Sitting here listening to the furnace. Had the house remodeled and the electric furnace is LOUD...not rattling, but just loud. I miss the old gas gravity furnace. It was old as dirt but you know, it heated this house up FAST. This new one, takes a bit longer.
Thursday night. Always a kind of weird night. Sort of the pre-weekend night. Not much going on. Feel like I should paint but don't feel like painting. Just read about an artist in San Francisco that converted her whole flat into a piece of art.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Sitting here listening to the furnace. Had the house remodeled and the electric furnace is LOUD...not rattling, but just loud. I miss the old gas grav
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Larry Herring woke up at 4 a.m. like he did most mornings…to the analog buzzing sound of an old wind up alarm clock that he had found at a second ha
Larry Herring woke up at 4 a.m. like he did most mornings…to the analog
buzzing sound of an old wind up alarm clock that he had found at a second
hand store. It was just another day, a typical day, in his existence.
Dragging himself out of bed, Larry slowly walked for about 45 minutes on the
rickety manual treadmill in his cramped apartment. It made a lot of funny
noises. That didn’t bother Larry. He got the treadmill at the same thrift
store for under $50.00, which included delivery. So, a few weird noises were
not a problem.
He retrieved his clothes from the dryer like he did every morning. A few
passes with the iron and he would be ready to go.
A few year s back, the tenant down the hall had moved out suddenly, leaving
a small washer and dryer. The landlord was going to throw it out. He didn’t
want the hassle of new tenants tearing them up and expecting him to fix
them. So, he gave them to Larry. Since then, Larry had worn the same thing
to work every day and just washed it every evening.
For Larry, his daily uniform was a pair of black Levi jeans, a light blue
button down Oxford and an old dark brown plaid jacket that he had found at
the same thrift store where he had found the alarm clock and the treadmill.
This thrift store had been good to him. It didn’t smell like most thrift
stores and the clerks were very helpful. The jacket was nearly new and some
famous brand with a name that Larry could barely pronounce. It fit him
perfectly and sort of had that droopy and understated Ivy League look that
Larry liked.
After a lukewarm shower and shave, Larry got on the bus and made his way to
the coffee shop at the corner of Grand and Reynolds and sat down for his
daily cup of coffee. This was his daily routine. He would get a transfer,
stop at the coffee shop, and then catch the next bus to work.
Larry liked this coffee shop. It was always open, regardless of the time or
weather. It was also quite old, built when Kansas City was in its jazz and
mobster heyday. The furnishings and trim were worn and battered but still
held the charm, simple curved lines, and elegance of 1920’s art deco. The
windows were huge and continuous plate glass constructions that looked out
onto Grand street, creating a kind of urban panorama. The old radiator gave
off some serious heat when necessary and the window units kept the place
cool in the summer. There were rumors that some of the nicks in the granite
and copper façade were from a gangland shootout back in the Pendergast era.
In the early morning the place was sort of luminescent with light flooding
down from the yellowed glass fixtures. Larry figured the yellowing was not
due to the aging of the glass but rather accumulated dust and pollution. It
was not bad thing. It kind of filtered the light so that it was a soft off
white rather than a blasting straight light. It was illuminating but easy on
bleary eyes. When reading the paper at night, it kind of made the words
leap off the page. The easy light was a good thing, especially this early
in the morning.
Sitting there in the morning coolness on one of the tattered red leather and
chrome stools facing out, Larry looked through the large glass windows onto
the streets outside. Through crystal clear glass, Larry looked upon a city
that was once again just starting to come to life. Behind darkened
skyscrapers, Larry could see the peeking sky that was still pretty much all
black but in the far horizon a slight glimmer of purplish dark blue was
breaking forth. A few glinting stars trickled above it. They were the final
remnants of a starry night.
This morning was a brisk morning and steam was wafting and curling from
drains and manhole covers. The streets and cars were covered with a
glistening sheen from the overnight precipitation.
There was as smell of moisture in the air. It was cool and clean but tinged
with hints of smog.
A few fatigued bus riders shuffled down the street to the bus stop. Down by
the corner, a homeless woman curled up against a mailbox, covering herself
with a natty, filthy blanket. Her matted dirty blond hair peeked out from
the top of the blanket. Across the street, a pack of stray mongrel pups
pulled, tugged, and fought over a box of half eaten chicken left in front of
a storefront. They bounced about, only stopping in curiosity when a bus
steamed by. A lithe bicyclist raced by, leaning forward with determination.
