giveawayboy

This is the 92nd drawing I've done for Julia Kay's Portrait Party. This is Alex.

This is the 91st drawing I've done for Julia Kay's Portrait Party. This is Gila.

Like Julia says in Week 4 (yes, dammit, I'm still in week 4) you might find yourself wanting to go through and get rid of things. I'm having an intensification of this process. I can't believe how many things in my life have been coming to the surface as things around the house suddenly seem to want to fly the coop, be gifted to others or taken to local thrift stores. One feeling that was refreshing was to go to Life's Treasures a few weeks back knowing that a whole bunch of my old things were now somewhere in the store, going on to new lives elsewhere where they will be more used than they were with me. While I was there with my mother there was a man there who looked very much like the kind of person I see in myself these days. It was like looking in a mirror. I realized that a few years ago or even a few months ago if I had seen this same man I would have felt either intimidated or reminded of qualities I imagined myself not to possess. This time it was more of an eye to eye thing with some acknowledgment from him as well, as if we located something common in each other and nodded in joint approval. That was an incredible experience. He happened to have a Superman S on his shirt for what it's worth. Anyway, back to my original point. I'm continuing through the program and exercises. I think I've given room for so much to actually work because I haven't roped myself into a kind of legalistic approach.

Nihonzaru Soaking In A Hot Spring is my favorite recent drawing. Though it doesn't mimic their style I feel this drawing owes a great debt to the influences of Steven Hammond and Jerry Waese. I can't put my finger on what it is I like about this drawing. I just feel that it is going somewhere my drawing needs to go.

In one part there was a Madonna photoshoot but nothing came of that. Then I ended up at some old wooden house with a sign out front that said THE WAFFLE. The house was called that. In it were several guys who lived there, all sort of orphans who had been allowed to live there. I didn't know much about them except that at one point they had made a music video where they all wore these masks. One mask was particularly elaborate with huge areas of different textures and at least three wigs attached at the top to give an impression of hair. I was describing the mask to the guys and they pointed to the guy who made it. I asked if it was still around. He said it was and he brought it out of his room. Only it was not the same as it looked in the video. Instead what he still had was the underlying frame of the mask. In the video he had it decorated elaborately. And yet, still, this more base version of the mask had some character and still felt a little like the one I had seen. I tried putting it on peoples' heads to take photos of them with the mask but they assumed I was taking portraits and all kept throwing off the mask and posing, which disgusted me. I felt like they didn't see the importance of the energy in the mask.

Again there were several layers but here are two I can recall. At one point Audrey and I are sitting in a room and I'm trying to give her some Trixie Belden books. It is dark in there. I turn on a light to show her the books and Audrey is sitting with her arms crossed. On her forearms there is a giant bug that looks like a large lacewing, about a foot in length. The body and wings are brown and the head is light blue. Right behind the head there is a puffy red mass that looks sort of like fur. My sister doesn't move. She looks at the insect and realizes that it is merely crawling and not harming her. We both have an initial shock at the presence of the bug in our space but neither of us seem to have fear beyond the shock. As the dream continues the bug walks all about the room. It's almost like having a cat crawling around.

Then at some other point I'm in a car with Jacob. I look out the window at a large grassland. I notice a bear running with a salmon in it's mouth. I tell Jacob. Then Jacob sees an orangutan also with a salmon in its mouth. Next he sees another orangutan twirling a salmon around in the air. The second orangutan begins to wail and run toward the car. "I think it's coming after us!" said Jacob. And it was.

The balcony window is open
Above mosquitoes and thieves
Above the Ho Ho Here We Come
Of bump-keys in the night
Above the followers-home of late nighters
Stirring in oak infested side-yards
Waiting for moments of hostile access
Above alienated neighbor kids
Entering lawns they once might have mowed
To hang their cocks over long grass
And piss on rotting sheds
Above local thugs stealing faux crystal from the front porch
And brazenly trying the knob

But here twenty stories up
The sound of the surf becomes our woodpecker drum
Knitting us into
The secret things that grow in darkness
The next thing I know is a long green silence
A snowy owl under glass
And mid-size land tortoises stealing night salad
Behind the red lamp of the Holy Infant Of Prague
We descend to the waves below
Going twenty stories down another way
To darkness but not to heat
To barnacles and warm water on cold sand
The foreheads of human tigers crash into our flesh
They walk on our bladders and bite the sides of our hands
Our bodies confer a glowing imprint onto black cloth
As we fall into to the dark back half of the world
Where clocks tell off the hours
With the tongues of birds
Like phantom sentries drawing magical seals on a night beach

During the coffee hour
The couch becomes my lotus throne
Cool air awakens my naked skin
In pointillist carpets of awareness
Beyond a planar world of angels and Egyptian gods
Past where owls alight on dowel rods
And the least killies congregate under warm towels
Here the national bird of Myanmar struts under oaks and thick vines
I gaze both fuzzy and clear into this cube of living green
Transforming all I encounter into a kind of Śarabha with the head of Ricky Nelson as a youth
He carries a twin-serpent crozier in his right hand, a Thomson's Gazelle in his left
His forehooves tame the god of fear
And the locus of this work is a secret ring of heat
Formed where a hot mug rests on my left inner thigh

And then off we go
To a house built of cedar
To gaze through the Charbel window
To be drowned in and buoyed up by a Syriac ocean
Before the long lazy middle hour of the day


~Bill Rogers
May 17th, 2012

(originally conceived in October of 2011)

In the last 24 hours, I saw * alone in person after about 20 years. This was sort of huge. So many questions. So much catching up. New stories. Clarifications. Fears laid aside. Loose ends tied up or abandoned finally. Sort of amazing and surreal. A meeting I had always sort of hoped for but never imagined happening. So happy.

Today I took my mother out for Mother's Day, admittedly late, but what an enjoyable day. Took her to Sunshine Thrift and then she took me to Baker's something or other and finally I took her to Yesterdaze. Then she dropped me off but came in and visited for awhile. I sent some Trixie Belden books home w her for Audrey. There is only the lowest chance Audrey will see this entry so I'm sure it won't spoil the surprise. If however the die land in her favor then her seeing it will simply serve to highlight the gifts already on their way to her.

In other news, Gonnerman got published in First Things today and has been celebrated by Coppen and Dreher.

Went to Swann Circle today as part of a five mile walk. Was continuing through Blue Highways. Today it was the sections on Conyers, Georgia and Selma, Alabama. I was reading about Brother Patrick when this red and white dog came running up to me. Totally open. Totally not fearing me. This dog just came and jumped up to greet me. I looked all over for another human in the landscape. I began to wonder if I had inherited a lost dog. Finally an elegant older woman, tall and thin, emerged from the trees to my right. She rallied up the dogs (there were apparently two) and continued on her way. A hoverfly kept me company along with some ants busily at work on the bench next to me. The breeze was sweeping the leaves in waves from behind me under the bench and away from my feet. I could feel the pull of its sweeping. Suddenly I heard a knocking and traced it to a red-bellied woodpecker steadily at work on a tree in front of me. He made several sweeps to other trees before returning to make this his primary hub. He was still there when I got to the end of the chapter on Conyers and got up to leave.