Dream big - draw big

Greetings,

This is the day of my dreams: The color of a hammer on brick. A trumpet, cement smoothing tool, dance.

A bike. Free wind pushing a child. A clean clear air song. High grey clouds.

Process becoming: Butterflies: yellow, white, brown, black, orange speckled. 

Closing down the connections. Absolving thieves their mysteries. Selling toys.

I am the Rocket Tourist at 20% operating capacity. 

The Marxist tools of production: knife, hoe, axe, elephant control stick, scythe, hammer.

Her daughter's card was the Master. Her card was Intensity. His card was the Rebel. After a dinner of grilled salmon, green salad, black olives, and fresh hot bread in Bursa they went to a cafe high above the smell and music of a river.

The river flowed strong and fast from Green Mountain. Dancing with stars was a silver-white crescent moon. They listened to water as the river cried. It was cold (May) and she wrapped his long soft leather jacket around her shoulders. She was happy.

Her daughter sat across from them drawing in this book (filled with transformations and great powerful understanding. Waves) and drinking hot chocolate. She was happy. Although now, only 8 and a strong willed child, she was a guest performer musician (piano) and character actor. She looked at them and said, Being correct is never the point.

Please put the blue sky on the white table. Unfold it gently. It is fragile and may be slightly creased along the horizon.  

Am I a clown searching along the ground for an appropriate mask?

Am I this or am I dreaming? 

Metta.

Art Women

Greetings,

The sewing woman returned to her guesthouse early with her girlfriend to change clothes, spit into red roses and splash water on her face.

She kick started her cycle and they went to the market, deep inside the labyrinth to her corner stall. She unlocked multiple locks, stacked wooden shutters and dragged out her sewing machine, ironing board and iron.

She lined up manikins. They wore her work: exquisite yellow, purple, blue, white shimmering silks decorated with sparkling faux-paws silver stars, moons, and small round reflecting balls. Her work was for women needing refinement, special elaborate occasions; weddings, funerals and engagements.

She did good work and stayed busy. Serious fittings and adjustments. 

Her sewing universe: process, fabric, measurement, ironing backing, a ruler, white chalk to mark pleats, cutting, sewing machine treadle, edges, pins, threads, trimming edges, hand sewing clasps, shiny connections, ironing.

Inside this slow prism threads of nets flashed light and shadow, needles danced through cloth in endless conversations. The needles talked about traditional values and the opportunity cost. They perform quick precise calculations to establish a stop-loss figure

smashing blocks of ice inside a bag with a blunt instrument creating a symphony of hips rolling outside these unspoken words as a homeless man with a pair of tired brown pants thrown over a shoulder using a solid walking stick sits down to rest and shy women avert their beautiful seductive deep pool eyes

women manipulate stacks of printed government issued paper trusting a perceived value in exchange for goods: meat, fruit, gold, fabric, counting and arranging denominations inside broken beams of light, cracked cement, lost mislaid wooden planks, debris, feathers,

jungles, jangled waves surveying commercial landscapes with the quick dispatch of dialects as Black H'mong girls far away near Sapa rivers and waterfalls express their creation story

Metta.

 

 

Egyptian Art

Greetings, 

These images are from a mural at an Indonesian school where I had 100 ten-year old teachers a year ago. They graduated to Grade 5 and I graduated back to Vietnam and the University of the Street. The kids said, "there's book learning and there's street learning."

read more...

Metta.

Head work

Greetings,

Actual raw material.
Make it new day by day, make it new.
Am I this or am I dreaming?
Non-verbal energies and perspectives. 

Nature is what you can be, and culture is what you are.

Metta.

Dance hall

Greetings,

The dancing hall at Preah Khan is where dancers don't smile. They dance. They are slave dancers, all the women.

They dance for the king. He is the god-king. He has resurrected his desire and fury creating new customs, new decrees for dancers. They dance for the mighty and powerful. They dance Khmer stories about war, conquest, harvests, seasons, sun, and moon. 

They are submissive dances of life/death. They dance to celebrate life. They dance the celebration of tranquility. They dance or die. They wear tinkling bands of gold around wrists and ankles. They wear diamond diademed crowns and shimmering silk clothing. They do not smile. Their faces are frozen in the trance of dance.

One dances to escape the tyranny. She's danced all her short, sweet life.

The hall of dancers is surrounded by columns, portals and broken jumbled green moss stones. Thick gnarled silk-cotton tree roots crawl toward dancers. They dance through roots, past Shiva and Vishnu. The preserver and destroyer of life. 

Two foreign dancers dance with guide books. Golden leafed pages dance past their eyes. A guide who knows everything watches them. They are blind. He dances alone.

Metta.

Phimeamakas, Preah Pithu, Thommanon, Chau Say Thevoda...