THIRTY DAYS HATH...

June 30, 2016

Well.. June's kaput.. almost.  Noticing the days hurrying by..  blah blah blah.. 

Free form association can be like watching paint dry.  In fact, I reviewed a play years ago before Drama-Logue fired me that was a little like watching paint dry. I used that analogy in my review.  The up side was that it was fascinating. An actor moving down stage almost imperceptively... references to the Magritte painting of the man in the bowler hat with an apple in front of his face.. or was it his face.. Cannot remember the name of the piece. It was down at the Hudson on Melrose.  The Fire Marshall could have found a dozen infractions, including it being impossible to move once all the invitees had been crammed into place.  It was hot and tight and truly fascinating.

That brings me to 'art.'   Truly, there is no accounting for taste.  I have no idea how my 366 images of the other side of Adams Hill will be perceived, if I am actually successful in completing the project.. How it might be received.  I can see the changes in the trees. Of course, the sky is different daily partly because I have not been dedicated enough to take the photo at the same time each day..  The shadows change.. the day changes.. 

I visited a friend in Denver several years ago.  Her view from her living room window was Union Station and the easterly horizon.  Awake way too early, the sun was just coming up but had not crested the horizon.. that space to the east where the Great Plains stretch divided by Nebraska and Kansas.. all flat.  I propped myself by the window and did not take my eyes off of the horizon until the sun had ... eventually.. it took a long time.. come up and was shining like anything on the cold Colorado morning.  Why do that? Why watch a pot until it boils?  Maybe just to say that I've done that?  Who really has time to attend to a pot of water or the sunrise?  What is life really about? Part of it, to me, is paying attention to the simple things that most folks would never attend to.  

I reviewed a play at the Whitefire .. a one person play.  No dialogue.  Realistic set: single apartment. Lonely woman going through her after work routine. No pets.  Once you got it that it was in real time and was the chronicle of lonliness, it was fascinating, as was the Magritte thing, as was the Colorado sunrise... but totally without theatricality.  Totally focused and sad. 

One thought blends into another thought.. Bleeds?  In my dream last night I was at a house where I'd never lived, but the dream made me think that I might have and had just forgotten about it.  I think my mother was in another room and her mother in another.  The familiarity of the situation was, at once: comfortable and unsettling as some dreams are because they seem so real at the time.  

I am really tired of all the bashing of the Orange Man and the Lady.  The recent fusillade of insults hurled by the Scots at TOM, who may single handedly destroy the United States, (if he is not doing so already!) is not without some appreciation, but the energy expended to come up with stupid insults might be better spent on figuring out how to prevent a nuclear war.  We are most naturally defensive beings, I guess.  And, by allowing those negative vibes to permeate our daily lives, how can we not come away a little grimy?  I had a friend who has colorful language. Sometimes his epithets just stuck in my memory, as one emerges right now.. and it in no way makes today any better.  Trying to forget is a silly exercise.  Is forgetting effortless?

Oh well.   

To me, the only pathway to peace is to become peace.  Warmongers and paranoids will always prevail unless we find ways to breathe deeply into the present and behave in a peaceful way.  

Now..  uh oh.. The War of the Worlds directed by Byron Haskin with SFX by George Pal pop into my head. The minister with his Bible in tow approaches the Martians reciting the 23rd Psalm!  

Vaporized!  Gosh!  So much for my theory, eh? Remember 'sword drill' in Vacation Bible School? 

A question on Jeopardy! the other night spoke to that: the  King of Sweden Gustavus Adolphus' cousin Sigismund reportedly rode into battle without armor secure that his belief in God would protect him.   Did that work out?  Nope. 

A plea for peace in the face of insanity may be a fool's errand.   There's no reasoning with the unreasonable.. which brings me right back home.  When one makes every effort to be in good communication and others either ignore the effort or casts one off discourteously (thanks to Greensleeves), all one can do is stand still and send out good vibes... if we have the patience for that.  Sometimes, the effort may be what gets in the way? 

The Last Day of June  2016

michaelsheehan