I Use To Dreamed I Was A Bird by tex norman

“I worked myself half plumb
to death,” granny said.
“After mama died and I was
drug up hard
by my sister Dot, who seemed more like
Satan’s Sister than mine. Back then
washing clothes involved
a galvanized washboard,
a galvanized tub,
a big ole cake of lye soap
and a whole lot of me. Seemed to me then
like there was no end to the clothes
needing to be scrubbed. Dot,
my merciless sister, didn’t have
a break schedule or
a quitting time schedule.
Quitting time was when you were done,
which was never.
I remember my arms ached
like an old maid’s heart at a wedding.
I remember I’d lay my arms over my head
each night and cried myself to sleep,
and in my slumbering
I dreamed I was a bird.
You just imagine birds can fly
and if you can fly then by golly
you can escape anything and birds are never
confined to drudgery
or the caustic contact of the lye,
or the constant contact with lies.

The Jigsaw Puzzle by tex norman

In 1958 I’d broken my leg, was confined to bed
and was working diligently at driving my mother
mad attending to insatiable need for her attention.

The pile of contorted cardboard shapes were given
in the hopes that a puzzle might preoccupy me.
It didn’t. The differences were too subtle for me.

The task was frustrating, exasperating, like job stress.
By not knowing the point, I missed the point. By not
seeing the big picture I couldn’t piece it together.

I thought the goal was to make the pieces fit,
to bring order to chaos, to get to the gestalt,
to finish, to conclude, to wrap up, to be done.

I’ve avoided jigsaw puzzles for the past 50 years
but my life has not been puzzle free. I’ve always
looked for the edges of everything, noticing similarities

in color, the shape, the corner pieces, believing that
if I just turn each piece, if I consider it from all sides,
if I believe a fit exists, order can be imposed on disorder,

then I can actually finish. The goal of puzzles has never
been to complete the picture, or to make all the pieces
fit. The purpose is the process. It is always the

journey and never the arrival. It is always the process
and never the product. The end doesn’t justify the means
if the means is the important part and the end is just the end.

Stay, Illusion

“. . . stay, illusion.” -- Hamlet Act 1 Scene 1 Line 139

Stay? Stay, Illusion? Why?
Is there an advantage in clinging
to our illusions? Security is
an illusion, as is unconditional love,
fair play, the happily ever
after ending, low calorie deserts,
a living wage, god, labor saving
devices, the right to privacy,
salt substitutes, the life time
warranty, satisfaction guaranteed,
safe cigarettes, sex after 60,
the nest egg, a binding verbal
agreements, a comprehensive
energy policy, a war for peace,
compassionate Republicans,
Democrats with a plan,
Independent’s with a chance,
spam protection, pop up blockers,
low cost housing, sufficiency,
palatable decaffeinated coffee,
and a tie without food stains.

Maps

Maps

We've looked and looked, but after all where are we?

Do we know any better where we are. . .?

--Robert Frost

All maps are arrogant.
Maps actually believe they know
where everything is.

Mall maps are the most egotistical of all,
they place an X on their condescending selves
with the words:
YOU ARE HERE!

If we know where we are
then it is possible to extrapolate,
but will that help?
These egomaniacal navigational tools
say:
Go this way and you’ll be there.
Go that way and you’ll be
at some other there,

still I am left asking myself:
Do I place my faith
in these topographical lines
and color coded roads
printed on a sheet of paper
that can only be refolded
by some master of origami?

This Is Me NOW WHAT?

I'M HANDICAPPED BY A BROKEN ARM, AND I'M NO CHRISTY BROWN. I write less when I'm forced to do it with one finger on my left hand. My shrink and I agree that I have this long habit of putting myself down, and feeling like, IF I DON'T DO STUFF TO EARN MY WORTH THEN I FEEL LIKE I HAVE NO WORTH.

I know the actions that counter these distorted beliefs, but I don't use what I know.

My shrink asked me if I want to change, or would I rather live out my days nestled into this warm blanket of self-deprecation?

I didn't come back with statements like, OH, NO, I WANT TO CHANGE.

IF i AM UNWILLING TO CHANGE THEN WHY SHOULD i KEEP SEEING A SHRINK? If I'm unwilling to change then why would a shrink be willing to keep seeing me? If I discover who I am and I'm broken, then what?

COMMUNICATION

MOTH BALLS by tex norman

Before unlocking the front door
I stood watching this moth fling
itself against my porch-light bulb.
His flailing wings imply a frantic
need for light. I know the feeling.
Apparently this moth believes
that on this silent summer night,
finally, somehow, after traveling
through a seemingly endless
darkness HE has somehow
managed to reach the sun,
all 60 brilliant watts of her.
I refer to this moth as a HE
because this moth just has
to be a HE. This moth has
the balls to fly directly and
boldly at a white hot burning
bulb. HE is drawn to the light,
HE rockets toward the light.
He is full speed ahead, fearlessly
charging into this intense,
illuminating, sever, relentlessly
dazzling light. It is as if this moth
has an irresistible need to enter
the light, to merge with the light,
to become the light, to BE light.

I found him dead on the porch
the following morning. I interrupted
a requiem mass of ants in jittery
procession as they carry this hero of
brightness to his final, and no doubt
delicious resting place. What HE
found is what we all find: a light that
is bright, hot, extraordinarily real and
yet undeniably and absolutely artificial

Re-enacting My Past

My shrink tells me to go back to those incidents in my past where I was hurt and devalued, and imagine, or do a mental re-enactment of how that incident could have been better.

For example, when I was about 6 my father came in after church, I was getting my church clothes off, and he decided he would teach me how to read “shaped notes.” [See http://tooninginonmylife.blogspot.com/2010/08/shaped-notes.html] Clearly, my father had no clue about how children learn, or when they are ready to learn certain concepts. There are age appropriate lessons, and then age inappropriate lessons. Teaching a six year old to read shaped notes is similar to teaching algebra to a kid who hasn’t learned to add and subtract yet.

When I didn’t get it in the first 5 minutes of instruction my father got mad and ended up giving me a dozen lashes with his belt.

Now how might that have gone better?

