WALKING ON THIN ICE

cemetery tango

cemetery scene – foto by smith

we saw our landlords walking down the street, holding hands. they’re middle-aged with 2 teen-age sons.

they’ve been using our rent money to finish a second story apartment. lady asked if we could see it. second floor has eating area and kitchen combined, two small bedrooms and a bathroom. third floor has another small room, couple sinks, and a large open roof-top patio surrounded by 4 foot high block walls. we can look out over the town west north east and see mountains all three directions. landlord said i could sit out in the patio and smoke, so i spose he suspects my vice.

lady’s been wanting to move due to lack of light and space here to make art. she told him we’d take it. he said it’d be awhile because he lacks the funds to finish. lady offered to pre-pay our current rent for 4 months to give him finishing capital. he smiled, said good. now when we move, it’ll be 30 feet down the courtyard and one flight up. we’ll buy cable internet, sit out under the sky, speak spanish, make art, edit our book, blog, smoke, and stare at the 222 degrees of surrounding mountains. a fine life for a wee wayward lad from the great pacific northwest inland empire and his lady from the elf woods.

someone wondered how we could trust giving someone we don’t know 4 months rent in advance. we figure any couple who still hold hands after 20 years or so are our kind of people.

we got locked in a cemetery – again. in albeilhan france they locked us in and we climbed out over the wall. here the wall is considerably taller, so we wandered within until we found a human who showed us the official entrance on the other side of the cemetery. the door we’d come in was for workers – they’d locked it and went home. trapped in two ancient cemeteries in 2 years – maybe realty’s trying to tell us something, like maybe i missed my check-out call.

street lamppost base – foto by smith

fluffy puppies, thin panties, and angel rainbows

art in Casa Colonial garden – foto by smith

experienced a 6.4 magnitude earthquake here yesterday at 6:50 a.m. i’m impressed – it was cool to feel the ground and house shake and roll. reminded me of one of those amusement floors that shimmy back and forth trying to knock you down as you walk through the funhouse. it was such a marvelous phenomenon, i forgot to analyze it as it happened. the ground seemed to move in all directions simultaneously. it was insistent but not violent. nothing fell, nothing cracked. no fear, more of a “wow” smile. went on longer than i expected. the temblor was 72 miles deep, the center not very far from here. it is the strongest of the 40 to hit this area the past 12 months. there was a 5.1-magnitude quake in baja california yesterday and a 5.4- magnitude temblor in the same state last week that left 400,000 people without power and shut down factories – yet here it’s 6.4 and nothing happens. maybe because we’re up in the sierra madre mountains and have a fairly solid rock foundation.

been an interesting journey with lady so far – in past 18 months i’ve seen my first flying stork, rode my first camel, saw my first slew of flamingos slung along the mediterranean, recited poetry as part of the opening acts for a rock concert, enjoyed my first earthquake. lady makes my earth move under my feet.

looking at online logs, for AgentOfChaos.com the top search requests were
police / exit / artcrimes / origin of vampires / collage art / junkie / assemblage art / flying fish / vagina / spencer tunick / lady godiva / nude photo shoot / lost love / origins of vampires / cancan / anastasia greer

for WalkingThinIce.com, the top search items are
walking on thin ice / clitoris / thin ice mug / bloody eyes / artcrimes / static electricity finger / thin ice poem / thin ice jokes / poems about ice / fluffy puppies / need brains / thin panties / angel rainbow / kazun foto / dead elvis / lady vampire.

i glanced at the most popular blogs on myspace – they all contain sex, near nudity, violence, lewdity, stupidity along with little depth and originality. and as you can see from the search items above, carnal desires even creep into those seeking our art, philosophy and poetry sites. if you want to be popular, then incorporate sex, violence, and flesh into your offerings.

if you’re curious about weird and sometimes sick searches, here’s 28 months of sick selected search phrases that brought folk to AgentOfChaos.com – a sordid stories – some odd & unsavory search words

you can balance that with these phrases from folk searching for poetry – some are sick, but most sincere – phrases used by people seeking poetry on media fear, hate, reptiles, marijuana, Wonder Woman, LSD, sluts, fetus, teal, justice, Zen… .

Bird Of Paradise flower in Casa Colonial garden – foto by smith

outlawed ambulance

foto by smith

no say to day. so i’ll leave this.

