November 2007 Archives

MCO 2007

I heard the Sudanese Foreign Minister try to imagine how we would feel if "our" religion was "demeaned." Well, Al-Jackass, I don't think the Pope is going to issue a fatwa on me, but you're welcome to. What a small-minded conception of God you have to give him such a huge and sensitive ego. THAT in my mind, is the ultimate blasphemy, but guess what? You only get a tongue-lashing from me. Allah just feels sorry for you, to so misunderstand her. (Oops, did I say "her?" COME AND GET ME.)

It seems to be a great swath of the Muslim World could learn a thing or two from something we tell 5-year olds over here. STICKS AND STONES WILL BREAK MY BONES BUT NAMES WILL NEVER HURT ME.

And then of course, there is the ear-curdling story of the raped women in Saudi Arabia being sentenced to 200 lashes for being alone with an unrelated male. What are they trying to do, unite left and right in the United States in universal disgust?

I also heard in the initial report that the "unrelated male" was also raped. Why is no one talking about what happened to him?

As a friend wrote me, "sometimes don't you just put your head in your hands?"

MCO 2007

I couldn't resist.

This may be arrogant of me, but sometimes I think some of these painters would heartily approve of my creations. I mean who doesn't love Escher? Who doesn't love Vermeer? Wouldn't they love each other?

Hey, do I have any copyright lawyer readers out there? Do you know if I could make a line of cards and sell them? Or would I have to be licensed from every museum and collection on the planet?

At this moment in time, I'm not worried about it. Between the blog, the HY-Art, the subtitling editing and the screenwriting, I'm in a state of almost constant creative ferment that is unbelievably pleasurable. When I combine all of that with service (picking up the trash and talking to sponsees) and some kick-ass AA meetings, there are times when I am physically high over it all. The dopamine just flows, and I haven't touched a drink or a drug a promise. And look Ma, no hangover!

Then I have these wonderful friendships and blogamis, old and new, on-line and off. I look at all these unattached people around me or on TV who seem to think they can't possibly be happy without a significant other, and I have to laugh! Oh yes you can! (Not to mention, how many couples do you know who are truly happy?)

MCO 2007

P.S. I also love Project Runway AND football. Yes, I love football!

On the one hand, the International Rescue Committee estimates 3.8 million people are dead from war and disease in the Congo—this is a holocaust by any standards, and it’s not even on the radar screen of about 98% of the West. (The violence toward women in particular, rape as a form of genocide, is horrifying). On the other hand, Indonesia just began a campaign to plant 79 million trees, part of a UN campaign to plant 1 billion trees worldwide. Both facts are real, one cause for utter depression, the other for singular hope.

In my own little life, disaster and redemption also go hand in hand, in much less dramatic fashion. (What’s that quote from Casablanca about one’s personal problems not mounting to a “hill of beans” in this crazy world?) My mechanic just told me I can’t wait any longer for a major tune-up—to the tune of $375. That’s exactly half of what I’m making doing the subtitling editing—for which I won’t see actual payment for a month. It will swallow up the check about to arrive from last month’s work though, leaving me very much feeling like I’m running in place, yet again, right before Christmas.

It would be so easy to slip into that old kind of thinking—you can’t get ahead, every time you try you get beaten down by reality, the glass is half-empty, blah, blah, blah. I’m happy to say it took me about 12 seconds to go from despair to gratitude in this situation. My mechanic told me I still had an excellent car for the age and the mileage—it costs me around $1200 a year to maintain (not including gas and insurance, of course). I have an ex-roommate who often uses the car and agreed to pay half the cost of the repair. And the most obvious—I do have work, work I’ve wanted for years, and there IS money coming in.

Crisis laps at the shores of safety all of the time in this world—it certainly does in this marriage of Edward Hopper and Winslow Homer (with a little addition of Whistler’s lady—from yesterday--standing in the door.) You can panic, standing up in the boat and capsizing, or you get keep rowing and wait for the storm to pass. Acceptance is the key. Take that route, and soon enough you’ll find yourself being warmed by some hot soup in a sweet, safe diner—until the next reminder that life ALWAYS happens.

MCO 2007

Grant Wood’s American Gothic is often parodied, but I got a particular rush out of melding it with this picture from the canon of James Whistler, known more for the famous portrait of his mother than for depicting sexy Gilded Age party girls. Fun, hunh?

Yes, even dour farmers no doubt have sex on the brain, though certainly less than the newly sober. I find this issue coming up over and over again with sponsees and other friends who seem to have trouble staying sober. The suggestion in AA is to generally put that whole area on the shelf for a year, and of course most react with indignation. What do you mean? What does sex have to do with anything? And/or: I’ve finally got my shit together, this is the ideal opportunity for me to finally have a healthy relationship! I’ve given up booze/drugs, do you want to take everything from me that makes life worthwhile?

Here’s the thing. It not about the sex or the relationship itself, (although with meth users, unquestionably, sex can be a major trigger.) It’s about what you DON’T do when you’re in the throes of romance or the hunt for it. It’s about the opportunity you’re missing to look at how uncomfortable you are with being single, being alone. It’s about learning to be married to yourself before you get married to others.

When I talk to one of the indignant newcomers (as I was) and I ask them how they feel on a Saturday night without a date, the answers are always universal. “What’s wrong with me? Why is everybody else in love but me? I’m really horny!” What I hear is: “I’m lonely. I don’t like being alone with myself. I want something outside of myself to fix me.” Working through all of that is crucial, and those who don’t are just delaying the day they will have to. (Not to mention far more likely to relapse, because they’re still thinking something outside can fix something inside. That thinking inevitably leads to picking up.)