Instead of teaching me shaped notes, he could have taught me a [VBS] vacation bible school song with hand motions:

This little light of mine. I’m gunnuh let it shine.
This little light of mine. I’m gunnuh let it shine.
Hide it under a bushel NO I’m gunnuh let it shine.
Let it shine, let it shine, all the time.

Or he could have put me on his back and played horsy with me.

What message would I have gotten if he had taught me a VBS song, or played some game with me? I would have learned that my daddy thought I was fun to be around. I’d have learned that he thought I was a neat kid just the way I was. I would have gotten the message that I did not have to learn something hard to deserve my father’s attention. And by not being belted for failing to perform it might not have occurred to me that failure, pain and punishment all go together.

The next step, I think, is that I have to extrapolate. I first imagine the better way things could have happened, and then I internalize the positive messages:

I not only could have been valued just as I am, I am valuable just as I am.
Failure is just a way of trying something and learning what works and doesn’t work. Punishment, pain, shame, embarrassment do not go with failure, especially not during the learning years. So what is supposed to be going on inside me? If I could have been valued, and delight could have been taken in my vary existence. Had that happened I might have grown up delighting in myself.

That seems logical. I feel I was treated as inferior and defective as a child and I grew up feeling like my inferiority is not just my perception, it is an absolute fact. IF my dad had treated me as a valuable delightful being, then theoretically I might have valued myself. I might have taken delight in myself. I can conceive of that, but I can’t imagine that.

Here come my troubling thoughts: Hypothetically, most of us agree that a baby has value period. Babies don’t have to earn value, they are just valuable.

Why do we think this? I think we generally agree that all babies have value because babies have potential. You can look at a baby and imagine that this baby might be the next Paul McCartney, or the next Dr. Salk, or the next President of the United States. If we looked at a baby and knew they would be the next Ted Bundy, or the next Joe the Plumber, or the next Leroy Jones: garbage collector, well, we might not value that child too much.

We value the potential contribution, but as the child ages and the ability of the child (or lack of ability) becomes apparent, well, our defense of the child diminishes in direct proportion to the inabilities of that being.

It is nice to think that unconditional love exists, but does it?

I understand that I might hate myself less had I been delighted in more at the beginning of my life. No one can really know the limits of their potential. I have taken on tasks and at some point, I’ve given up, but I’ve never given up because I had nothing left to give. I always give up before I’ve reached total depletion. I have been on empty but known there were a few fumes left. Whenever I stop, I always believe I could have done just a little bit more. I give up because I choose to give up, and because I give up early, I never know where my total depletion point is located.

Since I have never gone as far as I can go, I can’t know how far I could have gone. My view of myself determines when I reach my throw up my hands and give up point.

In my childhood, my family members spoke of themselves as if they knew themselves fully. My father would say, “I’m not mechanical” and by that he meant he had no mechanical ability, so he would never attempt to fix anything, he would never try to understand how something worked, he would never assemble a bookshelf in a box, or install a ceiling fan. my father labeled himself as being NOT MECHANICAL and that label locked his potential mechanical ability behind a door and that was then sealed shut by a brigade of bricklayers.

I remember saying I thought I would like to be a lawyer and my father said, “You’re not a good reader. Lawyers have to read a lot. You could never be a lawyer.” I received the label, “I’m a poor reader,” and from that point on I just didn’t try to do anything that required a lot of reading. My dad said, “You’re not good at math,” and I accepted that as a fact. Therefore, when I took algebra if I couldn’t instantly understand something I didn’t sit quietly and study the material, and I didn’t practice problems until I could do them. Why should I? I’m just not a math guy.

But what if I had grown up believing that I could do anything? What if I believed I could learn math if I wanted to learn math. What MIGHT have happened if I had believed I could become a good reader? What MIGHT have happened if I had believed I could become a math guy? How would my life be different now, had I thought there was no skill, and no profession that was too difficult for me? If I’d grown up believing that I could do anything, and be anything if I just applied myself to learning the material and practicing the skills, how might my life be different today?

If you grow up getting these “I can’t” messages, then you end up grown up and there are more things you can’t do, than things you can do.

No, it is worse than that. You grow up believing that you can’t do anything, and if there happens to be something you do well, you will dismiss that skill, you will deny your abilities, down play your successes, and (like me) you will become a full time self deprecating loser.

When I left home, I had NO PLAN for my life. I had no career notions because I didn’t think I was smart enough to do anything difficult. I loaded trucks, and had no ambition to order the supplies, or to learn to be a driver, because that was beyond me. I washed dishes in a restaurant, and never once considered waiting tables, or learning to cook. I stocked shelves in a grocery store but had no thoughts of ordering that stock, or managing a store, or owning a store.

I went to college because I was homeless, and starving. I didn’t know what to do with my life. I would have joined the army, but that was during the Viet Nam War and I wasn’t too interested in killing people and even less interested in being killed. I realized that collages have dorms and cafeterias. If you go to college you have a place to sleep, and you get three meals a day.

In college I discovered that I could do things I had previously believed were impossible things for me to do. I took a math class and passed it. I studied things that required a lot of reading, and I comprehended what I read.

Now this may sound stupid, but a success now and then did not fix my over-all problems with low self esteem. Actually, LOW self-esteem is not the right term, it should be NO-self-esteem.

So, IF I go back and pick the more memorable traumas of my past, and IF I do mental re-enactments and see how I could have valued myself, loved myself, seen myself as normal instead of a worthless loser do I then become OK?

I probably don’t understand the whole concept because when I see the past was unfair, that I deserved a better past, just means I have confirmed the hurts and unfairness of my past. I may understand WHY I hate myself, but I don’t stop hating myself.

Shaped Notes

By tex norman

He moved into my room. I felt the pressure
change, as if he were an angry thunder
storm, about to rain down hail upon
my head. He was a churning cloud of pent
up charges looking for a place to strike.

