Run & Paint

Saturday, August 21, 2010

work and work and non-august august.

faux-tigue or true overtraining?
here I am in august, burnt out on the burnt end of running routes and busy season at my job and less sleep than when I was strung out and anyway—runs are not feeling good. it is hot as hell. the effort required in a six mile circuit is nearly heroic. the mind will not still for long periods of time. the legs are heavy and angry and even undisciplined- awkward- in gait. strange. . . . so the runs are strained and ugly and fish-flopping funky.



work and work—new paintings by darren mulvenna and jay edge (c'est moi). opening on thursday, september 25th, with the premiere fourth friday reception following on September 26th. . . . here are some sneak-peaks (of my recent work), landscape-nudes, inverted dopplegangers, et cetera. . . .  the doppelgangers have continued for several years now, as have the landscape-nudes, and their visual vocabulary is fresh and reinvigorated: i am truly excited about them!   flesh soil paint.  three prominent elements of my creative cycle. we shall see what darren has up his talented sleeve.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

figures, fugues, fuego, Fugueres.

august 10.  late summer, runs, similar to rimbaudian withdrawals (saisons a l'enfer).  celine thrusts of point/ counterpoint and fragment-language, foucault or schoenberg spindrift through fogmind.  jerks and kicks. figures and fugues and thought-drifts, pushing against the wall. sputters of motion, spastic passing of ocean's vague horizon;  suspended breath and mild hallucinations against asphalt of road which boils up through soles, ankles, shins, knees.  the asphalt ocean i run on. . . . figures and fugues meld towards a conjunction of meaning.  hallucination or inspiration?  just too fucking hot.

august 13th. the 8am air was already swampy. but by the end of the six mile run, the scorching sun would boil the feathers offa the wings of this bird. just another dante-launch of leg-language.  (run as poetry:  a personal happening.) 
and on canvas:  paint against two dancers, inksplash figures emerging, cadmium red light. 

the longdistancelungs—how the diaphragm builds and expands across the miles. . . . but to breathe in the swampy Carolina summer at ~7mph requires gills. . . .

berryville. . . (the fugue of the mountains. take a profile/ elevation map and place on a set of sheet music and play. or have 4 by 4 play it.) a wonderful experience full of sun   skeet-shooting  a few miles  good food and homegrown music.  daily route was (according to mapmyrun.com) 7.7 miles, a beautiful run from the farm by locke mill to watermelon park, a campground smelling of warm tortillas, hot dogs, and drunk campfires and back. 


the crisped confit days of august in the south. . . . atmospheric perspective swallows the horizons of trees, gray mist with swatches of blurred browngreen. visual sewage, mind sewage. heat burns body outta soul and flightless, heavy-winged albatrosses emerge where eyes once burned. burned out and burned out.  ready for autumn cooldown. some fugazi for the day, but not the first photo posted below. . .


Wednesday, August 11, 2010

french roast and fugazi. . .

mahler’s 150th birthday. the brutal brushes, the pushing-and-pulling colors, the sounds of knife scraping canvas, a female arabesque becomes a pennsylvania hill grided into mosaic farms, charcoal grinding her black dry-oil against the tweed of cotton, the pushing of titanium white into burntbone black, gray pasting form into fields of kinetic line. landscape and figure mingle and enmesh, a biomorphic dance, fugazi launching vocals and rampant rifts, then bach cello suites (rostropovich) and kyote sleeps as basho breathes.

the pleasure of work. the pleasure of the run. the pleasure of Being, Whole. (van gogh’s delirium?)


august fifth twenty-ten. caprice bistro for dinner.

my wife and I haven’t had a dinner date since our anniversary, and before that it was sometime around our wedding two+ years ago. so a date was due—and enjoy a date we did.

the hostess warmly received us, offering the window table on their banquette as we arrived. it was 6pm and we enjoyed a marvelous living theater of the street outside, watching downtowners walking dogs, moving from desk to bar, jogging, or riding the horse-drawn carriage for a tour (probably the finest window in downtown wilmington). my wife was beautiful and happy, reviewing the menu and sipping a mohito, freshly muddled mint wafting across the table. our lively waiter explained the specials, cracked a coupl’a jokes, and we ordered the first course: spinach salad and curried mussels. mussels are something of a culinary religion in the bistro menu, and man does Caprice nail them! yellow curry pushed and pulled the mussels like a spirited dance partner, allowing the mussels their own flavors, then enhancing them. the spinach salad was good, the fresh leaves like crisped butter pushing lightly bitter notes against a very good Roquefort cheese and sweetened walnuts.

for the entrée, my wife had the plat du jour—lapin au moutarde. the rabbit was perfectly prepared, and a hint of smoky pork-salt extracted the nuanced flavors of the meat. the mustard notes were pleasantly subtle, infused with a buttery white wine. the sauce coated a fresh fettucine, perfectly al dente and flavorful in itself.
i had the bistro steak. pomme frites arrived with the teres major steak, seasoned and grilled and served with a bordelaise reduction. pink and tender on the inside while nicely charred on the outside, the beef was amazing. the baked, herbed tomato and sauteed carrots were also delicious, that innate sweetness working the meat's earthier elements.

dessert was a simple, traditional faire (by choice)—my wife ordered the crème brulee, vanilla, with the crisp skin of the caramelized sugar cracking nicely beneath the spoon. my choice was also delicious, (though I caught some jokes for the simplicity of my dessert palette)the eternal "dame blanche." while vanilla ice cream is timeless and not very exciting, add the chef’s belgian chocolate and freshly whipped cream (amazing!) and voila—a beautiful dessert. a cup of dark coffee, procured from a regional coffee roaster, poured dark and deep to make the meal a fine success.

while my palette may be less advanced in some selections, the fundamentals of cooking are well-represented and are, infact, feted at caprice bistro. even a basic selection, whether beef or vanilla ice cream or coffee, becomes a multilayered, intricate flavor-map of culinary traditions of the French bistro.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

mingus and miles and soon, mountains.


august 2. vision quest. the word just sort of slapped me upside the head, sipping coffee and sketching. every act is a sort of vision quest, is a form of prayer, is an act of faith. a run is a mini-vision quest, every conversation is a process of finding those contours of forms of self in the internal, infinite dark of Being. . . . hopi hopping with song and foot-schlogging.

y'days run was a solid run against thunder and rain; love running in the rain.  graphic novel idea:  diary of a punk-ass schlogger.

august 3rd--> ran a mixed-surface 10k, starting on the bike trail that cuts alongside the sidewalk merging onto lumina road to shell island and crossed the bird-sanctuary trail to the beach; paused against the clear horizon, then bent into the shore with burning calves and tight achilles and some beauties bathing in early-day sun and then the heat hit, so i slowed down to a moderate pace, eyeing the next water fountain. . . . enjoyed the sound of shoes compressing sand and the voices of children against waves and the general feel-good vibe of august beaches. run was good but heat invaded my endurance and a good pace to a slower form of trudging work. . . . silence on ride home, then mingus and cool shower and preparations for virginia hills this weekend.

some drawings below as studies for upcoming paintings, but photos may or may not capture the energy of upcoming work. . . . inverted, frenetic, disoriented. . . mad, mad & mingus.