Series8:GlassBalls

Really want to be in Ohio right now.

There's a physical therapist at work who delightfully responds to my art work. With this painting when she saw it, she said, "Whoa, fireworks!". I said, "what do you see". She responded with, "semen hitting the egg exploding".

14" x 18" Acrylic with Ink

Tits Gallery

It kinda sucks when child support doesn't come when it is suppose to. 2 weeks late. Putting off grocery store shopping. Anyway, my daughter told me about the "secret tits gallery" when she shows off my paintings when I'm not around. Her friends love it. What it is ... is my first paintings of naked women. Her friends think it is cool. No morals. Only flesh.

Continuation of "If Wishes Were Horses"...

When I typed the last sentence of Dan's email..."I can't grant any of your wishes at this time"...Blogger replied with, "Sorry, Blogger cannot grant your wish at this time"....

"If wishes were horses"

To: Dan

From: Holly

Date: 4/25/06



"Yes, I know this places me, yet again, 'over the limit'. My writing/sending you 'poems'---my agenda'...I don't know. "Something comes to me, I write, I send to you 'feeling the flow as it goes'. Perhaps it's only in my head, but my hope is that whatever I 'write' does good somewhere for someone...afterall, what is life without sharing. My 'agenda' in writing is not in using you or wanting you to put my words to music...that, my friend, is my fantasy. I have already 'seen' my life through your work. In doing so, I know it is not just 'my life'. You, my friend, you, the artist, you did that...I lived it but you brought it to life."



To: Holly

From: Dan

Date 4/25/06



"The wishes that I am able to grant are spontaneous, and not subject to force. That's the problem with your requests, from my point of view you manifest yourself only as an inexhaustable appetite; wanting more but never tasting what you have. I understand that you have feelings, and that you don't want to be viewed as a monster, but that is how your behavior at present appears, at least to me. Until you get whatever drives that in balance, my wish-granting is stymied.

From what I've read it seems that you expect others to accept that you will ignore their wishes because you have a need to be free. Yet at the same time believe that others should (for what reason?) grant your wishes. This is a common ailment, and not just for individuals. Maybe your experience with others has lead you to expect the worst from them, so you push buttons until you get the negative responses you knew you'd get all along) (That is called "self-fulfilling prophecy"..its a form of the True Thomas complex, but a very unfortunate one.) If that's the case, I've seen the phenomena before, mostly in the elderly.

I really don't know how to respond to your emails, because I know that you have not in the past granted any request that I've made. (And they have been few! Limit emails to 2 a day. No erotica or seduction attempts. But I'm all about fresh starts and another chances, so I'll offer one: Limit emails to no more than 5 a day. No erotica or seduction attempts. If you can grant that, then I can consider one of your wishes. I cannot grant more than one under any circumstances.

Here are the specific reasons that I cannot grant these particular wishes: Friendship, at least for me, is based on trust and mutual interest. Trust cannot be commanded or compelled, it grows from experience. One observes that a particular person behaves in a reliable way and trust in that behavior begins to form. Some people put their trust in projected fantasy...believing for no reason that others will respond as they wish them to. That causes pain, because it disappoints. Both the first and third wish are based on the idea of friendship, and although we started on that track, way back...you wanted to turn it into something else, and refused to pay attention to my response. I'm not writing this to display anger or disappointment in your behavior (I had no expectations to begin with.) but to try to show you what the impediments to developing a friendship are. Just so you'll know, I am a wary person, for very good reasons; after what I've experienced so far with this correspondence, it will take a long time to re-establish trust. But anything's possible.

As to the 2nd wish, that I tell your story, that is literally impossible, and I wouldn't consider doing it under any circumstances. The only story that I have to tell is what I have experienced directly. All of us have an amazing story, but few people decide to learn the craft of storytelling, even fewer the art of writing. Both of those disciplines are commitments that require devotion and time....so much devotion and time that even in the most favorable circumstances there is little chance for success in making something that will have enough duration to reach the reader or listener who can receive it. Early on there is exuberance and exhilaration....but eventually it comes round to studying punctuation and grammer. If you're going to do that, something has to be sacrificed...and that something is huge amounts of time."

Life's Transitions

Now, a rainbow appearing in the sky.

