BLOG/ WRITINGS
A Painter’s Short Story
Although I am a painter, I have closet desires to write too, and although this below is raw and unedited, I figure I will share it with the world, for there is nothing to lose…
Titled : “MRE’s”
I wish that I had stepped off that puddle jumper into something other than the god forsaken humidity so ordained to the southern regions of our nation. Who the hell could live in such a purgatory? But I guess Mark could, for he had chosen this place nearly four years ago, after his last “venture” had collapsed. Like so many pilgrims before him, he left the land he knew in exchange for yet again chasing the dragon seeking desperate renewal. How he had gotten the money to start this new place, well, I really didn’t want to know. But if you knew anything of Mark, you knew that on occasion, he could pull a rabbit out of a hat.
The heat of this place, horrid as it was, was not entirely unfamiliar I had to admit. But Mark and I had to go back close to half a century to find ourselves together again in such a sweatbox. I guess at this point, to come full circle back to air such as this, was in some ways oddly comforting. Back then, how many cheap beers had Mark and I swilled down, sometimes merely draining them atop our heads, our form of a cool shower to stave off the morbid heat. We had been young then, body and souls just beginning to be inked into what would become the tattoos of our lives. God if only we had known.
How many nights, amidst the beating rain, wet to the bone, down in some hideous foxhole, waiting for gunfire, had we opened yet again those damned MRE’s? And yet, bad as they were, a guy like Mark could make it a feast. And thank god for his small pleasures, for at the time he gave us visions of the finest dining any of us had ever known , the finest dining some of us would ever know. So it was no surprise when, back from the hell of the Nam, after a few stints on the lines of dining establishments from New Mexico to New York City, that Mark had figured out a way to open his first joint.
That first place had been epic, and for years Mark rode the waves of restaurant stardom like Kelly Slater or Peter Mel surfing the monster waves of Maverick’s, always escaping death, only to be rewarded with the finest of accolades known to the dining world. And, dish by dish, plate by plate, wave by wave, this was how Mark had sculpted the creation of his life.
The Nam had changed all of us. Those of us lucky or unlucky enough to have survived that specific hell would forever be married to a silent gnawing pain that rarely slept. But maybe that is exactly why Mark thrived as he did. For his creations of food, mixed with the magic of libations, gifted his diners, his ever growing cadre, with journeys to places within themselves most had not known existed. Just as he had done in those hellfire, lonely, god forsaken foxholes of the Nam, Mark took his guests on forays into happier, more ecstatic realms than the often lonely lives they fed upon in their day to day existences.
Sometimes I find there are just things I can’t say in a painting in a way that I can say with a photograph…
One of the things I love about a blog is simply the ability to post without having to worry about keeping things in sections, etc…As an artist, always with ideas buzzing in my head, thinking of new painting ideas or new photo ideas, I can just post it up in hopes of giving the viewer even a small glimpse into the creative processes.
And Then, As a Lover of Surf and Ocean, there are always my photos to find some peace.
The photography and the painting help to complement one another. Combined, they allow me to see in new ways and thus both contribute to one another.
20-Year-Old Hunter S. Thompson’s Surprisingly Sage Advice on How to Find Your Purpose and Live a Meaningful Life
Just wanted to share this link to a great essay. This is a brief excerpt from a young Hunter S Thompson: “To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles…” And indeed, that IS the question: whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make consciously or unconsciously at one time in our lives. So few people understand this! Think of any decision you’ve ever made which had a bearing on your future: I may be wrong, but I don’t see how it could have been anything but a choice however indirect — between the two things I’ve mentioned: the floating or the swimming.
The full essay is below.
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
“It is not necessary to accept the choices handed down to you by life as you know it.”
By Maria Popova
As a hopeless lover of both letters and notable advice, I was delighted to discover a letter 20-year-old Hunter S. Thompson (July 18, 1937–February 20, 2005) — gonzo journalism godfather, pundit of media politics, dark philosopher — penned to his friend Hume Logan in 1958. Found in Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience (public library) — the aptly titled, superb collection based on Shaun Usher’s indispensable website of the same name — the letter is an exquisite addition to luminaries’ reflections on the meaning of life, speaking to what it really means to find your purpose.
