102313 Phoner

I’m staring at this phone I own. My phone. My phone is perhaps looking into your phone- or whatever your phone wants to reveal to me. Then- I must only reveal the same in return. I’m waiting for my phone to set me into action. I’m waiting for my phone to tell me when to stop doing something. I check in with my phone’s well being… “Are you trying to tell me something? Have I neglected you for too long?” I want to shut my phone off, but I can’t. It would be unacceptable. It would be an act of defiance to turn off the material access to me, and my accountability to the community. My inherited community. This ‘thing’ is how I am forced to communicate- with others as well as myself. Ever more socially acceptable, designed distance between human beings in a planet that is shrinking as it is.

Franz Kline

Looking at minimalist abstract art comforts me. I don’t know why it comforts me. I’m not much to praise the genius of artists. Really it is because I don’t know how to define and attach the word genius to anyone (or anything). It’s not that I don’t think that there are countless people with talents or an intellect well beyond my own (not just the guys at the tech repair bar Herr Jobs has anointed). It’s just that I see genius as something inside of everyone. Genius simply defined as an idea no one else had… yet. I am currently entangled in a Franz Kline painting. Black, white, a square and a line. The more I observe it the more I am comforted. Perhaps it’s the Zen notion of simplicity and oneness. Or maybe it’s just the notion of how black and white symbolize opposing forces and conflict, blah, blah. Maybe I like squares. I think it may be the simple notion that there exists a group of people that find deep personal substance in this painting. There is enough substance that even makes it quite valuable to the oligarchs. Whatever anyone’s personal substance is, and I don’t want to know, there is an agreed understanding, and acceptance of the presumed randomness of human expression that flows out of us all.     -

8-26

I went for a walk in my suburban New York City town. The disgust of the SUVs and traffic overwhelmed my gag reflex instantly. I started on a thought process of the how impossible it is for one to truly find peace in an American suburb, and how delude these peoples’ lives are, and every other pseudo-artistic cliché perspective on American family life. Maybe I belong in the woods alone. Or maybe I belong in Manhattan where the noise cancels out the noise, which cancels out the noise, which cancels out that noise, etc. I decided to forge on. As I made my way to a small pond in the nearby woods I came across a family- mother, father, grandmother, and 3 children. All fishing, and all silent. Only myself and the lone, angel feathered white stork I sussed out on the edge of the pond were observing this. I knew then that I was in the perfect place.

Invisible Majority

There are far too many invisible moments in our existence- or so we perceive. In order to tolerate the loneliness of that invisibility it is adapted to as a comfort. I justify it as solitude and a retreat from humanity’s wretch. The fact that we are ignored as artists as well as humans is something I am forced to consolidate in my mind and heart. I am so constantly dismissed I create a pattern that makes my lack of significance concrete to me. It must be universal. Is it really? When asked for my personal contribution on anything, why would I ever assume it will have any more of an impact than it had in the past. Why? Because I realize not one thing in this universe does not impact the whole.  

Toile Out Toile In

I am hostile with the notion of structure. Perhaps the word itself provokes an image of constraint- a sort of rule set I inescapably must adhere. Structure seems to be the safety buffer from the internal toile of self-exploration, intellect, spirituality, transcendence, etc. Internal toile seems to be the mind freeing itself from constraints such as structures… and round and round I go! I find it difficult as an artist to work without structure. At the same time I find it debilitating fixating to structure. Balance the two! No doubt. But more the question- How does one truly balance the two? Be here fully present now (Ram Das), but let the mind free. Follow your bliss (J. Campbell), but understand the laws of nature. Duality seems to be the recurring theme. I do know I (probably like everyone else) find balance and happiness when I’m just busy enough. Busy enough to not be able to fixate on the myriad of things that debilitate me, or at the same time the myriad of things that inspire me. It feels as though it is impossible to find balance without structure. Structure is our master. The structure we create dictates the world around us. Assuming that man-made structures (i.e.- career ranks, roads, market prices, social interaction, education systems, food systems, medicine, government, etc.) are needed to progress and survive as a whole, where is the turning point where it becomes detrimental to humanity? I find I get irate when in the presence of someone highly patterned, trudging from task to task. There seems a lack of mindfulness- meaning a full understanding and complete experience in their own life. It has an aura of avoidance from something. What is that something? The self? The internal toile perhaps that most of us fear? It seems the more we attach to a structure, the further from our humanity we get. I watch this person go from task to task, agenda to agenda struggling with some, and flowing with others. Refined in appearance and speech, proud (proud of the “self” no doubt.), this person is unperturbed by anything or anyone except the challenges the chores bring them. They seem unable to stop to just look you in the eye. They toile and toile on in their order. I suppose my question is simple, “Is it better to toile over the outside things or the inside things?” 

Bringing The Monster With Us (On Vacation)

I am in a typical east coast, rocky, marshy, buggy, bustling beach vacationing town. And in the worst time to visit possible… dead smack in the middle of summer. This place is filled with families. Families that are trying to escape the city I would assume. Yet the pace is faster than rush hour in Shanghai (I exaggerate). The restaurant offerings are bland, boring, and childish at best. And the game and family activities seem to drone on a theme of mindlessness custom built for the seeker of mindlessness. And thousands are here to partake in this phenomenon! Ok, enough judgment and subjectivity, I do apologize.

It would seem logical to me that the word vacation would evoke a calm, quiet, special “me” time. What urges us to seek crowded areas? Is it the landscape? i.e.- We all love water in the summer and beach towns happen to be crowded during the summer. Is it being around people? Oh yes, we seem to do so well with this in our normal day life (that’s sarcasm), why not find it on vacation? It seems we completely miss the need to be with ourselves… quietly. I find so many people self-righteously using the term, “I have to keep my mind occupied so my head stays straight.” It is as though the mind is this evil thing that must be fed or it will run rampant and destroy us. No wonder we live in constant fear. We create these habits by our chosen perspectives. For such a brave, prideful country we seem to fear stillness as though it is a cancer that will destroy us. We adapt to the franticness so much that calm, clarity, and relaxation become the enemy. Most people do not even sleep well. Too much down time I suppose. There are times I am in a public place, and literally do nothing but observe. I either stand or sit in an inconspicuous area observing myself, and my surroundings. 9 out of 10 times I get a look of strangeness from anyone walking by. A sort of distain like, “You seem threatening! What’s your agenda?” or “Find something to do!” I am, and I am doing it. How am I less productive than a random errand that you, for whatever reason, make ultra substantial? Or a board game with the family? As if those lessons in Monopoly money will set the CEO path of your child in motion. I find the miniature golfers, and card game families to mistake mental masturbation to productivity and connection. Are we fearing what we may find if we listen to ourselves? It’s the monster in the dark syndrome transferred into adult life. You know, the monster is there and when you turn on the light he’s gone! Same thing… if I keep mentally distracted, no monster. Stop for a minute, monster appears. There is no monster. Really there is no dark or light. There is you and there was only you. There will only be you. You will always be there. You are actually there now. And “you” are who you are always minding even if your Uno game is on fire at the moment. How about resting and listening to the “you” that is giving you life?