Exchange of Values

Exchange of Values
acrylic on board 48'X96'

"Structure of Color Perception"

"Structure of Color Perception"
48'X96' acrylic on board

Monday, November 12, 2018




“Disclosing his wounds to the listener was the same as bathing it in the river, until it became cool and one with the river.” Hermann Hesse.
“Thou keepest track of all my sorrows; thou hast collected
my tears in your bottle.” Psalm 56: 8.
Siddhartha’s Kaddish:
As the monk burned
the serene unknowing of his golden robe
plunged
into raging mindfulness
the now
would like to rest in peace
instead of chasing naked sighs
through saudade moors of eire
Celts its believed
lived circular lives
unbesmirched by dualistic papists or
ghosted by mortal green subtexts
blistering saint patrick
for all those hallowed nuns
who rescued foundering babies
from potato slurries of famished grace
And where was our lord then—?
under lock and key
as the cosmos kept expanding
exploding our reliquaries
yet we still don’t know for sure
how our postmodern ideas of “truth”
got kick-started
anyway these are now questions for wall street
not science
or the old testament
Limbo though
devas and asuras know
got born in mother’s heart
on a ganges river shore
watching her lost children drift away
on swirling currents and
insufferable winds
Fluttering above the funeral pyre
butterflies see
seven more colors than we
tongues of ultra-violet flame
shimmer over mourning cocoons
glazed
with splendored pigments unknown to human eyes
schooled to the black and white
of gød’s printable word
Oh I don’t doubt for a minute
lazarus came forth from his tomb
jetztzeit
stink and all—mad as hell
but who hasn’t been pissed at christ
for arriving after the fact
What if
truth be told
jacob had beaten that angel
locked it in a cage and took it to market
hoping to barter angel-tears
for babylonian currency
maybe a small dacha on the sea of tiberius
just compensation for his limp
Not everyone could agree on the cage
but nobody except jacob could see the angel
other than orthodox butterflies
so when his captive refused to cry
jacob hid behind the vale
filling bottles with his own tears
so great was his sorrow
for breaking gød
Jacob’s angel chooses the cage
a monk’s heart chooses the fire
to burn and not to burn
like little gidding’s shirt of flame
like the tears of esau
like the grief of any virgin mother
cradling a dying gød in her arms
when every other gate is shut
the gate of tears remains open
this is the new and everlasting covenant
jerusalem falling falling
into the red bliss of the roiling sun
the fire and the rose
not yet
one
(For Thích Quảng Đức, killed in Vietnam, June 11,1963. at my age of 66. Acrylic on canvas. 30 X 40 in.)
Obliged.

Sunday, August 5, 2018






"Structures of Visual Perception." 9 feet by 3 feet, acrylic on board)

For Marilyn Monroe (Born Norma Jeane Mortenson; June 1, 1926 Died on this day, August 5, 1962).


Roslyn (Marilyn Monroe): "Horse killers! Killers! Murderers! You're liars! All of you, liars! You're only happy when you can see something die! Why don't you kill yourself to be happy? You and your God's country! Freedom! I pity you! You're three dear, sweet, dead men!"

In "The Misfits," (Marilyn's and Clark Gable's last movies) three broken-back old cowboys hunt wild mustang horses for scratch and dog food while believing that their lust for Roslyn (MM) will save them from death. But in this scene Marilyn is outraged by their violence and barbarity and she attempts to stop the slaughter. The screenplay was written by playwright Arthur Miller, Marilyn's husband, and its based, I think, on an earlier actual experience. I am reading Miller's autobiography and he recounts that when he and Marilyn were living at Amagansett long island she encountered the surf-net fishers early one morning. The fishers drug their nets onto the beach then marketed the "money fish" but left all the writhing "trash fish" to slowly suffocate and die on the beach. Marilyn was horrified and began to get up early and follow behind these fishers and gather up all the dying fish and return them to the water. She became obsessed with stopping this daily slaughter that was ignored by everyone else and began saving the condemned fish every morning. Marilyn (like Pope Francis it seems?) rejected the economic ideology that classifies life as either 'trash' or 'marketable, but her life-saving work took a painful, physical and spiritual toll on her. A soaked-through Marilyn could often be witnessed shivering, stumbling, along the beach weeping and trying to get the dying fish back into the ocean, until one day she completely collapsed. Marilyn never fully recovered from that "break-down," and subsequent suicide attempt even though she was hospitalized for "treatment." She eventually recovered just enough to finish "The Misfits," but perhaps at the cost of her life. Other than academic/σαρκικός I have never really had much of an interest in Marilyn, but it was this story and movie that have caused me to engage her again with more seriousness, sorrow, and maybe even reverence. I agree with what Clifford Odets said: “If they tell you that she died of sleeping pills you must know that she died of a wasting grief, of a slow bleeding at the soul.”

