1800 miles from santa fe to olympia (i took a few slow roads to see some land i hadn't seen), a guy in a purple track suit with an camo hat huffing down 285 in Abiquu, then a nun (in full habit) driving a chevy suburban, every cop i passed scrutinized me like never before, then the animals, some dead and some living, dogs and crows, two ducks flying so low that one duck's wing tip hit my windshield and left water droplets, buzzards, opposums, bunnies and jack rabbits, unrecognizables (whole or in pieces), a dead coyote, a sign for fresh curd, a sign for Deeth Starr Valley [sic], badger, winnemucca (pets stay for free), more than a dozen magpies eating something spread thinly across the road, a live coyote, waved at many cars between winnemucca and jordan valley (highway 95), the beautiful, long (3 hours long) valley of which I gave a rating of five out of five for places worth revisiting, wyhee canyon, crooked creek, rome launch site (?), the smell of onion harvesting in east oregon and finally olympia

can anyone tell me the significance of the names made from rounded stones placed all along interstate 70 going west from 15 in Utah? Is it some Mormon coming of age ritual? Literally thousands of names, some big, some small, all in the dry lake beds along the interstate. ???

Well, if all goes well, I should be hitting the road Thursday morning. But who knows? My copilot is in somewhere in 10SE and all the flights are down today. He's supposed to come in tomorrow, but will the flights be up then? And how many bumped flights will there be due to today's outage? I might end up driving up alone...

My phone number in Seattle is: 206-517-9321. My phone down here will be out of service for the duration.

Anybody looking for a house in Greenlake?

Excellent. Of course you are a little scared but - as I wrote to Julie last
year- courage comes on all kinds of packages. I got a rush just reading
about your plans. I got the nicest compliment last week from a drunk woman
at a wedding in Atlanta who I had met that weekend. She said, "You have
lived your life(14 or 15 times in various conjugations). Of course, I don't
fully feel that way but your letter gave me the impression that you are
living yours. No big payoffs without some risk taking.Of course the other
pieces need to be there: talent and opportunity. You have those so I have
little doubt that it will work. Good for you. Anna is screaming. Bye.


-----Original Message-----

Yes, I had to post the sake headache picture, I like that picture a lot.
Such a moment. I was on an "art" kick taking pictures that trip - that was
the only one that felt authentic. Most of the others look posed (which they
were). And of my readership of 3 people, only Dave knows you...

I'm selling my house because I don't think I'll ever live in Seattle again.
Maybe Washington, but not the big shitty. And also, the tax man cometh. If I
sell now, I don't get taxed on my profit. And further, I still love it here
and want to buy a house down here.

Are you offering an art residency? Room & board & stipend? Sounds great. I
might just take you up on that. :)

I hope to see you soon, and my latest plans may afford me the time, if not
the money. And time is better than money anyway. I'm going to quit my
computer job and try to make a living making metal objects. There will
certainly be a big creative/design element to this work, but it won't be my
art. I just can't stand sitting in front of the computer no more. Really.
That's it in a nutshell. It's not worth the money. I'm gonna give a shot at
making furniture - the one thing in metal work that I really enjoy doing. I
really like the design problems inherent in furniture - like how to make a
heavy and hard object that fits into a human environment generally, and more
specifically, where to put legs and struts on a coffee table such that you
can still sit with your legs underneath and eat dinner. Anyway, that's the
plan, and serendipity has already dipped: Just last night we had our
neighbors over for dinner. William is a stone-worker and as I was asking him
questions about his work (which i'm very interested in learning to do
myself) and building up to my idea of trying to sell furniture - he
mentioned that he was planning the same thing and needed a metal worker to
do the structural stuff to support his hand-finished stone tops. Could it be
more ideal? So, I already have something to come back to - which was my big
worry. I know I need to quit this job, but the next step is largely unclear.
Though obviously it is getting clearer.

That's the big news. I'm heading to Seattle in a week and will likely be
there for a month or two selling my house, quitting my job, driving back to
start the new adventure. I'm excited and scared.


-----Original Message-----

Nate- I finally opened your site. I had over 1,000 e mails in no order to
sift through. I am dowm in the 200's now and feel a little better. Did you
have to post the sake headache picture of me? I am sure there are better
ones out there? Why are you selling your house? Don't do that. If you want
to make art, come live here with us. Fill me in.


-----Original Message-----

Hey, just for grins, here's my web site address: http://randomorbit.net/ - I
think it speaks for itself, for better or for worse.

I'm sorry to hear you're sick. I hope you get better very quick. I'll be
beaming healing energy thoughts your way...


