Revamp

As of late ideas have been spurling all over, yet being contained in a single motivation. Artwork I want to hire you to become my boss. This spinning wheel has been churning since getting my paper studio set up in October (yes I make paper). Call it a business, a studio, a job, an entrepreneurship, inspiration, it is what I am happy doing.

I came up with a clever name to title my upcoming body of work--StonePaperPrint. I need to work on my artist statement in connection with this name, it needs an explanation and conceptual support that will entice people to look at (and to acquire) a piece of my art. Doing what motivates and inspires myself and others encircles my goal. My desire to feed my hunger is also a motivator. The basic premise behind 'StonePaperPrint' is the media that I enjoy working with. I have made paper in the past--which I really enjoyed hence why I invested in collecting the tools to make it--carving and 3-d work (soap stone and pottery) is a talent of mine, printing through various mediums (lino-cut, digital prints, photography, etc.) has been an enjoyable experience, and paper is something that is wonderful to work with. I recently discovered (read: last summer) that oil paint on paper produces a fabulous effect, dries faster than working on canvas, and I make incredible compositions on paper. :D

Of the work I have produced, sold, and gained the greatest recognition from--what I see as successful ventures--have been sprinkled across the mediums of clay, stone, paper, and print. I have sold my photographs, digital prints and pottery, I have been awarded scholarships for my soapstone hand, and I feel some of my great art work comes from painting (or drawing, or printing, etc.) on paper. Being inspired by a piece that came through the frame shop I would like to add & work toward sculpting with paper (paper moulding).

Currently I work at Hobby Lobby as a custom framer to support the transition over to the business of being a professional artist. It is fun because I get to talk about art & art supplies all day. Politics & drama at work is not fun. Everyone is vying for full time, and getting caught up in that is becoming a large distraction. This past week I have refocused and rededicated myself to this venture of growing as an artist.

The blog revamp enters here: As part of my ongoing artistic growth I would like to redirect his blog. I'd like to transform this into a space to record, play with, investigate and research ideas, my creative process, and production of art. This blog has already laid itself as a foundation for writing and adding this new direction I feel would be in line with the initial intent of this blog.

I also desire to involve you in this process, I invite you to offer any feedback you have on this and the following posts. Tell your friends, invite you family to read, anyone you know is invited to read & comment. I could even invite future guest posts, in relationship to developing art, music, written works, or about the creative process. Turning this blog into a small community of friends, artists, engineers, computer science ninjas, behavioural science gurus, students, physical trainers, and family would make me feel all warm & fuzzy inside. :) The only thing that I ask is that there are no vulgarities used and we keep our discussions family friendly.


p.s. I'm still weighing the idea of beginning a completely different blog for my art, SPP. Here are reasons in point form:
-This A.d.r.o.u.f. blog has been a place to record creative writing/poetry.
-A.d.r.o.u.f. has a strong history and I think it could support a creative future with some adaptation.
-I am not keen on having certain folks (read:my parents) reading the archived history of this blog. There are just somethings better left unsaid.
-I am keen on branding my work so that it is recognizable and 'the symbol' works on the psyche through such branding.

p.p.s. Suggestions? I've already chopped some foolish thoughts, such as introducing a caricature of Einstein. That would just be too complicated to wrap things around, and it draws away from my artistic goals. I would like to continue working through the concept of what I call happy accidents.

inspired while running

Inspired by awesome Canadian music songwriters too! What do I pump on iTunes to get me motivated to work out? The CBC Radio 3 podcast with Grant Lawrence.

I hopped off the ellipitcal jsut shot of 30 minutes, so that I could jot this down:

We're all waiting
Waiting for something
What are you wiling to do while
You're waiting?

One day it may come
What will you see?
What will you have Done?
While you've waited
For something, for someone.

Is that something
A way of being?
Or does that something become
A way of knowing?

Yes, we're all waiting
waiting for something
What will you do
While you wait?

What I was thinking:
I'm waiting to get off this machine so I can write this down!
Really, I'm referencing all those times in life when we're striving for and reaching for something that we may, or may not, be able to bring any closer to us by our own power. This thing we wait for comes to us just as quickly as we get to it.

What do we really do with our time while we strive for that thing? Do we treat that object/person/goal as a salvation, and just passively let life go by, dwindling our efforts in our wait? Or do we do everything we can to prepare for the coming of that time, to realize that goal, to reach for that dream?

What if that thing we wait for never comes? Is our wait in vain? Not necessarily. I think it's what we did with our waiting time that most significantly effects the outcome. Like the poem says "Is that something, A way of being? Or does that something become, A way of knowing?". I have had this experience with several things I wait for. I wait to have a healthy body, I wait for the return of Christ, I wait to finish school, I wait to find out where I will attend graduate school, I wait to meet & find out who my kids are, I wait to grow old, I wait for the weekend, I wait for my turn in the bathroom, I wait in many, many lines. What do I do while I wait? What is this "waiting" stuff?

