February 2008 Archives

These are four shots from my trip to New York. They are all taken from the bus to or from the airport. The bottom left was taken in the bus, where we were regaled by an hour of an ancient episode of David Hasselhof in Knightrider.  The writing and acting was so bad, so 70s, so hackneyed, that it had actually taken on a certain classic quality. Cheese on its way to Camp.  You'd think I was taking a bus to the Pyongyang Airport, and this was the North Koreans trying to show how modern they were. But New York in 2008? I couldn't figure out if the programming was intentionally tongue-in-cheek, or just permananently tuned to ABC (Airport Bus Channel), which evidentally exists in some kind of time warp.

The bottom right pic is of the New York Times building. Sometimes a bumpy ride is a photographer's best friend.

Today I'm awash in demands on my artistic time. I'm trying to figure out which version of a story to submit to a short fiction contest, and a waylaid UPS package full of Hy-Art cards and envelopes should be arriving and I need to fulfill several orders. Do you realize how many years I've been hoping this is exactly what my day looks like?

MCO 2008 

For crying out loud, how stupid can they get? They put me in this airless plastic jump suit and then stick me under the windshield in the hot afternoon sun! I'm friggin' burning up! And I'm squished! SQUISHED!

Okay, okay! Maybe I can't feel the heat, or the pressure of the glass against my nose. But they can't KNOW that.  And what kind of message does that send to the kid, hunh? How is she gonna treat her baby, when she has one, which will probably be at around 14 with the example they're giving her. McDonalds, like, every other day, and don't you think she notices all the other women Mr. Babydaddy flirts with? What an asshole--

--hey who are you, with the cameraphone? I didn't say you could take my picture!  Shit, I can't even fix my hair. Damn windshield. I don't always look like this,you know I have a killer little pink dress, she puts me in at home. That little girl LOVES me! Hey, come back here, I'm not finished with you! SHE LOVES ME!

Well, it would seem I've created yet another hybrid art from - The One Minute Illustrated Short Story- or OMISS. You just take a photo, and write a tiny little novel about it.

As usual, feel free to use at as a meme.

I gotta run, trying to finish a short story and gotta do some work on making getting the Hy-Art Cards a smoother process, as far as the Internets go.  What I want to know is how did all these web designers get to be web designers?  We went from 1998, and there were, like 10, and now it's 2008, and they're are hundreds of thousands, and they're ALL SELF-TAUGHT.  How come I can't even figure out how to add a blog roll, or a link inside a banner?

I'm artsmart and technostupid.  That's what you get for majoring in Film and French. I can romance you with poems about Truffaut in a Parisian cafe but I'm rather not the savviest entrepreneurd.

MCO 2008

P.S.  Let's see if I can actually come up with an OMP (One Minute Poem) about Truffaut in a Parisian cafe

Oh Francois

Quelle joie

Ton cinema

J'espere ne pas faire

Un truffaux- pas

Si je te dis

quand tu m'a pris

Dans tes bras

Sous la pluie

Dehors de la brasserie

Sous le ciel de Paris

C'etait

De la poesie...

This photo was on the wall at the party I went to Saturday, it was taken by a woman named Jane Lensky.  I fell in love with it. You just know she's wondering if she wishes her husband Arthur was still alive or not.

She likes her life in Florida, even if it's a little lonely. But she can only afford Boca Raton because Arthur dropped dead and left her a pile of money after repeatedly refusing to close his dry-cleaning business and retire. "Sell it to the Koreans!" she would scream at him, especially after the first heart attack. But that Arthur, was he stubborn.  Which made him a pain in the ass to live with. There were days she thought she would stab him with a fork if she had to listen to one more stupid story about how suede was so hard to clean he was thinking of dropping the leather-and-suede-cleaning part entirely. And then taxes! Would he rail against taxes. And yet he'd still vote Democratic.  

Let's face it, Arthur was cheap. 36 years in that same 2-bedroom on 73th street, when all of her friends had moved to Long Island. If they'd moved to the suburbs, she would have had another child besides Neil. She'd never told Arthur that. Never told him about the birth control pills. You'd think a man would have figured that out! Hell, he knew. He just didn't want to know, if you know what I mean.  Another child would have meant leaving that precious apartment--if it was a girl. The truth was, if it was a girl Arthur was afraid it would look too much like his dead sister, Miriam. But that was another story.

I was going to write about art--how divine it is that its creation has nothing to do with the need for food, clothing or shelter. But I think spinning a little yarn based on a beautiful photo says it all much better.  However here are some lovely quotations if you care to fugue on the topic. This is my favorite I think: Art is a collaboration between God an the artist, and the less the artist does the better - Andre Gide.

MCO 2008

 

 

Yes, I came up with this, but I bet you anything someone else did too. Something very similar will probably be a graphic on Jon Stewart or SNL - mark my words.  Lest you think I should "submit" it--believe me, I've tried to find a way, and I discoverd long ago the the writers for these shows don't want to be accused of stealing anything, not to mention they are very well-compensated for coming up with their own stuff, thank you very much.  They don't exactly earn those salaries by taking material submitted by Joe Wannabe Comedy Writer--even if it's funny--especially if it's funny. I can't blame them. Would you?

