"IT'S NOT WHO I AM UNDERNEATH BUT WHAT I DO THAT DEFINES ME".........

BATMAN

ART LIVING IS ALIVE AND WELL

 

  

DAY 2 OF MANY, I HOPE

The first day of the month, I awakened in unusually high spirits, my attentions first drawn to pleasant sensations.....winter birds, shaking out their vocal repertoires in the early morning rays....a pale blue velvety sky of scattered clusters of cumulus cloud formations parading their shapes.....evolving with my imagination...Bunnie jumping about with a palmetto bug...the first to be discovered this winter..... seeking refuge from the coming winter.   I entered the kitchen, noticing a that a small, forgotten bag of extremo Kona coffee beans had dropped behind the cat food and had been hidden by a box of cereal  and was now in prominent view.  So Bunnie and I, equipped with bug and bean,  joined the accumulation of unwrapped Xmas gifts at the dining room table for our morning chatter.   From the kitchen radio,  the most beautiful music....even better, since it was heretofore totally unfamiliar......t'was Andre' Mathieu's Piano Concerto 4, performed by Alain Lefevre......I was on a 'high' and thought this day might be inspirational and emotionally elevating, which it proved to be!

The sun rose above the bamboo thicket, flooding the sunroom with a soft light across the amassed plants in the sunroom.  A second after receiving a call from a childhood friend, Mike Tanner, whom I'd not heard from since we were ten, my friend Pam Harper called for our usual conversation, and both of us signed off in moods of encouragement and uplifted spirits.    Wow!  I was in the mood to take on the "outside world", to share my pleasant disposition, to complete xmas shopping, pick up packages at the post office and do grocery shopping; so, dressing in clothes that matched my mood, I began my day........

After dropping a couple of bags of clothes and household articles at a Charity drop, I stopped by Suntrust to cash a check.    A cashier named Michael greeted me with a smile as I chatted with an old friend, Jack Titelman, whom I seldom see,  and I left the bank, noting the bird songs casting magic from the high branches to the ears of passerbys chatting on their cells and sighed for just a second before returning to the natural high I was enjoying so much.......

Then, off to Home Depot for planting supplies for the plants that I'd moved indoors from their summer in the sun on outside decks,  I listened to Yolanda Kondonassis' magical harp performing Debussy's Sacred and Profane Dance music as I finishing some pleasant tasks.   

My stomach growled its needs, so I went to Whole Foods for groceries and a late afternoon lunch.   As I sat, alone, at a long table to dine on my favorite take-out foods.....lightly grilled red and orange peppers with vidalia onions, asparagus,  rosemary-encrusted potatoes, yams with walnuts and curried chicken salad, I watched the passerbys scurrying before the windows.   A flare of beautiful light blinded me for a moment as a Titian-like cloud passed across and away into the blue sky; and when my eyes adjusted, I saw a single figure walking in front of the huge plate glass windows.....The most elegantly beautiful Apollonian man with a handsome dog.   Although my glance was short and a bit embarrassed, he quickly returned my glance for a fraction of second, making a soulful contact in that brief time.......I finished  the last roasted red pepper and gathered the paper and plastic....to depart, when, looking up, I saw a luminous figure approaching from my right, bearing a slice of pizza.....It was Adonis!   He asked with his eyes if he might sit across from me......not directly but off to the side a bit.   "of course!", I replied with my right eye as my thighs relaxed from their departure position.......We engaged in magical conversation as I pushed the pile of plastic and paper onto a chair to my right.......After a simply beautiful dialogue which ended with, "I'm Michael (Mick) Tanner"  and a sensitive handshake, I left for the last not-so-Periclean tasks of the day, noting the name tag of the cashier that had scanned my lunch......"Mike".   

The clouds had grown into deeper perspective and the low rays of the Winter afternoon began to transform them, and a rainbow seemed to saturate the velvety sky......

I stopped by the corner Thrift Store to drop off some old togs, chatted for a moment with "Michael", an acquaintance that I often run into on thrifting days and, having a very definite "need" for some toasted almonds from Trader Joe's, stopped by to pick up a pouch of them....I was bemusedly surprised that the cashier was named "Mike".......Biting open the cellophane bag of almonds, I ate a few of them and felt perfectly satisfied!

Then, off to Reis' for bridge with Tommy and Beth.......I had set my watch to an hour before, so was early.....Reis and I played backgammon until the other 2 of our bridge foursome arrived....both in good spirits....My bridge playing was spot on, as though Omar and Charles were advising me.......I won every rubber with all my partners.   Beth informed me that she was making me a sweater!  I felt so honored and excited!   