Marilyn's last words on screen were, "Which way is home…How do you find your way home in the dark." But I don't think that Arthur Miller's answer is true, he wrote, "To have survived, she would have had to be either more cynical or even further from reality than she was. She was a poet on a street corner trying to recite to a crowd pulling at her clothes." But Miller was also one of those desperate clawing men pulling at her clothes. What Marilyn needed was not more cynicism or fantasy but the kind of love that finding her broken and suffocating would return her to life-giving water.

Marilyn Found Poems:

To the Weeping Willow

'I stood beneath your limbs
and you flowered and finally clung to me
and when the wind struck with earth 
and sand--you clung to me.

Don't cry my doll
Don't cry
I hold you and rock you to sleep
Hush hush
I'm pretending now
I'm not your mother who died.

They taught my body
to squeeze grapes.
Warm wine poured out.
And once or twice,
a slick skin.

O, Time
Be Kind
Help this weary being
To forget what is sad to remember
Loose my loneliness,
Ease my mind,
While you eat my flesh.

Life
I am of both of your directions
strong as a cobweb in the
wind — I exist more with the cold glistening frost.
But my beaded rays have the colors I’ve
seen in a paintings — ah life they
have cheated you

When the hourglass
takes off its dress,
the sand loosens and spreads.
You cannot find a footing
in me. They always said
I was terrible in bed.

I have always been
deeply terrified to
really be someone’s wife
since I know from life
one cannot love another,
ever, really
We're all dying aren't we
we're not teaching each other
what we really know,
are we'


Obliged.

Wednesday, March 28, 2018




Christian church calendars name today, ‘Silent Wednesday’
or ‘Wednesday of Shadows.’ 

Also occurring on this day in history:

Mary of Bethany anointed Jesus with expensive oil >> Lady GaGa was born in 1986 >> In 1854 Britain, France, and Russia, began the Crimean war >> Liturgy committees everywhere begin preparations for Jesus ‘last supper’ >> Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with rocks and drowned herself today in 1941 >> Judas conspired with the Sanhedrin to betray Jesus (that is why today is also known as “Spy Wednesday”) >> The Premier performance of PT Barnum’s “Greatest show On Earth” occurred today >> Paris was sacked by Ragnar Lodbrok and his Viking horde in the year 854 >> The donkey who carried Jesus into Jerusalem went back to hauling water and wood for Roman occupiers >> Today in 1933 the Reichstag conferred dictatorial powers on Adolf Hitler >> The Supreme’s song, “Stop! In the Name of Love!” topped the 1966 pop charts >> The Gospels record that today Jesus taught parables about: *Vineyards, *Taxes, *Wedding banquets, *the Destruction of Jerusalem >> In 1655 Puritans defeated Catholic forces in Maryland and outlawed Roman Catholicism in the colony >> Raphael completed his remarkable painting ‘The Madonna of the Chairs’ >> Today was the day that High priest Caiphas first plotted with Quisling collaborators to murder Jesus  >> The Largest dinosaur footprint ever was found in Kimberley Australia >> Jesus’ Disciples complained about Mary wasting expensive oil on Jesus >> In 1917 Jews are expelled from Tel Aviv and Jaffa by Turkish soldiers >> According to legend Barabbas was arrested on this day for opposing Roman occupation >> In Poland on ‘Spy Wednesdays’ Roman catholics throw an effigy of Judas from the top of a church steeple. Then he is dragged through villages as the devout hurl sticks and stones at him. What remains of the effigy is drowned in a nearby stream or pond >> Astrophysicists just announced the discovery of a “ghost galaxy” that contains no ‘dark matter’ >>  Today a cock in old J-town crowed twice.
Pax.