Jack of Arts

Downton Abbey

2012-01-28T12:49:00.000-08:00

I have a theory as to how Matthew and Mary will get together. It seems apparent that Matthew is continuously put into harms way and from the previews one can assume he will be injured in some grievous way. I think when he comes back, and needs to convalesce, his fiancé will lose some of her shine for him and Mary will step in guided by her true feelings. At last they will be together, although in many ways he will never be whole again. This is mere speculation, but one, as a writer, I feel as inevitable.

This is just speculation from a writer's point of view.

Anesthesia

2012-01-21T10:37:00.000-08:00

Anesthesia
I sat in the corner. My knees wet. Wet from damp grass, or was I in a van? She sat on the bed or was she busy. Cruelty. Somehow always… managed to seep in. At the end. What does it matter what’s said, the feeling won’t change. No one’s having a change of heart. Even though you feel…tearing you apart. Breaking into pieces. It’s your face. You see? I love what I see, but not the way you are. But not the act. This is the way you made me. You made me into this. One way or another. It’s inevitable, don’t you see? Then. Really. Finding. A way to…GO. Make a change. Really? Inevitable, obligatory old story they’ve been telling for years. What holds us together? Something was once. Recapture what? Was it once? Endless recriminations. Self loathing at the last. Fitting into narrow spaces. Why bother? Why bother. Who are you? Because it’s the way you are. Way of the…species. What you have. What I give. What’s that smell? That stimulates the brain? What did I have? Why wasn’t it good enough? Was it? Good enough? What more could you want? To grow old and die? Our bodies together. Old and dying. Where’s the magic in that? Gone? Where is the magic? Smell. Smelling of death. Where’s the science in it? In the end. We’re all alone.

Ruminations (A Monologue)

2011-12-18T12:52:00.000-08:00

RUMINATIONS OF A TEN YEAR OLD or ETERNITY AND THE COOKIE THEORY: A MONOLOGUE

by
Charles Hinckley

SETTING: Eternity, so a blank space.

TIME: Here and now.

CHARACTER: MAX, a young man in his early twenties.

(A Black stage. The sound of wind whips through. Then silence. Lights slowly begin to rise. MAX a young man, is alone on stage. He pulls a bag of chocolate chip cookies from behind his back. He considers the audience, puts the bag of cookies on the floor, D.S.C. in an offering to them.)

MAX: When I was about ten, I told my mother I didn’t think it was fair what God had done; in the world, about the world and to the people of the world. I didn’t get it the whole Catholic notion of things. I mean, okay, I’m ten and say I’m God, and I’m gonna create a bunch of beings in my image…why would I do that? What could possibly be the purpose of God making things in his image and then telling them, you can’t do this and you BETTER do that or else you’re gonna fry? Well, “because he was lonely.” Really? God was lonely? For goodness sakes, Mother, God is lonely?…Then what chance do I have? In a new school. With all those kids. Who don’t like new kids. I’m the geek! The queer! The faggot new kid! What’s the point again? He made us for WHAT? “He created you because he loves you.” Okay, he loved me before he created me, or he loved the notion of me? Me, with all these…imperfections? And sin? He didn’t have to create sin did he? That’s where I started to veer off into uncharted Catholic territory. That’s where my logic says. Well, yin and yang. I knew about yin and yang from TV. Don’t ask me where I saw it. But the notion that you can’t have good without the bad, right? Okay, so that’s part of the order of the world, right? The orderliness of it. Can’t have hot without cold, night without day, cruelty without kindness…So, it’s set up so you can if you WANT. I mean if you WANT, you can turn BAD. Some people choose to go that way. Right? BAD. WHY? I don’t know. What’s the point of that? As a Catholic, the only reasoning you can have is THE BAD people, they want to see how close to death they can get, have as much BAD FUN as they can get until that day when they turn around and say, shit! I’m dying, I better go good or when I die I may go to hell, and that’s forever, and ever, and ever…The ten commandments, right? Break em and you’re gone. And you’re not just gonna fry till you’re crispy brown, but fry for all eternity. A timeless echo of pain wracking your being forever, and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever…until. Oh, wait, there’s no until. It just goes on and on and on…I’m ten years old and I'm in bed at night thinking about this. I’m ten years old and I’m thinking about eternity and heaven and hell. And eternity. What is THAT? Eternity? How can I grasp it? How can anyone grasp it? It’s forever, and ever and ever, and ever, ever, ever…an echo that never ends. I’d get a flash of panic run right through me and I’d sit up in bed, suck in a deep breath and freeze! Sweat dripping down my nose. I’d roll over and dwell on it. Oh my God! I can’t go there! I can’t suffer FOREVER! Just change the subject! Change it! So, I’d think of something else. Something not so MYSTERIOUS. Sex was always a good change of subject. Or my notion of what sex was at the time. I still had visions of women attached to strange and incomprehensible contraptions hidden in the ladies room, wondering what they wore under all those clothes, with straps and harnesses due to the times when they had their period…whatever that was. Strange and wonderful creatures women were. As mysterious as all eternity, but not as vexing…So I’m ten and in bed and my mind is racing between eternity, and the mystery of women, eternity, the mystery of women…Some nights I’d roll around for hours sweating in my little PJ’s.
So God made me in his image. Then there must be some remnants of God still in me right? Which part? “The good part,” my mother would say. Well, that’s fine with me. WE each have a sliver of goodness in us. I like that thought. I like that a lot. Kind of like the chocolate chip part in cookies. The good parts just waiting and pop out and be appreciated. So, that’s the way I look at it.

(He holds a cookie above his head with both hands, then brings it down to his mouth.)

WE all have that good part just waiting to be appreciated. And if you find it in someone, let them know, hey, a part of you is deliciously good, good as can be. Just like a chocolate chip cookie.

(MAX smiles as

lights slowly fade.

The wind is heard

Only the bag of cookies is in a soft pool of light.

Fade to black.)

The End

New Play/ Web Page

2011-09-30T12:39:00.000-07:00

Kerida 2, oil on Linen 15" x15"

My new play, "The Man in the Black Pajamas", is being produced this November at Space 55, here in Phoenix. It is a psychological drama about what happens to a man when he is accused of a horrendous crime they call the "incident." Although we never clearly see what that "incident" was, we do see him processing his situation and the phases of his reaction to his captivity. There is much heart felt humor, surprises and truth in this story. The play is being directed by the muti-talented Raymond King Shurtz, with a great cast. So pleased so far.

More info on my new web page:

http://www.charleshinckleyfineart.com/

Open studio sketches

2011-05-12T11:59:00.000-07:00

Deam State (Continuation of a novel) Bookends agency

2011-02-23T12:21:00.000-08:00

Carla, Carla, Carla

Shortly after my first “dream State,” that early winter morning lying in the hallway of my East Side apartment, in that confused and frightened condition, I stopped having the dreams for a while, thanks to the love I felt for a woman. Francine, the bike rider "dream" had haunted me for months. I had thought I was going to lose my mind. Then I met Diana, and the dreams suddenly stopped.
I was studying writing at NYU and working nights at a pizza joint/restaurant on the Upper East Side named Delish. Diana was young and blonde, with large blue eyes and a smile that lit up my heart. The three years we spent together were the best and worst I’ve had. There’s something to be said for getting lost in ones work, but when that obsession becomes a woman, man you are in trouble. I was writing short stories at the time and they all revolved around our relationship, and usually featured an alluring siren pulling the protagonist into a deadly snare he eventually had to fight his way of, but was always doomed to fail. She was an intoxicant to me. I would lay with my head on her bare belly, taking in her smells, the aroma of skin, run my fingers through her hair and never get bored, look into her eyes for hours, or watch her sleep. I wanted to live in her, breath her, taste her, make her cum, look into her eyes as I came, have sex with her always, all night all the time. My school work began to suffer. The writing became less focused, rambling, as I attempted to capture elusive feelings I didn’t or couldn’t understand. I not only wanted to marry her, I wanted to crawl inside her womb and live there, poke my head out every so often to eat and maybe watch a football game, then crawl back inside. I began eating all the time and gained twenty pounds. Unwarranted jealousy filled me whenever she answered the phone or talked to a clerk in the grocery store. I began imagining her affairs, illicit, sexual, taunting me at every turn. I began snooping into her computer files and monitoring her emails. I even considered tapping our phone but couldn’t afford the electronics. Then she broke up with me. I couldn’t function. I felt like my brains had been cold pressed and left out to dry. It was all about me, me and me. What I was thinking, feeling, and hearing. Was my heart beating too fast or too slowly, why were my hands shaky, why couldn’t I walk in a straight line? Then one night, I was sitting on a bar stool next to Millar, listening to how awful his life was and it all lifted. Somehow the old version of me suddenly walked into the bar and settled back inside my body.
I still haven’t figured it all out, because I’ve had other relationships before and since, and never came close to being so completely lost in a woman. Looking back, I even thought she was better looking than she really was, because when I look at photos of her now, I just can’t feel that same magic. So was it just a phase I was going through? Were the dreams a catalyst that pushed me into a vulnerable and fragile state whereby I latched onto her for comfort and support? I think I’m getting warm. Anyway, past relationship mistakes is what drives me now. It’s always at the back of my mind, knowing I could go off that ledge again. As far as women go, I can’t say I’m sex obsessed or a dependant personality so much as a worshiper of women. I empathize with the more fragile emotional state, am aware of the “femaleness” of their bodies. The supple curviness, forbidden recesses and especially the roundness of the female hip, can drive a heterosexual male insane with desire. And I’m no exception. I guess what I’m saying is I’m a sucker for beautiful women. Where most men are intimidated, I’m invigorated by them. So when Carla called the next day, I knew I could be headed for trouble.
She was brief, said she wanted to meet me for coffee downtown near her work. I didn’t bother asking what she did. Actually, I didn’t ask her anything, my mind just drew a blank the minute I heard her voice. I took a bus downtown and waited outside a typical building by the South Street Seaport. Cool autumn winds blew dust around the corner of the building and I turned away to shelter my eyes. I looked up in time to see her walking toward me. She was stunning in a short skirt and calf high boots. Her skirt flew up in the wind and I turned away, not wanting to embarrass her.
We walked to a nearby, upscale touristy café and sat at a window table. I ordered coffee and she a cappuccino. I felt reserved, polite, not wanting to give her any impression other than business. She thanked me for meeting her, took a sip of her drink and started to cry. Quietly, at first, then she had a few seconds of real tears and nose blowing. She finally caught her breath with a heavy sigh and apologized.
“Don’t. You don’t have to,” I offered.
Gathering another breath, she removed the black leather gloves from her hands and started talking.
“The reason I called you, and I’m sorry for the first time we met, but you know how it is. I wanted to see you again because the police, well they’re getting no where. They have no leads, little evidence and I’m afraid my sister’s killer is going to go free.”
I looked at her and she lifted her eyes to mine. Bloodshot and red rimmed, they were tired, worn, but still had that spark.
“I don’t know what I can do to help,” I said, but that was a lie. I knew exactly what I could do, if it was possible for me to conjure that dream again. I just didn’t want to face it. I could see it even as she spoke. Flashes of the crime scene shot through my mind. Emma, lying against a brick wall, her lips slightly apart as her last gasp escaped, the limpness of her body as she released from this life, her dead eyes staring up through glazed pools.
“I would pay you,” she said.
I paused, looking at her clothes and purse. They were not exactly fifth avenue couture.
“What do you do for a living?” I asked.
She turned away. I could almost see a cigarette between her index and middle fingers as she placed her thumb between them and moved it.
“What does that matter?” She asked.
“It doesn’t. I just don’t want to feel guilty collecting my check.”
“Don’t worry about the money. I can pay.”
“I haven’t said how much.”
“You’re not going to fleece me are you?”
“That’s not the way I operate.”
“How do you operate?”
“I’m not sure why you called me. The other day I got the impression you thought I was a clown.”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to. I’ve seen it a hundred times before. I try to tell people I’m a seer, and they want to run. Smiles turn to fright.”
“I’m not scared of you.”
“There’s no reason to be.”
She put the imaginary cigarette to her lips, and let her fingers fall to the table.
“How long?” I asked.
“How long what?”
“How long ago did you quit smoking?”
She smirked and looked out the window. A young couple walked by arm and arm hunched together against the wind.
“I just want to know if you can help me. Really, I just want to pick your brains a little. Can I ask you a few questions?”
“Shoot.”
“In your vision-“
“I like that. See you’re already becoming accepting of what I do.”
“Well, you say you saw the mugging. I want to know if you saw the muggers face. Did you report anything, any details to the police? Did they take you to a police station and fill out paperwork?”
“I didn’t go to the police. At first I didn’t think there was an Emma. I still couldn’t accept that what I was seeing was really going to happen. I found a few likely names in the phone book. I narrowed it down over a few days until I came to your sister. I knew it was her the minute I laid eyes on her. You see, I did see her that night. Her face, I mean. Not the killer’s. I followed her to work, to a bar afterward and sat near her and her friends. She was popular, your sister, people all around her. I caught up to her near the bar, offered to buy her a drink. She declined. I tried to use my charm. She rebuffed me. Finally, I took her arm, like this." I grabbed Carla's arm and gently pulled it toward me. She didn't resist, her eyes clued to mine. "I warned her to stay away from midtown if at all possible, not to go out at night alone. I told her she was in danger and I wanted to help her.”
My grasp on Carl’s arm grew tighter as I talked.
“I told her I was a friend. That something bad was going to happened if she didn’t leave town.”
Carla’s arms were up, off the table now as I held them. She jerked away, giving me a disgusted frown. I immediately raised my hands in a conciliatory gesture. Glaring at me for a second, she rubbed her wrist and sat back in her chair.
“No need for theatrics,” she said. “It’s contemptible and untrustworthy.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry. It’s a gut reaction. I see bits of the dream when I think about it. I've lived with it for months.”
“And you never went to the police?”
“You know what the police do with someone who comes in and foretells a crime? They arrest him after the crime is committed.”
Again she looked startled. I remained silent. The small tree in front of the building moved as the wind picked up, forcing loose a few anemic leaves.
“I don’t know why I called you,” She said after a few seconds.
“That was quick. That’s pretty much how you felt the last time we talked.”
“It’s just too weird. I’m sorry. You’re stranger. A strange, stranger mixed up in my life in the worst possible way. There’s nothing…”
“What?”
“Nothing, no way to…”
“Make it better?”
“Make you better.”
“I see. Thanks.”
“That’s not what I mean. The circumstances suck.”
“I know.”
There was an awkward silence.
“Okay,” she said finally, “My idea is to hire a private investigator and have him pick your brains, follow any and all leads.”
“Oh, okay,” I said, suddenly crest fallen, aware she had no intention of working with me directly. “Look, I’m sorry I grabbed your arms," I offered.
“And I’ll pay you for your time, like I said.”
“You said that, yes.”
Suddenly she wasn’t hearing me at all. She stood and put her black leather gloves back on her long fingers. “We’ll call you.”
“You do that.” I remained seated. “I’ll get this.” I pointed to the check.
She glanced down at it, turned and walked away.
My nerves were tingling. I felt high on adrenaline or caffeine or both. I didn’t know her, but every cell in my body wanted to follow her out that door. Like rusting unused bolts to a magnet, I was drawn to her. I jumped from my seat and walked quickly after her. As I turned the corner outside the cafe, I got a glimpse of her at the end of the block. I jogged up to her and started talking.
“You’ll be wasting your money, you know.”
She kept walking. I took stride next to her.
“I mean, you’d be paying someone for what I do anyway. You’d be paying me for what I already do.”
“Come again?” She asked.
“Look, I’m a detective. You’re going to pay another detective to pick my brain and act upon that information?”
She stopped and looked at me.
“Maybe.”
“I just think you’d be paying out twice what you should.”
“You’re a detective?”
“Yes,” I lied. “Well, almost. I’m taking the licensing exam this week.” I lied again.
“I thought you were a psychic?”
“I hate that word, but yes, I am a kind of psychic.”
“And now you’re a detective?”
“Soon to be licensed. But I’ve been tracking people down for years. It’s what I do.”
She looked up at the sky, as if searching for answers.
“Look, I recently had a break through," I continued. "By experimentation I was able to bring myself into a dream about a particular subject. That’s never happened before. Usually, the subject just comes to me and I have no say about who it is, but now I have the ability to focus on an individual and see them in a my dream state.”
“How do you know this dream is what really happened, not some fantasy?”
“I’ve never been wrong. I see it as it happens, or as it has happened. If I go back and look at a dream, sometimes I can control it, stop it, and see it from different angles. Even identify faces, license plate numbers. Sometimes I see a date; a number jumps out at me, like on a calendar.”
She seemed unsure.
“Okay, you think about it,” I said. “I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do, but really, I’d rather not go through another individual, least of all a detective. A middle man will just muck up the works.”
She thought a second, and then said, “I’ll let you know.”
“You have my number. Call me when you’re ready.”
She nodded.
“Okay,” I said. “See you.”
I turned and walked away wondering if I’d ever hear from her again.

In our society there are takers and there are those who contribute. Nine times out of ten, it’s a taker who sniffs out the life of a giver. I didn’t expect anything different in Emma’s case. As I looked into her background, the more I discovered, the more I admired her. She’d gotten a degree in economics from NYU and was working toward her masters at the time of her death, all the while holding down various jobs. Most recently she’d been a teaching assistant at her ala mater. Because teaching assistants generally earn less than seventeen thousand a year, she’d been working as a part-time short order cook at Café Classic, hence the memoriam poster I’d seen on the wall there. I figured I’d start at the café and work my way over to the school. I wasn’t going to wait for Carla to call, nor was I going into a dream state if I didn’t have to. I’d had enough bad dreams and bloody noses to last a while. Hopefully, when Carla did call, I’d be ready with as much background information as I’d need to get a running start on the case. That was when the phone rang with a call that would change everything.

Alla Prima Portrait Workshop with Rose Frantzen

2011-02-12T13:00:00.001-08:00

We had 16 people. Two models. We worked four days, two days on each model. She did a wonderful demo the first day. She asked us to not post any photos of her demo, so I don't have anything to show, but it was gorgeous. The first two days I did the painting of the female model. I struggled a bit as I was pretty far away and was having trouble seeing the details of her face. But as the time wore on I was seeing more and more. For the second model I was a few feet away and it was easy to see his face. Loved that! Rose is a dear, wonderful gal and I would highly recommend her workshops. Well worth the time and money. She is a true living master! Her knowledge of color alone is worth the cost of tuition.
Nearly finished last day.

Had a great week working with the master painter Rose Frantzen. She's a bundle of energy and a great teacher as well as artist. Took her lessons to heart and had a great week.

Dream State (Fiction) Continuation of a novel

2011-01-25T10:46:00.000-08:00

In this posting we learn more about Millar's charcter, and August has a trip in "dream state" to a watering hole...where a girl drowns.

Got To Run!

Allen the bartender was in one of his rare good moods. He greeted me with a wink and asked me if I wanted my usual pint of ale. I nodded with a half smile and sat next to Millar, who evidently had just finished a burger.
Wiping grease and ketchup from his chin with a stained napkin, he said, “I’ll try another one, too, please.”
I sniggered to myself and then gave Millar a serious look.
“What exactly does that mean, I’ll try another one? Was that one no good? Don’t they all taste the same? Is one bottle of stout different from every other bottle of the same brand?”
Turning to me with a slight grin on his face he said, “I’ve been trying to figure that out for years.”
“Ah, research.”
“Exactly. It takes years, even for a discerning palette like mine, to adapt, conceptualize, catalogue and present findings on these matters.”
“I am so happy you're happy in your work.”
“Oh, don’t be happy for me, I hate my work. It’s a burden. I bear this only that others may not have to.”
“And when does this great volume, this tome, this wondrous work from the master of beer tasting come out?”
“Ah, I feel like shit.” Standing up, he bent at the knees. “Oh, oh!” is all he could manage. Stumbling a few steps toward the bathroom, he stopped and said, “Oh!” again and then disappeared into the head.
I turned back to the bar and said to no one, “Thanks for the drama.”
Allen stood at the end of the bar, staring at a taped soccer game.
“Hey, Al, how goes it?”
“All right,” he answered not turning away from the game.
“How about another beer for my friend, here, Al?”
“Right, coming right over.”
Allen continued to stare up at the game. I waited to see how long it was going to take for him to serve his only two customers.
Millar sat back down next to me and said, “Whew that was a close one.”
“Spare me the details.” I tapped on the bar and said, “Al, how about that beer for my friend here?”
Allen grabbed a bottle, popped it open and walked over to us. Placing the bottle in front of Millar, he leaned down and stared in my face, his buggy eyes bulging out at me.
“My name is Allen, not fucking Al! You got that? Don’t ever call me Al or tap on my bar again, you got it?” His pallor was scarlet. Huge sweat stains outlined his armpits. The veins on his neck were popped out, making him look like a great snapping turtle.
I put my hands in the air and said, "Sorry."
Swaggering back the cash register and again taking his position beneath the TV, he propped his foot up on a milk crate, elbow on his knee, and stared at the soccer game.
“What the heck was that?” I asked.
Millar just shook his head. “Too many vitamins.”
“Too many roids.”
Millar leaned in and whispered, “Don’t worry about old Allen. I got a fix on him.” Then he winked and turned toward the kitchen doorway. Manuel, the day cook looked at Millar and nodded. He then carried a ramekin perched on a small plate over to the bar.
“What’s this?” I heard Allen inquire.
“Chocolate pudding. 70% cocoa. No sugar, no dairy. Made with soy milk, just the way you say.”
Allen managed a smug smile, nodded to Manuel and turned back to his game.
Millar whispered to me, "He gets a shot of that, he’ll be cleansed for days.” A rumbling chortle rose from his chest, followed by a fit of coughing.
I squirmed on my stool. “Why would you want to do that?”
“The fucker deserves it. I had Manuel put some laxatives in there. I’ve seen my cousin do the same thing. It’s funny.”
I wasn’t laughing.
“How do I know you won’t do the same to me?” I asked.
“You aren’t a prick. Manuel can’t stand him, either. He’s a prick to the whole kitchen staff.”
“How has he managed to keep his job, if he’s so unpopular?”
“Cousin to the owner or something, I don’t know.” Millar lost some of his humor as he stared at the ramekin of laxative pudding. “Just enough to teach him a lesson.”
I took a swig of my ale. “It’s only a lesson if he knows he’s getting it and who it’s from.”
“You want me to tell him? Oh, I’ll tell him, right after his third trip to the john.”
“That’s cold, man.”
“Yeah, but ain’t life a bitch?” Millar wiped the top of his fresh beer bottle on a sleeve and took a long slug. We surreptitiously watched the ramekin for a while and finally I asked, “What can you tell me about The Fat Man, Frank?”
“I told you all I know.”
“He’s a member of an online astrology club, and that’s it?”
“I can make some inquires if you want. Ask some of the other members about him.”
“That’d be good, Mill. This guy is turning out to be a freak, and I want to know if I should just walk away.”
Mill poked me in the ribs. “Oh, shit!”
Allen dipped a spoon into the pudding. Mill rumbled into muted laughter. I got up, finished my brew, put some money on the bar and turned to Mill.
“Let me know what you find out about The Fat Man, will you?”
Mill’s attention shot back to me for a second. “Huh? Oh, yeah, the group thing. I’ll ask around.”
I thanked him, and glanced at Allen just as he placed the empty pudding container on a kitchen tray. Then I walked out of the bar.

In my darkened bedroom, I spread the yellowed newspaper on the floor in front of me and laid down on my stomach to look at it. I couldn’t shake the image of Frank lying on his bed, his fat fingers joined over his bloated belly, eyes half closed as if he’d been saturated in opiates. Images of his room, and the hallway crowded with boxes, his fat pet cat rubbing on my pant leg, flooded my mind. Momentarily lost in these images, the tinny sound of blood dripping onto the paper brought me back to awareness. As I put a finger to my nostril, a sharp jolt of pain flashed through the center of my brain. I lost my orientation, and was swept into a vision.

Surrounding me were dark shadows, back lit in a moonless night. Trees framed the outline of a wooded clearing. Children laughing and talking unintelligibly echoed through the field. The sounds of water splashing, feet kicking, and another splash informed me of the direction I would take. In front of me, shadowy forms moved on gray horizon lines. A voice called,
“Frank, stop it!”
Instantly, I was in the pond. The coolness of rippling water caressed my ears and mouth. A small face appeared in front of me. Carole? I wanted to ask, but no voice would come from my throat.
“Frank, cut it out!”
I see the girl in the water. A shadow takes her under. The water moves slowly in circles round and round the pond and I fight to stay afloat. The vortex is pulling her under. She is choking, coughing, fighting for her life. Her struggle engulfs me and I take in the same water. My mouth opens and water pours in and fills my throat and sinus, drowning my senses in her screams. I am consumed in the echoes of her struggle. Then a quiet stillness, a dark figure standing on the shore. Slowly, I swim forward where banking meets the water. He is there, looking down on me, but I cannot see his face, only a mask blackness shaped vaguely in horror and disbelief. I rise up, floating far above the pond. Water gushes from my nose and mouth and I struggle to breath. The dark figure glares at me. Ignited in ruby red, the eyes follow me as I rise above the trees, far above the field and into the cold blackness beyond.
When I awoke, my nose was still dripping blood. I rolled onto my back on the bed and put an old t-shirt to my face. The trobbing in my head was slowly dissipating and when I recovered enough from this frightening dream state, I opened my eyes and found the newspaper. Slowly I turned the pages until I stopped on the obituary section. There I found mention of a young girl who’d drowned in a back woods swimming hole near the town of Manchester, New Hampshire. She was seven years old at the time and her name was Carole Cosh. The drowning details were not listed, but at the bottom of the column it read: She is survived by her Mother, Janet, her Father, Franklin and her older brother, Frank, Jr.
Could this be another of Frank’s relatives? Was this in fact, his sister? And if she were already dead, why would Frank tell me he feared for her life?

