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.”
My day off spent with brother and mother. Highlights were a haircut, lunch at Coco’s, and watching a David Bowie DVD with Brian.
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.
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 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.
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!!
I’ve just read Al Kooper’s jaw-dropping memoir BACKSTAGE PASSES AND BACKSTABBING BASTARDS. The man who crashed a Bob Dylan recording session and ended up with the organ lead in “Like a Rolling Stone;” the man who not only played for, but named, Blood, Sweat & Tears; the man who produced Lynyrd Skynyrd–all that just turns out to be the tip of the iceberg. Read this amazing book and you’ll learn why Norman Rockwell hugged Al, then painted a portrait of him and Mike Bloomfield of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.
The words:
A & R spread like an oak
And bad finger defunct a loco
A gig a friend a deal a zoo
Lo! Super Session–quite a coup
Lynyrd Skynyrd paid the fare
Let a legend climb the stair
Today was a day off from work, and a belated Christmas for the fact that I worked on Christmas and the two days after. I’m still living on a shoestring, so the gifts I had for my daughter, my ex-wife, my mother and my younger brother came mostly from the Family Dollar. I felt bad about, so I did something I almost never do: I gave, not printed copies, but original journal pages, as gifts. The pages I chose for them, all from early 2009, had a particular connection to each of them.
This one was for Brian. He and I had marathon sessions playing Risk, a game of global conquest. Whenever I rolled the dice as the attacker, he’d exclaim, “LOSE one!”
This was for Joni. It was done when our beloved dog Bill was still alive and well, and the poem concerns the healing power of human-animal companionship.
This one was for Kate. One of Kate’s favorite songs is Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”
Three fewer journal pages for me turns out to be a gain, not a loss. The pages are more valuable as connective tissue than as artifacts.
The library is closing in 15 minutes, so this will be brief. Four weeks ago I became employed by a corporation that manages several restaurant chains. In the course of my employ I’ve been on my feet every working minute, and have not only lost several pounds but have also had a good insider’s look at what happens in a quality restaurant. When a customer spontaneously says “It was wonderful” or “That’s the been airport food I’ve ever had” on her or his way out, and that’s happened many times in these weeks, it means much more than that they had a good meal. They traded a segment of their irreplaceable lifetime and were happy with value received, even though they could have saved money and time with alternative sources of nutrition. That well-being will improve their digestion, their outlook on life, and (given that we cook from scratch with fresh, top-of-the-line ingredients) their very bodies, incorporating the ingested nutrient into their cell structures. Win-win-win–almost Zennish.
In these terrorism-laced times it is hard not to feel vulnerable and targeted, no matter who or where you are. And at Sky Harbor International Airport, self-proclaimed “America’s Friendliest Airport,” the big challenge is to be at once accepting of a mind-boggling diversity of humanity, and mindful that the Bad Guys often strike at or near the airport, or on and/or with airplanes.
One consequence is that a new airport-vendor hire is treated as a provisional employee while a ten-year criminal background check is done. Until the positive results come in, the new hire must be escorted through and beyond the security checkpoint everywhere, including to the restroom. My own background check, just completed, took a solid three weeks. Somehow I managed to limit my restroom need to once per shift. (Yesterday’s shift was 10-1/2 hours. Yoicks!)
When I was “cleared for takeoff” (just last night) I was voiced-mailed to go to the Badging Office for video watching and testing. I arrived at the Office at 10:30 AM this morning (Tuesday and Saturday are my days off right now) and emerged, educated as to my responsibilities as a blue-badged airport employee, at 12:45. The videos I was shown did a good job of covering security basics, which are mostly common-sense things (example: if you badge yourself in through a door, you must be 100% sure that the door closes securely behind you before you leave it) that such as I, being NON-commonsensical, don’t normally think of.
Now I am badged. The badge is good for six months. I trust and hope that I am too.
One with Clay, Image and Text 