...and they lived happily ever after. Smith & Lady: poets, artists, photographers & adventurers.
Our relationship was forged to the soundtrack of Yoko Ono's magic,
frenetic, love-laden song, "Walking On Thin Ice." ( play song )
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Lady is furnishing our new house (140 years old) with used items from Craigslist and Facebook’s market place because she tries to help the planet by buying repurposed rather than new. Got a great hand-painted antique Asian black chest with raised porceline or plastic figures for $35, several wood rocking chairs at $35 each, a carved wood and marble table for $50, a $10 metal owl lamp, etc.
Then she tried to replace her grandfather clock which she gave away when we left the U.S. in 2006 to live in 10 countries on 3 continets for 31 months.
She agreed to buy one. We went to the bank for the money, and started the hour drive to pick it up when we got a call from the husband saying his wife was mistaken, it wasn’t for sale. (Still wonder what was going on there… the wife perhaps trying to sell the husband’s clock behind his back).
Week later she tried another ad, and as we were getting ready to leave, the guy called and said he’d changed his mind.
Found a third one. Got the money, drove over, were let in by a young man who explained it was his grandmother’s clock. Lady glanced around at the art on the walls, and told the dude, “You probably don’t remember me, but we’re related.” Turns out they’re cousins.
The art was by Sandy Pollack, her grandmother’s brother. He’d died a decade ago, and his wife Miriam and their daughter had just died from the Covid-19 plague a few hours apart.
They started chatting about old family reunions, and he gave her two of Sandy’s owl paintings.
I’m thinking Reality jinxed the first two clocks so Lady could buy her grand aunt’s clock to keep in the family.
Reminded me of Croatia in 2005 when we decided to walk into town to rent bikes. As we passed a walled house on the dirt road, two dogs started barking enthusiastically at us, then the big black dog jumped on top of the wall while the little dashed underneath, and they both rushed us. Fortunately they were friendly, just wanted to be with us, and they followed us to town. But they were too enthusiastic, all over the place, in and out of the highway, causing problems, so we had to turn back. When we got home bikeless, we found our hosts had left two bikes for us. The dogs, which we named Thumper and Bambi, came by daily to play with us for the rest of our 3 month stay.
Once again Reality stopped us from doing something because it was already done.
While in Croatia in 2007, Lady morphed my face onto famous fotos. The Gandhi one is my favorite, though the Nixon and Waylon Jennings are right up there. I went looking for them because this would have been Gandhi’s 143rd birthday . . . I wonder if he’s coming to the party.
Dung or Diamond
On my lack of fame and fortune
I keep baiting the stream
But nobody bites
As for peace and understanding
I chase the spirit
I follow the sprite
— Smith, 1990
Willie Nelson & Smith as Waylon Jennings – collage by Lady K
Elvis Presley & Smith as Richard Nixon – collage by Lady K
Marcel Duchamp & Smith as Duchamp – collage by Lady K
Smith as Jesus – collage by Lady K
Smith as Vishnu – collage by Lady K
Ponytails were killing us. My most excellent friend & I are solving the problems of the universe. The most excellent show maybe ever–“Red Dwarf…”
On Friday, the Red Dwarf ran into the Squid of Despair, a giant squid. The cast and crew discovered that everything is a giant, mass hallucination, that we’ve all been playing parts for four years in a GIANT VIRTUAL VIDEO GAME.
SO, now they find out who they REALLY are–and THAT’s the DESPAIR–the despair was that they found out who they really were…
AND, right when they were about to KILL themselves, all cast members lined up, four in a row with one bullet–the ship’s computer finally got to a high enough FREQUENCY where they could HEAR and save them.
Oy.
So.
Friends, we suggest that we buy each other’s organically grown sustainable smoothie very expensive cakes and artisanal food, get frequent behive hairdos, sans hair dye, at the beauty salons where the hairdressers are paid magnificently and enjoy their work. Exercise classes and spas. Sustainable capitalism–it’s a plan.
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I suggest free education for everyone, or paid education, whatever works. And a career of anyone’s choice. Some people have to go to school longer for their careers. Those people should be paid a wee bit more. OK, incentive. But not ridiculous incentive. I’m thinking: sliding scale speeding tickets, like the ones they have in Sweden. Getting rid of tax loopholes and offshore accounts. Staying local. Stopping all this weird international shipping except for cruise ships to one anothers continents. In the basements of the cruise ships, we could carry very expensive, fine cheese and the spices and coffee of the world. Gigantic, energy efficient cruise ships. Free energy? What was that thing Tesla was talking about? Hope it works. I would like to beam myself to the North and South pole if possible, and Japan. Coffee crops as well. I really like coffee from fair wage growers whose wages must grow more excellent.
Keeping the inheritance ‘stuff’ within reason, but making sure these rich people work doing art/music/artisanal food or whatever tickles their fancy and stimulates the economy in a sustainable way.
– –
Primed the pump last night and bought some local, organic food. Sharpened our old knives for only $12. Hope he charges more next time. Hope the family business has more business coming in–we are an overtly ethical business. Hope our book projects take off. I know all this will happen. I just, know… it.
Maybe Heaven is supposed to be this Planet. This is the butterfly that’s going to carry me home, and this is the trash I’m going to pick up later, I hope.
Original post down below. I am strongly feeling that the staples on my roof seem to think I was wrong & I tend to agree with them.
– – –
As a person with a BSEE,a background in neural nets and search engine optimization, I belive (believe) I am receiving scientific messages which could be interpreted as holy messages (for me they are one and the same.)
I am not entirely certain, but I think I heard on the radio that J (Lebron James) is Jesus. (I do believe, I think.) Hard to tell. Will try to be truthful in what I’m picking up.
Now, off to good faith work. Seems like a harsh think (thing) for a prophet, but I must do my work for my loved ones.
We attend a monthly poet’s workshop called Rufus where 6 to 12 of us gather at a coffee shop and each read one poem to the others, whereupon they ask questions and offer suggestions and criticisms.
Didn’t have the time or inspiration to write a new poem this month, so I took one I’d written and blogged in Croatia in 2006 and hadn’t seen since, and revised it for the better. It made me realize I have a couple dozen poems I wrote on our journey and blogged and then never saw again that might be worth revisiting and revising.
In Time and Tide
The sea takes color from the sky
The sky water from the sea
In sharing shore rhyme and reed
Feed and flow form to need
While we
Unfertilize skies with lies
Mime death’s unliving power
Bleed need greed unheed
Knot dead our daily hour
So what’s it to be
The cabbage and the cauliflower?
Or cemetery ceremony?
– written Liznjan, Croatia 11/20/06
revised Cleveland, Ohio 9/26/09
Steven B. Smith
“No Exit” by Mother Dwarf Smith – foto by son Smith
We 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 Smith
Sometimes 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
The 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.