Peter the rabbit bore no resemblance to a real rabbit beyond its long elliptical ears and buck teeth. I wasn’t even sure rabbits had buck teeth, but they fit the face well. I pulled him toward me and gently rubbed the very convincing gold colored eyes. They were smooth glass, cold and secured tightly to the face. The fur was matted on the belly and back and almost completely gone on the sides. I searched the seams for any breaks in the stitching. On back of its head, I felt for any holes, rips or tears. I found nothing out of the ordinary. The rabbit was clean. “I’ve frisked a thousand young rabbits.” I said out loud thinking, of the line spoken by the corrupt policeman in The Godfather. I held a cold cloth to my nose and wondered what had sent me off into dream land. Had it been the newspaper? Or was it Peter the rabbit doing his job, as Frank had almost predicted? Either way, for some reason unknown to me, for the first time, I was able to conjure dreams at will. Well, not really at will, pretty much whenever they wanted to come, but I was able to influence who they were about. And that was a major breakthrough.

to be continued...

Make'n Stew

2011-01-25T10:26:00.001-08:00

Just a quick painting I'd done a while back. Fixn's for stew broth. Oil on canvas on baord. 9 x 12 2010

The Pequeña Señora

2011-01-20T11:44:00.001-08:00

The two men dripped sweat after the short chase. They sat in the patrol car, hot and miserable, in the mid-day heat. Officer Barrett wrote in his log.

The prisoner looked up and smiled. “Hey hombre, they say if you breathe in the smoke of the burning Pequena plant you will come face to face with the demons that hold you back, keep hidden in a world of shadows, far away from the life you truly should be. You know what I’m talking about?

Officer Barrett kept writing in his book and did not look up.

The prisoner continued: “You know, that gentle nibble, the irritation gnawing at your soul.”

Officer Barrett wiped sweat from his brow with a white handkerchief, and glanced in the rear view mirror at his prisoner.

“You got illegal plants, Golton?” Barrett asked.

“Illegal? That plant? No. Extinct in the wild, very endangered world wide.”

“Extinct huh?”

“The smoke sets you on a journey you wouldn’t believe. You like to try?”

“I know you don’t have anything on you, unless it crawled out your ass.”

“I know where to get it. Close by.”

“I don’t smoke amigo. But you keep talking like this, I’ll book you on more than just being a public nuisance and intoxication, understand?”

“I can get it for you now. You see what it can do.”

“Did wonders for you, huh?” Officer Barrett chuckled as he wrote in his log.

“You see what I mean? I have an offer for you that could change your life and all you can do is write in your police book. Why don’t you look around, Hombre? People are living other people’s lives.”

Barrett glanced in the side mirror for oncoming traffic and merged quickly onto the single lane highway from the shoulder.

Golton made a clucking sound with his tongue and rested his head against the back cruiser door. The desert heat penetrated the car and washed over the men in rippling waves.

“Hey Hombre, how about turning up the air in this bucket?”

“Don’t worry about it; we’ll be at headquarters in fifteen minutes.”

“You telling me you don’t have air?”

Barrett said nothing.

Golton kicked the seat and slumped down.

“You kick that seat again and I’ll close your window.”

The two men stared at each other in the mirror.

Golton hummed quietly the Spanish song, De Colores as he turned away and looked out the window.

Distant, low mountains tops gleamed in the desert sun. Sequoia cacti dotted the sparse landscape. The occasional tumble weed blew across the dusty road.

“I see a few lonely plants out there, Hombre. But none like the Pequena. She has the most beautiful flowers of any plant, more beautiful than the cactus flower. I can take you to see it.”

Barrett smiled into the mirror. Golton frowned. “Hey, these cuffs are hurting my wrists. Why don’t you fix them at the next stop?”

“Next stop for you is the jail.”

“Before that.”

Barrett started to roll up the rear window.

“No, no! Please the air is all I need!”

The rear windows rolled back down and Barrett smiled into the rear view mirror.

Golton Nodded. “You have a heart, Amigo.”

They sat in silence for a mile or so. Golton coughed and sighed, then said, “The first time I tried the plant, it was such a beautiful day. It was at my Cousin Celia’s house in the back yard. We sat under some trees there and she pulled out the little dried piece of the Pequena. The air was thin and dry that day, too. Some clouds were trying to roll in from the foothills, but the sun was keeping away. Celia, she lit this little twig and pulled a shawl over us to breath in the smoke. I coughed and choked, Amigo. Oh, man my throat closed up and I could hardly breathe. But, that was when I saw her. She came to me under that tree. She appeared to me first from a cloud and took the shape of a beautiful woman with long flowing gowns. She had flowers in her hair. . I said to her, ‘Where do you come from?’ And do you know she looked right at me and her eyes sparkled, little silver sparkles like tiny bits of sun came from her eyes. ‘I have always been with you,’ she says. Then she spread her wings and covered me, she took me in her arms and…”

Barrett looked at Golton in the rear view mirror.

“She took you for a ride, huh?”

“No man, she made me see. I saw my life the way it should have been instead of all the way it is now. I was a different person. I was me, but a better me. Different…”

Barrett pulled his aviator glasses down his nose a bit and glanced at Golton. “Yeah, you weren’t a screw up anymore? That’s rich. Most drug trips just kill a few thousand brain cells, right amigo?”

Golton looked out the window. “You wouldn’t understand even if I told you the whole story. You would just laugh. People like you always laugh at people like me.”

“Laugh at drug addicts? I’m not laughing at you Golton, I’m laughing with you, you and your story.”

Golton began to cough. He gagged and choked and tried to catch his breath. Barrett pulled off to the side of the road and got out of the patrol car. Opening the back seat door, he leaned in to see to Golton, when the spray hit him squarely in the face. Barrett shot straight back and put his fingers to his nose and wiped. A fine dark purple power covered his finger tips. The earth began to spin. Round and round it went until he could no longer hold on, until he staggered back and fell.

“I forgot to tell you, Amigo, it comes in powdered form, too.” Golton laughed.

Barrett was rigid on the ground. His body convulsed once, and then went limp.

“Oh, shit, Amigo. Don’t die on me now. I still have to get you off the road.” Golton dragged Barrett around the back side of the cruiser and lay him face down in the dirt. He removed the keys to the cuffs and unlocked them from his wrists. “These hurt me, Amigo. For that you will pay.”

Gloton went trough the deputy’s pockets and found cigarettes and matches and lit one up. In the front seat he found a bottle of water and drank his fill. Water droplets tickled his nose and he rubbed his fingers under his nose and wiped. When he pulled his fingers back he saw they were purple. “No!” He said out loud and looked in the rear view mirror. The purple was in his nostrils and on his fingers. “Shit, shit!” Golton wiped his face on the deputy’s shirt. He found Barrett’s hanky and used it in each nostril, but it was too late.

Golton looked far across the desert plane and as far as he could see, a small dark cloud lingered in the distance. But soon that cloud was rising up. And he could see her coming. On a galloping cloud she rode. Her teeth bright white and clenched, her hair flowing back into the wind. In an instant she was there. Her wind horse screamed and the dust flew up into his face. She sat on the thundering horse cloud as it reared up before him. Her shadow cast him in darkness and the wind blinded him with sand. “Please leave me now! Please help me!”

She leaned forward on the swirling mass and spread her wings.
“Forgive me mother soul! I am a wicked man! Please. I know I have not done what I am supposed to do. I have failed you! Please!”

Her voice ran through him as an electric current would tickle skin. It yanked and pulled his flesh, yet was a smooth and comforting. A voice other worldly in gravity and charm. A voice that grounded him pinned him to the floor of the Earth and opened him as a frog on a dissection table. “You are. No more or less than eternal truth has created you.” She said. And it all went black.

A buzz reached is ear and pulled him through a dark tunnel back into the light. The voice was harsh and hard to understand. Then it came back to him that he was human and had ears and could hear and understand these words. “Come on, get your ass out of the car, I said!” Barrett pulled Golton from the car and steadied him as they walked to the police station door. Golton strained to open his eyes. They stung and felt filled with sand as he tried to concentrate on Barrett’s commands.

“I don’t know what stunt you pulled on me, Golton. But I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let you get away with it. Assault on an officer is a serious charge!”

“Hey, Amigo. I’m glad to see you’re all right. I thought maybe you had a bad accident or something. Last I saw you, you were lying by the side of the road.” Golton said, as they made their way to the processing room. Barrett sat Golton at a chair and cuffed his hands to the table there.

“Hey, Amigo. Have I told you about the Pequena, the lady in the wind? She comes to me and tells me when things are going to happen.

“Yeah? Did she tell you you’re gonna spend a few days in lock up?” Barrett said as he filled out a form.

Another voice charged the air. “Barrett, what the hell happened to you?”

“Nothing, Sarg. I got the wind knocked out of me is all. Damn little prick hit me with some kind of spray.”

“Yes. Yes, she tells me many things, Amigo.” Golton said out loud but not so loud as to be heard.

"Well, you look like shit." The voice said. "Barrett? Barrett!"

Golton still could not see, but he heard now a banging, a fall. Men scuttled toward him and then to Barrett. They said things like, “Get the EMT’s. And, “Put his feet up.” He heard the chest compressions being performed. More men scuttling back and forth and the far off siren as it raced across the desert toward them.

“Hey, Amigo? Are you still there?”

A voice called, “Somebody get him out of here!” And Golton was being led to a cell. The blurry path to the back was lined in tan uniforms and shiny guns and badges as the whirling sounds of life and death played out in back of him.

“Amigo. Don’t fight it, Amigo. I see now what she told me. Yes, she told me she was coming. For you, I guess. I thought it was me. But she covered me with her wings. It must have been you, Amigo. You! You see? The Pequena Senora, she never lies. I told you, Amigo. She sends you on a trip, eh?” Golton laughed and coughed. “A trip, eh?”

Golton grew suddenly tired and rested his head on the bench in his cell. The sirens were there now, just outside his door, but they could not keep him awake. They could not bring him back. He fell slowly into the desert's swirling winds, covered only by her wings. Protecting him from all that will ever be.

The End
Disclaimer: The Pequena Senora is NOT a real plant, it is not used to get high or smoke or ingest in any way and does not make you high. No drugs or plants should be used for any kind of ingestion. This story is fiction.

Dream State (Continuation of a novel)

2011-01-14T23:36:00.000-08:00

Bear Cave

The door to Frank’s apartment was ajar. He’d buzzed me in and apparently left it that way for me to walk in, so I did. The room was stuffy and dark, boxes lined every wall and into the hallway. Walking to his bedroom gave me the sense of a carnival fun house, walls leaning and tipping in various directions, floors creaking as I went. I followed the faint light into his bedroom and sat down in the same chair at the foot of his bed, but Frank was not there. I called his name and heard a muffled reply coming from what I assumed was the bathroom. I took the opportunity to look through a few boxes. Old newspapers were folded and stacked neatly in every top box I saw, except for one that held old “Life” magazines. I flipped through the first few and found nothing to catch my eye. They were mostly dated from the 50’s and late 60’s. One had beautiful color prints from the battle of Iwo Jima. Next to the magazine was an old Manchester News from the early seventies. I reached in the box and pulled out three more of the same issue, all dated July, 17, 1972. And then I noticed the one opened lying on the floor at the foot of his bed. I stuffed a copy under my coat.
“Great stuff, isn’t it?”
I was startled to see Frank standing in the doorway. I hadn’t even heard the floors creak.
“Oh, yeah. Incredible detail in these photos.” I picked up the Life magazine.
“That Iwo Jima photo shoot was something special. Printed in the 1968, I bet.”
I looked at the date and he was correct.
“I never asked, are you a writer, Frank?”
“I am. Graphic novels, mostly.” He pointed to a poster of what I assumed was one of his covers. The title, AUGUR! in blood red ink, was scratched across the top of the page. Below that stood a hooded figure raising a large walking stick up to the sky. A flock of birds flew overhead and into the distant hills. Two names appeared at the bottom of the page. McNaughlty appeared on the left and to the right the name, Finn. I shook my head in the affirmative and sat back down in the chair.
“Are you Finn or McNaughlty?” I asked.
“Neither,” he said in an annoyed tone.
Not wanting to press the matter, I asked him if he liked to read, an ironic question considering his décor.
“I’m a veracious reader. I consume everything, as you can see. I can’t seem to throw anything away. I’m always afraid I may need it for reference or I may not finish a periodical and set it aside, never to return. But in my mind, I know I will return, so I keep it handy.”
Looking at the stacks of newspapers and boxes, ‘handy’ was not exactly the word that came to mind.
“They have computers for this type of library now, you know.”
Frank’s smile disappeared and he sat heavy on the bed.
“Where’s Peter?”
I’d forgotten the rabbit, or maybe I just want to hold onto it for a little leverage, incase I was in trouble.
“He’s safe,” I said.
“Safe? What do you mean safe?” Frank’s startled look caught me off guard.
“I mean, he’s safe at my apartment. I have him in a bag, ready to go, but I forgot to take him at the last minute.”
“You have him in a bag?”
I gave him a gentle nod that said, ‘Sorry, I’m really not a stuffed animal abuser.’
“He’s very old and fragile. I thought I told you that. Be careful with him. And I thought you were going to use him to entice a dream?”
“And I did,” I said quickly.
“I said to bring him!”
Frank’s perturbed look softened into a general calmness. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“It lowers blood pressure.”
I nodded, and then asked, “The rabbit?”
“The breathing!” He said, looking at me like I was an imbecile.
Frank’s exasperated mood was not conducive to doing business. I decided to lighten things a bit.
“I really like that rabbit. It seems nice. How long have you had it?”
Franks eyes slowly moved in my direction, not quite finding my face.
I continued, “Its fur is a little matted. It must be old. It’s interesting the way its not a hunched up rabbit on all fours, they way you’d think of a rabbit, but it looks more like a teddy bear rabbit, except it has big rabbit ears…”
Weariness is all that comes to mind. I was making him weary.
“I had an interesting dream,” I said.
A jolt went through my nerves and my heart started beating faster. What the hell was I doing?
“Tell me about this, dream…” And he lay back onto the bed, closing his eyes.
“Well…” I swear a minute ticked by and neither one of us moved, gave a look or said anything. Sweat dripped from my upper lip into my mouth. My eyes wandered around the room searching for a starting point. The dream I had just didn’t seem useful or even something I wanted to share with him. After a while Frank cleared his throat. I coughed. And it occurred to me he didn’t get many visitors. Maybe he was just enjoying having some company? That gave me some courage to explore.
“I saw something very interesting.”
“Yes, go on.”
“I have a few questions, though.”
He sat up and looked at me; his large round eyes appeared even bigger than usual.
“Was your sister your twin?”
“Not even close.” His tone was a bit surly as he lay back down.
“Okay, then was she younger?”
“Yes.”
“And you had a good relationship?”
“What do you mean, had?”
“Oh, sorry. How is your relationship now?” I asked.
“As opposed to before?”
“Before what?”
“What?”
“You said ‘as opposed to,’ and I asked, opposed to what?”
“As opposed to nothing. Move on, will you?”
I let a few seconds of silence go by to capture the mood again.
“Yes. The room is dark now,” I started.
Frank popped open an eye, apparently to check the light, then closed it.
“So dark now, so dark. Oh look, a magazine. A woman in her thirties. She wears red lipstick and a kerchief on her head.”
I was studying an illustration on the back of an old Life magazine that lay in the box in front of me.
“Her lips are puckered and she seems acutely aware something is amiss.”
Frank popped open an eye, and said, “What the fuck are you doing?”
“There’s a baby boy,” I added quickly. “And I see a baby girl.”
“Okay!” Frank sat up again. “Is this something you’re seeing now or is this what you dreamt, because I thought you told me you don’t do trances, and there’s nothing I hate more than a phony, you understand me? You start making shit up and I’ll have you out on your ear so fast…”
Startled, I immediately went into recovery mode. It didn’t matter that I was scared shitless of this reclusive fatty. That he was sending people to my house to take pictures and had a strange affection for a stuffed rabbit named, Peter. All I saw was me losing again; Losing a job, an employer, a gig. I was drenched in flop sweat. Being good enough to entice him further was my driving force. Lies were starting to ensnare me. I had to untangle myself before it got wrapped too tightly. I didn’t care so much about Motorcycle Jacket taking pictures of my apartment; I just didn’t want to lose a customer. I wanted this gig! So I decided to tell the damn truth. What the hell, I had nothing else!
So, I paced the small open area in front of his bed determined to lay it all out there.
“Okay, Frank. I didn’t want to tell you, but I saw you push your sister off the page of the magazine, okay? You were just babies, in diapers I would guess. You were jealous and you pushed her off. And your mother was there and yes, she did have red lipstick and a fifties style hairdo.”
A few seconds ticked of silence ticked by.
“I was in a magazine?” he asked.
“Yes. Well, I saw your baby pictures and they came to life.”
“In the magazine?”
“Yes. A full color spread.”
“And we moved, like in a movie?”
“Yes. You moved, in a cartoon-like movie and you crawled over to your sister-“
“How do you know it was my sister,” he interrupted.
“Well, I don’t. I just assumed.”
“Yes, yes, go on.”
“And your mother was there. Kind of an iconic looking female figure of the early sixties, I would guess.”
“Yes, yes.”
“And you pushed her, your sister, off the page.”
“And my mother, what did she do?
That was a good question, I didn’t notice that.
“Nothing, that was the end of the dream.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes, that’s all I have.”
Frank closed his eyes. There was a thickness to the air. The pause seemed to weigh on my chest. “Does that make any sense?” I asked, finally.
Frank took an enormously deep breath and looked out the window.
“Interesting.”
Seemingly impressed, mystified and weary all at the same time, he slowly walked into the kitchen. I followed close behind. He stood at the open door, apparently waiting for me to take leave. I walked into the hallway and turned to face him.
“Dream some more. I’ll call you. Use Peter.”
Frank held out a fifty dollar bill. I looked at it, not wanting to take it.
“What’s that for?”
“I want you to come back.”
A flush ran through my cheeks. I felt like a prostitute. “I’ll come back. I don’t need your money.” I choked on the last few syllables.
“You dreamed. Dream more, that’s all.”
I looked at the bill he held so politely in his fat fingers.
“Here, take it, you’re making my arm tired.”
Frank stuffed the bill in my hand, patted my back and shut the door, and that was that. I had my first paying customer. And I felt dirty all over.

Painting by Adolph Hitler

2011-01-11T13:12:00.001-08:00

The above painting is a water color attributed to Hilter. When I look at it, I have to ignore the creepy feeling I get and concentrate on the art. Was he talented? Perhaps he had some talent, but any amount of talent, great or small must be developed and honed through many years of practice. Good health, clear eyes and mind help with this process. Best to try and learn to paint at a younger age. Fine art can be subjective, but I find nothing of great interest in this painting. It seems workman like in approach. There are some of the classic tricks a painting generally adheres to in order to trick the eye. Make the back ground surfaces lighter and more vague than the foreground. Vary the shapes, including the shading, etc. But the main problem with this painting, I think, is the shape and size of the paper it is on. The focal point is the mountain, but the more interesting aspect would have been how the trees and foreground lead into a majestic hill. The square shape of the paper does not permit this to happen. Another problem is the smaller hill. It looks like a green blob and takes away from the larger focal point of the mountain. The general feeling one gets looking at the painting is that of coldness, even though it was probably painted in the summer. There is greenery, but muted and a bit muddy. Generally, my gut feeling toward this painting is negative. I would never want to hang it in my house. Would you?

Recent charcoal drawings/studies

2011-01-06T21:32:00.000-08:00

I had occasion to take a life study class. It gave me good practice for short studies. I had not worked a lot in charcoal and it took me a while to find a comfort zone. Unfortunately, the class was not set up for long pose. The most I was able to work on any of them was about 3 hours or so. Not enough time to do a detailed finished portrait, but more of a skill building exercise. These are some of the longer poses. There are many very quick pose drawings that were done in the class that aren't for posting. I plan on taking a long pose drawing class with Dan Thompson this April. Will be working in pencil for that and hopefully have a much more finsihed drawing.

Workshop with Rose Frantzen

2011-01-04T15:43:00.000-08:00

Taking a portrait painting workshop this Feb at Scottsdale artists school with the amazingly talented Rose Frantzen. This was the one workshop I couldn't miss. Very excited to get back to painting after taking a 3 month drawing class.

http://reg129.imperisoft.com/SAS/ProgramDetail/34303033/Registration.aspx

Dream of Horses

2010-12-30T15:39:00.000-08:00

Dream of Horses

Graham House dreamed of horses in a field of tall grass. Dusty, ragged smells, earth and dung filled his senses. The small group of horses ran in circles around him, kicking up dust, running at a slow canter, heads bobbing and heaving up and down, foam lilting from mouth to ground. Trembling, he stood in the middle of the small herd in his Covington Men's Plaid Flannel Pajamas he’d purchased at Sears and one by one pulled them into his inner circle by an invisible lead. He held their necks, smelled their briny aroma, and ran his fingers against the hot wetness of powerful equine necks. One by one he pulled them in, the palomino pony, the little pinto, the standard, the Morgan, until he reached for the Arabian, it’s strikingly sharp features alert and asking. The Arabian came toward him, towering in agile form, reaching the middle of the circle, her long white head, sleek mane and black eyes at once unapproachable and soothing. When he took her neck, she flung him upon her back and he settled down clinging to her lean frame with the grip of his legs. She wandered down beyond the banking of tall grasses and into the thickly wooded area. The trail was covered in grasses and foliage. The sky broke through fingered openings in the trees. The trail was narrow but soon opened to a clearing that lead to a small pond and fast moving river beyond. He stayed on her as one, feeling each muscle and joint move in harmony with his contracted frame. At the river, she drank from the frigid water. House was entranced by the sounds she made. The chug, chug, chug of her long esophagus pushing liquids to her belly, splashing happily, digging her snout into the water and then jolting up, searchingly, her ears moving in each direction as if testing for predators. She was sinew, bone and power under him, strong, agile, and omnipotent in her surroundings. And as she drank, he could feel her belly expand. The more she drank the darker and heavier she grew, until he could no longer fit on her and he slid off to the muddy ground. She drank and expanded until she resembled an engorged tick, white, bloated beyond countenance, spindly legs sticking out from her sides, her head submerged to her girth until she split open spilling a torrent of water. The flood took him off his feet. Rivers of water carried him as he struggled to keep his head above the sway. He lay gasping on the banking. Eyes closed, his head pounding, soothing warmth swathed his cheek. He opened his eyes to see the Arabian licking his face, and he awoke.

Graham lay trapped in sweaty sheets, curling them tighter around his body as he sat up. Looking over at his wife, Penelope, he tried to make out her face, but could see nothing in the shadows of their bed, she but a bundle in the dark. He pulled the sheet as he sat up, knowing that she wouldn’t care, because she hadn’t slept with covers for about two years. She was always too hot, couldn’t have a warm body next to her, just couldn’t stand the heat of it. The balled-up sheet fell to the floor as he walked slowly to the bathroom, feeling the walls in the dark as he went.

Splashes of cold water numbed his face in the dim light of the bathroom. The dream came back to him then, in vivid pictorials, the Arabian staring at him with her intense black eyes. Horses? Why horses? He hadn’t ridden a horse since he was fifteen. Carefully drying his face near the darkened closet where she kept the neatly stacked towels, the sounds and smell of the Arabian were more than memory. He inhaled deeply attempting to capture the essence of the beast, but his senses were dull and he couldn’t even smell the fresh towel. House kicked the sheets back over his body and slowly let his right arm fall on Penelope’s side. His hand slipped down and he palmed her hip bone. She grumbled and turned onto her stomach. He tried to make out her dirty blonde hair, the line of her form, but he could see only a dark lump. He was alone again, in the same bed as his wife, her flesh radiating like hot coal next to him. How could I have married a person who can’t cuddle? How did I, the cuddle king of the entire world, end up with someone like that? Laying still, trying not to disturb his wife, he conjured visions of the horses to take him back to the lazy fields, but they would not come and he fell into a restless sleep.

In the morning, House could tell he was alone without looking. The empty bed felt lighter and freer than when she was there. He looked at her clock, 10 AM, set ten minutes into the future, and decided he could sleep a few more minutes. The smell of horses came to him then and he closed his eyes to ride back to the golden fields. He was in the circle now, holding out his hand toward the flowing beasts. The Arabian walked slowly toward him and circled him, just out of his grasp. The circle grew smaller and tighter as he reached for them all, his fingers stretching out never quite far enough to reach them. As the heat and the movement intensified, he could smell the dust and the horse hair warming in the sun. The blue sky above was bright white with heat. He spun and turned in circles, reaching his hands out to the horses as they slowly cantered around and around until he lost his footing and he fell to the dry earth in a cloud of dust, his legs spread out before him like a twisted rag doll, his chest heaving, head still spinning. The horses stopped and looked at him, their heads down, ears flopping back and forth with gentle alertness.

House’s job had nothing to do with horses, and everything to do with computers.
In fact, he hadn’t touched a horse since he was fifteen years old, that time on his birthday, when they went to the horse-riding camp on Cape Cod. He remembered the nag they gave him: A nasty black and white pinto. The thing had bucked all over the place. Wouldn’t put out when he had encouraged it. “Give it a little kick,” the guy had said. And the bucking started and didn’t stop until he returned the evil thing back to the wrangler a half hour later. That was his only memory of horses, except for the dream. Throughout the day, all he could think about, all he saw, was horses; Horses on TV, horses on billboards, horses in the park. He supposed they had always been around, he’d just never noticed them. But now, with this dream, this hot, sweaty, aromatic dream splendid of languor, it was fresh in his thoughts. And he knew that the Arabian especially had something on her mind.

