I love you
very much 💋
Saturday, October 29, 2022
Friday, October 28, 2022
Ive had Today's Tom Sawyer stuck in my head for like a week. That is what it's called, right? Don't know what that's about.
Found out today that my old high school, which is still a public school, costs $12,000 a year to attend. How is that possible?
I'm having an insane craving for broccoli.
I voted Tuesday. At HCC. These new machines print out your ballot with your choices and then you take them to a collection machine that reads you ballot, collects your vote, waves a flags at you and retains your paper ballot for verification. I enjoyed the whole process. Not as much as when I was young and voted at the Mexican restaurant, but then, just unpacking that, I mean, it's too much of a mixed metaphor, it just gets sad.
I was sleeping through my alarms, plural.
So I changed the tone. It has been something that sounded vaguely like an old school video game. Now it's those dramatic strings Vivaldi Four Seasons. I hear them. I hear them all through the day-- they aren't actually playing.
Duhn da Duhn da Duhn da
Dahdahdahdahdah
Dahdahdahdahdah
Snooze
Five minuted later
Duhn da Duhn da Duhn da
Snooze
Thursday, October 27, 2022
Tuesday, October 25, 2022
Friday, October 21, 2022
Wednesday, October 19, 2022
I didn't go today
However I didn't really do anything else either
My head hurts and my fingers hurt and I had weird dreams
That's not true that I didn't do anything I used a massager on my hip for a long time
And it's better
But it's only somewhat better
It's substantially better
And that's great but
My first joint of my thumb has been hurting all day and that hadn't been hurting before and I've got some s*** going on with my left wrist
And just seems to be aggravated by everything I do
I don't know if wrists can go out of alignment but I think it's slightly out of alignment
If it's possible for it to be
Because it just feels wrong
And there's the bones are sticking out in different ways from one hand to the other which I noticed because the one on the left wrist just did not look right and so I was comparing it to the right one but that isn't new that's been going on it just hurts a lot more today
And you know I just don't want to sit here and tell you hey my brain didn't work today I had brain fog and my body hurts so I just sat and stared at things
I found out I'm in a new district
I did not know but they have a new district that they made and I'm just on the edge of that
So instead of having Lizzie Fletcher to vote for
I'm in a super Republican district
I mean it was some I was in a somewhat Republican district before but
In the blue wave it changed to Democrat and she keeps getting reelected well I guess keeps his a little bit she got reelected
And it's a weird district I mean it goes all the way from the woodlands up north almost all the way to Alvin and the south
It doesn't go to Alvin it just goes up to the edge of Alvin
So it's like I don't understand how
I mean some pretty diverse area
Although I guess what it has in common is that it contains a lot of suburb with just a little striper non suburb included
Anyway I'm not too thrilled about that
I'm going back to the studio tomorrow and I may finish tomorrow and if I finish tomorrow I'm not going to work Friday and Saturday and then I have to go Sunday for the open studio if I don't finish tomorrow I'll have to finish on Friday and or Saturday
So I hope whatever problems the front is causing will be over
And I'm sorry that I have not been very much fun
I just looked at the swatches I've painted today to see if there's anything worthy of showing you and there really isn't
goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋
I dreamed that I spent like $60 on fancy chocolates
shaped like fruits
rapped in colorful foil
to hand out
to surprise people
for the holidays
I tried to go to work
it was up through this attic ladder thing
and then there was a flying car
and I went with pami to make the deposit
but
then I had to go to the hospital
I went to sleep
my aunt Edith woke me up
they wanted to do something called
fourteenization
for my birthday
Monday, October 17, 2022
I've been working on the studio
There's an open studio on Sunday
They brought a bunch of stuff from the house that I hear marked for the studio cuz it was studio stuff
But there's a bunch of stuff here that I don't remember seeing so I don't know whether she snuck a bunch of extra stuff in or whether they were just a bunch of boxes on shelves that I didn't look in in fact I believe that is the case there were
It's just so much stuff
I've been feeling so bad
We're supposed to be getting our first cold front it was cooler today but tomorrow I think the high is supposed to be in the mid to upper 70s
And that is amazing
Cuz you're not really supposed to get the first cold front until around Halloween so there's a couple weeks early
But I've had such a bad headache
To keep my sanity I've been painting not necessarily even pictures of things just washes of color
And I've been watching all the swatchings that I can get my hands on
I love you sweetheart 💋
I'm going to bed soon
Thursday, October 13, 2022
Monday, October 10, 2022
Okay so PB15
I now know why I can't keep it straight
PB15: 1 is phthalo blue red shade
PB15: 3 is phthalo blue green shade
PB 15: 4 is phthalo turquoise so you think it's going in an ascending order progressively more green
but
PB 15: 6 is also a phthalo blue red shade just I guess not the same phthalo blue red shade as PB15: 1
It's been a weird day
So far
Saturday, October 8, 2022
So today I'm thinking
The title of the book
Cuz maybe I'm always writing a book in my head
I'm just not actually writing it
Today the title of the book is PR206
It's an actual thing
