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.