A Work Progressing

Inflation’s a beast, folks. Back in the day, a $55 dollar sink was my choice. Perfect for the guest bath by the door – a quick pit stop, not a spa experience.

But the master bath? That was getting the Italian stone treatment, complete with a perfect mosaic tile job. Picking those three sizes took forever, with countless trips to the charming (but slow) tile shop downtown.

Right there, tempting me by the register, was a display of sinks unlike any I’d seen. Forget utilitarian porcelain, these were artisanal masterpieces. One even had the artist’s signature! And a “Sale” sign. Intriguing.

On my third visit, curiosity gnawed at me. “Price on that beauty?” I mumbled, gesturing at the signed sink. His response was a quick “$1,600”.

The salesperson’s expression was a picture. He must have seen the “$55 sink guy” tattooed on my forehead. I mumbled thanks and stuck to the tiles.

But that sink… it lingered in my mind. Next time around, I found myself confused, trying to justify a $1,600 price tag. The poor guy thought I was negotiating! He whispered a desperate offer: “$900, take it or leave it.”

I was so prepared to leave it. Ha! But in my final stop after finding the right color grout, the salesman said, “$600!” And I surprisingly nodded yes!

Fifteen Years of Basin Bliss

For the next fifteen years, that sink became a source of pride. Guests got the full tour – the perfect granite countertop, the gold fixtures, the whole shebang. It wasn’t just a sink, it was art!

Fast Forward: The Staged Sellout

Now, we are selling the house. Times have changed in thirty years. Stagers are all the rage, promising a faster sale with their beige-on-beige nirvana. I get the logic, but ouch.

My glorious sink? Ripped out, replaced with a white quartz ghost. White on white, surrounded by white. My personal oasis, sacrificed to the market gods.

But the signed beauty? That’s coming with me. Not for handwashing, perhaps, but as a conversation starter. A reminder that a little defiance can be a good thing. Maybe even a nod to Duchamp, mounted on the wall in all its glory.

Cleaning my messages on my phone to create more space for more messages. Ouroboros!

I copied/paste from a message to a family member.

Some advice

Have you ever heard the phrase, “You are what you eat!”

There is another semi lie, “you are what you do.” When you retire you realize, “that you are what you think” and everything flows from that.

Your art doesn’t define you. You define your art.

I’ve seen drawings where the horse is hitched to the wagon, pushing it forward. It doesn’t work that way. You are the horse, and the wagon is your world, your art, everything… and it just follows you where ever you go.

The issue is that you must choose your path everyday, if you don’t, someone else will choose it for you, and you will be living someone else’s life.

You don’t have to be perfect, but sailing teaches you a lesson, if you don’t make tiny corrections early on, you won’t make the port you desire.

Freezing up, not moving the wheel, will guarantee a crash. Or sailing off the edge of the world, hahaha!

As a philosophical exercise, pick a reasonable goal, outline the steps that would normally assist you in getting there, then each day, for a month, assess how well you have done. Then make the goal bigger.

Hehe, I once removed the word coincidence from my vocabulary. It changed everything for me.

That was 15 years ago.

Everything is a plan, either my plan, or others. Some that are good, some that are bad. But nothing is by chance. Or luck.

Not making a plan, is a plan!

Then there is the old Irish saying, “Do you want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans!”

The Arabs often end every paragraph with, “in-shallah”, meaning “God willing.”

Here’s another thought. What is peace? The Hebrew word for peace is “Shalom”, the root word that creates shalom is “sacrifice”. There is no peace without sacrifice. A soldier knows this.

See what happens, you ask a simple question and you get word diarrhea from me.

I’m old and slightly demented I think the answer is somewhere in between everything that l’ve heard from everyone.

I prefer to think a bit, before I do. Take a beat!

It is complicated. Self-identity is always thick… with ego goo. The answer will always be the thing that works.

When I find something, it’s always in the last place I’ve looked. And I have never been lost… just misdirected for a few years.

Spring, the season of hope, emerges as the most uplifting of the four seasons. The very word “spring” signifies “coming forth”, likely inspired by dormant seeds, patiently awaiting through fall and winter, now germinating and thrusting green shoots into the air. It’s a riot out there!

Our ancestors must have been challenged to comprehend nature’s workings. They had to accept its rhythmic repetitions like clockwork. Today, of course, science illuminates the tilt of the earth that orchestrates the seasons, somewhat diminishing the romantic allure.

I recall the incredulity of my youth upon learning that while it was spring here, it was fall elsewhere, seeming as if I stood upright while others were upside down.

Reflecting on our ancestors’ perspectives on spring, Greek mythology offers insights into the complex Pantheon of Gods. Zeus, the chief, alongside his formidable brothers Poseidon and Hades, and their three sisters—Hestia, Demeter, and Hera—spawned from Rhea. It’s a convoluted family, replete with peculiar dynamics.