I remember that, that day, my room was hot.
My sweating made my church clothes cling to me
so tight that taking off my pants was like
the peeling of banana skins — no lie!
I still had on my church shirt as he rolled
into my room, but, down below, my legs
were bare.
“I’m going to teach you how to read
music, like the kind we sing in church,”
he said, but it was like a speech that he’d
prepared himself to say. This was rehearsed.
“You know son,” said my father, “singing is
Biblically commanded by God’s Word,
but only singing, never instruments.”

“I thought that angels played on harps up there?”
I said.

“Yes, I guess that’s so,” my father said,
“but, I’m sure you know, or you should know,
we speak when the Bible speaks and we
are silent on all subjects where the Bible
is silent. The New Testament of Jesus
Christ says seven times that we should sing,
but never mentions using instruments.
Since singing without instruments is hard,
that’s why we have developed these shaped notes.
Once you learn the shapes and learn the scale,
you can, without piano, learn new tunes.”

There was a tiny blackboard in my room.
My father drew five horizontal lines,
a treble clef, and then he drew shaped notes
and put them on the lines or spaces there.
He pointed to the first shape singing do,”
and then to ray and mi et cetera,
but I was five years old and didn’t care.
My room was hot like mama’s oven, but
without the smell of risen, dying yeast,
and I’d endured a morning spent in church.
All I wanted was to lay down on
the slightly cooler hardwood floor and draw.

He quized me on the shaped notes, but I failed.

“Pay attention, boy!” my father said.
“You’ll please the Lord if you can learn shaped notes,
but boy you’ve got to listen when I talk.”
Worry crawled around inside my shirt.
The fear inside my stomach seemed to rise.
I thought I might vomit up those fears.
Again my father’s finger pointed out
each note. He sang and talked the lesson, only
louder, like a sudden thunder’s slap.

My father pointed to a diamond shape.

“Which note is this note? Do you have a clue?”
My father answered for me, “No you don’t!
Because you do not listen when I speak.
I’m trying to help you. You don’t even care.
I could make you famous, if you just
open up your stupid ears and hear!
But do you listen? You don’t even try.
You’re just a stupid, brainless, sinful boy
who doesn’t care enough about his dad
to listen when his daddy teaches stuff.”

My fingers trembled like the leaves before
a storm, yet I felt rooted to the floor.

“You don’t listen. You don’t even care,”
my father said, “I take my time to spend
with you, yet you don’t have the courtesy
to listen to your father when he talks.”

Then like a thunder bolt he shouted out,
“DO YOU?” Let me hear you say it, NOW!
Let me hear you now say to me ‘no dad.’
Say it right now. Say it to my face.”

I looked down to my toes and said, “No dad.”

“I thought I said to say it to my face?
Can you see daddy’s face down on that floor?
Look me in the eye and say, ‘no dad.’”

I looked him in the eyes and said, “No dad.”
I said it soft, because I didn’t want
to say the words at all.

“What was that?
Did you say something to your daddy, son?
Well, how do you expect your dad to hear
you mumble like a moron? Tell me that.
Now look me in the eye and say real loud,
‘No dad, I never listen when you talk.”

I forced my face to face his face and said
the words he said I had to say. My father
moved in close. Our noses almost touched.

“I can’t HEEAAR you, boy,” my father yelled.

“No dad, I never listen when you talk,”
I yelled.

“The Bible says to love and honor
dads. But you don’t love or honor me.”

“I do!” I said.

“You don’t! Don’t lie to me.
When you lie, it only makes things worse.”

My eyes envied over towards the door.

“Don’t look over there,” my father said.
“Look at me. Look me in the eye
and tell me you don’t love and honor me.”

I didn’t want to say it, but I did.

“I hope someday you’ll know what it is like
to have a kid that will not show respect.”

“I do too love and honor you,” I said.

“Don’t lie to me!” he shouted. “Don’t you lie.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I really, really do.”

“If you cared the way you claim to care
then you should know the shape and name of do.
After all, I taught it to you twice.
So show me that you love me. Point to do.”

I had to guess, because I didn’t know.

“That’s WRONG, you stupid knot-head. Wrong, wrong, wrong!”

Unbuckling his belt, in one swift move,
the leather slipping through the loops, is free.

“I’m going to teach you not to lie,” he said.
“Next time, you’ll pay attention when I talk.”

He looped the belt and swung it at my thighs.
I tried to step away. He grabbed my arm
and pulled me up toward heaven, ‘til my toes
were all of me that touched the earth. And then
he rained down lashes on my legs.
It wasn’t like my father wound down
but more like he was winding himself up.
I must’ve cried and surely I cried out.
I don’t remember that. What I recall,
what I remember, is my mama at
the door. Her voice is shrill with panic as
she’s screaming to my father,
“Dick,” she yells,
“you’re going to kill him. Stop it! Stop it, Dick.”

Angels (a poem by tex norman)

I wish I could count them as they descend
on that dance floor set up on a pens head.
If only one would shake the depression
out of me as if melancholia
was like shards of salt and after that I’d
discover I have a WONDERFUL LIFE.
I’d like to sink down into the folds of
an overstuffed chair and listen for the
tintinnabulation of the bells as
St Peter was passing out sets of wings.
I’d like to think that even angels have
some opportunities for advancement.
You know, Michael, slays a dragon and then
rises to the rank of Saint. I wish to
God that God had a special message for
me. Then I wonder what sort of message
would merit an angelic courier?
And what sort of delivery system
might the Almighty employ? Handwriting
on the wall, perhaps? I’ve been weighed in the
balance, and I have been found wanting. Tell
me something that I don’t already know.

The Suicide Questions

In a job interview
there is a category of questions
faced by all job seekers
a list of questions have come
to be called the Suicide Questions.

‘Tell me about yourself.”

Your fear of pauses
the terror of silence
the churning of fear
in your lower track
and that hyper drive
of nervousness
causes you to find a comma
and insert a paragraph
of self-revelations,
each of them Unfiltered
by anticipatory thought.
Your uneasy answers
have an effect similar to
burping the alphabet.

When asked about myself why,
why, why in god’s name
did I share that time I was asked
to resign. I wasn’t fired, so why
bring up being encouraged to quit?

“What are your weaknesses?”

Why did I give them a list?

