Siberia With A View

I mine hypnopompic interludes for gems, remaining in bed for a quarter hour or so each morning while I wake fully, bedcovers pulled to my chin as I sift material from post slumber hallucinations.

Most mornings, I’m unable to retrieve the better ideas and images once I am awake and alert, though I sense them as they recede and dissolve. I know they are better because what I manage to recall is of little use once I sit down at the keyboard, or stand before the easel in the studio.

One morning, however, debris of value appears, keyed by my viewing of a news network program: “The Year in Review.” I snatch it up, hustle it to the surface, and kick-start an amalgamation of what, at other times, would be unrelated ideas and images. Not so, this day: I detect a pattern, elements dovetail neatly together; the pattern develops with distinctive, albeit unusual, internal logic. Continue reading →

I’m watching television and, instead of studying repeat episodes of Live PD or Policewomen of Dallas as part of my ongoing investigation into oppression of the underclass, I have my set tuned to a “news” channel. The host discusses an interview with our current president, noting the number of lies our fearless leader tells per minute.

The chief executive outrages my liberal friends, but I like to remind them his behavior is not unusual. Most politicians of all stripes are grifters, hustlers in service to ready sources of money, nearly all of them bottom feeders and liars whose contrition when their cons are discovered issues not from a moral awakening, but is born in an attempt to conceal their frustration at being temporarily thwarted in their pursuit of funds, fame, and flings.

That said, there’s no denying the oaf in the Oval Office has set a standard that tinplate dictators, zealous ideologues, and oil-rich despots will be hard-pressed to top.

It’s like the time you hire an entertainer for Bitsy’s sixth birthday party. The doorbell rings, and you open it to find a grossly obese parolee in full clown makeup, drunk, vomiting in the flowerpot, and naked from the waist down but for a pair of grotesquely large shoes. Continue reading →

It’s my brother’s fault.

Not quite a year ago, my brother, Kurt, decided to ignore a couple of heart attacks, possibly as many as three.

Perhaps “decided” is not the most accurate term; he had two or three heart attacks, of a less than elephant-sitting-on-the-chest quality, was told by an HMO doc that it was acid reflux resulting from lunches taken nearly every work day at an Iraqi restaurant in southeast Denver, and Kurt did nothing further about it. It made sense to him that five large helpings per week of Timman Ou Keema — the extra-spicy version — might provoke a reaction.

He did nothing, until he experienced major heart failure. Continue reading →

I’ve neglected this site for a month or more because I’m feeble; I do ridiculous things that cause me to suffer, and I’m easily distracted by stress.

Should you care, I apologize.

It’s no surprise when I do something monumentally inane; this is a habit I adopted as an adolescent, and I continue it to this day. Mastery requires practice. Consider me a master. Continue reading →