The hair flowing from underneath the shiny silver helmet seemed to indicate
it was a woman, but the nearly flat chest seemed to indicate otherwise.
All in all, it was a typical city morning. This was the kind of morning that
Larry liked. This morning WAS Larry.
Larry was a high school teacher. He was as history teacher to be exact. His
specialty was American History. In a way, his precise specialty was
pre-Civil War American History. Of course, he had to teach American History
as whole but this area seemed to get his attention the most.
Every day Larry went into the same classroom that he had taught in since he
began teaching. Well, actually, since he was officially a teacher Larry had
used the same room. As a student teacher, Larry had done his student
teaching in Room 223 at Reynolds High School. His supervising teacher,
Russell Jones, got sick and decided to retire at the end of that year and,
since Larry was acclimated, he was offered the position.
Since then, for the past 14 years, he had taught history in this same room.
Mr. Jones had used the room for 38 years and left it in great condition and
well organized. It wasn’t broke, so Larry decided not to fix it.
Larry wasn’t a superstar teacher. He wasn’t the kind of guy to get an award
or have a movie made about him. In fact, he was kind of a nobody on the
staff. If he disappeared, no one would really notice. Students, for the most
part, respected him but he wasn’t going to win any popularity contests.
Unless students had him as a teacher or saw the ID badge around his neck,
they just didn’t know who he was. Larry was just sort of a flat, phlegmatic
type of person, giving dry lectures, study notes, exams and grading the
occasional research paper.
In some ways, Larry was in a world of his own. He really didn’t care if
students slept in his class or did not pay attention...as long as they did
not disrupt him. He used files of lectures, 211 of them to be exact, each
typed word for word, that he read verbatim, laying the appropriate
transparencies on the overhead projector as he went along. They were all
neatly organized into their own folders, ready to be pulled out at moment’s
notice. Larry used them year after year, semester after semester, student
after student. It covered the material the State of Missouri required him to
cover and so it worked for him.
It was the same with tests. Larry had been using the same tests since he
began, but since he only showed students their grade afterwards and did not
let them take the tests home…he was not concerned that his test s were being
passed around.
And, so this was the way it was, day in and day out. Up at 5, off to work at
6:30, stopping for the cup of coffee on most days, back home at 3, throwing
the clothes in the washer with a dash of soap, pulling on some sweats or
shorts, maybe having a cold beer, and then finishing off the day with some
television.
This was his life.
Larry had wanted to be a writer when he was younger. He dreamt of writing
suspense novels and living in a modernized log cabin house high up in some
wooded area, with a morning view of a foggy lake. He imagined himself
sitting there in his pajamas or maybe even nude, with the steaming cup of
freshly ground at his side, computer aglow…plucking out his next work.
Sitting at the coffee shop reminded Larry of this dream, minus everything
but the coffee.
Larry was a gifted writer, even though he had not written in ages. He kind
of knew it. Nobody else did.
It had been his dream.
However, Larry got scared in college at the prospect of a useless degree. He
didn’t want to end up with a Summa Cum Laude degree in English hanging on
his wall while he changed tires or flipped burgers. He didn’t have the
patience or resources to go all the way to a terminal degree. So, midway
through his junior year, he changed his major from creative writing to
history education and became a teacher. He would have chosen English
education but it reminded him too much of his broken dream and personal
cowardice. So, he chose history education.
This is not to say that Larry was a bad teacher. He met all the curriculum
requirements and the students that remained attentive in his class actually
learned something. He just lacked passion and fire. His classroom was an
assembly line and he was the guy riveting the bolts into the undercarriage.
Either the bolt attached or it didn’t. If you gave Larry your attention, you
learned. But, if you didn’t give him your attention, he was not going to ask
you for it. He just let you fail.
Larry kind of knew that he was not a very inspiring educator, but it didn’t
bother him. He kind of liked flying below the radar. In his years of
teaching, Larry had seen some superstar teachers come along and quickly
become the talk of both the faculty and the student body. They usually had
new and exuberant ways of motivating and inspiring students. Then, something
would happen. Usually their nonconventional and adventurous instructional
methods would lead into some dangerous territory and questionable teaching
stunt and the teacher would be in hot water, maybe even fired. Larry didn’t
want that. He just wanted to clock in, do his job, clock out, and go home.