Cronus, having usurped his father Uranus to rule the Heavens, harbored the same apprehension. Upon Rhea’s childbirth, Cronus swiftly swallowed each infant, one by one. Yet, Zeus, the youngest, was spared when Rhea concealed a stone within swaddling clothes, tricking Cronus.

Zeus matured and eventually overthrew Cronus, liberating his siblings and marrying his sister Hera. Truly, a turbulent family affair.

Meanwhile, Hades, unmarried, set his sights on his niece, Persephone, daughter of Demeter. Despite Persephone’s disinterest, being deeply connected to the Earth like her mother, she was ensnared by Hades’ relentless pursuit. His black chariot, drawn by four steeds with fiery eyes, whisked Persephone to the Underworld to reign as its queen.

Consequently, Earth lost its idyllic perfection, descending into a singular, melancholic season. Demeter, devastated by her daughter’s abduction, plunged Earth into desolate winter, lamenting her loss. Eventually, Hera intervened, securing a compromise. Persephone would cyclically descend to Hades, marking the onset of fall, then ascend to reunite with Demeter, heralding spring’s return. Summers, meanwhile, were a time of revelry.

Thus, the year’s cycle was dictated by a dysfunctional family saga, transcending the mundane tilt of the Earth. Oh, and did I mention Persephone’s father was Zeus, the younger brother who reigned over all?

Martha Wainwright’s poignant song “Proserpina” (Persephone) on YouTube.com adds a musical dimension to this tale.

https://youtu.be/0CfwGwhcycI?si=-L-00hFkSGaGd4ZA

I’ve collected a number of Fayum Mummy Portraits from archeological digs. There was a short period where this art was popular, running from 1st century to the middle of the 3rd century, primary in the Fayum Basin in Egypt.

They were primarily full color portraits, painted on boards, that were placed on the face,and attached, to wrapped mummies.

It’s clear that many of the mummies were of individuals who had died young.

I scanned the images, then spent some time repairing cracks, and giving a little modern makeover.

It’s tax time. Every year about this time, it’s tax time. Time to pay the piper. Time to fund the government that makes choices for where my money goes. Time to assess if those choices are in agreement with my choices. Yech!

It’s also one of those big years, one of those presidential choice years, it’s such a very very sad year, at least until this morning.

This morning, as a complete surprise, I found a candidate, one that edged out the others in the significant category of who I would want stuck in an elevator with, or trapped in snow lodge with lots of coffee. Actually it even extends to personally having a dinner in my own home.

No one has met that standard on the national stage for decades, and that’s okay because national issues are really platform issues, and I always support the platform that mostly coincides with my own personal standards. It’s never perfect, but I know I’m doing the best I can.

But this year, I believe I have found a candidate that meets both standards and that hasn’t happened for decades upon decades.

My vote is secret, I will not participate in polls, I’m stubborn that way, but I do occasionally announce candidates that I support…

I support Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

All have to say, is watch his movie

Bags and bags of springs, their ends straight, with the springy part in the middle. My pay depended on the pound of completed bent springs.

It was a monotonous task, but one I could manage from home, offering flexibility in my hours. There seemed to be an insatiable demand for precisely bent springs. For months, it was the same routine, until one day, a new jig arrived with slightly heavier springs, ushering in a change.

A “jig” was the machine responsible for bending and clipping the ends of the raw springs. I merely had to insert the spring and press the pedal on the floor. Arms would swing into action, bending and clipping the wire. All I had to do was drop it into the completed bucket and insert another spring. It was repetitive, hypnotic, and surprisingly profitable.

In the 60s, there weren’t many job opportunities for teenagers with long hair. Businesses were wary of hiring “hippies” or radicals. But for me, it worked out just fine.

I landed this gig through my sister-in-law, who outsourced her spring making. She obtained her springs from a weathered old man she had “adopted”. He was likely in his eighties, with gnarled fingers, stooped shoulders, and a shuffling gait, speaking broken English with an Italian accent.

Amadeo, the middleman, supplied the portable electric jigs and the specified weight of the springs. I assumed he shipped the final products to factories or warehouses.

But Amadeo was more than just a supplier. He was a genuine spiritualist, specifically a Faithist, believing in the “New Bible”, a text published in 1882 by a dentist in New York City.

The book, titled “Oahspe”, was said to have been “automatically” typed over several years, guided by spiritual forces. With the typewriter being a recent invention, the spiritual forces must have been thrilled.

Amadeo often lingered for a few hours when delivering supplies or picking up springs. It was his opportunity to share about Oahspe and its impact on his life.

As a subcontractor, I felt it was polite to excuse myself and return to bending springs. Although I did receive a broken English translation of Oahspe, I needed to focus on earning money, so I politely declined further discussions.

