Confessions of a Starving Artist

New Year’s Day… is now the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions.  Next week you can begin paving Hell with them as usual.  ~ Mark Twain

People who know me best would offer that I’m not someone with the most Christmas spirit.  I think that it only fits that I am most comfortable when the 25^th of December has finally come and gone.  I’ve tried just about every mental episode that I can creatively come up with in order to frolic in the Yule Tide festivities, but no matter how I try to light that light upon the highest bow, I only end up frustrated, disappointed, drunk, or some combination of all three.  Only recently have I come to understand that my utter lack of approval or judgment on the Christmas holiday has relinquished me of any sort of stress and strain.  Nonetheless, it is not until the proverbial morning after that I feel like I’m truly on vacation.  Something’s you just cannot shake no matter how hard you try.

So here we are in the waning days of 2008.  Some of my old political notions already seem trite and short-sighted as I listen to Bob Dylan’s Tell Tale Signs: Rare and Unreleased 1989-2006.  Still, a trickle of ye ole still emotion run though, and it’s that small stream that I try to wash my concepts within to see if they can still come out clean.  Doesn’t always work, and that’s okay with me.  You’ve got to tote your ideas as right almost to the point of lunacy if the are ever going to pass through what Jim Morrison may have called ‘The Other Side’.  If they don’t make it across a conversational Bataan Death March, well, those were the ones that just weren’t supposed to make it.  But the nice thing about parlor chemistry is that experiments that fail do not result necessarily in failure.  Revision, re-examination, return to innovation; we can hope that these are the fates of thoughts plucked and raised from salted dreamscapes and meditations.

The week after Christmas gets me ready for the New Year because it seems like a condensed version of the spiritual struggle of the year, which tends to get misplaced within busy schedules and boredoms, lookings forward and dwellings upon.  Come January we’ll make our plans and goals nested so comfortably within our resolutions, but nearly as quickly we’ll forget and chase down the next fifty meter life target and then the next and the next, until we are perhaps too far from our original intentions to continue without some form of revision.  Such is this fleeting week of this year.  This weekend we look boldly forth, seeing an apparent and endless sea of time to meet and greet, cheer and be merry, as well as construct those valuable minutes work that need to be done.  However, those post-holiday sweatpant afternoons and lazy mornings eat upon our fragile time so much so that we quickly loss track of what is going on around us, and before long, we are looking at what we can cut out in a meager attempt to sprint to the finish.

Unlike Christmas, I enjoy New Year’s Eve.  I think that it is much more in line with what I would call the spiritual portion of my life.  The weakness of man may lie in those sins outlined in The Bible or other testaments of faith, but I think that it can be far more surmised in the expression of indifference toward that which needs to be done with regards to individual convictions or whom or whatever the individual chooses to align themselves with.  Its far to grandiose to think that each and everyone of us will be able to make a sound and perfectly matched spiritual awareness out of relative thin air, so adhering to the words of institution is not only far more likely for people to hold to, but it is also far stable, comforting in numbers.  That being said, whatever your beliefs, its our collective indifference to them, toward accomplishing them, toward adhering to them, that mars our spirit.  Perhaps this makes the human Will the highest spiritual calling?  I may well set this thought upon a route through the desert.

Nonetheless, it’s our intentions, our adherences, which allow us this exercise of Will.  One seems fairly useless without the other.  I think then that our emplacement of resolutions at the end of the week are considerably worthwhile, even though they don’t really carry the added weight of direct spiritual dogma.  Rather, it’s more of a more concise exercise to set a benchmark for ourselves and achieve it.  No real ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ sort of scenario.  Just a check on what you can do… and if you can do it with what you want, then I suppose its all a matter of what you really want.

My resolutions are fairly small scale but self-improving.  Most are on the docket anyway, but I think it will be worthwhile to put them down in this time and space to create some form of visual reminder.

1.  Get back into Martial Arts.  My mind was never more pure and my body more sound.  It has served as the root of all that I have become, and yet somehow I’ve left it by the wayside for the gym and late nights at the bar.  It’s time for the artist to return to the easel.

2.  Learn how to ride a motorcycle.  This is just part of the family line.  Something about being an American of the caliber that I have shown to be, or at least, think that I have.  As unassuming as this may seem, I don’t think I need to explain myself any further.

3.  Get a concealed carry permit and purchase a handgun.  Again, this is a sense of something that actually falls under American entitlement.  Further, at this point, not having one just feels strange; a warrior without his sword.  Besides, what’s all this training worth if you are unarmed when the unexpected comes?

4.  Get back into Soccer.  Regardless of what’s going on with me, a quick game of soccer always releases me from whatever ails.  I just don’t do it enough.  I might volunteer as a coach or I might start in with the Latinos and pick up some games.  Dunno right now.