That was the way he liked it.
So now, it was a Tuesday morning and Larry was looking down, talking in a
monotone, and reading his lecture on how invention of the cotton gin
affected Southern commerce in the years leading up to the civil war. The
classroom was so quiet you could hear a mouse piss on cotton. Maybe 45% of
the students were actually paying attention. Some were sleeping with their
chins in their palms, some where just sitting there dazing into space, and a
few were even leaned back knocked out with their mouths wide open. This was
normal for Larry’s room.
Slowly, Larry put a new transparency on the overhead as he introduced each
new point. He never looked up.
When Larry first started teaching, he used to make students take notes but
they wrote way too slow and illegible for his tastes. Besides, Larry felt it
was just sort of stupid to spend 45 minutes making students copy stuff from
an overhead slide so he spend all afternoon looking at it to make sure they
copied it. That had nothing to do with the assimilation of knowledge, as far
as Larry was concerned. So, Larry simply posted all the notes on a website,
organized by lecture number, and started telling students to go online and
review the notes for that lecture. As far as he was concerned, they could
cut, paste, copy, and print to their heart’s desire. It meant one less
hassle for Larry since students didn’t need writing utensils in his class
(except on test and quiz days) and he didn’t have to sift through a plethora
of spiral notebooks grading notes to see who was copying them correctly. He
could also cover more material in a single day, as if the students really
cared.
Larry pulled the last slide off the projector and flipped the off switch. He
went to his desk, sat down, and sipped the last of his morning coffee. It
was lukewarm and he could taste a bit of a coffee grind as it went down.
That didn’t bother Larry. Hardly anything did.
This was his life.
buzzing sound of an old wind up alarm clock that he had found at a second
hand store. It was just another day, a typical day, in his existence.
Dragging himself out of bed, Larry slowly walked for about 45 minutes on the
rickety manual treadmill in his cramped apartment. It made a lot of funny
noises. That didn’t bother Larry. He got the treadmill at the same thrift
store for under $50.00, which included delivery. So, a few weird noises were
not a problem.
He retrieved his clothes from the dryer like he did every morning. A few
passes with the iron and he would be ready to go.
A few year s back, the tenant down the hall had moved out suddenly, leaving
a small washer and dryer. The landlord was going to throw it out. He didn’t
want the hassle of new tenants tearing them up and expecting him to fix
them. So, he gave them to Larry. Since then, Larry had worn the same thing
to work every day and just washed it every evening.
For Larry, his daily uniform was a pair of black Levi jeans, a light blue
button down Oxford and an old dark brown plaid jacket that he had found at
the same thrift store where he had found the alarm clock and the treadmill.
This thrift store had been good to him. It didn’t smell like most thrift
stores and the clerks were very helpful. The jacket was nearly new and some
famous brand with a name that Larry could barely pronounce. It fit him
perfectly and sort of had that droopy and understated Ivy League look that
Larry liked.
After a lukewarm shower and shave, Larry got on the bus and made his way to
the coffee shop at the corner of Grand and Reynolds and sat down for his
daily cup of coffee. This was his daily routine. He would get a transfer,
stop at the coffee shop, and then catch the next bus to work.
Larry liked this coffee shop. It was always open, regardless of the time or
weather. It was also quite old, built when Kansas City was in its jazz and
mobster heyday. The furnishings and trim were worn and battered but still
held the charm, simple curved lines, and elegance of 1920’s art deco. The
windows were huge and continuous plate glass constructions that looked out
onto Grand street, creating a kind of urban panorama. The old radiator gave
off some serious heat when necessary and the window units kept the place
cool in the summer. There were rumors that some of the nicks in the granite
and copper façade were from a gangland shootout back in the Pendergast era.
In the early morning the place was sort of luminescent with light flooding
down from the yellowed glass fixtures. Larry figured the yellowing was not
due to the aging of the glass but rather accumulated dust and pollution. It
was not bad thing. It kind of filtered the light so that it was a soft off
white rather than a blasting straight light. It was illuminating but easy on
bleary eyes. When reading the paper at night, it kind of made the words
leap off the page. The easy light was a good thing, especially this early
in the morning.