But Jon, don't you think you should hire one writer who's older than you?>You don't even have to use my jokes, just pay me, and declare me your token senior, to show off that you don't buy in to the Hollywood "ageist" culture. C'mon, wouldn't you like to go for coffee who someone who "gets" you?  Who watched The Mod Squad when you did? Who remembers what a doddering idiot Reagan was because he was actually old enough to read the paper?

I'll be waiting for your email. Or just send money.

MCO 2008

 

I love this shot I took from the train in New York. I didn't even notice the couple until after I took it.

One of my very first and most loyal readers has started a blog, and I'm particularly happy to recommend it.   We have quite a history, and I don't think he'll mind me sharing some of it.  S. was one of my clients, back in the day, and as all of us do on meth, he went to some very dark places. It was finally a matter of life and death that he get sober, but after a month he was ready to go at it again.  He then called me, and I refused to sell to him. In fact I spent a good half-an-hour on the phone with him, reminding him where the meth had taken him, encouraging him to stay the course.

The next morning, there was a little baggie of crystal under my welcome mat, and I couldn't figure out how or why it had gotten there.  Then, when I got sober, S.--who'd been reading the blog while I was in prison-- told me that what happened was that he'd called another dealer after our conversation and bought some crystal from him. But he couldn't shake our conversation, and instead of using it, put the baggie under my doormat, That turned out to be his sobriety date.

I often think how strange it must be to think of me as a drug dealer, with all of the concomitant nefarious connotations. But I lived with what I did by maintaining a certain ethic: when someone was trying to get off the crazy train, I supported their efforts, to the point of cutting them off and sending them to a meeting. I thought I was the exception, but you'd be surprised how many times I've heard similar stories in the rooms.  Dealers see it all, and feel so enslaved to their own addiction and the fast cash, to the illusion that they are dispensing happiness (think how often bartenders are the target of effusive gratitude) that sometimes it's all they can do to say "save yourself--I'm too far gone."  The idea that they are out to hook newbies to make money is just not accurate. The last thing you have to do is find new customers--word-of-mouth among addicts is a marketer's dream.

In any case, S. has moved to Chicago after the death of his mother (inheriting her house) and is documenting his new life there. He's a very sharp writer, please visit him at: http://gayscribeinthecity.blogspot.com/

MCO 2008 

This was the best picture I could manage because the space is small, but it doesn't really do the room justice.  It is the reading room of the gorgeous house owned by a director and his wife, where the party yesterday was held. I fell in love with the house, but this room in particular.  What you can't see is the books that line the shelves above and across from it.  Absolute heaven.

The party was wonderful. Heather loved my lamp, and read a beautiful passage from her book. I took pictures, and talked to a lot of interesting people,  I bought a copy of the book and started reading it last night. I can't recommend it enough--here's today's review in the Los Angeles Times.

Tomorrow I should get, via UPS, from my sister in Alburquerque, the sets of Hy-Art cards--which she is able to produce at much lower costs than I am. I will then send them out to the pending orders.

I wish for every one of you a sister like I have, or a friend like Heather.

Last night I watched "Across the Universe."  What a lovely film--sort of Moulin Rougey in its creation of a narrative to link already written songs, but a more developed story and no way as frenetic as that film. And of course, the songs are the from the oeuvre of The Beatles, so gorgeous--as are the actors.

It's raining and all is right with my world. I predict a cozy Sunday.  Until tonight of course, when Jon Stewart gets the Oscars going.  I'm going to christen my friend Michael's new 8000- ft. wide-screen TV and cheer on Michael Clayton. 

MCO 2008.

So this is the light I made in honor of my friend Heather King's new book, "Redeemed: A Spiritual Misfit Stumbles Toward God, Marginal Sanity, and a Peace the Passes All Understanding."  I'm going to give it to her at her book party this afternoon.  What pleases me the most is when you get tired of it as a light, you can just take it off, turn it over and it becomes a vase!  (Yeah, yeah, I should do these as commissions and charge tons of money. Been there, done that. My business was called "Wizard of Vase."  The problem is you have to charge a LOT to make it worth the hours of labor. But if it's done from love and affection--ah what a pleasure.) It's covered in the pages of a weathered old Hebrew-English dictionary, by the way.

Yesterday I was going to see "Atoned" but decided to stay in, make dinner for David, and rent "Michael Clayton" instead.  So I go to the video store and then Ralph's, and instead of the generic store brand of yogurt, I decided to get a half-dozen yogurts. Behind me in line, a redhaired Armenian woman of about 70 hands me a coupon--40 cents off 6 or more Yoplaits.  I am very touched and thank her, and she says: "No, I thank you. I live on your block. Every morning I see you picking up the trash. Very nice man."

The feeling I had at that moment was better than any rush from being let in behind a red velvet rope at a chic nightclub.  I now have a completely new definition of "cool." 