I do not wait passively. I try to exercise as often as I can. eat healthful foods, and learn from good books all the things I can do to have a healthy body. I may not ever get a fully "healthy" body. there are somethings that I do not know how to control, like if I get a brain tumor, have a stroke, or cancer. I can influence my contribution to those things, but if those things come to me I cannot always control. I research graduate schools, I prepare my applications for submission. I find out and complete the requirements that they expect their new students to have, in anticipation of acceptance.

This is kind of a measurement of life. It's not about waiting it's about doing, knowing, and having faith in the unknown.

Perhaps this poem needs a rewrite, or additions... it doesn't quite convey my feelings fully yet. This is why it's developed & unexposed.

"When artistic creation occurs, it creates sparks of illumination and ignites a chain reaction of influences that cross the boundaries of disciplines and time."

-Peter von Tiesenhausen

Commas, parenthesis, and en-dashes.

Rules, as set out by Deb Thornton my English professor:

Dashes are used for yelling in sentences.
Commas and semi colons cast a casual or subtle emphasis,
Parenthesis bring down the text inside of them, things that can be skipped over if you need to read fast.

I never knew. Now you do too.

A poem I just wrote off the cuff, to put on my wedding website.

Oh the fun!

These paths were destined to cross
A choice made
No time delayed
Then a move

A smile from a stranger
A brief passing on the street
Soon closer in view
Passed too quickly, yet soon to be reviewed
To become more familiar

A wrong turn perceived
A warning given
From a stranger in the hall
Familiarity triggered
The street recalled

The smile remembered like the brilliant flash from a camera.

Edit


These rivers were destined to cross
A choice made
No time delayed
Then a move as a wave trying to break from the sea

A smile from a stranger
A brief passing on the street
Soon closer in view
Risen, passed, and settled too quickly, yet soon to be reviewed
To become more familiar

A wrong turn perceived
A warning given
From a stranger in the hall
Familiarity triggered
The street recalled, rushing

The smile remembered like the brilliant flash from a camera
Capturing the magnificent spray on the rocks before
The Ocean recedes.

A work In progress: Shades of you.

*update February 14th 2009.

I am trying to work out the details of a song that I have been writing. it's not my first song, but it is the first that I have been moved to include words. Curse the boy and the love he inspires. [haha ;)]

I figured I'd put it up here as I work on it, let you all see how it's going, then publish the finished set when it's done.

An interesting note: In the Art therapy group I participated in this past semester the leading therapist suggested at the end of one of the group sessions "perhaps your relationship will truly begin when you finish that song." This was after I had expressed some fears of commitment, this song that I am working on and the root fear that I am not finishing it this song about my significant other because I fear I will come to a day or place where I do not love him anymore. (another note: the previous entry to this one was inspire by work that I was doing in that group therapy). This is not to say that I am defining the creation of this song upon that statement, rather, now that I have had a chance to openly explore past pain I would like to more openly explore how I experience love. This is what I am doing here, exploring, and hopefully knitting hearts.

It's not all grammatically correct, the words in ( ) are optional or considerations for the final work, and the // separate different lines or ideas written on different days. They are really not in any chronological order. Something in the middle I wrote today as I was recording all the other little tidbits, pausing transcription for demand of the flow for creation, then continued the process of recording and analysis. It really is like putting together pieces of a mystery, or scene that is come upon, or film that is started half way through the narrative. Thoughts all put together and looked at to be organized in a communicative way. I want you to be able to feel all the little pieces that are abstractly multidimensional inside of my experience. Also to have a record of those feelings for myself to return to if that day ever comes that I feel them no longer.

(this set of words and music has been taking many many months - I'm eager to see it complete and meet it in it's fullness, which will really only be full to me because of the process of creation).


Shades of You

I'm Flying/Feeling weightless when I'm with you
//
this verse will never be complete because I'll always have a need to tell you just how fantastic you are
//
one thing I know for sure is that my love for you is deeper than any stone
and higher than any moon or star,
purer than any diamond
and stretches farther than the reaching folds as the (uni)'verse are.
//
one thing I know for sure is that
my love for you is deeper than any stone
and wider than any expanse of the (uni)verse(heavens?)
//
our fate lies beyond this fallen state
always to continue on this earth and in the heavens we'll stay
together.
//
I want to smell the air those walls & to know
the wall of joy
through experiencing the world next to
the eyes that help my own to see