Sitting there in the morning coolness on one of the tattered red leather and
chrome stools facing out, Larry looked through the large glass windows onto
the streets outside. Through crystal clear glass, Larry looked upon a city
that was once again just starting to come to life. Behind darkened
skyscrapers, Larry could see the peeking sky that was still pretty much all
black but in the far horizon a slight glimmer of purplish dark blue was
breaking forth. A few glinting stars trickled above it. They were the final
remnants of a starry night.
This morning was a brisk morning and steam was wafting and curling from
drains and manhole covers. The streets and cars were covered with a
glistening sheen from the overnight precipitation.
There was as smell of moisture in the air. It was cool and clean but tinged
with hints of smog.
A few fatigued bus riders shuffled down the street to the bus stop. Down by
the corner, a homeless woman curled up against a mailbox, covering herself
with a natty, filthy blanket. Her matted dirty blond hair peeked out from
the top of the blanket. Across the street, a pack of stray mongrel pups
pulled, tugged, and fought over a box of half eaten chicken left in front of
a storefront. They bounced about, only stopping in curiosity when a bus
steamed by. A lithe bicyclist raced by, leaning forward with determination.
The hair flowing from underneath the shiny silver helmet seemed to indicate
it was a woman, but the nearly flat chest seemed to indicate otherwise.
All in all, it was a typical city morning. This was the kind of morning that
Larry liked. This morning WAS Larry.
Larry was a high school teacher. He was as history teacher to be exact. His
specialty was American History. In a way, his precise specialty was
pre-Civil War American History. Of course, he had to teach American History
as whole but this area seemed to get his attention the most.
Every day Larry went into the same classroom that he had taught in since he
began teaching. Well, actually, since he was officially a teacher Larry had
used the same room. As a student teacher, Larry had done his student
teaching in Room 223 at Reynolds High School. His supervising teacher,
Russell Jones, got sick and decided to retire at the end of that year and,
since Larry was acclimated, he was offered the position.
Since then, for the past 14 years, he had taught history in this same room.
Mr. Jones had used the room for 38 years and left it in great condition and
well organized. It wasn’t broke, so Larry decided not to fix it.
Larry wasn’t a superstar teacher. He wasn’t the kind of guy to get an award
or have a movie made about him. In fact, he was kind of a nobody on the
staff. If he disappeared, no one would really notice. Students, for the most
part, respected him but he wasn’t going to win any popularity contests.
Unless students had him as a teacher or saw the ID badge around his neck,
they just didn’t know who he was. Larry was just sort of a flat, phlegmatic
type of person, giving dry lectures, study notes, exams and grading the
occasional research paper.
In some ways, Larry was in a world of his own. He really didn’t care if
students slept in his class or did not pay attention...as long as they did
not disrupt him. He used files of lectures, 211 of them to be exact, each
typed word for word, that he read verbatim, laying the appropriate
transparencies on the overhead projector as he went along. They were all
neatly organized into their own folders, ready to be pulled out at moment’s
notice. Larry used them year after year, semester after semester, student
after student. It covered the material the State of Missouri required him to
cover and so it worked for him.
It was the same with tests. Larry had been using the same tests since he
began, but since he only showed students their grade afterwards and did not
let them take the tests home…he was not concerned that his test s were being
passed around.
And, so this was the way it was, day in and day out. Up at 5, off to work at
6:30, stopping for the cup of coffee on most days, back home at 3, throwing
the clothes in the washer with a dash of soap, pulling on some sweats or
shorts, maybe having a cold beer, and then finishing off the day with some
television.
This was his life.
Larry had wanted to be a writer when he was younger. He dreamt of writing
suspense novels and living in a modernized log cabin house high up in some
wooded area, with a morning view of a foggy lake. He imagined himself
sitting there in his pajamas or maybe even nude, with the steaming cup of
freshly ground at his side, computer aglow…plucking out his next work.
Sitting at the coffee shop reminded Larry of this dream, minus everything
but the coffee.
Larry was a gifted writer, even though he had not written in ages. He kind
of knew it. Nobody else did.
It had been his dream.
However, Larry got scared in college at the prospect of a useless degree. He
didn’t want to end up with a Summa Cum Laude degree in English hanging on
his wall while he changed tires or flipped burgers. He didn’t have the
patience or resources to go all the way to a terminal degree. So, midway
through his junior year, he changed his major from creative writing to
history education and became a teacher. He would have chosen English
education but it reminded him too much of his broken dream and personal
cowardice. So, he chose history education.