After a solemn day of fighting traffic, plucking keys on his computer keyboard, eating lunch at a cheap fast food deli and then fighting traffic for an hour returning home, all of it almost feeling like a dream, House couldn’t get the horse dream out of his mind and he almost willed the night to come so he could get into bed. He dutifully complimented his wife on dinner, carefully watched the clock as his favorite TV shows ticked by, commercials on mute, his trusty clicker in hand. Finally, at 10 o’clock, with Penelope long asleep (she being the early riser in the family) he wrapped himself in the cool sheets, anticipating meeting the herd. A vague feeling of loneliness hung on him, his plump body shaking and bouncing on the air springs until at last he drifted off into a tintype dream of horses.

The arrived slowly, one by one, passing ever closer in a circle, each appearing in turn as if from a mist. The pinto moved in close and House could smell candy canes and mint. The palomino moved in close and he could smell his wife’s perfume. The Morgan moved in and he sensed his childhood and playing games with the neighborhood children, the smell of his leather football and baseball glove. He reached out and took the Morgan by the mane. He inhaled the smells and wrapped his arms around the horse’s neck. The Morgan flung him up onto her back and started to trot out into the field.

Heat rose in waves from the brown grasses and he could feel the sun bite the back of his neck. Muted colors glowed all around and as the horse moved closer to the river. A feeling of nostalgia overtook him. Gradually, rising out of the swaying grass and the scrub, the idea of his childhood home found shape. In front of him were the muted yellow of the clapboards, the umber of the back yard fence, the carousel close line white with linens. On the right, a slab porch and a green bulkhead leading to the dirt floor cellar. A barefoot boy of about seven came out the back door and, as the screen door slammed, sat on the porch and smiled up at strange rider.
“Hey mister, where’d you get that horse?”
House looked carefully at the boy, the short dirty-blond hair, the round pudgy face. A rush of adrenaline exploded in his chest and steamed into his head. The Earth seemed to be spinning faster. And in a flash he saw all of his childhood: The crying and sucking on a teething cookie, learning to walk, the football games in the back yard, his friends running to and fro in heavy pursuit each other, his mother, her light brown hair falling partially over one blue eye, wet pie crust in her hands, his high school years.
“Hey, Mister, can I ride your horse?” the boy called.
House focused on the boy and suddenly recognized himself. He remembered that he had seen a rider come to his back porch, through this same field, long ago, and he remembered the rider sitting in silence, staring down and saying nothing.
House turned the Morgan and kicked at its belly. They rode out into the field. The whole time he could see himself sitting on his old back porch, and knew everything he was thinking, everything that he did, had already done, and will do and there was nothing he could do to change it. It was as if it were inevitable, him doing the things he was doing, fulfilling a prophecy, the purpose of which was lost to him. He turned to face his old house and it faded into a dull ball of yellow and white, and suddenly exploded into a million small dots until there was nothing, and he awoke.

House sat up in bed gasping for air. Penelope reached out to him.
“Graham, what is it?’
“Horses!”
“You scared me!”
He took her arm, heaving deep breaths and said, “It’s okay. A dream is all.”
“Horses?”
“What?”
“You said, ‘horses.’”
“Yeah.”
They lay back and he moved close to her, wrapping his leg over hers, spooning her in the middle. His heart danced wildly in his chest. The young boys smiling face stayed clear in his mind, (he could count the freckles on his cheeks) but soon faded and nothing was left but the cool darkness of the room. Soon a profound sadness overtook him.
“Weird, thing is...” he whispered.
But she was half asleep and showing signs of discomfort from his body heat. He knew better than to try and talk to her now. Rolling onto his back, he pulled the sheets up to his chest, thinking of his old house, the back porch and the strange man that had ridden up, the man he knew now to be himself, on horseback, that hot summer day. And he slipped into a listless trance-like state, staring off into the dull nothingness that surrounded him. As he drifted off to sleep, muted yellow dots danced, oscillated in formations before him and coalesced into his childhood home. A sated feeling ran through him. Helpless to control his urge for more, wanting to delve deeper and stay longer in his strange dream, he began to weep. He wept for the boy on the porch, for his lost potential and for future that promised nothing more than what he already had.

On his way to work the next day he saw horses in a trailer and followed it off the wrong exit. Realizing his error too late, he found the nearest turn around and headed back in the direction of work. When he finally sat at his desk, he typed “horses” into a search engine and spent the day picking out horse screen savers. He found a web site devoted to horse stories, but found them unsatisfying, preferring to remember his own experiences. And suddenly it dawned on him that he had momentarily thought of his dreams as real experiences. Startled, he turned his attention to a project he’d begun the week before.

Traffic was heavy on the ride home and when he got to the “horse” exit, he found himself turning off the freeway and into an area he’d never been. He could almost see that same horse trailer he’d followed in front of him as he made a left turn off the down ramp. The languid feeling from the night before fell upon him like a fog, and he stared straight ahead, out at the road, turning left, then right, then right again, traveling for several minutes before stopping at a gated fence. He got out of the car and stood, silently staring off into a field. He looked down past the scrub brush and the small wooden barn, to a pretty palomino pony grazing on clumps of wet grass. As his world stretched into this long, lost moment, a light drizzle began to mist and he wiped his face with his sleeve. He coughed and cleared his throat. The horse’s head popped up, her ears reaching toward the sound. The chill of the afternoon dug through his thin coat and he walked back to the car. He sat in the driver seat, turned the key and kicked up the heat. After a few minutes, he turned the radio on low and, as if waking from a dream, realized he couldn’t remember how to get back to the freeway.
He turned toward the field and the horse stood close to the car, her head straining through the fence, motionless, her liquid eyes targeting him. He stared back at the horse, feeling dreamy and calm, thinking: What? What are you trying to tell me? A loud commercial sprang from the radio and it sent a jolt through him. He turned it off, thinking: No, no, I’m not dreaming. Am I? I’m awake, aren’t I? And for a second he wasn’t sure. He touched his puffy cheeks and swore they felt numb. Then rubbed his forehead red, hoping to feel that and he did. His heart jumped and pushed his racing pulse as he turned the car back onto the road and sped away. He turned off the heat, fighting the numbness of his despair, telling himself to pull out of it, that this was sinking too far from reason. But even as the adrenaline raced through his body, fighting the narcotic lure of his fantasy, he could feel the horse dream pulling him back. The thin veil of desire wafted over him, filled him, calming, pulling him back until at last, he sat sated, quiet, heading home on the dark road.

It’s not that Penelope didn’t like children. She just had a problem with being pregnant. She had a hard time taking two aspirin for a headache, never mind having her stomach grow uncontrollably, hormones raging through her body. She liked things just the way they were. Normal. It was always good when things were normal: Early to bed, early to rise. Eat at seven, noon and five, shower everyday at the same time. Not too hot, not too cold. Just right. Normal. So when House started to question her about why they didn’t have any children again, saying that an empty spot touched his heart, she was silent. He pressed her and started talking about the horses, how the Arabian, he was sure, was giving him a sign of childbirth. That it was natural and right to drink from the stream of life. To breach and let life flow out from her body. He explained how the Morgan had reminded him of his own childhood, the blissful, happy times when he would run in the fields and laugh and jump and play ball, the lovely feeling of freedom. She sat stony-faced at the kitchen table holding a piece of white fish on her fork, staring over the light-blue rim glasses on the end of her nose. Her lips pursed and puckered, as if giving weight to her thoughts.
“You know what the doctor said. If we try again, you could lose both of us.”
“But it wasn’t an absolute,” he said, smiling. “It’s not like it’s written in stone: ‘If you get pregnant, this will happen!’”
“I don’t want to talk about it right now, Graham. I’m tired.” She scrapped off her plate and began loading the dishwasher.
“We could try again, is all I’m saying.”
She held her stomach, turned toward the sink and started to run the water.
Petulant, groggy from the meal, Graham laid himself out on the living room sofa and stared up at the shadowy corners of the darkening living room. He remembered the awful day Penelope had bled so much. She’d shaken him awake, her hands cold as ice, staring at him dumb struck. Her face pasty white, eyes sunken and red, shaking involuntarily, stuttering what the matter was. He’d wrapped her in blankets and carried her to the car, his mind only on saving her, to hell with the baby. He remembered her frightened looks, the bone white of her cheeks, her trembling. The Doctor had been very concerned, stating only, “she’s so very far along,” as they wheeled her into the operating room. Those hours waiting, the longest he’d ever spent slipped by as a rock through flesh. On the cell phone one minute, crying the next. Drinking coffee and vomiting it up in the men’s room, until at last the doctor came and told him it was done. The child was gone.
“Was it a girl or a boy?”
“A girl. But your wife is going to be all right.”
And he burst into tears, profusely thanking the doctor.
Graham opened his eyes, shifting his weight on the couch. Darkened tree limbs danced and swayed near the window above his head, casting shadows on the walls. He followed the moving shadows for a while, thinking of them as his horses, wild, beautiful, free. Then he drifted off.

As the dream took shape, he saw himself jumping through the tall, pale grasses beyond his childhood home. The warm wind licked his face as he turned to see the huge horse before him. Twelve feet tall, the monster horse stood snorting and grunting, masterfully shaking its mane. House lunged for its neck, but could not wrap his arms around it. Frustrated and a little frightened, he looked down at the massive round hoof near his foot, the weight of it digging into the ground. He felt it would be rooted there forever if he didn’t get it to move and he looked back up at the snorting beast.
“How do I ride you?”
The horse glanced at him with a bored eye, winked and trotted off toward the stream.
Graham ran after and soon found himself in the circle of horses, the dust beneath their hooves rising high in the air as they trotted round and round. Faster and faster they galloped. The huge horse stood hands taller than the rest, its proud eye staring at Graham, daring him to come forward and ride. Suddenly, he was snatched back to the sofa and he found himself staring up into the face of Penelope as she stood over him, whispering into his ear.
“Come to bed, dear. Come.”
And as he got up to follow, he touched her thigh and gave it a squeeze. She didn’t say a word but trotted up the stairs and disappeared into the bathroom. Graham climbed into bed fighting the ether veil of sleep. He reached for Penelope’s leg and she gave a sigh, mouthed a few incoherent words and turned onto her stomach. Remembering her naked body, her smooth thighs and flat tummy as she had walked naked from her shower, admiring how youthful she’d kept herself, he longed to feel her now. He reached for her again, pulling back her hair, kissing her face. She smiled and said, “I love you, Graham.”
“I love you, too, Penelope.”
He pulled the sheets up to his neck, feeling his fat stomach rub against bed as he turned onto his side, then stillness, staring into the dark. Soon his eyes grew tired and he closed them.

Graham stood bright eyed and fixed upon the white Arabian, her snout opening delicately contoured above her dark muzzle. The musculature of her body was sharp and beautifully modeled. He felt her strong back, dark legs, held her snout in his fingers.
“This is my very best work.”
“What dear?” Penelope leaned over the counter, browsing the Sunday Paper.
“This one. The Arabian. It’s my best one, don’t you think?”
She turned and glanced over her blue rimmed reading glasses and smiled.
“Very nice,” she said.
Graham took the six-inch wooden model and lightly brushed some white latex paint onto the eye. It looked startled, he noticed. Not at all like the strong Arabian he’d seen in his dreams. Perhaps he needed something more off-white, something comfortable, perhaps a tinge more beige so it wouldn’t upset the balance of color.

Upstairs standing next to her side of the bed, he placed the beautiful model on the alarm clock facing his wife’s pillow. The suitcase behind him in the closet was already packed. All he had to was pick it up and walk away. Holding the heavy suitcase in both hands, he stared at the king size bed for a long time. The boy he’d seen from horseback was a distant memory now, and the gnawing need to hold him, to never let him go, tell him what he must do overwhelmed him. But he knew the boy wouldn’t listen, to anyone, let alone a man unknown to him and he began to weep. Great sobs heaved from his chest. He dropped the suitcase with a thunderous boom.
“Are you all right?” Penelope called.
“Just fine, Dear,” he managed to say.
After a while he walked downstairs and placed the finished horse on the top shelf of the study and stood back to admire his work. There was a Morgan, a palomino, a standard and now the Arabian. His “circle of horses” was nearly complete. They had become his passion, his playmates, and his hobby. And even as the memory of the horse dreams began to fade, the horses brought him great joy and comfort in the long nights he spent carving and painting them from mere blocks of wood.

The End

Dream State (Continuation of a novel)

2010-12-29T21:08:00.000-08:00

My cell phone buzzed and rattled itself off the nightstand and onto my shoes. I looked down and saw the name, FRANK, brightly lit on the screen.
“Shit!” I said aloud, and rolled over for a few for hours more sleep. This self employment gig was gonna be a pain in the ass. I mean, desperate people do desperate things, especially when they can transfer some of that raw energy onto someone else. Frank was no exception. He called two more times in ten minutes, no doubt wanting answers I didn’t have. My head started to fill with ideas, things I could tell him. Your sister is fine and will live a long and happy life. Unfortunately, she will die, someday at the hands of, or rather, the fangs of an ill tempered water moccasin down on the pond walk at the retirement home in Celebration, Florida. Your sister is healthy as a horse; it’s you who has to be concerned, Fat Man. No, of course I couldn’t say that, it wouldn’t be ethical. Besides, I hated to tell Frank anything like this, besides I had feeling I’d get some answers in those boxes of magazines.
I leaned over and pressed “return call.”
“Frank!” I said shaking off a sleepy voice, “I just got out of the shower.”
“I need to see you,” he said in his usual calm, mannered voice.
“Certainly. What time?”
“As soon as you can.”
“Is anything wrong?”
“No.”
I heard the cat purring on the line.
“Okay, how about…” The alarm clock burned an amber 11:00 AM. “In an hour?”
“Very well. I’ll see you then.”
“And Gus?”
“Yes?”
“Bring, Peanuts.”
Before I could get up and hit the shower, the phone rang from “CALLER UNKNOWN.” I pressed the answer button.
“Yes?”
“Hello, is this, August?”
I cleared my throat and tried to place the voice.
“August Chase?” The voice asked again.
“Who’s calling?”
“You don’t know me, my name is Carla Donati. I think you knew my sister?”
“Oh?” Immediately, I tired to place that name, Donati.
“Her name was Emma.”
I froze. “Emma?”
“Emma Donati. You spoke with her several times last month?”
“Did I?” It raced back into my brain like yesterday’s nightmare.
“I need to see you.”
“Oh?”
“I understand it’s kind of awkward, but could you meet me at the Boat House Café in Central Park?”
“When?”
“Sorry, I meant to say at about three o’clock this afternoon?”
“This afternoon?”
“I’m sorry for the short notice, but it’s the best time for me this week.”
“Okay. I guess. What’s this about?”
“I think you know.”
“Is it about the mugging? Because really, I had nothing-“
“I just have to ask a few questions…please, meet me?”
Her voice sounded edgy, like she was about to crack. I stared out the window wondering if this was some extended version of the “Emma” dream, a warped kind of epilogue to her life story.
“Carla, I’ll meet you, but I can’t stay long. Got a lot of things going on today,” I lied.
“Thank you.”
Still holding the phone, I caught sight of a man standing across the street from my apartment. He seemed to be looking right at me. The camera he held flashed a few times. I got closer to the window in time to see him walk around the corner. I noticed he wore a dark leather motorcycle jacket and black jeans, but he didn’t mount a bike. Then a motorcycle zipped past my window.
“Hello? Are you still there?” I asked, not aware she’d hung up. I didn’t hear the click at the other end. Why did I agree to see her? What could she possibly want from me? Unless she thought I was some kind of nut fulfilling a deadly prophecy? I was sure she’d have the cops there waiting for me. Already things were turning to shit and I hadn’t even had my coffee yet.

I’ll Do That.

Peanut fit snuggly into a plastic shopping bag. I’d take him out before I got to the fat man’s apartment. Didn’t want him to think I was disrespectful of his little buddy. Just as I turned the corner onto Frank’s street, I saw motorcycle jacket guy walking toward me. I stopped short and pressed my back against the building as he got buzzed into Frank's building. An hour late and look what I find; Frank dealing in dirty little secrets. This guy was starting to scare me. Stepping into a nearby coffee shop, I ordered a cup and sat at a small table near the window. I typed Frank’s name into my phone search engine to see what popped up. Frank Cosh didn’t show up anything. I typed in Frank Cosh, New Hampshire, his place of birth, and that came up another blank. Did Frank send him to spy on me? Why would he do that, some sort of test? Was he a control freak and wanted to check me out? The hell with Frank and his scary Motorcycle Jacket spy, the Lantern had a burger calling my name, and I had a few question for my friend Millar.

A half hour later as I sat perched at the bar, sipping a Bass ale, received a call from Frank. I apologized and told him a friend had died unexpectedly and that I had to be there for the family. Saying he understood, we arranged to meet at six o’clock at his place. Then I turned back to Millar.
“So you’re telling me you only know Frank through this online astronomy site, Manhattan Observers, and you’ve never met the man or know what he does or how he gets his money?”
“If I knew the Fat Man, then I’d be complicit in a spy operation centered on your doorway and I have no interest in your doorway,” Millar said.
“Come on, Mill, you’ve got me mixed up with a freak.”
“Hey, you’re the Dream Detective, just tell him you didn’t dream anything and go on your way.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Good.”
“Yeah, good, the guy's a freak show.” I said and finished my pint of Bass.
Millar got up and put a few coins in the juke box and waited for the buttons to light up. Nothing happened.
“Hey,” he shouted, “What the fuck, Al?”
The bartender walked over to the jukebox and pulled the plug. “Sorry, forgot to unplug it. It’s been eating money all day.”
“Well, shit! Thanks for the warning.”
“Here, I’ll give you your money back, yah big baby.”
Allen santered behind the bar and slapped a few quarters down in front of Millar.
“Fucking joint,” Millar started to walk away, I took his arm.
“Why do you think the Fat Man would be interested in me? Is he a writer of some sort?”
“How the fuck should I know? You’re the Sleeping Detective.”
“Nice. Is that going to be your retort to all things relating to me from now on? Dream Detective, Sleep Detective, what the hell?”
“Got a nice ring to it.” Millar smiled. “I gotta pee, Sleeping Detective. Sir.”
“Great, Mill. Thanks ever so much. I knew I could count on you.”
I sat sat ruminating on the Fat Man's spy and possible motives for checking me out.
When Millar got back to the bar, he sat hard on his chair and turned to me.
“I think he’s got something to hide and wants you…”
“Wants me?”
“He wants you to find something for him?”
“But he was so vague. He said he was worried about his sister, who I assume is still in New Hampshire. That’s not very specific.”
“Exacty! He wants to see how safe this secret is.”
“That’s nuts,” I said.
“That’s right. It is nuts. Fuck it.”
Millar downed the rest of his beer and we both ordered a burger.

The park seemed almost empty in the late afternoon. I was feeling bit skittish after seeing Motorcycle Jacket taking pictures of my apartment, and wasn’t feeling very brave approaching the Boat House. I sat on a high wall on the back side of the property, kind of out of the way, and watched people as they came and went. Of course, I was an hour late, but hey, if she really wanted to see me, she’d still be there, right?
After a while I was starting to feel a bit guilty for standing her up, so I walked sheepishly into the restaurant and stood in the entrance. A dark haired woman, about thirty five and carrying two brightly colored museum bags, walked toward me. Instinctively, I covered my face and started to turn away, but held my ground as she approached.
“Carla?” I asked.
The woman gave me a sad nod and kept walking out of the building. I followed.
“Sorry I’m so late." I called after. "But I’m here now if you want to talk.”
She kept walking. I chased. “Look, things are a bit messed up right now and I’m sorry, okay? But I didn’t kill your sister.”
The woman half turned, a panicked look in her eye.
“Carla?”
The woman walked faster still.
“Yes?”
A strong female voice hit me from behind. I turned and saw a tall, light skinned woman with dark hair. I turned back and saw the other woman scurry off, her shopping bags flapping against her knees as she tried desperately to run up the small hill.
“You have a way with women,” she said.
“Look, I thought she was you.”
“Are you going to chase me up the hill, too?”
“What? No, I –“
Her smile stopped my plea.
“Okay, you got me. I’m a deranged stalker. You’ve nailed it.”
A look of sadness came over her. We just stood there avoiding eye contact for what seemed like a minute or two but was probably only seconds. She seemed to be thinking about what she already knew she was going to say. An extremely attractive woman, her even features, full lips and dark shoulder length hair were instantly alluring.
“How did you know my sister was going to get killed?” She asked finally.
I looked away. What was I going to say? There was so much to say, so much I could tell her. So much I should never tell anyone. The hair flopped around on my head as the wind picked up. Scattered leaves flew into the corners and crags of the wall. Her mid-length raincoat flew up in the back. I smiled slightly, hoping to break the ice a bit.
“Let’s get a cup of coffee,” I said.
She nodded and we walked back into the Boat House.
I remember once a disc jockey doing his little spiel about talking to women, his deep radio voice going on about a specific woman he'd seen, saying “She was a living doll but you, you know you’re nothing to look at…” And I remember thinking, really? Guys think that way? Well, shit, I don’t! I’m a good looking guy and I know it. I’ve never been intimidated by a woman in my life. Taken off guard, maybe, once or twice, but never really intimidated. I've always found something to say, creeping along until on easily found common ground until a spark ignighted. If that’s arrogant then so be it. I just think of myself as confident with the ladies. Only once did I stammer in the face of a beautiful woman. I was selling magazine subscriptions for my high school sports program back in Massachusetts, door to door. I'd come to a fairly nice house at the top of a cul-de-sac and knocked, puffing myself up with some energy to do my best sell. And when the door opened, there stood the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. I can’t even describe her as looking like a real person. I’d say the closest thing I’d seen was a painting we had in the living room of a “gypsy girl.” Dark hair, great big brown eyes, perfectly shaped nose and eyebrows. Curly locks pulled back just enough to reveal a large gold hoop on her ear. Well, I stood there and couldn’t even speak to the woman. Finally, out came something like, “You buy this?”
Carla took my breath away. And the feeling that she wasn’t quite human crept upon me the way it did that day I was selling door to door. What the hell was I going to say to her?
We sat silently sipping our drinks. I got a regular cup and she had a decaf latte. The water beyond the large glass windows rippled in the intermittent gusts. Leaves blew around the back deck. A few boaters leisurely rowed in and out of the rental area. I felt frozen in my chair, like I’d been dipped in dry ice and left on a pedestal for the chain saw. Her eyes were clear and bright and radiated intelligence.
“My sister was murdered.”
“I know.”
“You knew.”
“Well, yeah.”
“I mean ahead of time,” she looked out the windows and back to me. “Give me a reason you would know that, or why I shouldn’t have my friend over there bring you in?”
I followed her gaze to a man in a long trench coat standing on the corner, and looking back at me.
“What is this?” I asked.
“This? This is a cup of coffee,” she took a deep breath and added, “For now.”
“Okay, so I’m supposed to be intimidated or what?”
“He’s here for my protection.”
“You think you need protection from me, I’m gonna kill the whole family now?”
“It’s a tough city.”
“But I’m not a tough guy.”
“We all need some protection.”
“I could use some myself.”
“Get your own guy.”
“How much do they cost?”
“I don’t know, I ask friends.”
“I don’t have any friends.”
“That’s too bad. But I can’t blame them.”
We looked into each others eyes.
“You really think I had something to do with your sister’s murder?”
“Did you?”
“I just told you I didn’t.”
“I didn’t hear you say it.”
“But that’s what I meant.”
I sipped my coffee. She took her cup and sipped.
“So do we keep on like this or do you want to tell me something?” She put her drink down and turned the cup handle to a 45 degree angle.
“You used to be a waiter?” I asked.
She smiled and asked, “How did you know?”
“I’m starting to think I’m a bit of a detective.”
“A detective? What was my sister wrapped up in?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you were on a case when you saw her?”
“Sort of. I do a lot of freelance work, on my own.”
“And she came into this case somehow?”
“Look, there wasn’t a case, okay? I dream things and sometimes they come true.”
“What? What are you saying?” She asked.
“Didn’t your sister tell you what I do?”
She nodded, “No.”
I turned to the man on the sidewalk and then back to her. “Listen, you’d think I was nuts if I tried to explain what’s going on. I’m not a cop, I don’t have a badge. I’m just a guy who sees things and tries to help, that’s all.”
She looked crest fallen, her eyes darting to the man outside and back to her latte.
“Your sister was a sweet girl. I don’t think she was mixed up in anything illegal, at least it didn’t appear that way.”
“But if you’re not a detective, then how do you know?”
I sat back exasperated.
She looked at the man again and seemed to nod in his direction. This sent a shrill of panic through me.
“Okay, wait. Call off your guy.”
“I just did.”
“Oh.” I sat back a bit relieved. “Why did you do that?”
“He had to go. But I can get him on the phone right away!” Her voice shot higher on those last words and I knew she was still scared.
At the next table, a young couple got up. I noticed they’d left behind a Village Voice. I leaned forward looking her straight in the eyes. “Okay, here’s the deal. I’m gonna explain to you what I do. You’re gonna have to trust I’m telling you the truth. If you don’t believe me, then I guess you’ll never understand how I got involved with your sister, but if you do, we’ll have it settled right here and now.”
I grabbed the copy of the Voice, found my ad and laid it out in front of her. “Read right here,” I said, pointing.
She put her nose in the paper, read a bit and looked up at me.
“This?” An incredulous lilt weaved through her voice.
“Yes. This”
“You’re a physic?”
“I hate that word.”
“And you’re trying to tell me that you knew this thing was going to happen to my sister? “I did everything I could to warn her.”
“This is just too weird.”
She stood up and put five dollars on the table.
“She just wouldn’t listen to what I had to say.”
“A psychic. Oh my God. How much did she give you?”
“What?”
“How much did you bilk out of her?”
“It’ not like that.”
Carla started to walk away.
“I’m telling you the truth! I saw what was going to happen.”
“I shouldn’t have come here,” she said half to herself, and then she turned to me, her eyes lit with sparks. “You’re a bad person, Mister…” She shook her head, trying to remember my last name. A tear streaked her cheek. Her tone was mystified, incredulous, beaten; she secured her jacket belt and walked out the door.
to be cont'd...