Let's take the living room outside
lounge on the sofa's in the sunshine
And act like we would in our private walls
without a care to who's looking at all.
//
I make a ridiculous Joke
and you follow with one just as ridiculous
//
silliness
//
you make my face hurt (from smiling of course!)
//
I choose love because Love is a choice
i will not give my fear a chance to offer it's voice
for it will surely deteriorate what beauty we share
yield heart to opportunity growth
//
live reacquainted with love
lived reacted
lived reactional
lived ready
lived reaffirmed
//
right moves with you
//
i'm glad i'm not totally comfortable with you, or ungrateful
it just ensures/warrants
that each moment will bring something new to love.
avoiding hedonic adaptation point of view
//
I'm not as psychic as some believe
I'm often left wondering what it is you think of (us)
so i watch instead for the inclination of your head
the gleam in your golden iris
your gentle hand always leading
even when we don't dance
//
my lips peak and curl
this happiness feels more mischievous
cause it feels like our own silly secret
as we anxiously try to remain oh so serious
//
you dance for passion & I dance because i'm passionate about you.
change often keeps us on our toes.
//
I choose love because love is a choice
it isn't some short lived feeling
//
The first time i saw you was on a thursday,
the sun was bright, the air was warm
our feet tread the sidewalk in one another's direction,
smiled as we passed each other
each on our way to our own/different place(s)
I had no idea what that look would turn into.

The next sunday you saved me,
pointed me in the right direction
(it was then you caught my attention)
and I wondered who is this man
who would care so much
for my(a stranger's) wandering feet that he would take a moment, (stop me in my tracks),
and set me on a path that I did not expect.

Look now what our silliness has gotten us into.
//
I'll continue to be silly if you agree to be ridiculous
//
silly, ridiculous
hilarious fit we're in
//
I'll be silly if you be ridiculous
and we'll laugh into the sunset
till the stroke of twelve.
//
I'm afraid to lose myself like I lost myself last time.
I was lost even to myself
//
the landscape of a room changes
so greatly with the addition of people
when you enter the energy becomes
bright & colourful, busy & directed
in so many individual ways
//
in you I have found happiness so excessive/expansive/ & exquisite.
//
i consult with others on how I can
stretch out my patience in attempt to
possibly come to understand
the mystery that is you.
OR
i consult with others on how I can
stretch out my patience in attempt to
possibly come to understand and see
the shades of you.
//
Dancing with Tod really is an experience, he is a fantastic partner, his signals are clear, he is patient and sincere, and when I ask for clarification he is willing to stop to show me.
//
sway, blink, in the shadow of memory

expectation clouds the surface of the message
analysis pierces the tension
waving its reaching
coming up with little more than what is now obvious.

hesitation is prominent
though willingness is strong
I've thrown away most of the icons
and sold the cheap gold & stone.

recent attempts have been fruitful
though anxiety still persists
opportunity to face it
is avoided at best.

this residual dust I see
is fallout from your Manhattan project
all matter gathered lightly fluttering together
mostly settled as snow on the ground.

the beauty that ensues
eerily suggests a connection
imperceptible by the ignorant eye
to hate sorrow bickering & flippant expectation

that does not override the good memories that were
which is why the bad ones burn
As you found I was not a plug & play bride
with you I could have never been satisfied

denied myself for a feeling
clouded the perception of misrepresentation
fronted by a charming smile
cleverly hidden is the carious core

fool me once shame on you,
fool me twice shame on me,
fool me thrice that shall not be.

I decided that in summer of 2006
since your hauntings have ceased to exist
yet you have spread your disease
situationally fixating it in my ability to. . . (commit)

which you do not deserve credit to claim
that is my own experience and gut reaction
falling out from our Manhattan
I'll find a way to rebuild in my own way,

no matter how long it takes.

Any living thing trapped within a prison that endures its torture will instinctively attempt to escape.

- Matthew Good.

It still confounds me how in even in a family, people who have lived with me for nearly 26 years, still don't fully understand how to appropriately approach topics of sensitivity.

I just had an experience with my mother that triggered my own mental state that i cannot really explain. I have sympathized with situations that others have defined, such as the flight or flight response, or what John Gottman calls "emotional flooding", in order to understand what I experience frequently through every day of my life. It isn't quite anxiety, it is more full of inadequacy and shame, and when I recognize that a situation is moving my mental state into that space I do one of two things, leave or try to push through the situation. I have learned to be much better at pushing through situations that become triggers, and avoiding the inevitable mental shutdown that occurs once I become too flooded. I can't really predict when it's going to happen, but I can say that it happens more often in certain situations than others, such as learning situations where I m the student, situations of stress (not always conflict though that is included), and in situations or relationships where I feel emotionally/mentally/physically unsafe as an individual.

My relationship with my mother is one of those relationships that I do not feel emotionally safe. I hope that this doesn't come off as a harp of depreciation for her, because that is not my intent. She has raised me in a good home, with minimal physical discipline, and has always been concerned for my betterment, and taught me to be a good upstanding compassionate member of society. I am merely trying to describe what I experience. This blog is one of my outlets that I utilize to manage what it is I feel and experience. Anyways, I often feel judged by her. She has a fairly judgemental personality, as well as she's very sensitive, inflexible to surprises, and when someone is telling a story she tends to top it off with a statement of her own personal experience. She often will allow others their opinions but ultimately feels that she is right and offers that air of correctness whilst allowing others their view, as though one is entitled to what they think, but ultimately that's not truly good enough. Also, she rarely believes that her actions are wrong. She will often complain about most everything, expressing whatever experience as not fitting into her ideal expectation. She also likes to discuss what she feels about a family member with other members of the family, attempting to rally together and in a "team effort" influence that one family member to what she feels/views about them. Also if you ever offend her (even if you don't intend to) she will hand whatever event/favour that you asked of her in the near future over your head. "So this is how you treat someone you'd like to do ____ for you???" She also blankets her assumptions to be true in other aspects of life, freely offering up her criticisms, such as "if you communicate this way then you'll never be able to function in whatever future marriage you have." Now that I have insufficiently painter her personality let's move on to the story. (there really are lots of good things she does, but there are also lots of disabling things she does too.)