Cautious that “all advice can only be a product of the man who gives it” — a caveat other literary legends have stressed with varying degrees of irreverence — Thompson begins with a necessary disclaimer about the very notion of advice-giving:
To give advice to a man who asks what to do with his life implies something very close to egomania. To presume to point a man to the right and ultimate goal — to point with a trembling finger in the RIGHT direction is something only a fool would take upon himself.
And yet he honors his friend’s request, turning to Shakespeare for an anchor of his own advice:
“To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles…”
And indeed, that IS the question: whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make consciously or unconsciously at one time in our lives. So few people understand this! Think of any decision you’ve ever made which had a bearing on your future: I may be wrong, but I don’t see how it could have been anything but a choice however indirect — between the two things I’ve mentioned: the floating or the swimming.
He acknowledges the obvious question of why not take the path of least resistance and float aimlessly, then counters it:
The answer — and, in a sense, the tragedy of life — is that we seek to understand the goal and not the man. We set up a goal which demands of us certain things: and we do these things. We adjust to the demands of a concept which CANNOT be valid. When you were young, let us say that you wanted to be a fireman. I feel reasonably safe in saying that you no longer want to be a fireman. Why? Because your perspective has changed. It’s not the fireman who has changed, but you.
Touching on the same notion that William Gibson termed “personal micro-culture,” Austin Kleon captured in asserting that “you are the mashup of what you let into your life,” and Paula Scher articulated so succinctly in speaking of the combinatorial nature of our creativity, Thompson writes:
Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on. Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective.
So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything other than galloping neurosis?
The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all, or not with tangible goals, anyway. It would take reams of paper to develop this subject to fulfillment. God only knows how many books have been written on “the meaning of man” and that sort of thing, and god only knows how many people have pondered the subject. (I use the term “god only knows” purely as an expression.)* There’s very little sense in my trying to give it up to you in the proverbial nutshell, because I’m the first to admit my absolute lack of qualifications for reducing the meaning of life to one or two paragraphs.
Resolving to steer clear of the word “existentialism,” Thompson nonetheless strongly urges his friend to read Sartre’s Nothingness and the anthology Existentialism: From Dostoyevsky to Sartre, then admonishes against succumbing to faulty definitions of success at the expense of finding one’s own purpose:
To put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.
But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors—but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal. In every man, heredity and environment have combined to produce a creature of certain abilities and desires—including a deeply ingrained need to function in such a way that his life will be MEANINGFUL. A man has to BE something; he has to matter.
As I see it then, the formula runs something like this: a man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES function at maximum efficiency toward the gratification of his DESIRES. In doing this, he is fulfilling a need (giving himself identity by functioning in a set pattern toward a set goal) he avoids frustrating his potential (choosing a path which puts no limit on his self-development), and he avoids the terror of seeing his goal wilt or lose its charm as he draws closer to it (rather than bending himself to meet the demands of that which he seeks, he has bent his goal to conform to his own abilities and desires).
In short, he has not dedicated his life to reaching a pre-defined goal, but he has rather chosen a way of life he KNOWS he will enjoy. The goal is absolutely secondary: it is the functioning toward the goal which is important. And it seems almost ridiculous to say that a man MUST function in a pattern of his own choosing; for to let another man define your own goals is to give up one of the most meaningful aspects of life — the definitive act of will which makes a man an individual.
Noting that his friend had thus far lived “a vertical rather than horizontal existence,” Thompson acknowledges the challenge of this choice but admonishes that however difficult, the choice must be made or else it melts away into those default modes of society:
A man who procrastinates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance. So if you now number yourself among the disenchanted, then you have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seriously seek something else. But beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life. But you say, “I don’t know where to look; I don’t know what to look for.”
And there’s the crux. Is it worth giving up what I have to look for something better? I don’t know—is it? Who can make that decision but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward making the choice.