This is not to say that Larry was a bad teacher. He met all the curriculum
requirements and the students that remained attentive in his class actually
learned something. He just lacked passion and fire. His classroom was an
assembly line and he was the guy riveting the bolts into the undercarriage.
Either the bolt attached or it didn’t. If you gave Larry your attention, you
learned. But, if you didn’t give him your attention, he was not going to ask
you for it. He just let you fail.
Larry kind of knew that he was not a very inspiring educator, but it didn’t
bother him. He kind of liked flying below the radar. In his years of
teaching, Larry had seen some superstar teachers come along and quickly
become the talk of both the faculty and the student body. They usually had
new and exuberant ways of motivating and inspiring students. Then, something
would happen. Usually their nonconventional and adventurous instructional
methods would lead into some dangerous territory and questionable teaching
stunt and the teacher would be in hot water, maybe even fired. Larry didn’t
want that. He just wanted to clock in, do his job, clock out, and go home.
That was the way he liked it.
So now, it was a Tuesday morning and Larry was looking down, talking in a
monotone, and reading his lecture on how invention of the cotton gin
affected Southern commerce in the years leading up to the civil war. The
classroom was so quiet you could hear a mouse piss on cotton. Maybe 45% of
the students were actually paying attention. Some were sleeping with their
chins in their palms, some where just sitting there dazing into space, and a
few were even leaned back knocked out with their mouths wide open. This was
normal for Larry’s room.
Slowly, Larry put a new transparency on the overhead as he introduced each
new point. He never looked up.
When Larry first started teaching, he used to make students take notes but
they wrote way too slow and illegible for his tastes. Besides, Larry felt it
was just sort of stupid to spend 45 minutes making students copy stuff from
an overhead slide so he spend all afternoon looking at it to make sure they
copied it. That had nothing to do with the assimilation of knowledge, as far
as Larry was concerned. So, Larry simply posted all the notes on a website,
organized by lecture number, and started telling students to go online and
review the notes for that lecture. As far as he was concerned, they could
cut, paste, copy, and print to their heart’s desire. It meant one less
hassle for Larry since students didn’t need writing utensils in his class
(except on test and quiz days) and he didn’t have to sift through a plethora
of spiral notebooks grading notes to see who was copying them correctly. He
could also cover more material in a single day, as if the students really
cared.
Larry pulled the last slide off the projector and flipped the off switch. He
went to his desk, sat down, and sipped the last of his morning coffee. It
was lukewarm and he could taste a bit of a coffee grind as it went down.
That didn’t bother Larry. Hardly anything did.
This was his life.
Welcome to 46
Turned 46 this morning. Looks the big 5-0 is just around the corner. Oh well.
It's 4:30 and I'm all ready to go the gym. Heat the car up a bit and I'm out. Another day. Been learning to ice skate and so I think I'll go when I leave work this afternoon. Well, I'll get a salad at the Sunfresh first. I stop there just about everyday and get a bit to eat.
Plus I have to mail a painting.
As usual, new stuff on www.haroldsmithart.com
It's 4:30 and I'm all ready to go the gym. Heat the car up a bit and I'm out. Another day. Been learning to ice skate and so I think I'll go when I leave work this afternoon. Well, I'll get a salad at the Sunfresh first. I stop there just about everyday and get a bit to eat.
Plus I have to mail a painting.
As usual, new stuff on www.haroldsmithart.com
Monday, December 1, 2008
Blah
First day to work after Thanksgiving. Even had a hard time getting up to target heart rate at the gym about 5 a.m. this morning. I guess the good news is that I look about 20lbs away from the 6 pack. Then again, I never really had one..just a faint impression. But, hey, it's better than bulge.
Monday, November 24, 2008
The other day, I thought about how much I would love to live in Seattle.
The other day, I thought about how much I would love to live in Seattle.
The funny thing is that I’ve never been there.
Then again, I have been to San Francisco but I think Seattle may be something like it.
The weird thing is that whenever I think of San Francisco, I think of that Alfred Hitchcock movie called “Vertigo”. I really liked Jimmy Stewart in that movie. In fact, I think I’ll watch it tonight.
When I think of Seattle, sometimes I think of living in a large artist’s loft with a view of the city. I think of having a bed that maybe simply consists of a mattress and box spring resting on cinder blocks atop an old wooden floor. Maybe it could rest on a foundation of red bricks instead. That would be cool.
