Tools of the trade
Up in the Air
Tools of the trade
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What people live for
This woman was born in Barcelona. She lived in the United States for ten years before moving back here.
She said, in the US people live for the work and here the people live for the people.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t disagree.
If anyone reading this blog is in Barcelona and wants to exchange a story for a portrait, let me know Offer only valid in Barcelona, preferably in Spanish.
Trying to explain
I came to Barcelona to do an artist residency at JIWAR in the Gracia district. What I proposed to do here is to draw people and while drawing them to get their story. Of course, in the exchange there is a bit of my story. As I’ve yet to draw an American, the conversation often involves the comparison of counties.
This is a 24 year old super cool guy who was traveling alone as his mother got sick so her and his 14 year old brother (who is on her passport) couldn’t come. He is going to move here and be successful with a perfume store. He was fully, get that? Fully confident (something you can’t be at my age) that he would move here and do that.
I’m sure he will. As ancient greek Virgil said Whether you think you can or you think you can’t You are right
But that’s not the story. The conversation was not completely understood, as both of our spanish was sub-literate and his English was not fluent
I was trying to explain to him that the USA is still a racist county. This came up in conjunction with the African American best-in-the-world gymnast. I said something to the effect that I was so happy for her and that she showed up the way she did for herself and (consciously or not) for her skin color and culture because people of color still don’t get a fair shake in the USA.
He didn’t get that… Obama and all. I tried to clarify and explained that a white policeman in any city (or not even police in stand-your-ground Florida) be it Baltimore or Oakland or Furguson or New Orleans or anywhere really; can wrongfully (as in proven by footage from cellphone bystanders) kill a black person (usually young and male) and get away with it free as a bird.
I don’t think he believed me.
Daylight savings time on my desk in the morning
Where to compost dead bodies?
Recently, I replaced three glass lights that had been gracing a path for many years along the coast of Big Sur, California. The insides of these lights had natural debris in them from all those years. It is funny white stuff, like imaginary attic fuzz, like cobwebs but stickier. Lighter than air almost. It is Similar to the dust that miraculously assembles itself out of nothing in usually missed corners but it’s meatier. It also resembles a tissue like paper, so I am wondering if I can get away with putting this webby junk in recycling. The compost can is down the hall.
On closer inspection, which I’ve never done before, of this “stuff” I see something. Yes, a bug, a bug like a bird, all off white, tiny and papery. I pick him out and clean him off. I look for more. I see one and then another and then I see, that it is ALL a mesh of tiny preserved dired up off white bird bugs.
now I know they go back to the earth in compost..
Or does it matter?
Not to those bugs who were traveling towards the light.
Swimming
In the locker room, I realize I don’t have my goggles.Coming outside to the pool, I see the dark college lifeguard is talking with a woman in the lane with the ladders. She is round and blond with pink skin. They are friendly and acknowledge me as I sit on the edge getting ready to go in.
I comment on forgetting my goggles and the lifeguard offers a box of goggles I can borrow. As I begin to look, the woman offers me her goggles which she explains are brand newish. Most of the ones in the box are broken at the nose. Before I know if all of them are broken, I put the guard box down and accept the pink woman’s goggles. The strap is the thinnest I’ve ever seen. It is made of linguini shaped translucent off white plastic with sparkles.
When I first put these over my eyes and enter my dry face into the water, all air is suctioned in, water tight. At the end of the watertight lap, I slide the goggles to the top of my head to do backstroke. I like to alternate between freestyle and backstroke which lifts for me the boredom of swimming. At the end of backstroke I pull the goggles down from my wet hair to my eyes.
They don’t fit. Not at all. Water seeps in near the nose so I swim the freestyle laps with one eye winking open and closed as my head goes in and out of the water with my breath. The goggles help some but do not allow me to see clearly.
I see clearly when I am doing backstroke, facing the sky and what I see clearly is nothing.
Never Enough
The cashier is chatty so I join in.
“I have soo many hooks because each of my teenagers have a thousand sweatshirts from thrift stores and 500 of them are on the ground”, I explain.