He ends by returning to his original disclaimer by reiterating that rather than a prescription for living, his “advice” is merely a reminder that how and what we choose — choices we’re in danger of forgetting even exist — shapes the course and experience of our lives:
I’m not trying to send you out “on the road” in search of Valhalla, but merely pointing out that it is not necessary to accept the choices handed down to you by life as you know it. There is more to it than that — no one HAS to do something he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life.
Grateful to Call This Man a Friend
His life’s work has always been cutting edge science.
A Short Video of Julian Schnabel in Montauk
Michael Franti - We Bomb the World
Why Lemons on the Amalfi Coast Still Matter
May 8, 2013
AMALFI, Italy — On a recent spring morning, Luigi Aceto, a hale 78, climbed a ladder in a terraced lemon grove that stretched up the hillside in one of Italy’s most picturesque towns and expertly began snipping lemons into a wicker basket. The sun was shining. The lemons were ripe and as big as fists. The scent of blossoms was intoxicating.
Mr. Aceto, nicknamed Gigino, was born and raised in these lemon groves, where his family has been working for centuries, first as tenant farmers, then as landowners. But with the land on the Amalfi Coast far more valuable today for luxury tourism than boutique lemons, Mr. Aceto worries what the future will bring.
“I have the honor and the burden of bearing witness here to six generations,” he said contemplatively, as he stood on a promontory in the lemon grove, wearing, as it happens, a lemon yellow shirt. He was referring to the three generations that preceded him as well as his own, and those of his two sons and grandchildren.
The Amalfi Coast is known these days as a tourist mecca.Credit...The New York Times
In many ways, the Aceto family tree mirrors Italy’s transformation from an agrarian peasant society before World War II into an industrial power afterward — and its lingering ambivalence about whether it wants to compete globally or believes its future lies in local traditions. The debate has become more intense since the introduction of the euro in 2002, which raised the price of Italian exports, making it harder for small businesses to compete.
Today, 90 percent of Italian businesses have fewer than 15 employees. The Acetos make a niche product — world-famous lemons, prized for their low acidity and delicate flavor — and like many small Italian businesses, they are reluctant to grow, preferring quality over quantity, tradition over expansion. Mr. Aceto wants the lemon groves and the business to stay in the family.
“My two sons work for the business and are dedicated; I count on them,” he said.
Mr. Aceto’s son Marco runs the production side of the company, La Valle dei Mulini, making limoncello liquor, lemon honey and other products from the lemons, which are so sweet you can eat them whole. Marco’s wife works in the family shop selling the products in the town’s touristy main square. Mr. Aceto’s other son, Salvatore, recently left a job as an accountant to come back to work for the family business.
That isn’t always the case for other nearby families, whose children left the lemon groves to go to college and seek professional jobs in the cities. Keeping the lemon groves alive is a constant struggle.
Luigi Aceto, whose family has worked in Amalfi for centuries, says he takes care of the “patrimony of humanity.”Credit...Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times
“One of our main goals is to prevent the abandonment of the gardens on the coast,” said Salvatore De Riso, a well-known pastry chef and the president of the Consortium for the Protection of the Amalfi Lemon. “So many have been abandoned, and we’re trying to get them back by involving the owners. We’d like to valorize the Amalfi lemon, which is unique in the world.”
Mr. De Riso said that the consortium, which certifies the quality of lemons in products like limoncello to protect them from low-quality imitations, is trying to help local producers raise production.
The consortium is also trying to get state financing to help the boutique producers stay afloat. But that is a vexed issue in Italy, where in past years, although generally not in Amalfi, the misuse of European Union agricultural subsidies has often made it more lucrative for larger farms to let fruit rot on the tree than to pay the costs of harvesting and transporting it.
Although Mr. Aceto helped start the lemon consortium, he no longer wants to be part of it, saying it is pushing small growers like him to produce too much.
The family’s limoncello.Credit...Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times
Mr. Aceto would also like to sell the lemons himself, and frowns on what he calls “mercenaries,” or wholesalers who buy lemons from small producers and sell them at a markup to larger distributors.
