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...and they lived happily ever after. Smith & Lady: poets, artists & urban adventurers.
Our relationship was forged to the soundtrack of Yoko Ono's magic,
frenetic, angst-laden hit, "Walking On Thin Ice." ( play song )
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Archive for the ‘Italy’ Category
Saturday, March 14th, 2009
“No Exit” by Mother Dwarf Smith - foto by son SmithWe made the monthly Tremont ArtWalk rounds tonight, and our first stop half a block around the corner at the Doubting Thomas Gallery, my 24 year old art past struck again. Performance artist Frank Green is selling off his art collection and one of the pieces he has for sale is a fine assemblage by my dead mom–Mother Dwarf–while another in a rusted cake pan is one-third of a triptych of mine from the mid-1980s (the other two portions of the triptych were destroyed somehow).
Also saw Dick Head at Green’s show, and 4 days ago in another part of town I chanced across some of my old artwork in a couple of Dick Head’s 1985 Clevebland Rag-o-zeens. My old art past is Mobius strip looping around in some Twilight Zone infinity flip. These seem to me to be omens saying I’m supposed to be here.
I first met poet artist punk musician publisher performance artist Dick Head in 1983. There was a pounding on my 4th floor warehouse fire door. I opened it to my first view of Dick Head. He whined, “Do you have any drugs?” “No,” I replied, “but if you find any, come back.” An hour later he was back pounding on my steel door, with drugs. Not a bad foundation for a 27 year friendship.
Robert Ritchie a.k.a Dick Head - foto by SmithSometimes I forget how long I’ve been in Ohio. Moved to Chagrin Falls in 1977 when I was 31 (moved there to be with another man’s wife), then to Solon in 78, downtown Cleveland warehouse 81, Tremont 85, Europe 2006, Africa 07, Mexico 07, and back to Tremont 09 at 63.
“Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty-four?”
Started life in Idaho in 1946. Then Washington state, Oregon, California, Tennessee, Maryland, Hawaii, Virginia, Florida, Connecticut, Michigan, Arizona, Ohio. And of course the England Netherlands Poland Croatia Italy France Spain Morocco Mexico Ohio loop just to keep things interesting
No wonder place has seldom been my identity.
“No Exit” (detail) by Mother Dwarf Smith - foto by Smith
“As Above, So Below” - 1/3 of triptych by Smith - foto by Smith |
Posted in Amsterdam, Croatia, Drugs, France, Italy, London, Mexico, Morocco, Poland, Spain, Travel Notes, Tremont, america, cleveland | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
balloonboy - foto by smithThe adventures of Lady & Smith, soon to be no longer broadcast from foreign shores.
Getting things picked up, packed, mailed, given away, tossed, cleansed for our fiftieth-some move since 2006. Our fridge and furniture have been traded for our final two weeks rent. Plants gone, art gone, books gone, spices gone, smoke gone. Getting white and empty in here. It’s the awkward stage where we’re gone in our minds but still here in the flesh. (Although my body still revels in this sun and warmth).
What an odd three year story arc it’s been - Cleveland England Netherlands Poland Croatia Italy France Spain Morocco Mexico, and now back to Cleveland to live. I spent 29 years there–46% of my life. Looks like I’ll stay at least one more.
Once back, perhaps we can begin to put our journey in perspective. 31 months, 10 countries, 21 cities, 3 continents. Not sure how we’ve changed, but know we ain’t the same.
After all this, I figure Cleveland will be just one more foreign city to report on.
We watched Stranger Than Paradise last night. Wanted to see the actors standing in the blowing snow looking out at the iced-over Lake Erie to prepare us for returning to Cleveland winters. The scene where they drive by Tremont into Cleveland showed our old studio flat. Interesting scene because they’re supposed to be driving from the east, from New York City to Cleveland, yet in that scene they’re coming from the west, which is ass backwards.
redhand - foto by smith |
Posted in Amsterdam, Croatia, France, Italy, London, Mexico, Morocco, Poland, Spain, Tremont, america, cleveland | 2 Comments »
Thursday, December 4th, 2008
Isolation - foto by smithRoundelay away we stray.
Looks like we’re moving back to Cleveland this spring after 32 months living outside the U.S.
Lady’s been talking of moving back awhile now. She’s isolated here, needs to be around younger people, have a viable art & poetry scene. We were talking of San Francisco or Seattle, but family and a job lead us back to Cleveland.
I’m isolated here as well, but then I’ve been isolated for 62 years now - place don’t make no difference because it’s the people I’m walled off from no matter the country, city or century.
Returning is going to be exceedingly odd because I left Cleveland AND the U.S.A. in both my mind and body August 2006 with nary a thought of ever returning to either. At least my cosmic script writer still has a sense of humor and the absurd.
Knowing we’re going, each day I look deeply into the colors and contours of here, the most beautiful place I’ve lived except for my 7 years being raised on a 40 acre farm on Paradise Prairie outside of Spokane Washington in the 1950s. Both southern France and the Istrian tip of Croatia were beautiful places to live as well, but they were culturally even more disadvantaged than Oaxaca.
Not looking forward to this, but relationships and marriages require compromise and right now Lady’s needs outweigh my own. Plus I’ve lived most my life and have become who I am while Lady is young, still living, still becoming. (Actually, she’s very becoming.)
I’m looking forward to the poetry and art. Cleveland has the best poetry scene we’ve seen anywhere in our three years of travel - including London England. And it’ll be good to make art again. I’ve made a dozen pieces in our journey through 10 countries and 22 cities we’ve lived in during that time, but the art desire was attenuated because I knew we’d be moving on again and I’d have to leave the art behind - my ego is too large to be comfortable with that.