Amadeo left a copy of his “New Bible”, a thick tome of around 1500 pages, filled with cosmic charts and color portraits of saints in turbans, giving it a distinctly Persian feel.

Years later, with Amadeo gone and my spring-bending days behind me, “Oahspe” remained on my bookshelf. During a visit, a friend noticed the book, she abruptly turned around, and left, another date gone awry.

Yesterday afternoon I saw the musical ‘The Divine Sarah” by June Richards and Elaine Lang. Something both of them started over forty years ago, and shelved more then 39 years ago. Most things on the shelf for more than five years are simply lost in time.

In this case, good friends asked them, “What happened to that script?” Then someone found the .pdf of the typed pages. Another found some VHS tapes that were made of readings, and the songs were found on tape.

Old friends were called upon, rewrites were made, COVID forced readings on Zoom. Endless edits, a completely new second act, lots more current research, and nearly a thousand images downloaded from around the world. When the resolution was so poor, the images were redrawn, reimagined.

In a world of takers, there was a subset of “makers”.

Months of wondering what to do, now that it was nearly finished. Submit the musical to producers, and a magically a local playhouse dedicated to new works agreed to produce the musical. I began helping nearly 4 years ago. It’s been on stage for a week with three more weeks to go. The production is wonderful, the music sublime, Sarah is perfect, and the Ensemble could not be better.

So amazing to see something that existed only in text and images in your head, become alive on stage with an audience enthralled.

Uh oh, I fear the path ahead.

So, I sit thinking about the things we see, and what we do about them. A painting on the wall, not yours, in a different place, different town. Who is it by? What do you think?

I think it is a blend of MC Escher and Salvador Dali. Oddly disturbing, mysterious, and beautiful.

That has an impact on how I feel, and the emotions that are just under the surface. Whatever happens next, whatever words are said, have to go first through this protective filter. Sight is powerful.

If we see something out of normal, a flaky patch of skin, a change in color, a lump of tissue. Between sight and touch, the experience can send you down path, close to the future abyss. Which is probably more like leaving the room than falling in a crevasse.

My thoughts turn to various moments of the totally natural event that didn’t happen, but should have. A truck crashing through a barricade on the road above me, 8×8 timbers exploding in either direction, so close as to sweep behind, and in front of me, leaving me standing safely, while the truck lands inches in front, bouncing from a 12 foot drop. Whew!

Or some years later, I’m on a small 20 foot sailboat, sailing alone, trying to let down the jib. I decide to go downwind, let the mainsail out fully, tie off the rudder, release the jib sheets, walk forward carefully to manually pull down the jib.

I was successful, I walk back safely, jump into the cockpit, bend forward a little, and my tight fitting beret fell off my head, I bend forward at my knees to pick the hat up, and suddenly the wind shifts and there is a hard gybe. The boom sweeps the boat moving from starboard to port with such violence as to nearly snap the mast.

Needless to say I should have been standing, I should have been hit in the chest, or beheaded. I should have been launched breathless into Richardson’s Bay, taking my first breath six feet under water.

For the non-sailor readers, a soft gybe is harmless in windless conditions. A hard gybe is still safe in steady winds from aft, but you have to bring the boom nearly to the center line of the boat, lock the sheet, and do not over steer the rudder, or you will knock the boat down.

Having the boom way out to the side, is like a professional baseball batter swinging for the bleachers. It gets real tricky when the wind shifts and your rudder is tied down. Somehow the boom didn’t hit me, and I got control of the rudder.

Accidents happen, sometimes we survive, sometimes we don’t. The curiosity is when synchronicity is taking place at the same time.

And here is the issue I am thinking today. If I have even the slightest issue of not understanding the meanings of past synchronicities, when they were monumentally obvious… what chance do I have in seeing and understanding the subtle future events?

Watching for them diligently is probably the first step, denying the possibility of coincidence is the second step, and maybe just asking for guidance is the third step.

Be ever alert, ask for help in your unbelief!

I’ve often pondered whether synchronicities are merely coincidences. While Google may suggest they’re related, synchronicities carry a weight of “meaning” that’s both perplexing and disconcerting.

I find it unsettling when seemingly disparate events align to convey significance, especially when they could easily be dismissed as random or even “cartoonish.”

With my daughter and her husband visiting during a layover from New Zealand to NYC, and my wife away assisting our other daughter, I’m left alone, perhaps more susceptible to flights of fancy—or at the very least, awkwardly stable.

Driving with my departing daughter to Alameda, where they plan to catch an early morning flight, dinner plans were thwarted by a combination of rain and nighttime driving—two elements I’m not keen on facing simultaneously.