I guess the loft would have to have been a converted warehouse or factory or old office building to have the kind of floor I am thinking about. Dark, full of nicks and dents, polished to a brilliance, and slick enough to walk on barefoot.
I think of waking up as the sunlight streams in and looking across the loft to some huge unfinished paintings leaning against the wall. The paintings would be so huge that they would have to be moved up and down using a freight elevator. So, I guess, the loft would have to be a former warehouse.
As far as the paintings go, I think of some of those avant-garde paintings that everyone seems to go crazy over. Maybe they could just be a few strokes of color over white and have the whole minimalist thing going on. In any event, they would be huge and dominate that whole side of the loft. They would be so big, they wouldn’t even rest on easels. They would lean against the wall.
People with lots of money could come over and tell me how incredible those two or three strokes of paint are. Then, they could open their wallets and give me lots of money and have their assistants load them onto the freight elevator and take them away.
I would like the loft to have lots of steel. Steel shelves and tables and appliances. I would like it to have lots of red brick too. I think red brick walls and countertops would be too cool. In fact, the more I think about it, sanded and treated red brick would be cooler than marble or granite. It would have to be sanded and treated so that it would be slick and not all rough. I can imagine it in the kitchen and bathroom.
I would love to hang out at the coffeehouses at night in Seattle. I doubt the coffee would taste any better in Seattle than it would anyplace else, but it might. I just think that in the Seattle coffeehouses I would see all kinds of funky and art and all hear all kinds of intellectual discussions.
To be honest, I think you could probably find any kind of intellectual you want in Seattle. Intellectuals, pseudo-intellectuals, neo-intellectuals, abstract-intellectuals, and any other type would be present in Seattle. Well, at least I think they would be present in Seattle. I guess they would talk about the same stuff that other intellectuals talk about, the state of the world and so on. They would talk on their complicated topics while they sipped on their coffee and looked at the funky art on the wall.
I would love to go to the fish market and get some fresh fish from the Puget Sound. The thought of it just makes my mouth water. I think the fish would be incredibly fresh and good tasting. Where I live, we get a lot of fish from the Missouri River. It’s not exactly the kind of waters where you find prime seafood. The thought is kind of disgusting when you think about it. These fish feed on human waste and then people fry and eat them. That’s appalling. However, I judging by the lines at all the local fish fry joints, I don’t think people see it in these terms.
Let’s talk about Seattle instead.
The more I think about it, I would probably like to see some fish that is still flopping and thrashing about when they put them in those giant sloping steel bins. Now, that would be fresh fish. The butcher could lop the head off with a big meat cleaver and scale it right there and I could take it home and broil it that very day and eat it with some rice and maybe a glass of wine. Maybe I could lose a few pounds that way.
That would be nice. As the sun sets, I could watch the downtown cityscape become a sea of tiny lighted offices against a background of darkened office buildings. I could eat my freshly broiled fish on a bed of rice and listen to some jazz.
In those moments, living in Seattle would be downright heavenly.
Sometimes, I am not sure I would necessarily live in the city. I wouldn’t mind having a renovated Victorian on a hill in a neighborhood that kind of looks down on the city. I would like the streets to be wide, the houses to be stately and have those wraparound porches, and the way lined with lots of large leafy trees. In the autumn, the trees could produce this giant crescendo of yellow, orange, red, and golden leaves that would blanket the street and sidewalks. When it rained, they would have that sweet smell. In the spring, these same trees could fill the neighborhood with lively squirrels and singing birds. In the summer, people could bicycle by in the shade. And, in the summer night, people could sit on their wraparound porches and watch the fireflies rise from the grass while the small children try to catch them in mason jars.
The other day I told my son “Let’s move to Seattle.” He was agreeable to it. Then again, he’s 10. So, anything that involves a train, plane, or automobile is fine with him.
Of course, I am broke and cannot move. But, it just felt good saying it.
The funny thing is that I’ve never been there.
Then again, I have been to San Francisco but I think Seattle may be something like it.
The weird thing is that whenever I think of San Francisco, I think of that Alfred Hitchcock movie called “Vertigo”. I really liked Jimmy Stewart in that movie. In fact, I think I’ll watch it tonight.