Trust me, I tell them, the urge to merge will never leave you. But coming from a desire to share the spiritual bounty of your life is entirely different than needing someone to “complete” (read fix, numb, distract) you. And just because you wait a year is no guarantee that once the year is over, the offers come flooding in. But it is entirely possible that you reach a place of serenity and patience, that you trust that the universe will put in your path those persons you are meant to spend time with. And it does.

MCO 2007

P.S. If you’re already in a relationship—that’s a different post, but the suggestion is “no major changes in the first year” if you can avoid them.

At first I looked for a guardian angel of sorts that would fit in the space behind the little black girl, but the only thing that fitted size-wise were cupidish cherubs, and that sure didn't fit the tone of this tableau. This is much better, I think, as it places the entire struggle for integration in a particular perspective. We tend to think of it in terms of the greater struggle for civil rights, and while that of course is true, as far as the impact on the ground over time, what it has meant is the opportunity for individual black and white children to get to know each other in ways they would never had if segregation has continued.

What makes the news, sadly, are all the stories of conflict. If it bleeds, it leads. What you don't hear about are life-changing friendships. Eddie Hudson was a black kid who seduced me in Drama Society and then took me to my first gay bar in New York City. Cheri was another girl I met in high school, we lived together in NY and we taught each other comedy. I know my blogami Sheria has a white B.F.F. since childhood, and I'm sure among you there are many such stories.

More specifically to the painting, I wonder if Renoir's little-girl-with-the-water-can might come closer to what happened that day than any guardian angel. Doesn't it make sense that a little girl going into such a fearsome situation would take along her imaginary best friend? (One to whom she would speak fake fluent French that no one else understood, of course.)

MCO 2007

When I was a kid, I used to imagine waking up, having breakfast, and turning on a machine that would show me what I dreamt last night. I also used to envy to no end my cousin Henri's incredible drawing talent, and pray that one day I would magically have the piano-playing proficiency of our neighbor Marc Fellows. Mostly, I used to wish I could make people laugh fairly effortlessly.

Ironcially, the one talent I never prayed for was a facility with words, and it is what has led to at least a modicum of gratification in each of the other realms. Starting fairly young, I found that I could joke my way out of being harassed by bullies--always a potential problem when you were always the shortest kid in the class. My father's alcoholism taught me how to become Johnny Carson to his Ed McMahon, he would tell some rambling story for which I felt compelled to come up with a punchline, so as to break the built-up tension around the dinner table. Since then, I've always known how to find the bon mot in almost any situation. Friendship with me means a lot of laughter. (I still have to watch out for being an attention-hog at the dinner table, but I think I'm much better unfueled by multiple glasses of wine.)

In 5th grade I wrote my first short story: "The Black-Framed Letter" and learned (on one Saturday afternoon I still remember) to keep writing even when I didn't feel like it. In 10th grade I co-wrote and directed a children's play, "Gadzooks!" which we actually performed at all the local elementary schools, about a king who doesn't want to be a king. I wrote most of the song lyrics as well:

"I'd rather drive a chevy,

than a chauffered limousine,

But the crown doesn't weigh so heavily,

upon the head of my queen."

I supplied lyrics for songs performed at my friend Cheri's cabaret shows, and still write them for my friend Richard Hefner to compose and perform. Not quite the same as playing an instrument or singing, but it goes a long way toward satisfying that old yearning for musical talent.

I taught myself graphics when I needed visuals for an advertising copywriting portfolio in the 80s, and Photoshop when I needed backgrounds for my poetry starting about a decade ago. You have witnessed the evolution of this idea of Hy-Art as it has happened over the past month. But it only occurred to me last night that it was as close as I would ever come to that dream machine, as these ideas for hybrid artwork probably spring from the same place in the brain as dreams do.

It also allows me to evoke an entire science fiction novel with one visual. Here is a 16th-century Dutch soldier flirting with a 19th Century French beauty. They meet due to the magic of 21st-century technology, and might be saying: "Let's not let the 18th-century get between us." I also get an art history lesson, because melding these two pictures forced me to notice their details, and I understand how profoundly Renoir had to have been influenced by Vermeer. (Note how naturally they seem to fit in the same painting?)

I'd like to offer a slight reinterpretation of the expression "Watch what you pray for," respoken not as a warning but as a suggestion. "Watch for what you pray for." You'll have much more fun when the wind comes if you have the kite ready.

MCO 2007

Really cheap thrills, I'd say, as these aren't pictures of real live men I took on my walk, but of posters. (Although I did risk my life taking the cop pic, as this was the side of the driver's side of the bus.)

Also on my walk, for the third time in two years I ran into the same friend out on a relapse. Somehow through his paranoia he is not afraid of me. Though I finally went right for the bottom line with him. "You can only do this so many times, before the jig is up. If you don't get sober and stay sober, you're gonna die." I don't know if it does any good, but the last 2 times, he told me running to me during a relapse was crucial to his picking up the phone and asking for help when he finally got enough sleep for the active psychosis to subside.

The other thing that is so startling is that he doesn't even enjoy it any more. He hasn't had one good time the last 50 he's been high. He goes almost immediately into paranoid psychosis. (He asked me if we were in the Middle East. On Hollywood Boulevard.)

What a fucked up disease that tells you such a state is preferable to staying sober, and you believe it.