Staying Married

A poem by tex norman

After nine years they were still together,
though sometimes Jack wondered why.
Maybe it was the trauma – the thing Jill
still calls THE FALL. And we know that
all falls matter. The hospital stay, and

the rehab became their shared history of hurt.
Pain became an emotional glue to bind this
couple together like a bandage binds together
the jagged edges of a torn and tender wound.
Over time came BLAME. Someone had to be

at fault. The theory is that if you know who
to BLAME then maybe future pain can be
avoided. Jill blamed Jack. After all Jack fell
first. That fact has never been in dispute. It’s
part of the written record. Jill claims Jack was

hauling that heavy pail of water, and holding on
to her hand to show what? Ownership, maybe?
Jack’s foot rolled on a rock, his balance was lost
and his fall was inevitable. Jill said he let go of
the pail but did not let go of her. Jack held on

to Jill, pulling her after him. Jack would like to
have argued that point, but his head injury had
wiped out all of his recall. His memory of The
Fall was just gone. Sometimes Jack wondered
if Jill might have pushed him. After all,

they had been arguing in the week prior to the
accident. Maybe Jill was the one who stubbornly
would not let go. Now, 9 years later, Jill’s knee
replacement still aches when the weather changes.
And Jack’s broken crown turned out to be a

subdural hematoma (a bleeding into the space
between the dura [the brain cover] and the brain
itself), As Jack recovered he found himself confused
and the details of that Fall were lost to him forever.
Clearly, it is Jack and Jill’s intention to stay married.

Early July Paintings 2010

Painting an Ostrich Egg

I am ambivalent about commissions. In these pictures I have painted a requested scene on an ostrich egg. I wanted to try painting on a big ole egg, but to get this chance I had to paint a combine. That was my only guidance, but still, a combine. I love bread but I’m just not moved by the site of a combine.

The process was interesting. I was brought an ostrich egg, but it still had a big ole ostrich embryo inside it. How does one get the yoke and white out of the egg and still have something you can paint on? I used my dermal and ground a hole in the bottom of the shell just slightly larger than a drinking straw. As the grinding went on, and I did the grinding slowly to avoid cracking the egg, I noticed that the small of grinding the shell was similar to the smell you sometimes get when a dentist is drilling a tooth.

I inserted the straw and blew air into the shell. At first nothing happened but once the pressure built up the goo sprayed out in that space between the straw and the rim of the hole and I got ostrich embryo on my glasses and face. It took a while to make most of the goo gone.

Next I went through a process of filling the egg shell with water and draining that over and over again. I let that drip until it would drip no more and next I filled the shell with bleach. Then I used water to clear out the bleach.

I let it dry a day and next I plugged the hole with a tiny wad of paper towel and some acrylic modeling paste. I got that hole as flush as possible and used primer and primed the egg. I let that dry a couple of days. I ended up painting the whole scene today.

Three New Poems by tex norman

Porch Stories, Cameron Texas,1957

The porch was a place of stories. Heat drove
us out on the house where we sat in the
darkness and waited. All the lights were off.

The claim was that lights invited June Bugs
and moths but the truth was this: darkness was
a necessary part of these stories.

I sat on the top wooden step. Grown-ups
sat in chairs that creaked and groaned under the
weight of their stories. You couldn’t order

these stories to perform. The best ones were
coaxed. “What was it like when you were little?”
It was like waiting for a bobber to

bob. Who is lured to the narrative hook?
Waiting was part of the fun. The tales that
mean the most are the tales that tell themselves.

These summer porch stories were not
made up, not created, not formulated,
not devised, oh’ no. Our stories are distilled.


The Jigsaw Puzzle

In 1958 I’d broken my leg, was confined to bed
and was working diligently at driving my mother
mad attending to insatiable need for her attention.

The pile of contorted cardboard shapes were given
in the hopes that a puzzle might preoccupy me.
It didn’t. The differences were too subtle for me.

The task was frustrating, exasperating, like job stress.
By not knowing the point, I missed the point. By not
seeing the big picture I couldn’t piece it together.

I thought the goal was to make the pieces fit,
to bring order to chaos, to complete the big picture,
to finish, to conclude, to wrap up, to be done.

I’ve avoided jigsaw puzzles for the past 50 years
but my life has not been puzzle free. I’ve always
looked for the edges of everything, noticing similarities

in color, the shape, the corner pieces, believing that
if I just turn each piece, if I consider it from all sides,
if I believe a fit exists, that order can be imposed on chaos,

then I can actually finish. The goal of puzzles has never
been to complete the picture, or to make all the pieces
fit. The purpose is the process. It is always the

journey and never the arrival. It is always the process
and never the product. The end doesn’t justify the means
if the means is the important part and the end is just the end.

Lies

Sometimes I sit and think of all the lies
I’ve told, of all the legs I’ve pulled, all that
crossed finger fibbing I’ve done, the wool I
have pulled over eyes, including my own.
Some of those lies were white which means polite
and some were intended as chain yanking
fun. Lies are better than straight forward jokes.

I think too of all the lies I’ve believed,
like “the poor are happier than the rich,”
or “god won’t give you more than you can bare.”
or “the way you look doesn’t matter,” or
“tell the truth and you won’t get in trouble,”
or how about: “ the truth will set you free?”

Today we’re blessed with statistical lies
Like “eighty-seven point three percent of
all statistics are made up on the spur
of the moment.” Lies come naturally
to us, we don’t have to be taught to lie.
The truth requires complete understanding
and everything we know is incomplete.

The year, I think, was nineteen fifty six.
My mother went outside to hang laundry
and I was told to watch my brother Tim.
If Tim should cry I was to call my mom.
Tim cried. I called my mom, but by the time
my mother got inside Tim had drifted
back asleep.. My mom was aggravated.
She needed to get the laundry hung and
I had halted this necessary chore.

Tim cried again. I called my mom again.
When she found Tim asleep again she was
angry and threatened to beat the soup out
of me if I dared tell that lie again.

When Tim cried a third time, and I called my
mother a third time and on her way in
when Tim drifted off asleep a third time
I pinched him hard enough to make him scream.
I’ve been a liar ever since that day.