-----Original Message-----

Good. I have thought a lot about you lately. Every time I dream up a project
(none of which we have time to do), I imagine you flying out here to
help...might not be your fantasy but to each her own. Seriously, I miss you
guys.
I had strep. Used some left over meds last week, woke up this am realizing
it wasn't enough so I have to find a Doctor tomorrow...if I make
it...nothing like knowing I'm about to get sick as a dog before I get
better...everything else is fine.
I have been doing adoption assessor work contractually which is finally
turning into a few hours and dollars. Now, I need to write the home studies.
Its a lot happier than juvenile justice...I am glad to hear its working out
for Julie. Its hard during those trasitional times: scary enough to make a
weak person give up...that's what separates the men from the boys. Tell
Julie I think of her as a real man.

What? Escape. Distraction. Devour books and movies and time. Complete a piece, at stand still for a year, submit to the CSF Sculpture Project, slides, deadline, all in one day. Forward to five more in the house, crazy mad fun. Zozobra, burn the year's woes. A wedding. But here and now, escape and distraction, too damn much to contemplate. Ready to begin the doing. Road lust.

I made a big scary decision Monday. Ever since, I've been alternating between joy and gut-pinching fear. I'm going to quit Apex and the computer biz at large, shortly after I finish this next phase, my sojourn in Seattle, selling my beautiful house. (To my Apex friends and friends who have friends at Apex, please don't spread this info around - it's definitely TOP SECRET.)

What I will do next, I'm not totally sure of, but it must involve my hands and body and soul, not just my strained fingers and eyes (and mind). Metal and stone work are both whispering to me. Though I find it a little hard to imagine, I can picture myself selling a line of metal furniture and chotchkes at the flea market. I can also picture myself all too easily working at somebody's shop for $6 an hour, grinding and welding until larger portions of my body are strained and tired. Hopefully the universe will expose a better path to me, something I can't even concept right now. I think my mantra is going to be: be open to new and unexpected opportunities. As if it hasn't been all along. I just need to chant it a little louder.

http://www.billyblob.com/animation_f/karma.html

Well, though this picture does bring back a lot of memories, I am loathe to repeat them in any detail. Two items will have to suffice for now:

 *  I was conceived in the town where this photo was taken, Chitose (on the northern island of Hokkaido - a very beautiful place with few people, many oceans, many mountains and good food all around - if you ever go to Japan, this is the place I will recommend visiting).

 *  To get there, Barbara (in the picture) and I hitchhiked. Long story that. Hitchhiking is not a universal method of travel, which has both good and bad aspects to it, especially when attempting it in a foreign land with minimal fluency.



Trivia for the day:

Japan and finding places. The concept, let alone the execution, of roads in a grid pattern comes from the West. If that were all, it would not be so hard. But there are no such things as blocks, measured by intersections or other. You cannot say, go x blocks and turn left. There are no numbers designating the range of addresses in any given segment of a road. Houses, buildings and temples are all given numbers, however. Don't worry, they are a modern society, and like us, appreciate the efficiency of referring to urban objects by number. However, the algorithm for generating these numbers is utterly arbitrary. If you build a new structure, how do you get a number designation for it? Well, you take the last structure built in the city and add one. This applies no matter where the last structure or your new structure might exist in physcial space. So, if you've got something like Harikari Supply Center, 1003 Shinchoizumisawaodori, you really don't have anything at all that will help you find the place. In Japan, if you flag a taxi, it is not enough to have the address; you need full instructions - a hand-drawn map would be better. It doesn't matter how experienced the driver is; he will frown, shake his head, repeat the address a few dozen times, call the dispatcher (if he is the polite type) and eventually make it clear, he will not be taking you anywhere today.

I could continue this riff for a bit, but I think that's enough to help explain Barbara's expression.

Today's green tea leaves gave me the most interesting reading I've ever gotten from tea leaves. Several strange things. The leaves actually clumped up from my last sip and stayed that way even after swooshing the whole thing around a bit - it looks as if it's a three-dimensional reading rather than the usual 2D. This is further supported by a little area in the middle, looking like an upside down mushroom where the water isn't touching the bottom of the cup at all. So it feels like a progression, from the sides of the cup to the tea leaves, tea water and then beyond, through the whole in the water. The clump of leaves looks a lot like a mountain top and at the left side is a figure looking like he's running like crazy, aimed for the top of the mountain and the whole in the water. Seems pretty positive, amplified by the 3Dness. And all these images/concepts definitely jive with what I'm feeling now.

It's only Tuesday.

Where are Dave and Nick?

