The Face I Can’t Say No To
January 18, 2009
This is the face that keeps me busy twenty four hours a day. Howard. Howard is a lemon. Howard has some issue at all times. Read more
Camp Casey becomes Insane Asylum
January 28, 2008
Dr. Casey has had a mental breakdown and is having difficulties dialing the phone numbers of friends who might come to her aid. It occurred suddenly, the day after her skiing mania and subsequent remorse over buying ski equipment that she feels she will never use again. It was snowing for the fourth day and Dr. Casey no longer saw the snow as white and had no desire to walk in it, let alone ski down it. The skis are in the back of her car and will remain there as a constant reminder of how totally fucked up she is. It appears that her latest personality, Bernice, is a professional downhill skier. It was Bernice would bought the skis and Bernice who skied yesterday. Bernice left Camp Casey this morning for Switzerland, and Dr. Casey has returned, only to discover the skis, and worse, the receipt: Absolutely No Refunds. Camp Casey will remain a one-woman mental institution until Dr. Casey developes another personality with a PhD in Multiple Personality Syndrome. 
Neighbors in the area have suggested that Dr. Casey get in her car and drive either South or West until she spots a palm tree. They have offered to pay travel expenses. Dr. Casey has written recently of the environment in which she has completely lost her mind:
It gets so dark here at night, that when you drive the eight miles you must travel to get a loaf of bread you have to guess where the road is. You have headlights, sure, but headlights are quite useless in total blackness. You use the line in the middle of the road as a guide, but you cannot see the sides of the road, so when you are here, you feel the need to stay here and not get in the car unless there is a large moon in a clear sky. You go without the bread until daybreak.
If you are feeling sad, the sadness will fill the room you are sitting in and when the sun goes down, it will wrap around you like a strait-jacket; suffocating your interests. If you are happy, your happiness will expand like a baking cupcake and warm your sockless toes. You will sit in the dark and the quiet soaking in a happiness that is so immediate it becomes a physical presence you can talk to.
Once in a great while you will hear the moaning of a train whistle across the lake, an owl, the crackling flame of the gas stove, branches moving in the wind. Each sound is an awakening from the dead quiet that has taken you directly to the workings of your emotions. The quiet enters your brain and grants an interview. It enters your groin and causes a baseless arousal. You stay busy staring out the window, listening to the repeated sound of your own internal voice saying, I should, I should, over and over. I should. In a couple of hours, the “I shoulds” fade away.
Word Window Art Installation Project begins in Middlebury, Vermont at Great Fall Gallery
January 27, 2008
I drove to Vermont from D.C. last week, to check on things. I went to Middlebury to visit friends and noticed that the town no longer existed. Main Street, Lolly-pop Land, had erased itself in an effort to be cute. There were many windows with snow suits, beads, cow mugs, folk singer posters. I decided to take a window hostage for a new Word Window Art Installation Project. Doug Lazarus, artist, had just opened a new gallery/studio on Main Street, and one of his windows faced an acceptable stream of pedestrian and car traffic. We discussed the project for four minutes and he gave me the window. I will be posting a continual stream of words in phrases for the next few months which will reflect the subtext of Middlebury and, in totality, when published, act as an artistic rendering of the collective unconscious of the area. My last Word Window was in Newport, RI in 1998, and became quite popular with the locals and police force. An example of a Word Window in Newport: You Are Not Your Car. I look forward to this art project, because I don’t have to stay in Vermont to do it. I will mail Doug the words and he will post them . I can simply lay in bed and think up phrases after reading the Middlebury newspaper and talking to artists in the area who will act as conduits for me.
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I drove to Vermont with a man and I would like to tell you, now that he is gone, what happened, but I cannot because I am not sure myself. I only know that I am tortured by the many photos of my parents. On the desk, the wall, the piano. Now that I am alone with the ten-thousand dollar dog, the cottage feels like a mausoleum. It is not my home, although I now own it. It is theirs. It will always be theirs and there is nothing I can do about it, nor do I care to. The white quiet is deafening, the memories unbearably burdensome. All the days of before, without the comforting illusion youth provides – there are many days ahead. I am caught in the white quiet, like a fly in a web, and I know that it will close in until my breathe is shallow and my supressed grief has resurfaced. The lake is frozen solid and I can walk to New York. It was a skating rink until last night, when a new snow lay three inches of powder. Those inches of snow hang heavy on the evergreens and fence. I am thankful that he is gone so that I can talk to the white quiet, and ask what happened.
Featured Article:
Dumb- Ster
The cop looked in the dumpster and noticed a picture of his wife. He had just received a complaint from the Olympic Sports store that someone had dumped bags of garbage in their dumpster. That someone was me. I’d cleaned out a few drawers of hometown memories that morning, – high school notebooks, graduation pictures, diplomas, clippings and headed into what I thought was a free-for-all dumpster tucked behind a strip mall. After I threw the bags into the dumpster I took a walk with the dog and when I returned to my car I was met by the policeman and the assistant manager of the Olympic Sports store. Read more »