Love

 Love is a hard nut to crack

The chemistry is only somewhat known

Especially in the falling part

More than the sum of all greeting cards

Love doesn’t begin or end with an orgasm

Anyone can possess it

To have and to hold from any day forward

Love can’t be contained by a song

Or make everything all right

Love has unexpected consequences

So check for stretch marks

Practice doesn’t make perfect

Because love is as human as we get

Pain is love’s companion, its guru

Love is a main ingredient in saints

Never a cheap date

But it could be a simple gold band

Worn properly

Jesus in America

 I think God was wise in sending Jesus to Earth two millennia ago. Can you imagine Jesus in contemporary America.? He’d wear kneeless skinny jeans and an un-tuck-it shirt, some expensive Nike’s and no socks. He’d ride into Jerusalem on a mountain bike and have the Last Supper at the Jerusalem TGI Friday’s. His disciples would be a band with three black female backup singers. He’d have to have a personal trainer so that he looked really good on the cross.

After all, this is what we’ve come to expect from our heroes.

Beauty

 Beauty is everywhere. You just have to pay attention. Fill your eyes and your ears with beauty. In fact, fill all your senses. No human culture failed to find beauty in nature and none failed to create its own beauty. Beauty eases pain, affirms the world and hits us in our guts with our own humanity. Beauty is not flabby.

Beauty is not always easy to find. It can be lost the noise, routine, busyness and empty spectacle of our lives. But beauty is everywhere. Waiting.

Eden

 Eden

Was it an apple?

Or maybe an exotic and

Long extinct fruit

How many seasons did the tree

Flower and fruit, fragrant

With the scent of life coming

How long did it take God

To invent sex, messy and glorious?

Did He regret the orgasm?

I don’t

Did God hassle with Satan 

Over the form of serpent?

Since there was at that time

No Queen of Heaven

Blame it on the woman

Only now can we openly admit

That the other genders

Lived in Eden too

This story lingers stubbornly

Truthful in its untruthfulness

Honest in its dishonesty

Wise in its silliness

Just needing a fresh coat of paint

Walls

 The walls go up. Fear is the builder. Fear of perceived threat. Fear growing out of ignorance. Fear of the loss of privilege.

Threat, ignorance, privilege.

This is the basis for hate, whether it’s racist, religious or ethnic. This kind of hate is a pernicious and persistent part of the human story.

It may be true, but it’s simplistic to say the answer is love. How can individuals be convinced that the threat they see is not real? How can individuals be educated out of their ignorance? How can individuals be convinced that the good for the many is a worthy advantage?

The answer is love. But it’s love that is unrelenting, mature, visible and shared across all walls. 

A pessimist's lament

 A Pessimist’s Lament

There’s no one to trust

The hungry eat crust

Love is just lust

The economy’s a bust

Gold’s turned to rust

There’s nothing that’s just

Anger’s a must

Then we all turn to dust

Truth and mystery

 Science searches for truth and mystery in nature.

Art searches for truth and mystery in human nature.

God

 There is God. There is no God. There are all the gods who have ever been. The God who lives in nature and the God who lives beyond the universe. The God who listens and the God who hides. The God who is a mystery and the God who is a friend. The God who judges and the God who pours out grace. The God who makes the rules and the God who redeems. The God way out there and the God deep inside us. The God of the East and the God of the West. The God with pure white skin and the God with the head of an elephant. The God who spoke the world into being and the God who ejaculated the world into being. The God who is a Goddess.

God is as difficult, as complicated and as diverse as we humans are. All the accumulated Gods still aren’t enough to make full sense of God. In the end, the only manifestation of the human understanding of God is the condition of the human world.

My celebrity

 

Training

 I believe that police need regular and updated training in effective policing practices and public engagement. But I also think all of us need training on what is expected of us as citizens in general and as citizens in our relation to police.

As we expect police to take more and more responsibility for their behavior, we take less and less responsibility for ours. The concept of freedom has been distorted, racist acts have increased and we have real concern for the social fabric that should bind us.

Beware

 Beware the creeping insidiousness of cuteness.

Beware the creeping insidiousness of self-important influencers.

Beware the creeping insidiousness of medications with nicknames.

Beware the creeping insidiousness of empty spectacle.

Beware the creeping insidiousness of dolled up untruth.

Beware the creeping insidiousness of manufactured desire.

Pledge

 Many professionals take a pledge that commits them to function with integrity and responsibility in their jobs. This is a pledge I take as an artist.

I pledge my commitment 

to the solemn practice of art making

to the belief that risk is fundamental

to the acceptance of failure as a teacher

to the courage needed to sustain a personal vision

to art as a social and cultural gift 

to art as a meaningful conversation with the viewer.

Trust

 The cycle is vicious.  A black man is stopped by white police and is pulled over. The black man is hesitant to respond to police orders. (A lack of trust?) The police ask the black man to get out of the car. (A lack of trust?) The intervention escalates. (A lack of trust?) The police try to handcuff the black man. (A lack of trust?) The black man resists or tries to flee. (A lack of trust?) The black man is shot. (A lack of trust?) Protests happen. (A lack of trust?) Looting happens and businesses close. (A lack of trust?)