5.  Finish writing Acadia.  More to follow…

Some small things, but yet they seem to be the last of the big things, if that makes any sense.  By that I mean that in my grand plan, if I can get beyond these things listed here, I may find myself in a situation where I’m right were I want to be.  I realize how that sounds, as if somehow I’m not were I want to be.  What I’d rather seek to convey would be… I don’t know a good way to put it.  Centered?  Comfortable?  Balanced?  None of those are quite right.  Maybe that’s because what I’m going for is so rarely, if ever, achieved for very long.  Who can know, really, until after you’ve crested the mountain and can look back and say whether for certain you were there or not.  But I’ll tell you what:  I’ll be sure and let you know about this time next year.

And So This Is Christmas…  ~ The Beatles

I’ve noticed that a lot of people who are not native to the State of Maine have a very idealized version of Christmas.  While it is true, one can see white blankets of snow resting upon the pine bows and large families coming together around a roaring fires can be common place, it is far more likely to see several women dressed in sweat pants and rubber boots in the jewelry store and more than ten snowmobiles in the local Wal-Mart parking lot.  Even as a native, I as have to remember that we are not as ideal as I would sometimes like to think that we are.  Then again, I think that most people can, in some sense or fashion, say the same about there respective situations, be it the holidays or not.

What is strange though is that we all have a romanticized version of Christmas, which almost inevitably does not come to fruition despite the amount of pre-Christmas planning, prepping, and primping that we put into the affair.  At least for me, the only time that Christmas has ever been exactly as I hoped it would be were those rare overseas Christmas eves when I was able to go to the bar, drink without interruption (mainly because I would pick the bar that didn’t speak much English) and wake up with a solid hangover, just in time to get steaks and go play video games.  The think about hanging around with others who have the so-called “Christmas Spirit” is that they, without fail, have their own agenda to create and live out the best Christmas ever… and depending on the individual, they may or may not walk all over your special day to get it.

Therefore, I’ve found it best to place expectations low.  I set small goals equaling success for myself; if I get some hot mulled cider to drink by a fire and a tin of home-made Chex Party Mix all to myself, then I’m a happy little Santa’s helper.  Okay, so maybe I’m still a Grinch, but at least I’m a less obnoxious, less drunk one.

What I think is important to note for the sake of further observation is that both my cider and Party Mix requirements were filled on days other than Christmas; my cider was sipped yesterday and my tin of Party Mix will not likely be fully engulfed until tomorrow or the day after.  Which leads me to my next spirited and festive thought – why Christmas?

To be clear, I’m not saying “Why Christmas” as if to add to the over-arching war on Christmas, nor am I implying anything in the least toward the Christian religion who notably claims a hold on the day that goes a bit beyond figgy pudding and red-nosed reindeer.  What I am saying is more along the line of “Why the 25^th of December?”  The over-all people of the holiday, excluding the religious factor, is to gather and to give (I think) and it would seem that this is about as universal as fruitcake to most families.

I usually come home to Maine twice a year, once for the 4^th of July and then again on Christmas.  When I’m home for the summer months, mom and dad simply call all the relatives and grand parents who are around, and both sides of the family have a huge BBQ.  There is no set day for it, it just sort of goes off without too much of a hitch; no expectations, no frills, just good food and family.  Not sure why Christmas then becomes such a stress-fest.  Perhaps it’s the road conditions and the lack of short-sleeve shirts, but then again, who can be sure.

I mentioned all this to a rather new addition to our family’s Christmas Eve celebration.  Sharon listened to me for a bit and nodded most of the time.  However, in the end she just smiled and said, “…regardless, my grandmother will expect me for lunch tomorrow in west Boston by noon.”  I guess it’s hard to argue with that. 

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt  ~ Mark Twain

It is not often that I feel like I develop a near complete and, dare I say, perfect metaphor for situations that are occurring close to or within the home front.  Therefore if you’ll indulge me, I’ll attempt to offer a bit of figurative wisdom that you, faithful reader, can either internalize or place into the recyclables in order to reduce your carbon paper footprint.  As I’m sure that most of you know, I’ve been going through a bit of emotional instability lately.  Some of you may consider the ol’ Guttersnake to be somewhat of a rock when it comes to matters of the heart; a blithe and romantically uncompromising spirit at best, a cold-hearted individual capable of putting forth enough logical to will himself out of troublesome emotional situations when they become too much to bare at worst.  To an extent both portrayals are true, but to whoever places the trust of stability upon the shoulders and heart of another may well leave themselves open to a level of potential unbalancing.  Such is the position that I have found myself in as of late. 