Last week, a robin flew on my window pane at work and pecked on my window. That same robin did that 3 times. My immediate thought was, "last time a bird pecked on my window, someone died". Then, for the last 3 days, I received phone messages on my answering machine at home from an automated burial insurance company. Again, my thought was, "the last time this happened, someone died". I became aware of this 5 years ago when my son's friend's mother died. Realizing the "signs of death" 5 years ago after the fact when my son's friend was murdered. The signs were coming, yet, at the time, I didn't realize it.

I told a friend about this last night, after hearing the news of my aunt dying yesterday (her husband, my uncle had died last year); his reply was, "I too experience life's transitions".

Today, for whatever reason, the picture above is what I drew. Appears to be "hands" in one form or fashion.

Last Night's Painting

14" x 18" Acrylic with Ink on Canvas

Jellyfish

14" x 18" Acrylic with Ink on Canvas

Being a single mom certainly is entertaining! As my daughter approaches the age of 17, it is a good thing that I have mellowed throughout the years. Last night, she told me she was spending the night with a friend. Parents said it was ok. She texted me at 3:30 a.m. telling me that her and 3 others were out in our back yard. By the time I got outside, they were in her car - it was raining. I made her come in the house - alone. The "truth" came out. Parents were not aware she and the 2 others were staying the night. Parents had planned to be gone for the night. Plans changed and they were coming home...so they came here. She was waiting until it turned 6:00 a.m. to take them all home due to curfew. She wasn't concerned at 2:30 a.m. when she drove. Anyway, I took her phone and her car away from her. She wasn't driving anywhere and the others needed to call their parents to come and get them. No, they were not coming into the house. I made them sit outside in the car beginning at 4:00 a.m.

I was fuming. I told my friend "this is when I truly despise my ex" (he doesn't see her). It is difficult at times not being able to share the trials and tribulations. My friend replied "he is a spineless jellyfish....without the sting". Funny sometimes where my inspiration arrives from!

At 7:00 a.m., 1 of her friends had left and 2 remained. I made cinnamon buns and let them come into the house. 3 hours of having to sit in one place seemed enough. Yes, I stayed up and kept an eye on them. As I was watching them, remembrance of my own teenage years flooded by. Wasn't hard to find empathy for those kids!

"I Get It"...took many years of purging...

From: dan

Date: 2/20/06



"The ballad show is a public event and all my family and friends, as well as the general public are invited to attend. I don't know when the opening date is yet, but I'll let everyone on my mailing list know as soon as I know.

When you wrote wanting to meet, it was in the context of god having decided that I was the predestined man for you, you were in love, etc...many of the many emails written under the influence of one extreme or another, horniness or rage being the most common; tears, railing, visual hallucinations, scripture, wierd (to me) church intrigues and orders, condemnations of homosexuality (with the usual verse citations, as if I hadn't been subject to that sort of thinly veiled meanness a million times already!) Endless demands for immediate attention (I can't breathe, you wrote on many occasions, as if I was the evil hand on the cutoff valve of your oxygen tank!)....and curses when I wouldn't deliver promptly. I (gradually) recognized this as the fairly typical symptoms of someone going through a difficult metamorphosis. I've seen it before, been through it myself...so in spite of being extremely annoyed at times with having a bunch of gnarliness thrust upon me by a virtual stranger who wouldn't respect my written request for a modicum of privacy.

(I've read long long books of great intimacy by writers who as far as I'm concerned remain strangers. I decide when someone is a trusted friend...and that's when I feel like I can trust them. I don't bestow friendship lightly, because it means a lot to me. I've had some bad experiences with that, thankfully very few, and I'm not so stubborn that I refuse to learn from my mistakes...which were not mistakes of being too closed, or hidden, but of allowing too much and not setting boundaries that I wanted and then sticking to them. I hope that I've moved forward from that sort of self-deception) .

So in spite of feeling that all your professed love hinged on your getting exactly what you wanted exactly when you wanted it, I decided to keep reading, hoping that the process would bring improvement, which you say it has. Good. We all meet helpers along the way who try to do unto others what was most graciously done for them. I have been lucky in having met a number of people who helped me for that reason. I learned that their time is precious to them (many of those helping hands were very old ones.) and that I couldn't expect more from them than what they decided to give. When I finally "got" that...I learned to touch the world sparingly. I myself was able to limit the time I spent with my Cherokee mentor to a single 10 hour session. I will ponder that day for the rest of my life...the brevity was an essential part of the miracle, demonstrating that I "got" it, by bidding him a meaningful thanks, without any times bound to a future for my benefit, was the demonstration I made to him that I had learned my lesson well. I sent him a nice card, with a painting of a sacred plant, something that only a person who had studied his culture long, hard and seriously would know the meaning of. I let go, and opened myself to being free. And I let him give all his precious remaining days to his own grandchildren, who were in a perilous condition, (thanks in no small part to the historical actions of MY government) and who needed to witness the dignity and knowledge of their grandfather, " even and especially because they had little idea just how grand he actually was. They could only speak a few words of his language.

