Let us end the day with something simple, simply to look at. If I did what I tried to do, you are not going to read anything political or moral or side-taking about this design. It just is. And you are welcome to it.
Me: Am I gonna hurt tomorrow?
Dr. Ahn: YES.
It is now Tomorrow. Ow.
Tooth B Gone
The dentist like the KGB
Omits to give an H•U•G
Observe as in your mouth he go
To exfiltrate to parts unknown
He has extracted faulty bone
This was all done under the influence of a severe toothache, but I am happy to say the work was engaging enough to distract away the pain for awhile. Now that the work is done the ache is back in full force; but I earned this toothache, and I own it. –The heck with THAT phony-baloney posturing–I’m going for the Oil of Cloves pronto! 🙂
family & vortex
famine & color TV
anthem & o sole mio
migraines & 4 on the floor
insight & clever retort
lattice & tree felled by axe
yelling & time to relax
Note: I have a dentist’s appointment for 11:30 this morning. Please wish me luck!
Here is a consummate professional AND a real Sweetheart. Her husband Zach (or Zac, or Zak, or Zack? unsure), who tends bar at Zipp’s, says “I’m good, but she’s a REAL Bartender.”
Yesterday Katie accidentally video-called me, and so I had a screen shot to work from. My drawing doesn’t do her justice though. Needs to be much more Glow-y.
She used to call me Gair-Bear, but now she calls me Gary Berry. “Move it, Gary Berry,” she says playfully, when I’m in her way behind the bar. I’ll take it. She can call me whatever she wants to.
The third grade art teacher told the class to make a word that is self-descriptive. So “TALL” would have long, skinny letters and “fuzzy” would look like it was growing hair.
Here is a supplement to my Project Finishline. I don’t remember the word I did in 1963, but I do remember thinking that I could have done better. So 55 years after the fact, this assignment is finished–sort of. It’s subtle. The word is not impeding, but impeded. But that itself makes the word an impediment to completion. But that makes it not an impediment. But that makes it an impediment…
Six years ago today this blog was created. I had a Sweetheart but not a job. I lived in an amazing place, with a climate and scenery much different from where I now reside. And I had been posting my creative efforts on eons.com, a site that is now defunct.
This post is called “adversarial anniversary” because this blog is particularly challenging on milestone dates. What can I show or say that I haven’t said or shown already, and perhaps better, in one or more of my 1,219 previous posts?
My answer is this page, which reveals the unfolding of things, and acrosticizes the challenge with these words:
animus begone via arcana
deliverance arrives, saves bacon
veracity is on a train to Macon
endorphins jazz and dissipate ennui
reconnaissance and chicken say Kiev
Susquehanna sustains sequence
animals wander two and four
rigidity rigorizes mortis
it is as odd as dancing paramecia
ad libitum drives endeavor
licensure makes lively
At the bottom right of the page is most of a quotation from Dan Jenkins, the author of Semi-Tough and Life Its Ownself. I left out the last part because I don’t know if it is true, but here is the quotation, used by some Southerners in a toast with bourbon whiskey, entire:
“We come into the world naked and bare. We go through the world with trouble and care. We depart from this world to we know not where. But if we’re thoroughbreds here, we’ll be thoroughbreds there.”
In my illustration I have a winding path that starts with a baby and ALMOST ends with a question mark. But there is more path beyond. May it always be so.
Andrew Meltzer came by Matt’s Big Breakfast and handed me an envelope. In it was a letter of gratitude, a pin with a 3 on it, and a voucher worth $20 toward a meal at any SSP America restaurant at the airport. (There are over a dozen, and soon there will be many more.)
As far as I know, Andrew is unaware of my artwork and poetry. He is acutely aware, though, of how Matt’s Big Breakfast is performing, and what I and everyone else are up to, because SSP runs all kinds of data on their establishments. They also have video cameras here, there and everywhere.
And I’m aware of them, and of Andrew, watching. And that is liberating. It makes a workday rather like a video game. Get people seated, see to it that they are glad to be there, keep it flowing, let the diners know that we are grateful that they chose us–this is the best of Capitalism, to be able to make an experience valuable, both for the bottom line and for the uplift and empowerment of the weary traveler. As Samuel L. Jackson put it so bluntly and with such panache, “You gotta put butts in the seats.” Matt’s reputation is so solid that airport volunteers, airline employees, and even TSA agents send diners our way, knowing that we are the real deal.
And my work at Matt’s not only funds my artist’s exploits, it also makes me a better artist and poet. The phrase “Work hard, then play hard” comes to mind, but it needs some tweaking to be a good fit. “Build cathedrals with gusto” is slightly better. Every day, working with solid, sincere effort at a host stand, then a drawing board, then the treasure-laden landscape of the English language, is another well-fired brick for the cathedral that is my artist’s life.
One with Clay, Image and Text 