The pooch was ignoring his pal but his pal didn’t care. He knew the y were friends forever and it was always a comfort even when the pooch had his nose in very important business.
Hazardous happenstance
Furtive encounters. happenstance, spontaneity are the romantic deficits of the untrammeled contagion. No escape exists except within ourselves which is no escape at all.
The sharp gaze.
Nothing was innocent about this.
Autumnal Damp
Its fall and everything feels chilled and damp. Almost Halloween and pretty soon the fate of the western world will be decided by the US presidential election. Regardless of the outcome we will not feel any warmer and only marginally safer if Trump loses. We have all seen the night coming and the darkness will not quickly recede.
Rain Dance
The evasion of the inevitable.
Public Gathering
It is hard to remember in the age of Covid how we used to casually gather and talk to each other. Now it seems the only gathering occasions are filled with protest and anger. With occasional gatherings being about the protests towards the safety precautions required to protect all of us. Recently there was a woman on a Scottish airline who refused to wear a mask and was told to get off the flight. Which she did but not before cursing everyone . Her penultimate rage spitball was we all have to die. Yes, that’s true we all have to die. But not necessarily from Covid or the negligence of strangers. Even though we all have to die we should have the option of doing so from the foothills of safety.
Causually Meeting
A long time ago.
My parents' car
I learned to drive on my parents’ car. The one they gave me. A 1970 dodge dart with a slant six engine.
That was the first car they got. In fact the only car they got.My parents were not car people. They were foot people. In their hearts and anywhere else their selves lurked, my parents were refugees. They werealways in or about to be in a state of flight. On foot. For them to choose something that was inescapably strange, like a car, was astonishing. In a moment of illuminated madness they chose the best car ever.
Not only was it a mystery how they discovered this car. It was also a mystery how each of them became licensed to drive. Both myparents wore glasses and my father wasalso deaf in one ear . He would have been about 60 years old when he was learning to drive. His hearing loss was in his right ear which, if he was behind the wheelat the time he was getting his lesson, would put him out of hearing range of the driving instruction.
I am sure my parents arrived at the drivingtest location late, bickering, blaming the other for not being ready on time. My father probably so agitated when he got into the car for the driving test, he could not figure out where to put the key. I can only presume my father bribed his successful completion of the driving test. It probably took five bucks and hewas free to roam among an unsuspecting driving public.
My father was deaf and he had a tenuous relationship with reality. A vestige of his world war two experience was that hesaw reality in a hyper-exaggerated form of menace. Particularly any reality that was different than what he was used to. He would become uncontrollably hysterical at the sight of an improperly folded newspaper. What could he possibly have thought he was going to do with a car improperly changing lanes?
My father only drove the car once. The first timehe got into the driver’s seat he rounded a corner and could not control the steering wheel. He made a complete revolution. Apparently he did not realisethat turning a corner required him to stop the rotation of the drive wheel somewhere in the movement through its circumference. The Dart ended up coming to a halt on someone’s front lawn. My Dad got out of the vehicle and walked away, never to drive it again.
To be continued...
Lost
Sergei Magnitsky
This is Sergei Magnitsky. I did this in 2012 shortly after he died. He is the reason for the Mangitsky Act in the USA that bars Russian thugs who have been implicated in criminal conduct from entering the country. In 2016 Canada was asked and refused to pass similar legislation. So, Dion/Trudeau talk the talk but can they walk the walk? Seems not.
Stanley and Leo
Stanley is 90 and Leo is 103. Good friends, they are both avid readers. They met a couple of years ago and Leo taught Stanley how to cook because Stanley's wife had recently died. I learned about them when I read about Stanley's typical Sunday in the NYT, May 15-16. Stanley's favourite publication is the New York Review of Books, which I also love.
Why I Paint By Simon Schneiderman: Drawn To People
Lots and lots of Sketching
Changed Everything
If art has has as one of its unstated objects the connection with the other I try to connect with others by drawing them. I am trying to bridge the isolation I live in. I am the only child drawing a community of people. Balzac said solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine. Which is to say one hand clapping is okay until you want applause. I use the image of strangers to turn them into companions for myself and anyone else. After all, the unstated question when we look at the image of the other is what do I have in common with you. Maybe nothing but just posing the question is worth the price of admission.
I started painting and drawing because I was unable to write.
I developed an impediment, a writer’s block. It came out of nowhere. I started falling asleep each time I tried to write. Instead of just trying to fight the block I thought, maybe I could fool the brain by trying another means of expression. Draw instead of write. But that was easier said than done.
I didn’t know how to draw and I wasn’t born with the drawing gene I thought you needed. Then I read a book that changed everything. Drawing on the Right side of the Brain. The book showed me through various exercises that anyone could learn how to do draw. That drawing was a language, no different than Spanish or French. If I learned the alphabet of drawing, perspective, shading, line. If I practiced a lot and learned how to see I could learn how to draw. I started carrying a little book with me everywhere I went. I filled dozens of those books with sketches. I worked every day to deepen my drawing vocabulary. These books became little records of my life, almost like a visual diary. Drawing of my kids, my travels. People on subways, lawyers in court, everyone and everything. That’s how it started and so it goes.