Foreplay

Freud comes tonight to mock our mere
Reflected lives refracted fear
Shelf dependents miming mirror
Of every man and action

In abstinence such sibilance
Through undue trade and undulance
Calls forth in outlawed ambulance
Emotional transaction

These scars we horde until they’re heard
To bargain bare a binding word
The players paid and pompous lured
To daily dead transgression

Nipples rise through lemon dust
Raw, red and real in sapient lust
Emasculant tongues court and musk
Mother’s moist application

foto by smith

sin sore / censor

smith oaxaca assemblage 3 – Masquerade, 20 x 20 inches – foto by smith

in 14 months travel, i did 3 assemblages. lady did 50. eight weeks here i made 3 more. being able to make art is the reason we’re settling down. more than half the pieces lady made overseas and mailed back to the u.s.a. were severely damaged in double customs checks. shipping’s expensive and wrapping a nightmare as well.

my new 3 are minor key, but something’s better than nothing. it’s the doing, not the done that matters.

the second 2 pieces weren’t working well – so i kept adding objects, paper, paint, washes, and they went even worse. i thought i’d lost my touch. but past two nights of play brought them back to causing thought rather than gasps of dismay.

lady’s large piece has been going through a fascinating panoply of changes in construction, deconstruction, reconstructiion, sprays, paints, and washes. i’ll have 5-6 stages of fotos when she’s done.

myspace deleted one of my fotos “because they violated our Terms of Use – we can’t have nude/sexually explicit, violence, material protected by copyright fotos.” i don’t really have any fotos on myspace that would qualify. i tried to find what they censored, but can’t see anything missing. not about to hunt through 11 months of daily blogs to find which foto’s missing.

myspace is run by a bunch of small minded lifeforms. they have a big brother REPORT button under each foto so folks can tattle. the 4th reich anyone? they’re starting to remind me of the scientologists.

smith oaxaca assemblage 2 – Last Election, 12 x 12 inches – foto by smith

the back story dues blues

street store newspapermache pinata man – foto by smith

lady walked into my bed 29 months ago. 5 weeks later we decided to sell my studio and go have adventures.

in the 10 months it took to leave the country, we discovered i had throat cancer, which was removed and killed with 8 weeks of rather painful neck radiation. got so bad we joked about my head falling off my raw hamburgered neck and rolling away.

while all this was going on, we had to deal with lady’s psychotic ex-boyfriend stalker who was talking about kidnapping her to keep in his closet and killing me – he threatened to kill a total stranger just to show he was serious.

during the first 5 months of this we had to fight lady’s bulimia as well, which was exacerbated by my cancer and her psycho – every time i’d go off to radiation, she’d vomit in the toilet, every time her psycho’d follow us to another poetry reading, she’d vomit in the toilet.

toss in a lot of studio cleaning, fixer-upping, discarding 21 years of found object collecting, selling the place, giving most our possessions away, 3 art shows, multiple poetry readings, the publication of the 21st and final issue of my ArtCrimes journal, and you’ve a very full 10 month time flow. it was made more interesting by our age gap – went to our first thanksgiving dinner and sat with her parents who were 4 years younger than i. like lady said, i’m closer to her grandmother’s age than her own (i’m 27 years older than lady, 20 years younger than granny).

then a month before leaving, we found my head was filled with polyps from eyeball to brainpan. a second operation. more pain and money down the drain.

when we started the trip, we figured at some point we’d find what to do and where to live. after 14 months of travel in 9 countries, we hadn’t found either but were tired, realized we needed a home base to do our art. 47 moves and 21,000 miles in 14 months was just too much overload for human body mode. decided to come back to usa and live in chicago for the poetry and art scene. once back in america, we realized we couldn’t take it, didn’t want to live there due to both the cold and political code. lady decided on mexico because the borders were still open and it was the closest cheapest warm around. after she chose mexico, reality kept dropping oaxaca in our lap until we acquiesced. as soon as we arrived, this seemed the place to be. at least awhile.

so by leaving north america and looping back and being unable to stay, we found our place. but we had to go back to the u.s.a. to find out we couldn’t stay.

now, we have each other and a warm sunny interesting place where revolution ferments not very far below the surface.

and this is just the past 29 months – my 59 years before that are as wildly fantastic, but nowhere near as magic romantic

lady’s back story is also fascinating, going from 2 fathers and a hillbilly hell childhood psycho friend to 300 pounds to discarding her 1st husband house 5 couches weight through finding me. we’ve got great stories to tell individually, and together.

i must say lady has extended my life adventure.

painting detail in museum of oaxaca painters – foto by smith

a slow fuzzing of the borders

Che piece Bill Wolf was working on at time of his suicide – foto by smith

Bill Wolf, 1947 – 2008

a theater director, set designer, activist and artist we recently met and liked hung himself yesterday – his lungs were riddled with tumors, and he decided not to linger. he was 60, a year younger than i, a chain smoker.

paper mache skull in Bill Wolf’s studio – foto by smith

his name’s bill wolf. among other things, he used to make porno movies in california – even worked with john c. holmes of 13 inch penis fame (aka johnny wadd, the guy they based Boogie Nights on).