MCO 2008

P.S.  Though I gotta say, "Michael Clayton" was way up there in "coolness." What an amazingly well-written and made movie.

The above is the flag hanging in the center of Grand Central Station, part of my pix from the trip back east .  Photography is defintely becoming a new passion.  I love coming up with an original angle, or taking shots of people who don't know they're being photographed. I also love finding the beauty of places one doesn't normally think of as beautiful-- trash-filled lots, the industrial sections of a city, random urban spaces. Or just an interesting composition. If you don't have the patience or the interest to look through the 50 shots, have no fear, I will be posting the best of them for a while, on or two at a time. 

I think I need to recharge my batteries with the making of new Hy-Arts  I've created a lot of glorious designs, and with the help of my sister, I'm putting together new sets of cards and selling them. (If you're waiting, the new sets should be ready in a week or so.  If you're curious,  it's $25 for 20 cards, with envelopes, and you can order a set by emailing me at makemarc@aol.com --- also my Paypal account address.   And if you're a new reader and not familiar with my Hy-Art, click here  and see what I'm talking about.)

This morning I got an email from Tennessee Tony letting me know that he's been getting serious with someone.  I've been ready for this for a while, the man is just too goodlooking to go single for too long.  I'm at least grafeful that I've had a year to prepare, so that I could tell him quite honestly that I'm happy for him.  As long as their endearments for each other are not the same as ours, (there's only ONE Lil Puppy/Big Daddy combo) and this guy is not as funny as I am, I can take it. (Especially since I can blame all the states between here and the Mississippi for why Tony and I aren't together. Damn Arizonexicotexahomarkansasee.)

The weird thing is that I actually had another little crush in Nashville, on the guy whose house I sublet when I was visiting Tony. He's an old friend of Molly's whom she thought I would be well-suited for, and I'm pretty sure the attraction was mutual when we met. Not to mention we have a lot more in common than Tony and I, among other things, he has a background in the theater and loves the New York Times and ABC soaps. I just couldn't imagine pursuing him while visiting Tony, obviously, and now that's not a problem. (He's still 7 states away, you say? What? I can't hear you! I'm in denial!) Just the other day I was finding myself very amused by an email of his and wondering how I was going to move this along. Could it even be that perhaps, ulimately, I met Tony so I could meet him?  Well, fun questions to ponder. I've got my feelers out and will keep you posted, as ever.

This is a good day.  I was so achy and fatigued yesterday I was worried, but it seems like it was just jet lag.

MCO 2008

I snuck this pair of photos of two cop partners on the train.  Wish I was brave enough to ask them to pose, but then again, it's a little more fun to do it on the sly, the whiff of risk and all that.  I took these on the cell phone, I have yet to download all the ones I took on the digital. One of  many tasks that await me today.  (I flew back last night.).

I don't want to travel again until I can afford a laptop.  I have way too many emails and alerts to attend to that I had to ignore at my Mom's, because I didn't want to spend too much time in the computer room away from her.  So I'm going to keep this short so I can get to them. Plus I have some orders for some Hy-Art cards, and need to get cracking on them.

The flight back was plum full of handsome men. Just thought I'd let you know.

MCO 2008

Spending time with the elderly really gets one thinking of the stages of man. We all go through it--if we're lucky. The self-centeredness, passion and arrogance of youth.  The questioning, anxiety and richness of middle-age, then the wisdom, fear and philosophizing of the "golden" years.

My mom lives in the really deluxe retirement community, and finds herself in a daily battle with anxiety and confusion in the morning, getting better by afternoon and evening, leavened by a sense of blessedness because her living conditions are about as good as it gets.  I find myself feeling none of the conflicts of earlier years, the inevitable clashes of parent and child.  I only find in myself an inexpressible tenderness, which is only fair. That's all I ever got from her.

But I do think of the elderly around the world.  The 70-years olds in Africa who sleep on dirt floors with their 6 grandchildren, orphaned by AIDS. Of the mothers of beggars or prostitutes in India, the last, sometimes, to eat. I think of the women of Afghanistan, who live in burkas from adolescence until death, the veterans in Russia or in VA homes, who have seen terrible things, the survivors of concentration camps in nursing homes in Riverdale and the Fairfax district of L.A, who can't bear to remember or to forget. 

Not that thinking of them does much good for them, but who knows how these things work? I could be firing off some positive electrons that hit some other positive electrons, and someone sitting alone in a room in the Bronx might feel a little less lonely for five minutes, and not know why. 

I'm flying back home today.

MCO 2008

My Mom used to be pretty fearless about coming into New York. In fact, when I was in college and most of the years after, she would come in about once a month. We would meet at Grand Central, and go to lunch and see a French movie. (This is what separates the gay sons from the straight sons.  Gay sons go out on dates with their moms.  Straight sons go out on man-dates with their Dads, they "catch a game."  I met my Dad for lunch, once, and went to a old book fair with him, once.)

My mother suffers from a lot of logistics-anxiety. When is the train again? When do we have to get ready? How will we get to the station? I patiently answer all the questions, and then again.  Often she'll ask me again when it's over. How did we get here? Who did we see? What did we do?  And then she'll come up with an observation about something that happened when we were doing whatever we were doing that attests to an ever-sharp mind. The brain is an odd concoction.