For example, we were discussing how her weekend went, which was a normal conversation. She had gone on a "Yoga retreat". Eventually the conversation moved on to a family friend whose teenage son is in a treatment centre for troubled youth. I add my comments that heroine has become a more common high school drug, it isn't just for the addict bums strung out downtown. She then says that it must have been the influence of bad friends, because isn't that how it is in most of these situations? (one of those blanketing comments)

I knew that she was directing her question to my own past experience of raving. Just because I went raving doesn't mean I did drugs, nor does it mean that my friends pressured me into doing drugs, nor does it mean i ought be judged for the choice to be there. Choices that an individual makes incorporate thousands of different combined reasons.

At this point in the conversation I recognized it as a place where the conversation is on the way to breakdown, and my own emotional flooding where that fight or flight response kicks in and my mind loses what sense it contains so I chose to leave the conversation, because I did not want to go into that with her. I said I don't want to talk about this individual anymore (though I knew her comment was directed at me). I was being honest and left. Well she got offended (cause I was in the wrong for leaving) and as she walks past my open bedroom door and says "you don't have to be snarky." She also loves to leave little bombs like that to shame whomever she's talking to for whatever they did she didn't appreciate. I expressed to her, when she passed in return, that it isn't my intention to offend her, that is her choice to feel that way. Open opportunity for going from bad to worse. Somehow she always manipulates my intention into something it isn't. She then points out her intention for the pointed cornering question by saying "don't pretend like I don't know about how you were involved with something that began with an R and ended with an E and is four letters, and how my car mysteriously disappeared at night." She's also really good at hanging onto past offences. That was over 8 YEARS ago that I was going to raves, yet she still categorizes me into the moderately delinquent slot she's got me in. She's never going to understand why i chose what I did, because she can't separate herself from the judgement long enough to consider the whole truth of the situation, thus I will never discus it with her. I set it akin to how soldiers will not talk about their war experiences with their family. Somethings are better left alone. John Gottman says that it's ok to have problems, an not solve them. That just means another arrangement needs working out to accommodate for the problem, like building a little boundary around it that both can appropriately handle the issue without solving it.

She accuses me of not even being conscious of when I am being "snarky", to which I reply that is because it isn't my intention, and i tried to make a repair attempt by making a joke out of it, putting my index fingers next to my head like little devil horns that are loaded cannons stating "I'm going to unconsciously sabotage my mother (pow, pow, pow)" making little exploding noises and moving my metaphorical cannon horns like they're firing. She didn't appreciate that very much, and says "see you're being snarky right now". She has a broad definition of what it means to be snarky, basically I understand it to be when she gets offended.

She says all of this to me like it's news that I stonewall people. I know I do, and if i recognize it to be a safe situation I am better able to work through those feelings of mental shut down and manage the inevitable breakdown myself. If it is necessary to tell people I am communicating with that this is something that I do, then i do so, in hopes that they will react to me so as not to further elevate the situation when that begins to happen, and work at bringing the stress level back to a place of safety. If it not safe that is when i either run away and hide to work through calming myself down, or i fight and try to ride it out without panicking.

I have had one panic attack that i can recall, it was in the Salt Lake airport. I was in the security clearance section, sitting, waiting to board my plane. Several planes had just landed at and around the gate at which I was waiting, so suddenly the area was packed with individuals trying to make their connections or to pick up their luggage. I started to feel very rushed, and terrified because there were so many people rushing around me, and my chest began to feel like it was being tightened. I had not where i could go, i was at the end of the gateways, with hundreds of people rushing in different directions, I felt trapped. All i could do was put my head down, plug in my iPod, crank the volume, try to make the world quieter, and breathe.

You're thinking, cranking the volume makes the world quieter? and I resoundingly say, Yes it most certainly does. So often the world gets so noisy. I hear everything, all at once, and it takes a great deal of ignoring to desensitize myself to all that is going on around me. Though there are times when I can get hyper focused in on things, like when i am working on art pieces I am creating.

They say ADD is a dysfunction of focus. Those people who say that do not have ADD. It is not a dysfunction of focus, my experience has been that I can focus on things just as long as the setting is right. My setting is not the same as your setting. You may like to have an open door to hear the bustle of the office outside, or you my talk to a co-worker working beside you as you get tasks done. For me if the stimulus isn't aiding what I am doing, it is detracting from it. That stimulus could be anything. I may like to listen to the bustle outside the office, and be able to work great.