MCO 2007

I added the fire this morning, when I heard on the radio that parts of Malibu have been evacuated due to fire. It just seemed to explain what I had made before, which was Bougereau's "Le Ravissement du Psyche" seeming to plunge into Hockney's pool, but with a clear blue sky behind. (I'm actually watching the fires on TV as I type this.)

I'm discovering how much patience is an indispensable part of the creative process. Most of these Hy-Arts are not made in one fell swoop. If I don't feel they're quite right, I put them in a file and wait. Invariably, something else happens that serves as the light bulb going off, and I add the missing element that completes it.

As I learn to practice it, this willingness to wait seems to be at more at work in my life in general as well. In fact, I realize you have to practice all sorts of spiritual principles, like honesty and patience and open-mindedness. And love. Especially love. Practice, practice, practice. You do get better at it, I promise, even if progress never seems to get us quite where we want to be when we want to be there.(That will always be the case, there's nothing to do but accept that. What's that expression? Perfection should never be the enemy of the possible?)

Sometimes, like yesterday's of Van Gogh and Cassatt, I look at it after having had put it aside for a bit, and I see how it needs nothing more, and it unexpectedly turns out to move several readers.

Suddenly I wonder if I'm being terribly insensitive. I certainly do not want to appear to be making light of an awful situation. Obviously that's not my intention. In the oddest way, I feel like the 18th century equivalent of a photo-journalist, transplanted to the present. (The flames are from Verschuier's "The Great Fire of London.")

My God, the images on TV are hallucinatory. I've never seen smoke like that, and I've lived here 15 years. Luckily the winds seem to be blowing it out to sea.

MCO 2007

In today's encore excerpt, seven-year-old Truman Capote, abandoned by his parents and raised by dirt-poor relatives in Alabama, with his closest friend a distant cousin--an elderly, simple minded, and slightly crippled woman named Sook. On a cold, bleak and empty Christmas afternoon with the two of them alone together, she exclaims to him:

" 'My, how foolish I am!' she cries, suddenly alert, like a woman remembering too late she has biscuits in the oven. 'You know what I've always thought?' she asks in a tone of discovery, and not smiling at me but a point beyond. 'I've always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when He came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun shining through, such a shine you don't know it's getting dark. And it's been a comfort: to think of that shine takes away all the spooky feeling.'

" 'But I'll wager it never happens like that. I'll wager at the very end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself. That things as they are,'--her hand circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie, our dog, pawing earth over her bone-- 'just what they've always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with just today in my eyes.' "

You hear that readers? It's all right here, in the every day. God is in the kites, the grass, the cats. And in your imagination and memory. Van Gogh never actually danced with Mary Cassat, probably never met her, but in the picture he does. And they don't need to be in any ballroom, a little hotel room in Arles is just fine. (Mary Cassat painted the couple, in another picture).

Yesterday I had a lovely Thanksgiving. It was very interesting to see the family from which sprang one of my closest friends. If I could be of any service to him as a friend, it was to supply him with a fresh pair of eyes to point out how he may have created all sorts of stories around his childhood that still affect him today that may have had little basis in what really happened. That were mostly a product of his perception. A perception irretrievably colored by fear of rejection.

Just like Sook says, it's possible to see God manifested everywhere--I would add, even in a painful past. Through the 12 steps, you can actually change your past, in a way. You go back and take responsibility for your part in things, clean house, and make amends. You find out you've been looking at your past through the dirty window of your disease, and you can clean that window off. Same past, different perception.

And when that dirty glass is actually your rearview mirror, watch your driving change.

MCO 2007

MCO 2007

Okay, my mysterious friend DK Thinker has responded to my Creative Writing meme. He took liberties, but who cares? What am I gonna do, sic the meme police on him? (I'm making assumptions on DK's gender, but if he or she can call God "he," well, I can do the same.)

I have this feeling this meme o' mine is going to end up yield a suspicious amount of Lurleens...

MCO 2007

Everyone recognizes Van Gogh's "Starry Starry Night," but I bet you didn't know about Dali's "Person Staring Out the Window." I love the result, and as you can see, have made it my holiday greeting card. Please feel free to use it as your own. Since I don't have the right to make money off the work of others, I can't charge for it, but I'd love to get new readers and MORE ATTENTION, ALWAYS. But please, only use it to send on line. It's called SAVING TREES. Only grandmothers who aren't on line should get cards, as far as I'm concerned.

I am going to a friend's family for Turkey Day. I haven't met them, but I've heard many stories, and let me put it this way, it ain't gonna be no episode of "The Waltons." (I was going to say "Brothers and Sisters," but the Walker family is pretty screwed up.) I'm actually looking forward to the mini-adventure in Dysfunctionland.

And because I have to edit the English subtitles of 11 episodes of a Russian mini-series, this is the first in a series of shorter entries, which I'm sure will be greeted by sighs of relief in some quarters. I completely understand; the more blogs I read, the more I lack the time to read more, and yet I keep discovering great ones.

But since I'm hardly going to cite this if I'm asked to say the prayer at the table tomorrow, let me use this opportunity to give thanks for the Blogosphere. This virtual world has become indispensable to my life, provides endless opportunities for creative expression and intellectual stimulation, and has led to a host of very real friendships that are no more dependent on having physically met than the friendships between some of history's great epistolary correspondents.

Thanks to YOU. (To everybody, but some more than others. You know who you are.)

MCO 2007

I’ve been tagged by two bloggers, who were each tagged by a blogger who wanted to tag me but didn’t because he knows I hate it. But I do love these guys, who are all part of my inner circle of recovery “blogamis” (Brian, you’ll like that term. For those misreading it, it’s not “blogamiss, but blog-ami-s, the “ami” being French for “friend,” the –s for the plural.) So, like this Hy-Art combining John Turnbull and Edgar Degas, I surrender.