Registered with WGA
Copyright 2010

Dream State (Part Three)

2010-12-20T09:58:00.000-08:00

Okay fiction fans, it's time to blast off with part three. Our hero meets "the Fat Man." And things are changed...and we meet Millar!

My first case: The Fat Man Sings

Bright and shiny of spirit, light hearted at the prospect of making some money and potentially helping people, I pushed any potential dream subjects out of my conscious mind. My first paying customer was a fat man named, Frank Cosh, who lived in the village in a run down four story walk up. He had a toothless grin, thinning hair and soup stains on his tent-size, button down shirt. With an elegant vocabulary, Frank spoke well of all those around him and while he greeted me, held a fat tabby named, “Peanuts.”
“Where do we begin?” He asked gliding his three hundred odd pounds past stacks of boxes holding old newspaper clippings, books and magazines. The boxes swayed and nearly tipped as he walked past. I guessed I was supposed to follow, so I did. We ended up in a far back bedroom which held the largest bed I’d ever seen. Between the boxes stuffed to capacity and tipping perilously toward me, I found myself seated in a small wood chair at the foot of the bed. Peanuts stared at me like I’d done something magical he’d been trying to figure out his whole life. The fat man smiled as he laid his head on his well troughed pillow.
“I don’t usually consult psychics, but I had a feeling when I read your ad, I don’t know, something came over me. I’m worried about my sister, Marion.”
“I see,” I said, nodding confidently. “Well, we’ll see what we can see.”
He smiled again, and then his face got serene and quiet. Laying a hand on his cat’s head, he rubbed its nose with his fat thumb and said, “I think she’s going to die.”
A flush went through me. I had a strong urge to bolt out of his bedroom. What was I thinking? I can’t do this. I can’t dream on demand. I have to be under stress, physical stress. I have to be pushed to my limit, tired, vulnerable, scared, and cold to have any kind of meaningful occurrence. Besides, hadn’t I been guided to these people by some connective force? Okay, maybe I exaggerate, but shit, I couldn’t just go into a trance, I had to be pushed into it.
“Okay,” I said, “but you know how this works?”
He nodded his head yes, but had a blank look that said, no.
“Okay’ let me lay it all out for you. I have to get to know you, see? I find out the facts and desires, your desires, well, maybe not your desires, but I get to know you, your essence.”
“My essence? That’s sounds rather…, don’t you think?”
“Well, what other way do you want me to explain it? Besides, I can’t do anything here. I can’t do a trance. I have to dream it. I have to sleep, and then I tell you what I see.”
“Oh,” he sounded down hearted.
“You did read my ad, right?”
“Yes, but I thought you’d trance sleep or something and I could get the results right away?”
“Sorry, Frank, I know in this age of instant gratification that’s what you want, but that’s not how it works.”
We spent the next two hours chatting. A quiet, intelligent man, I surmised he’d succumbed to his many phobias years before and was basically trapped in his self-made tomb, a living ghost, as it were. His only contact with the outside world was the internet and TV, and the germs his cat tracked in through the window after a night out. His money had come and gone from a telephone answering service he’d managed. Having briefly flourished in the early eighties, it died a quick, silent death in the early nineties when cell phones became readily available. Since then he’d been living off a small inheritance he’d gotten from his uncle. That was enough information for me to try and get a dream. After handing me an old stuffed rabbit, as a sort of memento/guide/talisman, I assumed, I walked home and proceeded to get drunk.
Okay, I lied. This part of the story is where things start to get complicated. I try to tell only the barest essentials, and sometimes I don’t tell the whole story because I just can’t face some things I’ve done. But mostly because there are certain people in this story that I’d rather forget. Now that I said that, I may as well admit it. I really didn’t place an ad in the Village Voice. Well, I did, but I didn’t get Frank as a client that way. Okay, that’s where I lied. Sue me. I was trying to avoid having to mention Millar Milford. I’m ashamed I knew him and that for a long time, he was my only friend, but now I realize how important he was to all this.
Millar and I met at The Lantern, a sleazy little bar that used to be a fairly nice pub. Good burgers, fish and chips. Soccer games showing on the television. Wood shavings covered the floor. The bartender was a freak named Allen, was skinny as a pole because he’d started on a Macrobiotic Diet several months back and thought he looked just peachy with .02 percent body fat. Allen had gotten mean in his skinniness. Thought he was above the lowly swine that haunted his late night establishment. For all I know he was a snooty English Major at the New School. What do I care? He was a prick.
Anyway, one night I’m trying to forget this one recurring dream where a girl named, Francine, I’d tracked to the Bronx gets her head ripped off by a city bus while she’s out for a nice Sunday bike ride. I’d heard of this type of accident before. It almost happened to me once. The bike rider is moving along, extra careful of traffic, studying the insane cabs coming at you, the people darting in and out. Then a bus comes along from behind, cuts you off and takes a right hand turn in front of you. The bus covers part of the curb, your trying desperately to get onto the curb and the next thing you know you have scrambled brains all over the sidewalk. So, I’m sitting in The Lantern trying to get this image out of my head, thinking up ways I can get this girl to understand she’s gonna have her head popped, when this geeky looking guy named, Millar buys me a round. Then he buys me another and another. Pretty soon I was hearing all about his pathetic life, how his wife was gone and he was stuck holding the bill for an extended honeymoon she’d never intended to finish, blah, blah, blah. The guy could talk. And he had money, lots of it. He was a computer geek and made millions selling a few software programs that allowed other programs to talk to each other of some such nonsense. It was all Greek to me. I just felt sorry for him because he was one lonely, shy dude, a bit on the rude side, and had the social skills of a wasp. Every other sentence he’d blurt out something nasty he’d seen or heard or noticed about you.
“Hey, that’s a nice zit you got there,” or “Gee, you got a scar on your nose, you know that?” or “You know how when you jerk off in the tub the sperm sticks to you?”
I don’t even have a big nose. He’s warped. Anyway, I didn’t want to tell you about Millar, because quite frankly, he’s a pain in the ass. But after a while he grows on you. So, one night he comes up with this idea for an ad in the Voice. “Take control of this thing,” he says. “Make some money off it.”
At the time I was an Exhibit Technician at the Natural History Museum, and not making a whole lot of dough. I’d wanted to be a writer, but that’s another story. So, I took him up on the classified ad idea, but before I even processed the idea he gets all excited and says he knows this guy looking for a psychic and he could call him for me. A guy he met in an online group of astronomy enthusiasts. (You should hear the whole “Red Dwarf Star” lecture) So I explained to him about the whole dream thing. About not forcing the dream subject on me, but he was so enthusiastic, a rare thing for this guy, that I took him up on it. More about Millar later, I just wanted, well, had to introduce him before I got too far into the story because he comes back to haunt it. Now I don’t feel so guilty. And besides, he ended up coming through for me.
Anyway, after visiting the fat man and going home and downing a few beers, I took a hot shower, laid out some comfy bed clothes and started to meditate. I wanted to clear my mind and really focus in. I sat on the floor and stared at a candle flame as it danced above the wax. After I relaxed a bit, I put on my bed clothes, took firm grasp of his rabbit, “Peter” I think he said its name was, and lay down on my bed. I put a tee shirt over the lamp to dim the lights and began a humming meditation. That’s where you hum to the point of it blocking out all else but the sound. After a while I felt myself drifting into a slushy, sputtering dream. Images formed from static pulses. The fat man is sitting on his bed, smiling, angles of the room where he sits, boxes toppling over, magazines falling to the floor. I look at one of the magazines; an old Life filled with hazy color photos. One of the photos is moving. I see a girl, no, not a girl but a slender, tall young woman. She’s attractive in a “fifties” kind of way. Her lips are bright red, hair done up like a Jane Mansfield publicity still. She moves in a staccato, frame by frame walk across the page. She leans down to a fat little baby, shakes her finger at it. “Don’t cry,” she seems to be saying. The baby crawls off. I follow it to the next page. It crawls over to another baby, a little girl wearing a pink ribbon in her hair, and pulling at her tiny little booties. Suddenly the fat baby pushes the girl baby off the page. She gets up, crying, and runs off into the shadows of the room. It went black. I woke up. I looked at the stuffed rabbit, encouraged I could even conjure up the fat man at all.
“Peter,” I said, “this is going to be one tough ride. But the fat man is going to get his answers.” I turned over to go to sleep when an idea popped into my head. I’d dreamed in black and white until now, but this was a kind of rich hazy color. Of course, Life Magazine was known for the color photography. There’s something else I didn’t get, something about those boxes of magazines. I had to see them for myself.

Dream State (Part Two)

2010-12-12T21:28:00.000-08:00

A few months ago I posted the first section of a novel I was writing called Dream State. You can go back to past posts to find it. This is the next section.

My first attempted rescue: Beaten but not whipped.

Pablo Carrillo, the dude in the car, didn’t realize his life was in danger. Nor did he think the gringo who knocked on his door that afternoon was anything worth mentioning to his wife, Phyllis. It wasn’t until the gringo started hanging around the corner deli near his apartment that he started to take the situation seriously, and not in the way the gringo had wanted, but in a way that could get the gringo hurt. At least, this is the impression I got from him when he grabbed me by the shirt and pushed me down in the corner of the store.
“Get out of my neighborhood, you understand me?”
“I’m trying to tell you you’re in danger!”
Carrillo hauled back, held his fist above my head ready to let loose.
“You think I want to be here?” I asked. “I hate this. I hate this.”
Carrillo lowered his fist, looked at the deli guy watching us.
“What are you looking at?”
The deli guy picked up a telephone and began to dial.
“Now you get the fuck out of my face or I swear I’ll put you deep in the ground.”
“It’s a bridge,” I started desperately, trying to sound as sincere and foreboding as possible, “I see a bridge and you’re crossing it. You have on a suit. A wedding? Are you going to a –“
The vision began playing in my head. All I could see was the truck coming at me. I was behind the dashboard, and the truck comes so fast he doesn’t have time to react. In an instant I feel the impact. My chest heaves, I try to catch my breath. My body convulses and contorts as the car wraps around me.
Carrillo stepped back, his fist still balled. I could feel the blood come to my mouth, my lip bleeding.
“You’re sick, dude. I didn’t even hit you! Get yourself to a fucking hospital.” Carrillo ran out of the store. I laughed to myself, but the pain in my chest was overwhelming. I saw black.
My face was cold. Numbness snaked up the side of my head from my ear to the top of my skull. I sat up, brushed pebbles from my cheek. I’d seen him crash and die. There was nothing I could do to stop it. It came, it happened and it finished, like a ride in an amusement park. It did what it was programmed to do and that was that. I’d tracked him down for nothing. He and Phyllis were going to crash on that bridge and fall into the river on their way to a wedding and there was nothing anyone could do about it. I turned my head and saw the deli guy looking at me from his window. No doubt he’d dragged me to the street, empathetic fucker. Yeah, I see you.
“I love you, too,” I said out loud, knowing he couldn’t hear me.
He turned away.
Okay, so there had to be a way to channel this stuff, synthesize it into a form I could deal with rather than chasing some guy until he thinks I’m nuts. Anyway, that’s what I was thinking. That was the plan, until I finally got it down to a science. You want facts and figures? I can give you that. You want times and places? I can give you that, too. You want to know who; it’s going to cost you. Cuz that’s what I do. Well, sort of. That was just three months ago, years from the time I’d had my first dream.

The Case of Emma

Cabrillo was not my first attempt to understand the reality of what I was dreaming. My first few dreams had faded as quickly as they’d come. Actually, Cabrillo came immediately after another set of disturbing dreams about a young woman named, Emma. The dreams by this time were longer, more concise. I began to see little details, such as the time of day or night, the weather, what they were wearing. And I just happen to wake up right away. That was the key to remembering.
In the case of Emma, I’d dreamed her death twice the first week, then three times the next week, then every night and twice during the day in the last week, when they stopped. I hadn’t connected her to anything real. Outside of enduring a horrible recurring nightmare, and a slightly bloodied nose, I just figured she was a mythical being I’d made up. I did however, out of curiosity, call a young woman I thought might be Emma and tried to warn her. She didn’t take it well. I tired to have a serious conversation with her, but she was spooked beyond imagination. I’d even given her my name and phone number in case she changed her mind and wanted to work with me. The more she resisted the more I attacked. I followed her to school, to work, to the dentist. I ran into her at a restaurant, in the subway, near a bus stop. One day the dreams just stopped and I was free, able move on. Or so I thought. A week or so later I was having lunch at a local restaurant and I saw her picture on the wall. On it was a memorial poem dedicated to her memory; her photo graced the bottom half of the poster. My heart stopped when I saw the picture. She had a straight white smile, shoulder length dirty blonde hair and was wearing chef whites, just as I had seen her in my dreams. The tag line below the picture stated she’d died on January 7th of that year, the victim of a brutal late night mugging in midtown Manhattan. I didn’t have to be told the details. I’d seen it several times. Now I knew for certain I was dreaming reality before it happened. In essence, I was a time traveler. A spirit roaming the dark halls of time, plucking out this event or that, all relating to the death of someone I didn’t even know existed before my subconscious brought me to them.

Fast forward a few weeks.

Once I’d started to put things together, figure out what I could do with this “gift,” I placed an ad in the Village Voice under “psychic readings.” In it I detailed my ability to dream the future and warn paying customers of what may be. The only problem was I didn’t know if it was a lie or not, because I’d never tried it on anyone in particular. I’d always been brought to a stranger in my dreams, as if guided by some unknown force, and it always took me a few days to track them down. Each time I’d ended up with nothing but heartache and hurt for my troubles. Funny thing is, I was always shocked and amazed that I could track down the subjects in my dreams. They never believed me. Would you? So, the hell with it, I was going into the dream business for real and make some money. Get rewarded for services rendered.

On aging and Creativity

2010-12-10T09:48:00.000-08:00

We all share in the state of being human. Of knowing our fate even as we start our journey in life. Theatre is a way to share bits and pieces of our emotional life with others. To relate to our own and others experiences and see it acted out in a concrete forum. Our intellects are tied closely to our emotions, informing our decisions, influencing our tastes. One thing I've noticed is that as age comes upon us, for many people, tolerance for frustration and difficult circumstances decreases and we do not want to deal with difficult problems the way we may have in our youth. A difficult person is avoided. Uncomfortable circumstances are circumvented. This is done through experience. I figured out a long time ago that certain battles, situations and problems were worth avoiding at all costs. I used to take on all challenges head on. I was constantly swimming up stream. But I’ve come to realize many challenges are not worth the effort. Writing, on the other hand has become easier for me, and is similar to the dream state. At times I simply feel like I'm writing down what I'm seeing composed in my head and have very little to do with it, except giving it a nudge here and a nudge there. Creativity can be changed by drugs, but not exclusively. I think depression and emotional exhaustion can be crippling, and can come upon you like a wave. The trick is to recognize the symptoms as they build and to head off the “event” with some sort of intervention.

The Importance of Players

2010-11-23T10:48:00.000-08:00

Being a playwright without a company to write for and have performances is like an artisan making a product with no store to sell at. It's frustrating at the very least. And what's ironic is now, more than ever, people have decided they want to be writers. Gone are the days when a writer actually had venues to go to. The most important thing a writer needs is support. He needs a sounding board he can trust and a venue in which to develop his product and ideas. Shakespeare had a company of players to write for. So did Ibsen. It is the most important step in a process of play development. Honing a script through readings and staged reading is the key to really getting a play to fly and unfortunately, unless you are in a place where these things are readily available through a company of associates, it is very difficult to put together. Once the playwright actually hears the words, sees the intent in the actors interpretations, hones the line reading and finds jokes that may not be evident but need to be unearthed. Then can the work proceed to greatness. However, these days it seems the playwright has to hone his stuff toward acceptance of the status quo or go It alone. Try as he will to get his words into the mouths of actors. This takes time, talent and money away from the playwright. Gone are the days of the many outlets and venues that used to be available to the writer. Now the pie has been cit so small that even a tiny piece has its costs. Doubly so in this terrible economy. You can't eat words, but they can sure eat at you.

Bowling For Miracles 10 pages

2010-11-18T17:50:00.000-08:00

Here's 10 pages of my new stage play, Bowling for Miracles. It's a comedy in 2 acts.
Copyright 2010 (c)
Registered with WGA

SCENE 3

Saturday afternoon, PAM’S living room. Dom has spread newspapers over the dining room table and on the floor. He devours one article after another, snickering as he does. After a few beats, Pam comes out of the kitchen.

PAM
Did you want-
Pam is surprised by the mess.

What are you doing?

DOM
This stuff is killing me!

PAM
What are you looking for?

DOM
I’m just reading.

PAM
Get them off of my table. Go on!

DOM
Look at this!

PAM
No.

DOM
Come here. Look at this one.

PAM(Reading)
Vampire boy found in bat cave...

DOM
Look at the picture! Can you believe that?

PAM
Get that off of my table.

DOM
Look at this! Look! “Man with two hearts donates one to next door neighbor!” Oh, that’s a good one! Can you believe they print this crap? Classic!

PAM
Move it or lose it!

DOM removes the papers to the floor revealing empty table. Pam does the following dialogue while setting table for three. Pam EXITS to Kit.

DOM
You got to see this one! Pam! Come on! Come out here a second.

PAM (O.S.From Kitchen)
Why are you reading that junk?

DOM
Perfect!

Pam enters from Kitchen carrying settings. Sets table.

PAM
They just make that stuff up. Imagine? They get paid for writing false stories like that.

DOM
Well, it’s a gold mine for somebody. Somebody’s making a mint! You can count
on that! You think they don’t make a lot of money writing this stuff? What do they charge for these things? A buck? Two bucks?

PAM
You’re the one wasting money.

DOM
I bet some of it’s true. Some of it could be true. Like this! See here? A man grew a radish in the shape of a chicken. Look at the size of that thing! What is it? A radish? Does that look like a chicken to you?

PAM
You want me to heat some bread?

DOM
That would be great. I mean it’s not the reason I bought these things. The miracle crap! That’s what I want to see. The holy stuff! That’s what I’m looking for!

PAM
Hush! You should be ashamed.

PAM EXITS to kitchen.

DOM
What? I’m just looking! A woman in Texas sees the Virgin Mary all the time. Then the sun spins around up in sky. People come from all around to see her. Does miracles too, I think. People, cripples, come hobbling up by the bus load just to watch her talk to the air. I wonder if they charge for parking? I bet that’s what they do, have some relative or somebody with a
huge cornfield or sand lot, charge a buck and a half.

PAM enters from the kitchen holding a hot bowl of pasta.

DOM (Cont’d)
Two, three bucks for vans. Campers. Motor homes, even!

PAM puts down the bowl and stares at Dom.

DOM
Ten bucks a pop even! Our Donny could be one of those people.

PAM
He’s not a cripple!

DOM
Not that.

PAM
Why, Dom? Why?

DOM
You know, special. He could be somebody very special. Oh, there’s money to be made! All you need is the right event, a little publicity. Start out small,

DOM (Cont’d)
work into the bigger stuff. Internet, radio, TV, Get on Oprah!

PAM
Oprah, ha! You got a screw loose you know that? Our, Donny...

Dom puts down the paper and smiles at Pam.

What?

DOM
I think he is. I think he’s, how you say it, blessed.

PAM
You think he is. Or is there “money to be made,” huh?

DOM
He’s a special kid, we both agree with that. Riding a bike at two. Lighting matches by four.

PAM
He takes after Henry.

DOM
He’s always reading the bible. Staying up all hours. Hardly sleeping. Barely eating...studying. I bet he knows more about the Bible than most priests!

PAM
Don’t say that!

DOM
Writing his writings. It’s like a retreat up there. Drawing those pictures on his pants. It’s like a shrine, those pants!

PAM
It’s a pig-sty up there.

DOM
I think something’s gonna happen. I believe he’s ready...he’s gonna
surprise even you! All he has to do is reveal a little bit of that mind of his...POP! A new Revelations! Something, some small little thing that gets the people come running and wham!

PAM
Wash your hands.

DOM
I tell you, Pam, I’ve been reading all about it! Things have been happening around the world. You think Donny’s the only one being affected? Other things,
too. Fish dying. People killing each other. Babies being born without brains!

PAM
So you’re not the only one.

DOM
It’s true! It’s true! And now, it’s happening to your own boy! Our, Donny!

PAM
Ughh...

DOM
It could be a sign! An omen!

PAM
Donny could be an omen? He draws on his arms and talks to lights and you think he’s sent from God? (A beat) The fish are dying? What the hell are you talking about?

DOM
Look at this-

PAM
Shut up and eat your supper.

DOM
All I’m trying to say is look around, he’s not the only one.

PAM
Your gonna be the only one to not get supper if you don’t shut up already! (Yelling) Donny! Donny, come down stairs your supper is ready.

We hear a door slam. Donny descends the stairs. He is shirtless. He wears blue jeans that have magic marker writing on them.
He is caressing his left side with his fingers and holds a BOOK in his free hand. He reads while walking slowly to the table.

PAM
Here he comes. Our savior!

She exits to the kitchen.

DOM
Come here, boy, I want you to look at something. You know it’s bowling night? You’re coming, right? You gotta wear a shirt, though.

Donny slowly walks over and slouches into the chair. Dom brings a paper to him.

DOM
Here, look at this! And this! And these!

Dom leaves the open papers in front of Donny and paces back and forth. A few beats.

DOM
Well?
DONNY puts the BOOK on the table and places his plate on top of it. DOM holds an article in Donny’s face.

DOM
You sure you want to eat on top of the Bible, there Donny?

DONNY
It’s Moby Dick.

DOM
You’re doing code on Moby Dick?

DONNY
It works pretty good, too!

DOM
Hush, you don’t want to tell anybody something like that. Don’t let your mother see you do that.

DONNY
Why not?

DOM
Why not? What are you trying to pull anyway? Are you onto something or are you not?

Donny shrugs shoulders.

Well, crap! (Beat) Anyways, you see this? (Reading) “The Virgin Mary appears regularly,” blah, blah...You see?

DONNY
It happens all the time.

DOM
That’s right! (To Pam in kitchen) You see? You see that? It happens all the time! Donny knows!

Donny starts to scoop a huge mound of pasta onto his plate.

PAM (O.S.)
I don’t want to hear it!

DOM
What are you doing in there?

PAM (O.S.)
Burning the bread!

Donny crams his mouth full of pasta.

DONNY
I’ll take a piece of that!

DOM
Me too! I’ll take a piece. We both want a piece!

Pam comes out of the kitchen holding a basket with the warmed bread, and places it on the table.

DOM
What about this one! “Virgin seen in sky!”

DONNY
Pass the pepper.

Pam passes the pepper and fills her plate with pasta.

PAM
Well, it’s all nonsense if you as me. If the Virgin wanted to show herself she would. You wouldn’t have to read some phony newspaper to hear about it. She’d make herself known!

DOM
And how would she do that?

DONNY
Is there any salad?

PAM
I didn’t have time.

DOM
How, pray tell, would she come down to earth, then?

PAM
Well, first of all, there would be no mystery.

DOM
Mystery is the first rule of being a Catholic!

PAM
She’d show herself for all the people to see. And people would be getting healed! Saved from the misery of their folly!

DOM
But that’s what we’re talking about here!

DONNY
Statues are giving milk.

DOM
What?

DONNY
In India. Statues are giving milk.

DOM
Milk? Really? You hear that? They’re milking statues! That miracle enough for you?

DONNY
Not milking! Milk is coming out of the statues! In India.

DOM
That’s what I said!

DONNY
Not milking! It’s just coming out!

DOM
What do you mean, it’s just spraying out all over the place? Like a car wash?

PAM
That’s crazy talk!

DONNY
Frogs are being born deformed.

PAM
Maybe they drank the milk!

DONNY
Floods. Famine. Disease. It’s all happening right now.

DOM
You hear that? We got to get in on this before it’s too late!

PAM
The end of the world is a scheme now?

DOM
I see shirts with Donny’s writin

Bowling For Miracles!

2010-10-20T12:04:00.000-07:00

Just finished a play I started 12 years ago. Bowling For Miracles is a satirical play about a man and his nephew who hatch a scheme to make money from a "miracle." They get involved with a small time journalist who blackmails them into going 50/50 for all profits. Add a wacky publicist, a day time TV show and add a dash of nuts, and you get the idea. I think it’s one of the funniest pieces I’ve written. The play is a statement on pop culture, celebrity, greed and the out of whack values in this country. Stay tuned for updates.

What is "realisitic" in film and theatre?