But it's kind of a metaphor
On that last picture that I published The four swatches to the left are from top to bottom I think because the bottom two were on a pallet and I'm not 100% sure which one is which brand I'm only about 75% sure
A Gallo quinacrone Chestnut
Roman Szmal quinacridone maroon
Daniel Smith quinacridone burnt Scarlet
Qor quinacridone burn orange
No they're all pretty much the same color there is difference variation between them and they're reading a little bit pinker on my monitor than what they actually are in person
I'm very attracted to this color
And you might think oh she just saw that color and bought it four times not knowing that it was the same color because they all had different names
But in fact that isn't right
If I looked through all the swatches for a brand I would find that color and I would probably want to buy it but it's highly unlikely that I wouldn't look at the pigment number before I bought it so I wouldn't know it was the same pigment
But it isn't even that
I actually saw that color and I was like I have to have that color and I ordered it from Daniel Smith first quinacridone burnt scarlet
And I was like no it isn't quite right that isn't quite the color I want and so I went looking and I found that the quinacridone burnt orange from qor was the same pigment number so I bought that and I liked that a little better but it wasn't quite right either
So I bought the Roman Szmal
Which is in a pan and it is so far my favorite
It's like the right texture and the right consistency the first two I mean they look like they're the same color now cuz I painted them out with a little more water in them but if you use them full strength they have a tendency to be too much
Also the texture of the Roman Szmal is just better somehow and it's got more of a luminous quality I really really like it
I really hate paint in little pans, though
As I've been putting this travel pallet together I'm like I don't like this at all I don't even really like pallets that have little spaces all lined up hang on just a minute let me take another picture and show you what I do like
This isn't perfect of course but it's got big enough areas that you can slop the paint around because what I really enjoy to do is to paint with these kind of dyads or triads where I'm constantly mixing I can get just pure color of one color but I have enough room to make kind of a soupy watery wash I don't have a lot of room this is pretty small it's like maybe 4x4 or 5x5 or something and I bought it a while back I've only just recently really started utilizing it
So this very carefully planned out palate that I've been putting together I mean it'll probably work but it's not my ideal I don't want a bunch of colors although I am really learning a lot about these paint brands and their different qualities and I am kind of enjoying using the different paints to their advantage within the same system you know like a multi-brand palette
The top color I went back and forth and back and forth about and I'm like you know I'm not going to like that one better but I was going to buy some a gallo paints and it's a small company and they only go live like once a month and they sell out in a few hours cuz they just have what they can make and they're real hot right now
But they had a sale where if you picked out 12 colors to make a pallet you would get 5% off of the paints plus you would get them in a 10 and you would get a brush included and blah blah
But it was so intense and I wanted to get some brushes I was more concerned about getting the brushes it was so intense stuff was disappearing out of my cart as I was trying to shop and so I ended up just saying f*** that because you know I couldn't get 12 because one or the other of the ones I wanted kept disappearing so I did an alternate thing which I won't go into but part of it included buying this little well why not go into it I had thought long and hard about getting this palette that they have that's all they're blues because they have some blues that are unusual and they're all really pretty now I usually do not use a lot of blue in a pallet at all so the idea that there was a whole pallet of blues that I like couldn't decide because they were all so beautiful to me I was like well that's got to be a sign cuz you don't normally really use blue at all well I do but not much I usually have like an indigo or you know one kind of distinctive blue but I never have like ultramarine blue and phthalo blue and that kind of stuff I did have cobalt blue on a pallet fairly recently but that was kind of an experiment
So I got the blue palette and then I'm like well okay but you maybe need some other paints cuz are you really going to do just completely blue things so they had this one little set it didn't have any blue in it it had several of the colors that were in the pallet I was going to pick maybe
Actually maybe not so much maybe I just convinced myself but at any rate it had this quinacridone chestnut
Now you may be saying why is she telling me all of this
I mean okay she's a pigment nerd but what is the point how is this a metaphor
Well part of the metaphor is kind of my weird process but it gets stranger because PR206 is being discontinued
And this happens I don't know how frequently it happens but it's been happening a lot recently because see these pigments the paint companies use them but the paint companies don't use enough of the pigment for it to be produced apparently
So these pigments are produced for like you know car paint and commercial applications industrial applications whatever
But then if people start deciding they don't like orange cars anymore or they don't like yellow cars anymore then they discontinue PO48 or PO49 or PR 149 was it 149 any rate