Mr. De Riso disagrees. He said that increasing the quantity of production would help small producers earn more without detracting from the quality. All lemons certified from Amalfi must be of the “sfusato” family, which comes from the Italian word for spindle, because of their pointed ends. These grow only in the microclimate of the Amalfi Coast, where cooling breezes are trapped between steep mountain valleys.
The lemons were first brought to the Amalfi Coast centuries ago on trade routes from the Middle East and were treasured by sailors for warding off scurvy and other ailments at sea.
For the Aceto family, the euro — and the euro crisis — is yet another phase in a long and rich history. Gigino Aceto’s great-grandfather, grandfather and father tended the lemon trees for a local nobleman, when the Italian south had a largely feudal economy. His father was able to buy some land when a local noble family needed an infusion of cash.
Mr. Aceto was born in 1934, the eighth of 13 children; his parents got a special large-family subsidy from Mussolini’s Fascist government. In 1968, he enlarged the plot to about 20 acres with a special 40-year loan from the Italian state at 1 percent interest, part of an agrarian reform aimed at helping farmers buy their own land.
He isn’t nostalgic for the past and still remembers being a child during the war, when the family nearly starved and he and his siblings were sent to gather herbs and anything else edible. “We had relatives in America who sent us packages,” Mr. Aceto recalled. “Now China is taking over. That’s how the times are going.”
Faced with global competition, Mr. Aceto’s son Salvatore is not convinced that the euro is helping small businesses like his. “I’d say no,” he said. “There are lots of positive sides, but the other side of the coin is that we didn’t benefit enough. If we still had the lire, we’d have stayed more competitive as agricultural producers.”
The Aceto lemon groves could be sold for millions of euros for luxury vacation properties, but the family will hear none of it.
“I’m taking care of the patrimony of humanity,” Gigino Aceto said. Planted in a series of stonewalled terraces, the roots of the lemon trees help prevent soil erosion and landslides, a growing problem with the torrential rains of recent years. “The rays of the sun penetrate under the roots, so that the lemon is like a little baby in its cradle,” he said.
“Maybe lemon juice runs in my veins instead of blood,” he added.
After his afternoon nap, Mr. Aceto showed off the family’s smaller plot, high on the hills above the coast. A sweet breeze blew through the lemon grove. The sounds of traffic and water lapping on the shore rose from below. Above were the steep stone walls of the local cemetery. Salvatore Aceto looked up. “Here, even the dead are in paradise,” he said.
Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting.
Danny Hess Handplanes - Water Art
On the Gap Between the Super Rich and the Majority of the People
Because it is Right
"Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it political? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor political, nor popular - but one must take it simply because it is right." Martin Luther King, Jr
Cyrus Sutton and His Handplanes are Good for the SOUL
Mark Bradford and Street Art
A month or so ago, I was checking out the "hot galleries" of Los Angeles, specifically those located in the Culver City area. While I am sure I saw art of all technical, philosophical, social, and visual natures in these galleries on that day, it was perhaps what I saw outside the galleries as I was walking back to my car that had the most impact. Call me crazy, but here I had just witnessed some of the "hottest" art in some of the "hottest" galleries in Los Angeles and yet when I spied this "wall art" near my car, I found it to be as compelling as anything I had just witnessed in the "sanctioned dominions" of artistic culture. I was moved by the freedom, the rawness, the spontaneity, and the rather utter lack of care that this wall piece expressed. As seen above, I reference it in comparison to a compelling piece by the esteemed Los Angeles artist, Mark Bradford. In no way am I trying to take anything away from the Bradford piece for I find Mark Bradford to be one of the more original and thought provoking artists of the day, not just here in Los Angeles, but the world over. But I use his piece here as a reference point. How is it that Bradford (the lower piece of the two above), in my opinion rightly so, has gained the notoriety that he has while this "anonymous" artist (top piece above)goes on without even a mention? How is it that the "corporate" art world has constructed itself so as to define what is "real" art, and what is perhaps only the markings of a deviant being? Given the right location, I can easily see this street art being successfully exhibited so as to provoke compelling discussion just as the Bradford piece has done. And yet, one artist is flourishing while who know what has become of the other artist, or even if that wall was the work of one person? The point is is that how often does the average joe, with no art historical training, view both pieces, listen to the various blurbs on the attributes of Bradford, and then look at the street art and have the confidence to deem that work just as valid, or just as compelling or, shall I say even beautiful?