Basically, this “blogameme” (a meme sent to you by blogamis) is to list 7 things you’ve learned in recovery. There are other rules, but I’m ignoring them. If this inspires you, then by all means do it (I'm thinking of you, DOGOTOGOD) but I’m not going to tag anyone anymore than I’d pass on a chain letter. But I gotta admit, as far as memes go, this is a good one. It's useful to think about and sum up some of your beliefs once in while. (Though you'll see my tone is a bit Oprah Chopra-ish, maybe a tad preachy even. But hey, maybe I have a future as a Guru.)

12 THINGS MARC HAS LEARNED IN RECOVERY. (Yes, I know it said 7, but doesn’t 12 make a tad more sense?) In no particular order (as they came to me):

1) The worst experience in your life can also be the best, and those experiences that are so terrible—like the death of child—they can seem irredeemable, still have value in the very fact of surviving them.

When I was first in prison, I never thought I would end up seeing it as the only thing that could have saved my life, utterly necessary to my journey. And really, in the grand scheme of things, 9 ½ months is not a long time chronologically. The disease is a great robber of perspective, its return a great gift of recovery.

2) Anxiety is your disease’s way of convincing you you are doing something about something you actually are powerless over. It forces you to focus on the problem, and can blind you to the solution.

Ever find yourself in traffic and frustrated, even enraged over the fact you aren’t moving? How, as Dr. Phil says, is that working for you? Your disease tells you your internal unrest is somehow going to make the traffic go faster, and when it does (cause it always does, eventually), you “learn” the (false) lesson that irritation is an effective tool to move traffic. Meanwhile, if you’d stayed in acceptance over something you cannot change, you’re far more likely to notice that if you get off at the next exit, you can take the 710 home. Your disease’s goal is to keep you so angry and irritated that your feel utterly justified in picking up that calming soothing drink when you get home. It delights in getting you to believe that consuming a substance is always part of the solution.

3) Question your premises.

Sometimes acceptance goes the other way. I thought, for example, that I had no choice but to accept the trash in Hollywood. Then, DING! (insert lightbulb over head) it occurred to me there was no law against picking it up. Make sure you’re not accepting something that you CAN, in fact, do something about it.

4) If you can’t see God, be God.

You may feel completely cut off from the sense of a Higher Power, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be kind to someone else, right now. You wanna know what God feels like? That experience is always at your fingertips. (The short version of this one is SERVICE, SERVICE, SERVICE.)

5) The less you define God, the closer you get to what God is.

Bigger is better. I finally came to the belief that God is EVERYTHING. I try not to use “him” because that invariably makes us conceive of some sort of superhuman. If I must, I use “her” or “she,” just to remind us neither really applies. God is context, not content.

6) Your dick will not fall off if you stop having sex.

This may sound obvious, but it is striking how preoccupied gay men, particularly in early recovery, are with sex or not having sex, as if taking a break is going to make them forget how to have it. I found it invaluable to put sex and love on the shelf until it got right-sized. I no longer feel being in on a Saturday night is somehow sinning against some sort of gay God for not having sex or looking for it when I could. I learned to flirt again—without an agenda. To allow sexual encounters to arise out of relationships instead of the other way around. To learn how NOT to replace the medication of a substance with that of a warm body. To be alone and not feel like something was wrong with me. (And anyone who’s seen pictures of Tony on this blog knows some men are worth waiting for when they drop from the sky.)

7) The disease of alcoholism/addiction is, at its core, any behavior that feeds the illusion that happiness is an outside job, something created by what you ingest, what you have, or who you know. Its goal is to cut you off from conscious contact with God through the sense that when you indulge, your high IS God.

8) Like Mother Superior in The Sound of Music, "I always keep faith in my doubts."

I don’t know if there is a God, and no one else does either. That’s what makes faith such a powerful experience. That I believe while I doubt. That I’m comfortable with not being at all sure. But when I align myself with God as I (mis) understand God, when I row in the direction of the river as it were, things keep happening that confirm for me the idea that there is indeed a mysterious and intangible energy at work in the universe. Every single day is an opportunity for more spiritual experiences than I can count—and that can mean going to Ralph’s, calling my mother, or commenting on a blog. It’s all God, as far as I’m concerned.

9) There is a great difference between willingness and desire.

Stay in one, and you’ll find the other changes. The point is not to get what you want, but to want what you get, to see what you already have as a gift. The glass is always full.

10) Take your hands off the rearview mirror, and put them on the steering wheel.

You do need to know where you came from, but don’t focus on it. Keep your eyes on the road or you’ll keep having accidents.

11) Laughter is the language of recovery.

Take your recovery seriously. Take others seriously. But by all means, don’t take yourself too seriously.

12) See #11.

MCO 2007

P.S. I got some work from the subtitling agency, so it may be Hy-Art blogs for a bit.

Here's the first entry (besides mine) in the Marc Olmsted Meme Competition, or the Momers.

(Although it's not really a competition. I just don't know what else to call it.)

Anyway this is great. But don't be intimidated, be inspired!

Sheria as Lurleen

MCO 2007

Well, I couldn't very well ignore my own MEME, could I, so here it is. My birthday is October 15, 1958, ergo the formula means I have to write a blog entry by a Paolo, writing from Austin, Texas, and I have to mention a job. {Note: We’re gonna pretend this is actually in Portuguese. Marc’s magic blog translation memeware is causing your brain to read it in English).