Bill Wolf red devils for condom poster – foto by smith

check out his amazing life at Bill Wolf. click back to his main page for links to his handmade books and other writings.

Bill Wolf found art- foto by smith

i doubt i’d kill myself, but if i did, it certainly wouldn’t be by hanging. that’d hurt. same for shooting, cutting, choking, drowning, car crashing. d.a. levy used a shotgun to blow his mind. my brother used a handgun with similar results. i wonder if the bullet blast was faster than the pain recognition? gas might not be bad – do a sylvia plath, though i think i’d prefer an opiate overdose – a slow fuzzing out of the borders. i find the possibility of pain, fear, or confusion at death a real problem. i don’t want to face any of them, so may have to opt out of dying altogether. which presents problems because my body is breaking down year by year. pretty soon i’ll be nothing but brain and drool. lady’s promised to pull me around in a wheeled transparent jar when it gets to that, maybe display me in rural carney side tent horror shows. she’ll feed me with vitamin-enriched cannabis smoke and reward me for a good performance by slowly licking the dew off my bottle.

Bill Wolf studio sticker (he was a fan of masked wrestlers) – foto by smith

you too can run away

wall art – foto by smith

people say they’re envious of lady’s and my adventure. i must admit, this is fun. but they forget what life is like. no matter who you are or what you do, most of the day is spent doing daily tasks – getting up, evacuating, eating, evacuating all this all over again, shopping to buy more stuff to eat, to wear, washing dirty clothes, cleaning up around the house, work, going here, doing this, going there, doing that. even if you’re famous and on top of the heap – like bob dylan or willie nelson – most of your day is spent getting through the day so you can go to sleep to get up tomorrow to do more trivialities.

lady and i are lucky in that the milieu we’ve chosen to do the mundane is special. if you’re going to drop off the laundry and walk to class and shop for food, southern mexico is about as cool as it gets. the weather’s warm, sun strong, sky blue, smoke cheap.

as lady says, wherever you go, there you are. satan will suffer in heaven, in hell, or in hollywood – whereas jesus will be just fine wherever he is because his life comes from within. and no, i don’t believe jesus is the son of god or the path to salvation – he’s just a cool dude who operated from within rather than without and tried to leave us some signposts to follow in our own journey. trouble is, folk seem obsessed with the man instead of the advice he left along the way about the way.

anyway, i could never respect any church that subjugates and objectifies women, or raises wealth, position and power above morality – which are most all of them. (wiccans do honor the feminine, but they still have the power games). it all seems to be about BIG MEs and little mes, with the religious or political or corporate speakers always BIG and the rest of us little-ized.

as for our adventure, there’s enough around to go around. we’re having fun because we decided to, without waiting until everything was ready and just right. if you wait for right, you wait forever. just go and do – you’ll be amazed how much reality appreciates your effort and rises to meet and help.

is all up to you.

of course there are problems of responsibility to work out. most have families to support, jobs to work, bills to pay, children to bail from jail, wives, husbands, lovers, others to fail.

the sad secret of my amazing life is i could not have done most of my adventures if i’d had children. children suck up 15-30 years of your life. so divorcing my wife and having myself sterilized back in 1975 was the gateway to most that’s happened since, and the lack of children the key to much that went before.

once lady decided to lose her weight, her 1st husband, her 5 couches, her unhappiness, her concern for her phony absent real father, it took 5 years for her to turn her life around and find me. it took me decades to get my life headed right.

the old sayings “this is the first day of the rest of your life” and “the longest journey begins with but a single step” are true . . . so if you want to run off and join the circus and have a life of adventure, best get a bag right now and start packing. it could take weeks, years, decades to get away, but just the knowing you’re going and are actually doing some of what needs done to get gone will give your life sparkle. once we decided to split, it took 10 months of intense work to leave – but it’s been way worth it.

you too can run away to far off lands and have exotic adventures.

the one catch here, the hardest part of all, is finding someone to be your adventure mate. without lady, i’d still be sitting alone in the dark in cleveland croaking in the night with my throat cancerous voice.

find the right one, the rest is easy

our shower window – foto by smith