Run & Paint

Monday, May 24, 2010

Updates and low days.

may 23rd 2010.

appointment tomorrow at atlantic orthopedics for my knee. not even a swift sprint seems possible now. . . . . stressful on too many levels to consider.

meanwhile my tomato plants are doing well—with mr. stripey actually showing his first fruits!



may 24th-- kas and my two year annivesary.   her gift is pictured below.

my new workspace!!  (ky's pool in background)

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

mahler, oil sticks, oil of night, strange divulgements. . . .

may 10.

a coupl’a mahler symphonies and a history of war & fucking. . . . a running (internal) dialogue.

a nighttime run, the first night run in at least one year, and a truly surreal experience.  the first kicks were normal and stretching and then the weirdness fell around me.  the grass became an asphalt mosaic, with no topography visible, just feet responding to what was there on the kick. then a blazing-eyed albino cat, the white cat that would stalk my run for perhaps a quarter mile as bats overhead dangle from a hyper puppeteer's wires in the azure fade-out of evening. . . . the porch visits of neighbors, dark and vague but for crystal voices and occasional distorted laughter. . . . then the long quiet of the night’s arrival, hardly a bird, trees stalk stars still as a cat. . . . pastels fold in on themselves and the stars emerge (in my periphery a tree quickly lunges). . . . night collapses and form dissolves into cloud-mind. . . . symphony.  the same effect as long daytime runs, but in much shorter work. hallucinatory and introspectful, an accompanying sensory deprivation yogis & ascetics endure as happenings approaching enlightment, Awareness. but I just kept running and breathing, the nights delirium containing me like a wolf-womb. stretching in front of the house, the night folds up its immense strange theater set and all is restored to normalcy. 
now pbs—“an American life: into the deep.” a show of American whaling and specifically the Essex’s disastrous and horror-stricken voyage.

night pours across the land like oil in the gulf.

time for pastel drawings, oil sticks. franz kline and joan mitchell, motherwell in mind. the french painter—soulages? the Italian poor artists, arte povera. . . hemingway is in mind much lately. . . . should revisit his short stories.
may 11. 11h01am. seven miles at the beach, summer rest loop and around the loop and the causeway park area and back. . . . gray broke into sun and warmth. mozart’s requiem on the way home.

have tapped into a great local band, and (as usual) I am the last to know. no dollar shoes is a group of mad-talented local boys who tear up the traditional bluegrass instruments with a certain punk sneer in their drawl. check it out here or here.

may 12. mahler and miles. . . .

mahler’s seventh today, a ravenous recording from the berliner philharmonic and was up latelate with kyote and croup. . . . . a long day followed. . . . brahms and flogging molly and memford and sons.
may 13. eight miles and change from folk’s café (downtown) into fifth and fourth and catholic school laughter and restoration construction across many porches of the southern homes leaning over the sidewalks with oaks and magnolias and taxis and sherrifs and small convenience stores populating the road towards the railroad passing where greenfield lake becomes visible. . . . a good day for a run, as temps rise into mid 80’s quickly with the sun. an old box turtle creeped along the edge of the park, his shell partially algaed over, a Mandelbrot puzzle of age in each pentagram formation and the interlocking shapes. . . . . recursive imagery. gatorade and old crow medicine show on the drive home.

a slight envy of the artists who meet for coffee and kibbutz at folk’s café each thursday, inclusive and interested. they would recognize my paintings but they would not recognize me.  I was just a runner (in a sketchy neighborhood) looking for a banana at the café where they sat. anonymity as exclusion.

may 17th.

one cannot structure the emotional into form, rather one allows the emotionalism to possess the body and surge into work and Act. this is true in running as it is in painting.  the interesting parallel between running, painting. . . . . the crux of the thing.  act serving as nexus to higher self.
saw porpoises, two of them, swimming across the tide-break sunday morning with ky and kas. 

Friday, May 7, 2010

don't let the work take the joy out of the thing--

may 5 2010.

don’t let the work take the joy of a thing. that was the mantra running through pa in ribbons wrapping farms and silos, grazing cows, the quietude but for my footfalls (& footclimbs) on the hills of the area. . . . . the bucolic, external beauty became an internal beauty, became a mind-journey as the body churned Aware but unconsciously. huckleberry mountain loomed across the horizon, my feet pushing and pulling against the hills towards that massive gray jut darkening against the northern sky. and through that landscape passed my alternately searching and still mind-body, finding miles and future paintings on some subconscious continuum rarely revealed.



the runs were through a picturesque loop from Benton to Unityville with a one-room school house still standing on one corner by a cow pasture, a few hound dogs lazily watching me pass with heavy eyes, and few cars. the cars that did pass had smiles and waves, unlike anything that greets me at home. the end point was the Swisher Farm, a member of my extended (by marriage) family, and there was the massive dog Kobe, a black lab that looked like a dinosaur mixed with Rottweiler, but whose owner kept him near to the red oxide barn.




the limestone and granite of northern Virginia, the plush life of the blue ridge. we stopped by Fredericksburg and found a charming historic city, bustling with tobacco and pint-clinking bars, galleries and even a river-front park. we then passed the preparations of the Apple Blossom Festival and turned left towards Berryville, where we visited friends on their wild green mountain, farm patches rolling behind rusted iron gates and thickets thrusting luscious and berried and fecund. a wonderful stop.



the premier run was across steep loose-rubble roads where horses nodded and hoof-stomped at my curious arrival. I listened, a bit paranoid, to the woods swallowing me as their rich life ruffled and shook and vibrated cacophonic. an easy breath came at the 1500’ elevation, even climbing the 500’ that rolls nearly unnoticed across the pastorale.


may 6 2010. schubert’s cypresses for string quartet, rachmoninoff’s elegiac trios for piano and strings. marvelous. today brought a six mile run, summer rest looping through the coast and back around wb park and up summer rest, the closest thing to a rolling run one can find at this coast. knee felt okay until I got home and sat outside with my dog and watched the tomato plants grow in the sun; tensed up something awful during that fifteen minute rest. but the run was fast and Hot, good cleansing with a full pint of Gatorade and plenty of h20 afterwards to wash out muscles and toxins. lovely bodies running, already bronzed and beautiful. much of the run was internal, quiet, just breathing and body-awareness (mostly knee and breath) and an effort to rid the negatives of the system. six miles was a good distance, though I look forward to the meditation of the long runs again.



Rauschenberg’s transfer drawings reclaim my interest and provoke the will to work. feels so long ago that I was playing with transfers and really painting. . . . . working fluidly and with excitement in my work. work begets work. also enjoying the previous two issues of Modern Painters, especially the hockney interview. I contemplate the next step of restoring myself to creativity.