On the way home, I called yet another "Mike" to ask about his just-completed project for graduate school , while listening to a wondrous Donny McCaslin album, "Lost Words and Recommended Tools" as I parked my vehicle in the garage.   Then, returning home, answering calls and after watching a few minutes of the DVR recorded Jimmy Fallon dancing and singing with Justin Timberlake's  impromptu performance that added some last minute humor to my day, I fell into slumber.....Bunnie curled up in my armpit.......listening to the little water fountains near my bed.....I fell into slumber within minutes.

After pleasant dreams, I awakened to another day....again...in great spirits.......I spoke with a couple of friends who had called late in the previous evening, and felt renewed confidences in relationships with old friends.......My old friend and one-time lover Bill Mello called and we chatted for an hour and a half.....then, before retiring last night, my Godson Branton and I had a heartfelt and much-needed conversation for a couple of hours..........I slept like a baby afterward....

So, this morning I have awakened in the most optimistic mood,  and am writing of these events, hoping to share some joy with these words before launching a new day......Wow!   It's amost  "1".........and I'm invigorated and inspired by hope and renewed confidence........for a moment, a poem, "Invictus", that I memorized in 9th grade and used to sing with Marjorie Oberne, whom I remember with much heartfelt emotion.  "Invictus" .......flashed, in its entirety, from the recesses of Memory......and I feel reconnected to the joys of Life on Earth.......Thank you all.....Thank you all.......and thank the wonder of coincidence for synchronicity.   

Legrenzi - Venice Before Vivaldi by Richard Savino

cocky, stupid, feisty and dunno, but whch is which?

 

 

 

 

DO YOU SEE WHAT I SEE?

 


   

WITH AUNT LOUISE, SILVERSPRINGS FLORIDA 1950

This is the first family vacation that I remember......being constantly carsick, throwing up repeatedly on the way to Daytona Beach in the un-airconditioned vehicle full of Mother, Grandmother, Grandfather, Aunt Louise, Uncle Paul and Me......Then facing my fears of the wild ocean and my salt-intolerance; abhorrence of bright light;  then-undiagnosed near-sightedness;  sensitivity to just about any and everything; inablity to sleep on rough, starched hotel sheets;  heat stroke; and pavement-blistered feet, burned through my cheap rubber flip-flops; terror of fish in general;  and up-chucking intolerance of  stinky Florida tap water.........I seemed a real  gardenia, yet Aunt Louise really loved her "sensitive nephew"!  She was always so kind, generous and understanding and I felt accepted and understood rather than like the hapless neurotic and compulsive kid breaking out in  rashes to critical glance and judgmental tone.

BASIC BLACK

1970.....I had acquired an old 1930's silk velvet dressing gown and an old  black silk French cloche with black maribou feather trim......and fancied myself as a Russian expatriate  artist living in Paris....This was what I called "the year of costuming" as I seldom appeared "out of one costume or another".....favorite outfit?.....peculiarly enough, it was a pair of red,yellow, black and green skin-tight bellbottom trousers worn with a long-sleeved "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts club skin-hugging cotton sweater" over which I wore a sweater vest in identical colors, bearing the "Ritz Cracker" Logo......completed by a pair of yellow, red and black tennis shoes and a beret......the era of "Cosmic Drag"...A friend was so wild about this outfit that I eventually gave it to him, and he wore it incessantly for yet another year, although it was then terribly outre and ill-suited for the new "Disco" look!   [second skin NIKNIK shirts with crotch-squeezing doubleknit bells] The dressing gown became my formal dress attire.....Oddly enough, I never considered my outfits to be particularly unusual, as  even more daring friends like Woody Brooks would, with little self-consciousness,  appear in a Folies Bergere outfit, wearing a 3-Ft. white Marie Antoinette Wig surmounted by a giant white bird cage filled with white doves, which he would release at  fashionable nightclubs {gay bars} to spectacular audience reactions.......When I saw PARTY MONSTER,  it brought back memories of these days of high fashion excesses.....





   

self-portrait of Stefan Scott, circa 1995

I found this sketch in an old drawing book of mine.......It may be the last depiction of Stephan....

My earliest photo of Steven Dearmoun....circa 1969-70

WHAT DO WE HAVE IN COMMON?

Sometimes, it's something that just isn't seen by others......it's some odd internal structure within the brain......within the emotional self....that can only be perceived by others who recognize it.......we're all made of cosmic dust from the beginning of this Time.

