The Mac is dead. Long live the Mac!

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The iMac had been acting a little wonky.

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So I ran out and bought a new 500g external drive and Leopard and ran back home and tried to install it but all I got was a dreadful "beep, beep, beep!"

They call it a "catastrophic hardware failure."

I call it "Go back to San Luis Obispo and spend another fifteen hundred dollars and get a fucking beautiful and amazing new iMac. 

Goddamn amazing.

*

But.

I now need new Photoshop or I can do no art. 

Ka-ching!

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Also, all my work is now trapped on a dead drive. My guy Rick Auricchio says we can pull it off the dead machine and it should be fine. The mother board is dead, but the drive should be okay.

Right?

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It is Mother's Day and I made the mad knitter some waffles for breakfast and then we drove out Vineyard to Chimney Rock Road and went to Justin Winery for lunch. Stinky cheeses and asparagus omelette and a forty dollar half bottle of the 2005 Isoceles.

A full bottle of it managed to make its way home with us.

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The picture above is from the side of the road.

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Also, my daughter is being really nice to me!

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Self in Trial

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Long dry spell, broken.

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Real life is wheeling and wheezing around me like a nightmare merry go round, caliope music grinding away, scary clowns leering from all of the painted ponys.

One of them took my popcorn.

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Thing about this job is that every time I think I'm pretty good at it, think I been around a while and can draw a pretty good bead on most folks, well, I tell you what. I get knocked right down on my butt. 

It's good for me. 

Humble pie.

*

I am in trial right now, been going on three weeks and we are maybe half way through. I can't go into detail, but it is a circus and not the main event but that sideshow tent where the two headed calf and the half-snake, half-woman and the rubber man hang out. 

Remember in those old westerns, the shoot-out on horses? One old boy will get shot and fall off, but hang up a boot in the stirrup and get dragged off down the street behind the spooked horse, big cloud of dust behind him?

How I feel.

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But in the midst of it all is a calm center, filled with love and light. I got wife and home and kid and dogs and money in the bank and food in the pantry and my arms and legs and sight and touch and what's left of my sense.

This too, this too.

*

You should see the damn backyard right now. 

It done bust out in flowers everywhere.

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Namaste, y'all.

*

Blindman

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If you have to go out into the desert and shoot shotguns for four or five days, do so. It will cleanse the soul and align the eye with the heart for the time when killing is at hand.

But I would not recommend going on the day of your wedding anniversary.

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I have recently returned from just such a trip. Men in desert tan and O.D. green and digicam and black with their various shotgun set ups standing on line and letting loose double ought buck and one ounce slugs and Federal Tactical Flight Control and Winchester Super X. 

Select slug drills from the 35 and the 50 yard line.

Close contact drills from the 3 yard line.

Head shots on hostage-taker targets in 1.5 seconds from the 7 yard line.

Malfunction clearance drills.

Etc.

*

Shooting and shooting and shooting and shooting. Faster and faster and more accurate and more accurate still. 

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A measure of contentment.

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I derive a certain satisfaction from knowing that I am a lethal being. There are more lethal beings on this planet (my little brother being a case in point), but I can hold my own against a hefty portion of them. It is in the hands and the eye and the back and legs, but it is also and more importantly in the dark heart.

It takes a killing heart to get done what needs doing in this world.

*

What I also love is moving from the world of skill at arms to the world of art. 

What is one without the other? 

Where is the glory of god to be found?

In the act of creation and the act of destruction.

*

Because you will be destroyed, you can destroy.

Because you have been created, you may create.

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What I know is that my wife is the dead center of my world. Yes I am a man and what comes with that. Yes I am a cop and what comes with that. Yes I am a son-of-a-bitch and what comes with that.

But I know what matters in this life.

And above all it is her.

It is her.

*

My little brother says to me on the last day of the desert shotgun class:

"My goddamn hands feel like I've been crushing gravel with them."

When I got home, I had to spend an hour cleaning all of the blood off my gun. From my own little bitch fingers. 

There is a lot of sharp edges on these guns.

*

I shoot the Benelli M1 Super 90. It is a semi-auto 12 gauge shotgun. I have put eight rounds of 00 buck downrange in less than four seconds. It is like having a portable shitstorm in your hands.

Seriously, you don't stand a chance.

*

I shot a "Distinguished Graduate" on this course. Two of the guys I was with shot the whole thing "clean". Perfect. Not a round dropped. Not a flaw. 

I missed that by one round.

*

There are some serious operators out there.

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I know that I buy into a certain kind of bullshit about what it means to be a man. What it means to hold your mud and to carry your weight and to do what needs doing.

I know that.

*

But still.

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Monochrome Sea No. 1

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34x 34 inches

Housepaint, paper, charcoal, fiber, wax on canvas.