2010-10-06T10:45:00.000-07:00

Few of us are experts on all things. Most of us don't know how closely a spy show parallels reality, if military movies are realistic or if a moon shot can actually be done in the way portrayed in film. The two things that binds us (and we can each agree to some degree of expertise in a chosen field), technical knowledge and innate knowledge of human nature. It is the latter I am referring when I recall whether something is realistic or not. Too many people are hung up on technical jargon, time lines, and events to actually consider the realistic response of the players. We as human beings recognise good or bad acting. Why? Because we see the human response as our area of expertise. If an actors performance is multilayered, spontaneous and evokes an emotional response in us, we recognize this and are impressed. If an actor's portrayal of true emotion if off the mark it is blatant and unforgivable. So, what is realistic? Are we talking about circumstances within a film or the emotional life of the actors? I've found that non-reality, as far as plot and circumstances, can swing wildly away from "truth" given the right circumstances and the audience can accept this."Twilight" is a good example of this type of film. As long as the characters act and behave according to the unspoken or even elicited rules of their world, and have true emtional reponses to circumstances. But once an actor starts to behave in an irrationally emotional way, it just doesn't work anymore. (except if they are crazy, then that will not carry a film) So when I hear people going on about how "unrealistic" a film is, they are usually referring to the plot and circumstances rather than the acting. But I ask you, was "Animal House" realistic? No. Were the character responses within the arc of the story real? Yes. So we accept the film as being good. What about "Saving Private Ryan?" Was that realistic? I've often heard it said that the battle scenes were very realistic. So be it, but in truth films stack events in such a way as to build tension and thus are artificial by definition. All fiction is unrealistic by defintition. In adapting a true story to film, for example, reality cannot sustain the tension of a dramatic 2 hour epic without the events being manipulated into a dramatic arc. This is because that is not the way life is lived. We live in a jumble of the mundane and dramatic. Films are condensed, events are manipulated, timelines are changed, characters are often compilations of many character traits of certain key players plucked from reality. In other words, a true story has ever made it to the screen that has not in several ways been changed by the dramatic process. Drama is tension, conflict, and release. The same holds true for music. In a song there is tension in a phrase, built up by another phrase and then a release at the end. In essence a good song, let's say, Bungalow Bill, by the Beatles, is a mini dramatic theme similar to a short story. So, my point is this: When I hear someone criticize a film as being unrealistic, I consider a few things: Are they talking about the technical aspects of the story, the acting, the suspension of disbelief or all three? A good film sets up a premise in a false world that, hopefully, an audience will accept. If we have trouble getting past the world in which the characters live, we will not be able to suspend our disbelief. But if a movie is well acted, the characters live in a world that we can accept and things happen within the rules of that world, then it is, in essence, "believable." If, however, you get hung up on technical jargon, procedures, and timelines, then you will not be convinced to invest your 90 minutes. In my short play, "Do You Want Chili Cheese Fries with That?" I wanted to demonstrate the horror of killing someone. The person who does the killing knows the victim and has tried to forge a bond with him, even though he is not a fellow soldier, but an Iraqi national who has volunteered to help the Americans. So the dichotomy of the death is complicated by three factors: 1. The killer knew the victim. 2. The victim could have been working for the enemy. 3. The killer is stuck in a cave with the victim for several minutes to contemplate what he has done. Now, in reality, the soldier doing the killing probably would not have felt too much at that moment. Perhaps days, months or years later, I feel, it may have come back to haunt him. So I compressed time and had what I thought may be some future response to killing his acquaintance. Furthermore, his response was not only compressed but elaborated on by speaking his thoughts out loud. These two factors, compression of time and speaking his thoughts were an UNrealistic response considering the circumstances and timeline, but they were necessary in order for me to drive home a point. When this short play got some attention from a movie director who wanted to make it into a short film, I was confronted by the fact that these were unrealistic circumstances and suddenly they, and consequently I, became enamored with military jargon, realistic circumstances of the mission they were on, etc. And it got to the point of considering what kind of radios they had and how would they talk to each other on them. Several re-writes ensued andf finally, it came down to the point that the soldiers response would not be as written. I found myself in a position of defending my play and my film. Eventually, the inevitable happened, as so often with films, and the project got dropped due to lack of funds. But my point is, they took an idea and tried to weave a different reality around it due to a change of medium, when in fact, I felt they didn't have to do any of that. Still I went along with it, all in the name of realism. My point being, realism or reality has less to do with setting up dramatic events or structure than you may think. There are those who think that if you choose a specific technical subject, for example the film, "Crimson Tide," Starring Danzel Washington and Gene Hackman, you MUST be dead on at all times regarding reality and precedure. In this film, Danzel plays a submarine commander who goes against his captain’s orders to deploy nuclear missiles because a certain protocol has not been met. The film was taught, well acted and, I thought, realistic. When I asked the wife of a submarine commander, my neighbor at the time, about the film, she told me her husband said it was a load of crap. Very unrealistic and stupid. So, was he referring to the plot, the action, the acting or the technical jargon? He was referring to the plot. This would never happen due to certain protocols aboard ship. Hmmm. He was also referring to the way the characters acted. It would never happen. Period! The public didn't know this and the movie didn't suffer because of it. It made tons of money. But you see, they had to ignore the reality in order to get to the drama. Which is my point. So, next time you hear someone say a movie is not real, tell them, that's right. It's just a movie.

Dream State

2010-10-01T00:11:00.000-07:00

Play Back

The car moves quickly and quietly through passages of indistinct dark and light. Shadows slide by faintly illuminated guard rails outside my window and beyond that, to my right, very far down, water. I turn to the driver. He’s a heavy set man with a dark five o’clock shadow and thick eyebrows. He looks not at the road, is fishing around for something, his eyes darting down to the seat and back to the road. Communication is nil. It’s already set in motion. I’m only along for the ride. But I have to try.
“Stop the car,” I yell.
He looks in my direction, smiles, like I’d paid him a gentle compliment. I turn down the sun visor and gaze into the mirror. It’s not me I see but a dark haired woman sitting in the back seat. She smiles. Her mouth moves but I cannot hear her. The moment comes: The truck comes at us, swerving all over the road, the piercing sound of tires skidding across cement, an instant shock, a slap to the head and we’re falling off the bridge into the river. My stomach flies around in my chest; my heart pulses to burst my veins. Then the smack of hitting the water, the look on his face when he turns to me, the crunching of vertebra as my cheek melts into the steel door. I see it in his eyes. He knows. All was lost. Death rears and there was no escaping. It’s happening no matter what I do.
Stop.
Stop time and see who he is. Can I start at the beginning, play it back?
Yes. I’m in the car again. We’d turn onto the bridge. What can I do? I unlatch the glove box and search for papers. Who is it this time? A name pops into my head as I try to read the registration. Then a flash of light, the crunching of vertebra as my cheek melts into the steel door. I’m in the water now, helpless, sinking down, trapped in the car, cold water envelopes me, bubbles escape my mouth as I scream his name.
”Carrillo. Pablo Carrillo.”
Then I woke up.
That was the first time I manipulated a dream to see who I was going to save.
The dreams first started about the time I turned thirty. I was walking home one early Sunday morning after a party in the East Village. I’d been drinking since about ten that evening and had a wonderful time chasing a girl I liked, trying to get her to go out with me. I failed in my attempt, however, and had way too much to drink. With time on my hands and little money for cabs, began the walk the fifty-something blocks back to my apartment. It was cold. Anemic flakes slowly began falling around me. After a while the snow stopped melting on the sidewalk and began a rapid accumulation. The light sputtering transformed into a white curtain and obscured anything beyond a half block in any direction. As I trudged on, the wind began to pick up. Swirling blasts of snow hit me in the face, numbing my cheeks and nose. I picked up a newspaper from a trash can and held it over my head. I looked down for protection, watching one foot step in front of the other. That was when I noticed the blood. There was a large drop of red on my shoe, then another on my knee. I put a finger to my nose and returned thin shades of red liquid. I collected snow and put it to my nose. Feeling woozy, I made it to the doorway of my apartment, unlocked the door and staggered into the building. I fell down, tried to recover but hadn’t the strength, and in the hallway I passed out.
I had the first of many special dreams. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the bits of information I was acquiring through this “dream state” would later enable me to save peoples lives. The information, or dream data, came to me in bits of short, black and white moving images, similar to a video clip. Micro movies I played back in my head and try to comprehend, but only if I woke up immediately. If I didn’t wake up immediately after, the information would slowly dissolve from easily remembered pictures into a mist of crumbling bits of black and white. I didn’t choose this to happen to me. I didn’t believe in ESP, mind melding, kinetic energy transference, time travel or anything else you can cram into that shit-box category. I was just an ordinary guy.

Dark Genius (Novel)

2010-08-18T14:14:00.000-07:00

Okay, so this is an excerpt from my novel, Dark Genius. I wanted to post this because I am editing it now and soon will try to get it published.

Chapter One

John Harper had been coming to Maynards Island since he was about 10 years old. A tiny spec in Casco Bay, Maine, about a mile long and a half mile wide, the island imbued a sense of self reliance, and a closeness to nature, since it had no electricity, running water, except for a gravity fed rain barrel on the roof, and no paved roads or cars. The cottage sat on a small sloping hill that afforded some of the best views of the bay on the island. Built in 1908, beyond a spectacular fireplace and warm cozy furniture, it held little in the way of creature comforts. The gas stove and refrigerator hadn’t been replaced since the mid-nineteen sixties. Most of the furniture came with the place when his parents bought it. It was all original from the last owners and held up well. Since the cottage, with three bedrooms, a living room and dinning room, was not winterized, it was unusual for Harper to stay much past Labor Day. But those late days of autumn were the most splendid. Something about the shorter days, the sun lower in the sky, a wisp of chill in the afternoon air and beginnings of autumn color on the trees always invigorated him.
Now Harper stood in his kitchen holding a very special envelope. It contained, he assumed, the last known letter written by his very famous, most successful and now deceased brother, Jimmy. Jimmy Harper had been famous for his art. The world had known such painters before; Willem De Kooning, Jackson Pollack, Gerhard Richter, to name a few, that had made names for themselves and had been declared masters by contemporary critics and the art buying connoisseurs as well. Jimmy was now a dead master. A lifetime of emotional ups and downs, exacerbated by booze and drugs, had finally pushed him to an edge he willing slipped over.
Ferryboat captain Craig Morton, a small, gruff looking man, having just delivered the letter to Harper, seemed most proud of himself for being so helpful. He stood in Harper’s kitchen doorway and waited, no doubt, for confirmation of his good deed.
“How can I thank you, Cap?”
“It is from Jimmy, then?”
“Oh, yes. There is no doubt.”
“Kind of strange, don’t you think?” Morton shifted on his bare feet. “To get this so long after he’s gone?”
“Of that I am not so surprised, Cap. My guess is the mail in New York City got a tangle in it.”
“But a month after?”
“Six weeks after, actually,” he lied.
Harper examined the envelope one more time. The post marked was blurred but seemed to confirm the letter was in fact mailed not but a week ago.
“Well, whatever happened, I got it now, Captain. Thanks to you.”
“Well Harp, I thought you might like to see it right away. Letter delivery’s not my regular routine, you know.”
“I am grateful, Cap. I truly am. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to read it in private.”
The Captain grumbled under his breath before forming it into words. “Off to the next run, then. Regular service to the mainland will stop this week.” Morton started walking away. “Just a reminder!”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks again, Cap.”
Morton trudged off.
Harper rested his back against the door and looked at the envelope. He took his pocket knife from his pocket and sliced it open.
It was probably just another in a series of odd little notes. Most of the notes had something to do with shadows moving, walls waving and demons living in the upstairs apartment. He'd seen many of these letters. Jimmy had been sending them for years, and each one had been more bizarre than the last; rambling, cryptic notes on paper bordered with hand drawn doodles and cartoons: Strange sea creatures, a snowman with black laced boots smoking a dope pipe in billowing clouds. Some of the letters were sent special delivery, others through regular mail. They never said much, chitchat about the New York art scene, ruminations on life, death, loneliness, and sometimes detailing dreams before going off into unintelligible blather. Harper knew them for what they were; the ramblings of a deranged man, hopped up on drugs, wallowing in hopelessness. And now Jimmy, his once beloved brother, internationally successful abstract artist, was dead. What was unusual was that it had been mailed weeks after Jimmy’s death by suicide. Unsettling as it was, Harper could not let himself get distracted.
Outside his back porch, tall brown grasses swayed gently in the field beyond his backyard. The late morning sun was drying foliage. Warm moisture from the grasses caressed Harper's face like hot breath as it coalesced above. He took a deep drag of his cigarette, put the tip onto a strand of grass and watched it bend from the heat. Then he opened the letter and read.

“Dear Bro,
I am drowning here in this filth hole. Why am I always complaining? Alright, I’m not complaining anymore. Where are you? I haven’t seen you in the city for a while. Still hiding on the island? Maybe I’ll come find you.
Jimmy”
That last sentence sent a chill down his spine. “Maybe I’ll come find you.” Harper folded up the letter and stuck it in his back pocket.
In his studio, Harper pulled on his heavy, paint splattered work boots and stared at his new canvas. The painting had come to him in a dream; an angry ocean ripped by wind and rain, and struggling on it, a small boat atop a giant whitecap in the middle of the vast sea. He’d hoped to show two things: The vastness and violence of the sea and the intimacy of the boat, a sailor alone, a mere spec of paint, at the tiller in that vastness. The painting was at the beginning stages. Harper hoped he would know when it was fully formed, his idea and concept realized, and not over paint the way he tended to do. Too much detail, he’d found confounds and destroys the illusion.
He also needed a rest from his brother’s spirit. It still lived within him, and all around the island, in the studio, the kitchen, and in his dreams. Death can never end a life so vivid, so complete in another persons mind. He knew Jimmy as he knew himself. He knew his heartache, his weaknesses and his vices. He knew of his spirit, his love, his gentleness. He knew his body and his eyes, his face. Even looking at his own hands, he could see the resemblance to Jimmy and it unnerved him. His hand alone could give him anxiety. He knew Jimmy needed to get out of his head. That he needed salvation from his brother’s spirit.
And salvation came in small rays of hope, and that hope was work. The glassy surface of a newly stretched canvas, stiff bristle brushes, the smell of gum turpentine and linseed oil, applying the paint; these things Harper loved. These things grounded him, healed him and would get him through his grief. Take him away from the guilt of Jimmy's death.
Taking a last drag of another cigarette, he looked up from his painting. The bay sparkled in silver slivers of reflected light. The nearby islands stood as blocks of green and dark brown in floating reflections of the sky. He put the canvas aside and headed down to the public dock for a look out at the bay.
Walking down the gangplank to the dock, Harper loved the feeling of being above the water, suspended over the secret world of sea creatures and grasses that he could see glimpses of gently swaying with the tide. The laughter of small children filled the air as Harper sat down on the dock. The autumn sun was just strong enough to warm his face and shoulders. A couple of kids with baited drop-lines, their faces hanging over the dock, waited for crabs to bite. Harper peered down at the sandy bottom, a patchwork of speckled light and sea grasses. Crabs appeared like black-brown spots, lingering by the children's baited hook. They moved mysteriously in and out of the murky shadows until succumbing to temptation.
"Got one!" The girl yelled as she leaped to her feet.
"Pull it up, pull it up!" The boy chimed, "No! This way!" The boy shouted again, taking the fishing line from her.
"It fell off!" "Let's do it again! Drop it!"
Harper chuckled as he watched the crab’s slow descent. Once landed, it again showed again interest in the baited hook, the harsh lesson not yet learned.
A canoe hit the dock as it came up along side. Harper got to his feet and grabbed the line offered him by a handsome young woman. He held out his hand to help her out of the canoe. She stepped awkwardly onto the dock, squared herself, and flashed a bright smile. She had to be about twenty-five, with thick, dark shoulder-length hair and dimples that framed her smile and accented both sides of her cheeks. She wore blue jeans, a white pullover jersey and nothing on her small white feet.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" She asked as she dropped her backpack onto the dock.
That line was too perfect for him to imagine anything but that she’d said it purposely to test him.
“Yes, it’s a beautiful day, isn’t it? I love the fall weather.”
She turned and scratched her head, fluffing her thick hair.
"Does that little store up there carry flashlight batteries?" She asked, pointing in the direction of the island store.
"I think they do," he said, half chuckling to himself. It took getting used to, not having electric lights. "You stay on the island long enough, you get used to walking around in the dark.” He looked at her beautifully formed, square feet. The small toes looked a bit worse for wear with nicks and cuts. “And your feet will toughen up, too."
She looked down at her feet, then at his heavy work boots. She let out a little laugh. “Those are some big band-aides you got.”
Harper chuckled at her little joke. So she could hold her own. "Where are you staying?" He asked, half expecting her to name a friend from the island. Perhaps he knew her family?
"The Nubble," she said, "Right out there." She gestured to her left.
Harper turned to look at the Nubble. He hadn’t wanted to look at it. He knew that place so very well inside and out. The small cottage sat atop a natural foundation of large rocks. The round, two story, cottage just fifty yards off shore was Jimmy’s summer home, his art studio, his passion, and once upon a time, the only place he’d been happy. It was called, “The Nubble” by everyone on the island and nobody really seemed to know why, except that it was a small little thing, out of the way, perched upon a small knob of rocks.
The Nubble was ablaze with reflected sun off the bright white surface he’d painted just a few short years ago. It had been boarded-up since well before Jimmy’s suicide. No one had been out there for several months.
"The Nubble?” He said incredulously. “That’s Jimmy's place."
"That's right," she said, securing the straps on the backpack.
Daggers cut his chest. He was about to inquire further when she said,
"He was my fiancé."
The word hit him like a cold wave. The possibility that Jimmy could have been engaged stunned him, threw him into his head searching for answers, clues. Had he ever mentioned a woman in his life? Did Jimmy ever give any indication that he’d even been attracted to a woman? Had he not read all of the letters and emails carefully enough? Suddenly, this man that he’d know so well, this brother through thick and thin whom he held so close in memory, for a split second, his brother seemed like a complete stranger.
"Did you know, Jimmy?" She asked.
His startled glare seemed to catch her off guard.
"Well I guess you would, famous artist and all."
She pulled the backpack onto her shoulders and started to walk up the gangplank toward shore. Harper stepped forward, taking her arm. She turned to him and they locked eyes.
"What?" She asked defensively.
"The Nubble is empty, boarded up," he said.
"It was."
She smiled slightly, pulled her arm gently from his grasp and headed up the ramp toward shore. He watched her until she disappeared behind the pines at the top of the hill.
Harper couldn’t focus. He was confused. He was instantly attracted to her, couldn’t keep his eyes off of her and yet he was stunned even further by the fact that she claimed to be his brother’s fiancé. And she dared to claim permission to stay at the Nubble! Was he so sad and lonely that all these emotions could crawl into his heart at once and could not be pulled apart and examined?
He turned to the gleaming monster off shore. It was radiant, alive in the warm sun. A couple shuttered windows lay open, exposed to the light and sea. Stabbing glints of sunlight reflected off the glass and were a violation, as was the thought of someone living in his beloved brother's studio. When was the last time he'd seen the place like that; open, vulnerable to the world, alive? Jimmy had lived and worked there for fifteen summers. Harper helped him paint the damn thing the year he'd bought it and several times since. And Jimmy had painted his masterpieces, grown ill, wrote many of those crazy letters there while slowly slipping away, into that dark place he’d gone.
He pictured Jimmy on the wrap around deck, alive, vibrant, making love to a canvas, spreading paint with bare hands, smoothing it like mud on a nude body. Young, smiling, handsome, shirtless, splattered in paint, breathing irregularly, a cigarette dangling from his lips as he worked. This is how he remembered Jimmy now. The genius lost in his world.
Inside the Nubble it would be a raging mess; beer bottles, melted candles, clothing scattered, canvases in various stages of completion, desecrated, coffee stained, urine soaked, Jimmy’s unholy world.
The confusion surrounding Jimmy's death, with no real “last will in testament” found, with agents and gallery owners laying claim to most of Jimmy’s artwork, how could there not be even more confusion? More hurtles to jump. Perhaps it was inevitable. Maybe he shouldn’t be at all surprised to find someone snooping around the island. But he never, ever could have imagined a scheme like this one: A "fiancé?” A thrill of emotion ran through Harper’s stomach. So, the game was on. A beautiful woman was involved. Okay, I’ll play. I’ll play for a little while. He turned and walked up the ramp to shore. Outside the island store, he peered inside the window, but she wasn’t there. And he wondered, just for a split second, if he’d just imagined this beautiful creature, this young goddess he’d given a hand to, arisen from the sea.

Alla Prima 12 x 9 Oil on canvas

2010-08-15T15:16:00.000-07:00

This little Alla Prima painting is not all I've been up to but it is the only painting I have bothered taking photos of. It's very difficult to get a really good photo of a painting. This one is just passable.

I don't usually work in alla prima, but I was inspired to just do a quick painting by some of the other work I had been checking out lately.

Just got back from a trip to Northern California a few weeks ago when I painted a small painting on the beach. I'll post that soon.

Been writing a lot. I am reminded of what a frustrating venture that is. It seems nobody really cares what you write. Why? Because they have to READ it and there is so much CRAP out there that after a while they just stop reading.

That's what happened to me when I was in a writers group. It seems the worst writers take up all the time of the more experienced writers and also it seems no really can give an honest crit because of hurt feelings and just not having anything constructive to say in general. Anyway, I can't blame people for not wanting to read because I'm the same way…so anyway, trying to get a screenplay read by anyone that can actually do something about producing it is next to zero!

It’s tough out there, people! But I have tons of ideas and stories I am developing in spite of the fact that I haven't an agent. Being hopeful and being full of shit are two different things, I've found. I know I am a good writer, as I have been published and been told so by folks in the business when they didn't have anything at stake by saying so. I enjoy writing immensely. It feeds my desire to create. Creativity is the closest to God a mortal can get. It is a gift from God, no doubt to be able to create, and only man can do this. We are all spiritual beings...enough ranting, back to work!

Peace,

Chuck

Peonies in Silver Cup 8 1/2 x 11 oil on linen

2010-07-09T11:38:00.000-07:00

Finished this last night. Flowers are hard to paint. Bought this cup at Hobby Lobby of all places. Did this one for my sister. Flying to Atlanta tomorrow to visit her. Bringing this painting as a gift. Supposed to be hot and muggy as opposed to hot and dry in Phoenix. I hate flying into Eastern time zone! My body does not adjust well to that 3 hour change, but it will be nice to see her and my nephew.

Cherries and The Screenplay

2010-06-08T11:31:00.000-07:00

A picture of the "cherries" painting I've been working on. This is still in progess, as I have some more work to do all 'round, but thought I'd post it anyway. Also been spending time adapting my novel, "Dark Genius," into a screenplay. It is a story about an artist who starts receiving letters from his dead brother. A mystery set on an island in Maine.

Enjoy. I'll post the finished painting soon.

Dan Thompson

2010-05-26T14:06:00.001-07:00

I just got word from Dan Thompson that he will be teaching the figure at Scottsdale Artist School May 16 - 20, 2011. I had taken a 10 day workshop from Dan back in 2007 and had asked him to come to SAS. I am very happy that he is. Dan is a great guy, a great teacher and artist, too!
Besides being an accomplished artist he Co-founded the Grand Central Academy of Art and Co-found The Janus Collaborative. He teaches at Janus, as well. Looking forward to seeing him again!

http://www.januscollaborative.org/faculty/thompson.html

Art for Art's Sake

2010-05-13T09:53:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to say that this blog is about art. So no more political stuff. I'll rant elsewhere. I recently applied for readmission to ASU. They have some drawing classes I want to take. It is very hard to find the kind of instruction I want, so I figure I have to do it on my own. At least at ASU they have resources and Life Drawing classes that I want. I might even finish my BFA. Here's a few pics from a while ago.

Pink lady and Onions

2010-05-08T11:56:00.000-07:00

Still struggling with lighting issues in the studio. Not having natural light is very difficult for me. Here is a still life and the pink lady again. I reworked some of the background and shirt for this. Don't know if anything will ever really feel completely finished...

New Paintings

2010-04-16T09:49:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple new still lifes. I am at the end of my rope with this camera. I will be going to the camera shop to get a proper news lense for it. These are oil on canvas. Just a few of a bunch of new things...I hope you all enjoy them as much as I did making them.

Blue vase

2010-04-08T18:20:00.000-07:00

Taking an oil painting workshop with Jeff Legg, realist artist, at the Scottsdale Artist School. He's a good teacher and its fun being around fellow painters and art lovers. Here one of the paintings I completed. I swear this camera is the worst ever and it's just not me. Also, I think my lens is not very good. I need to get a new one as this was a cheap replacement for one that broke. Anyway, here's a detail picture.
9 x 12 Oil on Canvas
Chuck

Studio pic

2010-03-27T10:49:00.000-07:00

I have a few works in progress in this pic. The paints are Gamblin on the right and M.Graham on the left. I wanted to try Graham because they are hand made with walnut oil. Very smooth and creamy.

Lemons

2010-03-24T18:08:00.001-07:00

Since I have a lemon tree in my back yard, I decided to use them for subjects. This is a work in progess. I wonder is anybody out there? Give me a shout out so I know I'm not posting into the wind...

Casual Monday Fiction 1154 words

2010-03-22T12:09:00.000-07:00

Casual Monday

Dave sits in his beat up 1968 Cougar and inhaling a deep drag from his cigarette as he watches the good workers of Skinner Cutlery enter the building for the morning shift.

A petite woman wearing a heavy coat walks to the entrance.

"She's a looker," Dave nods.
"That little stick?" Answers Bret, sitting next to Dave in the front seat.
"Nice little body," Dave enthuses.
"You think?"
"Look at her."
They stare at her, a tiny bundle of red cloth as she hugs herself against the wind, and disappears behind the large glass door.
"Wouldn't touch that," said Bret.

Dave takes another drag and blows it out the window.

