Art Criticism

[a repost from June 2011 when crowndot.com was a Posterous (R.I.P.) blog]

So this little communication-challenged man comes up to the parts counter at work, and I am totally not understanding what he is trying to ask me.  Subject?  Verb?  Object?  -- He hasn't filled in any of the blanks for me.
"Eesss a, eess, uh . . .  khow you say?  Uh, you have pepper?," he asked.
"I'm sorry?  Pardon me?," I attempted to ask for clarification.
"Uh, you khave uh pen a pepper?"
I handed him a ball point pen and a clipboard loaded with copy paper.  This is his illustration:

That is an 8-1/2" x 11" piece of paper.  And that is his drawing.  Really.  This is what I deal with day after day.  For their own safety, people with this tenuous a grasp on reality should not be allowed to roam about unsupervised.  Let alone be allowed to work on large equipment.  He was trying to draw one of these:

Aha!  I see your are cleverly and playfully deconstructing the construction industry!  However I find this work menacing as well, in that the aura of tension created by the minisculization of the scribbled signifier seems very disturbing in light of the accessibility of the work.  With regard to the issue of content, the disjunctive transmutation of quasi-biomorphic forms threatens to disintegrate the inherent overspecificity.  In sum, the work verges on codifying our own participation in the critical dialogue of the last decade.  Or something.

Lo-o-o-ong Distance Phone Call

I had seen the movie "The Matrix" the weekend of 17 June 2000.  The idea of phones ringing might have been percolating around my brain.

I was having a midsummer night dream.

I am at a cafe in a downtown high-rise.  Looking out the window, I can see the glass front of another high-rise.  In that other building across a narrow street -- hey, I can see my Mom!  She is standing there with HER  mom (my grandmother, who died in 1981), and they are all dressed up.  My mom is holding a telephone, but she is not speaking.  Instead she is smiling, waving at me, and pointing.  Not pointing at ME but at  something BEHIND me.  I turn around, and see a pay phone on the wall.  I turn back to my mom, and I gesture toward the phone, as though to say, "What?  You want me to make a phone call?"  Mom nods, and she and Grammie smile and wave.  My Mom is still holding the phone, and she's pointing again.  Just then the phone rings.

The phone rings.

I wake up.  I can still hear the phone ringing.  "That's strange," I think, "I can still hear that phone."  Then I get it.  It's my REAL phone ringing.  I rise and pick up the phone, but I don't say anything.

It's 1:20 AM on 21 June 2000.

Finally, I say, "Hello?"

On the phone is my Dad, telling me Mom has been taken to the hospital  in an ambulance. He says slowly, "The prognosis not good."

Well, Mom had died very suddenly of a massive heart attack, and was perhaps dead by the time the ambulance showed up, but her pacemaker restarted part of her heart, so there was some question to the  paramedics.  I know sometimes dreams can create a context for a noise that is about to wake us up.  But I think that the dream was a real call from my Mom.  Lo-o-o-ong Distance and not only "Person to Person" but Soul to Soul.  Calling to give me one last hug, as it were.  It was my Mom, with my Grammie.  There they were, on the "other side" -- and happy.  To me, that is too much for coincidence.  That dream continues to be a source of some comfort, and of great hope.

Things I learned from my big brother

1.)  The water in the cup on the night stand turns into oil overnight, and if you drink it you turn into Frankenstein.

2.)  The last tablespoon of milk out of the carton -- the one with the all the bubbles in it -- is poison.

3.)  The potato chips with the green edges are poison.

4.)  Mom said he could have the last piece of cake. 

5.)  The brown crayons are made out of poop.

Role playing

On a good weekend, I am a Zen Archer.  "Dungeons and Dragons"  (Pathfinder, actually).  That's right, role playing games.  Some families play Monopoly.  At Casa Crowndot, the whole family dons their imaginary personae, weapons, and feats, and move through a world full of creatures that want to take advantage of you, if not kill you. 

Which is to say, it is not all that different from the rest of my life. 

At work I frequently feel that I am playing a character who is not really me (and doing it rather clumsily).  Since I lack the gene for telling consciousness to STFU and go with the flow, most social situations are like role playing to me (and I just rolled a one for sense motive). 

BMI physics

As little as I try to think about it, I do step onto the bathroom scale from time to time.  Healthy lifestyle changes notwithstanding, I've been hovering at about the same weight since November 2011.  At the same time, my waist size has decreased by about four inches. 

This means, basically, that my mass / weight are the same, but my volume is decreasing. 

I figure at this rate, by about the year 2313, I may collapse into a black hole. 

A Triptych of Tanka About Running

June 8 2013



I.
Hot red rubber track,
Four hundred meter repeats.
Best part of my run --
In suddenly clear focus:
A lizard on the sidewalk.

II.
On a predawn run,
Against the luminous sky:
An osprey hunting,

One wheeling white pelican,
A black line of cormorants.

III.
Cracked adobe trail,
Doing some miles in the hills.
Highlight of the run:
Up in the wind on the ridge,
Luminous stalks of dry grass.

[Tanka  is a form of poetry that originated in Japan, in which the lines are arranged with a set number of syllables, in the form 5, 7, 5, 7, 7.] 

 

It must be the pinto pony genes...

I keep my hair short.  Number 1 on the sides blending to Number 2 on top.  If you know barber talk.  Every two weeks. 

Maybe it was the lighting, but when I cut it this morning, it looked like the "gray" (white) was a lot more extensively spreading from the right temple area than the left. 

I'm not going bald -- I'm going piebald.