Big Dipper by Drop Trio

AUNTS JO AND DEDE

This photo, taken in the late 50's at Daytona Beach, shows my identical twin Aunts.....shy and reserved DeDe on the left and more emphatic Jo on the right.......Mirror images, yet so different in posture and disposition. I was an identical twin also, and have always wondered what my brother would have been like had he survived infancy.....I had fantasies of living with one who is genetically identical...at birth anyway......but that was not to be........My friend Steven [who has a surviving fraternal twin, Sandra] and I used to pretend that we were twins sometimes....it was fun, although we were not very much alike.

Cheryl Lowe Ransijn

Cheryl's untimely death by Cancer still saddens me, for we met in 1963 and were close friends for many of the years....I think of her every day.......every day....

Kathleen McIntosh plays Bach by Kathleen McIntosh

THE ORIGINAL BRIDGE GROUP

Marjorie Oberne, Hunter Patterson, Reis Birdwhistell and I (not pictured) began playing bridge every Wednesday night in the '70's.
Marjorie died and was replaced by Hunter's childhood friend, Tommy Lewis, who moved to Tampa and was replaced by Beth Boston; Hunter died and was replaced by Betty Samson who moved to yuppieland north of I-285 and was replaced by Jo Anne Stone. Reis, Beth, Jo Ann and I still play every Wednesday night @ 7. Although we play for small change which is put into a box when one "loses" and is spent on dinner when we have enough, it takes months to get together enough for a fancy meal, as our stakes have not increased with inflation and are the same as they were 30 years ago.........

Elvolution by Falik

Fixation, Transference, Heartbreak.....Love and Art

I've been watching the entire QAF series again........still groundbreaking and sensitively wrought......hey, it's about good, sensitive, emotionally-wrought gay persons.......of course I think it's wonderful.....

THE BROWN RECLUSE

When @ 18, a freshman in college, I read a poem by one of my professors, John Crowe Ransom:

BELLS FOR JOHN WHITESIDE'S DAUGHTER

There was such speed in her little body,
And such lightness in her footfall,
It is no wonder her brown study Astonishes us all

Her wars were bruited in our high window.
We looked among orchard trees and beyond
Where she took arms against her shadow,
Or harried unto the pond

The lazy geese, like a snow cloud
Dripping their snow on the green grass,
Tricking and stopping, sleepy and proud,
Who cried in goose, Alas,

For the tireless heart within the little
Lady with rod that made them rise
From their noon apple-dreams and scuttle
Goose-fashion under the skies!

But now go the bells, and we are ready,
In one house we are sternly stopped
To say we are vexed at her brown study,
Lying so primly propped.

This poem was unlike the more classical work that I was to later emulate in my own writing. More in the Dickenson style.... elusively simple and ironically melancholy. It transcended the maudlin sentimentality of the read-on-the-toilet Reader's Digest poetry that was stacked beneath the toilet paper dispenser in my mother's bathroom, and opened my mindset about poetry. Natural and stylistically transparent and so much more accessible than the work of Pound or Eliot, that I admired so much, it flows from a wisely understanding heart. My own work is more guarded and stilted, evolving from the poesy of the 17th and 18th centuries, tempered by my love of Eastern philosophy and aesthetic and my preoccupations with the thought processes that divulge the words and schematics that manifest from within emotional thinking, embarrassingly Rorschachianly spilled to the virtual parchment.

Live At Bliss Gardens by Kourosh Dini

. . . . .MELANCHOLIA ADUST

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts...

William Shakespeare, "As You Like It", Act 2 scene 7

"Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae" Aristotle


"His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixed up in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world 'This was a man!" Shakespeare..... Julius Caesar

"In sooth I know not why I am so sad,
It wearies me..." Shakespeare......The Merchant of Venice

"And since you know you cannot see yourself,
so well as by reflection, I, your glass,
will modestly discover to yourself,
that of yourself which you yet know not of."

William Shakespeare

I have struggled to keep my "humours" in ayurvedic equilibrium, but for the past year the light of the moon has illuminated the corners of science and Mind has transformed Body accordingly; a nagging reminder of the physicality of thought and emotion....