To be blunt, I don’t know how to completely regain my footing.  Poetic quotes of the heart don’t seem hardly apropos enough to provide comfort and expression, nor does the solace of another’s, any others’, company.  In all actuality, any attempts to drown my sorrows in a sea of sin, a normally tried and truth method, have been stopped short well ahead of time.  Frustrations at the dating process and an over abundance of porn seem to be the root cause, but I digress…

Another fell observation is that once looking up from the wreckage of this affair is that I have, to a great extent, negated the expansion of any sort of personal life in order to keep my previous long distance relationship afloat, so much so that said personal life actually seems to have atrophied to near non-existence.  Support networks then being found at critically wanting levels, I have found myself not only searching for old connections, but also old connections to myself and my past states of mind, that is to say, looking to figure out where I left off so that maybe in some small way I can get back to where I was going… even though I guess I was getting there regardless. 

In a like-minded discussion over soup and salad the other night, I said just this.  I offered that it was like I had been floating blissfully upon a river with my companion and I together, and that that our world aboard our vessel seemed both unifying and whole.  It was as if being upon the river did not take us out of the world, but rather placed us into the center of it, easing our journey and giving us greater perspective of not only our down side, but the far banks as well.  Maybe it even went beyond just perspective, but also rendered us the ability to move closer to the other side, disembarking and experiencing deeply of each other prior footing when necessary as well. 

Now, I am back upon the shore staring out upon the wide river again, this time watching our old vessel depart.  It is not as though I jumped from it in fear or anger, swimming madly for the restored and known traction, but rather it a detour that quietly took me to my bank and let me off without too much fuss.  I know that I am now standing and staring, wondering if it will turn around for me, but on that night over soup and salad, I realized a little more that likely it would not.  I realized again that there was a road to back, one that followed in and away from the river, and that this was the road upon which I was used to travelling for it was the same that I had tread upon my whole life.  I realized that it was time to get back upon its uneven path and try to find my way back to where I stepped off.

Waiting here, staring out at the ship’s wake, will not get me downriver any faster.  Jumping in alone is not an option; it’s a waste of time and likely would only result in me not getting very far and just a little wet… after all, only those that can walk on water can make it in such a manner.  Walking along the shoreline will probably keep me from remembering where I’m going, what I am doing, or at the very least, it won’t help me in any matter other than getting more lost than I currently am.  Very soon it will be time to stop staring out at the water, and get back on the road.  I know that this last vessel came upon me when I wasn’t even aware the water was close at hand, and I imagine that another will again if the road winds me in such a manner. 

My feet are soled of and not finned, so it would seem that my path is somewhat clear; for that is what it is – a path.  With the New Year coming, I think it is time to consider renewal and rebirth and what may lie around the next corner of the road, no matter how inviting the lapping, sunset banks may be to the mind who would dally another day or two in indolent bliss.  I’m sure that I will be back here someday.

Dip me in honey and feed me to the lesbians.  ~ as seen on a tee-shirt

I hate Windows VISTA.  Not because that it is a poor program, because it is not.  I’m wary of it because all the semi-maze-like hiccups don’t really strike me as bugs or flaws, but rather seem like the well-oiled money-making machine of an evil genius.  The latest rue that I have overcome is the fact that when you buy the operating system, you only receive a trial version of all the Microsoft Office products.  What this means is that you can only open the Microsoft programs a total of thirty times before you have to go buy the program from the store to receive the product key.  What they don’t tell you is that it comes with the hefty price tag of around two hundred bucks!  Luckily, the military has some sort of E-Commerce agreement with the powers that be, and in my mail box just arrived my product key… for only twenty bucks.  I love it when the government takes from corporate America… and if that makes me a Democrat, then so be it!

It comes at a good time because my Thanksgiving was wrought with colorful observation of the outside world, that is to say, a world away from a military township.  Things are not the same here.  There is an obvious over abundance of skinheads, a term I affectionately use for the lower enlisted Soldiers of the 82^nd Airborne Division, which in turn depletes an already under stocked population of attractive and eligible twenty-three to thirty-five year old females.  Also, the level of athleticism in a military town, for the most part, is a bit higher than your average ‘ville in the lower forty-eight, which leads to one taking for granted the mindset and dedication toward a healthy and active lifestyle.  Also, the conservative flavor of a town that is generally homogeneous in its political stance can stagnate most critical thinking, at least within a political sphere… unfortunately, I tend to agree with them most of the time anyway so I’m not too concerned with finding a new pundit outside of NPR.

Apparently, one other aspect that I seem to have been shielded from is the overt homosexual culture that is becoming more and more acceptable within our American way of life.  I spent this Thanksgiving in the Queen City of Cincinnati; a city that was once described truthfully to me as one part modern Midwestern metropolis, one part back-lot American freight-yard, and one part Bosnia.  However, my trip, which was supposed to be a relaxing semi-sober meet-and-greet with lost friends and family slowly turned into a bit of a suggestion toward where the mainstream of Cincinnati is going, and perhaps other cities as well.

