Chagal4's Blog

Like a lot of things in life…jumping into something without enough thought or planning or investigating can turn out to be less fun than first anticipated. Of course we have millions of examples everyday but in this case I just didn’t see it as that big a deal. See, I started out to post one of my drawings or paintings every day for as long as I could. I was thinking a year …give or take a few days for vacations, depressions, health problems and general “I don’t want to do it today” days. I have a lot of art work stored on my computer and once I figured out how to get them into my blog…well I thought I’d be home free and eating ice-cream. Every day for the past couple of weeks I’d go through my archive and try to find something that sort of went along with my thinking at that particular moment. So far so good. But then I felt like I should write something…That drawing looked sort of naked there without a frame or a wall or anything. My drawings take some time…and I usually make up a backstory for the piece. I give the people lives…friends…enemies…problems. I get to know them and… O.K. they talk to me. But ten years later the story gets a little fuzzy…see. So I just write something else. That’s where it all gets a little less easy than I thought it would be. So…I’m learning. I’ll find new ways to post the art work and I’ve decided to concentrate on the stories for the pieces…maybe introduce them and maybe re-introduce them to myself. Hope it works out. Let me know if isn’t.

Blues: 19-09-15

This is not a diary…but it’s not just random thoughts either…or maybe it is. There’s certainly enough to think about these days…Some to laugh…some to cry.

Eight o’clock and it was

Already hot…

Sunlight filled windows and doors

Bounced on the street

Polished the floors.

My eye lids were helpless…

Used the pillow instead.

When the European Union launched the notion of open borders among members I thought it was a brave and progressive move. Dogmatic nationalism had been the abiding curse that managed to kill off millions of people over the past century.The off spring of Queen Victoria turned out to be toxic. So…I thought …Europe can set an example and back away from the worst elements of nationalism. I was wrong I think. At least for now the resurgence of xenophobic right wing arguments in response to the shifting of demographics caused by decades of immigration capped with the arrival of the “new refugees” is frightening. None of these things happen in a vacuum. A complex series of events led to the outrageous sitation in Syria and the creation of a devastated population there…likewise the bungled affair of Iraq and the even more extreme case of Afghanistan. I mean…really…really. The U.S. response to 9-11 was to try to obliterate a country that had been returned to the brink of the stone age by the Soviet Union…???What? The majority of the terrorists on those planes and the greatly unloved Osama Bin Laden were Saudi Arabians…not Afghans. O.K. enough of that.

What’s up is that even though nobody is swimming to North America from Eastern Europe this is still a global problem. And to illustrate how welcoming and charitable the response is likely to be…Donald trump is applauded for suggesting that he’d build a wall along the Mexican border (and get them to pay for it!!!) Not long after that another American politician says that they should build a wall along the Canadian border…(well I’m kind of liking that idea …if it keeps those sorts of politicians out of my country…we have enough lunatics of our own thanks).

So I don’t see any bright ideas on the horizon and it’s now September…in three months it will be winter…We need to start thinking about blankets and winter clothing for people stuck in those camps…or worse.

When I draw it sometimes feels like I’m playing piano, although I don’t actually play the piano. It’s almost always jazz…but really…I love almost any music.

This drawing was done for part of a painting that never happened. I like it anyway.

Don Juan writes letters to imaginary lovers,

Dressed in silk pajamas he dreams of long ago

And rich red wine when love was young,

the scent of perfumes filled the night.

He loved the sound of shadows

Where the rustling

of silken skirts and satin thighs

Set his heart on fire…

Well, it was more difficult when I was a bureaucrat. Dozing behind your desk in mid afternoon is frowned upon. So I’d wait until I got home. Of course there are those whose default setting is more asleep than awake. You can see them in almost any office…Their eyes are open…body’s moving…but you know that a humming bird could fly in one ear and out the other…and they wouldn’t blink. Years of watching the same piece of paper slide across your desk can do that. But for me…the nap is a sacred part of the day…it draws a line under the frustrating lunacy of the early part of the day and it recuperates enough strength to salvage the rest of the day. But more than that…it somehow allows my mind to consolidate and clarify things I’ve seen, heard or experienced…and I often come away with a better understanding of things than I had before I dozed off.

Since I retired there was so much that I just didn’t understand…How one could be “unemployed” and still have the day fill up with things to be done…How one could be ambushed by pain here or an ache there and…it turns out to be worse than you could have imagined…How whole pages of a newspaper can make no sense at all…How there’s always a great little book to be read…A piece of music to be discovered (The Bach Cello Suites by Pablo Casals)…The list is endless and actually…I love it all. So my naps have become an afternoon refuge, a sanctuary where my mind can find a shady corner to dream in…I take my current favourite book, read a few pages and drift off…

On a sunny summer day….this is what it feels like.

Once we walked on hands and knees

Once we lived in the arms of trees

Then we learned to tie our shoes

Wear the hats, wear the suits

Kill the buffalo, chop the trees

Did we think that Mother would approve?

Oh…it was soo-o-o cold in Canada and when we got off the plane in Varadero…the heat was like a fog of palm oil…My bones turned to rubber and they sold ice cold beer on the bus to the hotel. The next day…exploring, I heard kids playing, laughing and shouting. I knew that sound and found a kind of vacant lot construction site. The kids had mapped out a diamond. With home made bats and a ball wrapped with electrical tape. They were playing and …damn they were serious and they were good. I watched a couple of innings  and applauded the moves…noticed Che watching from the fence. I left feeling very far from home…and thinking…These kids are alright.