Painter's Progress

Tonight was another poetry night, with my wing gal/fellow traveler/poetic comrade...Shelley was the poet this time. Poems inspired by PBS will follow. Again, the highlight of the night was the simultaneous creativity...poetry and painting...she writing, me painting. One poem, inspired by Shelley...another, with each line having 7 syllables. My friend is more mathematical in her poetry than me...I am all over the place...although I did try a rhyme structure 4(ab)cc.

I now have five canvases going at once. I am in a bit of a block with The Philogynist, perhaps afraid to capture the woman with her red hair in the bed. I have a 30" x 40" canvas with an orange base,an 11" x 14" with a blood red base, an 11" x 14" with a blue base...but it is likely to be a self portrait (I wonder how good-looking and godlike I will appear in the a painting!)...and lastly, a painting of the half-drunk bourbon for my fellow traveler.

A little wine...a little bourbon (Knob Creek)...a cheese and fruit plate.

Again, a wonderful early evening.

Off to Justins.

Reflections on a 1970s Film

This morning, I woke up at 3:00, to find one of my favorite representative films of the 1970's on Turner Classic Movies: Shampoo, directed by Hal Ashby, with Warren Beatty, Jack Warden, Julie Christie, Lee Grant, Carrie Fisher and Goldie Hawn. What a great movie. Takes place on election day 1968, as Beatty - a hairdresser and philanderer - prepares a number of gals for a party that evening. Two of them happen to be involved with the guy he's trying to get to support his business, played by Jack Warden: one is a mistress, the other a wife. So, somehow in the course of a day, Beatty beds down with his future business partner's wife, mistress and daughter (played by a very young, pre-Star Wars Carrie Fisher), gets in trouble with his girlfriend, wants the mistress but loses everything...except maybe the business, in the end.

But the key to the whole movie, to me, is this great monologue where he tells Goldie Hawn how he got involved in the business, of being a hair stylist, for no other reason than the women.

It is a very dated film in a way...pre-AIDS, pre-safe sex, drug parties and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts club band playing in the background at said party. And for a film of the times, it does cast a wonderfully dark message about the non-commital life that Beatty's character lives. He screws his way through the whole film, but inthe end, he has nothing...or he doesn't have what he wants, which I guess was Julie Christie.

I guess for me it's kind of timely to see that film. A bit of a warning as far as my own new bachelorhood: be careful for what I wish, I just might get it. But the reality is, I have never been one who is in it just for the sex. There has to be conversation before at after. There needs to be, in any and all relationships, intimate and otherwise, a life of the mind. And how you treat people, as I learn for the better and the worse, has repurcussions.

I've had a pretty mellow bachelorhood, thus far. I do seek more fun and thrills, but not without the added dimensions, not without the accountability - on my part and the part of others. Friends with benefits are fine and probably would work with an Aquarian and an ethical slut like me, but the key word is "friends."

So endeth the sermon!

Sadness

Perhaps my father is right. Perhaps this is a bit of a sad blog. A pathetic attempt by a man to rediscover himself, reconnect with the world after cloistering himself in some two dimensional idea of marriage, ultimately cloistering himself from his own family, from his wife, his friends, and himself.

A few have noted that this blog goes from one extreme to another...from enthusiasm for life to depths of sadness, perhaps even anger.

The activities discussed do occur and are enjoyable; the issues are not forced...they are genuine events and issues which I am engaging to keep moving.

But sometimes I stop, sometimes I pause, and sometimes I think. In this blog, you will get both the excitement of writing a poem and getting good feedback on it; and you will also get quotes from Styron on loss and abandonment, along with linkages to my own situation.

I don't know how else to function.

There is an undercurrent of sadness which runs under everything I do, think, say, feel...it is there, and I cannot shake it. It has been with me for as long as I recall...at least back to my high school years...that's over 20 years.

I can stay active and stay moving and stay positive, and will try to keep the depression to myself...fake it to make it, I guess, but my countenance cannot always be glowy and shiny.