I find that when the rushing and multiple loud activities are occurring simultaneously within close proximity to me that's when i lose ability to think. I hear it all going on, the boss giving instructions, the phone ringing, the clock ticking, the staff member coming to check their schedule, the radio playing, the casual conversation across the room, the customer coming in to fill in details of an order and the sound of their pen on the paper as they leave them, the receptionist typing on her keyboard, her chair wheels as they slide across the carpet, the money counter in the back room. In addition to hearing it all my mind then creates visual images to match the sounds it is receiving. Can you understand how this can be confusing for a person who is linear in their thinking? My mind is not a linear tool, it understands everything in vision and multiple dimensions. I can spout off details of a setting, or aspects of a page i read, including the layout, or possibilities of how a person acts and why they act that way, but ask me to memorize and work through a formula, and it doesn't work so well.

I just do what I can do to accommodate what i can accommodate about myself, but i don't try to "fix" myself, because someone concludes that because i act or think this way I am broken, whilst offering a label to write off who I am.

Too many people search for labels to things they don't understand.

I am moved,

The clouds have been heavy and wet for several days, soaking us groundlings. Some of us revel it, while some of us curse it, but the heavy clouds stay all the same. Yet, the clouds don't all rain the same. Yesterday it rained so hard rivers were created in any gully that existed, gathering into small trepidatious lakes. The drops would careen the surface heeling the tension in such a way that air would be trapped for just a moment under the tight molecules stretched across the displaced gas until the bubble blossomed into coruscating petals of water. Even within the same storm the clouds evolve through measures of downpour and blusters of existence.

An Odd Mood (The Wall)

I have felt and odd mood lately
one that separates the communication of your senses of each other
compartmentalizes each into their own unrelated box

My headspace is going numb,
& wrapping it around the ordinary is a
challenge

I analyze this state
in & through the spam of the day
sometimes forgetting it in the business
& fully realizing it
when someone is speaking to me for too long.
(longer than a few phrases)

I think I need to get out of this town
run away to the city
alone.

I want to touch those walls I've
Learned of
dreamt of
& felt in sleeping sense
I want to smell the air around those walls
& to
know the wall of
joy
experiencing
the world next to a pair of eyes that open
my own

The Wall(s) (in no specific order)
The louvre,
Paris (specifically Van Gough & the Nike of Somathrace)
Scotland
Meet Matthew good (done june 30th 2007)
The Bauhaus (my art therapy studio)
Japan - war sites
Germany - war sites
Australia
India
Niagra Falls
Brazil
A healthful body
A companion who is willing to be with me, not follow or force me.

what i said about myself, on my flickr.

Artist, Behavioural scientist.

Those 2 elements are my passions which keep me going on a day to day basis. The big picture is in the process of being made, and it would be a pity to leave it unfinished.

I am going to get my masters degree in Art therapy, at some big school out east. My top choice is Concordia University in Montreal Quebec Canada.
When i finish school I want to open an art therapy studio. Make it a centre for positive learning, not just a place were weird people with problems go to line my pockets with money.

I care about people and I care about what they think, because what they think is what they create.

I feel that art can positively influence for positive change.

As for what is life right now,
I go to school believing I am going to do something with my life and save a world. I get involved in campus stuff to feel involved, keep busy and productive. As a side note I try to do what I can to make a difference in other people's lives. Talk with them, do things for them, just be there. I haven't always done that, and I'm trying to get better at it. It's not really a conscious effort to receive some reward, it's just what I want to do.

Other than that I appreciate all things beautiful that are well thought out. That is not to say that perfection is demanded. Beauty is found in the scars and imperfections.

I also appreciate the adage: It's easy to make something complicated. To make something simple and effective is difficult, but far greater.

mechanics of a gun

just thinking about that as a metaphor, for a kick start reaction instead of an intention for harm...

Pushing buttons he’s not going to like.

It is possible, yet far more complicated than being alone, to be with someone and to feel entirely afraid of being anything but alone.

This being with someone pushes boundaries, fears of being together, fears of opening up and having it all fall apart again, fears of knowing how and when to express or reciprocate. Fears of the anxiety that creeps up and stops you like a crushing rock set gently upon your chest. It creeps in and settles in your mind, taking the will power of a deep thick carefully engineered concrete wall to fend it off, hold the sanity in, and to walk across the violent chopping glassy surface.

Loving is the easy part. Saying it is the hard part. So I try to show him. I kiss him, I snuggle with him. I hold him loosely so as to avoid too fast an attachment that is already developing. I am picking up new social hobbies so I can be a deeper part of his world. I fear him becoming a deeper part of my world. My logic is that maybe if I can find out who he is and feel comfortable there, he can find out who I am and feel a similar way. Then, somehow, we will be able to survive the flood waters when they come.