Celocity by Claire Fitch

..........................THE IS FROM THE WAS

As the constructs that take form from the interpolation of the politics of experience and our unconscious motivations, Life becomes, remains, and is transformed by will and desire and is transmogrified by the lives and intentions of other conscious beings, and perhaps by even the movement of boulders, loosing footing under great rainfall and brought by gravity to the canyon's depths......our perception of change modifying our fleeting sense of permanence and exasperating our innate will to control our own destiny; the increasing awareness that much of what forms our future is beyond conscious choice, having been predicated by genetic propensities, the leanings of will and the plans of others.....all overshadowed by the flux of the Universe which ultimately overtrumps even our most calculated choices and, not encumbered by determination, shows it's own indeterminate expressions which flow like lava from a great energy source toward the outer reaches of the yet frozen void....The meanings of the numbers ultimately lies in interpretation, their source in imagination and the next moment in the flash of decision....even Dr. Jacob Bernhardt cannot predict the trajectory of his own Life or another's tomorrows......for it is not a target that is the ultimate objective, but a subjective state of mind at the center of the storm within, reflecting the flexing of the matmos within a calmness that lies beyond the expression of energy into form at the fleeting perimeters of manifestation.....all of humanity gazes through the same portal into the incomprehensibility of tomorrow's tomorrows as the inchoateness is revealed in the twits of time and defined by the dogmatics of science, mathematics and other abhorrent religions.......we are all the stuff that dwells within us and all that lives without, both drawn into the other and repelled into isolation......such is the mechanics of the machine which all of existence fuels by being and which is imbued with infinitudes of meaning by the shape-shifters that emerge to consciousness and fall back to elemental clouds, drifting toward the expanse that is yet untouched by matter or energy... .

Hidden Sky by Jami Sieber

Loud and Faint

Those greatly praised for modest accomplishments
become satisfied with them,
growing even in dimmest light
toward over-constant recognition.

Those denied simple affections
grow, shunted by lengthening shadows,
eyes cast beyond seeing....
inward, to blinded darkness.....

I sat and sat and thought and thought and sat and thought some more......

SABBAT BROTH

A poem that I wrote as a sophmore at University.......The poem was pasted, with many others in a scrapbook by a lover to whom I sent the poems in the 1960's.......When our relationship changed, the bound set of poems was sent via post to me. I was heartbroken! I still think about the aborted relationship, especially when reading these poems that are immature and third-rate at best, but heartfelt, nevertheless.

Atheists to the back. Please step this way......

My parents never mentioned God, yet we drew straws to decide who would accompany my Grandmother to the Presbyterian Church on Sunday mornings....At my Grandmother's insistence, I was even baptized (an insurance policy, I suppose)......My natural instinct?...... I never thought about God, Heaven, Hell ....well....any of that hocus-pocus.... Now, of course, I resent any imposition made by "believers".....and am quite content without any considerations of dogma, faith, and hereafters of eternal rewards or punishments. It is almost incomprehensible to me that almost everyone is of another accordance altogether....The "believers" that know me are always saying "but....you ARE a very "spiritual" person......in that patronizing manner that is so annoying to those of us who just simply "do not believe"......Yet, we must indulge them, nonetheless for we still sit in the back seats of their buses to Heaven.......

JS Bach - CD1 - Mass in B Minor by American Bach Soloists

TODAY IS EARTH DAY.........

Sunrise.....I awakened to walk around the block, listen to spring bird songs and smell the flowers.......on my walk I picked up up a hundred cigarette butts, 4 empty cigarette packs, 6 beer or coke cans, a used condom, a plastic hair comb, a dozen fast food containers and a run-over cat body........reminders of man's insensitivity, carelessness and lack of consciousness........sigh!

Perhaps I am a bit fastidious, but it is difficult for me to praise our species, which seems to act not from altruism but from indifference, which is elevated to psyched concern only when it is fashionable......So, I seldom praise Humanity, choosing to praise individuals who consider Life from heightened consciousness and empathetic concern.......Our species acts benevolently only to undo that which it has already done. That is not to say, of course, that there are many, many of us who attain a level of shared enlightenment which supersedes the mass effect of our lemming-like flooding into the morass of dark misconception, and this gives me Hope. I feel the Earth move under me......as it will, hundreds of millions of years after our extinction......

LONG-LINGERING LIVES

angels and demons, fools and killers,
granted temporary immortality,
come as they will and stay as you will;
each sense with guides and vectors,
each view unique to that only second,
blinking in a timeless void,
making a Universe,
and like a quark, disappearing
with no memory, lest leaks in time
bring it to mind....

Memories of My Almost Happy Great Aunt Lucille

These photos, from 1927, show my great-aunt Lucille in a school play and as President of the Thoron Literary Society. Aunt Lucille became an amateur painter, then a school teacher, married the manager of Loveman's, moved to Birmingham, led the butterfly life, things went awry, divorce, a job as a sales clerk, dependency on her older sister, my Grandmother, being tossed from one of my Grandfather's houses (in which she lived....practically free!) for making extraordinary demands on the family, poverty and death in a tiny studio apartment, penniless and cynical........such is Life!