So, I’m writing this in the Austin airport, after 4 very interesting days here. I'll have to break the trip down to an entry for each day.

Day 1: I had to change planes twice from Rio, in Mexico City and Houston, so I was exhausted when I got to Austin at 8 in the morning. I collapsed into bed (I have never been able to sleep much on planes, and don’t even want to, because it’s the only time I get to read. I got through “The Kite Runner” which is great stuff.)

I wasn’t exactly in Austin itself, I was in a town called Lago Vista, as the shoot was happening on the golf course there. (It’s a cute campaign for golfing footwear, in which a bunch of lady golfers wear high heels on the course and the caddy hands them the brand of golf shoes that should be wearing. You’ll be seeing it if you subscribe to Golf magazines but I can’t mention the brand of shoes here.)

Anyway, I woke up in the afternoon, had room service sent up, and worked for a few hours, getting everything prepared for the shoot. I was still wide awake, so went down to the hotel bar, and after a drink, asked the bartender where HE goes on his nights off. He pointed me to a place called “Shenanigan’s” and I popped in a cab.

To be honest, if I was in the same kind of bar in Brazil, I would probably have run for the hills, or for the some sort of chic club where you usually find me. But I liked it cause it was so Texas. Pool table, karaoke, redneck girls and urban cowboys. And a bartender with high cheekbones and mahogany skin, who looked right in my eyes when I ordered a beer than asked if I’d like to do a “shot.” I thought she was talking about my photo “shoot” and that led to an entire conversation about why I was there, along with a concoction known as a ‘mudslinger”—or two, or three. THEN it got interesting

But it was midnight by then, which means we were into Day 2. You’ll have to wait for tomorrow for that blog entry! (Plus, they just announced my flight). Here’s a preview: it involves not waking up alone, and a hangover!

Paolo

I googled "Paolo" in images, and got this soccer player. But he looks like he could be a hot Brazilian photographer, doesn't he?

You'll recognize the redhatted girl from a few blogs back. My sense of symmetry (and the Sargent portrait of the rakish fellow with some jaunty headgear) inspired me to give her a companion and both of them a caption.

MCO 2007

These are my buds Corey and Richard. Aren't they handsome?

Richard, on the right, is the one I've written a song with, and it's going to be on his upcoming album. Corey, (holding the dogs), I just think is incredibly yummy, and what makes him even more so is that he doesn't know it. He's learned not to argue when I tell him how handsome he is, so now he just blushes and says "you made my day."

Nothing makes my day like making someone else's day with a free compliment. ["Free" means without agenda or expectations for a return. It's the only way to go, in my book.]

MCO 2007

I saw this on a neighborhood car and just fell in love with it. I wish I could do a same thing with the trash, but can't figure out how that would work! (I was able to throw an entire stack of pre-placed Walgreens fliers in a box and toss them yesterday. They were probably put on the corner by the distributor at 5 in the morning, for the guys to grab them when they got to that neighborhood. SORRY!!! No pelting the hood' with your tree-killing refuse today! Saved me a ton of work--as 90% percent of these flyers end up in the street and sidewalk for yours truly to pick up anyway.)

I've decided we need some new thinking about global warming, grounded in more than just fighting it, but in looking realistically at mitigating some of the consequences of what cannot be undone. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, even if we go full-on reverse right now, there's still going to be major ice-cap melting. So I'm thinking, since this is being accompanied by huge droughts, would a possible silver lining be to get some of the fresh polar ice cap water into the arid regions of the world? Is it conceivable that some oil tankers could be refitted as water-haulers? If there's going to be major melting no matter what, isn't it better that some of the water goes to combat drought as opposed to adding to the rise in sea levels? Aren't there inland lakes and reservoirs that could be filled? Atlanta, hello?

Either that, or shouldn't there be some major building of desalination plants going on in coastal areas?

MCO 2007

One of my favorite readers suggested I try something with Dali, who is one of my very favorite painters. At first I resisted, because he's already over the top, it's like "gilding the lily," I said. Well, that's all I needed to get an inspiration, and wouldn't you know that Monet did over 250 pictures of "Waterlilies," so I don't even have to feel like I'm repeating myself.

If it's good enough for Monet, it's good enough for me.

MCO 2007

Steven is back at Pekin and sent me his first post from there.

http://prisonsabitch.blogspot.com/

MCO 2007

I'm not much of a "meme" person (a "me me" person, very much so) and have actually been endlessly grateful only one person tagged me, and she was also the same person who didn't feel bad that I didn't want to do it. (For those who don't know, a "meme" is list of questions you answer and then tag someone else to answer. Frankly, I don't see the point of you knowing what are the names of the last 4 pets I had, or what flavors ice cream are in my fridge. And knowing such things about you fails to increase or decrease my interest in you one whit.)

Then I read today's horoscope: Libra (Sep 23 - Oct 22): Your heightened sense of creativity enables you to spontaneously dream up original ideas today... and that indeed seems to be the case. So I'm not tagging anyone, but if anyone is inspired by this idea, please post your entry on your blog and let me know when you have so I can direct people there, or if you don't have a blog, send it to me and I'll post it for you.

Here's the idea: You write one imaginary blog entry, based on the invented person you are according to the chart below. You determine that according to your birthdate. There are 12 names in the first row, for the 12 months of the year. So if you are born in August, say, you will write as Lieutenant Michaels. Where you are writing from depends on the specific date of your birth. For example if it's on the 2nd, the 12th, or the 22nd, you're writing from Long Island. And to give you a leg up on a topic, you must at least mention one of the topics in column three--based on the year of your birth. For example, if you were born in a year ending in a "9," mention a pet (or make the whole entry about one, if you want.)

