Jeff Chiplis art exhibit postcard – foto by Smith

Three major dark mood bummers have been lifted from my brow.

1) Our friend and Love-Shack-Out-Back proprietor Jeff Chiplis (the inventor of recycled neon art according to the The New York Times) tried to jump start our dead car but we found out the battery was dead and beyond recall so he took me over to buy a new one. Actually took me three places to inspect an $80 battery, an $87 battery, and a $55 one. Guess which one we bought.

2) All by myself I researched how to switch my old computer’s anti-virus subscription to my new laptop for no charge. Lady usually has to do these computer things for me but was busy so i dood it myself.

3) We got internet cable installed in our new apartment.

Now all we need to do is get gas installed Wednesday, then we can move in and start taking long hot baths. In our 31 months travel we had a bathtub in London for 10 weeks and one in Marrakech for a month. Besides toking, nothing heals me and keeps me saner than soaking in a hot tub, and of course the greatest path to sanity is to soak and toke simultaneously. When mom spent 9 months dying in 2005, it was the nightly toke and soak that kept me going.

Chiplis is one of my guest artists at AgentOfChaos.com. You can check out his work at agentofchaos.com/chiplis/index. It’s joyous to behold.

He’s also a friend of some 28 years and the owner of the Love Shack Out Back, a very small 2-room cottage which we’ve stayed in 4 times already: for 6 weeks after we sold our studio in 2006 and before we left the U.S., 12 weeks when we thought we were moving back to the U.S. in 2007 but moved to Mexico instead, a 2 week visit last July, and these past 4 weeks. I’ll show some fotos of it tomorrow – the kitchen has the glass shower in between the refrigerator and the cooking stove, giving new meaning to lunch meat and breakfast sausage.

postcard from another Chiplis art show – foto by Smith

Cleveland picnic – foto by Smith

This starting life anew in a new-old land while weather’s cold, wet, gray and I leave my car lights on and the battery goes dead is not what I’d recommend for fun and peace of mind.

A friend had delivered some free furniture last night and as I got out of the car I forgot to turn off my lights so we came back to a dead car. Called a few folk before finding a friend home and we sat in the dark wet cold shivering for 30 minutes waiting her help. But when she got there, none of us could make the battery jump work, so she brought us home and the car’s still there. Try again today in daylight so we can see what we’re doing. My skill set seems to be missing anything normally considered male, like fixing cars and anything else mechanical, commercial or social.

Things are progressing. Bought a mattress and box springs to sleep on and had them delivered. Bought a used couch and a used recliner and conned a friend into helping us carry them up three flights of narrow steep twisty stairs.

A couple friends have brought by free tables, chairs, dishes, chest of drawers, so we’ve the minimum to start our new nest life. People are extraordinarily generous and giving with both their time and possessions.

Today we get internet installed, and day after tomorrow we get the gas connected and actually move in.

We’ve replaced my old computer, so now I’ve lost all my old comfortable tools like Word with its spell checking and I’m operating in new Vista operating system’s never never land. Spent all day yesterday putting 50 gigabytes of my old computer data 2 gigs at a time on my memory stick and transferring it to my new machine. That 50 gigs represents my past 10 years of art life. And of course the new computer is totally different in key layout and touch sensitivity and displays all my old foto programs in totally strange unworkable layouts.

Basically right now everything is unfamiliar, uncomfortable, unknown, and expensive. Money’s going out like it doesn’t want to be around me anymore.

I haven’t been blogging past three days and find I rather like it. This daily soap opera of the life of Smith is less interesting than I’d believed. I’ve little positive to say and no fotos to post. In Oaxaca I had to beat the fotos off with a stick, while here I have to hunt them down. Unfortunately I miss the daily process of writing, blogging, responding, so will continue to blog more days than not… eventually I may even actually have something to say.

The one value of my daily blogging these past 33 months is a real-time record of the daily vicissitudes in the journey of one adventurous nomadic creative art/poetry couple. Figure 80% of what I write is fit to wrap fish in, but the other 20% has some veracity and validity. Lady and I have been a couple 3.5 years now, and all but the first nine months is blogged online with fotos, a rather unusual situation couple-wise.

This starting over in a new place gets old when you do it 55 times in 31 months, but at least this time we’re starting anew in a creative poetry/art community where we know the people, the rules, and the lay of the land. Once we move in and I get back to making art and writing poetry, my angst will dissipate.

I’m basically an eternal internal optimist who periodically feels overwhelmed, down and depressed by the actual facts of life. Usually a good night’s sleep bounces me back, but it’s been over a week since I’ve had one so the gloom and body sickness are spreading doom in my head. I just want this endless transition to be over.

I want to get back to being me, but I gather I have to fight through me to be me again. Gotta tell myself to get out of my own way.

Cleveland sky high – foto by Smith

penis chicken – foto by Smith

“Do you subscribe to the one-China or two-China theory,” I ask Lady.

“What do you mean?” she replies.

“Taiwan separated from China in 1949 when China went communist. Communist China claims Taiwan is still part of it, even though Taiwan says it isn’t,” I explain.

“Taiwan is whatever Taiwanna be,” she answers.

“That puts you in the two-China school.”

~ ~ ~

Later on she said of herself out of the blue, “I am an addict of the ego and the mirror.”

~ ~ ~

I guess every time my ceramic artist friend brought his pre-school daughter in to visit me, I reeked of marijuana smoke because last time he went home after smoking with me, his daughter hugged him, then said, “Daddy, you smell like Smith.” So next time she and I meet she may not recognize me because I no longer smell like Smith.

where I used to buy chicken feet for art – foto by Smith

Smith collage from 1980s Clevebland Rag-o-zeen – foto by Smith

We were in the coffee shop when I told Lady a friend said we should get a WiFi finder to tell us where free WiFi was. Ten minutes later the guy behind the coffee counter tapped my shoulder, handed me his WiFi finder and said “Here, I’ve had this three years now and never used it. You can have it.”

Last night there was a knock on the door and the woman next door said “We were just reading your blog about your laptop battery overheating – here’s a laptop cooler pad with a fan you can have.”

I was also given small amounts of weed by two folk and turned down free weed from two others since we returned.

People have told us we could stay at their places if we have trouble finding an apartment, while others offered to help us move–of course right now we have no furniture to move, but the thought is certainly appreciated.

You just never know what goodness is lurking just beyond your perception.

Here are the rest of my mid-1980s collages I came across at a musician’s house. Obviously I posted the better ones first – these are the leftovers.

Smith collage from 1980s Clevebland Rag-o-zeen – foto by Smith

Smith collage from 1980s Clevebland Rag-o-zeen – foto by Smith

Smith collage from 1980s Clevebland Rag-o-zeen – foto by Smith

Smith collage from 1980s Clevebland Rag-o-zeen – foto by Smith

Smith collage from 1980s Clevebland Rag-o-zeen – foto by Smith