Quinacridone gold was discontinued so they started making a hue of it mostly with nickel azo yellow and quinacridone burnt orange which is usually what PO 48 is called although qor is using that number that name for PR206
The whole pigment thing is kind of confusing which is probably why people a lot of times a lot of artists end up with like two or three colors that they're attracted to but they think are different colors because they have different names
So PR 206 I heard a few months ago that it was being discontinued but I was like well you know I've got two tubes of it that I'm not really using all that much but then I did buy the quinacridone maroon for my little palette and I liked it so much or have been liking it so much that it's kind of reawakened my desire for this color
So I'm like PR206 is being discontinued so I thought about buying several more of the little pans
but
I really don't like painting with the little pans
So what I did was I ordered the shamincke madder brown that is there PR 206
But then I also ordered their Indian red because I love Indian red and it turns out they have a really beautiful Indian red that uses PR101 and PR206
Instead of just the regular PR101
But then I could not leave that alone because sennelier has a quinacridone gold that uses the nickel Azo yellow which is PY 150 along with PR101 and PR206
Which is of course also being discontinued and just replaced with PY 150 and PR101
And they have a permanent rose madder deep That's of course also being discontinued that's PR206
In Maimeriblu has a version called madder brown or brown madder I can't remember which now and I ordered that too
Now Windsor Newton I'm pretty sure already replaced their brown madder with some other color but for some reason I don't like Windsor and Newton
And I didn't know anything about Maimeriblu except I ended up with some small half pans of their paint and it's just beautiful luminous clear they're all like single pigments and it's just amazing
I used to really like Daniel Smith and they are a very popular brand they are probably at least in America the most loved brand of paint
But thinking a lot of love from the European vloggers that I watch as well and I really I used to really like them but I'm less I'm less into them now
I want to get to know the Maimeriblu a little bit better and they might ultimately be the best I don't know
Shmincke, and they're the ones that made that little case that I switched everything to that I have photographed they are I mean they make those super granulating colors but part of the reason why they did that and it's like a real novelty for them is the thing about schmika I wish this thing would not make me change that every single goddamn time schmincke they are very smooth and they lay down very smooth non-cauliflowery washes and what's so great about them for this pallet the travel palette that I put together is that you could take these very intense colors and you can use them full strength and get the intense colors but you can do a really really watered down wash and it still comes out smooth and looks really nice whereas most watercolors if you dilute them that much they they don't come out so nice or you have to really work to get them to come out nice
So you might say well you know it's a German company and they make a very precision product wow what a shock but it's a really good paint
And the sennelier it's more sensual it's very buttery and it glazes really beautifully and they make particularly nice reds and yellows now the earth tones nobody really says nice things about their earth tones and their blues and greens are they're okay they're not bad but they're not like they're reds and yellows they're reds and yellows are amazing
And the little that I've seen of the Maimeriblu they've got like a luminous quality they're very bright but in a completely different way somehow from the sennelier
I have never liked cadmium colors ever I didn't like them in oils I didn't like them in acrylics I didn't like them in watercolors they're opaque and I don't know clunky or something cadmium red cadmium yellow yuck you know but these they're almost well I mean they are opaque in full strength but if you thin them down they don't seem opaque at all and even the opacity it's different it's got a different quality to it
And it was a Cobalt blue and I'm like that doesn't look like any Cobalt blue I have ever seen well it's not the pigment for cobalt blue it's the pigment for cerulean blue but it doesn't look like cerulean blue either it's somehow a hybrid
And I had to order a separate blue from a gallo because it was too beautiful I absolutely had to have it and it wasn't in the blue palette so I ordered a separate blue and it is a blend of PB15 I'm not sure if it's PB 15: 1 or PB15: 3 and it's going to bother me it's phthalo blue green shade I think but maybe not maybe it's some other phthalo blue has a lot of different variations sorry since I don't use it I have a hard time keeping those straight in my head but it's got some kind of thalo blue blended with ultramarine blue so it's kind of a green blue blended with a more red leaning blue so it's a neutral blue that you could use as your only blue on your pallet and it blends greens or purples either one
And they call it like azzuro or something and I was like I have to have it it's so beautiful it's so beautiful right it's like exactly the same color it's a little bit different consistency and texture but it's exactly the same color as the Maimeri Cobalt