MOMA was wonderful, if a bit too populated because of the holiday weekend. I took heart in the crowds, as they belie the reports of a populace that devalues education, n'est-ce pas? I forgot that "modern" doesn't necessary mean "contemporary."  We saw much of what I use in my Hy-Art, including Cezannes, Picassos, etc.  Rather staid compared to the wild installations I saw at Denver's Museum of Contemporary Art.

My good friend Claudia has learned to let her Mom be her Mom. That means charging to every information booth and every Maitre D, determining all the options and particulars to the oncoming experience. My mother hangs back, almost shy, though we all got our two cents in at a lovely lunch at the Cafe Terrasse. Mostly me, the loudmouth raconteur at most gatherings.

I took some cool pictures, especially from the train. I love taking pictures from the train.

Today is just hang out with Mom day, maybe take a walk.  Tomorrow afternoon I go home. Boy am I addicted to the internet. I feel positively parched, at just an hour a day.  And my mother does not have cable--I've had to confine myself to network. Can you imagine?

MCO 2008

hudson.bmp

I'm in the computer room downstairs at my mother's retirement community, so I don't know how successful my attempt to download a picture of the Hudson will be.  I got a "cheap thrills" shot of two NYC cops on the train coming up here that I'll share when I get back,

In less than an hour we're going into the city to have lunch with friends and see the new MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) building.  My mother is battling a lot of memory and anxiety about memory, I keep repeating when the train is leaving and that I'll handle everything. Over lunch, watch her remember details of my youth (and hers) like a champ.  It's so odd how old age attacks short-term memory and leaves long-term memory intact.  I thinks we must need it more.

What I love about history is how if you combine remembering the past with reimagining it, you can access times and places you never were every bit as well as if you'd lived them yourself.  All the walls in the hallways here are covered with the residents' artwork--often from a lifetime of accumulation.  Photos from trips to China and Peru, masks from Africa, posters from Provence.  When I open myself up to it, I can feel all the energy of so much memory wash over me.

I see the roomful of seniors having dinner and I imagine it to be 60 years earlier. What it would have been like if they were all in a high school or college cafeteria--not a walker in sight.  I am about to go off an a major manifesto about time, but I can't--ironically, I don't have the time.  But the friend we are meeting will understand. She has the most historicial memory of anyone I know. But that's another blog entirely.

MCO 2008

I can't believe how much I enjoy visiting my Mom.  I sleep well, I have intense dreams, we have all sorts of wide ranging conversations, we do the crossword puzzles.  She shows me off to all of her friends and I make them laugh.  It's really a pleasure.

I was stuck in the last row of the plane, behind 20 rows of 8th graders from Corona del Mar on a field trip to New York.  You've never seen so much electronic gear...Ipods, portable DVR players, Digital Cameras, all in semi-constant use. OY!  But all of it does seem to be in the service of this hyperconnectedness, a need to be social at all moments.  On the one hand, it's sorta sweet.  On the other hand, it seemed tragic that there wasn't one kid reading a book. In my day we would have been reading.  Hell, in my day, a bunch of 8th graders would never have thought of taking a field trip in anything but a yellow bus.

This is short because my Mom is about to come get me for a piano concert in the community room.

Love to all

MCO 2008

 

My friend Jacquie sent me this extraordinary PowerPoint presentation of the

POT-topimages2007.pps and one of them just really hit me between the eyes:

 

MCO 2008

This is yesterday's work.  Heather and Mark, one and two, are close friends, and these were Valentine's Day presents for them.  (I had emailed Mark and told him: "You better call me for Valentine's Day, dammit!"  When he did, I asked him who his favorite artist is, and he said "Botticelli.") Yasmin, on the right, is my very first "Thou Art" client, all the way from England!

It wasn't supposed to be this way.  I am a writer!  And have no fear, I will never not be a writer, and I truly can't imagine being remembered primarily as a visual artist, even if the "art" is conceptual, as Photoshop does all of the actual "painting." But what I love about the journey of life, of my life, of sobriety in particular, is a willingness to row my canoe in the direction of the river. And if I hugged the left bank (writing), sticking to what I "knew" out of fear, I would have never spent time on the right bank, and developed a what turned out to be a real knack for graphic artistic expression. Ironically enough, it was those hours on meth where I had the obsessive focus that proved as valuable as a year of art classes, but in sobriety we get to own and acknowledge the value of all our experience. Nothing goes to waste,  (Even the bad stuff, accounts of hospitals and prisons and spiritual emptiness, when shared, helps others.)

And certainly, my capacity to connect my art and writing with the world has bloomed in sobriety, because I'm not afraid of all of you.  I've climbed into my faithful canoe, and happily wave at the rest of the canoes, inviting many of you in and jumping into yours.  Sometimes we take a swim.  I still see those canoes furiously rowing upstream, just as I did, and all I can do is try to show them how much less exhausting it is to turn the canoe around. But everyone has their journey, and I have learned to respect even those who frustrate me by doggedly sticking to a path that clearly drives them repeatedly into the rapids.