I have plans. I have plans to be, to go, to do, to become, for I have been promised these will be because of who I am. I have made plans that have been set in place prior to him even entering my world, those plans now having been modified and yet still modifiable, to become something different. I see the important thing here being flexibility. To incorporate new concepts and ideas within the process of carrying out plans. Bending and not breaking, seeing and not running, loving and staying.

You thought it’d be possible to remake something out of a rock? I already tried, and to sore disappointment it is valued far less coming from the hands of the owner than the originating hands of a salesman. I tried to save you from pain and anguish that you experienced anyways, resulting from a rescinding action opposed to returning an owned item. Taking an owned item back to the salesman who doesn’t hold a simple return or exchange policy is rigidly and psychologically flooding, like a dam holding back too much emotional water, running off to surrounding plains, effecting every detail of the landscape, pushing away life, flattening strong historic trees, thinning out fertile soil, burying entity beneath a flooding tumult of restless death. The rock sits in a box, underneath the tumult, underneath the restlessness, underneath the entity which bore it. But even the rock is not alone; it sits with another precious metal beneath it, procured by a similar method the first was obtained. They sit together, closed away and protected by a box, buried.

I made a suckers choice.

Pierce

did Christ just go out for a walk
or was he looking for a sign?

I became a wave
circling still

I would like to be a sharpened quiver
in my place cutting unbelief and self-disapproval

when he turned back did He look to see who was watching?
on a sea of torrent and black

His path became an unseen shadow on the sea floor
shining bright as the day-lit stars
(can you perceive them?)
With seven divisions
between earth
beneath the ocean & the expanse star spread overhead

I collect light & burn

I realized that I became a moving wave circling still beneath His feet

I strive to be a sharpened arrow in this place
piercing self loathing & divorce of unity with humanity

Did He Know they'd be watching?
Did Peter expect His invitation?

An unaddressed letter of experiment

Imagine an image of a horse saddled up, bit in mouth, reins over neck, and blinders over eyes. Now imagine that same image, but with those elements removed. What do you see? Your mind is lying to you. You do not see a bare back unsaddled horse with bit and reigns removed, and you able to look deeply into its milky colourful iris. Those things do not exist in an image, and therefore cannot exist when certain parts of an image are taken away. What you see is a representation of an animal with a hole in its spine, missing eyes, and parts of its body dismembered by all the removed straps that belong to these tools of restraint.[a]

Which begs the question, what are you seeing? Are you seeing a whole animal anymore? Those pieces were never in the image to begin with; your brain just logically placed those missing pieces there so you wouldn’t die of a heart attack upon realizing such an animal would never be able to exist. Without those implements of restraint of modern man the horse becomes freakish, disturbing, and un-lifelike. Without those missing pieces filled in by the psyche the horse doesn’t make sense, all logic is lost and understanding falls apart. Your rules of logic do not exist in the world of vision and action. How far does the world of vision reach? How far reaching is action?

To the horse in the image it makes no difference if the reigns are there or not, because it still lives the same. To the horse, they are an external substance, which only visually connects the parts, because it really doesn’t live off real substance it can survive off none at all.

Is the horse even aware that the visual restrains have been removed? Would it act the same as if it had them, or would it come to some visual realization that it is now free, although it posses no eyes. Remember: the blinders are gone.

If the world were presented with the parts of a man, how would the members of the world react? Depends on which parts of the man, and how you define a man. What if it were only a half? Does a half imply a mere incision between the navel and the spine, drawn horizontally or vertically, or does it imply half of the mass, no matter which parts were presented? I can predict with almost certainty what the reaction would be to a half a man based upon his mass presented in random parts, and I can almost certainly predict which of those parts would have to be left out to decrease that reaction. There would be a degree of measure upon who he is based on what was given, if it were a hand, a leg, a penis, or a head with eyes still in their sockets. A torso would give a fair amount of information to an observer, the approximate height and weight of the man, what his habits were in life and how satisfied he was with the physical interaction he had with others. It could also tell you a great deal about the personality and psychology of the man as well, informing us of his common preferences for food, physical upkeep as far as strength and building of that physique he once owned.

What if this man was still whole, but his face was horrifically scarred by war? His youth and beauty stripped away by the duty fulfilled for his country. His pride reduced to an unimaginable disconnect with others, because of their inability to deal with his dehumanizing scars. Can he survive with out a face? Does it matter to him if his face is there or not? What would you say to his wide eyed compassionate bride, who married him upon his return? That single act of her marrying a man that she loves despite his physical appearance, no matter how macabre, is more courageous than most things you’ll do in life. She understands that there is something greater to a man than his appearance. I just hope she keeps that understanding always within view, planted and growing within her being.[b]

What if you changed your dismembered focus of this horse and man within your head to a woman? Remove her fabric restraints and her breasts disappear, vulva gone; those things that make her a woman disappear as instantly as the horse’s imagined spine and eyes, as quickly as a soldiers’ features melt under the heat of a bomb.

