Art, Typos & Everything Inbetween

When I found this in my ebox, I almost choked:  “Do not respond to this email, sadly; we are not able to respond to 1,000 emails a day.”

“Yeah, I get a thousand emails a day too, but mine are all trying to sell me insurance.”

I had turned to my emails as a diversion from editing my novel and saw that comment about not responding to their emails.

Thank you. I won’t.

Back to editing: I’m not an editor, I stink at editing, but I’m giving it my best shot. A friend told me to read a manuscript from the back to the front, that way you are more apt to see errors. Yeah, fine for a page or two, but 403 pages? I think not. I will keep my sanity and throw discretion to the wind.

You know how it is when reading our own material. Your eyes glaze over, you slide past a mistake without seeing it, for your brain fills in what you believe is there. Let a typo slip through in a published book, though, and it pops off the page like a boa constrictor.

This work I’m editing has been in my computer, on flash drives, in the file cabinet, and worked on for over 40 years. It is titled SARA. There are two Sara’s an old one and a young one. I was reworking the first dinner date of the young lovers, Sara and Ryan, at the Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles, California. For their menu, I was using my daughter’s and my Easter dinner at the Anasazi Restaurant in Santa Fe New Mexico.

Wait a minute.

 That’s not fair.

 Don’t copy the Anasazi

The Bonaventure might not be as good.

Readers might go expecting this dinner.  So, I scrapped the menu, although it had me salivating, and it was doubly hard to erase the dessert that was chocolate mousse served in a four- inch by four-inch chocolate grand piano—lid up.

However, courtesy of the Internet, I looked up the Bonaventure’s La Prime Restaurant menu—a research option not present 40 years ago. Now Sara and Ryan’s dinner is authentic.

The thrill of the Bonaventure is that a glass elevator shoots through the ceiling at the fifth floor, and climbs, hanging on the side of the building like Spiderman, up to the 32^nd floor, home of their revolving restaurant.

If you sit in the restaurant for an hour, the entire restaurant will make a complete revolution, and you will have a panoramic view of the City of Angels. Someone commented that if you eat at the Bonaventure regularly and have a daughter, send her to me—that was in reference to a steak costing 70 bucks.

While I can sit at the computer writing until both legs fall off when I edit my butt goes numb in a half-hour or so.

Andy Warhol said, “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”

Ernest Hemingway said to “Write drunk, edit sober.” Since he was known to bend a few elbows, (he had only two, but he bent them often) he might have meant that literally, but figuratively his principle works too. The creative phase comes dancing in like a fairy—or maybe marching in like a warrior. Either way, the artist is intoxicated.

A while back I read something Vincent Van Gogh wrote to his brother. Vincent was sitting in a cheap little hotel room looking out the window at a watery twilight, a thin lamp post, and a star. “It is so beautiful,” he wrote, “I must show you how it looks." And he the most beautiful, tender, little drawing of it. 

When I saw the movie Vincent where he pointed his brushes with his mouth, I said, “That man had lead poisoning.” But then perhaps his mental condition existed before he began painting. Poor guy, his letters to his brother were so sweet, he wanted love so badly, yet he felt continually rejected.

“There may be a great fire in our hearts,” wrote Van Gogh, “yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.”

What struck me after reading about Van Gogh’s lamp post view was that he wanted to show his brother what he saw. He wanted to bask in the beauty of the scene, and share it with someone else. “Do you see what I see? Do you feel what I feel? Is it exciting you as it is me?” Once a teacher of a writing class said that “All art is flawed.” I’m not sure I agree, for some paintings look pretty damn perfect to me, but maybe that’s what he meant—a rendition can never truly depict what the creator sees, neither can it adequately convey what is in his heart.

Have you ever had a dream or a soliloquy in your mind that sounded like God’s gift to man, but when you tried to write it down, it stank like a dead whale washed up on the beach?

Van Gogh’s little drawing and later painting, was his perspective, his rendition of the world. It wasn’t a photograph (not that photographs can’t be art), I’m talking about that rarefied experience where a creator’s perception is heightened. It’s like sparkles in your eyes. It’s where a painter wants to slap paint on canvas, a musician wants to pound the keys, and a writer wants to throw up. Are the images I see seen the same way by others? How can I capture that? No wonder Van Gogh had a mental condition.

A painting titled “The Girl on the Pier,” in my novel sparked this line of thought. I want the painting to ignite something ethereal in the viewer, something, magical something that will make the painting more valuable than the subject painted on the canvas.

I want people so awestruck that when they view it that they will plunk down dollars for it at an auction.

This artist, Charlie Mackesy, is a genius, simple exquisite drawings, lessons on life. I was tickled to find them last night. I do not wish to infringe on a copyright, however I found his drawings scattered about over the Internet, so I'm hoping they are public domain. All credit goes to him.

Notice how in my effort to stay positive, I am refraining from comment about the spoiled brat in the white house who is punishing the American people by shutting down the government to get his own way.

A Piece of Sky

This picture will make sense eventually--maybe.

Here I am sitting in my office on wheels, aka pickup truck, outside the grocery store. the day is gray, not like the picture above. My little dog is beside me licking her paw. I’m sipping a latte’ bought on the way here, and since I also carried a notebook from home, I open it.

This quote popped out at me: “We change what we focus on.”

No, that’s only half the story. We might manifest, or draw to us what we focus on, but change is another matter. It appears that sad, depressing, or hurtful stories get fixed in our gray matter waiting to be cycled and recycled over and over.

