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!
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!!
At long, long last my Residential Drawing Station is operational, and I have many to thank. The fluorescent drawing-table lamp was a gift from my parents more than forty years ago. The pencil was part of a package of pencils given me by my then-wife, Joni, about eight years back. The light tablet, a marvelous surface to draw on, came on a Christmas from my then-sweetheart, Denise. The Captain America shield/eraser was a freebie acquired at the Jack Kirby Birthday Celebration, courtesy of my friend Russ Kazmierczak, Jr. The Bookmans goodie bag is from my fabulous Steady Girlfriend, Joy. And the coffee? The coffee was, is, and always will be a Gift From The Gods.
The work in progress is signed and dated today, and therefore must be finished by midnight tonight. Got to get cracking. Thanks so much, everyone!!
Here is my Steady Girlfriend, Joy Riner Taylor, in the haloed darkness of a service-for-six karaoke room. Some days back she asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and what kind of cake I wanted. I asked for a Scrabble Night Party at her stepmom Genny’s house, and a lemon cake with lemon frosting. My dear Joy gave me EXACTLY what I asked for, Saturday night. The delicious sweet/tart cake had added lemon juice in the cake, and thinly sliced lemon circles on top of the frosting. Best cake I’ve had in forever. And I won the Scrabble game by one point, only because Genny’s Scrabblemaster daughter Marleah was keeping score, and fudged the numbers. (I think.)
Then there was today . . .
Today Joy, my daughter Kate, the Karaoke Fanboy himself, Russ Kazmierczak, his lovely and nice girlfriend Randi, and I appropriated a karaoke room at the Geisha a Go Go out Scottsdale way. I put my meager vocal talents to work on “Homeward Bound,” “Blowin’ In the Wind,” “Piano Man,” “Forever and Ever Amen,” and “The Dance,” which I dedicated to the memory of my friend Karen Wilkinson. Joy joined me in another Garth Brooks song, “Friends In Low Places.” Russ KILLED on songs like Rod Stewart’s “Forever Young” and Jim Croce’s “Time In a Bottle.” Kate did the Blink 182 song “All the Small Things,” and Randi sang “Can’t Fight the Moonlight” as softly as, well, Moonlight.
The laden table above reminds me of another song, Bob Dylan’s “Restless Farewell,” a good way to close:
O all the money that ever I did spend
Be it gotten most right- or wrongfully,
I let it slip gladly to my friends
To tie up the time most forcefully.
But the bottles are gone
We’ve killed each one
And the table is full and overflowed,
And the corner sign
Says it’s closing time,
So I’ll bid Farewell and be down the road.
–But before I go, THANK YOU to those who shared my Birthday, and those who wished me well; and especial thanks to Joy, whom I love.
The title of this post derives from the splendid, brutal novel Cool Hand Luke. Luke and his fellow fugitive Dragline are on the lam from prison personnel and their vicious, man-hunting hounds. Drag says he knows where they can get ahold of some nice, [generously-bosomed] country gals. Luke avers that they can’t be messing with women when they need to be making good their escape. “This bein’ free is hard work.”
And so it is. For me to be free of the matrix of indebtedness, ancillary guilt from being subsidized, and the various life-sucking distractions this evil world constantly proffers, I’ve taken a small, no-Internet-access apartment and a full-time, low-paying job that I can leave at the end of the workday without it following me. I’ve worn out my shoes to the point of harm, and then got a new pair that abraded the flesh atop my Achilles tendon into hamburger. I buy my toilet paper at the Family Dollar and my dollar-ninety-nine breakfast burrito at the QT.
But life is good. I had a wonderful day yesterday, my daughter Kate calling to ask for a guitar lesson and/or a movie (we saw the execrable FANTASTIC FOUR, knowing it would be bad, because that’s how we roll), and afterward, by prearrangement, I spent the night on the living-room couch of my ex-wife, getting the best night’s sleep I’ve had in many days. And today I had a quick and convivial lunch with the sweet and steadfast Joy Riner Taylor, and tonight we’ll be out on the town, not too lavishly.
While I was at Joni and Kate’s I saw one of Joni’s houseplants–she says a schefflera–in a planter I’d made a long time ago; I didn’t remember exactly when, but guessed ten years, then curiosity compelled me to hoist it up high and read the underside (I sign and date almost all my ceramic works). Sure enough, I’d done it in 2004. I was delighted to see it doing what I’d made it to do.
Bein’ free has been such hard work that my artwork and poetry have been nearly nil of late. (I put in eleven and a half hours of overtime last week, and public transportation and pedestrianism also take their toll.) But, Friends, I am finding my feet. Expect more from this source, well before the end of this month.
What a tumultuous year it has been. Karen died. Betty K died. Denise and I broke up. I gave two weeks’ notice at work and then moved to Phoenix. Dorine died. Anne Meara died. B.B. King died. I lost about fifteen pounds. And Bruce is now Caitlyn.
But one bright spot is that I now have a genuine, just-like-high-school Steady Girlfriend. Her name is the title, and acrostic, of this sonnet. And here’s a shout-out to Judith Lynne Cameron, my Aunt Judy, who as long ago as March suggested I write Joy a poem. This is it!
Joy Riner Taylor
Just asked this Glendale girl if she’d go Steady
O what a thrill ’twas when she answered Yes
You see, she’s fun as handfuls of confetti
Religious yet unjudging–I confess
I want to go to church with her, but fear it
Not due to Hellfire–rather to embarrassment
Ecclesiates ROCKS, and in its spirit
Religion’s nothing new–yet neither’s harassment
Thus courting Joy involves a change of scenery
And serendipitous improvisation
Young love will never see such ever-greenery
LUST is all well & good–still, mere sensation
Omits the richness found if spirits blend
Regard the beauty of this WONDROUS FRIEND.
One with Clay, Image and Text 