No amount of equipment or cameras can resolve the problems that arise in police engagement with black men. Currently there are calls for better training of police. But there also needs to be better training for parents and citizens as well. 

What’s missing is trust, a hard thing to achieve. Trust comes from understanding, experience and honest engagement. We have a lot of work to do all around.

Guns in America

 Policemen with guns kill black men.

Black men with guns kill black men.

Manufacturers make guns that kill black men.

Republican senators thwart gun legislation that could save black men.

This is America.

Anyone can get a gun to kill anyone.

One at a time or many at a time.

Handgun or AK-47.

19, 13, 5 or 6 is old enough to get a gun.

This is America.

Rationality

 When I look at what’s happening in the world these days, I increasingly think that rationality is actually the real aberration of the human mind.

Real men

 Real Men

Real men don’t use or abuse women.

Real men don’t live inside a stereotype of manhood.

Real men are real fathers.

Real men control their libidos and are not controlled by them.

Real men own their own emotions.

Real men act from love, not power.

Real men understand mature love.

Real men can feel love for other men.

Real men mentor young men into real men.

Real men acknowledge their feminine side.

Future

 If you were a Neanderthal, what would you imagine a far future to look like?

If you were Jesus, what would you imagine a far future to look like?

If you were Charles Darwin, what would you imagine a far future to look like?

If you were Wendell Berry, what would you imagine a far future to look like?

Sometimes imagined futures are no more than that. Other times they are perceptive constructs built on what is right in front of us. We have been able to discover the astounding and unimaginable in nature and in our natural selves. We have created culture from dirt, stone and wood. 

And yet, at this time in history, what would you imagine the far future of humanity to look like?

Honoring Donald Trump

 Honoring Donald Trump

The Donald Trump Memorial City Dump

The Donald Trump Fertilizer Research Center

The Donald Trump Garbage Processing Plant

The Donald Trump Home for Reformed Pussy Grabbers

The Donald Trump Dirt Road to Nowhere

The Donald Trump Center for Disinfectant Research

The Donald Trump Fecal Research Laboratory

The Donald Trump Home for Wayward Nude Fashion Models

Dust

Spring

 

Bang, bang

“Bang, bang, you’re dead,” said the child.

And the disgruntled employee

And the angry man

And the abusive spouse

And the homegrown terrorist

And the thug

And the gang member

And the robber

And the racist

And the depressed teenager

And the mentally ill person

And the man with a grudge

And the random shooter

And the highway sniper

And the school gunman

And the kid with Dad’s handgun

And the man holding the AK-47

 

Well oiled

 There are more than enough jerks and assholes in the world. And there are plenty of leaders who are inept and focused on their own power and self-importance. And still the world hasn’t fallen apart.

That’s because sandwiched in between them are all the decent folks, who go to work, work hard, do their jobs well and care about the people around them.

Of course, I’m talking about those of us who are not influencers, tiktok celebrities or the fodder of “Entertainment Tonight.” We just keep the wheels of society well oiled.

Why?

 If you hate, you lose. If you love, you gain. Why is that so hard to understand?

Fear builds walls. Love opens up the world.

Survive

 I heard a news commentator remark with discouragement that all this time after Martin Luther King, Jr. death, we were still dealing with the same problems. It occurred to me that two millennia after the death of Jesus we were dealing with the same problems.

Evolution gave us two tasks: reproduce and survive. Human culture gave us myriad strategies to reproduce and survive. Sadly, one of those strategies was fear. When we fear, we hate. When we hate, we believe we can survive through the death of others.

We are sadly still in this place. How can we come to live as if we believe that our only true means of survival is through love.

Easter

 Across the world Christians are celebrating the solemnity and joy of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. Services. Rituals. Beautiful worship spaces. This, at a time when church attendance is waning, more people identify as non-religious, Christian belief has taken some strange turns and Jesus must still compete with the Easter Bunny.

The truth is that the message of Jesus doesn’t really require any of the elaboration we create. It is a message about the human condition as we struggle to understand suffering, love, forgiveness and redemption.

We may hear it in church, but it lives in the individual, in the sunlight, in the action.

Fuck

 We have done a great disservice to the word “fuck.” It used to be a powerful word, used by the select and rebellious few who knew how to put it to greatest effect. It was saved and savored for occasions when it was really necessary. It could identify the common ground of the low and the mighty. It was a word among words.

Now it’s lost its authenticity and impact. It’s the go-to word for any adjective. It’s the word of choice for those of limited vocabulary. It’s the easy spice for movie scripts and pop music. For both men and women, it gives oomph when being articulate is not an option.

I don’t think it’s possible to restore “fuck” to its past glory. We need a new “fuck.” Maybe a contest to find one. What do you think? (And please, don’t tell me, “Fuck you.”) 

Science/art

 

In the universe