Picked it up in a free bin at the dump, needed some easy reading to get back in the habit of novels and longer reads.

Good, after it's fashion - while I'm wary of Castaneda - most of his writings, passed off as true, were later called into some question (amazing they weren't questioned at the time) - but, like a lot of writers his fiction is a means of expressing a deeper metaphysical or metaphorical truth. And despite the queer circumstances of his later life (read the Wiki here and The NY Times and Salon on his legacy), it was worth giving him the chance - don't judge the book by it's author, as it were. Vaguely inspiring.

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Category: Books

It's Batshit's birthday, and he's outside the restaurant waiting for the Ferry. I sit down to talk with him, he's still working on my nude - not the one I requested, but another he thinks just as good, a couple, and he's showing me pictures.  And we're talking and he lets me know that it's Sophia Loren's birthday coming up, and he'll be going away to visit her for it, and he had a little leather purse made for her to honor the occasion...

And I admire it, because it's proof, in his mind, of their acquaintance, and a lot of money to spend on somebody if you don't know them to honor their birthday...

I've googled him, his real name ("Batshit"'s mine), and found no references. It's unique enough that somewhere, somehow, he should exist online. But he doesn't.

The next day he drops off the paintings (drawings) - and I would post them here, but for this disclaimer I discovered in the corner of one page:

So I'm bound. Damn. Because his stuff - it's good, great, in that outsider/mental-health sort of way. In future I'll content myself with describing it - large breasted women, photocopies, collages, found objects (posters, cards, flyers, etc), pencil-crayon, felt marker, mixed media. Absolutely nuts. 

But there's something curious about them I'd like to share - and that's the reference to Baron Munchhausen. It's made again in these artworks, and - for those who don't know, Baron Munchhausen was famous for telling elaborate lies and exaggerations about his supposed adventures. Which hints to me that he's got self-knowledge, you only need the education and similar points of reference to make sense of it - he knows, and he's telling me - and without it I knew, but in this we're probably on the same page...

I will support him further, I'm his newest and favorite admirer - for the moment - and, should I collect enough of them I'd love to arrange a gallery showing - with the artist in attendance. This is Nelson, after all, and This is Fantastic.

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Category: People

Strange dreams...

I'm on a pier above a muddy pool filled with people, children, I fall (or jump) off, somehow the people all part, I land in it, 5 feet deep, up to my chest, enough to break my fall, and there's some things on me that I shouldn't have gotten wet...

...on my father's front step with the children, disabled, street kids, people, all from the neighborhood, didn't know he knew so many people...

...and now, up several flights of stairs, a  wooden rail on the side, top floor of the house, my father's room, a shimmering blue carpet, warmly furnished and lit, in the bedroom but there are passages leading off from it to I don't know where. I'm blocked from entering by the railing, but one of the street kids has crawled over and somebody is passing him instruments, a banjo, a fine old guitar, other instruments that are being put away in it, I didn't know he played...

***

I'm in an empty restaurant in the middle of the Playa, more a corporate boardroom, I have a single table, we're joking about how empty the place is, and I offer them entertainment, perhaps we can arrange something outside (everywhere outside there is only desert...), my son, daughter, some other children are out in the desert, they oblige, in the middle of the Playa there is a hole, an opening into an underground bunker, down the center of which runs a metal pipe affixed to which is a ladder hung by a small metal hook, taking a set of shears (the same the homeless man was advertising to the people at the bus stop) he reaches into the hole with them to snip the wire...

"NOOO" I tell him, looking into the bunker, it's hundreds of feet deep with unrailed levels every few meters, I can see my daughter beneath in the bunker, walking too close to the edge on one of the levels, around the rubbish and boxes, always on the bottomless edge side, and I'm yelling down the hole to her not to walk too close to the edge and trying to stop the boy from snipping her only means of escape...

(***Note: Weird dreams, and I've only remembered a few of the images...)

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Category: Dreams

He looks to be a street guy, prosthetic leg, maybe late 50's, early 60's, rides his bus up to the bus stop, parks it, goes inside the shelter.

I'm early for the bus, sitting down against the outside of the shelter, can't see in...

More people are showing up every minute, a young kid, maybe 8 or 10 goes into the shelter with him, takes a seat...

And he begins...intoning, a weird accent, high, nasal voice...."We are doing to this planet what we have done to Mars...our history is older than has been recorded..." 

He's channeling, or something, I can only hear him, in the smoky haze, the sun and mountains obscured it almost seems relevant...I look over into the bus shelter at the kid, he's got a horrified, WTF expression on his face...

He continues..."The price of gas should be 10 fold what it is now...only when it is $20 per litre will it stop...."

The kid is weirded out, grabs his knapsack and leaves the shelter, homeless guy has taken off his prosthetic, eyes rolling in his head as he channels the spirits, makes his prophecies, his amputated stump hangs down, a mass of soggy flesh that resembles an elephant's trunk, "Only in Foon"  I'm thinking...he continues with his prophecies and dire warnings to the human race at sporadic intervals...

As other passengers show up to wait he hops out, talks to them, shows them a pair of long-handled snipping shears, for the arborist, he's raving about what a great deal they were, fairly normal conversation, I was hoping for better, all the locals know him, humour him, I just watch..

Then, when the bus comes, he loads his bike on the front, grabs his leg, his packages and shears, hops on the bus, stands close to me and begins to amuse a young girl, he's quacking at her like a duck, speaking in that Donald-Duck voice, but mostly just quacking, the girl, her mother, they're amused, even the bus rides in Foon are an adventure...

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Category: People
  1. Prop Dick
  2. Where are they now?
  3. 1 Bar of Internet
  4. Meteorite over Nelson