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Better Daze Illustrated 2

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  • jwm March 3, 2021, 11:37 AM

    “Every act of beauty is a revolt against the modern world.”
    Because Beauty is Truth
    is Goodness is…

    I haven’t been participating much as of late, but I follow the conversation.
    Gerard’s spectacular content, plus the ongoing discussion here are always bright points in the day. This place helps keep me sane. I’m not doing much internet either. No Ace, No Whatfinger, no Breitbart. And I haven’t had TV since forever. The news of the day, exposure to the entire all-encompassing nightmare is like shoving your face in a toilet bowl. Right now, I’m fine with letting others do it. I’ll take their word on how bad it smells.
    In the mean time everyone is simmering with anger. Everything is going to hell in a handbasket.
    Which leads us to the overwhelming question:
    Just what exactly am I to *do* in the face of all this, other than to stay as prepared as I can?
    Go to a protest? Write a letter to my congressman? Write an essay?
    No.
    A few weeks ago Gerard posted a video of some of the French impressionists at work. Somehow the footage of Rodin working a heavy mallet & chisel at 80 some years of age stuck with me. It lit a fire that has been dead in me for a very long time. So I built a new table, brought my tools out of mothballs, and I’m back at work on a stone that I abandoned over fifteen years ago. I’m on fire again. This is the greatest gift I could have been given right now. Gratitude meter is pegged. (Stone’s coming out good, too.)

    And I got the bike gang. And my wife and I are bringing our friends, together for a second season of backyard gatherings. We started this for our friends last spring. To an individual, everyone has thanked us profusely for providing an island of joy in this ocean of crap we’re dealing with. This year we’re turning the bi-weekly BBQ into a ‘show & tell’ artist, musicians, dilettantes, and amateurs of all things creative sort of seminar. Or maybe we’ll just drink, smoke, and bullshit all afternoon.
    Point is, I can not stop what’s going down from going down. As much as it is humanly possible, I’m disengaging from the insanity, and creating what value I can where I can create it. We gotta’ fight the Darkness where we meet it. And we meet it face to face with the people who are closest to us. I can’t stop the big stuff. I can maybe do some good on the small things right in front of me.

    JWM

  • ghostsniper March 3, 2021, 12:42 PM

    Good on you JW, keep on pounding that stone. I too am faltering, at everything internet. The luster, the thrill, are gone. I don’t know what to make of it. Some how I had steered into another direction. Sort of like the past 20 years of internet submersion has become tiresome and mostly unrewarding. I check into a few places a few times a day but the rest of the time I’m occupied with other things.

    It’s still cold here in the mornings, 28 degrees this morning at 6am, but now at 3pm it’s in the low 60’s and things are getting done and other things are in the cue. Bought a new washing machine last month and the old one is sitting on the side porch waiting to get picked up. I need to flip it upside down and get the motor, and maybe the pump too, out of it. Never know when a motor will come in handy. Dealing with the mountain of delivery boxes in the workshop, throwed there over the winter. Everytime I think I’m done cutting them up I find another bunch behind some stuff. When I do finally burn em it’ll look like the world is on fire. But they gotta go, and I mean now. I got a load of construction lumber (plywood and 2x materials) coming next week and it’s got to go in the work shop til I’m ready to use it, don’t want it exposed to the elements. So yeah, I gotta get rid of some refined trees to make room for some less refined trees. Crazy, no?

    Muscles that have not been used much are talking their shit. They want to go sit on their winter ass but my summer mind is whipping them like a rented mule. Eat the pain. I got a 26 mile hike coming the end of the month and as of right now I’m not qualified but by then I will be, regardless. And on and on.

    The daffodils were poking up through the snow last week and now they are about 6″ tall. Easter’s coming, they always tell me so. I got a new solar array to install and the batts are sitting over there gurgling in their boxes, and speaking of bats one of the goals this year is to get the old bat house down and build and install a new one. They seem to wear out after about 10 years. Bats is amazing, I like watching them at twilight. Our cats are captivated by them.

    There was a nudge on my leg and I looked down. That white and tan face is long and it wants to go out and get some sun. When I finish this I’ll say, “Let’s go outside and stretch a leg!” and Shannon will dance her little jig mostly in mid air.

    Peace, out.

  • Mike Anderson March 3, 2021, 1:10 PM

    OK, even though I’m an old Air Force ground-pounder, I’m pretty sure that fellow is not showing us the proper way to deploy a Claymore mine.

  • Kevin in PA March 4, 2021, 5:58 AM

    Wow, I hear you jwm.
    I’m disgusted, disillusioned and angry at pretty much everything that’s passed in the previous 12 months. It’s worse than sticking one’s head in the toilet bowl.

    I hope you will share pictures of your project in stone. Sculpture is something that has always fascinated me. Perhaps you might even indulge your friends here at AD with a collage of photos as your project developed….or is that taboo to share your work before it is complete?

    I wait for the weather to warm and for my hands to plunge into the soil of my vegetable patch. To work in the compost that has been rotting over the past several months, to smell the richness of the earth, to see life return.

    In the meantime, I find great solace here and thank Gerard for the beauty he shares daily. And to the many commenters who seem to be some of the only sane people remaining in my world.

  • gwbnyc March 4, 2021, 8:52 AM

    Johnny Stompanato rears his ugly head- a friend’s, now deceased, glamour girl Jane Easton, name was found in Johnny’s notorious Little Black Book.