"Nice entrance for a shit-hole," Bret says.
"What?"
"Never know it was such a shit-hole by the look of those doors."
"Nice doors," says Dave, a touch of sarcasm in his tone.
Bret rolls up his window, staring at the front doors. "Big fucking doors made of glass. How thick you think those things are, two inches at least? Like a freaking blast door, only glass. What the hell is that supposed to mean? I mean, they make steel cutlery in there; People sweating their asses off behind two ton presses. Lucky they don't lose a finger after a week, grease coming out of their pores with the sweat. Zits springing up all over their greasy little worker faces, sweating oil."

"They should wash their fucking hands and faces more often." Dave threw the butt out the window. “I wash my hands all day long in that place.”

"Nobody says you have to stay."
"That's right. Nobody says I have to stay.”

Bret smiles and says, "But then she'd never let you leave the job, would she, the wife? I mean, how'd you live, then, huh? Where'd the money come from? No money coming in. You sitting around the house all day breathing in the stink of diapers and cat piss. Watching, The Price Is Right and Hogan's Heroes re-runs."
"Got rid of the cats."
"You'd go bonkers in a week."
"Two weeks."
"What?"
"I'd last about two weeks then I'd have to kill somebody."

Bret whistles and smiles. "Look at that one. Bingham's secretary isn't she? Oh my, oh my."

A shapely woman in a black dress and heels walks by the car and into the building.

"Gina Collins. Saw here at the Christmas party. Had a lot to drink, too," Dave says.

Bret smiles. "Ain't nobody gonna mess with her. A real woman, that one. Nobody gonna mess with her. She carries herself right, doesn’t she? See the way she walks?”

They stare at her as she disappears behind the glass doors.

“She carries herself like a woman aught to, right? Nice piece of ass, too,” Bret says.

Dave sighs and looks at his watch.

"Time to go?" Asks Bret.
"Almost."
"So what do you think she'd do if you left?"
"Who?"
"Your wife. What would she do if you just up and quit? Walked out on the job?"
"How the fuck should I know?"
"You know she'd have a bird."
"What the fuck does that mean, 'have a bird', anyway? Who the hell has a bird? What does that mean? She's gonna shit out a bird?"
"She'd have the law after you for it, wouldn't she?"
"Why? It's not against the law."
"Abandonment is. Child abandonment."
"I don't know what the fuck you’re talking about. Just shut up."

Dave lights another cigarette. They stare at a few people bunched together as they walk into the building.
"Look at the fat fuck, Freddy."
"What about him?"
"He's a disgusting pig, that's what."
A heavy set man hovers at the edge of the crowd as they talk and laugh.

"What he ever do to you?"
"I have to look at him, don't I? I can smell that fat fuck from here."
Dave looks at Bret and they burst out laughing.
"You're real benevolent piece of work, aren't you? You're a real sweet guy, Bret."
"Yeah, I'm the American freaking, Gandhi."
"Smelling people from the car. You're a fucking super hero, too. A real useful super power, you've got there."
"That's right. I'm ‘fat fuck smeller guy’. I can smell 'em a mile away."
"Wonderful power. Any others? Any more wonderful super powers? Smell farts from behind walls or something?"
"Anything having to do with smells, I can do it."
They laugh.
Bret points to a small woman carrying a bag.
"See that woman? She just farted about ten minutes ago and I can still smell it!"
"Shut up!” Dave laughs.

Dave throws the second butt out the window and checks his watch again.

"Would you ever do it, though?" Bret asked.
"Do what?"
"Walk. Just walk right out."
"On my wife or the job?"
"The whole thing. Would you?"

Dave thinks a minute. A bell rings from the cutlery plant and they get out of the car and walk toward the building.

"You wouldn't have the balls. I bet when you were a kid this is exactly what you wanted to do, right? Work in a shit-hole making piece work for the rest of your life."

Dave looks at Bret.
"What?"
"You trying to piss me off?"
"I'm just asking a question. Would you ever walk?"

Dave stops outside the factory door and takes a deep breath. He looks into the lobby and back to Bret. "I love my wife and kids. The only way I'd walk is if I won the lottery or something. If inherited a lot of money. Then I'd walk in a heartbeat. But that would never happen."

“What if I told you you’ve already won the lottery?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said, you’ve already won. Just by you being born you won the biggest lottery of all. You beat out those thousands of other little bastards and got inside that fucking egg and you struggled for life and came out your mother and took your first breath…and here you are.”

Dave pulls the handle on the huge glass door and walks inside. He turns and sees Bret staring in through the glass.

Dave waves at Bret to come in. He points to his watch and waves Bret in. “Come on.”

Bret backs away from the factory door and bundles himself against the cold wind.

Bret punches his card in the time clock and turns to look at Dave, but he is gone. Bret is alone in the lobby. The sound of huge presses churning echo down the hall. Bret looks at his watch, at his grease stained fingernails, his worn steel toed boots. A bell rings from inside the work floor. Bret turns and walks through the inner doors of the factory floor. The bright hard sounds of the presses clank in familiar rhythmic staccato and echo in his head as he finds his work station and stands at his place.

The End

Brown Stone Diary (Fiction) 2000 words

2010-03-15T12:01:00.000-07:00

Brown Stone Diary

September 23, 1983

I am standing on dark brown linoleum, my foot narrowly escaping a cockroach as it scurries under the day bed. The room is dark, tall, with ten-foot ceilings. The beige paint is chipping out in large, continent shaped patches, little South Americas, Africa hanging by a thread. Shelves line the walls above the sofa. Good, a book case. The day bed comes with the room. A bent screen is jammed into the open window and I can hear traffic noise, but at least it’s on the ground floor. I look over at my potential roommate, Jim. He is upbeat, about thirty five, good looking; almost game show host-like in his mannerisms and enthusiasm.

What the hell, “I’ll take it,” I say.

Three hundred and fifty a month, how can you go wrong? A bedroom with a private entrance connected to a small hall and bath. And the rooms are big, if not crumbling out of themselves. I convince myself that with a little bit of paint, it’ll be like new.

“Good!” he says, “Let’s get a drink.”

We wander across Second Avenue and up the hill to the Bull’s Eye tavern. They know Jim there and he seems to be well liked this game show host roommate of mine. And why not, he’s athletic, got a great smile, dimpled chin, and full shock of hair. We sit in front of a couple of drafts and he casually asks, “By the way, you know I’m gay, right?”

A little twinge hits my stomach. Is he looking at my crotch? Why isn’t he effeminate? I never would have guessed he’s gay. Does he have orgies in his room? I look at the bartender. Now they think I’m gay, right? “Well, I’m not gay,” I say.
Oh, he assures me, I don’t flaunt it. I don’t care for fems, he says. Besides, this is strictly a business deal. Rent for a room. It wasn’t in the ad, but I don’t really care, “Sure, sure. No problem.”

After I pile in my few meager possessions, bags of cloths and my desk from home, I encamp on the day bed. First nights are always the hardest. Cramped and lonely in my little burrow, I learn not to be afraid of things that crawl in the dark and scatter when the lights come on. Lying in the blackened room, they crawl casually across my arm, and I fling the insects onto the wall or floor. I reach up with the side of my fist and pound them into submission, letting them fall where they may.

At four AM, the heavy cruisers arrive. I hear then scuttling and munching on God knows what. The armored division attacks my front. I brush my arm and a heavy thud hits the floor. That was no small insect. I turn the lights on. The floor and walls are alive with brown exoskeletons scattering in all directions.

September 24, 1983

My second evening is less strained. I take comfort in my newly purchased roach motels and poison traps. Already, there are fewer insects to be seen. Suddenly, I hear something at the window. A dark bare arm slowly reaches in through the curtains, fingers outstretched, reaching, ready to grasp. I yell, “Hey!” The arm jerks to attention and recoils as if wound back onto a human fishing reel. I close the window and lock the doors, unsettled, I’m feeling lost in the whirr of the city.

September 30, 1983

I wouldn’t say Jim is a health nut, but he sure does like to run. Right up to Central Park and back every day. Lifts weights in the kitchen, too. Breathes real loud and strong to get that energy flowing. One, two, three twist and turn, up and down, deep knee bends, come on, one and two, his thick boozy breath billowing into all corners of the room, like a steam bath in there when he gets going. It’s tough to swallow my scrambled eggs with all that going on. Amazing how he can stay up until three a.m. sucking up all that booze and pop right back up the next morning… two, three, and here we go and one. Shouldn’t complain, though. It’s tough to find a first floor apartment this cheap on the Upper East Side.

October 2, 1983

I’m waiting tables while I take classes in acting: Shakespeare, scene study, auditioning technique. I have a long way to go. Feel lost in a sea of false hope and groundless optimism leading nowhere. Auditions go badly. I’ve met a few girls in acting class. Made a few friends. I am building a life, my own life, while learning to be a good waiter.

Jan 7, 1984

Jim throws me a surprise party for my thirtieth birthday. Friends from work, some of his friends, they all chip in, buy me a mattress for the wooden frame that I had made from cut pine and bolts. Fits real nice. Damn nice of these guys, friends of Jim’s, mostly, acquaintances of mine. Damn nice.

We finished the evening with another bottle of wine. A girl from the tavern offers herself to me as a present. Can’t complain about that. Damned nice of her. Damned nice. Six months is a long time. Later, we talk on the stoop in front of her apartment until 3 a.m. I’ll have to avoid her for a while. Don’t want to give the wrong impression.

Jan 25, 1984

I come home unexpectedly and my private entrance is locked. I pound on the door, hear shuffling noises in the room and creaking from my desk chair. Jim calls for me to wait a minute. Finally, after several minutes, he unlocks the door. I hear them as they scurry into his side of the apartment, Jim and his secret guest. Later I learn he was glad I had arrived when I did, not knowing what the strange man might have done, Jim being naked and tied up in my favorite chair.

February 25, 1984

Jim has decided to kill himself. Seems he’s unhappy with his life. The booze and the cocaine, the anonymous sex, have all taken their toll. AIDS has crept into the picture. A nurse friend told us about hygiene and the treatment for the afflicted. She scared me half to death and I went out and bought some liquid soap for the bath. No more sharing bar soap for this kid. Jim was greatly offended by the soap, but I told him we always used the liquid at home, I’m just homesick for it. I know Jim doesn’t have AIDS. I think.

February 28, 1984

Three AM. Jim is weepy. He staggers into my room, wakes me up, and tells me he wants to kill himself. I ask him how and he tells me to mind my own business, but if I must know, he has a hoard of pills. I tell Shirley, our mutual friend from the Bull’s Eye and she comes over to search his room while he’s gone out. She finds pills, but there isn’t enough to kill him, just maybe make him sleep for a day or two.

March 3, 1984

I feel terrible about Jim. I confide in a friend at work. He tells me there is nothing for it, he had a roommate that killed himself and he was just a selfish prick, tells me people who off themselves are all selfish pricks. I worry anyway, thinking how unfair it all is.

March 5, 1984

Pills gone, Jim has decided to kill himself the slowest way possible. He stays up all night snorting cocaine, and drinking with his new buddies, the drug dealers. They play cards until morning light; argue about nonsense, thinking they are being clever when they are repetitive and shallow. They offer Jim money for my room; have them move in, me out. Jim turns them down, but likes to tell me about the offers anyway. I find a .22 caliber bullet on the kitchen floor.

Jim comes from a big, Irish Catholic family in the mid-west somewhere. His sister talks to me on the phone, thinks I’m his lover. She wants to know if he’s really all right. I lie; tell her he’s just fine. She seems relieved. What can she do anyway, I think. It’s not like she’s going to come rescue him. Yeah, he’s fine. Well, take care of him, she says. I don’t bother to tell her, he’s just my roommate and I try to avoid him as much as possible.

March 25, 1984

I am finally alone in the apartment! Some much needed alone time! My resentment toward Jim has peaked and I sing aloud, “Ding dong, the master baiter’s gone!” to the tune of “Ding dong the Witch is Dead,” while I make popcorn. I dance with delight at my free evening at home. Jim suddenly emerges from his closet. He’s been hiding behind his wardrobe and wants to spring out and surprise me. Now he wants to know what I meant by “The master baiter” crack. He pulls out his stash of gay porno mags, stained with some odd smelling oils, and asks me if this is to what I am referring. I don’t know what to say. The greasy stained magazines flop around in his hands. I look at the greasy bottle of corn oil I used to make the popcorn. Was that a pubic hair stuck to the label?

April 23, 1984

Jim’s friend Rico, the drug dealer from Brazil, and his heroin-addicted girl friend, Sheila, need a place to stay. Jim lets them put a mattress on the kitchen floor. Jim is very helpful like that. Rico gets a lot of phone calls to make to his drug-dealing friends. They come to the door and he leaves with them. Sal, from New Jersey, came by the other day and he seemed quite angry about something. Sorry I answered the door, really. But Rico and Sal went for a walk and worked it out. Afterward, Rico bought a bunch of shrimp and cooked them in water and beer. He insisted I eat with him. They tasted pretty good once I realized they weren’t poisoned.

May 3, 1984

Rico’s girlfriend, Sheila, is feeling pretty sick. They sit in the bathtub together for hours sometimes; they take the phone in there and make business calls. I hear that Rico has offered Jim lots of money for my room, but Jim says not to worry, he wouldn’t kick me out. Although, he hints, the extra money would be nice.

The landlady came down and asked me for the rent today. Seems she hasn’t seen any money for a few months. I told her I just give my money to Jim. It’s his place. He pays the rent. (I guess not.) I haven’t seen Jim for a while to talk to him about it.

May 27, 1984

Rico and Sheila finally move out. Am seeing less and less of Jim, now. He lost his job at the good restaurant and now he ‘s working for a not-so-nice place on the West side. Makes less money. I have been talking to the landlady about letting me move into an empty apartment upstairs.

June 15, 1984

I finally have my own place. Up five floors, but it’s worth it. Two bedrooms, kitchen and a bath! Jim knocked on the door the other day, but I pretended I wasn’t home. He scares me now. Not like the person I met at all. That far away look in his eyes makes me think he is the loneliest person on Earth. But I’ve made up my mind I can’t help him. I need to live my own life.

July 2, 1984

They came and took Jim home today. His sister and brother bought him a ticket and he’s gone. I don’t even know who’s in the apartment downstairs now. Some creepy guy he had move in a while ago. Poor Jim, all he wanted to do was be an actor.

Oscar, Life and Death...

2010-03-07T22:23:00.001-08:00

I don't usually post about films but I was shocked when Sandra Bullock won the Oscar for Best Actress. I think she was a bit too, judging by her reaction. Anyway, she is a lovely woman and a good actor. Sometimes I think it is harder for a woman with such a bright, cheery face to be taken seriously as an actor. So, I was shocked when they call ed her name. I didn't see the film she won it for. It seemed from the ads to be a formulaic tear jerking sports movie, not my cup of tea. A film I did see recently that I liked very much was, Elegy, with Sir Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz. That was a very deep, moving film for me. I think when you get to be a certain age, as the protagonist was in this film, you look at life differently. You start to see the end coming. Old age creeping in, and death around the corner. You start to look at back at ten twenty years ago and realize how quickly time, and life, moves you further and further, like a never ending conveyer and you have no choice but to ride it into the dark at the end of the line. This film made me think of these things and of how the Kingsley character perceived himself in the world. We leave things behind as we go; we leave the things that meant something at the time, energies used in things that seem unimportant now, especially, wasting time drinking and partying. Thinking you will find that one or two people that would be just fascinating and perhaps change you life. You get to a certain age and the ache of things lost, opportunity not taken advantage of, doors left closed, and these things leave a dull ache in the back of your mind, thinking about how your life could have gone, how it could have been changed by this event or that, by taking advantage of a certain situation you may have perceived you had. But you are living the life you deserve at some point. Not deserve as in, "I don't deserve this cancer," but deserve as in "You reap what you sew." The trick is to never stop sewing the seeds, for they will spring forth at any age, however little time you may have left to enjoy them. And I’m not complaining about my life. It is full of joy and happiness as well as the regret and the sorrow. I saw my father looking at his life as he aged, I saw the on switch turned "off" when he found out he had cancer and little time left. He was ready to check out that day, not wanting, I think, to wait in line at the end of the trail to face the eternal question...what is there after this thing we call life? Or simply finding it too hard to say goodbye to all that you hold so dear…

Studio

2010-02-27T17:23:00.000-08:00

Here's a few shots of my new studio. It's 16 x 12, hard wood floor. I'm installing lighting so it can be well lit enough to see clearly. Nothing worse than painting in the dark and not seeing the colors properly. I am leaning towards a looser style, but need to finsh a few projects before I can do that. I plan on having a few studio still lifes set up and working at the same time on two easels. I also want to start a few protraits. I am changing mediums around, trying walnut oil and flemish morager, a pasty substance made form an old masters formula. Here's the link below. More later when I start oraginizing the mess. Whew, moving does suck! We are all beat. But excited to start painting in my new studio!

http://www.oldmastersmaroger.com/flemish.htm

Finally move and new studio

2010-02-20T08:21:00.000-08:00

After a few months on pins and needles to see if we would get our new house, we are going to move in on Feb 26th. My new studio space will be larger and, hopefully, easier for me to be productive in. It has a hard wood floor and I painted one wall a green-gray color that I had replicated from a Chardin painting background. The rest of the walls are off white. The lighting is not natural, as I have only one West facing window, but I plan to use a configuration similar to that recommended by the great studio painter, Duffy Sheridan.
http://www.duffysheridan.com/index.html

The light is a combo of different tones of light mixed with a "natural sunlight" lamp or two. Of which, I already have.

http://www.fullspectrumsolutions.com/black_floor_lamp_6_prd1.htm

Anyway, I am excited to get all of the distractions of buying a house and moving out of the way so I get back down top business.

I plan on taking a few classes at Scottsdale Artists School, even though they don't really meet my needs, they occasionally have a teacher I am interested in meeting, Like Tony Pro.
http://www.scottsdaleartschool.org/

One of these days I will master or at least get better at taking photos of my paintings, something the new studio lighting will help with, and I will not be hesitant to post them here. In the mean time, keep creating guys!

Looking at the Face of Genius

2010-02-14T10:18:00.000-08:00

It's not too often that my jaw drops in admiration of a painters work. Most painters are okay some are better than okay and some are really good. But few are great. You are looking at the face of Odd Nerdrum. He paints like I wish I could and has brought me to the point of trying to emulate him. But genius cannot be taught. Only by experimentation and hard work can true genius be brought out of an artist, and if they are just so so, then that is what they have to offer. But I am hopeful looking at his work. I am hopeful because I understand it. And understanding is the first step toward emulation and emulation is the next step toward individual expression and that is the subjective point of view known by some as genius. I don't necessarily like some of his images, but his technique is marvelous. My favorite expression in life is quoted from the master acting teacher Stanislavski, "We must make the impossible difficult, the difficult easy, and the easy, second nature." Amen to that!

http://www.nerdrum.com/works/index.php?id=57

Orange Painting

2010-02-04T14:00:00.000-08:00

"Organic Smile" 8 x 10 Oil on board

I try to paint in the Classical Realist style. I use lots of layering and glazes. I am starting to work larger and will post more paintings as time permits.

The Baseball Thief (Short story)

2010-01-17T09:22:00.000-08:00

This is a Fiction Short Story published a while back...

Jimmy Gaines swatted his pant leg with his cane when he saw the Plexiglas-encased 1939 baseball signed by Babe Ruth was missing.

"Kenny! Kenny, where are you? You and that damn monkey will be the death of me. Kenny!"

Jimmy stuck his head out the window overlooking the back alley.

"Kenny!"

"Yes, sir?" Kenny stood shirtless, batting a tennis ball against the alley wall.

"My Babe Ruth ball—"

"What?"

"My ball!"

"Yes, sir?"

"Oh, for goodness sake. Get up here, will you, please!"

Jimmy limped to his easy chair and set his cane against the TV table. He could hear Kenny banging his way up the three flights of stairs.

"Yes, sir?" Kenny barged into the room, pulling his shirt on over his head.

"Take a look over at my memorabilia hutch."

Kenny turned around and stared at the glass enclosed shrine, framed photos of baseball players, service metals from the Marines, a 1967 Red Sox jersey worn by Carl Yastrzemski.

"Notice anything missing?"

"No."

"My Babe Ruth ball!"

"Huh?"

"It’s missing." Jimmy raised an eyebrow. "You wouldn’t know anything about that?"

"No."

"Just because I let you come up here, tell you stories, and let you bring that monkey up here—"

"You said I could bring Milo on a leash."

"What I didn’t say is that you could help yourself to my memorabilia."

Kenny stood back, eyes wide.

"Honest, Jimmy. I wouldn’t take any of your stuff."

Jimmy leaned back in the chair. "That’s not the first thing I’ve noticed missing. I’ve had other stuff taken from my collection. I thought perhaps I’d misplaced them."

"What?"

"A few of my service ribbons."

"You’re blaming me?" Kenny took a step toward the door, his hand on his chest.

"Now, don’t get in a huff. Perhaps that monkey of yours."

"Milo couldn’t take anything without me knowing it."

"Maybe, he gets loose. Runs around the yard, sees an open window and makes his way in."

"No."

"You don’t watch him every minute do you? Monkeys are infamous for their curiosity, is all I’m saying."

"Maybe there’s a thief in the building," Kenny suggested.

"That’s exactly what I was thinking."

"It can’t be Milo. He’s a good monkey. What about Buddy Brown? He’d take anything."

"Buddy Brown from down the street? Hardly. What would he be doing way up here in my old apartment? No, Kenny, it’s somebody we know, with access to this building. Someone with a key."

"Gee."

Jimmy leaned in at the boy. "'Gee' is right."

"Who, besides me, has a key?" Kenny asked.

Jimmy’s eyes locked onto Kenny’s.

"You still think it was me?"

Jimmy eased back in his chair, putting his gouty foot on the ottoman.

"So, that’s it, huh? You think I’m a dirty rotten criminal!"

"Kenny!"

"You think I’d do a thing like that? After I help you all the time? Well, forget you!"

Kenny walked to the door. "You’re a mean old man!"

"No! Kenny, wait! Don’t leave. Please!"

Kenny stood with his hand on the door handle.

"I haven’t been myself lately. I’m sick, Kenny. You can understand that."

"That doesn’t make me a criminal. I thought we were friends!"

"We are, Kenny. We are friends. Please don’t run off."

Kenny put his hand to the back of his neck and stared at Jimmy.

"I haven’t been sleeping well, you know. Up all hours of the night. Feel like I’m not getting any sleep."

"Why don’t you take some pills?"

"I have, Kenny. I have all these pills the doctor gave me."

Jimmy reached into his robe pocket and pulled out a fist full of small prescription bottles. Kenny took a few steps into the living room.

"What are they for?"

"Oh, for everything under the sun. It’s no fun getting old, Kenny. You're lucky you have Milo to keep you company. I’m all alone up here. Except for visits from you and the monkey."

Kenny took another step into the room.

"Oh, I have my memories, the First Marines, Korea, my medals and all. But they are poor company on a cold night. Remember that story I told you about winning my Purple Heart? About getting shot."

"Yeah, tell me about Korea again!" Kenny stood at attention, did a smart salute. "Captain Jim Gaines, reporting as ordered, Sir!" Kenny took a bullet in the stomach and fell to the floor, crawled slowly over to Jimmy. "I’m hit. You gotta help me, Doc!"

Jimmy howled with laughter, picked up his cane and shot Kenny.

"Oh, you got me!" Kenny sprawled out on the floor, dead.

Jimmy sat quiet for a second. A tear glazed his eye as he watched the boy pop to his feet. He wiped his eye with his index finger and sat up straight.

"You know, I’ve been thinking, Kenny. Since we know it couldn’t be you and that stinky monkey of yours."

"Milo!"

"Yes, Milo. Why don’t we set a trap?"

"What kind of a trap? Like one the marines would do?"

"No. I’ve got something better in mind. You know how they are always monitoring babysitters and ATM machines with cameras?"

"A hidden camera! Cool!"

"We can set it up over there." Jimmy pointed to a bureau above the memorabilia hutch. "I’ll leave out something shiny for them to try and take."

"And then we play it back for the police!"

Jimmy slapped his good leg, laughing out loud. "Something like that."

"We’ve got a video camera I can use."

"Excellent. We’ll set the trap tonight. You bring the camera, I’ll set up the loot."

"Deal!"

They shook hands. Kenny winked and Jimmy nodded in agreement.

"Show me again how you die."

Kenny took a hit to the chest and fell to the floor in a lump as Jimmy howled with laughter.

That evening they positioned the video camera and set it on slow record. Jimmy left the door of the memorabilia hutch open.

Jimmy had a rough night of sleep. He tossed and turned until nearly 3:00 a.m. when he finally passed out from exhaustion.

The next morning, when he noticed his Purple Heart medal missing, he felt dubious—like that morning was an evil Christmas. His heart sunk when he rewound the tape and watched the images that appeared in the view screen. At first it was just black, then as the monkey pulled away from the screen, he could see Kenny, Milo riding his back, as he poked around in the memorabilia. Milo turned and shot a big-toothed grin at the camera.

Jimmy stopped the tape, sat down hard on his chair, and slapped his cane on the floor. The boy is all I’ve got, he thought. How can I lose him now?

When Kenny came upstairs with Milo riding his back, it was as if they’d stepped out from the video viewfinder. Jimmy sat stony faced and silent as the guilty pair entered the apartment.

"I’m glad you’re awake, Jimmy. I was worried about you," Kenny said, as Milo ran down his arm to the floor.

"Worried? Why?"

"I was afraid you’d hurt yourself."

"Oh, really?"

"Man, you can sleep!"

Jimmy sat up, smacked the cane on the floor. Milo let out a yelp and ran up Kenny’s arm.

"I saw the tape, Kenny. I saw you and that stinking monkey of yours helping yourself to my things."

"How could you?"