Fear of Knowledge

I sat in the third row,
the third seat back
and watched Janet Stinchcomb
pass out the Scholastic Science magazines.
Janet was the teacher’s pet,
always selected to be freed
from the prison of the student desk.
That’s why the boys called her Janet Stinkbomb.
We got science magazines because
the school board wouldn’t afford
to hire a science teacher.
On the back of every issue was a picture
of jungle underbrush, or the dead dry grasses
of the veldt, or the reeds of a stagnate pond
and at the top of the page
in arrogant type was a question
that felt like a dare:
CAN YOU SEE THE ELEPHANT?
I looked at those pictures as if it mattered.
I would squint, turn my head away and
then look back suddenly
hoping to startle hidden prey,
just enough to make it move.
Eventually, inevitably I would see the elephant
or the wildebeest, or the Greater Red Musk Shrew
or whatever beast that week was hidden
by the chaos of shadows, leaves, and
dappled sunlight.

I have never forgotten the lesson
of these photos: Once I saw
the elephant, I could never
not see it again.

Early June 2010 paintings

Archival Painting: Is It Worth It?

I don’t make a lot of money. Compared to most of the world I’m rich, but I’m entangled by the trappings of Western civilization. I have two vehicles, a house, with payments, and high medical expenses that will only stop when I do. For this reason, I am a cheapo when it comes to my art supplies. For example, I don’t buy tubes of watercolor or acrylic paint. I buy those little bottles of craft acrylic paint. Is that wrong? I am told that the quality of the pigment and the acrylic binders are best with tubes of paint, but how much better? Will the tube paints cause a painting to last 500 years, while the craft acrylic paint will last only 400 years. A tube of acrylic paint may cost me $4.00 and if I wait for a sale I can sometimes get a bottle for 48 cents.

I varnish my paintings using acrylic varnish, but instead of buying a jar of Liquatex Acrylic Varnish I get the stuff they sell at Home Depot or Lowes. I get about 4 times more varnish for about the same cost.

If I have a gift card I’ll buy canvas at the local arts and craft store, but if I have to pay out of my pocket I get a bucket of gesso and a sheet of hardboard. I cut the hardboard to size. I put one coat of gesso on the sanded smooth side, and then I use water based primer to put enough coats on the hardboard to make it white.

I’m told that I am just not taking the care to ensure my work is going to last.

This cheapo thing I’m doing has many advantages for me AND it conforms to my outlook on life.

THE ADVANTAGE

The advantage is that if the materials are cheap, I can afford to paint more. I don’t believe my work is going to be treasured by the future beings, and I’m not painting for them. My desire is to paint.

I have a friend, Richard Montgomery, now a philosophy professor in West Virginia, but 40 years ago we were in a creative writing class together. Richard wrote a story about an artist painting a picture. The majority of the story is about the intensity of his focus as he created this picture. At the end of the story the artist sees the whole work, he is pleased with his efforts. The next thing the artist does is burn the painting. Why? Because the importance is creating art is the creating, not the admiration of the piece after it is done. That story has never left my mind.

Early in my life my family admired creativity, but the focus was in having the completed work. The stress was for the work to last beyond our own lifetime. The purpose of creating a picture, or a poem, or a novel is to have that finished product last longer than the artist lasts. The emphasis was on leaving a trace of one’s existence.

Early in my creative life I bought that pile of horse hockey, so I got protective and possessive of everything I created. Later I noticed that my focus on making stuff for posterity was keeping me from working every day. I had to make some choices:

Do I want to have been an artist, or do I want to be an artist right now.
Do I want the title, or do I want to paint pictures.
Do I want to talk about writing, or do I want to write.

MY OUTLOOK ON LIFE

I believe that someday, life on earth will end. Some day our planet will resemble Mars. I believe that all art will deteriorate eventually. The question is not will an art work last, but how long will it last. The lasting forever is not one of the choices. There is a point where every work of art will crumble into dust.

No artist can know how long his work is going to last, will it be admired, treasured, preserved. Leonardo DaVinci probably painted hundred’s of pictures, but only a handful have been preserved. If posterity is what matters, then you are not an artist you’re a narcissist. Because I believe that in time every trace of me will be dust, my focus is in the creating. I can do the creating with cheap materials. I have no fear that my work is going to crumble and fade during my lifetime. My work is going to out last me. I feel certain it will last as long as it needs to last.

I have a brother that tells me he likes my work. I have given him half a dozen paintings. Recently I learned that he re-gifted them. I have another brother who accepted paintings, claimed to like them, but, when I went to his home I noticed my work was no where to be seen. I gave a close friend a large watercolor that I spent $100 to frame, and he hung it in the junk room of his house. It hangs on a wall and is enjoyed by the ironing board, and stored Christmas decorations.

I have very little reason to believe people are going to value my work. Some are polite and say that it is nice, but few people like it enough to buy it. The thing is, I paint now. Now is when I exist. Now is what matters. And my NOWs are enhanced by the act of doing some creative work. After that, well, I just don’t have a clue.

The Art I Like Most

There are a lot of art work that I just can’t stop loving. I have a catholic taste in art, allowing me to enjoy so called realism, impressionism, surrealism, folk art-outsider art, and actually the isms just don’t matter to me. I also like illustration art.

I am an Andrew Wyeth fan. I am certain I will love Christina's World for the rest of my life. http://www.michaelarnoldart.com/christinas_world.jpg

I am powerfully moved by the work of Jack Unruh. http://www.jackunruh.com/home.html My father was a commercial artist (not an illustrator) but because ads were so important to my dad, I grew up loving illustrators.

In my opinion Brad Holland is just a wonderful illustrator http://www.bradholland.net/

The best artist I ever met personally is D.J. Lafon
http://www.askart.com/askart/l/dee_j_lafon/dee_j_lafon.aspx Lafon was head of the art department at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma. I took a large landscape to his home and he gave me some insights from what he observed.

It is somewhat odd that I would like illustrators since I have such an aversion to creating paintings or drawings requested by other people. I recall Andrew Wyeth painted a picture of Eisenhower http://collectionsonline.lacma.org/MWEBimages/aa_mm/thumb/M64_67.JPG as a cover for Time magazine. The act was so unpleasant to him that he never took another illustrator’s job.