Tomorrow morning I'm off to New York to spend 5 days with my Mom.  I will blog from there, 

MCO 2008 

So I really didn't so much have the money to give to the Afghan Women refugees, and then the universe stepped up to handle that. A lovely woman named Val emailed me and said she loved the Hy-Art she saw on my website, did I have any cards for sale?

It just so happened that I had the set my sister had made me for Christmas, and within a few hours it was winging its way to Florida and my paypal account was $25 richer--and hence some Afghani refugee will eat for a week without me having to pay my phone bill late.  (I'm always in a moral quandary about giving away money when you owe it to others.  Does one have the right?)

Anyway, my sister is willing to run off more sets on her deluxe, cheap printer.  The question is, do I have customers out there? Would you order a set of 20 for $25 (incl. shipping.)?  If I get more than 5 yesses, I may consider starting a little site on E-bay. 

MCO 2008

P.S.  Don't say yes just to make me feel good. Only if you mean it! 

What could be a better Valentine's Day present than a reverse "Thou Art" from my adorable niece and nephew, inserting their Uncle Marc into some pieces.  TICKLED ME PINK.

The charity I finally chose for my Second Annual Valentine Expenditure Day (S.A.V.E.D.) is the USA for the United Nations Refugee Fund . Now I know most of you give plenty, and don't need me to wag a finger at you.  But if you were inspired to cough up some money that might have otherwise gone to a Valentine feel free to comment and let me TOOT YOUR HORN for you!

You have NO idea how much affection I feel for all of you.  I am SO grateful, especially recently, because my  numbers are way up, for some reason!

MCO 2008

It is rare indeed that I don't know what to blog about. So I decided to grab something from my old notebook of writings that from the 90s that are no longer on any computer.  (When I was arrested, my computer was confiscated, Not everything was backed up.)

Anyway, in the crazy screenplay I referred to a few blogs back, the main character is pretending to be British when she loses her memory, and when she wakes up in a Nashville hospital after a plane crash, she's speaking in a n English accent, and bonds with her nurse, Lurleen, who is trying to make it in country music.  "Amanda," my heroine, decides to write her a song using her knowledge of Shakespeare (before she lost her memory she was editing a book on his work.)  She comes up with:

2B or not 2B

Found the matchbook in the laundry

You forgot to check your pants

Called your office and your cellphone

Than had to take a chance

Got the jeep and started wand'ring

To the address on the tracks

The motel rently hourly

I thought you had more class

The room was up a stairwell

Second floor and on the right

Was this a final farewell

Would I run or would I fight?

2B or not 2B

That's the burning question

Not 3A and not 4C

God I hope that I'm mistaken

On the landing was a payphone

Dialed you one more time

Felt the stings of slings and arrows

Till your voice came on the line

Not 2B, oh not 2B

That's the answer to my questions

Not 2B, oh not 2B

I'm so glad I was mistaken.

It could use a little work, but it's a lot of fun. I really should take a songwriting class, but I really should do a lot of things.

That's what I love about blogging. These little gems don't have to rot on my shelf, I have this little platform to put it out there in the universe.

MCO 2008 

So the day before yesterday I went to Elysian Park with a friend and the dog and caught this lovely view of the old and new (left.)  And then, in a very opening-of-Law-and-Order moment, found (right) this dress splayed against the grass. Prom Dress or Quincenara Gown? (That's the Mexican equivalent of a sweet-16, except given at 15).  Given the neighborhood, I suspect it was the latter, and of course, absent a dead body, I went all over the place in my head as to how it got there.  Is it a souvenir of a young girl's lost innocence, perhaps? Or is there a much more pedestrian explanation?.

I should, of course, write the short story behind the dress myself, but I am at present a bit busy building an empire that will make the Aaron Brothers weep with envy.  I have added several more creations to Thou Art, and I insist you go check them out. There's still time to get in your Valentine's Day order! 

I also got a call from Steven this weekend, feeling insecure about his writing.  I assured him he'd written some of his best of late, but I thought I'd replug his blog and encourage some commenting. It makes his day and doesn't cost you a penny! 

Prison's A Bitch

MCO 2008 

P,S,  Rod over at  http://www.kickintina.blogspot.com/ has deeply touched me with his words--not to mention, he looks quite dapper in Ingres! 

My nephew recommended a wonderful site called Dark Roasted Blend to which I have submitted the HY-Art for consideration,

I had to share two of their "Weird Signs."

 

 

MCO 2008

My, my, my, I'm having an interesting mornng.  Sheria's response to my rendition was not only enthusiastic, but several of her readers immediately expressed interest in having one done for them.  I realized that I should strike while the iron is hot, just in case, I have, indeed, landed on something profit-making.

So I created these samples. The top left is Rod. A picture he had on his blog of Amy Winehouse immediately inspired one of her (if you know how to get it to her people, please forward it!)  And I posted them all on a new blog, called Thou Art. Please spread the word, I mean, c'mon, can you GET a more original gift for someone?