"It’s on the tape."

"We tried to wake you. I yelled and yelled. I shook your arm. We couldn’t wake you up!"

"What are you talking about?"

"I’ll show you." Kenny grabbed the videotape out of the camera and plugged it into an adaptor for the TV and turned it on. Milo and Kenny appeared on the screen as before, but when they stepped aside, Jimmy walked into the picture, took the Purple Heart and walked away with it. The camera followed Jimmy as he put the medals into a box, slid it under his bed, and crawled under the covers. Kenny’s voice could be heard asking Jimmy to please wake up, but Jimmy was like a stone.

"Oh," Jimmy said. "I know that box. It was a gift from my wife. To hold my keepsakes. Kenny, I don’t know what to say. It was me the whole time?"

"That’s okay, Jimmy. We all make mistakes. My dad sleepwalks sometimes, after he has a few beers."

Kenny took the bottles of medicine from his pocket and looked at one in particular.

"Thanks, Kenny. For not running away when I thought it was you."

"That’s all right, Jimmy. I know how it is."

Milo ran up Kenny’s arm and pulled something from his back pocket. The Babe Ruth ball fell to the floor. Jimmy and Kenny locked eyes.

"Oh, yeah. I was gonna hold onto this until you woke up."

Kenny handed Jimmy the ball.

"Thanks, Kenny. You’re a true friend."

The Sequence

2010-01-08T08:06:00.000-08:00

Colin took a deep breath and lay down in the grass. "The Fibonacci
Sequence is found throughout nature. It's a golden ratio, a sequence
that represents a recurring growth pattern. It determines the number
of branches and leaves in a simple meadow flower, the number of seeds
in the design of a sunflower core, all according to the golden ratio.
Even the whirlpool of a far away galaxy follows the sequence to form a
perfect spiral." Colin lifted his head toward the sky. "Where do you see these things in concrete polymers?"
"Concrete is ancient history," Matt said, as he plucked a blade of
grass and studied it. "Nature is very commendable, though."
"Nature is for the rich," said Colin.
"And you’re complaining because?"
"I'm not the sole holder of earthly delights. Nature should be enjoyed by all." Colin took a breath and stared up at the blue sky.

Matt chewed the blade of grass and squinted into the sun. "If nature
was meant for all, we all would be rich." He spit the blade of grass
out and smiled. "Besides, there are too many now to just let the
hoards trample nature's beauty."
"Father says the people have finally gotten what they've wanted."
Colin said.
"The people can go to hell." Matt got to his feet and started walking
toward the main compound. "Come on. We have to start the preparation."

"Do you know what I mean, though, Matt? About the golden ratio?" Colin
asked.

"Get to your feet, fool. We'll miss the first bell." Matt continued to walk. Colin followed close behind.

"The golden ratio is confirmation the world was created by an
intelligence, don't you think?"

"What propaganda have you been reading?" Matt asked.

Colin put his hands out to touch the waist high grass and ran, letting
the blades touch the undersides of his hands. The slight wind was warm and dry. Matt ran ahead of Colin and stopped near an ancient apple tree, its dead branches brittle and falling.

"How many apples does your golden rule say this tree will grow?" Matt asked.

"As many as the people can eat!" Colin laughed as he rushed past Matt
toward the barns.

The first of the three barns was open to the wind and captured the
golden rays gleamed from the sun, filtered through the polished glass ceiling. Colin ran inside and pushed the three purple buttons that closed the watering systems. Matt climbed the steps to the catwalk and turned the brass ringlets that shut the metal roof shields. A loud beeping blared throughout the barn as the stainless steel outer roof slowly slid closed.

"Just made the first bell!" Colin yelled.
"Bells are for apes." Matt yelled over the beeping.
"And apes are for apples," answered Colin.
"And apples are for?" Matt asked.

Colin walked across the sleek shiny barn floor and sat on the green sofa facing the large wall screen. Matt joined him a moment later and
handed Colin ripe red apple.

"Apples are for people." Colin said, as he bit into the apple. "Hmmm,
delicious."

"I made it myself." Matt sat next to Colin and pressed the white
button near the table. The large screen lit up and a narrative began in mid-sentence. "Mary's family had many reservations of the coming drought. They took many precautions-"
"I don't want this story." Colin clicked off the screen and looked at Matt.
"What news?"
"No news so bad abroad as that at home," Matt quoted.
"Oh," continued Colin, "Is the king sickly weak and melancholy?"
"And his physicians fear him mightily," Matt said. They both laughed.
"Alright, no more Shakespeare for a while."

"Seriously though, what news from home?" Colin grew serious and
anxiously rubbed his hands on his knees. He nodded to Matt, urging him
to start the screen again. Matt pressed the white button and said, "News."

The screen clicked on and an out of focus, older male face could be seen too close in the frame of the picture. The old man sat back and cleared his throat. Matt stole a glance at Colin, who watched intently.

"Day two thousand forty one, the old man began, “Today was a special day. Many who thought the great experiment would fail have been proven wrong. Earth 2 Systems in well beyond the unsafe zone and trajectory is as planned-"

The picture froze with the man was caught open mouthed, in mid-sentence. Colin slid down on the sofa.

"Well, the signal, I mean you know it will take a while to reach and-"

"Shut up!" Colin stood and threw his apple at the screen. "That's the
same message we've seen for three months. There is no news. It's all a waste!"

Colin ran into the inner chamber and down a white corridor marked B level. Stopping at a large plate glass window that opened up onto the lower level of the Growing Fields, he counted how many of the young saplings were barren or turning brown. Many of the young trees drooped over and dropped leaves. Three this time. Last time two, at least one per day. They would all be dead in a matter of weeks. His hand slid down the glass leaving a large smear. Wiping the moisture off with his finger, he noted his own secretions were changing. The smear was thick and viscous, not the gentle sheen of oil nature intended.
Colin ran into his quarters and yelled, "Intercom." A low beep emitted from a wall and a green light came on. "Matt, meet me at station three. You hear me?"

"Will do." Matt's voice echoed throughout the hall as Colin made his
way down a flight of metal stairs onto C section toward a large dome
structure at the end of the hall.

"Execute one," Colin said. The dome lit up and the large white door slid open. Inside, Colin found a grid on a large wall facing an oblong
pod. "Begin pressurization life supports green, alpha, nine."

A large cylindrical tank swiveled onto the pod as steam vapors shot out from the connection until it was sealed.

"Why are you firing up the escape pod?" Matt asked, as he made his way
into the sphere.

"Look at this." Colin held out his hand. Matt leaned in to look at it and Colin smeared his fingers on his face.
"Hey, what the?" Matt stepped back.
"Now feel it. Feel the slop I just left on your face. It’s in a
non-sequential state. I am non-sequential, you understand? We are non-sequential!."

"Hey, now buddy. Come on. Don't be so fast to blow the lid off this thing."

Matt touched Colin's arm. "You know we can re-sequence this. Have you
tried a re-calibration?"
"I am not doing that! I’m not doing a thing. I don't want to be recalibrated. I am out of sequence."
"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Come on, Matt. I give up. The trees are dying. The messages are
garbled and old and I'm getting bored, okay?"

"You just can't take off when you're ready. What about me?"

"Man, this is really starting to be redundant. We can't win this
thing. It's too complicated."

"We can start at the sequence machine."

"I'm sick of the sequence machine. Sorry, Matt. I'm out of here."

"Do you want me to save it, at least?"
"I don't care."

"You little selfish prick, as it gets hard."

"My head hurts."

Matt stood staring at Colin. "You were going to blow it up again,
weren't you?"

Colin smiled. "At least it's something I know how to do."

"Oh, brother." Matt pressed a button on his wrist band and yelled,
"Game over!"

The surroundings turned bright white then faded to a light green.
Padded walls surrounded them. Colin pulled off his receptor suit,
pulled the wires from the energy back pack and slid the suit off to the floor.
"Man it feels good to be out of that thing." Colin said.
"All right, you don't like 'Project Earth 2' what else do you want to play?"
"I don't know. It's your birthday. How much time do we have left?"
"I think about twenty minutes."
"Let's go surfing."
"Okay, but I choose the wave size!"

Matt and Colin walked out the green room and into the arcade center. They returned the suits to the guy at the desk.
"All done with Planet Earth 2, already?" The guy asked.
"Has anybody ever won that game?" Colin asked.
"Yeah," said the guy, "but it takes like 30 hours."
"Two for Big Surf, please", said Matt.
"Two Big Surf coming up."
"How much time do I have left?" Matt asked.
"Long enough to catch a few good waves, my man," said the guy behind
the counter.
The guy handed them two new suits and pointed them toward a large room
with surfboards hanging above the door.

The End

On Being A writer

2010-01-04T11:07:00.000-08:00

The last words of the great general, Robert E lee before he died, years after the end of the war, on his death bed were, "Strike the tent..." Oh, how we live in our dreams, our guilt and pleasures of the past, present and future. I have lived memories over until they were worn thin and lost impact. I have seen how I wanted things to be and argued with ghosts of the past only to awaken and see them for what they are. There was a time when I refused to commune with certain people because I did not want the memory of them in my head. I see things over and over again after they are gone. I am an observer. I have a keen interest in cause and effect. I see people as they are, as they try to be, as they hope they are...The past haunts me until I tell it to go away, then it does for a while until stirred up again by some inane comment or situation. This is why I write. I see things clearly enough, can hold them still long enough for me to write it down…

Trio Of lemons

2010-01-02T10:09:00.000-08:00

Painted using lemons from the tree in the back yard. They weren't quite ripe at the time. 9x12 Oil on canvas, 2009.

Casting With Clay

2010-01-02T09:07:00.000-08:00

The painting to the left is a detail of "Chris", oil, 9 x 12, 2007.
This story was published a few years ago in an online magazine...

“How you doing, tonight, Julie?” He smiles, and leans in from the shadows, resting his hand on her apartment doorframe.
“It’s Saturday night and I’m home alone, how do you think I’m doing?” She tightens the sash on her bathrobe and crosses her arms on her belly.

“Your ex-husband around?”
“What do you want, Mickey?”
“Can I come in?”

She steps back from the doorway and he slinks into her dark studio apartment. Clay heads mounted on her work shelf greet him; their glass eyes reflect pinpoints of light.

He takes her hair in his hand and lets it flow through his fingers. It’s smooth and silky, like she just washed it. He stares silently into her dark eyes and pulls her close, kisses her on the mouth, but she pulls away at the last second. He stands upright and glares at the clay heads.

“So, how are things in the world of forensic art?”

“Busy. People being killed, buried, found, all the time. It’s a cruel world.”
She pauses and looks him in the eye. “We can’t do this, Mickey. It’s just not gonna happen.”

He tilts his head to the side. “No matter how many times I see these heads you make, I just can’t seem to get used to this one.” He taps a small clay skull mounted on a side table.

“Why are you here, Mickey?”

Beyond her shoulder is her unmade bed, looking warm and soft. Secluded from the rest of the world. He turns and faces another skull, the features barely discernable the darkness of the room. He shudders at her reconstructed roommates.

“What’s this, a new one? Hey, that looks like-” He leans in and pulls the skull into the light. His face goes white, and his jaw drops.

“My new assignment. They found him last week.”

Julie feigns professional disinterest, but continues to watch him from the kitchen.

“They just found this skull? Who, who is it, you know, yet?”

“I just finished the final layering.”

Mickey takes a deep breath and slowly lets it out through his nose.

“How can you stand having this stuff near you?”

“Where have you been tonight?” Julie asked.
“Aren’t they all dead people, anyway? Murder victims?”
“Jane Doe types mostly. You out at Sawyers?”
“Over at The Town House. Had a few beers.”

She heats up a pot of water. He sits at the table, takes the saltshaker into his huge hand as his eye search her robe for the line of her still young body.

“You want some tea?”
“Tea?”
“Coffee?”
“Got any beer?”
She hesitates, turns to face him.
“You can’t stay, Mickey.”
“Who said I wanted to stay?”

Mickey picks up the clay head. “Ugly little prick, ain’t he? I bet he got what he deserved.”

Julie turns to face him. “What do you mean deserved? What do you think happened to him?”

“I don’t know. People do things, you know, get what’s coming to them. How do I know?”

“You recognize him, Mickey?”

“What? Are you kidding me? Him?”

She glares at Mickey.

“It’s a clay head, for cripes sake. What do I know? How am I gonna know? Who is it? I don’t know…Howdy Duty?”

“You’re flustered.”

“Mickey’s face flushes red. “I don’t know any of them, your creepy little dead friends.”

Julie places a hot cup of tea in front of him. He snickers, takes the cup up in his hands, and breathes in the steam, and scowls in disapproval.

“How are things at the shop?” She asks.
“Busy, had two new orders come in this week. A couple of classic choppers. Custom chrome tear drop on one.”
“That’s a gas tank, right?”
“Yeah.”

He sips the tea.

“Mickey, I said I would be your friend and you know that I am.”
He scrapes a “Yeah” from the bottom of his stomach and stares down at the table, like he knows what’s coming.
“But, I don’t think coming here on Saturday night, after a few beers.”
Mickey looks up, a grimace on his face. “Drunk?” He finishes for her.
“Horny.”

Mickey stares into the other room. She follows his eyes to the new clay head. He catches her looking at him.

Suddenly he stands facing her. “Why you wanna bring that stuff in here for, huh, you trying to ruin your house?”
“Mickey, what has gotten into you?”
“You have all this crap around here. A guy can’t even think! This head staring at me!”

He goes to the head, picks it up, and stares at it. “Certain things should be buried. Stay buried. You people keep digging this crap up.”

“Mickey, you’re sweating bullets. My work has never bothered you before.”

“I hate your work.” He tosses the clay head onto the sofa and it bounces, landing face up on the cushions.

“Mickey, come sit down. Have some tea.” She leads him to the kitchen. He sits and takes hold of the cup. After a few minutes he sighs.

“Better?” She asks.
“You must think I’m crazy?”
“Oh, no. No.”
“I have these feelings sometimes. I can’t tell you what.”
“I know.”
“And those creepy heads, they don’t help.”
“They’re my work, Mickey. That’s all.”
“Well, what you take your work home for?”

He takes another sip of tea and smiles at her.

“Ever since I met you. I mean, a guy like me. A woman like you.”
She smiles lightly, a twinkle in her eye.

“You ‘re an educated woman.”
“You’re a beautiful man.”
He laughs. “Cut it out. A man isn’t beautiful.”
“To me you are. You are a strong, virile-“

“Grease monkey.”

“Who is smart enough to own his own business and has changed his ways.”

“Yeah, I changed. You helped me with that. The guys I used to run with. Things we did.” Staring at her, his eyes well up with tears. “That’s how come I can’t…” His slams his fist on the table in frustration.

“Can’t what?”

“Let you go.”

She pulls back, standing against the kitchen counter.

“I didn’t come just cuz’ I was horny, you know that.”

“I know, but I think you should stop coming here unannounced.”

He stares at the skull on the sofa.

She folds her arms across her torso and backs away. He turns to her.

“What? You’re afraid of me now?”
“No.”
“You are!”
“I don’t fear you.”
“Why you look that way?”
“Nothing. Listen, Mickey, it didn’t work out for us. I’m sorry. We have to let it go.”
“What was the other night, then, huh? You let me into your bed!”
“That was a mistake, I’m sorry.”
“Everything was fine until you went off to that seminar!”
“Was it?”
He pauses, looks into her hazel eyes.
“Wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What, were you just pretending?”
“Mickey, no. Please…”
“What, then you tell me…”
“I never meant to hurt you.”
“What was I, some sort of experiment? Go see the gorilla?”
“No!”
“Date the gorilla with the bike. See I can train him?”
“Stop it.”
“I meant nothing to you?”
“Of course you did. I-”
“You what? Loved me? You can’t even say it.”
“I have great affection for you, Mickey.”

Mickey stands up. “You’re just a bitch, like any other, you know that? You think you mean anything more than that? Huh?”
She shakes her head.
“You’re just a lousy bitch in a smart suit. You think you’re so frigg’n smart! Miss Manners!”

The new clay skull is in his hands. He holds it high above her head; about to smash it down; he sees the fear in her eyes, her mouth open in a silent scream. Turning away, he smashes the clay skull onto the floor.

He takes her in his arms, presses hard against her mouth, and probes her with his tongue. She pushes him away, raking his neck with her nails. Tears well up in her eyes, as she looks down at her bloodied fingernails.

“I just wanted to.” He backs away from the kitchen holding his bleeding neck. “I just wanted you!”

Looking out the window, she sees him racing up the hill to his motorcycle. Two sets of headlights pull away from the curb and follow him into the night.

Sheila picks up the phone and dials.

“Hello, Lieutenant? You were right. He recognized the fake skull. No, he just left and I saw two of your cars following. He was pretty agitated. Probably lead you right to the body.

She drops the phone and cups her hand to her mouth. “Oh, my Mickey.”

The End

Dark Genius (Prologue)

2009-12-19T11:11:00.000-08:00

The nightmare begins the same way: Night. Dark. Air so thick you can hardly breathe. The walls of the loft give birth to partially formed demons. Slowly, they emerge; first a foot, a rib cage, a deformed head. Round, smooth, covered in greasy birth slather, soft, slick images frolic through the bedroom, down through the halls, leaving smearing footprints. Low whispered voices calling out. They float from room to room, space to space. Their guttural wails waft into the bedroom and Jimmy pulls the sheets up over his head. Black shadows surround the bed. He's got to get away before they reach him, before they touch him or he will melt into one of them.
Racing to the bathroom, he slides to the floor in front of the sink. Unable to stop the room from spinning or to stand long enough to take a leak, he kneels to relieve himself in the bathtub. Shaking involuntarily, he sits on the cool hardwood floor and studies the small room, waiting for the demons to slip in under the door.
The unframed painting on the back of the door moves in a swirling, wavy pattern as he studies its composition. What's not to hate about that painting? It looks just like him, his burnt soul, a mass of black and gray lines intersecting in a warped ball of nothingness.
Jimmy pulls himself up to the sink and stares into the mirror. The rings under his eyes are a dull umber. His narrow head and bulbous nose are what he hates the most. The red lines just under the skin twist and dance to the beat of his racing heart. An open envelope on the sink still holds white powder. Jimmy wets a finger on his tongue and swabs the crystal poison onto his gums.
They are pounding on the door now, the demons, calling his name in a dreamy, guttural singsong: Jimmmeee, Jimmmeee. They dance on the floorboards; ethereal rats mixing it up, just outside.
Go away! Leave me alone.
They scuttle across, projecting tiny dark shadows in under the door. On his knees, his face flush to the floor, he can see them moving back and forth.
Jimmmeee.
Whispering; Do it, Jimmy, just do it.

He knows what they want. Come to play lethal games; he feels it in his soul, come play in hell. Everything that is wrong with him they hunger for. They'll suck him dry, the vampire demons; squeeze every drop, all that's left, until his soul is empty.
It's so wrong, isn't it? All wrong: The loft, the work, and the money, loneliness, all alone, all gone wrong.

But it's time to face them, take the pain away for good.

He remembers the noose, already made up, waiting for him just outside the door, left over from Halloween, and kept intact to amuse unsuspecting visitors.
Running to the front hall, he stands near the ladder, searching for them, waiting to see them scurry, slip and slide over each other for first place in the race to his hell. Top of the ladder, he takes hold of the hanging noose. Gently, he guides it down over his head, and snug around his neck. The room is spinning again and the demons just below the ladder, rush in circles, snarling and hissing.
Jimmeee, Jimmeee!
Jimmy stands on one foot, taunting them, sniggering, but his attention is drawn to a large canvas on the wall. The brilliant cadmium red and dull burnt umber seemingly melt together into one oozing color and run off to the floor. The yellow ochre needs adjustment; it doesn't quite fit the rest of the composition. He might fix that, get some more burnt umber going. Reaching for a brush, he takes a step off the ladder and... That's when he awakens, heart pounding, not sure if he’s dead or alive, shouting: “I’m not Jimmy, I’m not Jimmy, I’m John Harper…and I am not dead, I am not dead...”

Studio Picture

2009-12-15T09:32:00.000-08:00

This photo is of Sargent's studio. Note Madam X and the heavy curtains. I love this photo.

Season's Greetings

2009-12-15T09:30:00.000-08:00

Wishing you all a very special holiday season! I hve new paintings I just need to get some photos done.

2009-10-28T23:32:00.001-07:00

I have two lemon trees in the back yard that will be bearing two variety of fruit in the next fews weeks. I also have an orange tree. Hopefully, I will be able to get lots of subject matter for my paintings. This "Lemon Study" is on canvas, 8 x 10, oil. I used a heavier mixture of Stand oil and turp, about 50/50, for the background and just stuck with the Liquin Original for the lemon and the greens. This painting was made to viewed at from about 5 feet or so, so until I figure out how to do a proper photo the right size, click on the smallish painting to get the gist of viewing it from that distance.

Bummed but not for too long...

2009-09-24T14:14:00.000-07:00

Well, as most of my friends know I ran into a bit of bad luck and a string of bad health issues that delayed my departure for New York just long enough to make it not worth my while this time...so I postponed the trip and will have to make due with working here at home and maybe taking a few nearby workshops. I am bummed because I wanted to see my good friend Richard and attend the classes. But I am determined to make it back there some time soon...enough, now back to work...

Preparing for NYC

2009-08-26T01:11:00.000-07:00

As I prepare mentally for my sojourn to NYC, and the Grand Central Academy, I have been reading through, again, Juliette Aristedes book, Classical Drawing Atelier. In it are the basic fundamentals and some in-depth instruction on the classical drawing methods of great representational artists throughout the last few hundred years, and particularly those of the nineteenth century atelier's that were so prevalent in Europe at the time. The methods and thinking are sound: make a good drawing and the painting will follow. Above all else, get the drawing right. Modeling form is fun, difficult and often frustrating for the art student. This book explains step by step the processes needed to acquire the skills to master representational drawing. I took a workshop from Juliette back in 2007, and enjoyed it very much. It opened my eyes to the work involved in developing the skills see and think as an artist. Although, I did already "see" as an artist to some degree, this strictly reinforced what I had instinctively started to develop. Consistent hard work is the key. Developing ones eye and skill takes some time, but I am confident that, since I have been drawing and painting since high school, as a part time artist, my development shall not be impeded by age. I am optimistic, and look forward to immersing myself completely in art. Next blog…about the art galleries I plan to visit. Love it already!
http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Drawing-Atelier-Contemporary-Traditional/dp/0823006573/The Photo is a self portrait by Juliette.

Finding a Sublet In NYC

2009-08-15T12:59:00.000-07:00

Having been out of the city of New York since 1992 after having lived there for 8 years, I can honestly say I forget how crazy it is to find a living situation there. As in most things, it's always best to "know" somebody. But I know only one person left from the old days and he shares a small apartment already...not something I can dive into. So, I've been looking on Craigslist and what I thought was almost a done deal on a sublet has turned South and now I am hot on the trail of a new sublet in the East Village. I can honestly say it reminds me of throwing bread crumbs into a pond of carp. A frenzy-like atmosphere emerges and you start to stress and get caught up in it. I have been jerked around by at least two (I think) would be scammers, whose sublets were just a bit too good to be true and who wanted me to wire them money. That was a laugh. One woman actually said I could not send my friend to see the place until I gave her a deposit because she had shown the place to a few people and they didn't rent it. Good luck with that! Another potential scammer answered one of my emails at 2:30 AM Pacific time. That means he is either a very early riser or he was someplace other than New York, say maybe Russia?!? Who knows? Anyway, I found a guy, who happens to be a trader on Wall Street and was born and raised in Half Moon Bay, CA. The same place where I own a home and recently moved from. Small world. We'll see what happens. And, BTW, all the places I've seen pics of are small, cramped even, with maybe 400 sq feet of space. My how we take space for granted here in Phoenix!
Out for now...

Well It's Official...

2009-08-13T23:17:00.000-07:00

I will be spending the month of September in NYC, studying part time at,
The Grand Central Academy of Art. http://grandcentralacademy.classicist.org/nightclassesdrawing.html
By part time, I mean, M-TH 6:30 – 9:30 PM, and Sat 12:30 – 4:30 PM The tickets are bought, the sublet is waiting, and I am ready to head back to NYC! The school was started by Jacob Collins, Dan Thompson, and others. I had the pleasure of studying under Dan for a workshop in 2007 in figure drawing. What a great guy. He also studied with Jacob Collins at The Water Street Atelier, also founded by Collins.
http://grandcentralacademy.classicist.org/waterstreetalumni.html
I've also had the pleasure of attending a workshop with Juliette Aristides, also alum of the same school. http://www.aristidesarts.com/
I had the pleasure of taking a portrait class from Jacob Collins in the early 90's at The National Academy of Art in NYC. Mr. Collins has been a huge inspiration to me and my pursuit, although part time, of being a better artist. And although I have pretty much been a part time, or Sunday painter, as I like to say, I have been inspired to take my art to the next level. Unfortunately for my music, I have found I no longer have the energy or the will to play full time in a band. I will, however, pursue that as a "Sunday" drummer/singer. At The Grand Central, they teach in the classical tradition, where skill in draftsmanship came first and was highly developed. This will be the foundation of all my future artistic endeavors. To be achieve above all, a good drawing, all else will follow. I will start will "cast drawing" and "figure drawing." As I am a part time student, this will only be for one month, but I am completely psyched to be able to immerse myself completely in my art work. I will be documenting this incredible journey through this blog...
Wish me luck!

Chuck

It's Been A Long Time...