Years later Andrew Wyeth’s son, Jamie Wyeth http://www.jamiewyeth.com/ was commissioned by the Kennedy family to do a portrait of John F. Kennedy http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/exploring/ballet/nw/images/wy_works/Portrait-of-JFK_300.jpg a work I find wonderful, but it was rejected by the Kennedy Family.

I have taken commissions from time to time. I have done cover illustrations for publications produced by some organization I was associated with, but I have never felt good about a requested art work. I imagine my low self-esteem has something to do with it. I have no problem selling a painting. If someone sees something I have done and they would like to have it, well, it is for sale. I’m getting a storage problem so selling my work is needed to free up space for new work.

But if someone asks for a painting I feel like I have to please the buyer before I start. I am not painting something that pleases me, I am trying to guess what someone else will like, and if I fail to guess what they wanted, well, I failed.

I have enough failure in my life. I don’t need to put myself in situations where I am open to criticism and rejection. I suppose I should “man-up.” I need to grow a spine. I need to be compassionate to myself and if someone wants to call me a failure I need to tell them to go screw themselves.

So, while I hate painting assignments, I still admire illustrations. It turns out that the fine art, and folk art that I like the most has an illustrator sense about them.

I don’t just like lines on a page, or dabs, and washes and smears of color. It is not the competence of an artist’s skill that draws me to their work, it is a work of art that says something to me. I don’t have to know the story that was in the artist’s mind, I just want to be intrigued.

The late Alan E. Cober http://www.letralia.com/ciudad/yusti/imagenes/mente.jpg thrills me.

I’ve loved the works of Franklin McMahon http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01185/arts-graphics-2008_1185467a.jpg

There are millions of skilled artists competent in their work, but regardless of their ability, the work resonates with me when the work is more than good painting, more than skilled drawing, more than accomplished technicians in photography, or collage, or whatever else they are doing. The work has to contain something more than the visual. The art I admire most is art that contains some trace of the living being that created it.

What is Art?

"Art is the lie that tells the truth."
-- Pablo Picasso

I heard the Picasso quote many years ago, and loved it. The phrase is, essentially, a SOUND BITE,. Picasso’s definition of art is short, concise, easy to remember, and it was made by someone generally accepted by most of the world as an authority on the subject, so, geez, what’s not to like?

I have coffee cups, and tee-shirt messages, tattoos, bumper stickers, and notebooks filled with quotations. There are millions of us that have attempted to form our philosophy of life from bumper stickers and distill our view of all facets of existence to aphorisms and clichés’

Of course the joy of an aphorism is that it can be called on in a debate, and it has been heard so often that it is often just accepted. Maxims become truth. The problem with leaning on quotable quotes is that it ends the debate, and what should have been an essay becomes 8 words accepted without analysis.

WHAT IS ART? When I look at the sound bite attempts to answer the question, I find myself simultaneously impressed and incredulous.

A picture is a poem without words.
Horace

Maybe so, since a picture is worth a thousand words.

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.
John Ruskin

Really? If you create a work of art because you enjoy throwing a pot, or painting a canvas, and have no thoughts about reality or truth, then what are you doing?

Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.
Twyla Tharp

The sense that you zone out while painting, is a sensation I experience almost daily, but is it possible people watching a football game are also running away without leaving home?

I think there is just a whole lot of BS yammering going on about art, artists, and talent.

I have two thoughts about becoming or being an artist.

FIRST: Anyone could develop an ability to draw, or paint. All it takes to draw something is to have dedicated thousands of hours of your life practicing. Author and artist Christy Brown, born with cerebral palsy, wrote a memoir entitled MY LEFT FOOT. The book was turned into a movie in 1989 directed by Jim Sheridan and starring Daniel Day-Lewis. Christy Brown had control over only one part of his body, his left foot. With that one area of bodily control he managed to write several books and paint numerous paintings. Painting a picture with your foot seems impossible, but clearly it is possible. The reason Mr. Brown could paint and type with his left foot is because he practiced. He wrote and painted every day.

There are dozens of quadriplegic artists painting amazing pictures while holding the brush in their teeth.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/quadriplegic-artist-finds-release-by-painting-with-his-mouth/1068344

http://www.allbusiness.com/education-training/students-student-life/13978670-1.html

It is not eye/hand coordination that enables you to paint, it is practice. You learn to paint by painting and you learn to write by writing, skaters learn to do the triple axis by practicing, any difficult task is learned by trying relentlessly.

I believe ANYONE without profound disabilities can become an accomplished artist. This brings me to my next thought.

TWO: One trait common to all artists is their motivated to practice. Anyone can draw if they will only try to draw a few thousand pictures within as short an amount of time as possible.

There is no secret about how to create accomplished art work. If you do anything a thousand times you will be better at it than you were on try one, or even try fifty. There is no HOW TO secret about art, but that doesn’t explain why some are artists and some are not. There is still a secret, there is still a question I can’t answer and that question is this:

WHY ARE SOME MOTIVATED? Why do some work at their art for months, and years, and for the majority of their life?

I have no answer. I know, for me, if I have family obligations, or household chores that prevent me from painting and writing for a day or so, I feel wrong. Something is off. I get nervous and fidgety. I carry a sketch journal. If I’m in a waiting room and have nothing to write or sketch in I feel like at a big event with my zipper down. Something is wrong. Something is not right. I don’t want to feel this way again. I rarely go anywhere without some outlet for my creative urge.

Why do some of us have this creative urge and why do others not have it? Maybe we all have a creative urge, but some are focused on other things. Donald Trump’s creative urge may be focused on business and sexy women with thick accents.

As a former high school teacher I figured out that teachers don’t teach anything. Teaching is not pouring knowledge into a kid’s head. All education is self-education. If you want to learn something badly enough you will learn it. The job of the teacher is not to dispense information, the job of a teacher is to motivate. If you can do something, say something, provide some activity that inspires a kid to want to learn something then they will teach themselves.

