Art Post: Existential Snowman

I was sipping my coffee yesterday morning and became inspired by my coffee cup of a snowman helping a bird in a nest get (back?) into a tree.

How many nests just fall from their tree? Maybe the snowman is helping straighten it out? Or maybe, just maybe this is an evil snowman who is about to destroy the nest...

Well anyhoo, I started thinking about how snowmen (snow people?) and how they are always shown as happy, joyful and completely oblivious that they will be melting in short order. Look, it's not too much of a stretch to understand the snowman's plight.

With that in mind, I painted this in a few hours, it's titled Existential Snowman. 

Warning: This is DEEP stuff. Enjoy and then contemplate your own melting.

Existential Snowman, acrilic paint and ink, 2018. 

Fun With My Scanner: Casper: Grown Up

Working on a update of fragments. Also thinking about finishing up my Peru trip blogs (just thinking about it though, so don't get too excited).

In the meantime, I was scanning some personal ephemera and documents and came across this little gem. It dates from 1996 or 1997. I drew this picture in church of all places and passed it to my friend nearby who wrote the note at the top of the page.  For those scoring at home, Casper is sporting a "666" on his forehead and his t-shirt reads "Pervert".

Now, on the surface, it's just a silly little drawing.  Ok, it's stupid, but I was 19 or 20, ya know.

What turned this from a throw-away to a keepsake is who wrote back to me. 

It was from my friend, Mikey who passed away a few years after this was written. Isn't it funny how something so meaningless can turn into a treasure? I don't have many notes from Mikey so everything I have from her is precious to me.  A simply piece of paper that was seemingly destined for the trash but somehow rescued and now it "lives" on a bit longer than expected.

This brings me to the idea of changefulness. Buddhists would call it maya; that is, everything is an illusion. Most especially time and the temporary things we fill it with. I know this all too well. Everything is ephemeral, nothing is permanent.  And that's another one of those facts about the universe I am still struggling to understand and cope with. 

Comparatively speaking from the cosmological scale, I am a sentient piece of dust on a slightly larger dust ball floating in this massive soup of galaxies.  Everything we come in contact with today or tomorrow will cease to exist. Including this world and the star it orbits. I understand that's a long way off but still, major bummer.

I'm not Buddhist, but I get the whole non-attachment thing. I get it so well, I don't want to embrace it. I don't want to get rid of my attachments (clinging or non-clinging, even if it does create suffering).  I follow a Vicktor Frankel/Camus/Agnostic-Theist, eventually Christian position on the universe (at least I am trying) so, I have to make due with what I am and what I do have (even if it is temporary).

 In the meantime,  I hold onto my silly little things, treasuring my ephemeral existence surrounded by temporary objects, smiling back on all the eventually forgotten memories. Hey, at least it will get you a cheap laugh from time to time.

Deafening Silence

So I went to the bathroom at work, stepped inside a stall and what do I find, written sideways on the wall?

"Deafening Silence"

 
My mind instantly ran through connections and possible meanings.

After all, this bathroom is situated in the hallway where our Philosophy classes take place. Maybe it's an existential statement of being. We find ourselves alone in a cold, god-less universe - where no one can hear our prayers. Maybe it's a comment on the apathy of today's college students. They are all too busy to take their ear buds out and care about politics or the environment.

Nah, I've come to the conclusion it's probably just another terrible name for some awful speed metal band that seem to spawn in terrific numbers here in San Antonio. By the way, I saw a bumper sticker for a band named "Upon a Burning Body" in the parking lot yesterday and I just started laughing.

Other Fragments:

Recently, all my jeans got holes in them except one pair. This means I am going to have to visit our Goodwill soon - the last time it took me an hour to find a pair that would fit. It's not something that's fun but seems to be the most moral option of them all.

Recently I opened up baseball card packs that were twenty years old. I tried the gum in one of the packs. It was bad idea --- but I did get a KEN GRIFFEY JR ROOKIE CARD (now worth all of a quarter).

Currently reading a synopsis of all four gospels (it's all paralleled for you on the same page) and just about finishing up. I tried to be open minded towards John...but it's just not my bag, baby.


Two events happened yesterday (one professionally, one personally) that made me recognize I am not in control of my own life and sometimes, well, life sucks. That evening I dreamed I was trapped on an elevator that started spinning sideways, stopped and then started flipping upside-down. I was walking like a hamster in one of those wheels so I wouldn't fall down. So my subconscious did pick up on that stress after all.

Yeah, it kinda was an out of control Wonkavator but not as cool.

  

That is all - may the force be with ya'll.