You may have noticed on that picture that the browns all look very similar but they aren't the two on the left are that iron chrome brown which is a little darker and it actually has a different undertone The one under it is schmincke sepia which is a PBR7 brown with black added most browns that you will find in a paint company's lineup from very light almost ochrey browns to very dark browns The vast majority of them are going to be PBR 7s just processed in different ways The two on the right the one on the top is a gallo umber dark and the one on the bottom is DaVinci raw umber
The big swatch above them looks very similar to the PR206 except it's a little oranger it's an earth tone it's Ercolono Red which I think is a PR 101 color PR101 is another one of the colors that's a it might be 101 and 102 they're red earthtones that are I think 101 is synthetic and 102 is natural or it's the other way around it's like p y 42 and 43 One is natural and one is synthetic but they're they're the same like mineral structures and they process them different ways and they make a broad range of everything from orangy to well I think it might actually include some yellowy ones too cuz I think all the Mars ones are 101s or 102s
At any rate the colors that I'm drawn to seem to be remarkably consistent
But it's like I went all in on PR206
A tube of paint lasts a very long time
And of course possible that by the time they come it will turn out that they had gotten the new batch in and hadn't changed the website and that it isn't PR206
But since they only had a very few left in stock I am pretty certain that it's the old one we'll see if it turns out not to be there still pretty colors and they will have had to approximate the color so it'll be similar
So I'll find out which is my favorite PR206
But then I might not be able to get more of my favorite
But then it's unlikely that I'll ever run out of PR206
Anyway there's some kind of message in there about things totally unrelated to art having control over what is available
And I saw this there's this place that I like to buy art supplies online it's called cheap Joe's and I like Joe who does little videos talking about his art stuff and there's somebody I don't know if it's his wife or if it's his daughter or if it's just somebody that is a very dedicated worker but there's somebody who's worked there for a very long time or been affiliated with him for a very long time and she does these like 2 minute art tips and sometimes she talks about you know products that you really should know about and in the process of my color mixing thing I saw a video from her that was talking about helping you mix colors it was like a chart but it wasn't like a wall chart it was like a little flip chart thing that showed you you know when you mix certain colors what you get and blah blah
And I'm like well that's almost useless unless you know what brand of paint it is and it's the same one you use because the colors are so different between brands
Like those PR206s I mean the top one anybody would see that that is very different but the other ones to me seem very different not very very different but somewhat different and if I was using them to mix colors I wouldn't expect to get the same color using those different brands
I mean I bought three of those four colors looking for the PR206 that I wanted
And that's some sort of metaphor for me I guess
So I don't know as I'm thinking of it now I'm not sure exactly how that's a book it probably isn't a book to anyone other than me but that's the kind of thoughts I think kind of the way my brain works and I'm very excited that I'm going to have all these PR206s to play with even though that seems slightly crazy from a painting standpoint I guess
I feel confident that the Maimeriblu and the schmincke we'll play nicely together in a pallet but I don't know about the sennelier
I'm kind of imagining a limited palette of just sennelier
Quinacridone gold
The PR206
They have this color it's called blue violet or violet blue I'm not sure I think it's a PV 16 or 17
But it seems quantitatively different
Quantitatively different what does that mean for a color did I mean qualitatively different hmm
They have a thelo green light that's just amazingly luminous I don't really usually like phthalo green at all at all at all like I never use it but this thalo green light is completely different and they've got a transparent brown
But I could not find a blue I liked
Like at all
They had a phtalo green dark that had a lot of blue mixed into it but I think it was still too green so I'm looking at that and I'm going well those colors they look good together but I don't know if you mixed them what you would get
Of course I guess if you have a pallet of colors that don't mix together to make anything then you'd have to just use those colors to paint with or you'd figure out what colors you needed with it but that's already
Well it's five colors five colors is a good limited palette although I will say that most people when they do a five color limited palette they probably are using colors that specifically mix and I'm sure these would mix I'd find a way to mix them and make something but I don't know what I would make
A broad range of oranges and greens
Anyway I didn't order those other colors
I have paints
I don't have to order a whole new limited palette of sennelier
Friday, October 7, 2022
I wish that I had learned about my mother
Well I guess I did somewhat
I guess what I really mean is
I wish I had learned something more intimate about her
I mean what I learned is that
I was correct in my thinking that
When she says these things that sound really fake they are really fake
It's just that rather than
Trying to sound good
Like she's using words that don't sound natural
Or at least not natural to her
And I thought that what she was doing was trying to sound smarter or more poetical or more something like it was more of a literary decision you know
