Pico de Orizaba

Pico de Orizaba
Taken from Huatusco, Veracruz, the closest town to Margarita's family's ranch.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

"To Kneel at the Feet of the Choices You've Made"



I love that line... by Massive Attack... It hits me in the center of my mind... for a moment... while painting for the first time... since December 9th... kiss the feet of the choices you've made... good or bad or neutral, a picture in my head; a vassel kneeling infront of the king, bending towards the floor... an islamic man with his forehead upon the floor, praying... or just a person without definition with generic human value kisses the toes of their memories... of their decisions... of their actions... Kiss the toes of their memories or actions or decisions? We are also subjects to ourselves... we must confront our selves, our decisions, reactions, beliefs...




Trying to jump-start my other mind, that other part of my life partially laying dormant since December 9th...




Escape, runaway, suicide, change, transformation, a caterpiller weaves itself into a cocoon and later on crawls out a butterfly, slide show, change the frame, sliding across space, across bounderies, from one reality to another, from one illusion to another... a water slide... a bobsled run... Suddenly we find ourself sliding down a fast rapids, fear triggers reflexively intense oar strokes that prevent capsizing and injury or worse and we find ourselves "on top" of the situation, gliding alongside rocks and through deep dips and over water moguls and suddenly shot out onto a tranquil lake, silver surfaced like a mirror... Adrenalin pumped heart still beating in our throats as we let the canoa coast on its own momentum, turning itself gently enough enabling the view of other canoes capsizing in the rapids we crossed without mishap... someone yells towards us to wait for the rest... or it's my conscience telling me to wait... or its fair of finding ourselves alone for having gone too far ahead... so I tell Steve to brace the canoe as I dive into the vast pool of slow moving water... and we resume, dreaming of encountering another fast rapids along this typically lazy river between soft mountain edges of the river cut valley with cliffs way up the sides, slipping away from a recent past to a suddenly different present, looking towards the future across what seems like an interminable gray lake towards the end of summer... I remember that 13-year-old boy sliding his canoe, seeking the limits of force or endurance of his chest, shoulder, biceps and back muscles intensely pushing his canoa 39 miles downstream from Milford towards the Delaware Water Gap, every meter of river slid across with the ever changing scenery perpetually repeated a rebirth, reward... skimming the silvery water surface with the oar when coasting, resting, meditatively... I remember this 44-year-old man gliding towards 45... viewing the silvery water's surface of his life, which is also the life of so many others... a perspective... ... ...


It's familiar... in the middle of the painting... stream of consciousness... it feels very familiar... and I realize I've painted this before... I'm repeating myself, although it isn't an intentional painting... But, some strange painting or sketching or drawing impulse repeats itself... And I wonder...

And I wonder just how much I should repeat myself or is that just what we do... repeat ourselves in some way or another... But, for some reason I never repeated that suddenly discovered new passion of pushing a canoa across a river for 3 days... Although I dreamed of returning one day...

So I pick up a book... one that I've never read before and imagine I'm not repeating myself... although I have this tendency towards picking up a book and passing much time just reading... like oar strokes on a very wide and slow part of a river, much like canoeing across a vast lake...

But where are we going and when we get there... but where, truthfully? And haven't I written something like that before?


Sí Sí Sí pienso en ti cuando escribo esto... y cuando pienso, pienso en español...  Pero, en relación contigo, parece que la unica decisión relacionada contigo junto a que agacho fue la decisión dejarlo Scott ir con lo suyo en vez de esperar hacer una decisión hasta después de nuestra reunión la siguiente mañana.  Parece que todos las decisiónes fueron tuyas...  Entonces, ¿por qué pensar en ti cuando escribo ésto? 

Buena pregunta...  

Ok bueno...  

Español...  English... The decisions we make... like suddenly selling my stuff and packing up the rest and leaving for Mexico...  That's a decision I made at which I kneel... every day.  But, I don't regret that decision... It's not about regrets but about understanding the complex arrangement of possible repercussions....  

We don't regret repercussions?

Maybe.  But there are some we must accept as a fair trade-off...  

Choices or inevitabilities due to our special personality, style or character...  Maybe there is just no other life we could have lived... meaning that maybe we couldn't have responded to the situation at the time in a different form...  Maybe your brother couldn't have avoided the suicide and you couldn't have prevented it... Maybe it was all part of a grander lesson for those who must learn something from his suicide and what led up to it; me very indirectly...  But, I am sure this is what connected us and what separated us... some strange lesson... 

Choices...  How much of life isn't a choice?  I must be writing English as it would be spoken in Spanish... in the negative.  The question isn't to focus on what isn't chosen, but to emphasize just how much is chosen;  "¡Cuantas cosas MADRINA!  ¡Cuantas cosas no pasamos juntos!"  No, it's not a question but and exclamation, and emphasis upon the things we did together...  It's a speaking backwards... a local "street-style" of speaking...  

So here's the question:How much of life is constructed upon choices?

But why does one choose in one style and another choose in a totally different style?  And could we have chosen differently?

But you would find yourself frozen in time repeatedly going back for changing the decision to see what could be the different possible response, result, repercussion... to your choice...

If I hadn't responded to you had I responded to you that day...  But, I responded that we and that was that... unchangeable...  leading to a possible chain reaction of responses and forms of relating... a part of our lives... and a memory of a person, people, and relationships...