I chose these specifics quite arbitrarily, but you'll find having some structure is a great stimulus to creativity. If I told you "write a fake blog entry" you'd probably be paralyzed with all the choices. But if you're born on July 19, 1963, you have to figure out what someone named Tamika is doing in France.

Oh, the subject is a brother, so she's visiting her brother! How'd he get there? Are they close? Were they once and not anymore? Does she hate his wife? Or is he gay and the entry is about him telling her? Or is she there for the funeral of her brother? What did he die of? Oh, AIDS, and she has to deal with his French lover, who is kinda hot and she wonders if he's bisexual? Or the wife is kind of hot and Tamika questions HER sexuality. I DON'T KNOW - USE YOUR IMAGINATION. AND DON'T TELL ME YOU "CAN'T." ("I'll sell you south I will!")

Remember, it doesn't have to read like a short story. It's a blog entry--so you can assume the reader has been following the blog for a while. That means you can refer to things that have happened without explaining them, but since, of course, you know the reader in fact HASN'T been following any blog, one of the interesting tasks as a writer is to subtly convey information without sounding like you are. WELCOME TO MY WORLD, PEOPLE.

So make me proud. And try to change up you writing style a little! Gazker, that means you! I don't want too many of these !!!! and "bloody arses!!" if you're Yelena writing from Tennesse about your gambling problem!

MCO 2007

P.S. And if you're not interested, then sit back and enjoy as the rest of us do the heavy lifting. That's right. Cause we ARE here to entertain YOU.

P.P.S. How odd that I should post this, check some other blogs I read, and find that I have been "tagged" to do a meme by Denys, aka Homo Homo Sapien.

This is the meme:

Describe your earliest memory where the memory is clear, and where “clear” means you can depict at least three details.

Give an estimate of your age at the time.

Tag five other bloggers with this meme.

As luck would have it, my sister posted a piece I wrote which fulfills two of these three requirements exactly 3 years ago, right before I was released from prison. The piece is called Before.

If you're in the mood to read more of me after this long-ass entry, God love you, but I sure won't be hurt if you don't. But I couldn't ignore Denys--he been around since almost the beginning.

As for tagging anyone, no way. I want people to do MY meme.

This is Paulus Bor's "The Enchantress" + Picasso's "Guernica." When I discovered the former, there was just a huge brown space on the wall behind her, and her expression just gave me the idea.

This internet is really a miraculous thing. It's given a way for artists from different centuries to communicate with each other in the future--their future, my present. (Please tell me if you come across anyone doing something similar. Of course there's no reason we can't both do it, but I don't want to entertain any delusional fantasies that I'm the first person to come up with this and then be deflated. But wouldn't it be cool if that turned out to be the case?)

MCO 2007

I'm trying out a new word for this thing I'm doing: Hy-Art. The "Hy" is short for "hybrid," but since I'm dealing with the classic Old Masters and generally considered museum-worthy art, I don't mind that it "hears" as 'High Art." (And "Hybrart" is just not a pretty word. Or is that just me?)

So this is a hybrid of Picasso's "Two Women Running on the Beach," and Monet's "Waterlilies." I wonder whether I'm going to get cease-and-desist orders from some estate, or whether combining two or more works leads one into new realms of copyrightland.

On such a completely different note that I'm tempted to make it another post entirely, I just want to make this point in the debate over Universal Health Care. I contend that if you could tell all the people who are at present making a lot of money out of the system the way it is presently constituted that we could have Universal Health Care AND they could make exactly as much money as they are making now--I'm talking doctors, Insurance Companies, Pharmeceutical Companies--meaningful opposition to it would evaporate overnight.

Now, you might say, "duh, Marc, really going out on a limb on THAT one"--but as obvious at it seems, you will NEVER hear any of the doctors and Insurance and Pharmeceutical companies admit that it is this fear of losing money that is at the root of their opposition to universal healthcare. They pull every bit of tortured argument out of their wily lobbyist-copywrighter pens imaginable, bandying about phrases like "Big Government Health Care" and "Socialized Medicine" and "On Size Fits All" and "Freedom of Choice." It's not that they're against the idea of everybody getting medical treatment, you see, it's that they believe MORE in personal responsibility, and the efficiency of the marketplace, and and look at waiting times for elective surgery in Canada, oh my!

What a CROCK! The aren't against it because they don't believe it can't work. (They been to Europe--they can afford it. They know damn well it can work.) They're against it because it'll hit them in the pocketbook. But they won't admit it because they'd have to admit that knowing that 45 million Americans could have access to the same kind of healthcare they take for granted is not worth the prospect that they might make $150,000 a year instead of $175,000, or for a CEO, $10,000,000 instead of $12,000,000. (Because that IS true. If we have universal health care, some people will not make as much money as they make off the present system. Although, I dare say if that might not have been the case if Bush hadn't just written a $1.5 TRILLION hot check to create 1 million potential terrorists where there were none before.)

I just would really appreciate some honesty in this discussion. Some people WILL take a hit. But in my book, it's a small price to pay. But I'm one of those types--and thank Heavens I'm not alone--whose personal happiness is impacted by the unhappiness of others--even strangers. That's right, a bleeding heart liberal and proud of it.

Let's hope I don't bleed so much I need a transplant. I may have to move to France.