By no fault of my own and without exaggeration, each of my days during my long weekend I encountered no less than three open homosexuals.  Some were introduced, as I hold no prejudice toward the gay community and neither do my friends or family; and some were random encounters which set off my “gay-dar” to multiple boggies.  While it was true, I did not attend any super conservative centers or congregations within the city, I was generally surprised at the general density and utter brazenness of some of the individuals which I encountered. 

I concluded this at the end of the third day, but by the fourth and final, I thought, wait, what centers of conservative nature would I be avoiding?  My old alma mater, Xavier University, a Jesuit Institution, placed a welcoming statement to “…all peoples of race, creed, gender, and sexual orientation…” while I was at school, so if not there, then where?  I consulted my friends (at least the ones who are not in the theater as I figured their perception would be naturally skewed), and was surprised to hear that they had observed the same as trends as well.  The single females stated that it was becoming terribly hard to find a good single man because the bars where becoming flooded with gay men, and further, many of their friends had turned bi-sexual simply out of an interest and availability of single and relaxed lesbians. 

While I was a bit disappointed that the single women of my beloved Cincinnati had to turn to each other for sex when I’m sitting at home watching porn in my own city praying for a lonely woman (heck, any lonely woman!) to call me on the phone, I thought about the plight of Cincinnati, and it made sense.  Cincinnati is a city that has fallen on hard times due to urban sprawl, poor city planning, and general crime and deterioration over the past ten to fifteen years.  The economic crisis in America has taken the controlling stake of many cities out of the hands of the corporate innovators and placed it back into the developmental hands of the only community (other than government service) that looks at toils and hardships inherent in this recession as just another day: the art community… which just happens to be filled with homosexuals.

However, the point of this observation is not to pass judgment on being a homosexual.  Honestly, I don’t feel that I am in any position to judge what another man does with his penis in his spare time… goodness knows that I’ve done some fairly abusive shit with mine… but I digress.  What I do want to pass judgment on is gayness.

I made the observation as I browsed through Macy’s on Black Friday that the voice that came over the intercom was not only gay sounding, but it was party queer with a chance of fag.  I remarked to my comrade that it would seem that the primary demographic in Macy’s on that day was thirty-to-fifty year old women, and that wouldn’t it seem to be more appropriate to have the voice of a Dean Martin stand-in explaining to them where to find the best savings throughout the store… perhaps while sipping a cool alcoholic beverage into the microphone.  My friend replied that women found gay men more comforting nowadays.  I asked if these were the same women who had explained to me that they were unhappy that there were no straight men to be found on Saturday night?  My friend had little reply.  I continued that most men that I knew fit very well the image of a strong, sound, and morally upright American male, such as they were looking for, but these men would be unlikely to advance on a woman, regardless of beauty or dowry, if she fit the description of a “fag-hag”.  This time, there was agreement.

Because I have no problem with a man or woman being gay; I have a problem with a man or woman acting gay.  It’s the difference between a Caucasian and a Red-Neck, an African American and a Niger (oops, can I say that?!), a Mexican and a Spick.  They are low-class, undesirable stereotypes of our various peoples that makes not only others from across the isle look at you with distaste, but also members of your own creed.

Until now.  I’m not quite sure when acting gay became okay and maybe even chic in our culture, but it seems to have.  I think that it started with the whole “metro-sexual” movement thing, which I may have taken part of in my lost early twenties for a brief moment, but I quickly came out of it because I realized that it was a bit, well, gay.  Now it has spiraled out of control from a hundred different sources such as feminist gender neutralization, a lack of overall hardship in American life propped up by a strange sense of American entitlement, and perhaps even somethings as simple as a disappearance of the rugged frontier spirit, true American idealism and independence, and hard male role models.  The funniest thing to me is that what is now cropping up is a whole sub-genre of men who are not homosexual who simply act gay, possibly because no one has ever stopped them and said, sir, your acting like a fag, knock it off and act like a grown man.  Who knows where this is going, but it’s going… or gone. 

I guess that’s the observation: that I think for at least a percentile of men who would classify themselves as homophobic, it’s not so much the fact that a person is a homosexual that forms a distaste (I think that demographic is solidly formed of evangelical Christians), but rather of having to deal with the fruity nature of fags.  Personally, I don’t tolerate the dancing around flaming behavior from a child starving for attention, regardless of sex, and I shouldn’t have to tolerate it from a grown man.  Forgive me if I sound chauvinistic, but if the homosexual community conducted themselves in a way that didn’t scream ‘fag’ as soon as they walked into a room, they would likely a lot more easy to swallow…  no pun intended.