Lunatics, Lay-Abouts, and Malcontents

Nobody wants to do the dishes or fix the septic system but they are quick to throw a party or blather on about art. If you fit in with the slacker vibe, you are golden. But if you push the river by calling a bum a bum you better watch out. That laid-back hippie will stab you in the back. He'll call you a bully and tell you that he's going to put a stop to your telling it the way it is. Of course, this doesn't apply just to hippies and slackers but to the high-flying "winners" out there too. Not many are strong enough to look at bad behavior, hypocritical thinking, or bogus mean-spirited sniping. No, they won't come right out and tell you they are going to get you. Instead they go behind closed doors, build their grenades, lob them when you aren't watching, and then go back into hiding. Until the next time.

What People Say When I Am Gone

Yeah, I know. It's a bit morbid, but I guess it's worth considering while I can still think. Contrary to what some of you might predict, I want to be remembered for little things, like that I smelled like soap and hard work. Whether or not I actually smell like soap is only part of the hope. I want to be remembered that way. I also want to be remembered for doing what I said I would do. Now, I have a lot of work still to complete in this area if people might actually say that. I guess I have to start now. I want people to say that I was an animal, not as in "he was an extreme athlete," though that would be nice, but as in he had hair, was warm blooded, liked to mate (a lot), and ate when he was hungry. As an animal, I didn't see myself as somehow "higher" than other animals -- like cats, dogs, bears, and guinea pigs. I pooped and farted and peed and probably took more away from the world than I needed to take. For that I am sorry. I hope they say, correctly, that I was a fool. I hope they say, because they got something, that I was wise. I don't want them to say I knew what I was doing, but I do hope they say I knew what I wanted, even if I messed up. Time to get to work and to buy some soap. Time's a wasting.

Humans Are a Work in Progress

When you embraced the error that you, and others, are solid, immutable, and locked into a story written when you were afraid, you forgot that you and they are really a river of stars. That error becomes like iron, when, in fact, you are motion, energy, light, and full of space waiting to be occupied with love. Because you composed the fallacy when you didn't know better, you believe it will be that way always, that others, too, are bound up in a moment of inference and conclusion. You believe you are wrong, unworthy, imperfect, that you don't matter. That what you do doesn't matter. Remember neither you nor they are that slip of weakness. Do you have to be responsible for your actions? Absolutely. Should the consequences of mistakes be permanent? The flowing river of the past has moved on. You really have only the fluid motion of a passing now. Do not make the mistake then of fixing a moment that was as what will forever be. But turn your eyes instead to your next step, your next word. It is here that you can rewrite the script of who you are, how you might live. Deliberate; focus; choose how you will place your foot; and point your actions toward the imagined possibility of who you really are, who you are already becoming. You will know the way when all you see is wide open nothing that it is up to you fill with all that you were afraid to give away. When you dissolve into a joy born of generosity, you will touch peace, find forgiveness.But you still have to write it down and then put it into motion.

Forward

The wreckage of the last couple of years recedes in the rear view mirror as you motor out of town, bike on the rack, gas in the tank. Yes, it has been a rough one, with the criminal case and all. It would have been better if he hadn't attacked someone. Christ! Why did he have to do that? And then there is the question of how to make a living in this digitized world. You are more of an analog kind of guy. And the heart... don't even go there. The days are getting thinner, with less light. They barely feed you enough to keep you alive. But that's all then. This is now and soon. We're talking future here. Now that's scary. If only those ghosts hanging onto the bumper would let go and go get a life somewhere else. You know the only thing they listen to is having balls big enough to forgive. Well, for now, anyway, you guess you'd rather not. They smile at the prospect of that and find the strength to get a tighter grip. They're making their up along the side of the truck. They'll be in with you soon, drinking your beer, grinding up your bones. Faster. Faster. You jam the pedal to the floor hoping to outrun them. 

In the Dark

Three o'clock in the morning and I'm wide awake sitting here in the dark again. This morning it is the meanness in the world that keeps me from sleep. The need to push others down so that you can feel safe or have more or rise higher is a way of being that I have lost, or fallen out of, or... something. It's that something again too, the one that has replaced the right word for things. A vise is closing on my mind. That is a hard one to accept, to witness, without running off into the desert, screaming. That said, the little thing that is me will pass. It is the meanness I'm really worried about. Seems like that has no trouble going on and on whether I can recognize it or not. 

Almost Done

Last day of class. Can't believe it. It has been a bumpy ride, but not without its pleasures: Panama, for instance, was a kick in the old pantalones. I wanted to keep going, to learn to surf, speak a lot more Spanish, dream big. In this, the downhill of mid-life, I am learning that the particulars matter less than the will to love it all. In the work world, it's go big or go home. I might end up going home because I went big. In all honesty, I don't think I can continue to teach first-year courses. The prison work has consumed the all of me. Or, more precisely, writing about what I love has consumed my attention. I am not sure what that means in terms of work next year. I have signed up, but there are forces at work that are beyond my control. What's that sound? Waves crashing?

Cutting Edge Sculpture Man

He is seen as the maven of metal, the jack of junk, the sultan of steel, the king of crumple. He makes sculptures for the rich and bored dentists in the foothills. They pay him thousands for his copy-cat towers of mangled rust, his tired idiom of irony. 

He poses as the product of recovery from alcohol, the student of Jung, he who faces his shadow. He glories in the beacon of attention that feature writers love to bestow on the eccentric makers with studios in the barrio. His oh-so-cool vibe reeks of condescension for critics or academe.

But this artsy icon of iron has a secret. He plays the artist, but only when the art will sell, and he changes his medium as the winds of taste change from rusted steel enigmas on stands to knock-offs of Magritte done desert style. He is the Oracle of art and turns a phrase into bumper stickers: "To master art, you must be its slave." His patrons project onto him the wisdom they lack because they know nothing or art or creativity. 

He is run by vitriol for any who question him, but especially women who have defied him, and he hangs on to old hurts like the jaws of gila monster when it latches onto prey. He attacks from behind because he is coward. He doesn't want to be seen for what he is, a font of vitriol, malevolence, revenge.

Because she said "I won't" when he said "Obey me," he has made her his sworn enemy, and he will do anything to hurt her, to destroy her. She was a shit, he says, and it was time to put a stop to it, put her in her place. He would take from her the home she lived in, the reputation she had built on years of study and teaching, her peace in sleep. 

She had defied him, and he would never let that go, would never forget. 

It didn't matter that life is an ongoing river of adaptation, of new, living cells, of incessant, scary change. The sand on the beach is always moving and the mountains are either growing or wearing down, even if we can't detect the changes. 

He was certain it was the way he said it was and he was going to stick to it. 

No amount of evidence to the contrary could move him from loops of hatred spinning in his mind, set as they were in stone that the wind was already beginning to grind down. He, after all, was a modern, self-made, metal man, like Ozymandias, king of the hipsters, a cutting edge sculpture man. 

He was an Artist, a creative genius who turned junk into gold.