I’ve fond memories of the cities we stayed in along the way - in chronological order: Cleveland, Ohio USA / London, UK / Leeds, UK / Grassington, UK / Burley-On-Wharfsdale, UK / Amsterdam, Netherlands / Lodz, Poland / Krakow, Poland / Liznjan, Croatia / Trieste, Italy / Venice, Italy / Abeilhan, France / Barcelona, Spain / Madrid, Spain / Marrakech, Morocco / Essaouira, Morocco / Keswick, England / Marseilles, France / Paris, France / New York City, New York USA / Oaxaca, Mexico / Tanetze, Mexico.
Not a bad run. And this will not be our last - get some more money and a wee bit of security and we’ll be off again.
Light at the end of the tunnel - foto by smith |
Posted in Amsterdam, Art, Being, Croatia, Family, France, Italy, London, Mexico, Morocco, Poetry, Poland, Relationships, Spain, Travel Notes, Tremont, cleveland | 2 Comments »
Friday, November 7th, 2008
Friend or food? - foto by smithOne of our new friends down here is an 82 year young life traveler who’s famous for writing one of the best known TV ad jingles - “Oh I wish I were an Oscar Meyer Weiner.”
When I become Dictator, I’m going to make it mandatory that everybody be happy. I’ll hire Happy Police, have them go door to door asking everyone if they’re happy - and if not, my Happy Police will do their little Happy Dance and sing “Oh I wish I were” to cheer them up.
I can solve the unemployment problem at the same time. There are lots of unhappy people and lots of the unemployed, so I’ll hire the second as Happy Police to cheer up the first. It’s a Win-Grin situation.
Oh I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Weiner!
That is what I truly wish to be!
’cause if I were an Oscar Mayer Weiner!
Then everyone would be in love with me!
(I asked him if I could use his name and got this reply):
Officially, the Oscar Mayer Weiner jingle is ascribed to “J. Walter Thompson Staff.” But hell, the assistant ad manager at OM, who just died, claimed it too. Success creates many fathers. Does it not. It’s mine, and I claim it. Actually, the first 4 bars are directly from the old barroom song, “I Only Want a Buddy, Not a Sweetheart.” I put it into 6/8 time and wrote the rest. It was done in May of 1962, recorded by Dick Trentlage’s kids at his home studio in Fox Lake, IL. Dick often gets credit, and I don’t blame him, because he shaped it. Later arranger Marty Rubensteing and I flew to Vienna Austria and recorded a full instrumental TV version, featuring the Vienna Philharmonic. And the jingle was nearly scrubbed because Oscar Mayer people began getting dirty parodies in the mail, and on some local radio stations. Thanks, Budd Blume
Interesting placed people down here. Met 2 other folk who used to room with Bob Dylan in college, and a man who was on the bridge with poet John Berryman the night he jumped to his death.
Yellow Blue Green Mitla Mexico - foto by smith |
Posted in Italy, Mexico | No Comments »
Saturday, November 1st, 2008
hot surface - foto by smithHere I am at my normal morning trouble point.
I’ve finished my morning ablutions, drank my 1st cup of eye-opening life-giving Mexican coffee purchased from the mountain woman with whom we stayed twice to help pick her coffee from her trees (so maybe we’re occasionally drinking some coffee beans we actually picked), answered my 1 email, spot checked the news to see what lies the evil corporate empire has defecated on us since last night, glanced at the blogs I follow of others, and read the few comments left on my blog.
Now it’s time for me to blog, and of course I have no blog.
Lady started this blog on WalkingThinIce.com end of June 2006 while I was recovering from my nose polyps removal and cancer biopsy operation (polyps are gone, cancer is clean). Since then we’ve lived in 10 countries (4 of them twice) and have blogged 1,232 blogs with between 2 to 3,000 fotos of our travels.
Lady and I have been together 3 years and 2 months, and we’ve a daily blog of our life and times for 2 years 4 months of that. Well, almost daily - for our three months of living in a small fishing village on the tip of Croatia facing the Adriatic we had to bus a half hour into town to blog, and our two weeks of camping in the North England rain we had to walk an hour through the mountains to blog, so in those cases we only blogged thrice weekly. But I blogged two-three times a day in our two months in Krakow Poland, so that should keep my average up.
In our 38 months together we’ve moved 50 times, living in the U.S.A., England, Amsterdam, Poland, Croatia, Italy, France, Spain, Morocco, England-France-Spain-U.S.A. a second time, and now for the past 11 months in southern Mexico.
Here in Oaxaca is my favorite place I’ve lived since I moved from the farm to the city in 1960. It’s not the most important place I’ve lived since then though - that’d have to be Morocco. One month in Marrakech and 2 months in the old walled city of Essaouira on the Northwest coast of Africa was the most amazing adventure I’ve had because it was like going through the looking glass to an ancient time before electricity, cleanliness, antibiotics. There’s nothing Western about it, it’s more like Old Testament times. Morocco also kept trying to kill me with multiple attacks of dysentery, which kept things interesting.
The one thing daily blogging in a multitude of countries, cities and cultures has done is made me a better, faster, more thoughtful writer. The other thing is it has given Lady and me an online diary record of our daily existence, with fotos.
The funny part is when Lady started this blog, I asked her why. I couldn’t fathom why anyone would want to blog. And now I’m addicted to my daily noise.
Still, it is hard to blog every day, to think of something to say. No one’s interesting every day all the time. So here’s my bogus non-blog of a blog today. Of course my non-blogs aren’t really a problem because I always have interesting fotos for eye candy to keep you distracted from my lack of content. Tomorrow I might just have something real to say.
Or not.
shadow slant - foto by smith |
Posted in Amsterdam, Croatia, France, Italy, London, Mexico, Morocco, Poland, Spain, Travel Notes, Tremont, cleveland | 1 Comment »
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