Teachers are not encyclopedias, they are cheerleaders. What goes for education goes for everything. The artist is not the one with talent, the artist is the one motivated to create art.

Hoffer said that where the development of talent is concerned, we are still at the food gathering stage. We don’t know how to grow it.

Is It A Hobby?

My long suffering wife, who (I believe) loves me as much as she can, said, "I think painting is a good hobby for you." As soon as I heard that word "hobby" it felt a little like I'd stepped on a shard of glass barefooted. Hobby? Is what I do a hobby?

Is what I do a hobby?

Does it matter? Why do I feel an aversion to the word?

The definition of a hobby is an activity or interest that is undertaken for pleasure or relaxation. The activity is done for pleasure and relaxation and not for financial gain. Obviously a hobby might produce something that can be sold, and money can accumulate, but the reason one engages in the hobby is not to earn a living, it is to enjoy living.

Often I tell people that when I paint I zone out, it is like medication, self-hypnotism, it creates in me a sort of Buddhist calm, and since I have been, for years depressed and stressed, it seems prudent for me to involve myself in some activity that clears my mind of distractions, and focuses me on the moment only. When I paint, I forget time. When I paint the television becomes a talking lamp, the coffee in my cup goes untouched and grows cold. I work a late shift so I set the alarm on my cell phone to go off at 1:45 pm. This reminds me to stop painting and get ready to go to work. Without the alarm I could easily be late to work. When I paint, time ceases to exist, or at least time ceases to matter.' When I paint what matters is the painting.

Sometimes friends will ask me to paint something particular. Often they want a portrait of their dog, or a likeness of their dead mother. I have stopped taking such commissions. I've done it in the past and sometimes I've been successful, and sometimes not. The thing is, if I take a commission then suddenly I have to paint something that pleases someone else, someone who likely has a preconceived idea of what they want. I have no problem having someone say, "I like that picture, how much would you take for it." The picture is done. If someone wants to buy something already done, something that appeals to them, then fine. At no point was that picture painted to please that buyer, it was painted because I wanted to paint it. If I have an order to fill then the benefits of painting is, for me, diminished.

Sometimes, once I have finished a painting, I'll look at it and decide it sucks like a vacuum cleaner. Because I am struggle financially, I will often decide to paint over the sucky picture with primer and try again. Why waste a canvas? Nevertheless, even when I paint a picture and feel my efforts have failed, I still benefited from the painting. I enjoy painting a bad picture as much as I enjoy painting a good picture. Of course I don't enjoy looking at a failed end product, the action of painting did not fail.

Again, this all sounds like what I do is a hobby. It sounds like I paint because it helps me, pleases me, relaxes me, and I don't do it to make money. So what's wrong with calling it a hobby?

I guess I have this assumption that something done for money is serious and something done for pleasure and relaxation is trivial. If what I do is considered a hobby by other people then they are not going to honor my sacrifice of time on the altar of hobby.

When I looked at the origins of the word Hobby I found that the roots of the word go way back and are linked to our childhood toy, the hobby horse. Actually the toy's name goes back even further, perhaps to medieval days when a small horse (13 to 14 hands which is about 52 to 56 inches, or 130 to 140 centimeters) was bred for soldiers called Hobelars. The HOBBY was the name given to these small skirmishing horse. Since that horse was small, it made since to call the child's toy horse, a Hobby Horse. The Hobby Horse could actually be ridden, and it was fun to ride, but it took you nowhere. In a similar way our hobbies are real activities, they are fun to do, but the fun, and the doing is the purpose of that activity.


Well, maybe the purpose of my painting is not getting rich and famous, but it is more than a hobby to me. I need another category. I need to find another term. There are, I guess, passive hobbies and obsessive hobbies. What I do matters to me, and people who care about me MUST honor my devotion to painting. If you want to have a relationship with me, then part of me is my need to paint every day. (I also write every day.)

Yes, I miss days sometimes. My son recently got his PHD at Princeton, and my wife and I flew up there and spent 4 days with him. I didn't paint. I did bring a sketch pad, and I did sketch when I had time, but I didn't paint. I will still go shopping with Kathie, and make trips to the grocery store. I still mow the grass. I am not demanding that ONLY my needs matter. While Kathie has a relationship with me, I also have a relationship with her. I honor what matters to her.

I just hate calling what I do a hobby. I've read that Vincent Van Gogh only sold one painting during his life time. Does that mean Van Gogh was just a hobbyist painter? Painting is part of who I am, and that means the value of painting is linked to my value as a human being.

I WISH I COULD DRAW LIKE THAT

Some people look at my doodles, or look at my paintings and I usually get the same comment: “I wish I could paint.” OR “I can’t even draw a straight line.” OR “I wish I had your talent.”

I usually reply in some way similar to this: “You not only could do the art work I do, but you could probably do it better than I do. All you need to do is do what I have done. I have drawn thousands of pictures. Most of the pictures I have drawn were on scraps of paper, or in the margins of workbooks, so I’m not claiming to have done thousands of finished, ready to be framed pictures. What I am saying is that I have sketched, doodled, and cartooned day after day for the past 60 years. I drew in school when I was supposed to be doing seat work. I drew in church as I endured two sermons on Sunday and one on Wednesday night. My parents thought drawing and painting were important so I was encouraged to draw and paint, supplies were made available to me, and while I didn’t call it practice, that is what it was. I practiced all the time.

A person who hasn’t drawn many pictures can’t expect to be as skilled as someone who has drawn 20, 000 pictures. But anyone who has drawn and painted as much as I have will be pretty good at it and lots of folks will be great at it.

What I think most people mean when they sigh and say they wish they could paint like I do, they mean that they wish they could just do what I do without ever having to do the practice. I wish I were thin without having to eat less. I wish I had muscles without having to lift weights.

Throughout history there have been these plumbs of artistic expression that seem to just happen. How can we explain that Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael all knew each other, were alive at about the same time, and about the same area on this earth? Or how about the Impressionists in France? Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Dagas Cezanne, Gauguin, Van Gaugh and Lautrec all come on the scene at about the same period in history, in France, or they are drawn to France, and these guys knew each other. How can that be? What explains it?