Prices will be very reasonable, but I reserve the right to negotiate depending on how developed you want the final product, whether you want me to print, frame, ship etc.

I just love being all creative, all the time. I live a truly magical life.

MCO 2008

 

Well, she didn't exactly pray for it, however Sheria made the suggestion -- after I put myself into one of my Hy-Arts -- that I do it with others, even consider doing it as a moneymaking sideline.  Well, it's a great suggestion, but in order to pull it off, I need to get a portfolio together don't I?

So I started with Sheria--although this is a surprise, she had no idea.  If you would like to see what I do with you, please send a pic, (marcolmsted@ca.rr.com) and if you have a favorite artist, I can see if I can accommodate that as well. Otherwise, I'll just choose one for you.If you like it and you want me to do one of or for someone else as a gift, then we'll talk a little fee.   

I put Sheria in a George de la Tour (late Renaissance), called The Fortune Teller.

MCO 2008

So my sister goes skiing and can't help but take a pic of this set of directional signs at a resort, one reading "Gayway."  At that very moment, I was doing just that, taking surreptitious photos of shirtless hot men hiking up Runyon Canyon in our unbelievable-for-February-even-in-California-is-this-global-warming weather.  (Listen, if I wasn't extremely shallow once in a while, you'd never appreciate my depth the rest of the time.) Thanks Sis!

It's also the new issue of The International Carnival of Postivities, which is an interesting group blog of sorts in which one blogger "hosts" entries from many others on various topics relating to HIV.  This issue is hosted by Dragonette at Not Perfect at All.  Ron Hudson, the editor, selected one of my entries, "Grace"  which most of you read last month. Please go check out the blog, not to reread me, but to support some of the others.  Ron has a good eyes and always chooses interesting stuff.

Sheria, whose judgement I trust implicitly, read the first chapter of "Here Lies the Truth," and insisted that it reads page-turningly well as a memoir.  It then occured to me that I can name several memoirs that are every bit as compelling as a novel, and sell just as well. So I'm sticking to the first person, and not novelizing it, but taking full advantage of the prose narrative form. (Maybe I should rename it "A Million Little Dollars." Then they can't accuse me of trying to make a buck with my pain! I'm admitting it right from the get go!)

I saw "Bernard and Doris" last night, on HBO. GAY, GAY, GAY!  The only thing gayer was a friend announcing he was going to spend the night at a bathhouse. He delivered his intentions with a warning, almost a threat: "C**KS WILL BE S**KED!"  We lafffffed. 

I think I had a better time watching Susan Sarandon then he did on his quest, but both of us definitely took The Gay Way.

MCO 2008

P.S, I feel obligated to balance out my celegaytion of shallowtude with a reminder that I and most gay Westerners live in a relative utopia compared to gays arounds the world.  I found this wonderful African poet/blogger on ICP who serves as quite the reality check.

http://gayuganda.blogspot.com/2008/02/where-it-is-illegal-to-be-hiv-positive.html

 A month or two ago I gave an old screenplay I wrote back in the 90's to someone I trust, an acting teacher who asked to read something I wrote.  (It's a comedy about a Tracy Ullman-like character who invents all these accents and personalities and then gets amnesia, and misremembers herself to be one of her inventions.) Yesterday my friend got back to me. "I LOVED  your screenplay. It was brilliant. But I have to tell you something." Uh-oh. There's always something. "I think you're a novelist.  I have never read a screenplay before where I wanted so much to know more about every single character you introduced to the story."

To put it mildy, this insight resonated, particularly given what I was going through.  I had just applied to be in a screenwriter's group, as I simply can't dredge up the motivation to work on the second draft of the script I wrote over Christmas. I felt that I had to create some deadlines, and there's nothing like owing pages to a group of other writers to light a fire under your procrastinating ass.  But I was also wrestling with what I recognized to be an internal resistance to the form itself.  I've become so accustomed, via the blog, to sharing all the insight and description I can conjure up in prose form, and I find the screenplay format much less satifsfying.

So I'm going to return to my memoir, Here Lies The Truth, but see what happens when I rewrite it in the third person, to give me the narrative flexibility of the fiction form. As interesting as my story is just the way it happened, it's also absurdly unwieldy, as reality tends to be. A little rearranging makes for a much better read, (which is why novels are much more read than biographies) and if you need to throw in a composite character of several, or fuse some different moments of clarity into one, you can.

Of course, if they accept me into the screenwriter's group, I will stll go and participate and rewrite my drafts  and read and critique the writing of the others. At the very least it's a way to make new talented and creative friends.  And if they decline my application, I'll just stuff that into my "I'll show them" resentment bag, and use it to redouble my efforts to be in a position where they pass a store window and see my book on sale, and kick themselves for their inablity to perceive my genius.  I'm always heartened by a author friend of mine, Kathy Hepinstall, who was passed on for admission in a M.F.A. Creative Writing program, and went on to publish three books. 