And what it is is really more of a manipulative thing
But it's the strangest thing I mean really weird because she'll say things
But like for example when she left that food on the table it was like a rotten container of food and I was supposed to pack everything into boxes or into a box
And I ask her did you know it was a container of rotten food on the table
And she's like torn between I mean I can see in her eye she's torn between saying Yes she knew it was there because that proves that she didn't forget
Or no she didn't know it was there because probably you're not supposed to leave rotten food on the table
And so she says I don't know maybe
Which okay I see that I understand that and I'm like was I supposed to pack it into the box
Because she had said that I was supposed to pack everything on the table into the box right and I know I told you about this before I'm not dwelling on it although I did for a while I'm using it as an example
And she stopped
And I could see she's torn because she doesn't know whether she's supposed to say yes because she told me to put everything from the table into the box
Or no because obviously it can't be the right answer that she was supposed to have rotten food packed into the box
But she doesn't want to say I don't know maybe again because that was clearly not the right answer
and so she just does like one of those people in the video games if you go up and you talk to somebody and they aren't character that you're supposed to talk to they're just like an extra then they'll say whatever lines they have available to them to say and then they just kind of wobble around for a minute and go back to to like they just saw you for the first time because that's all they got
Well she's like that
So what she says is you're so cute
Which is also not a right answer
The right answer would be something like I'm really sorry I put you in that position I'm glad you didn't get stuff all over you
But you're so cute
Is at least deflection
Probably attempted manipulation
I'm angry and she's trying not to make me any angrier right
Well I mean to some degree this is what we all do
We don't all with every conversation soul search and apologize for our shortcomings and what not so you see any individual conversation
Kind of can't by definition be all that helpful
And explaining the situation we got going here
And I've known for like you know at least 40 years that she does not believe she is capable of doing anything wrong or maybe she does in her own mind but she won't admit it to anyone else
So you know most of this stuff is not actually new that I'm learning but the thing that I've learned that I hope I'm wrong about I would like to unlearn I don't want to think
Is that nothing she ever says nothing not just like a lot of it but like nothing she ever says is actually sincere from the heart communication
I think it's all just made up in the spot
For deflection
Or manipulation
Or just sounding like the kind of person she wants to appear like
And again
When I put it like that it doesn't sound that different from anybody because of course everybody monitors or edits what they say to some degree
Based on who they're talking to you know
But I feel like
That while if I was talking to a stranger
I would not necessarily expect them to be speaking you know from the heart sincerely or whatever but I sort of feel like that most of the communication that I have with strangers is more real than the conversation that I have with her
It makes me sad
And it kind of creeps me out
Surely
Surely there's something in her that is authentic
And of course where she's always running to trouble she says these things that aren't true but they're just in the moment she doesn't store the information and so she has continuity issues that you know a lot of people probably wouldn't catch but I have typically caught them
So now pretty much my feeling about her is that I know she's lying because her lips are moving
She's a completely unreliable witness
I don't I don't know if I believe that she loves me
We went to lunch the other day she's like do you want to go to lunch and I'm like oh it's 12:30 that's peak lunch time I'm trying not to be in crowds of people and she's like well by the time we get there you know it'll be almost 1:00
I'm like well that's still kind of peak lunch time
But she wanted me to go right and she wasn't going to go to lunch if I didn't go with her and she was very hungry so I'm like okay fine
She's like I want to sit and look at you for a while so we went and we ate and then she like had her purse in her lap and she was clearly wanting to go but I wasn't done yet
She got a Mexican Coke and I haven't had a soda in I don't know like I think I've had a soda in years and I was like well you know this will be a fun thing I can do it'll be a different experience see if I still like Coke
But it's very very sweet so I had to put a lot of ice in it and kind of let it melt a little bit and drink it slowly right so I wasn't ready to go yet but we were in separate cars
So I saw her with her purse in her lap I'm like you know if you're ready to go you can go you don't need to stay to watch me finish the last of my Coke it's okay
And she's like no no like she had to stay until I finished and that meant I should go faster right but you know it might be that she had stuff to do and she did have stuff to do but
This is not a new phenomena
She wants to be with me
But then she gets bored with me and she wants to go she stops listening or whatever
And I wish we didn't have to play that game you know like she doesn't really want to talk to me she just wants to look at me she's really like what she sees but she wants to look at me so I don't know why I can't just sit quietly let her look at me until she's bored of looking at me and then she could go I'm not emotionally attached to the idea that she needs to be interested in me