RORCHACH EXTERIORIZATION #4

Vadalna by Solace

RORSHACH EXTERIORIZATION PAINTING #3

 

Numinous River by Francesca Genco

RORSHACH EXTERIORIZATION PAINTING #2

Gravity by Artemis

MY RORSCHACH EXTERIORIZATION PAINTINGS

WHAT DO YOU SEE? I'm doing a series of these abstract externalizations in a study of psychological therapy devices........

THE DRESSED-UP BIOPIC OF MY LIFE IN COLLEGE

I decided not to post this on my Cinema Nostalgia blog, for these scenes, ultimately deleted from the commercial release of MAURICE, yet another groundbreaking film about English repression,
inked themselves into my memories of college days.....my infatuation with "C.A.D." , for 3 years at Vanderbilt, was uncomfortably almost identical in my memory to these scenes. When I read MAURICE, years later, it seemed to me, very autobiographical.....

"KILLING THE EYE"

At 6, i became aware of the variations in individual's interpretations of sensory information and how these variations from the mean create eccentrics like myself. A few years later i discovered that my eyes did not focus very acutely upon objects more than a yard away, although my close range focus was extraordinary. i was amazed, when my vision had been "corrected" by the intricacies of Nature at greater than arm's length. now that the world was "in focus" I continued to avoid interactions with other children whom i considered boisterous and undisciplined...and therefore.....unthinkingly dangerous and volatile creatures. it seemed that the surfaces of things were extreme and the depths unfathomable. of course, i did not..at that time....either have the vocabulary to shape my thoughts in such a way that i could play back my interpretations or the confidence to believe that my take on what seemed to be happening around me could be any more "true" than the preconceptions of others that formed the context of my education in Life. I did not know about the sub-species called artists or those labeled intellectuals or those who lived lives as instinctual as those of birds. I was wary of the impulses that were genetically driven and that seemed to bypass ethical or moral considerations and wanted only to cast aside the predestinations of learned patterns of both perception and thought......But then....I was only 7 by then, and had only a few clues to go by.....

Having acquired several new watches, a couple dozen DVDS and some silk ties that I will never wear.......I think.....

I've got to join "Collector's Anonymous"..........I was in therapy for OCD many years ago.......the problem seems to always lurk in the wings. Thoughts of getting a grip on this compulsiveness seem to take me even more in the "wrong" directions....That is the problem, of course! I have a friend who is constantly flossing, buying floss and fixating on the possibility, probability and likelihood of losing his teeth....the more he thinks about it, the more he flosses, irrigates, brushes and gargles.........When I think about his dilemma, i want to floss my teeth! Maybe something happened...something that traumatized me when I was just a thought in a love letter left in a back pocket and never sent!

Tin of Drum by Rapoon

Pegasus draws a chariot into the clouds

I have not ceased to think of your plight......And, as thinking is all that I do well, breast that under consideration. Elevate, not as the result of your willful action as much as by the vectors of other's feedback, which changes with your thoughts and actions toward and with them........Be better; try to love the things others do that show their love for others, too; and practice writing skills and the art of punctuation, rhetoric and as close to all-encompassing devotion to the Truth as you can muster from the spoils of conflict and angst. This will take dedication of purpose and a will that is strengthened by rightness of purpose and whose purpose is the pursuit of the highest ideals by your most evolved thinking, against a primer of calm resourcefulness and an impulse from your most just and humble center, which will direct your decisions and thus....your fate and Future. Veristes

Kedarika - Nada Yoga (Volume 1) by Amelia Cuni and Werner Durand

Sometimes, It's just the Lighting

I watched American Idol this evening.
It seemed to be going just the way it could.
or just a way I knew it should;
yet either way of all it would,
I'm eager, that it's shed its peeling,
week by week to find that Icon.





Big Dipper by Drop Trio

ULYSSES......

By 16, I was just gravitating from John Blaine's Scientific Adventure Novels and Classic Illustrated Novels, having read only "Lady Chatterley's Lover", then widely censored, and the standard fare such as "Penrod and Sam", Mark Twain's novels and Bomba The Jungle Boy Books......Then, on the coffee table in Dr. Czerny's living room, I came across "Ulysses"......the then impenetrable novel by James Joyce. I realized, at that moment, that there was much more than was ever dreamt in my Philosophy......Just reading pages at random were enough to set me off on my philosophical journey through Life and Living........ Viewing this painting, by Paul Cadmus set off other areas of my brain!

The same kid's inside

 

20 years apart.....i had'nt changed so very much......

Kedarika - Nada Yoga (Volume 1) by Amelia Cuni and Werner Durand