Eric Hoffer writes some about this and in general he seems to think what is valued by society creates the talented. A kid that throws a ball well, in a society that honors sports, is likely to get encouragement to keep throwing that ball. A kid in Renaissance Italy might draw a picture on the side walk with a piece of chalk and the art lovers of their society will say, “Hey kid. That’s great. Draw some more.”

I have a good friend who argues with me and the example he uses to refute my view is singing. Some people just can’t carry a tune. Some people can take lessons, and practice and even love music, but they just can’t stay on tune. We all know people like that he says so clearly some people just get the gift of singing and some don’t.

It is a good point. I am not sure I agree, but I do recognize that the point is well made and not easily refuted.

Eric Hoffer said, "Where the development of talent is concerned, we are still at the food gathering stage." In other words, we may recognize talent, we might be able to go out and find talent and haul talent into the studio, but we have not yet learned how to grow talent. Our ability to plant the seeds of talent, to cultivate and nurture talent is just not something we as a society have learned do yet.

I guess the debate about art is similar to the debate about all human traits: is it nature or nurture, is it a gift, or a learned skill, is it etched on our DNA or is it learnable.

I want it to be learnable, because if it is a gift then I have it, or I don’t have it. It takes ME out of the equation. I want to believe that I can be an artist if I choose to be an artist. If YOU believe talent is a gift, and if YOU believe you didn’t get the gift then YOU will not try, and you will not develop the talent you admire.

Some of the April Paintings

I FEEL BETTER

I’ve lived with depression so long that I expect to be depressed. Depression has been the norm for me for the last 54 years. For me, not being depressed would be like rearranging the furniture in a blind man’s house. Everything in my life is where it has always been when I am depressed. I have actually started to fear that MAYBE depression was such a habit that I was keeping myself depressed because that was the only way I knew how to exist.

I have been BETTER for the past few years, because of cognitive behavioral therapy, but I was not depression free. It is like if depression had been a fever then I had a 104 degree fever for nearly 50 years, but over the past 4 years or so I’ve had a 100 degree temp. I have been better, but I still felt the presence of depression. If Depression were a color I was Navy Blue for 50 years, and sort of a bruised blue for the last 4 years. I continued to see my shrink every other week, because that activity enabled me to at least be a functioning depressant.

Something has changed. I’m not sure what changed, but there is no doubt that within me something has changed. I am different. I noted two things happened about the time I started feeling better. I started taking Deplin, and I wrote a description of what I thought a depression free life would be like.

First let me comment on the Deplin. What I understand is that one of the B vitamins needed by everyone is Folate. We get Folate from our diet, IF we obeyed mama and ate our green vegetables. Of course many of us do not eat enough green vegetables to ingest a therapeutic dose of Folate, so, to get this essential vitamin into our body without eating a pound of broccoli per meal, some of us take the man made form of Folate that comes in a little tablet called Folic Acid. Researchers found out that before our body benefits from this folic acid the vitamin must be broken down using a 4 step process.

Folate is chemically created as Folic Acid which breaks down into
Dihydrofolate, which then breaks down into
Tetrahydrofolate, and this is finally broken down into
L-Methylfolate.

The tablet Deplin is L Methylfolate.

The literature on Deplin claims that some people have a compromised ability to break down folic acid . Researchers further claim that about 70% of depressed people have this compromised ability to turn folic acid into L-Methylfolate. With Deplin, it doesn’t matter if the patient can or can’t bread down Folate, because when you ingest L-Methylfolate the body can use it immediately.

With Deplin not only do we benefit from ingesting this purest form of Folate, we also benefit from this L-Methylfolate because it is concentrated. Deplin makes a lot more of the useful supplement available to you. Remember, one 7.5mg Deplin tablet provides the bio-equivalent L-Methylfolate of 66 (800mcg) folic acid tablets.

I started taking Deplin about a month ago. My therapist added Deplin to the antidepressant cocktail I’ve been taking for several; years.

When the Deplin was suggested to me, and when I learned that it was a form of vitamin supplement, I was polite and said I’d try it, but in my mind I expected nothing to happen. Deplin is a purified vitamin! For most of my life I have considered vitamins as a way to produce very expensive brightly colored urine.

Remember all the wild claims made for ingesting mega doses of vitamin C, back in the day?. I remember hearing that if you took mega doses of vitamin C you could cure cancer and improve your ability to play the piano. That seemed crazy to me. After a month, something changed in me. I've been depressed for most of my life, around 55 years or so, and I have been taking meds and using talk therapy since 1980, and I figured I would live depressed until I died depressed. I did not believe anything was going to fix me. Something has happened after being a month on Deplin. I would not say I am giddy, I do not feel I have my life under control, but I am no longer worried, fearful, hopeless. I still have all the problems I've always had, including a traumatic childhood, but now I just feel I can cope. I may not know how I'm going to cope, but I sense that I will be able to cope. This change in me is not a thought, it is a feeling, but it is just barely a feeling. It is more like an unpleasant feeling gradually faded away, and I am just now noticing that it is gone. At first I thought it was a fluke. I thought, well, even a guy like me can have a good day once in a while. But one OK day followed the next OK day. I've been waiting for that other sad shoe to drop, I’ve been waiting for my sole to fall and it just hasn’t happened. . . repeatedly. This is the closest I have ever been to feeling as if I had an effective treatment for depression. Depression is like diabetes for me, you have it for the rest of your life, but with the right diet and meds you can live almost as if you didn't have it. Deplin just may be the I'm OK drug that brings my chronic depression under control.

No one expected this less than me. I am not happy. I am not joyful. I am not problem free. My life is still as flawed as the world around me. What is missing is worry, dread, and hopelessness. I don’t feel giddy, I’m not smiling all the time. The change is that I feel OK about being alive. I feel like I can cope with whatever happens next.

Have I just, finally fixed my thinking patterns? I don’t think it is that. I’m leaning toward the years of cognitive behavioral therapy, my psychotropic cocktail and the booster effects of Deplin. Obviously this is anecdotal evidence, and my experience is not a scientific conclusion. For the world of science the study must continue, but for me, well, all I can say is, I feel better.