It does not hurt my feelings that she's not interested in me but it wears me out to have to pretend like she's entertained by my talking couldn't I just sit quietly
So I feel like I haven't really learned anything and I really did want you know for it to all make more sense
and though I guess technically you could say it makes more sense because I have a more complete pathology
What I wanted was to understand better what makes her tick and I don't feel like I do know that I don't really understand what she cares about
Maybe that's just me maybe I'm not letting myself see something
We kind of came through my being so angry and irritated to a place where I'm more just detached about it
I don't really understand who she is
But then I kind of feel like I don't really understand who I am either
I'm sure I've gotten some valuable lessons out of this I'm just not able to process what they are exactly
I have been kind of thinking about a book
Working title: throwing Bob away
I have sort of odd feelings about Bob
I mean I was kind of fond of him after a while we kind of got off to a rocky start cuz apparently my mom was talking all kind of smack about me to him and so he thought I was a bad willful badly behaved child which I wasn't
So by the time he moved in with my mom he was pretty convinced that I was trouble
But it didn't take very long of him actually interacting with me to realize that I was not trouble
So we had kind of a amicable relationship
And he was
Kind of a bundle of contradictions
I mean he was supposed to be from LA
You know big city fairly sophisticated
But he didn't know anything about LA like if you ask him anything about LA he didn't know anything like it seemed like a lie
And he had this weird kind of hick accent
He was you know a gun collector
And the kind of person who you know would print up a bunch of stuff about gun control and the government and blah blah and take it to the local radio station to try to let them see that they had the wrong idea about guns and you know I don't know he thought the government was going to come take his guns he like hit him in the wall
But for years she took classes at the esoteric philosophy center he would do these like chants and you know real metaphysical new age stuff and for a long time that seemed those two things seem very contradictory to me
Perhaps as a part of the metaphysical stuff he was very interested in collecting crystals and so he had gone to Arkansas many times and dug up crystals right and so his accent and all this information he knew about Arkansas whereas he didn't seem to know anything about LA I teased him and told him he was really from Arkansas and he was lying about the whole LA thing
And he watched wrestling and he watched football and you know I would kind of wander through when he was watching these things and every time he'd be watching football and I'd wander through I try to learn something else about football
And we'd have conversations about the wrestlers and their soap opera stuff
And you know the house we were all living in was the house that my mom bought that was split up into apartments so she and I had lived an apartment three and he moved into apartment four and she made him pay rent but then she kind of moved in with him and then you know that was I mean she was basically she had her stuff in the whole house One apartment was supposed to be her studio and then the other one was supposed to be storage
But none of it had air conditioning except Bob's apartment had a window unit in his bedroom so so she had air conditioning in her bedroom too because they were sleeping together
In my room was in the attic of apartment 3 cuz that you know put me further away from them and I had kind of a little bit of autonomy even though I mean we were living all together we weren't exactly you know
But whatever
When I moved out
I looked at him and I was like
You're going to miss me
Cuz you're going to be the only one she has to focus on so you're going to get all of it
And he kind of gave me a little bit surprised look like he hadn't really thought about that
I mean not that he was anxious for me to go
But I kind of felt sorry for Bob
I mean there are a lot of ways in which he was totally a boomer
In the okay Boomer sense
And they were fair amount of ways in which he was I mean not maga exactly
He was definitely not a white supremacist
He was definitely not a fundamentalist Christian
But he was a person who did not engage in a lot of critical thinking
He was against abortion because his mother had had an abortion once and apparently his father had not been on board with that and they fought about it a lot
He was like I said before very pro guns
He had been in the military and you know I really don't think he should have been in the military
His father had been in the military
And I think was injured physically in some way but for sure had emotional issues
And Bob thought the reason why he got stationed in Thailand during Vietnam
In addition to the fact that he had flat feet and was almost legally blind without his classes
Was the fact that his father had committed suicide apparently something related to his military emotional issues
And Bob thought that they kind of went easy on him because of that although I don't really know if that's true or not
He had a lot of emotional issues
And bad dreams he would wake up screaming or crying he would get up not awake and walk to the doors and check to make sure they were locked checking the perimeter
If it was really cold I slept in the recliner in the living room because it had it was a heater a radiator kind of thing in their living room