The above is a hybrid of Bazile and Landseer. And guess who makes an appearance? Look closely

MCO 20008 

I'm reading Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. (He's the author of The Kite Runner.)  It's the story of two Afghani woman from the 70s to the present, and as you can imagine, some of it is nothing short of harrowing.

As my own past would have it, I lived above an Afghani immigrant couple in West Hollywood for 12 years.  Soheila brought me a plate of food twice a week without fail.  This childless couple, who lived off the earnings of selling at local flea markets, attuned me to Afghanistan in a way I never would have otherwise been. When I read about the Taliban taking over in 1996, I was horrified.  I  was much more able to imagine the plight of the women there by imagining Soheila forced to don a burka.  When America invaded in 2001, Soheila and Ati had a big party. I was quite happy for them, as far as I could be happy for anyone in my crystal haze. (As I write this, I realize that my relationship with them is worth an entire essay, perhaps a short story.)

As anyone who's read A Kite Runner can tell you, you certainly don't have to know an Afghani to be moved by Hosseini's work.  But I personally find his descriptions of life for women in the Muslim Third World to challenge my faith.  This question is as old as Buddha--what does God mean in a world of so much suffering?  How do we live on a day to day basis with this knowledge?  How can I enjoy my little prosperous life knowing how many others live in terror and subjugation?

This provoked quite an interior discussion of questions of humility, helplessness, hopelessness and redemption. Strangely--or appropriately--enough, the only way I found to deal with it was prayer. I wished these woman strength, and from God asked for clarity on the best way I myself could help alleviate their suffering. But even more importantly,  I prayed for the men who inflict such cruelty. For them to have arrived at a place so foreign to their humanity had to have necessitated a terrible journey. And that's the prayer that ultimately brought me relief, that allowed me to sleep.

Get your checkbooks ready people.  This February 14th  will be my Second Annual Valentine's Expenditure Day (SAVED) in which I encourage you to give $25 or more to charity in lieu of, or addition to, a gift to your honey.  If you don't have a favorite, I'm going to find a medical charity for Afghani women and will share that information with you.

Meanwhile, as an artist, I'm grateful for writers like Hosseini. He inspires me as a storyteller and as a humanitarian.  There's a lot of God in that.

MCO 2008

P.S.  The above Hy-Art is Whistler (the landscape) and Bruni (the refugees).  

Sheria suggested I start defining some of the funny words I come up with, (did anyone notice the intentional mispelling of "boundaries" yesterday as "bounda-rays?"  I was trying to suggest the invisible lines projected by straight men.) I've decided I'm going to try to visually express them when I can think of something good.  I do love this one.

As far as epiphanies at breakfast, I have them all the time. At lunch and dinner too. Driving the car. Sitting here at the computer. In fact I share most of them with you!  For the Chinese New Year though, I was eligible for a free reading from tarot.com, and so I said what the hell? The question I usually ask is about my career, this time I went for the gold and asked whether I might find success in love this year. This is what it came up with:

 

I'll take it!

MCO 2008

P.S.  I actually don't think about the love thing much at all, and beyond momentary infatuations while out in the world, spend next to no time in pursuing it. My gut feeling has been for a while that there's a husband in my future, but he will appear after I get some professional success, and I will meet him as part of that process.  Until then, I will post at will about fantasy hotties or the Joy of Flirting, but trust me, I do not sit and pine about what (who) is not mine.  I've evolved enough to know when it works, it's not work. If I don't know whether the other guy is interested, then that's an indicator that this is no tree to bark up.

P.P.S.  And yes, I know relationships are hard work. But the romance shouldn't be.

 

I fell in love all over the place yesterday.  First I fell in love with democracy, because, in my book, there's no anti-depressant like voting,   Then I fell in love with this guy, pictured above left, whose picture does not do him justice.  (No, we exchanged nary a word, I still have to master the capacity to talk to handsome men whose sexual orientation is unclear to me. Damn this rampant metrosexuality! It's jammed my gaydar completely!)

Then I fell in love with my dental hygienist, not because he was particularly cute but because he validated my recent devotion to flossing as working well. I fell in love with my ex-roommate, who cut my hair for free and even paid to have my parking validated.  I fell in love with the writers of All My Children, who give me endless hours of camp pleasure. I fell madly in love with Irina Menzel, whose video is posted below.

Then I REALLY fell in love.  A little backstory--two days ago I hiked in Bronson Canyon, and couldn't help but notice a Jason Statham ("Transporter") lookalike with a three pit bulls, two frisky young ones and an older, arthritic one with a harness/cart holding up his backside. I decided to impress him from afar with my trashpicking, and chose a litter-strewn mudflat that looked far more firm than it was, after our recent rains. I promptly sunk past my ankles, ruining my subsequent walk with mudsoaked feet.  (He wasn't that close, but I felt rather foolish--that's what you get for showing off your ability to pick up trash.).

On a completely different trail yesterday, I ran into him again, with just the harnessed dog.  He immediately went to pet Gaza, and I went to pet his ultra sweet arthritic pit, asking him where the other two were.  He tells me in this soft, gravelly voice that was one of the sexiest I've ever heard, that three days a week he goes and gets these dogs from a shelter to "rehab" them so they can be adopted.  I gave him the thumbs up, as butchly as possibly, and walked away with a "Have a Great Day."