What makes a woman? Dismember her and see what parts you would pick out to determine her sex. You wouldn’t need to go far; a woman’s womanhood is stained within every cell of her body. Would you sever her brain open to determine how much of which hormones were running through her psyche to judge whether or not she was of much value in life? What if you discovered she was a drug addict? What would you think then? What if she were addicted to something far more discreet, like the internet, talking on chat rooms? Perhaps that is why she’s is in the predicament she is in, dismembered and dead. Perhaps she was enticed by what seemed to be a gentleman, perhaps the devil himself.

They say the devil is a gentleman. I believe that. How would he otherwise be able to woo so many into believing that shredding the tiniest and largest amounts of human dignity, by any and all means, to be right and correct?

This woman, having been enticed by the greatest gentleman of all, is now brought to your imagination to be analyzed and measured, to be drawn and separated, to be abused and misunderstood by your preconceived notions of what is and should be. What if this imagined image were the woman who married the marred soldier? Do you judge her? Do you spite her manifestation of Grace? Do you abhor her existence for encumbering your blinders? Do you hate her for being? Are you angry with her for having compassion upon the evidence of the devil’s work, successful in his mission?

Would you do the devils work differently? If so, you are the same, the same as Lucifer himself. You are just another person watching from outside the ring, shouting obscenities, and jeering for more violence, while the fighters dance for survival. Or perhaps you have been enticed by that same gentleman, but you yourself have given in, being won over to his side to be restrained, to perceive that the gold plated saddle he’s set you in with blinders to boot is a luxury and a pleasure to wear. You don’t have to witness the ugly side of life because he’s given you the chance to see only what you want to see, unless you accidentally venture too far into experience and the pages of learning, exceeding the amount of ignorance he restrains you to. That is not about to happen, though, because the endless drugs and meaningless entertainment he has prescribed you to have set you in an all too familiar headspace of complacency and dull wits.

Can you escape his mists of illusion, or do you have the will to do so? Is there any need for escape? Would life improve or change with an escape, with a unification of the parts, the seeing of the whole? The spaces between filled in magnificently with God and Grace, spaces you could not fill in with your own logic; spaces only possibly filled with the unifying explanation of the profane, the divine, and the elegant. What room would your separation have place for then? What about your degradation and objectification? You could no longer fling around parts of a human being like pieces of meat to analyze for pleasure or for terror. The power of hell could not forego its segregating will; it would have to obliterate its mission in full surrender.

Or would it? Is it the absolute element of hell within us that thing which supports the absolute possibility of exercising Grace?

Does it take more than your individuality to realize that you alone are insignificant? That you alone, without other people, would degrade to a state where life would be pointless. That the only sense that can be made in existence is only created and accomplished by unification?

Why then do you think the writers of the bible call it the At-One-Ment? Why not the Christ-save-ment?

Because it wasn’t about Christ. It was about you. He died so you could live for more than this life, than this existence, so you could learn that faith will be found in existence upon his return, and that hell will obliterate in surrender.

God came down and created the world in seven days, but will you lose faith and believe that he has abandoned this place after that? That the creation of this earth was something to be put up on the shelf, forgotten about or to be returned to at a later date, if at all? If His abandonment were true, He would not have stayed the hand of Abraham, later killing His Son. Action is further reaching than you think.

Weigh that while you’re weighing the worth of a man, the grace of a woman, with the image of the dismembered horse in the background.

Are you worth as much as another man’s life? Are you worth joining together with all the other men and women that ever lived or ever will live to become something far more wretched and beautiful for a purpose greater than you could possibly conceive? Forget just human existence; are you worth unifying with every other fibre vibrating in the entirety of everything that is incomprehensible? See that while you imagine your imaginary horse.

Are you worth the single most unifying action through the single most degrading event in history?

This is not to say that any other sorrowful historical event that occurred is not important, rather it is to say that they all occurred within Him. He unified the profane within Himself, within the divine and within His Grace.

Show that to your imagined beast of burden with no spine or eyes.

Tell that to the bride who marries her love who has been scarred by a war that is inspired of the politics of economy.

Remind yourself of that when considering one of the first things you do is throw out the rules of the game. Consider, are the rules worth discarding? In some situations perhaps, as long as it applies to your actions. Love the higher law. Imagine the dove from above is a dragon and your feet are on fire.[c] Don’t come into the temple and crawl. Stop thinking about the dismembered horse in your head, stop thinking about what judgements you have about another person, start doing something more than wander, start to see through the devil’s medicated mist.

---

[a] Josh Ritter, http://www.joshritter.com/ , Album Cover of “The Animal Years”.

[b] Nina Berman Photography http://www.ninaberman.com/ click on “Marine Wedding” to view image of Bride and Marine.

[c] Josh Ritter http://www.joshritter.com/album_animal.shtml Album “The Animal Years”, Song Girl in the War (mp3 available to listen to on this site.)