She says, “I know. It’s the same at our house.”
That catches me as we are outwardly so different in lots of ways. Yeti it’s the same at her house.
We have longer than an moment of eye contact. I note her perfect eyeliner but mostly we look into each other’s eyes for a second or two. Then we look down at the hooks.
“No matter how many hooks I buy…” , I say.
“it will never be enough”, she finishes.
The Lenses We See Through
After talking with Ilana, whom I’ve just met at a party full of eclectic people, I am starting to wonder about her glasses. I don’t have on my glasses because I am not reading but, truth is, I should be wearing those progressives all the time as there are quite a few subtleties passing me by.
Ilana, a wildly talented San Francisco Art Institute grad student is talking about her hispanic childhood in LA and how she devoted twelve years of her life to throwing the discus. She’s got the body for it. She’s funny and is rambling on in a I’ve-got-this-conversation-covered kind of way. I’m fine with that and enjoying the ride as are my two teenagers. It’s Christmas eve and even the food is eclectic because a lot of the party works at Rainbow grocery, one of the first large co-op health food stores in the nation.
I am feeling friendlier and friendlier with Ilana as we get smushed closer together when still others feel there is enough room to sit down on the large couch.
I become more suspicious and say, “Let me see your glasses!”
She shies away and says, “No, you can’t see my glasses!” but in a smiling way.
“Come on, take them off”.
“I can’t see without them”.
Close enough now on the couch for almost anything I grab her glasses. There is no glass in them!
I comment on this and she says, “I’ve got a pair of sunglasses at home just like these”.
I say, “But there’s no glass in them!”
I’m liking her more than ever when she says, “I Know. They’re prescription!”
Happy Holidays
This isn’t the road I was on when it happened. This is the road I rode by bike after I got home to calm my nerves.
Christmas had started fine. More than fine was prepping my older teenage kids that we were taking consumerism to an all time low this year. I decided this not because I had to but because I was sick of meaningless stuff feeling a space.
We opened presents late and calmly. Everyone liked what they got.
Slowly I baked a cake and got together personal items to go down South a bit where we yearly spend Christmas with a 27 person odd group of alternative type friends, all ages.
It’s satisfying mostly because conversation is interesting, we are in the country surrounding by large trees and the food is deliciously plentiful.
Unfortunately I burn my right hand. I take the teapot off the wood burning stove and go to the sink to fill it. The teapot is hot hot from being on the stove empty so when I put the water in, it streams furiously and burns by hand. Though not dangerous, it is painful. Years ago when blowing neon, I learned to put a hand in cold water if burned. Despite everyone’s well intentioned advice for different methods, I keep changing the water to cold (no ice) until finally when I take my hand out, it no longer hurts. For me this cessation stops at 3 am., long after we’d finished with desert and caroling.
Tired, after breakfasting with more interesting slow conversation, Me and the teenagers set out on the long country driveway to the road to the highway home.
It happened on the highway. 880 north is as ugly as any with six lanes each direction. I didn’t see him in the lane next to me. He was in my blind spot and I wasn’t paying serious attention. All of a sudden I brushed up (at 60 mph) against the car on my right while starting to go in that lane.
There was nothing jarring or dramatic about it. However, it was still an accident, It took me a little while to figure out where to get off and talk as I knew we must. I was in front of him and pulled off on a large shoulder off the next exit. I stop. He stops behind me.
I get out and say, “How are you?” Looking at his truck which has ladders on top and miraculously, no damage.
He says, “Fine. How are you?” I say “Fine.. well a little a little scraped up but I’m not going to do anything about it…. It was my fault, right?”
He says, “Right.”
I say, “How about we give each other a hug, and wish each other a Happy New Year”
He says, “Okay” so we do that.
Then I hold his hand for a moment and say, “Thank you for being a person.”
It was kind of a stupid thing to say but that’s what came out. I think he knew what I meant.
I walk back to my car and get in. I wave as I drive away.
I continue until there is an intersection where I can turn around and get us back to 880. There is a beggar with a sign at the intersection as the cars stop. I give him a five. I can afford to.
betweenstops 