Opting to depart between storms while daylight lingered, I found myself amidst the peak of commute traffic, a scenario I’m accustomed to handling, so long as it moves at a steady pace.

Navigating through Alameda’s maze of commuter traffic and underwater tubes, I found myself queued up for the Webster Street tube. As traffic slowed, I seized the opportunity to cue up some music on my phone, settling on a blast from the past—“Alley Oop” from 1960.

Though it had been decades since I last heard it, I called upon Siri to play the tune. Yet, as seconds ticked by, it became evident Siri was struggling to connect. Did she need the artist’s name? The dilemma was real—I couldn’t recall. Was it “Sam the Sham, and the Pharaohs”? My memory was foggy, clouded by the dozens of one-hit wonders from that era.

As I attempted to clarify, the unexpected unfolded. Just as I uttered “Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs,” a towering figure emerged in the tunnel ahead of me. His outstretched arms and striped robe gave him an uncanny resemblance to Moses, especially with the cars parting to the left and right. But wait, he had a headdress and kohl eye makeup. Not Moses, but Pharaoh!

There was no logical explanation for his sudden appearance, no empty vehicle he emerged from. Was he one of the Pharaohs from my half-remembered band? The mind plays tricks in the murky depths of exhaust fumes, beneath forty feet of water.

As he knelt before a passing Tesla, motioning as if in supplication, chaos ensued. Swerving to avoid him, the Tesla nearly collided with the tunnel wall, providing me with a narrow window to slip past on the right. The cramped confines of the tunnel, coupled with the unexpected presence of a Pharaoh, made for a surreal experience.

Glancing in my mirror, I verified he was still there, and ahead I saw the tunnel’s end approaching. And just as abruptly as the Pharaoh appeared, the unmistakable strains of “Alley Oop” filled the car—not by the expected artists, but by the Hollywood Argyles.

Coincidence may no longer have a place in my vocabulary, but synchronicity lingers—a reminder of the inexplicable connections that weave through the tapestry of life.

In my world there are no coincidences, only undiscovered meanings. If synchronicity embraces that then I’m left with the “cartoonish” puzzle of my thoughts and the timing.

It’s almost like a test flight, “I can do this, and other things, prepare to believe.”

I’ve been here before, or so it feels. Maybe it’s the flickering neon sign of “Pizza Palace” casting a familiar red glow on my beatle-length hair. I rock the “early days” look, paired with year-round sandals and a perpetually shoulder-draped jacket. Not exactly bar-worthy, which sucks at nineteen.

No car, no license. My “haunt” is this late-night pizza joint, a haven for weary souls and my trusty notebooks. Two of them, because you never know when inspiration strikes. One night, it took the form of a giant Finn named Don, and his “girlfriend” – twice his size and three times the ambition. He spent nights here drowning his existential dread in cheap beer, while she built her own life, brick by brick, degree in hand.

Don offered me a job at the cannery – peaches, pears, and the dubious glory of fruit cocktail. From head to toe, I donned a rubber hazmat suit (before Hazmat suits were a thing). My baptism by fire was the graveyard shift, pushing a squeegee and sending fallen fruit on a one-way trip to the bay.

Then came the steam. Hours spent hosing down machinery, the air thick with the metallic tang of fear. The real terror? Zeke and the sewers. The guy who knew the labyrinthine network of tubes carrying deceased peaches to their watery grave. Every so often, a tube clogged, and Zeke asked for a volunteer from the cleanup crew. I was volunteered. He’d return alone, the disposable guy long gone, quitting after the shift.

I quit before my shift came. The money was good, but the thought of Zeke’s expeditions under the cannery sent shivers down my spine.

Yet, next summer, a postcard arrived: “Come back, the second year is easier!” Apparently, seniority had its perks. This time, I landed a swing shift, working my way up the cannery ladder. My station? Lid-placing. Easy, right? Except, I mostly fed the machine, occasionally causing a five-minute “distraction” with an upside-down lid. Hey, a little chaos never hurt anyone.

Third season. Savings account growing. I was assigned to the fruit cocktail line. Here, the rejects found redemption – diced, de-rotted, and swimming with a few grapes and maraschino cherries. Speaking of cherries, I confess, I pilfered a few during breaks. Mistake. Absolutely tasteless, dyed imposters. Turns out, the “pop-pop-pop” of the cherry dispenser wasn’t the sound of juicy delight, but of culinary deception.

My season ended with a rogue barrel, a misplaced hand truck handle, and a near-burst appendix, the “largest inflamed” one the hospital had ever seen. They kept it in a jar, a morbid souvenir of my summer spent whispering secrets to fruit.

Sure, the job wasn’t perfect. But hey, it was an adventure, and who knows? Maybe that jarred appendix still resides in the hospital basement, a silent testament to the summer I became the Fruit Whisperer.

BTW, nine cherries per can.