I have been asked today to discuss the proper way to traverse the Erie Canal, the 363-mile waterway that links Albany, New York, to Buffalo and the Great Lakes.
Before we go any further, it is important for you to know that I was asked to deliver this talk in a dream.
I know.
It shocked me too.
What you see here is a merger of the sensibilities and artistic triumphs of Maurizio Cattelan and Andy Warhol, both of who saw the intrinsic (and financial) value in the humble banana as art. I do not expect much for this appropriation and mashup of their creativity. Contact me privately with your offer. Make my Christmas …
Long before there was Maurizio Cattelan and his $120,000 banana duct-taped to a wall, there was Andy Warhol and a whole bunch of bananas. And they both claimed them as art.
Like everyone else in the universe, I have been chortling over Cattelan’s “Comedian” which created such a sensation, if that is the correct word, at the Miami Basel earlier this month.
“Miami Basel is literally such a joke,” wrote one friend.
“It’s a party,” responded another, who actually lives in Miami. Continue reading
She sits on the cold stone stoop. She looks neither left nor right.
Her head is bowed, mostly, her left hand extends for alms.
The hand rests on her knee. It is rigid and curled into an unnatural cup. A shape carved over a lifetime. A boney cup meant to hold, pesos, centavos.
Give or don’t give. It is all the same. Continue reading
What crimes were perpetrated upon society, so heinous that such innocent-looking flowers should be locked behind bars?
I ask you.
Are they behind these bars for our protection?
Are they the offspring of legendary Bella Donna? Kin to the deadly sweet-smelling Nerium Oleander? Gang members of Titan Arum, alias the stinky “corpse plant”? Continue reading
The bed of a pickup truck is probably the last place most of us would go looking for art.
The pickup truck has one job: to haul things. We fill the beds with wood, bricks, dirt, furniture, boxes, people, camping gear, tools, food, stuff and more stuff … then we haul it from Point A to Point B.
Job well done. Continue reading
Hummingbirds are drawn to the atrium at the top of our stairwell.
The blue glass lantern looks like a feeder, I think.
But the atrium is like a fish wier. Once a bird flies in, it can’t get out.
There is something sad and poetic about this, as they flutter from corner to corner. Like little feathered Marcel Marceaus, they feel the edges of the glass box, probe the invisible, flap wings against the glass.
Freedom is a fraction of an inch away but the glass will not yield to their perceptions.
Sometimes, on the outside, a mate flies up to the glass. You can feel the concern. Continue reading
Gordon Ramsay knows flan. And you don’t.
Two things happened last week.
My wife, Rose, and her daughter, Caira, binge-watched the 10th anniversary season of Gordon Ramsay’s “MasterChef.”
It is what they love to do when they are together.
Because our place is small, I sort of binge-overheard. Continue reading
Truck carrying decorative stone moves up the Libramente. Also a weird self-portrait.
Many people know that I have a sense of humor that can best be described as “curious.” And at worse, “idiotic.”
Nobody has said that to my face –unless you count Facebook. It is what I tell myself in social situations when I find myself babbling on about … “oh god, what was I just saying? Idiot!”
The view from my terrace this evening, Doves on the wire in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. November 2019.
Like a bird on the wire,
Like a drunk in some old midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
— Leonard Cohen – “Bird on the Wire,” 1979
What can possibly be more free than birds on a wire?
They come. They go. They gather. They fly off on a whim.
Doves gather and coo sweet nothings in each others’ ears.
But mostly they sit silently, thinking thoughts beyond our reach and ken.
They enjoy the buzzy thrum of power surging beneath their feet.
They face forward, into the weather, keeping feathers unruffled.
Much as we wish we could go through life.
Blackbirds watch the world whiz by from a safe perch in Porto, Portugal. October 2019.
The next best thing to birds on a wire?
Birds on a rail.
Eleven blackbirds all in a row.
What a conversation up there!
Blackbirds tell each other the most inappropriate jokes. They make fun of the tourists passing below.
They insult each other and slap each other on the back before flying off in search of a beer.
Separately.
Illusions. Tui, Spain. October 2019.
We walk past buildings and see loose wires, draped across the front.
“An unsightly mess,” we think. Then we walk on.
Into the unsightly mess that is our lives.
The rare soul sees art, or the opportunity for art.
Even rarer is the one who commits the act of art.
Enabling the rest of us, who have passed the same wire for untold ages,
to smile, to chuckle, to enjoy the whimsy of an artistic soul/warrior.
Commit art where and when you can.
Be like Leonard Cohen.
Express yourself.
Let the rest of the world figure it out.
The couple sat down at the next table as I dipped my second churro into a piping hot Chocolate Mexicano.
“I’ll sit right next to my darling sweetheart,” said the man brightly. And a little loudly.
“Who talks like that?” I wondered.
I was especially curious because I happened to be reading a NOVA report on the theory that the Big Bang created a mirrored universe that runs in reverse of ours. Mind you, not for one moment did I think that I’d slipped through the portal and landed in 1947.
It was just, you know, quaint. And a tad patriarchial. But then, she looked like the sort who thought a line like that might be charming, under some circumstances. Continue reading
Musings, Magic, San Miguel and More 