2009-06-18T23:44:00.000-07:00

It's almost been a year since I had my second knee replacement surgery, the first one being in Feb of 08'. It's been a long hard road, having been in a wheelchair for 3 years prior to the surgery, I wasn't even sure I would ever walk again. I'll never forget choking back the tears driving home from a doctor's office after he'd told me he could not do surgery on my legs, they were just too contracted...Luckily, I found a brilliant DR. at Stanford Medical that did a great job on me. The wheelchair kind of snuck up on me. I used it to ease the pain of walking but it robbed me of that task completely. My knees just locked up and I could not straighten them out to walk at all.

Anyway, now I look forward to getting on with things I had long lost the feeling for, like playing my drums and singing. I got the idea for starting a band again, and since I had not been in one for a few years it's been hard getting my drum playing and singing chops back again. Sometimes I forget how out of shape my body had become...that sneaks up on you, too...

The band I have in mind would play music that I have a feeling for...a lot of Steely Dan, because I like the challenge and the sound, and Sting. I love Ten Summoners Tales, one of his best efforts. He is truly a gifted singer/song writer.

So here I am sweating and toiling away learning song and I suddenly I give in to a long standing urge I used to get....the urge to be the "front man" of a band instead of the drummer who sings back up. I want to be the lead singer...

I have taken voice lessons in the past and have sung the lead in stage musicals and sung lead vocals on a few songs in bands...

Okay...

I go back to voice lessons once a week, I buy a CD from a singing coach with a killer warm up exercise on it...I practice my butt off trying to squeeze out those few extra high notes I need...and I get a cold...a two week set back...

I have a guitar track from Stings, "Shape of My Heart" that I paid a guy to perform so I can lay down the vocal track for... as kind of a calling card to other musicians...

Like I said it's been rough...it's kind of like putting on a play by yourself in some ways, but every time I think I can't do it, I think back and remember where I've been.

I'm the type of person that completely immerses himself in what he is doing to the point of neglecting all else...Unfortunately, I tend to get to a certain level of competence and just let it go...hence the "Jack of Arts..."

But this time I think I can safely say I am sticking with it...working hard and will get it done...however long it takes, and it will take a long time...

In the mean time my painting and writing have taken a back seat. I have an idea for a painting, or a re-write to a story and I tend to just let them go...I want to be a singer, damn it! Is that so wrong...?

Now ready, breathe and .... AAAAAAAA EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA OOOOOOOOOOO OUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU...

Something Rare Indeed.

2009-05-20T23:50:00.001-07:00

This is a true story...I feel like a successful lawyer today. Even though I am no where near a real lawyer, I won my first case in court!

The city of Phoenix, in an effort to squeeze more money from the tax paying public, has put up camera on the major highway systems in Phoenix. If you go 10 Miles an hour over the speed limit you get a nice photo taken of you infraction and a letter sent to your home address. I got such a letter a few months ago for something I supposedly did in December. Received a nice little photo of myself traveling along Interstate 10, supposedly traveling at 77 miles per hour.

Well, I don't go that fast because I know where the cameras are and I use my cruise control. So, just before signing the "guilty" portion of the summons, and thereby forfeiting $181.00, I decided to watch the video they made of my infraction. To my amazement, I saw not only my car but another vechicle approximately the same size as mine, go zooming from in back of me in my lane to my right and passing me. I then noticed that my car had stayed parallel to a city bus in the far right lane...

So to me this meant two things. One: I was going the same speed as a city bus. Second: That car that passed me from in back of me must have triggered the cameras and I got left holding the bag.

I requested a court hearing. Today I went to downtown to the court house. They had a Department of Transportation Officer there presenting cases to the court and a judge. I was waiting there a good 45 minutes. One lady in front of me had been nailed for going...coincidentely...77 miles per hour! She plead her case in broken English, claiming her husband had turned red and the veins began to pop in his head, so she sped to the doctor. The judge didn't buy this and ordered her to pay the fine and seek an appeal.

As time passed and the cases in the court dwindled down, I began to get a little nervous wondering if I would be able to speak clearly and intelligibly about what I believed to be my case.

My heart raced as my name was butchered by the judge. I waved my hand and was asked to approach and be seated. I was sworn in and the Judge repeated his spiel about this being a hearing and that the state was going to present evidence against me and that I could then question the officer and then argue my case.

I was delighted that the officer produced photos of the infraction that included surrounding vehicles and indeed included the mystery car that I believed had cause my dilemma.

Once the Officer was finished I began my questioning: "Do you see a car to my cars right?" Yes..."Do you see that the car to my right in partially in my lane?" Yes... 'In the next picture, do you see a city bus parallel to my car?" Yes...

The officer handed the photos to the judge. I then began...

"Your Honor, I drove these highways from August 08 until Jan 09 twice a day to drive my son to and from school. I knew exactly where these cameras are....When I received the notice in the mail I was puzzled as to how I could have been going 77 miles per hour since my custom was to set my cruise control on 65 miles per hour...then when I saw the video I realized there may be a flaw in the system. I am under oath and I believe that it was that car that pass me from behind in my lane and to my right that set off the camera, unless of course that other driver also received a ticket at the exact same time I did."

The Judge looked bemused, was his day was being broken up by an actual argument...?

The DPS Officer produced a small video console and watched the film of my car a few times, showed it to me and said..."Your Honor, I do see a car passing his and the state cannot verify that that car did not indeed trip the cameras, therefor the state will withdraw its case..."

The Judge looked at me over his glasses and said...I smiled a we bit. "Good for you..." Said the Judge.

I asked, "Am I dismissed, Judge?"

He said, "Yes, you are dismissed. And enjoy your time here in Phoenix."

"Thank you, Your Honor," I said. I turned to the Officer and said, "Thank you Officer."

He turned to me and said in a low voice, "Your welcome. Good job!"

I walked out of the hushed court room to the hallway and pump my fist. "Yeah!" I said out loud. Now I know how Matlock feels."

Obviously, there are flaws in the "camera" systems that catch speeders. I happened to get caught up by one of those flaws and luckily for me, I was able to demonstrate it to the court. I firmly believe I was correct.

Rotten Apple in box

2009-03-31T09:56:00.000-07:00

This is done on canvas, oil. Trying for some painterly effects because the canvas was not that smooth. I use liquin original as a medium. Underpainting is done with orderless mineral spirits and Asphaltum.

The All American Kid

2009-03-27T00:31:00.000-07:00

"Billy! Billy, are you listening or are you gonna be dead all day?”
Billy picks his bullet-ridden body off the ground, brushes some lint from his ice cream cone and looks at me with meatball eyes.
“Okay Billy, let me finish my story. I’m on this raft, see? I built myself out of old paint cans and plywood. But I can’t keep my balance. My arms are thrashing and my hips are moving up and down and around and around trying to stay on. It’s a really funky raft, see? The cans are tied together with old twine rope.” I gyrate around for effect.
He licks his cone while standing on the lip of the huge city fountain, leaning back toward the water. “Can a bear kill a whale if it could swim fast like a whale?”
“Watch it!” I say, pleased he may fall in, horrified for thinking it.
He’s my sister’s kid, wearing shorts, bleached canvas Keds sneakers, one white, and the other grey. His white socks have fallen down around his ankles.
Knees locked at an impossible double-jointed angle, he stands surveying his domain.
“Don’t you get it?” I ask, “I couldn’t get the raft to float. But I kept trying anyway and I fell into the water and got all wet.”
“He fell in the water? Hah, hah, hah!” Billy forces a groaning laugh.
“Yes. He fell in the water,” I say, my enthusiasm trailing off. “He, me, she, it, whatever Kid.” I check my watch. Yet another hour of babysitting torture to go.
“Can tigers swim?” He closes one eye and cocks his head up at a pine tree, his mouth outlined in white foam. “I think I see a bird.”
“Yeah,” I say, “birds live in trees.”
“If tigers could swim in the ocean they could kill whales.”
“If tigers could fly, they would swoop down and take you to a cave somewhere.”
He cocks his head again and looks at me with the one eye. “Tigers don’t live in caves.”
“Yes they do. Big fat caves and they eat ice cream right out of little boy’s hands.” I laugh maniacally, snort and clench my fingers at him.
He rolls his eyes and makes a farting noise with his lips.
“Hey, that’s impolite.”
“Tigers do that.”
“They do not.”
“I heard one at the zoo.”
“I doubt it.” I look around for witnesses, I want no one video of this..
“My mother says everyone passes gas.”
“Mary Finn didn’t.”
“Who’s she?”
“A girl I knew.”
“If horses can’t fart, they die,” Billy says.
“Who told you that?”
“The horse lady, who my sister rides her horses with sometimes and they had a horse die of it!”
His cone falls into the water..
“Is there anything you don’t know, Billy?”
He turns on the lip of the fountain and reaches in for the cone. It slips between his fingers and sinks. Fishing around, he pulls out a wad of muck before I can stop him.
“Hey, look what I got.”
Yeah, real neat, kid. Now I have to touch that stinking little hand and run it under the sink. I look around for a park bathroom.
“See?” He holds up a funky blob of something and drops it onto the ground like a crane dredging swamp muck.
“Can I keep it?”
“Keep what?”
He kicks the wad and it takes the shape of an open wallet.
“Hey, look at that.” I lean in toward the slime.
“I found it.”
“That belongs to somebody, Billy. Don’t touch it.”
I grab a stick from a near by bush and poke at the blob. Billy ignores the stick and picks up the wallet.
“Give me that.” I let my fingers touch the slippery leather and rinse it in the fountain. A driver’s license falls out. Billy is on it like a kitten on yarn.
“It’s a grandpa.”
I see the photo of a bald man, seventy-ish, wide eyed, looking like he’d been caught doing a felony. The license reads: James Richard Collier, 39 Pleasant St., Northborough, Massachusetts.
“That’s right around here,” I say.
“Let’s go.” Billy jumps up and down and runs in a circle.
“We should take this to the police, Billy. I don’t want to get involved.”
“Uncle John, he’s a grandpa lost his money.”
I look inside the wallet and pull out Costco and Visa cards, an AARP membership card, triple A and AMC Movie Watcher cards. No cash.
I know the address is around the corner from the park. We can be there in five minutes.
“Come on, Uncle John. Let’s go to his house.”
“There’s probably a police report on this, Billy. They’ll know what to do with it.”
“The grandpa needs to go shopping. Let’s go!”
I look at my watch. There’s still time to kill before my sister retrieves him. I stand up and point to the left.
“That way.”
A tree lined street off the park named Walnut leads to Pleasant Street and tenement houses lining a small hillside lane. I knock at number thirty-nine. Billy has hit every part of the front metal railing with the stick and I am about to take it away from him when a small dark woman comes to the door.
“Yes?” she asks.
Billy darts behind me. I nearly fall over, goosed from his head between my legs. I recover, laughing sheepishly.
“We’re looking for a Mr. Collier.”
“Oh, and who are you?” The woman pulls back a step, holding a hand to her heart.
“Is he a Grandpa?” Billy asks, suddenly poking his head out from between my legs.
“Why, yes he is. And who are you?”
“I’m Billy the Kid. Pow!” Billy shoots her between the eyes with his finger, then draws back, staggering in a death throw. He lands on the stoop between my feet.
“We found this wallet in the park.”
I hold out the wallet. It takes a minute to sink in before she opens it and pulls out the license.
“Where did you say you found this?”
“It was in the fountain at the park,” I answer.
She stares at the photo.
“Has it been lost long?” I ask.
“Since last fall. He was walking and...” She begins to choke up but stops herself. “It was days before we realized. He can’t remember the simplest things.”
“I’m sorry,” I say feeling uncomfortable.
“Is the grandpa home?” Billy asks.
“Don’t bother the lady,” I scold.
“It’s all right. He’s right in here.” She turns to her left, then back to us. “You want to see him? He’s having a good day.” She smiles at Billy.
“Was he in the war?” Billy asks, climbing back up my leg.
“Yes, he was. He was a Captain in the infantry.”
“Did he shoot anybody?” The ack, ack, ack of anti-aircraft fire suddenly explodes from Billy as he sights enemy bombers over head. “If they had tanks in the olden days, they would have won,” he offers without missing a beat.
“Who would have won?” She asks.
“The ones with the tanks.”
She looks up at me and I smile.
“Come on in.” She steps aside and Billy is in before I can grab his shirt.
“Grandpa, there’s someone here to see you,” she says, politely.
She walks us into a dark living room. The old man is sitting on a stuffed chair, cane at rest between his knees. He looks up with a start.
“Grandpa, these gentlemen found your wallet and returned it.”
“What’s that?” He asks, looking at me.
“They found your wallet.”
“Oh.”
He takes the wallet from her and, without missing a beat, stuffs it into his back pocket.
“It’s kind of wet,” I say, but no one seems to hear me.
“Grandpa, this is Billy and?” She looks at me.
“I’m John.”
“Good to meet you. And who is this young man?” He asks, smiling at Billy.
I am goosed again, as Billy’s head pops out from between my legs.
“I’m a tiger. Grrrr.” Billy runs around the room and lands hard next to the old man at the chair. “If polar bears and tigers had a fight, who would win?” Billy asks.
“Polar bears?” The old man shouts. “Who cares about polar bears?
Billy furrows his brow.
“Tiger’s beat polar bears every time.”
Billy zooms around the room, looping past vases and framed photos, landing safely at the old man’s feet. “What if the polar bear had wings?”
“There were flying tigers once. They kicked all comers. Best pilots in the world.”
“There can’t be flying tigers,” Billy snorts. “Can there?”
“No, Billy,” I offer. “That was the name of a group of flyers in world war two.
“That’s right,” the Old Man says. “So, you see, tigers kick polar bear butt.”
Billy looks puzzled. “You were in the war, huh?”
The Old Man coughs, moves his cane around nervously. “My brother Dicky made all American!” The old man’s eyes light up. “He was in the paper and Life magazine.”
“I’m an America,” Billy shouts.
“How fast can you run?” Asks the Old Man.
Billy jumps around the room like a ping bong ball and crashes into the Old Man’s chair.
“Fast!” Billy says.
“That’s not running, Dicky. You bounced too much. You got to step into it, take long ones.”
The Old Man gets up and nearly falls back into the chair. I lean forward, but he catches himself with the cane. “Spread your legs out and make it smooth, like the runners at the track meet. The best ones take long strides.”
Billy cocks his head and looks at the Old Man with one eye. “You can’t beat me.”
“Billy,” I chastise.
“I can beat you any day of the week. I hurt my leg is all.” The Old Man slaps his bad leg and points his cane at Billy. “Lets you and me take it outside, if you think you’re man enough!”
“Dad, you know you can’t go outside,” the woman says.
“Dicky thinks he…” The Old Man’s voice trails off as he catches sight of his granddaughter. His eyes grow dim and he slowly sits back in the chair. Billy grows quiet, places a hand on the Old Man’s knee.
“Can I see your cane?” Billy asks.
“It’s not a toy,” I say.

The Old Man lets go of the cane and Billy pulls it away. “Bam! Bam!” Billy suddenly has a shotgun in his hands and races to the other side of the room. Taking cover behind a stuffed chair, Billy jumps up aims and fires. “Bam! Bam! Bam!”
“Ahhh, got me got!” The Old Man slouches in his chair, dead.
“Ah hah, hah, hah, yah dirty rat! I got yah!” Billy screams.
I start toward Billy, but he races past me to the Old Man. Billy leans close to the Old Man’s face, his nose almost touching his. The Old Man springs to life and grabs the cane from Billy, aims and unloads a few blasts into Billy’s chest. Blam! Blam!
Billy staggers back, leans right, left, forward, then back and crumples to his knees.
I clear my throat. “Well, thanks so much for letting us visit,” I say. “We really should get going. Come on Billy.”
I start walking to the door, but Billy hasn’t moved. I turn to see the Old Man hovering over Billy holding the cane in firing position. “Move and you get plugged again,” the Old Man says.
“Grandpa, they have to go now.”
“But, Dicky just got here.” The Old Man’s voice has a child-like quality. I see the glint back in his eye.
“Aw, do we have to?” Billy asks.
“Come on, Billy. Your Mom should be home by now.”
“Will you come back and see me soon?” The Old Man asks enthusiastically.
“Sure, if we can,” Billy says.
The woman gives me a knowing glance. I smile.
Billy drags himself to his feet and slowly clomps his way to the door. The woman comes with us.
“That’s the happiest I’ve seen him in a long while,” she says. “Thank you for returning his wallet.”
“Sorry he’s not feeling well,” I say.
“Hey Dicky!” The Old Man calls, “I’ll race you next time!”
“Yeah and I’ll beat you.” Billy answers.
“Fat chance, fat chance. You never beat me yet, Dicky!”
Billy turns to me. “Whose Dicky?”
“You are,” I say.
“Oh. Why am I Dicky?”
Billy spreads his arms and takes off from the back porch, circles around and zooms out toward the street.
“Come on Uncle John. I’ll beat you, I’m an All American!
I walk down the steps and turn to see the Old Man smiling at me from the window. I nod as I follow Billy on his bombing run back to the park.

The End

Trompe L'oeil

2009-02-25T08:10:00.000-08:00

Trompe-l'œil, which can also be spelled without the hyphen in English,[1] (French: "trick the eye", IPA: [tʁɔ̃p lœj]) is an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects appear in three-dimensions, instead of actually being a two-dimensional painting.

I am taking a class in Trompe L'oeil painting next week. The "apples and grapes" was done in 2007 , oil on board, 8x10.

Drums and Drumming

2009-02-17T21:18:00.000-08:00

6/8 I started drumming in 4th grade. I picked up a pair of sticks and started counting 1 + 2 and, blah blah blah, hitting the wooden seat of the chair in front of me in music class. I was pretty good at the one and two ands, understood the whole note, half note, quarter note concept, but then I got walking pneumonia and missed a week of school. Sometime during my week of illness, the sly old coot teacher had moved on to sixteenth notes and suddenly I was lost counting and kind of sunk off the old stool and out of music class.

12/8 Looking back, I find it hard to believe my music teacher didn't take the extra five minutes to explain (or as Bernard Purdie would say, "splain...") what had happened while I was gone.

4/4 During that week at home, I read my first book cover to cover. It was a little chapter book about a pony. Don't remember much about it other than the pony was nice and the kids in the book were happy. Anyway, I digress. Seems the little slip up at the 4th grade level kind of set the tone for me not really understanding counting and note values for some time to come. But I continued to hit things with my drumsticks, only at home now.

5/4 As I got older and into junior high, my dad bought me a used Japanese drum set. It was awesome! The cymbals were cheap and would dent, crack and bend when I hit them, and the drums were out of tune, but I didn't care. I was in heaven!

7/8 As I got into high school I bought a pro level set off a classmate for a whooping $200.00. A nice blue onyx Rogers Holiday set, with a 22 inch Zildjian sizzle ride and an 18 inch crash. Heaven thy name is drum!

15/8 I listened to records and tried to play along. School band was out of the question. They had too many notes. I was determined to teach myself how to play. Only thing I really didn't know about drumming was how to do it. Oh, sure I bashed and moved and soon my hands and feet were flying. I used to listen to Gene Krupa and try to imitate his sound. Soon I was listening to Mitch Mitchell and Ginger Baker.

7/4 Eventually, I learned to play a pretty mean drum solo. Only problem was I could not hold a steady beat. Nor did I have any concept of "time." Little did I know all those "notes" had to be played in time and had so many beats per measure at a particular speed. I just thought drummers played and that was it. Kind of like an embellishment on the music.

9/8 Well, anyway, a few thousand drum lessons later, I was in a band, but still, the notion of keeping "time" was just lost on me. I didn't know what a time signature was, nor did I have any concept of playing notes as a drummer. Oh, sure, I kind of learned my rudiments and kind of could count out notes, but the concept of time...?

12/8 I got into music school by enrolling in a correspondence class from Berklee College of Music in Boston. I was 19 and had just been asked to leave a band because I couldn't play in time with the music. I was determined to show them the genius I truly was by going to school. Eventually, I got into the Berklee by lying about my past experience and about which "required" drumming books I had mastered. Ah, yeah, kind of a huge mistake.

15/8 I met "monsters" at Berklee. Huge one eyed Cyclopes that ate whole villages for breakfast. Those were the kids that had been practicing, with books and a metronome, for 12 hours each day since 4 th grade. (Like I should have.) These were the kids that absolutely blew people away with their skill and dedication. Me? I kind of faded into the shadows as much as possible.

3/4 I did okay, though. I got a 3.5 my first year and did very well in everything but sight reading for my instrument. Again, 4th grade came back to haunt me.

5/8 Anyway, even now, as an "old man", I am still learning. Each year as I progress, I marvel at what I pick up. Listening to music is like a dissection to me now. Sure I hear the piece as a whole, but like a painter looking at another artists work, I see the work that went into that painting. I see the strokes used by the brush, the composition used, the layout, the points of interest.

16/8 I listen to a piece of music now to be thrilled, not so much by the sound, but by the skill of the artists involved. And the more I listen and learn and imitate, the more I love and dissect and appreciate virtuosity in a player or group of players. I appreciate more and more the genius that is in all of us, if only to be nurtured and developed by curious and loving hands.

7/4 I love drums! I love to look at pictures of drums, cymbals, hardware, drumsticks. I have books on how to make drums, old drums, new drums. Show me a good drum and you will have my attention, and a smile. Sometimes I'll go into a music store just to look at the pretty drums...

4/4 Oh, and now I count everything. That that I have to anymore, it's just ingrained in my head.

Peace.

Breaking Into Show Business

2009-02-14T10:21:00.000-08:00

When I first tried to break into show business, I was young and naive about it all. I answered an ad in the paper for a movie that was to be shot in NYC. So I go down to this casting place and there is a couple of guys in a bare room, an exercise bicycle and a barrel of water in front of a white screen. They had a big camera set up in front.

I hand the guy my headshot and he says, "Okay, I want you to stick your hand in the barrel of water and pretend you get a shock."

He stands behind the camera and the little red light comes on. So, I put my hand in the water and pull it out quickly. "Do it again," he says. So I give it my best, “Ow I'm shocked!” expression.

"Now,” he says, “do it one more time." And looks over at this guy, who mounts the exercise bicycle with a little generator attached to it. I look at the guy on the bike and he's giving this odd smile.

I put my hand in the water and ZAP! I get a real shock. The director yells, "Good, do it again!" So, like the fool I am, I do it again and get another shock! ZAP!

"Hey, what is this? I ask.

"That's good," he says, "Follow me."

Desperate actor that I am, I follow the guy into a room with curtains surrounding a mound of exotic pillows and lights set up for the camera.

"Would you be willing to take your clothes off for the camera?" he asks.

"What do you mean?"

"I want to see how you react to stimulus under the lights and camera. For the movie."

"Hey, wait a minute," I say. "What does this have to do with a movie anyway?"

"You've heard of Marlon Brando?" he asks.

"Of course I have? Who hasn't?"

"Well, he's in the next room watching on the monitor."

"You're kidding? Why?"

"Well, he is directing the movie and wants his actors to be able to do certain things. He thinks 'regular' auditions don’t' show enough."

"Oh. Well, if it's for Brando," I say.

So I take off my shirt and jeans and stand there with my socks on, embarrassed and a little chilled.

"Okay, sit on the cushions."

I sit down and the lights dim, a blue light comes on. Suddenly a wind machine picks up and is blowing the curtains all over and in walks this actress dressed in a harem costume with her belly exposed, like Genie in “I Dream Of Genie.” She has a little wand in her hand.

"Hi," I say. "Some audition, huh?"

She puts her finger to her lips and pokes me with the wand. "Ow," I say, not really hurt, a bit confused.

"Good," says the director. "Now make me believe it is a cattle prod."

Before I can answer, she pokes me again and this time I get a JOLT like you wouldn't believe! Suddenly music starts to play, surrounding us from all sides. South Seas music and waves crashing on surf spring from the speakers, weird instruments punching out odd animal rhythms. She pokes me again and smiles a florescent white smile!

“Stop!”

She zaps me again.

"That's it!" I yell. "This is not an audition, you jerks!"

I jump up and get my clothes. The girl runs out of the room. The music stops, the lights stay low but the wind is still blowing category three on my hair. I am sweating like a pig and shaking all over. I got to get out of here!

Starting for the door, shoes and shirt in hand, I trip on my pants as they tangle on my ankles. The guy comes out and looks at me splayed across the floor. He’s not fazed.

"Marlon wants you to stay. He liked what you did!"

"I'm outta here, Pal! Tell Marlon to go prod himself!

I turn and trip onto the floor again. I notice out the corner of my eye a big fat guy with graying hair and a ponytail walking toward the other side of the room. No, it can't be! I hear the chuckle, the unmistakable Marlon Brando chuckle.

But it's too late. I have blown it. I am in the hallway, staring at the heavy grey metal door. I hear his voice from within. "Get me another actor. If he doesn't want to do it, he doesn't want to do it, that's all."

I make a fist, pound on the door. No one comes. I pound again.

The door creaks open and standing in front of me is the actress. She’s wearing a pink terrycloth robe. In natural light she looks different, her features more defined. "Yes?" she asks in a strange accent.

"I, I want to do the movie. I want to do, do..." All the time I am thinking, what am I crazy? I want to do WHAT?

"Sorry" she says. "The part is no longer available."

She smiles and shuts the door. I turn and walk away dazed and confused. Marlon Brando wanted me! Wanted ME! I almost turn, run back and pound on the door, but I am numb. I cannot move. I am frozen in place. The face of the girl at the audition comes to me and slaps me like I have never been slapped before. It was, it couldn't have been but it was, was that? Salma Hyack?

I sit on the cross-town bus, images of Salma dancing before me. Her smooth soft belly in the dim blue light, the delicate way she prodded my side. The lovely little ZAP she gave me. I sit and stare, beating myself up when a realization pops into my head...Wow! So, this is show biz!

Jack of Arts