Well you know there are all these pictures that Bob took at the Renaissance festival That's where they met at the Renaissance festival
And so when I was going through stuff and sorting stuff and I was putting my mom's photographs in boxes and whatnot but I mean she didn't need pictures of all of his friends at the Renaissance festival nor would she care about pictures of all of his friends at the Renaissance festival and you know they wouldn't mean anything to his family either so I kept a few of them you know especially if Bob was in it with some you know group of people or whatever
Not so much because it was Bob exactly but it just represented a period of my life and sort of a spirit that was conveyed in the pictures that wasn't really represented by any of the pictures that I took that were more documenting the place I wasn't really living the '70s lifestyle when I was you know 11 or 12 years old you know so I wasn't taking pictures of the kind of things that a semi youngish guy would be taking
And then I found some pictures later of him with people he was going to college with or whatever and Bob had told me a lot about his college cuz I asked a lot of questions
Like when I went to Chico I was shocked because I didn't realize it was like a serious party school think it was Chico maybe it wasn't Chico maybe Chico was the junior college at any rate I went to the place where he went to college to see a show and they were like packs of college kids roaming the streets looking for alcohol
And he I'm sure I told you this he got a degree in agriculture because I mean he was going to school in the GI Bill and he didn't really know what he wanted to do and he was hanging out with some people he was going to go to Canada with this guy and this girl and grow pot with them or something
No I don't know if Bob smoked pot I feel like he did probably but I can't recall him ever saying that he smoked pot and I don't think he drank I think his father had been an alcoholic so maybe he didn't smoke pot either
And I mean the kind of things you told me were I don't know maybe not the best choice like he had a friend in college who was a girl and she was working her way through college at a massage parlor and they were some stories she had told them about things and f*** I don't know maybe he went there and paid her I don't know
But he thought he was going to go to Canada with these people and like have a group marriage or probably not even marriage just a group thing but I but they either broke up or they left without him or something anyway so that didn't happen
But you know his choices about what he did with his life they did not seem very directed
Seem like when he got back from Vietnam or Thailand that he was wanting to go to college and make a better life for himself but he didn't really know what he wanted
And I mean it's not like I can't relate to that but you know he's still got like subscription to mother Jones Wait no not mother Jones what is the name of that magazine it was the one that had all the stuff about homesteading and gardening and I can't remember I can't remember now what it was called but anyway he had a subscription to that and I would sometimes read things
I think that's where I got my idea that I wanted to live off grid
Anyway with his agricultural degree what he ended up with was a grain inspector job at the ship channel which is how he ended up coming to Texas from California
And he f****** hated that job
But he worked there until he retired because he wanted to have you know his retirement he didn't want to lose out on that so he did that but he died very shortly thereafter
You know when my mother she has his pension she's having a much more comfortable life than she would have had without it
but she doesn't feel grateful to him at all she doesn't have any kind emotion for him at all
And I found these plaques you know like 20 years of service 30 years of service retirement 35 years of service which I think includes the time he was in the military
And she's like oh you can just throw those away
So yeah I'm going through and I'm finding all this stuff and I'm like well you know I hate to just throw them away but I mean he hated that job and the plaques were never something he put up and had any you know I'm so proud of that about and you know I threw away most of those kind of things so I was like well I don't know and I did end up throwing those away but I found like his high school diploma and his junior college diploma and his college diploma and some pictures of him when he was really young I mean not like a child but like you know maybe maybe in Thailand or before he left or right after he got back I mean really young and some other stuff and I ended up putting you know some of it into like one of these little plexi boxes and bringing it away with me because I don't know it just I wanted to look through it and think about it
Seems to me there's a way in which he represents a whole generation of people that don't fit in with I don't know for sure or not with the political correct world but just not even with the world at all and you know if I had to enumerate his personality traits and all of the things about him you know it wouldn't necessarily sound like he was such a fabulous person
And I mean he wasn't my father and he never had a paternal type role for me but there's a way in which I have a real fondness for him
Then when he was in the hospital my mom and his sister were they are visiting him a lot they would stay there all day or whatever and I went to visit him and nobody else was there at that particular moment I don't remember why and he kind of grabbed my hand and started trying to kind of rub it on him not like on his crotch or anything just on his chest or something he was like you know talking about how he needed human touch or something and it just I don't know it hit me kind of creepy