Camus
I am certainly no authority on the works of Camus, but I have read his journals and most of his writings, with more attention to "The Stranger" and "The Plague". Although these were written over 50 years ago, I wonder if these are still relevant, and if so, are they worth commenting on especially in these current times of unrest and insecurity the world over. In "The Stranger", Camus' lead character, Meursault, appears to lack empathy for those he comes into contact with. He sees life as "godless", "absurd", and without meaning, and thus finds justification for his self serving actions. His character is one of the most well known literary characters of the past 75 years, and I must ask why? Could it be that Camus was even "before his time", and was using his lead character not only as a foil for certain general human traits, but as a metaphor for the larger weapons or voices of state power in his time? For surely, we all are familiar with the notion of a unit/team/nation only being as strong as its' weakest link, and therefore, I pose the idea that perhaps in presenting Mersault to the world, Camus was using him to comment on the apathy and general lack of interest or power that the weakest links in his society may have had. And if this may be posited as perhaps true, then could it not be said that we may draw a parallel between the character Mersault and the rank and file of so many of us who currently feel relatively helpless and therefore apathetic to the national and world economic mess, political dissillusionments, and enigmatic nature of the primary countries we now devote so much of our war effort towards? And therefore, if any of this is even remotely possibly true, does not it stand that the works of Camus are just as relevant today as they were over 50 years ago? And if this is so, and we are simultaneously watching the closing of bookstores across the nation (Borders Books being long gone, themselves having killed off countless mom and pop bookshops) and the general decline of the reading of the written word, then is not it now as important as ever that works like Camus' "the Stranger" not be forgotten in this daily deluge of internet tech magic that seems to override so quickly so much of past history as we have known it? What I mean is that we, as a culture are now seemingly so obsessed with the "magic" of the iPhone, the iPad, the immediate gratification that our technology brings, that we neglect to heed the important voices of the past that, in fact, are desperately relevant to the current times we are living in? And therefore, should we not be more wary of the "bells and whistles" of some of our modern technology, which may simply be acting as a smoke and mirror show to simply keep us apathetic towards some of the more "humanistic" attentions that need paying attention to in the here and now?
The Last Intellectuals, Russell Jacoby
Back in the late 1980's, fresh out of college and ready to change the world, I read a book by Russell Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals, that still haunts me nearly twenty five years later...In it, he forsook the idea of the university as the premier "ivory tower" of learning, and went back to earlier days when common men and women spent more time chatting about the affairs of the world not only in the higher halls of learning, but on country porches, local coffee houses and diners, and the like. He mourned the fact that serious discussion of important ideas, news, and events had increasingly taken place most often only in the domains of the colleges and universities across the nation. He argued that in fact, part of our strength as a nation had historically been that more of the general populace, both the college educated and those even far less so were all more involved in the daily dialogue of what was transpiring in the towns, nation, and world they lived in.
Now of course, as I was a youngster with very little experience outside the college confines, I ate up his words like a marathon runner who was deeply in need of fuel for the journey ahead. I was sure that change was fast, right around the corner, and that all it took was a little group interaction. Being the young idealist, I was sure that others cared just as much as I did about the history of ideas and culture, and that without attention to those ideas of the past that we all would not move forward in manners in accordance to our higher callings as humans populating the prescious planet Earth. Boy was I wrong... Ouch...
And so it is in ode to this original young idealist spirit, and the writings among others, of Russell Jacoby, that in these current times of so much vast change, insecurity, and economic, political, geopolitical and cultural "unknowing" that I seek out to you, my unknown populace to see if one small voice may indeed be the mere tinder to start a fire from which unknown energies may be revealed. The future has not been written, and thus remains to be seen. I invite you to join me on this journey into explorations of culture, politics, diplomacy, economics, technology, war and peace, and how it may all affect where we all will end up...