Seattle ETA: September 15th.

I used to be a poet. Some friends from that time in my life, still think of me this way and don't believe me when I say, no, I'm a visual artist now, don't write poetry. Friends are nice, aren't they?

This is a poem from back in the day, from a little book I gave out at Xmas in 1986 in lieu of presents (living the poor glorious hippy life back then - should dig up a picture of me with my hair down to my shoulders, which was a lot of hair for me because my hair curls up pretty tightly by nature, or at least it did back when I was 19).

gloss page

she was a cool jelly-bean
her name was Roo-Valore,
i liked the way she moved
like a smooth body in glue,
it's just not the same anymore
when iron-cloth windshield lights
set scrub-brush to flame,
like a bite of yellow mojo cream
in the middle of some lonely night,
somewhere someone was crying
"out of sight, out of sight,"
and the newspaper was just to small
to burn the alcohol tape-worm shine
of her eyebrow diamond nine,
i saught the girl in fake leather boots
to soothe my one place sits alone,
how rarely peace has threaded jeans
smearing blue everywhere she goes,
yes, her name was Ra Ra Raw
and i liked her more than
anything i ever saw before.

Over the next few years (after writing the poem I just posted), I went into what I would call my "serious" poetry phase. I pushed on myself pretty hard to improve my poetry and write more of it. The result of those years was that I no longer could stand writing much poetry at all. (This might shed some light on my Extremely Short Poems Archive and why this is where I am with poetry today.)

I took my first group poetry class in my Junior year at Evergreen. (Before that I had done an independent contract on poetry-writing, but didn't really have that group-critique experience.) In the interview to get in to the class, I told the instructor I wanted to write the perfect poem. She suggested to me that such a thing might not exist. I should have taken that suggestion to heart as it might have saved me from unwittingly developing my internal poetry critic, with whom I ultimately had more success with than my internal poetry writer. But it was a good lesson nonetheless, even if it was sort of a sacrifice. In recent years, realizing the visual arts was where I needed to be, I have been very careful about feeding my internal visual art critic. He is very smart, and while I think art education is necessary for becoming aware of the broader context of art, it is a double-edged sword; my critic learns too, expands his knowledge of how to criticize art based on more and more information and experience.

I wrote this poem during that class and presented it publically (nervously) in a poetry reading we set up at the college. Three things I remember about that evening, in more detail than I remember doing the reading itself:

1. My girlfriend drove me to the reading in a car that was hanging by a thread. And it did actually break down on the way, but we still ended up getting to the reading on time. Some of you will not be surprised to hear that this really stressed me out.

2. My previous girlfriend (who I had just broken up with not long before) attended the reading and sat a few rows behind us visibly fuming. Some of you will not be surprised to hear that this didn't bother me at all.

3. With a respectful nod to the poets who had come before me (especially Charles Bukowski), and to assuage my nervousness, I had several hits off a bottle of whiskey right before the reading.

This was the poem I read:


Bottle Green

In the dislocated space of a summer night
dandelion weeds fall turning,
separate knots of mandarin lint.

The big hand of time leads you down
step by step to an orange grove
between grenadine bottles and halved grapefruits.

Your friend the jester joking king
plays each slice of time into his drink.
Was it a round of lime

that sat upon the knife edge
or a miniature cabbage vivisected?
The clock won't tell.

Queen's mate crumbling cage
slips another chocolate mint false lip
into the wrong dip

long dead by now
and all the best estimates.
She's going to preserve her body for the pool.

You have a mind for her,
a just peeled orange sprinkled with nutmeg.
You're looking for the singular fold

that will admit the morning light,
turning coffee
and dandelions with cream.

Assured by the fluted cup,
the solution may be viewed
through the top of an ice cube

melting into the carpet drop by drop.
From the arm of a sure-footed recliner
it looks as if the ants will dance tonight.

The clock spring brushes a metal hinge.
Creased cream silk slips over a knee.
The queen spills her drink.

With wrist-driven fingers,
she rolls a cold cube into the pool,
a chlorine green cocktail cooling by degree.

Queen's late night tumbler sage
turns another page away for now.
He's going to conserve his body for the pool.

The joker falls asleep
dreaming stretched wet rubber bands
with his hands gently folding.

Drinking the sun below the horizon
through the bottom of her bottle green
night lies down in leathery shade of avocado.



Worth noting: Between the time I wrote "gloss page" and "bottle green" I did a lot of acid, started having sex and read and fell in love with T.S. Elliot. Throughout, I never tired of using the word "cream" and, though my use of the comma improved, it wasn't until much later that it got solid.