*

"You have one day."

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They always issue an ultimatum. 

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Yesterday I made the tower of babel in ceramics class. I will show it to you when it is finished. It is so coool. 

My wife makes stuff like it just pops out from between her fingertips. 

'pop!'       a bowl

'pop!'      another bowl.

'pop!'      a crazy plate.

'pop!'     the cathedral at Notre Dame.

*

She are an artist.

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When you are sixteen you are supposed to come home late and all fucked up and high and then say

 "What? What? What?" 

"I am not high! 

I am not fucked up. 

I'm going to bed!"

*

Right?

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I dunno. Some reason today, I'm having a great time.

*

Namaste.

**

Intersections

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this is a painting that no longer exists.

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I got up and went to work and came back home sick after only two hours. I have some kind of cough. 

It brings me to my knees.

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My wife is obsessive compulsive, like me. But different. She does art. Art. Art. Art. Art. Art. Art. Art. Is it art yet? Let's do it some more and see if it is. 

She takes something and makes it art. And then she puts some art on it again. And then once more. Or twice maybe. 

Over and over and over.

*

She is knitting socks of late. Intricate and mysterious and warm and colorful and vibrant and, yes, odd.

*

I am instant gratification man when it comes to art. Or almost anything. Give it to me now. 

There. It's art. 

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Next!  

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I watched Tom Hanks in Castaway again last week. There is this moment, right before the plane he is on smashes into the middle of the vast Pacific ocean, where Mr. Hanks is in the airplane lavatory, trying to splash some water on his face in the tiny stainless steel sink. He pats the water off his face and then holds up his thumb, which sports a band-aid.

Slowly, grimacing, he peels it off and stares at the injured thumb.

In the blink of an eye he will be smashed up into the overhead, then flung around in the belly of the plane, then smashed into the sea, nearly drowned, nearly eaten by the screaming turbine of the wing-mounted engine, and then cast adrift in a tiny, leaking life raft in mountainous seas in the middle of a storm in the middle of the night in the middle of nothing.

After that, he doesn't think about his thumb any more.

*

It's all about perspective.

*

If my life lacks sufficient stark terror, I tend to obsess over my little injured thumb.

"Ooooh. It hurts."

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Anxity.

*

There is a method for disassembly. There is one for assembly. There are myriad others in between. 

I am a stranger to them.

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The most beautiful thing in the world is the world itself.

*

What more does one need?

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There is the thrill of glimpsing the vast timescales of the geological processes. The vast numbers of years and ages and creatures. Not to mention the galaxies. The worlds and numberless stars and numberless experiments made in no one's name at all.

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We are all grist for the mill.

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make no mistake about that.

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yet we are given the beauty of a sunset. of the sea. of our own flesh. of kisses and numberless kisses of our beloved.

riches rain upon us like disasters.

*

we are all of us undone.

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Palimpsest

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Dusted the bedroom. Wiped down all wood surfaces with Method Good For Wood. Touched up all scratches with Old English Scratch Cover for Dark Woods. Vacuumed with new Bosch canister vacuum. Mopped with microfiber mop head and Minwax Hardwood floor cleaner.

Vacuumed and mopped the Darjeeling Limited Hallway.

Painted one wall of the living room in Ralph Lauren Oatmeal. Dusted, wiped down all wood surfaces, touched up with scratch cover. Vacuumed the sofa and sofa cushions and cleaned leather sofa, ottoman, and chair with saddle soap. Vacuumed and damp mopped. Re-did the mantle display.

Vacuumed the office and dusted it. Wiped down the steel table top with Good for Wood. Damp mopped with Minwax Hardwood floor cleaner.

Bleached the countertops in the kitchen. Took the O'Keefe and Merrit stove apart and cleaned the outside from top to bottom. Scrubbed the stainless steel sink with Barkeep's Friend and vacuumed under and behind the stove and wiped the floor down by hand and then damp mopped. Took the caps off all the spices and washed the grime off and put them back.

Clorox bleach plus on the bathroom sink and toilet and shower and vacuumed and wiped down by hand and damp mopped.

Washed the dog and dried her.

Ate quesadillas prepared by my wonderful wife.

Watched part of The Magnificent Seven.

Dusted the bookshelves in the living room again and wiped down the steel table top.

Looked under the sofa for dust bunnies but there were none.

Had a short glass of frozen vodka and lime/ginger juice.

*

Last night I made a new painting and today I put it up in the bedroom.

It is a palimpsest. It is black and oatmeal colored. It is mysterious and torn and half-scrubbed away.

*

Our fireplace mantel has now a small collection of pinch-pots from our first week in ceramics class.

It is sweet.

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I am deeply, deeply disturbed.

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But everything is in its place.

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Soon, very soon now, I will have everything under control.

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What are you lookin' at?

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