I think you're a fine person, beyond all the neurosis, as medical types say, which your obsessional emails detail. I'm sure that you will work your way through the love fascination stage (or not) and realize eventually that to love the images and sounds that an artist prepares as a gift of love, potentially for everyone and for everything, is no more nor less than the love one feels for the branch of a tree festooned with snow on a lovely morning. It comes and it goes. It requires nothing but witnessing. And that is exactly what makes it sacred.

Intimate companionship is a different thing entirely, to me...for all I know in my case it may be the result of some air bourne scent from a peculiar molecule, or mere happenstance. I don't care really. Lucky when it happens, lucky when it doesn't. (because I have things to do.) If I'm an unusually wary person in that regard, or picky, or both, then I'm very very glad of that.

Too much casual stuff gets labeled as love. All my life I've had to resist being "changed" for someone else's agenda. It's tiresome, but I've accepted it as going with the job.

Be happy with what you have, if you can, is my gospel. "Accept what I can't change, etc." God nor universe need give me anything more than this and I'll be grateful; my gratitude is my song. I'm not wrangling for eternity, I feel lucky when I "get" one second.

My take on the email only idea is that for a person battling addictions, one addiction at a time is plenty. You've writen that you're not a stalker, no danger, etc. I have a family and my work to protect and I don't take those kind of chances. Why not make the best of the medium for what it can do, rather than trying to force something else?

Series5.GlassBalls

14" x 18" Acrylic with Ink on Canvas

My son came home last week for the summer from college in Colorado. When he flew into Tennessee, he said it looked like the wetlands. It is absolutely wonderful having him home again. The love I feel for my family and my friends is overwhelming!

Series4:Glassballs

14" x 18" Acrylic with Ink on Canvas

I drove over roads yesterday that were completely under water last week. I had to totally ground myself for the energies surrounding me were intense. The day before the flood arrived, I came home to find a baby rabbit next to my house. First rabbit since last summer. I have mentioned before in my blog "the rabbit story". Came across the story today:

From: dan

Subject: The Sleeping Faun

Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2006

"No, I've never found goddesses attractive in that way, and no I never thought of anything "within" Terry. He was perfect as he was. I didn't want anything else than what he was. What I wanted was more time. "There's never enough time or money to make an opera." That was what my opera director mentor told me. As it turns out the amount of time is fine. What needed work was my ability to catch the nature of time and to synchronize myself with its many speeds. That's a skill, like playing an instrument, which is developed by determined practice. At 21 I simply didn't have the skill yet, and all the wanting in the world wouldn't change that, as I was to discover. Lucky me!

Perhaps there's nothing wrong with your friend at all. Maybe she's just addicted to the habit of whining, pretending that being pathetic is some sort of penance. Too much self-importance....does she think she's too good to have to suffer some in life?

Of course I know nothing about this person or her inner life, so its idle guessing. One night I hit a rabbit on the road, something I hate to do. "Oh! How awful!" But I realized how hypocritical that was, how self-important I was puffing myself up to be. Rabbits lived for millions of years before there were cars, so they can't really understand, with the oversoul of rabbits, what cars do...what the connection is between the lights and death. It moves at a different speed. "Death is not as slow as thought." But cars may come and go, as the vector of death for every rabbit on earth. But it could be too that our time will come and go, perhaps our great tower will rise and fall, and dissappear beneath the fields. And it could be that in those fields the rabbits will continue with their rabbit lives, concerned with more lasting things than wheels and headlights. Who knows? People only want to envision a story in which they are the stars...each of us is that way, must be that way, seeing our story reflected as in a mirror in all we see and think. But it should be obvious that there might be more to the universe than our story.

The rabbit story for instance."

Yes...one of my many favorite stories from Dan! The rabbit story. And yes, when the floods came, this story too came to mind.

Kasper

Kasper, Occupational Therapist, a co-worker who moved here from Illinois is moving back to Illinois after marrying her childhood sweetheart. She is an amazing woman! Anyway, she has always enjoyed my paintings and today, she bought this one! Yea! I like it when my paintings are sold!