That's just the way it is.

McCain for the GOP, Obama for the Democrats!

This blog has not really delved too much into politics, because lately I have not been satisfied with the direction the nomination process has been going. Too much handicapping based on fundraising and national polls, too much interest in what the media talking heads think, and we are going to end up having to choose again between the cleanest of our dirtiest shirts.

If the media are to be believed, the front runners for their parties nomination would be Rudy Giuliani, the supposed hero of 9/11, and Hillary Clinton, whose husband's infidelities earned her a seat on the U.S. Senate. I find neither of these candidates acceptable to a country that needs to be unified and requires a leader who can rise above the politics of the moment to lead us out of the 9/11 mindset and into a progressive 9/12 mindset. We need a leader who half the country won't hate and the other half won't just defend out of blind loyalty to the party. Clinton v. Giuliani would simply be more of the same...a clash of the baby boomers...a divided country. As I once heard them described..."Nixon in a pant suit" and "a small man looking for a balcony."

So, I am going to pray and advocate to my Republican and Democratic friends that they vote and support the following candidates for their parties nomination: John McCain for the GOP, and Barack Obama for the Democratic Party.

A McCain-Obama face off would guarantee a few things: 1) we would not have a baby-boomer in the White House; 2) we would have a president who has proven he can work across party lines to get results and would have a better chance at unifying the country; and 3) we would have a president who would be able to restore this country's credibility in the world by undoing the current U.S. policies (secretly made and implemented) on the use of torture in the gathering of intelligence. And although McCain supported the war (with many caveats) and Obama opposed the war (but is not afraid to both engage our enemies or take the fight to them), the debate about the war would be vibrant and honest and would give Americans a real choice.

So, in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and the states that follow, let us pray the country gets what it deserves and has a contest between McCain and Obama, and no matter who wins, this country won't lose.

Norman Mailer: 1923 - 2007

I sadly learned this morning that writer, activist, provocateur, poet, director and journalist Norman Mailer died today at the age of 84.

I have read a number of his works, including "An American Dream," "Death to the Ladies and Other Poems," "Tough Guys Don't Dance," "The Deer Park," and one of my favorites, "Harlot's Ghost." And I mostly enjoyed his work.

So, I hope wherever he is, there is bourbon and boxing 24/7 and plenty of bars and dead writers with whom to pick his fights.

New Poem

Yesterday, I wrote a new poem for a new friend, who has been quite encouraging of the painting and writing. The poem is called "Blue Bar."

E-mailed it to this friend yesterday and woke up at 3 a.m. to find a wonderful response.

In December, I will be in NYC, and we will meet for a drink and talk writing and painting and southern kinky-gothic romance at...where else...the Blue Bar.

Receiving her e-mail in the early hours of the morning made my day. I can coast on the fumes of her message all day long.

Existential Funk?

It is Saturday a.m., around 11:20, but I still have not gotten out of bed. Just hanging out at my old home...my wife and daughter's home....upstairs, watching Spongebob Squarepants with my little girl, IM'ing with a new friend, thinking about the post I deleted.

Probably suffering a minor existential funk, one that will be relieved only with activity, reading, new poetry, painting tonight perhaps. I should probably get out of bed.

Why a existential funk? I thought I was doing well, combatting the depression, reaching out to new people, trying to make peace in my own heart with those whom I might have alienated (not intentionally, but alienated nonetheless). Coming to terms with my limitations, trying to be aware of my talents and strengths and build on them.

And sometimes I get in an e-mail conversation that puts me in this funk...and gets me thinking that I have not progressed as far as I thought. Am I deluding myself? Is the fellow conversant and I so far apart that we can't communicate anymore? I don't know. I value outside perspectives, because they can offer a view that someone who is too emotionally close can't objectively provide.

I've made my mistakes in friendships and relationships, and I have certainly contributed to the failure of my marriage...both in terms of my rigidity and in terms of not taking care of myself to the extent that I could not tend to the relationship.

I don't know. And therein lies the existential funk. I don't know.