Empty Nest

I have been fighting a general malaise these last few weeks. Nothing too serious, I suppose. My emotional state is normally directly tied to my bank balance, which is a bit paltry at present. I know that this unmasks me as nothing much more than a rank materialist but I can't help it. It's the way I roll. Broke, bummed. Rich, happy. I am gamely marshaling forward but my brain is full of nagging questions about the limits of personal endurance and general sustainability.

I had a series of strange dreams in San Francisco. Normally my dreams are very rich and fantastic, I routinely perform supernatural tasks with the greatest of ease like a wayward character out of a Marquez novel. Typically I am confronted by some insurmountable conundrum and I manage to untie the gordian knots and vanquish my nocturnal opponents before I wake up. In these dreams of mine of late I only find more tangled knots and circumstances awaiting me.

I decided to consult the i ching and try to get a little help from the random void. You don't have to count sticks, throw coins or count the cracks in a turtle's back anymore, all of the new smart  phones having handy i ching widgets. It was really no help at all. All broken lines with the top one changing, earth moving to the condition of splitting apart. 23, the hexagram where the whole shitpile comes loose and goes up in flames. No help there.

SPLITTING APART. IT does not further one
To go anywhere.

I threw it again or should I say, tapped the little coins on my android screen and received another not exactly sanguine message about keeping my head down and not attempting to do much of anything beyond breathing. Check.

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Leslie tends to view my little temperamental inner roller coaster rides with a fair degree of suspicion. She has seen them too many times and I always find a way out of the maze, being both lucky and fairly resourceful and having a lot of inventory. So it is up to me to right my ship and I will. Here's hoping shitty is not the new stasis.

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Of course you might be just ambling along, maybe tilling the soil and minding your own business when the 55' wide interplanetary visitor with a mass of ten thousand tons tons decides to break through the atmosphere at 44,000 mph with a 500 kiloton explosion. The eggheads said the asteroid that recently hit the Russian Urals had a force of about thirty Hiroshima's.  Far right politician Zhironovsky said that it was probably a secret American weapon. A rock like that could really ruin a picnic.

"Instead of fighting on Earth, people should be creating a joint system of asteroid defense," the Russian parliament's foreign affairs committee chief Alexei Pushkov wrote on Twitter on Friday.

Forget about our petty earthly squabbles and join hands against the invaders from space, even if they fiendishly masquerade themselves as inanimate rocks.



I have been watching the red tail hawks hover near the old nest these last few weeks. They come back to the high roost year after year. They are probably sussing it out now for any new danger before the mother plops down for the 28 to 35 day gestation period. And I had a thought about what a wonder nature is. The tall sycamore tree is barren of leaves right now but in three weeks, right about the time the mother hawk will commence her roost, the leaves will sprout forth and give the expectant mother and her chicks cover. Fantastic how these things work.

I went to two parties yesterday. Michael and Carmen had a soirée which included a bunch of very hip contemporary artists and gallery owners from Los Angeles. Next gen. I felt a bit old and past tense in this group but they were all very nice and intelligent. The talented silk screener Rolo Castillo was there. He worked with Jim Evans in the 90's poster collective T.A.Z. for many years.

There is definitely a generational shift happening in art. I welcome it and embrace it, even if it spells doom for my personal bailiwick. Things move forward and they move on. As long as the work is good, bring it on.

Afterwards a bunch of friend's went over to K's house. K is a wonderful and kind man, has the best toys of all my pals around here. He built the ultimate man cave and had the photo group over to hear music on his sick system. Apogee planar speakers, not the Scintillas (he has them as well), the giant ones, powered by four massive Krell amps. Serious Studer tape deck, size of a tractor engine. Whole thing is beyond impressive and the sound was so accurate and revealing. I listened to it when he was setting it up and it is really getting dialed in now.

Wine, beers, music, vinyl and cd's. I brought Dafos, Steppenwolf, Iron Butterfly. K had some reference tapes. Allan brought some really good electronic music. Tom brought Doors. We gave the system a solid workout and had a really nice time.

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Ken has to drive to Kansas today. An aunt passed away. Leslie is still in Las Vegas so I am batching it. The cat jumped on my crotch to wake me up, maybe a little pissed off that mom isn't there. Devil is knocking at my door, got to make something of my life this week.

When  we meet St. Peter at the golden gate and assess our term on this celestial rock of ours, only a tool or a fool will say "Well, I had this much money in the bank." The only thing that counts, at least in my humble estimation is, did we love and were we loved? I feel very blessed myself. You get one shot. Put the hammer down.