Perpetual Novembers; Spring Eternal in my Mind; Late-Summer Labyrinths: Upon dying...

Saturday, May 13, 2017

Upon dying...

... John, Tom or Ted... was taken on a visit with the angel of death... to the lives of others... John, Tom or Ted had lived a perfect life, no struggle, no trauma... possibly the "American Dream"... The Angle of Death took him visiting the experiences of people who suffered horribly... unimaginable struggles, traumas...

John, Tom or Ted cried out, "This just can't be!" and found himself in the endeavor of digging up the unseen good in these horrifying lives...

Upon dying... John, Tom or Ted... was taken on a visit with the angel of death... to the lives of others... John, Tom or Ted had lived a horrible life... The Angel of Death took him visiting the wonderful lives of others...

John, Tom or Ted cried out, "This just can't be!" and found himself looking for "skeletons in the closet", and wishing for the ability to bury all the good he saw... the good he didn't experience in his past life...

What is "truth"?

Truth is what happened, what existed... For some, truth is a wonderful experience, a good thing. For others, truth is horrible... And then there are the others, for whom, truth is a mix of good and bad...

And here we come to the question of what truly is good and what truly is bad?... Or or both necessary for the existence of others, for healthfulness?

And what is denile? How does it affect us... our families, communities... our relationships... our lives?

Must we fear the Angel of Death? And how can Death and Angel be placed together as a descriptor of a specific entity?

Death...

No one is immortal... at least within the typical modern context..

Maybe immortality is the existence of infinite lives and infinite deaths... It's to say that we die and are reborn... again and again...

And you may ask skeptically? "For what purpose?" And I will ask you, "for what purpose is living only one life?"

The people who exploit, negate and deny justify their behaviors lacking conscientiousnous and consideration with the popular statement "you only live once, so you may as well live life to its fullest potential!" And if you live repeated lives?

But why live only one life? And wouldn't that actually make our spirit or soul obsolete? If you only live one life, the damage you create, the garbage you leave behind... is past... You're gone... nothing to worry about... So, why do we continue he name of our fathers and our grandfathers? Why is it important for us to have children?

If when you die, it didn't really matter what you did when you lived... since you lived only one life, you may as well enjoy it at all costs, ignoring the consequences of your hedonism and your lack of consciousness and true consideration... then maybe your life, your existence, YOU, who you are or were, isn't really worth diddly... And if most of the almost 7 billion human being overpopulating the Earth believe as you believe, then maybe it isn't a tragedy that certain governments believe in exterminating millions of people, genocide... Maybe a nuclear war doesn't matter... Maybe it really doesn't matter if you lived well or if you suffered... Afterall, you only live one life... which means that just as you lived, you will die... so why does it matter how you lived... or at what age you died?

There are no tragedies... just experiences...

If she was raped by her brother or he by his father... or picked upon in school and at home... or had 6 unsuccessful surgeries attending to her cancer before the age of 15... or his town was invided by a foreign army, mutilating and destroying and torturing everyone in sight... what does it matter? If you only live one life...

If you only live one life, you only have so much time for accomplishing so many things...

For what?

Afterall, when you die, you can't take your success with you... And after you've died, you can't look up your name in the history books... So why does it matter?

Why does having children matter if it doesn't truly matter to you the world you participated in creating for them and their children and their children's children?

That one day the white Americans would live as did the African slaves because of your lack of interest, your lack of consideration, your lack of compassion... because of your exaggerated egoism, selfishness, hedonism...

Because you only live one life, it doesn't matter what you did and what will happen to the lives after yours... Afterall, you won't be around to observe the aftermath...

But, what if you live repeated lives and you will observe the aftermath of your actions? your participation?

This is not about God or the bibles... It's not about law. Nor is it about philosophy... It's about perspectives and truth...

It's about the history of humankind on Earth... All we have is the present and history... So, when you look at the past, you are actually looking at the present... And until you decide to change the present, you won't see changes in the past showing you how you truly live... History doesn't repeat itself... it just continues as we truly wish for history continuing...

If you are a denyer or a negator, that's the present and the history you participated in creating... If you say you are against child abuse but you blatantly ignore the histories of the children you abused, well you've just negated your validity as a conscientious progressive and proactive human being... You've turned yourself into a hypocrite and that's the society you helped create... I don't know who truly is the monster: you or the person who honestly says they hate the other, honestly says they would rape again and that it was a good thing... At the very least, whom you call the monster is easily identified and is clearly defined problem... But, you the hypocrite create a horrible ambiguity that doesn't enable clean and clear work for creating healthy evolution...

Instead, we find the human race spiraling into an increasingly horrible abyss... and the hypocrites scream, "how could this have occurred!!!!????" How is it that Trump entered office and hasn't been impeached and was able to avoid a government shut down before the end of his 100 days...? As if Trump was the worst of the world's problems...

I guess you've never truly suffered at the hands of others... and maybe it doesn't truly matter... Afterall, you live only one life... And when it's over, so is your suffering at the hands of Trump...

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Unfinished "Self-Portrait at 33"

Something I've dreamed of painting since just after my ultimate surgery in 2001. I post this now since I don't know if I will have the chance to work on it before going back on the road on Sunday... The problem is I've been sick for the past 5 days, painting this for the past week, a few hours per day. Whatever the sickness is, it isn't anything I've known and seemingly changes every day. In order to guarrantee my being well anough for the intense work for the following month, I may have to leave this hanging until I return at the end of August...

