Christ for the price of television [excerpt]

If you or anyone of us fortunate enough to reside for any length of time within the inner sanctum of the modern cityscape, you, more or less, know what it’s like to be here. The ‘more you try it the more you like it’ approach at first seems like an ideal situation. Years (sometimes months, weeks, most likely even days) latter it takes on more than daily living can afford. It is here we are divided into categories and sub-categories and re-located to respective geographic and moralistic territories, each with its own individualized site-specific economic responsibilities. It’s a battle for the top, if you are a multi-nation conglomerate or if you’re a street-wise punk, it’s a struggle to stay high. Both, poised with the same struggle of dominance or threat of disaster, have their own system and network of fail-safes to assure at all cost the avoidance of any unnecessary remedy. They exist in exactly the same stasis of need and ultimately there is no one who can make a right decision about anything.

Both sides have advantages and disadvantages. The Junky is clumsy and heavy-handed; the multi-national is driven by the power and greed of conquest. The Junky has as his advantage the power of invisibility; he or she can safely disappear for intervals of time, as they never existed. At the junkies back, however, is the never-ending demand of a most elusive and restrained capital. The multi-nation, on the other hand, has as its base the liquidity and dexterity of commerce, yet its restriction is a constant and bothersome accountability, known as the paper trail.

Long Form: [excerpts]

long form
and other post-modern apocalypse

______________

“One no longer sees the blue sky or the green earth, only a consonant grey, brown or black enveloping the soul in a spider like web forming within a sphere like glass.”

I have no memory of anything, anymore. The line between the real and what was once considered unimaginable has long since blurred into a searing white noise rendering my mind blank as a canvas and still as a wintry morning blanketed with wet, heavy freshly fallen snow. There is no room for movement of any kind. If I were to look up, I would only see, staring back down at me, a sad, lonely reflection of an old and withered man I have become. Loneliness is the final mask hiding the pain and joy, which is life.

“I no longer touch the blue Earth or see the green Sky…”

This is not Death or what some have come to believe in as Death, more precisely, a catechism of purgatory, limbo, half-life, the spirit world, Bardo. One recognizes this state in questions poised "who’s listening, who’s speaking?" This is the oldest, most primitive, primordial conception of humankind.



_____________



"What good is truth if the truth is us?"

Of course, this lovely imagination can never hold the truth and why would should it? Gauging from history, the changes the self as an absolute authority brings is what none of us really want. There is no God as there is no Death. Yet the ability to grasp the meaning of such is and has always been beyond the reach of Mankind’s rational mind and its obsessions and struggles of conformity. It is the words you read [or believe you read] now that is the closest you will know of these things. It is you who are Dead. In fact, you do not read these words or hold this book. If I where to answer you, why, at this moment you will dissolve, before your own very eyes, into a pool of undifferentiated matter which comprises and is comprised by the multiple realities of this Bastard Universe.


"I stand at the gate of Hell whilst holding the keys of heaven, yet, I can enter neither. My heart is as pure gold, a wild flaming fire whose love, compassion and kindness fuels all lust, hatred and desire. I am every poet and every mad man. I am every blessing and every lie that has ever been spoken."

White River Junction 2006

When I returned, ten years ago, having already been to California and back, I don’t know exactly what I expected. I left the West Coast nearly ten-years after my Art School days had ended at the San Francisco Art Institute. I was thinking Australia; definitely, somewhere off the continental United States. On that long transit ride east, White River Junction, no more appealing than a-thousand tiny-other little grease spots on the map, like it or not, was in the cards for me. It now seems fittingly apropos that this culturally and economically challenged and cross-mixed outcast boarder-line railroad town happened to be the return destination printed on my bus ticket home. It is nothing other than circumstance, opportunity or chance, as far as I can see, that leads you and I to being here, right here and now. It’s the discovery of a new set of principles that you or no one else around you could see the possibilities in before. It’s become a drive for innovation, creativity, finding pathways that lead towards more sustainable futures. It is being on the wrong side-of-the-tracks until you can see the relativity between the concepts of absolute. It’s about those few and then a few more, who make it worthwhile - to stick around – and get it all done. White River Junction – It’s not so bad! Even the motto of the town’s Rio Blanco social club isn’t so hard adapting to. One can do it seemingly overnight. I’ll be glad to tell the rest of that story too, if you or anyone else who asks cares to listen. And do I still dream of Australia? You bet. Mate.

Can one make visible what is invisible? Or is it even necessary to try? Or is it that, what is visible, most likely, goes unseen?

As an Artist, I look for what I cannot always see.
I am interested in any available insight seen through an internal yet interpersonal individuality.
I seek to understand this influence of intuition; how precepts of integrity, value, and meaning are, in turn, influenced, by emerging experiences in a new and changing bio-political and techno-ecological environment.

As a Painter, I want to challenge my perception.
What can be observed can also be manipulated.
Just as the un-known, sometimes, will become known, what already has been seen, is often forgotten.
This uncertainty is timeless and resolute.
The most puerile action of the painter is an act of seeing and remembering.
My process, as a painter, is deeply dependent on an ability to sublimate the expanding or contracting of uncertainty.