But again, completely jammed gaydar. When they're that hot, you have to factor in your wishful thinking. And, at least in LA, there are really a distressing amount of young straight men who are perfectly friendly and don't emit any bounda-rays, who probably wouldn't even care if you flirted with them. But how embarrassing if you're wrong.

What I can do, of course, is post a little something on Craig's List M4M missed connections.  And have something friendly and witty prepared for the next chance encounter, like; "Will you marry me?"  You know, casual.

MCO 2008 

So I'm glad to have this beautiful woman for my very first insertion of You Tube. (Don't forget, I'm 49 in the 18-49 demographic. I have 8 months until technobsolescence!)

Rod played this song in Denver, and it hit me right between the eyes, in a way that one song does very rarely. 

If you know her, please tell her I want to be her new best friend.

And if you want to read the lyrics, let me refer you to rod's blog.  (I'm testing how to insert a link. 

I almost forgot what it was yesterday, February 4, 2004 was the last day I did meth, as well as the day I was arrested for dealing and forgery.  Even though some drinking after I got out of prison meant I had to set my sobriety date in December of that year, for me, February 4th is the day I started on this journey.  (Prison was a very hardcore re-introduction to reality when you've been AWOL from it for so long--but in many ways a blessing. I had to find God in a place where she was not readily evident, and nothing could have trained me better for the future, in retrospect.)

Four has always been "my" number, and election years have always been very big years in my life.  In 1976 I was in France for a year, in 1980 I graduated college.  1984 was, well, 1984, and, well, perhaps what makes them feel so seminal personally is that they're memorable politically.  But I'm feeling a tingle this year. A sense of hope, renewal, of  renaisssance. I remember the crushing disappointment of both Gore and Kerry's loss (the latter just a couple of weeks before my release), but they bookended the darkest years of my crystal use and full-time dealing.  My sobriety has coincided with the gradual awakening of most of the country from the nightmare of the Bush junta, and damned if I don't intend my personal eblouissance ("shining" in French) not to coincide with the reintroduction of electoral sanity on the national level.

The Hy-Art is not a bad snapshot of four years ago, with me as Degas' absinthe-soaked bar denizen and the police as the El Greco's dour finger-pointer. (Although I was not your typical drug-dealer for sure--probably one of the very few who had the New York Times delivered to his door every day and actually read it. In fact, when the lawyer visited me three days in, the first thing I asked him was who won the New Hampshire primary!)

MCO 2008

 So yesterday I watched the Superbowl and then Masterpiece Theater, which was an absolutely exquisite coda to its recent series of the works of Jane Austen. "Miss Austen Regrets," written by Gwyneth Hughes, imagined the last years of Austen's life (played pitch perfectly by Olivia Williams).

I thought I might take a hand describing my day yesterday by attempting to write in the style of Jane Austen.  If this inspires you, consider it a meme: Choose a well-known author and write an entry in his or her writing style.

 

He delighted in the inclement weather to which he awakened--it was uncommon enough in his little corner of Angelshire, where he lived in delightful solitude enlivened only by his dog and the frequents visit of his former fiancé, Mr. Ex.  They had remained an amicable pair of sorts, like a pair of old slippers that one could not imagine replacing. They cooked for each other, indulged in fervid gossip and the exchange of frank confidences--often in silly accents---and alternately celebrated and lamented the decreasing frequency with which either of them ever received proposals of marriage or even a date to the cinema.

 

Because of the rain, M. did not indulge his usual habit of whispering the refuse of the surrounding garden paths and local chemins. It was too much to balance his parasol, his excited pointer/mix, and a trashpicker. But today was a special day, anyway, a day that only came once a year. He would return to his usual habits tomorrow, when the Great Game had turned into a memory to be savored or ruminated upon.

 

After he returned from his walk, M. wrote in his diary. He has been taken with some of the Old Masters he'd seen hanging in a museum, and spun his inspiration into a poem about bringing flowers to death, and death crying from the kindness of receiving them. M. took great pleasure and pride in communing with his muse--that was the real marriage of his life.  The Goddess of Romantic Euphoria had anointed him early and often in his past, but the torment of heartbreak and disappointment had been his equally frequent companion as well. He found the outlet of creative expression to be a much more dependable object of his affection.

 

The early afternoon was consumed in correspondence and chores--Lord Ex came by to do his laundry and eat breakfast, and then settle in for the Great Game. Such a night of theater!  How rare it was for the first acts to be so plodding and unexciting, only to be completely redeemed by a last-minute twist of fate and athletic prowess that cause the lungs to gasp and the groin to rumble!

 

M. was decidedly content at the outcome--Mr. Brady, to his mind, had received quite enough his share of the honors and glory of previous battles won. It was the time of the upstart Lord Manning--perhaps less dashing than Master Tom, but with a humble determination that spoke of a future to call his own.

 

One was a Patriot, but the other a Giant.

 

MCO 2008