MCO 2007

MCO 2007

So last night in Ralph's, (a grocery store here) my eye happened to catch a Pinot Grigio display. It has been a long time since I actually thought of what a glass of wine would taste like--I wish I could say that the idea turned my stomach. Rather the opposite, I'm afraid. One big-ass glass--nice and round, I NEVER drank wine in a non-wine glass--suddenly seemed to me like a most excellent end to a most excellent day.

I noted the alcoholic thought, thanked my disease for sharing, than suggested it go back to the basement where it can continue plotting its take over of the world to its heart's delight. Then I walked on, getting dinner. David (the ex- and future roommate, no doubt) came home stressed and immediately had a glass, of course. He's very annoying to an alcoholic because he always has just one. Who has just one? (I used to at the end, only because I was on so much meth, so I don't get credit for restraint.)

At 9 the phone rang--a rare occurrence at night. It was my new sponsee, going through a tough time. He was sober for a bit earlier in the year, relapsed, and created some wreckage during that time that he's having to clean up now, months later. He needed a steadying hand to tell him he was doing the right thing, that rigorous honesty tends not to come back to bite you. And he needed someone to walk him through the likely consequences of giving into the "fuckits," and going back out again.

To hear the change in his voice, the slight lifting of anxiety, the sense that he felt indeed steadied--wow, what a powerful thing. A moment that would not have been available to me if I has been on my second or third glass of Pinot Grigio, wondering if I wasn't going to stop in a bar for a quick cocktail (or two or three) later.

Door number 1: "enhancing," soaking, and numbing. Door Number #2: Being of service.

No comparison.

MCO 2007

MCO 2007

I have several blogger friends who never post without including a YouTube, with song lyrics or both, or an image from a favorite artist or series of artists. I guess my equivalent to that are these collages (for lack of a better word-pastiches maybe?). As long as it lasts, I'm just going to post them without necessarily finding a point or a caption. Who knows? Maybe I'll end up with a coffee table book's worth and I'll be soliciting you for a title for that.

I've rejected "Little Big Mouth" and came up with a different list of titles for the potential blog discussed yesterday. I'm going to confine those to the proposal for now, as it doesn't seem right for me to be conducting this discussion with readers when the people I would be working with have yet to see them. I have gotten some individual suggestions--thank you--and are submitting a few of them. I worked on the proposal yesterday, as I decided I couldn't risk procrastinating on it and then suddenly finding it fallen off my To Do list. Lack of follow-up and follow-through DO tend to be my weakness.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for rain in Georgia. Who's pro-drought? At the same time, I find this group prayer (Baptists only!) convened by the Governor ludicrous. Is their idea of God so impoverished that they imagine a befuddled old Creator taking a snooze, who needs their pleading voices to wake him up, at which moment he'll cry out "Oh, I'm sorry! I didn't realize! Here you go! I'll just go light on the monsoons in Bangladesh this year, they've got plenty of water!"

What's so sad is they can't even imagine that maybe God is trying to tell them something with the drought, aka, this is the ONLY WAY I can get you to stop taking 20 minutes showers and drenching your lawn on a daily basis! (No, I don't think God operates lilke this either, but it sure makes more sense than their version of things.)

MCO 2007

Of course I enjoy when I can come up with an original visual that offers up an easy and humorous caption. That's not the case this time, but my 45 minutes of play aren't always about the result--which is still cool, if more whimsical than ironic. This was about the process, getting into that place of flow that's like getting a massage for your frontal cortex.

THIS is what saved my ass in prison. Not that without it I would have gone nuts or anything--I was only there for 9 1/2 months after all. But when I was writing letters, or poems, or drawing, or plotting novels, and most of all, blogging--it didn't matter where I was. The artistic process knows no bounds. When you're engaged in it, you're THERE, not HERE. But the experience that you are writing from can provide invaluable material. In my case, being in prison was excellent fodder. And in a few cases, like when I was truly in a dicey situation like that week with the white supremacist cellmate named Drifter,

creativity may have saved my life. I encouraged him to use his drawing talents to draw a jungle on the wall, and I let him read one of my poems as his own on "talent night." (It distracted him enough from asking too many questions until I had a chance to check myself into protective custody!)

Anyone who follows this blog knows that I extoll the therapeutic virtues of the creative process regularly. And I am gratified to the extent to which my example or comments or support may have facilitated creative expression in others. But I was dancing around how exactly to bring that particular message to the wider world in a way that might also help me pay the bills.

Yesterday I sat down with the Director of the Center for the Children of Incarcerated Parents, and this is what we came up with: A group blog, written by kids who have dealings with the criminal justice system, edited and maintained by me. These will obviously be entries written by kids having a tough time, and even though I will help them hone and craft their work, my personal goal is to faciliate that same sense in them that I know so well, that their own creativity can be a route to escape, transformation, healing. (I guess it's Freedom Writers on the Internet. That's fine---I'm happy to be first to be second.)

I'm going to write up a proposal and the Director is going to take it to her board and if they approve, investigate grant possibiliities so I can commit to this without being overly distracted by the need to pursue other bread-and-butter opportunities just to pay the rent. I'll no doubt ask for some guidance and help from several of you, starting now. Any suggestions for the blog title?

My working title is "Little Big Mouths." If you think that's good, let me know. If you've got a better suggestion, let me know. It'll be a little while before I submit the proposal, as I HAVE gotten back to the screenplay, and as my nephew is back from India on December 1st, I need to have it at least half written by then.

MCO 2007

A reader, "DKThinker" who regularly leaves the most intelligent comments, has started a blog.