"La Sonrisa de Amarillo" (Amarillo's smile).

"La Sonrisa de Amarillo" (Amarillo's smile). José and Nicolas were commenting that I should sell the shirt I use for painting, since it is covered with paint. And then José said, "better yet, I'll give you one of my shirts to paint..." It was a joke. But I took it seriously. He has shirt he bought 4 years ago in Zacatecas with a copy of a painting of a bull in a bull fight. However, the print was erased from the shirt years ago. So, I decided to use the space that had the bull. "Amarillo" (Yellow) was the dog at my in-laws ranch when Margarita and I met. Due to a bad fight, he was left with one side of his mouth and one of his ears mangled, which gave him a permanent half snarl with one fang sticking out. He died years ago. But we often mention him...

New House/Studio Guadalajara

Over 20 years ago our friend José "Montaña" bought a parcel of land in the center of Guadalajara. His uncle who was a constructor/mason helped José build the brick house that has 6 bedrooms. Not long afterward, José entered into his older brother's Indian crafts importation business and decided to sell the crafts in fairs around Mexico. His brothers were one of the first people in Mexico City to enter into the Krishna movement that gave them certain perks. While José became vegetarian 4 years ago, sells the Indian furniture and crafts etc, has a giant shrine to Ganesh in his house and hosts the Mahareshi at least two times a year, José doesn't consider himself a Krishna. For at least 15 years José experienced extreme success in the fairs and was able to send his children to private English Language schools (his oldest son went to University in Texas and Married there),was able to visit with his children the U.S. and India and even bought the "castillo" (castle---an insider joke) next door. For years he used it as a store house and for a shop where Mary had workers fabricating crafts and Mexican/asian Indian style clothing. Then, about 4 years ago, Mexico entered into the international economic crises and José began losing money in the fairs. (I, on the other hand, have managed the situation and the coffee business well enough to be able to improve our economy over the past 2+ years, although this year we lost half our fairs (my decision not to enter into suddenly horribly violent zones where the people are fleeing and have fair to go out to the streets.) Out of desperation, José put the house he built on the market and moved his family into the "castillo"; his children were not happy. The "castillo" was built in the 19th century and has very high ceilings and wonderful giant windows and a terrace surrounding the second story kitchen. After a year on the market, One of José's Asian Indian suppliers bought the house and decided to put it on the market. A year ago, dreaming of having an artist studio/house in the center of Guadalajara with it's majestic tree-lined streets, I asked José to contact the Indian suppliers to see if they would sell the "guest house". José replied that he couldn't locate the Indians' representative in Guadalajara. And that ended that fantasy. However, a year later, upon returning to Guadalajara, Margarita called Mary who asked Margarita if we were in need of a house. We had just rented a house for 3 months (a house infested with cockaroaches). However, I had to see the house. The moment we set foot in the empty guest house without kitchen, bathroom, closets, I was hit with the return of the dream I left behind when we left Guadalajara last November. This time I could see all the projects we would begin over the next 10 years. So, we decided to rent the house and hoped that the 32 day fair in Guadalajara would be good for us; and it was. So, now we are "building" the kitchen, we bought a new refrigerator, are having a stainless steel restaurant sink fabricated for us, are looking for good furniture, looking into nice tiling and thinking about the future one more time.

"Hummingbird Goddess of the Mountain"/"Diosa Colibrí de la Montaña"

Crucified Pregnant Woman

(Unfinished Painting November/December 2010). This was the last painting I worked on before putting aside the painting and drawing for 6 months. I don't have any artist training. I haven't ever taken a painting or a drawing class. I don't know anything about anatomy and I have NEVER seen naked pregnant woman, let alone a naked pregnant woman on a cross. That created a hell of a headache working on perspective and shadowing... How does a head hang with the arms spread outwards to the side? My dilemma. After the fair of Tepic, I asked my friend José "Montaña" to take it with him to Guadalajara. Truthfully, it created so much stress that I really didn't want to see it. The problem is that we don't have a house of our own. I don't have a studio for storing my work and supplies...

Stream of Consciousness Drawing "Your Turned Back/The Cold Shoulder" July 11, 2011

In La Isla de Mexcaltitan, Nayarit

The story goes that the group of Mexica indians had a dream one night of the great city of Tenochtitlan they would construct 200 years later in the Valley of Mexico, now known as Mexico City that later on became known as the Aztec Empire. The dream was had on the Island of Mexcaltitan, Nayarit. Upon leaving his "home" on the edge of the river Antigua in Veracruz, Cortez journeyed to the center of what is now known as the Republic of Mexico and conquered the Aztecs, with the help of the Totonoco indians of the region known as Veracruz. Cortez destroy the Grand Tenochtitlan, probably the largest pre-hispanic city in the Americas and constructed churches and cathedrals where the ancient temples and pyramids had been...

Pico de Orizaba in the Morning

I took this photo during our Sunday morning walk. We found a wonderful route that circles Margarita's parents' house; great for a jogging route. When I've run in Mexico, Margarita was my running partner. Back in 2005, when we were running in the Lakes, there were many times when Margarita ran faster than I ran. But, I always passed her on the hills... The wonderful thing about this route is that it passes through the woods, coffee plantations and sugar cane fields; a lot of hills as you can see... So, we've decided that, if we have a strong finish of 2011, we'll buy land here and build a house.