Do you remember that night I took you to a party mutual friends from The Tea Lounge (I believe they were mutual friends; in the local acting circle) threw one night and you and I spent some time sitting on top of the washer and dryer?  And a drunk woman (I believe she was drunk) asked me something strange or personal related to kissing a stranger and I responded in my typical timid fashion causing her to exclaim something to the tone of "too bad for you!" as if I had just lost the opportunity to kiss her...  But, I believe, aside from being timid or shy, I was also being loyal to you; meaning that I went with you (our night out on the town together) and focussing on a stranger in that state and a relationship in that form would have been incredibly inconsiderate por parte mia ;-)

But... looking back upon the history, nothing became of our friendship and maybe I should have been inconsiderate towards you and experimented with another part of me...

And then the childish phrase blurts down from the sky, "Could have...  Should have... Would Have.... BUT YOU DIDN'T FOOOOOOOL!"

What I did is that I didn't play the cards in a way that you and I would still be incontact today as friends...  We didn't marry and have test-tube babies, as you had once thought appropriate for you and I...  And I ended up finally doing something really good for myself and I married someone who truly wanted to be with me...  who would create a life with me very important and interesting...  

Over the years I've mentioned you enough for Margarita to know you as Michele or la lesbiana...  La Lesbiana?  But, not spoken in a derogatory fashion... one of the names connected with your person equal in value as what your parents put on your birth certificate... Or am I wrong with that?  What else could we label you for identification means?  

You were confused.  I was incredibly foolish or naive or desperate for profound connections... immature?  Well you were too... inevitable within a person struggling for discovering themselves and their world or their value or their interests or their health... desperately struggling against losing control.  It's bad enough that circumstances were lost controls of other harming you and causing you (and me) to run...  

How many songs written with the theme of "Run, Run, Run..."?  

I think of The Doors, Pink Floyd...  I'm sure if we probe our music memories, we'll find so many more songs about running away or running towards or trying to catch up with... only to find that we were always standing in the same place; within ourselves, within our lives... within our destiny... the route that we must travel...

And the person who never lost their composure and was always in control and never made mistakes and never looked foolish...  And maybe that was a mistake in itself...  Or maybe that was just their lesson and their life.  In the long run, not better nor worse, but something they must life... Just as you must have done what you must have done to have the life or the success you have now.  But, I don't know just how much happier that makes you feel.  I imagine you must be content with yourself.  I was surprised by the photo of you with the new TV Star look...  Looking at that photo, I imagine it's a sign that all your work or struggling paid off and you are entering a space you sought...  

I say to myself, "I wish I could have obtained an equivalent artistic success"... and then I catch myself and wonder if I just don't understand myself well enough at that moment...

And I think about two nights ago when I fould myself painting again for the first time since Margarita's grandmother died on December 9th...  and I look at my paintings all over the house.  And if I look at them with a certain quality of light... night or day... or looking at them as if I had forgotten that they were on the wall... or looking at them as if they had just appeared in the corner of my eye... I realize that maybe just maybe they are pretty awesome...  But, does that justify the pursuit of fame or possible economic success as an artist?  

What would be the possible repercussions of that pursuit?  You trade one thing for another...

In order to truly focus upon myself as an artist, I must tap into a much more egoistic space within.  I may gain one thing.  But, I know what I would lose in the process: my relationship with Margarita...  

But why write you?

I imagine there are some communications we must maintain within this lifetime, even if those communications are limited to a very spiritual level; not spiritual in mindset, but spiritual as in another dimension of our existence...  "when she appears in your mind, it is possible that your thoughts or memories just crossed... nothing more and nothing less.  But, possibly more important than somethings we thought were important and probably weren't...  

I just had a flash of the sidewalk curving around the Brooklyn Art Museum walking towards the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens one afternoon... I tried to connect the flash with someone and Randi, Anya and Joey appeared... So, it had nothing to do with anyone in particular...  

Makes me think of something more like...kneeling at the feet of the choices you didn't make...  like not choosing outdoor sports (hiking, canoeing, kayaking etc) as an important pass-time.  

It was the first time I had gone on a canoe-trip and the first time I remember intentionally challenging my body and my endurance level... Steve and I made an incredible team and we constantly challenged the other canoers in races down the river... and we were the best...  But the best was pushing my muscles to their limits and continuing onward...  I was becoming a man.  But, I never made one thing me...  with the exception of being Margarita's husband and Spanish my only spoken language, as strange as that may sound... 

I realized that I'm not really a good writer, although at times I write well...  I'm not really a painter or an artist...  I'm an excellent cook; it's truly magic at my fingertips... But, who will know my cooking outside of my very closed world?

Over time life tells you what you are truly doing and what you won't do, no matter your fantasies or desires...  And, I guess we've gotta accept those structural limits...  No matter how much she wished, Gertrude Stein couldn't be an Aryan Male...  I have 5 "planets" in Virgo...  Gemini Sun and Mars in Sagittarius is wonderful for flying... to Mexico for instance... But, Virgo is the sign of the isolating and intellectual Hermit.  You were fortunate to find yourself at the tale-end of Leo that allowed you to seek the spotlight and gave you the belief that you should control the inter-personal situations...


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