair no? He's always swooshing it around and recompiling it.
Paula and I were behaving badly towards each other, we were wary of each other and distant. We had had a fight while strolling together on a long sandy beach. Paula used to visit this park oa lot as a child. I think she was seeing ghosts. We were holding hands and enjoying the beautiful warm sunny weather and everything was good, this is what we had come here for. The closeness turned upside with a few words and a few overreactions and we were deep into another cold wars.
As they slept, I stoked a huge fire, drank Sauza's Tequila and played songs on my MP3 player. I cried into the bottle. Sitting in one of those folding chairs that you can stuff in a trunk, I looked at the stars, stared long into the fire and stumbled into the woods to pee. The area was speckled with moonlight filtering through the canopy of leaves. I wandered back and repeated this whole deal 5 or 6 more time. The air was cold damp, the campground silent.
This whole emotional scenario is a regular fixture of our relationship, a sunken sofa cushion of funk, but not as bad as it used to be. Drawing couldn't make me feel better though. If you know me you probably think drawing might be my eye of the hurricane, where I probably feel peaceful and somewhere I can process trauma and anxiety, but actually when I'm feeling this kind of sick inside, it's practically useless.
The other boy lives in another world, a limbo world from a bad dream. Everything that’s part of the first boy, the boy who lives in the real world, that this real boy feels but doesn't want to experience, feelings of guilt, shame and terror, goes to the limbo world. All the denied stuff goes there. And it waits.
The limbo world boy wanders in a kind of wasteland full of dumped people parts, everyone's. He drifts around not understanding that he himself is just a fragment of the real world boy.
It would happen like this. In the real world a piece of you breaks off, like a quarter dropping out of a short pant pocket. Where does it go? It could find a receptacle in some retarded person in a home somewhere, maybe in the country. You wouldn't realize that you had lost something and the retarded person would have no idea he’s now actually part of someone else. He's sit waiting for dough nut day, hoping to got a jelly filling and that there’s a whole box of them. That's what's on his mind. That's what's on his mind all the time.
But with or without that special someone you one day, let's say in the middle of the day, and for no apparent reason, you suddenly feel this ecstatic delight and calm, peace even. You guess that you've somehow figured out something important about this life, by constantly worrying and strategic thinking. Now you see how smart and wonderful you are and how good life actually is, you just had forgotten.
He's licking powdered pastry sugar off the waxed paper bottom of the dough nut box and his eyes are rolling up into the back of his head, the TV has got a lady talking about a stabbing, she’s round and brunette like the woman who gives him the enema. Up his bum. And that’s tomorrow. The crothc of his jeans have a drool puddle building near his zipper. And my Graphic Novels are about how what you really need is to reacquire these fragments of yourself, relocate them back inside you. That would be for real happiness and might last if you were a real entire person in the first place, which is highly unlikely. So both stories are about that stuff.