How could a blog that is a palindrome (Do Go To God) possibly go wrong?

MCO 2007

Lest you think all I do is flip through art books trying desperately to think up ways to make 300 year-old paintings funny, I'm still picking up trash--waiting anxiously for the now flagyl-treated Gaza to deliver his first solid poop in a week. This morning I found this set of keys, in the bushes in front of an apartment building. I "posed" them on the railing of said building, so that if they belong to a tenant or someone who comes back they will be seen easily enough. I also posted an ad on Craig's List.

Of course, one has to wonder how the keys got there--they would never have been seen by anyone but me, because I know to check for empty pints of vodka right under that bush. They definitely belong to a woman, and it was not far from the Karoake bar on the corner, so the scenario I invented is of a girl who got a little too drunk and then flung her keys angrily at her boyfriend when he told her to let him drive.The keys landed in the bushes and after 10 minutes of searching in the dark, that felt like 2 hours because they were both drunk, they gave up and took a cab, or called Triple AAA or her roommate or whatever.

Isn't it time for there to be a National Lost Keys Registry Service? A key chain you could buy in stores that would guarantee if your keys were put in a mail box they would be electronically scannable from a central location and sent back to you?

I wanted to acknowledge an email I got from a reader in Australia that just made my weekend. He wanted to assure me that my relative dearth of commenters compared to most blogs does not mean I don't have many silent readers who are very faithful. He said some of the nicest things I've ever heard, particularly as a writer who wants to touch people, make them think, laugh, want more. (Sounds likes a hot date, doesn't it?) He was also amusing in describing his "peeping-tom" guilt at reading blogs when you yourself don't have one yourself.

Have no fear Mr. M. We bloggers are an exhibitionist lot, we love being peeped at. It's quite a rush to feel that complete strangers (at first, at least) find what you have to say interesting enough to check in day after day. And for those of us who have yet to conquer that last addiction of wanting LOTS AND LOTS OF ATTENTION, at least we found a way to get our fix that doesn't result in jail-time or waking up with strangers (emphasis on strange.)

MCO 2007

MCO 2007

I seem to be infected by a compulsion to ironically update the Great Masters. It can't last much longer, as I'm confining myself to works of art that are known by everyone. After the Sistine Chapel, Mona Lisa, and Girl with the Pearl Earring, how many more are they?

Gotta Gogh.

MCO 2007

See, this is how comedy works. I'm having a little email exchange with someone whose initials are "DK" and one thing leads to another and now I get to offend the Muslim world AND the Fashion world. Maybe some Ayatollista will issue a "fashtwa," and the cast of Saudi Project Runway will track me down and make me model a line of burkas.

So Friday night I was watching The Wizard of Oz, and I remembered how absolutely traumatized I was by it as a child. The way Elvira Gulch was going to have Toto destroyed, the weird ass munchkins, the way the toes curled up the Wicked Witch of the East after Dorothy took off the ruby slippers, the tree that threw fruit, the flying monkeys--terrifying--those horrible soldiers going "oh-ee-oh-oh=OH=oh"--and of course, the Wicked Witch of the West. And it made me so homesick, so afraid I was going to be forcibly separated from my family, and the balloon, why did it fly away without Dorothy? I felt as stranded as she did. It took me years to enjoy it, I had to get old enough to appreciate those marvelous songs and art direction.

So then I'm in the video store, and a man is in line with his 9ish-year old son, who seems like a very personable and energetic kid, and I see one of the movies the man is going to rent is "Hostel." Another of a recent spate of movies that turns faux-torture into entertainment because of (what I consider) a completely fucked-up cinematic fascination with violence that seems to be the straight male equivalent to what "camp" is for us gays. And I just knew that this man was going to watch this movie with his son, and they were both going to get off on how "cool" the gruesome scenes were.

I wanted to grab the man right there in the video store and shake him. But he probably wouldn't have understood why I was shouting: "Auntie Em, Auntie Em! Don't do it!"

MCO 2007

I can't help it. I have these thoughts, and since Photoshop is a friend of mine, I just gotta go with them.

What plagues me of course is the following question: is the creation of one kind of art in the service of avoiding working on another kind of art a more forgivable form of procrastination? Cause I so enjoy coming up with these graphic amusements, even if I can't even actually hear you chuckle out there in cyberspace. Even if it doesn't put a dime in my pocket or seem to advance my "career" in any discernible way, putting this little oeuvre together made for a delicious hour, almost as wonderful as the nap taken right after.

Who knows where creative expression is going to lead, anyway? Hell, the way the future keeps altering the landscape of art and entertainment, it might well be blogging altered art with funny captions could be just as likely to be what I'm remembered or paid for as anything else.

That's what I tell myself. The truth is that writing is hard. Not blog writing, that's easy. But concentrating on structure, character, believability, motivation, rewriting, rewriting, endlessly rewriting, THAT IS VERY HARD WORK. And the older I get, the lazier I get, frankly. I find the patience to embrace deferred gratification more elusive. I want to see the finished work NOW, get reaction NOW.

Ah, the dilemma of the artist, this artist at least. There are so MANY valid things to do. Working to make some money, reading a good book, going to an AA meeting, commenting on other blogs, talking to a friend, cleaning the house, walking the dog, getting a haircut, writing a letter, reading the New York Times, volunteering, protesting, meditating, going to the movies (after all, how can you expect someone to go to yours if you don't go to theirs?)

And don't forget picking up trash.

What is art for? What does life mean? What does anything mean? Why are we here? Why does everything seem to make me feel guilty?

MCO 2007