“If he was sitting in his car on the railroad tracks and the train was racing toward him, he would be in no hurry to move,” the Parkinson’s specialist said about me during our interview. Lisa was in the room and he was explaining my problem to her (although, given our almost eleven years together,Continue reading “1. The Future is a Freight Train”
Tag Archives: art
Contents
Part I: Groundwork 1. The Future Is a Freight Train 2. A Story Continued 3. So Why a Road Trip? 4. Rich in History 5. A Blockade Along the Way 6. From Where to Where? 7. Control 8. The Odd One Out 9. A Latchkey Encounter 10. The Facts Are Few 11. Terra Incognita 12.Continue reading “Contents”
Authenticity
December 17, 2025, will live in personal infamy. Lisa had dropped me off at the vascular surgery clinic before one o’clock that afternoon. Now, I had undergone the same procedure before we met, almost fifteen years ago. My left leg, exclusively ropy with varicose veins, had increasingly been a problem throughout our relationship. It began,Continue reading “Authenticity”
Sierra City
A Portfolio’s Worth
Their immaturity: that’s why I had overruled including the case’s contents earlier. Starting in high school, the stash of old drawings had dates reaching into my college years. A few printouts of other pieces were tucked among the aging pages. With the obvious student exercises omitted, what examples remained were still largely goofier than IContinue reading “A Portfolio’s Worth”
Buncom, Oregon
Chinese miners first settled Buncom in 1851 when gold was discovered in Sterling Creek. The outpost (now a ghost town) is located twenty miles southwest of Medford along a very scenic, very twisty road. We often hike the nearby Sterling Mine Ditch Trail. Built (with hand tools!) in 1877 to carry water from the LittleContinue reading “Buncom, Oregon”
Model Behavior
I’ll continue drawing Lisa as long as she lets me. It takes a while but, since I’m happy to study the subject, it’s easy to persevere. I spent four hours on the latest, too long for her to hold a pose. I had to rely on a photograph. When she saw the result, she wasContinue reading “Model Behavior”
Potential
As the words encroached on the images, I found a passage that described the latter: “My work is good, it has potential”. Given how badly I had doubted myself, it may be the closest that I ever came to praising what I had done. In the rest of the paragraph, I displayed my usual ambivalence:Continue reading “Potential”
A Story Born Again
A couple of months ago, I wrote about a painting of mine from the mid-1990s. In A Pivotal Piece, I described its abstract imagery as a way of abandoning the figure and freeing myself from the heavy baggage of the body. I’ve always had a complex relationship with the nude. There’s a line somewhere betweenContinue reading “A Story Born Again”
Like Anywhere Else
“That desolate place, not even a town but a corner — the intersection of two roads on their way somewhere better — that was home. The street names are Jackson and Bradshaw but that doesn’t really matter. On my last trip into the area, I discovered every landmark gone. The city that used to castContinue reading “Like Anywhere Else”