When I think of Seattle, sometimes I think of living in a large artist’s loft with a view of the city. I think of having a bed that maybe simply consists of a mattress and box spring resting on cinder blocks atop an old wooden floor. Maybe it could rest on a foundation of red bricks instead. That would be cool.
I guess the loft would have to have been a converted warehouse or factory or old office building to have the kind of floor I am thinking about. Dark, full of nicks and dents, polished to a brilliance, and slick enough to walk on barefoot.
I think of waking up as the sunlight streams in and looking across the loft to some huge unfinished paintings leaning against the wall. The paintings would be so huge that they would have to be moved up and down using a freight elevator. So, I guess, the loft would have to be a former warehouse.
As far as the paintings go, I think of some of those avant-garde paintings that everyone seems to go crazy over. Maybe they could just be a few strokes of color over white and have the whole minimalist thing going on. In any event, they would be huge and dominate that whole side of the loft. They would be so big, they wouldn’t even rest on easels. They would lean against the wall.
People with lots of money could come over and tell me how incredible those two or three strokes of paint are. Then, they could open their wallets and give me lots of money and have their assistants load them onto the freight elevator and take them away.
I would like the loft to have lots of steel. Steel shelves and tables and appliances. I would like it to have lots of red brick too. I think red brick walls and countertops would be too cool. In fact, the more I think about it, sanded and treated red brick would be cooler than marble or granite. It would have to be sanded and treated so that it would be slick and not all rough. I can imagine it in the kitchen and bathroom.
I would love to hang out at the coffeehouses at night in Seattle. I doubt the coffee would taste any better in Seattle than it would anyplace else, but it might. I just think that in the Seattle coffeehouses I would see all kinds of funky and art and all hear all kinds of intellectual discussions.
To be honest, I think you could probably find any kind of intellectual you want in Seattle. Intellectuals, pseudo-intellectuals, neo-intellectuals, abstract-intellectuals, and any other type would be present in Seattle. Well, at least I think they would be present in Seattle. I guess they would talk about the same stuff that other intellectuals talk about, the state of the world and so on. They would talk on their complicated topics while they sipped on their coffee and looked at the funky art on the wall.
I would love to go to the fish market and get some fresh fish from the Puget Sound. The thought of it just makes my mouth water. I think the fish would be incredibly fresh and good tasting. Where I live, we get a lot of fish from the Missouri River. It’s not exactly the kind of waters where you find prime seafood. The thought is kind of disgusting when you think about it. These fish feed on human waste and then people fry and eat them. That’s appalling. However, I judging by the lines at all the local fish fry joints, I don’t think people see it in these terms.
Let’s talk about Seattle instead.
The more I think about it, I would probably like to see some fish that is still flopping and thrashing about when they put them in those giant sloping steel bins. Now, that would be fresh fish. The butcher could lop the head off with a big meat cleaver and scale it right there and I could take it home and broil it that very day and eat it with some rice and maybe a glass of wine. Maybe I could lose a few pounds that way.
That would be nice. As the sun sets, I could watch the downtown cityscape become a sea of tiny lighted offices against a background of darkened office buildings. I could eat my freshly broiled fish on a bed of rice and listen to some jazz.
In those moments, living in Seattle would be downright heavenly.
Sometimes, I am not sure I would necessarily live in the city. I wouldn’t mind having a renovated Victorian on a hill in a neighborhood that kind of looks down on the city. I would like the streets to be wide, the houses to be stately and have those wraparound porches, and the way lined with lots of large leafy trees. In the autumn, the trees could produce this giant crescendo of yellow, orange, red, and golden leaves that would blanket the street and sidewalks. When it rained, they would have that sweet smell. In the spring, these same trees could fill the neighborhood with lively squirrels and singing birds. In the summer, people could bicycle by in the shade. And, in the summer night, people could sit on their wraparound porches and watch the fireflies rise from the grass while the small children try to catch them in mason jars.
The other day I told my son “Let’s move to Seattle.” He was agreeable to it. Then again, he’s 10. So, anything that involves a train, plane, or automobile is fine with him.
Of course, I am broke and cannot move. But, it just felt good saying it.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Man of Color Series
I've been working on a new series of paintings called the "Man of Color" series. They are all 18" x 24" on acid free paper. They can be framed prior to shipping.
Following is "Man of Color 1"
Monday, August 25, 2008
Monday..monday..monday
School starts today. My 19th year as a full time teacher and my 23rd year overall in education. Here we go again!!!!
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