All footnote contents were originally read about on http://matthewgood.org/ in entries posted by Matthew Good dated and titled as follows: Monday, February 26^th, 2007 “There are no words necessary”; and Monday, February 19^th , 2007 “A rare endorsement”

Fine Art

Both in their own separate ways and timing, preservation and transformation acted upon my thoughts and feelings. They put in flux my concept of how this world displaces me. All structure of action, emotion, regularity, the ordinary, has ebbed into the dark facets of a small deficient stone. Experience has infused this light beaming facet with human sensibilities and meaning that were expected to be more than sufficient to carry thought and action into a single plane. Instead it became a struggle for a sense of existence and clout. It lacked the ability to support failure. We voyaged around the city in a tumultuous circle.

“Give it back!” He demanded, “I want the thing that started it all.” He begged as he half concentrated on the road, and half waited for my response. In my refusal I realized the thought that ‘nothing will ever suffice’ has stripped away my willingness to give, to receive, to interact on an intimately allegorical plane with him. It has stripped away so much in my own awareness that nothing remains but the exposition of my longing, which has brought fullness to me.

I wanted to tell him that it was not that thing that started it all, but our own inevitable gravity which did. I lacked confidence that he would accept my answer, for he was already denying my denial to give. This lack of knowing his next reaction is that which hesitated my thought and action. It was also the knowledge of what this vestige couldn’t do for him that gave me the ability to deny his request. He still placed great expectations upon this anulus, as thought it would act as a shelter or defender, or that it would develop into a curative occurring outside of his being. What he could not perceive is what I saw in it, the wanting of destruction, separation, the end of things, but the vauntingly minor ability in which it could do this. He needed to find the closure from within himself.

I thunk to myself, whist sitting prisoner inside of his vehicle, I almost married a man who’s mental and emotional tumult overtook his efforts to control the material and his own will.

“I’ll have you know I drugged myself up quite thoroughly before coming to this moment,” he paused waiting for a reaction. I knew the drugs his words were indicative of, the ones that came in little orange yellow bottles, containing capsules of even smaller size to dispense the appropriate dosage of control or complacency, dispensed by the individuals who claimed to be caring healers, and corporate conglomerates to help aid the consumption of society while easing the anxiety that nearly everyone is addicted to, but few truly realize they are suffering from.

This statement didn’t elicit a strong response within me, a heavy twinge of disappointment and grief hung over the silence. We hurt each other in this opposition. All I wanted was to not hurt anymore. But we could not agree on how to do that for one another. I myself have found ways to compensate, accept, and fill my lonely existence. He claimed he did not have the same experience, and would not until I gave him what he wanted.

“I have everything to gain from this! What do you stand to gain from keeping it?”

“I gain nothing.” Is all that could escape from my thoughts, traveling the distance to my mouth. I also muttered something about how I am not responsible for his closure. What I wanted to say what much more amorous and admirable, but the abstract feelings of expressing to someone what an amazing and worth while creature they are is far from being explicable with words. For me this wasn’t about control, about ego, nor fault. For me this was a chance to spend a little more time with him, which in turn was with a past self, though it may be in the most conflicting of circumstances and desires. I wanted to express to him the magnitude of person and being sitting next to me in the car, and the difference between that and the state he perceived he was in. I wanted to express to him that regardless of what we believed was happening that there was something far more beautiful to be experienced, regardless of the physical presence, because our souls had already become one. Within that oneness we sensed an urgency to do something, but neither could agree on what.

So we continued to drive.

My physical body began to become weary with chaos of opposing will. Asking my soul for rest, he granted it and took me home.

The physical resolution is that the ring is now gone. The soulful resolution is an unspoken curiosity and understanding that separation will serve best our poignant passage within the duality of unification.

This pain and confinement will stand as our ultimate moral, offering a degree of hope to the anagogical sanctified coalition.

There will always exist inexplicable ties invested within myself ceaselessly distending outward of the memory, the experience, the love, the joy, the horrific fear, the deficiency to mesh desires, imposition of will, and the fine art of falling apart, spreading its hopeful abstract essence without the corporeal.

ditto to below, bottom right corner

who's to say it's wrong
&
who's to say it's right?

same paper as below, written diagonal across the top right corner

concealing the profane numinous

different jackets for appropriate weather?
different jackets felicitously expressing euphemisms.
these circumstances are only anointed opportunities to canopy nakedness
one exposes my vulnerable
one warms my weary
one parades my pride
one brings my comfort
one shines my felicity
one conserves my frugal
one preserves my youth
one asks my playful
one reminds me of you
to accessorize these jackets poses just as difficult selections
as choosing which jacket to exhibit over my naked.

for lack of a note pad; written on the front page of "in" paper magazine; around & over an image of an eye, a rooster, and a coat.

like unorganized children the snow follows through the erratic air currents
meets with the earth
having joined forces with gravity
in a pattern so elusive no mathematician could figure
god's self actualization
and the freedom of grace he releases

written on the same page, separate after thought.

how long will you wait to get revenge?
(through perfection of self)
you just want to state:
he's a fit sucking asshole
who's following his dick after big breasts. (or insert appealing physical appendage here).





written late summer, august maybe.