I left the house in an emotional slump, but now, having changed the scenery and meeting fun people at Dutch Bros coffee Kiosk, my emotional state is creeping its way up.

It’s been a trying week here in Junction City. 

On Saturday the 22^nd, the mother of my brother died of Alzheimer’s. The following day, Sunday—strange as this is—my daughter’s mother-in-law Phyllis, died. On Sunday, Phyllis, just short of 92, a lady who lived a long life, was bright in mind, had a stroke on the eve of Saturday, and died Sunday morning. She had a long life and a short death. Well played Phyllis.

I awakened in the night, saddened that Phyllis was gone, then got mad, thinking, Shit, no happy endings. 

I want to throw rocks—not at anybody or any living thing, just throw rocks for the sake of alleviating frustration. I can hear them plunking in the water. 

I have endeavored to maintain a positive attitude here on this blog. However, what do you do when you feel slammed?

Do you keep quiet?

Do you crawl under the covers and pull the blanket over your head?

Do you turn to other humans that might understand, not to dump on them, but to seek guidance, and yes, for tea and sympathy?

I turn pen to paper…

I remember what Julia Cameron said in The Artist’s Way about writing morning pages. Writing out your thoughts and feelings is a way to release tension, to throw out the junk. It is putting a period at the end of a sentence, instead of the mind’s tendency to replay.

Your morning pages will clear the way for your creative endeavors. And don’t show these pages to anyone.

Am I breaking a code here?

No. My intention here is to release frustration but to also be of service to others.

I have a friend who, over the holidays season relives the death of her dog and other family members who died during this time of the year. She suffers over and over every year. That’s what I call fixing it in your brain.

Contrast this to another friend who says she is happy all the time, and since I know her history, I also know that she has slain dragons in her day. 

To take a spiritual journey is to grow.

You know how it is if we have a goal and once reached if we don’t set a new goal we stagnate, become despondent and glum.

Time to get out the warrior’s sword and slay—oh I like dragons—let’s slay demons instead.

After I said, “Shit, no happy endings,” a little voice spoke to me, “You signed up for this life this knowing full well the rules, birth—death. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to do something with the middle.  Besides, think of it this way, Phyllis will get to see her husband she has sorely missed for 40 years.

The Mystic, Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek surmises that life “is often cruel, but always beautiful. The least we can do is try to be there.”

 

“The emerging heroic ideal does not see life as a challenge to be overcome, but a gift to be received.” (From The Hero Within by Carol S Pearson.)

Remember, the hero is you. 

The world honors struggle, and wealth and celebrity. Heroes are—you know, those people, or animals, who have done courageous deeds, saved someone from a burning building or from other perils. 

Those rarefied events come few and far between. Life comes daily. 

Think of the quiet souls who take their journeys, face their fears, and daily walk through the fire of human experience. These are the heroes I am talking about. 

The increased complexity of life has caused many to feel powerless. Notice how bad deeds are winked at, or ignored. If an employee sees something amiss, his boss might call him into the office admonishing him: “We don’t need any heroes around here.”

Yes, we do — whistle blowers, people who speak up, people who live their lives and speak their truth. 

Let’s look at it this way; we have a 2 million-year-old brain that’s not designed to make us happy. It’s designed for survival—and it’s always looking for what’s wrong instead of what’s right. 

Happy is our job.

I’ve tried to place a guardian at the door of my mind, and it fights me. It brings up images I hate. They say we can control our thoughts, but what do you do when those thoughts go amuck?

Get out! Do something different! Get out of your own mind!

We do fall into an emotional slump sometimes, grappling with death is one, but  there are arguments, disagreements, disappointments—You know, life. 

“I wish you would get over this problem with death,” says the teacher Abraham. “You are forever beings.”

My daughter says, “Yeah, I wish we would get over it too.” 

It may sound simple, but everybody has fears. Everyone is concerned about death—we have been taught to fear it. Everyone thinks that they aren’t good enough, smart enough, rich enough, or know the right people. It’s the human condition. Tony Robbins says, “The quality of your life is where you live emotionally.”

Action works wonders. It changes the chemistry of the body.

Now, sit up straight, put a big stupid grin on your face. Don’t you feel better?

Dillard imagines that the dying prayer should be, not “Please,” but “Thank you.”—as a guest thanks his host at the door. The universe, she explains, “was not made in jest, but in solemn, incomprehensible earnest”

I wrote all of the above yesterday.

Today is the dawning of a new age, a new year.  I see a piece of blue sky. 

Today I’m charging full steam ahead, and I just read something wonderful.

If you have ever had any thoughts, as I have, about young people and the constant play of video games, this will uplift your spirits.

In a genre that is often associated with aggression and violence, Jenova Chen, a video designer, called “The Digital Monk,” has designed a video game promoting peace, generosity, and compassion through a personal trans-formative video game called Sky. It will be released in 2019.

In 2006 a video designer said, “When a video game actually makes you cry, you know you have made it”

Apparently, Chen has accomplished that.

Somewhere hidden among ancient writings, we find the Supreme Creator saying this: “In times of trouble I will send a comforter.”

“Controlling a group of heroic people is a bit like herding cats.”—Carol Pearson

A reader responding to Supreme Court Justice Ruth B Ginsburg’s recent fall breaking two ribs then having cancer surgery, said, “If you need a kidney, a lung or a liver, I’ll give you one.”

Thank you for being here. I know you could be doing any of a number of other things, so I totally appreciate that you sent time with me.--Jo