... What an artist thinks…No…What an artist feels is what I perhaps now feel. I am connected with all the chaos below. I am floating. No I am standing in the midst of screaming, of blood dripping, of detached limbs and heads and emptied torsos, crushed oozing bodies, flames, of sirens sounding, of a thousand screams, no, ten thousand prayers to a living GOD. Where is God today in all this confusion? No answer. Perhaps an answer later. Perhaps.
Valley of tears is a phrase from a childhood prayer comes into focus to label this instant. Life on Earth can indeed become a trek through a great valley of tears. Lord have mercy. Amen.
An artist inspires. An artist touches the souls or is it the spirits of others when they look at his creation, his painting, his music, reads his book. At this moment I want to look away. I have no choice. I am part of this moment. The moment sculpts reality into eternal pictures.. Thoughts and photographic images, real in the human sense, real in the spiritual sense are being formed.
The living and the dead will no doubt in their own time stand back and admire or not understand or may even despise the art of this present moment. Where is the museum? It is here. Time stands still on this planet or at least slows down. Time pauses from second to second. A hundred lives passed in one second. Then two hundred lives passed on not the next second but the second after that. And so on an so forth. Statistics amass.
Amidst the screams and sighs and puzzled thoughts of the unexpected dead, a silence comes. I slip from this macro of life and fade into some micro aspect of my former existence.
I come to a bright sun filled prairie. A simple wood clapboarded, white washed house stands in stark contrast to clear blue sky and rich green vegetation textures. A woman with her back to me is hanging wet laundry on clothes lines a short distance from the house. A small barn is also in view. On a short stone wall sits an old woman in a plain white robe. She is watching a small child, a girl in a gingham dress walking about the yard area. The old woman looks in my direction. I recognize her. She is Myrtle. I had been her elder in a church I belonged to. The last church I had belonged to. Haven’t been to church for a long time.
She smiles a faint smile at me. I never made it to her funeral. She never had a funeral when she died at 94. Her body had been willed to science. The thought occurs to me that she is perhaps dreaming about some scene from her own childhood in early twentieth century rural Illinois. Myrtle gives me non-verbal nods to my questions to her. She had made it to the other side. I would not consider donating my mortal coil to be entrusted to the likes of some smirking first year medical students…
The smell of charred meat. How I always hated that smell. Leaving the roast in the oven too long to dry up and then to burn.
More like a barbecue smell. The teacher in eighth grade wrote in chalk on the slate blackboard common American words that originated in other languages. Barbecue had Spanish origins I think. I remember this as the pungent smell of burning meat rolls off the olfactory senses of a wandering creature all bent over as if in pain. Clothed in a thick dark outfit, he climbs stairs, step after step after step after bloody, dusty step.
The fireman’s breathing is labored. He occasionally reaches for assistance in breathing from the tank hanging off his back. Crackling noise of walkie-talkie sounds mix with breathing, and hisses and the smell of burned meat dance around senses in a misty fog of smoke coming and going. The smell of burning petrol and plastic add to this undefinable barbecue sauce.
Why do I smell human smells if I am truly dead? Why am I suddenly connecting in consciousness to the senses of one living man, this fireman? Why am I connected back to the world of the living?
People push by on the dark stairs.
The fireman’s flashlight wavers back and forth to give momentary assistance to the descending surviving refugees of terror. The fireman’s goal is upward, ever upward. A ladder to heaven is not possible but in this behemoth structure heaven might in fact be at the top of this arduous climb.
At the Core of Donald Trump and Mike Pence's fear of face masks for disease prevention is the Obsolete 19th Century Robber Barron Racist belief in the Survival of the Fittest. This racist, classist coded visual message among Right Wing ruling class politician types today is moot. Stupid people these days are not superior or immortal; they are just Stupid. .
Yesterday, Hawaii was attacked by the Empire of Japan. We are waiting on the Governor of Hawaii to see what his response to this supposed incident is. It is that Governor's responsibility in this matter to react to this attack. And I am as popular as ever boys. .
Rumors running rampant and Ryan Reynold's safe distancing La La Land drinking club grapevine that Don Johnson is vigorously resisting (threatened lawsuits) re-release of his first starring Film Debut and almost Career Ending film, soft core skin flick (then Rated R?) "the Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart". Sequel (adapted) script by author Robert T Westbrook has an aged Stanley (Bruce Willis) waking up from a decades long bad acid trip, finding himself old, alone and a greeter at the Hell's Gate entrance of a Wal-Mart in Northeast Philly. Some flashbacks to 12 Monkeys and Stanley Sweetheart (sans the nude Don Johnson) and Stanley is befriended by a Russian oligarch shopping at the Wal-Mart for TP. The Russian oligarch befriends the aged Stanley and offers him a new Job. As it turns out it is Super President of Russia Vladimer Putin and the new job is none other than POTUS of the new Russian state of North America. President Sweetheart (Bruce) hooks up with a granddaughter of Cathy (Kim Kardashian) and the rest of movie is filmed in the POTUS bedroom at the White House. Adapted Stanley Sweeheart Deux film said to be already optioned by the legendary film maker M. Night Shyamalan to be adapted as a quasi sequel with Bruce Willis, via a 12 Monkeys theme as another one of his Philly-Noir masterpieces. Working Title: Kenzo Covid Bites
A billboard is installed on an apartment building in Cape Town, South Africa, Wednesday, March 25, 2020, before the country of 57 million people, will go into a nationwide lockdown for 21 days from Thursday to fight the spead of the new coronvirus. The new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms for most people, but for some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness or death. (AP Photo/ Nardus Engelbrech) .
It is hard to put oneself in self-imposed exile from a dysfunctional family such as the House of Windor-Mountbatten. Prince Harry, like his mother before him, chose to walk away when it became apparent that whipping boy of the reign of E2, is passing away into history, and Charles, as direct heir can no longer do the role of whipping boy that he shared at times with his late aunt Princess Margaret. That Margaret was not allowed to marry beneath her station in life caused so many problems later into her life. That Edward VIII was not allowed to marry the person he needed to function in life with, a partner that was contaminated by religious supersition mojo regarding divorce and also being an American led him to abdicate and live the rest of his life in exile from the dysfunctional clowns on the payroll at Buck House under the monarch is in residence flag. That the Duchess of Sussex is an American and of mixed race is part of the typical Brit racism that has precipated the present Duke of Sussex to take stock of his life and move to the friendly shores of North America and its lack of obsolete dogmatic royal bloodline stuff, but more on a system of merit to get on in life. That the Frogmore Cottage thing, to live in the shadow of the castle and still be separate but equal. Can we sell you stock in the Brooklyn Bridge Harry old chum? Wink. Nod. The bickering in the press last spring and summer between the Duchess and the White Princess, future White Queen, was all baloney as I saw it. The same playbook from the Palace for getting Rid of Diana, the first Princess of Wales with Charles, was in play in the Royal playing field for him and his new wife methinks. And funny thing, Harry is not stupid. Good Luck to the current Duke of Windsor and his family.