As an American, I hope to refine my critical awareness.
Our Nation State has been set on edge by a war of politics and economics.
The lure of disaster, real or imagined, continually reinforces threats of cultural uncertainty.
Our lives are devalued, night after night, and day after day, through a carefully marketed and managed allegiance to image, product or entertainment, distracting us from seeing what we could see, if we truly wanted to.

inverse parallax of the dream landscape

back from the beyond

on a bridge over-looking
an icy river

flowing through an
abandoned dream landscape

a glistening, rippling water
moves beneath me

on all edges...

i am overcome by a sense of beauty
its presence is everywhere

it strikes me
that the splendor of this fact

is not dampened by my situation

for you see
I am suspended above

a narrow ledge

the bridge is ended in front of me

and behind me it does not
connect

to anything
except empty space

i am lost

stranded atop
this plank

a steel matrix
of girders and beams

tethers me
to a frozen ground

hundreds of feet
below

i peer down

is there anyone
below i wonder?

"Hello..."

"Who's there?"

"I Can't get down..."

and even if
i do...

where is
there to go?

inverse paralax of the dream

dream

back from the beyond:

forward is the same
as behind

to my left is a beauty
i struggle
to find

to my right,
a way down but

but not
a way out.

poem

i can't fix
it

it's
not broke

but i'll
try

moments like these...

paint
already on
my hands
like blood

live blood

first
thought
only thought

revised thought
best
thought

no thought what
thought?

untitled now

moments like these...
allowing me to forget
to remember...

allowing me to move
through time

without interference

...more from an undisclosed past

dream

there's an open house and
problem at the studio.
the lights won't come on
and there are people gathering
to see my new work.

the electric panel in my studio
has erupted and a complex string
of wire is hanging out of the box.

the studio is filling up. i yell to matt.
he says david is on the roof trying to fix it..

the lights come on quick..

but go off just as fast. already, there are
several people here looking at my
un-illumined works..

and more in the hallway coming...

the electrical wires form an arc and
spring out in a circle, almost as a zodiac.

there seems to be a critical mass,
and a group of people in a circle around
the wires become connected,

and the lights come on.

this time for good.

there are as many people in
my studio as can fit.
matt comes in and sits face to face
with me.

he looks me straight in the eye
and tells me about my life.
he makes a speech and a few jokes

everyone laughs.

people are all writing messages
on the walls between my paintings.
it is a very emotional moment.
they leave shrines in the hallways.

the dream goes on and on...

dream#254,654,987,960 (from an undisclosed past)

dream

i am home here at the mill
it is a dark night, dark, black
the darkest of all nights.

the light in our house is dimmer,
the glaze of a dream light,
letting me know, that nothing is as it seems,

matt and gabriel come home
there is a chaos about and through it
i decide to make order..

there is a glass that matt mentions is half full,
and promises it to gabriel later
in the evening.

matt sets the glass down on a small table
that collects clutter in our kitchen
without a thought, i whisk the glass away and dump it's contents down the drain.

"o-did you want this blurts out of my mouth"
there is a look of malaise on both their faces..
"shit" i think.

they had been planning to dye their hair
and that was the last of the peroxide,
i immediately volunteer to go out to the store for more.

some one decides to make a list of items needed from the store
matt starts jotting things on a yellow piece of paper.
the phone rings and i decide to answer

on the other end is my dad
in a faint voice i can hardly decipher
what he is saying to me. my attention is scattered

and i can not devote any real focus to him,
i try to let him know i have to leave,
but it doesn't get through to him. the conversation fades to nothing.

just then that special someone comes bursting through the door.
and i am so glad to see him. "baby, lets get out of here..."
the first words out of my mouth.

we embrace each other.

we bound out the door with a chuckle,
embrace, laugh, and find our way through
the maze of doors to the out side.

we are in the parking lot,
his car is there, and i think we get in and drive away,
but i can't remember

i notice that i am in my bed,
but i look up and see the stars,
it is cold and i wrestle with my blankets.

i realize i am sleeping in the parking lot.
the stars are wonderful and bright, but i don't want to be there.
i sense something raw, a predatorial sent

someone is at the foot of my bed.
a very intense primal fear surges through my body.

the predator senses my fear..

i can not move, i am paralyzed with fear,
until i leap up and slash like a wild beast
protecting my territory

universe doesn't care just keeps on revolving

we are stardust
million-year-old carbon
we are golden
caught in the devil's bargain
and we've got to get ourselves
back to the garden

i dreamt of a future
and in that future
there was something i was a part of
and that something presented itself
in what i could only
describe or think of as
what might be considered
the future
of what we know
today as our internet

it wasn't frightful, suspicious
or some Orwellian nightmare
feels natural and peaceful
like evolution
almost John Lennon's
...imagine there's no possessions
something like that

wet warm consciousness
a loving caress
reaching out towards the world
a voice or a thought
and it's so much more
than this

and like all dreams
it fades quick from my memory
i'm left with my blankets and pillows
and the impression it left
will always cause me to wonder

we are stardust
we are golden
and we've got to get ourselves
back to the garden