I mean he was in the hospital and he was vulnerable and maybe he did need that you know but he didn't say you know hey can you rub my back or hey could you just hold my hand or anything like that he just kind of grabbed me and was kind of forcing it on me in a way and that it just felt bad
Like when Myron was chasing me around the house and tickling me and stuff and I was like you know feeling really not good about it and was telling him to stop and he wouldn't stop and I called my dad and that got him to stop finally but then I got in big trouble for my mom and it's like well what was I supposed to do had to get him to stop
So
And you know when I was in college we would have these conversations and I was talking about flag burning or something one time
And he's like oh yeah I think you should have the right to burn the flag when you wrap yourself in it and douse yourself in gasoline and set yourself on fire
And then you know years later I don't know what brought it up but I was reminding him of that conversation somehow and I'm like you know the symbol of the freedom is more important than the actual freedom and my life wasn't as important as a piece of cloth or something
And that sounds kind of harsh but I wasn't saying it like I'm recriminating you I know that's I don't think that's a word but I'm using it as one I wasn't using it like that we were talking about something else and it was just kind of a something I don't know it sounds bad but I wasn't saying it to upset him is my point but it made him cry and he was telling me how much he cares about me and everything and he always called me his daughter and stuff I just didn't think of him as my father cuz you know he wasn't my father and he wasn't really in a fatherly role but you know whatever
Anyway so I guess I'm kind of using him as a metaphor for whole generation of people who well and it's not the whole generation but it's a particular swath of white lower middle class you know conservative non-critical thinking you know
And you know he went to the esoteric philosophy center and stuff but I don't think it was so much that he even believed I mean he kind of he kind of believed but I think his reason for starting to go there was honestly that he was lonely and he wanted to meet some girls who might put out and you know you could go to church but he's from California supposedly so he's you know more I mean he was not hippie he was not a hippie but I don't know I don't have a completely thought through idea about this it just I had so much reluctance in just throwing him away
I've been watching a lot of paint swatching videos
And then somehow as a consequence I've watched some things about color mixing
That Oto Kano on YouTube
She had this thing about how to mix any color
And I watched it and it was terrible
Well probably isn't terrible if you're not good at mixing color it wasn't bad advice
It just seemed not terribly helpful
But then I recalled a story that surely I've told you but maybe not cuz why would I have told you
When I was in high school I was in the art program and probably a final project for I'm going to say junior year but maybe it was sophomore year I don't remember for sure
We did a religious painting
Now I think if you were an atheist you were allowed to do something that just related to like your history and family or something I don't know and it was four designs it wasn't like supposed to be or maybe it was like a joint project with design and art history or I don't know something but it was also part of the very little bit of color theory
And so you had this whole like design that was based on some sort of idea
And you chose colors which perhaps related to your idea
but the colors had to relate to each other in some sort of color theory way
So I did karmic wheels
I did secondary colors
Based on a triangle
In the painting was these wheels and
Was orange and green those were sacred colors in Japan and purple was tied in with India somehow that I might have just made up I don't know but
They weren't fact checking your story anyway I still have it somewhere it's one of my favorite things that I did because when you look at it from a distance the wheels seem to float above the background because of the color contrast
And you were supposed to use taped block the stuff off but I knew I was not going to be able to deal with that so I just did it freehand I mean I drew it with pencil or whatever first so I could see the spaces but I painted it free hand
And you know it's pretty small pieces and supposed to have two coats on everything
I'm just trying to give you enough information that it makes sense but I feel like I'm just going on and on and on
Anyway so when you picked out what your colors were going to be they had Pantone squares swatches and can't remember right now what you call them but you know every color has a number and blah blah and pantones you you've heard of Pantone so I'm sure okay so you pick out your pantones and then you have to mix the color to match your pantones
Which I guess is hard
They made a really big deal about how hard it was going to be
And Debbie Moses I mean she just kept mixing and mixing and mixing and she ended up with like pint-sized jars of this paint
So I took them and I guess pretty much everybody in class took the majority of the hour or when it was a 3-hour block most people didn't take the whole 3 hours but most people took I think at least an hour to mix the paints to be the same color as the pantones you know and get them approved as actually the same
But it took me like I don't know 10 minutes 15 minutes tops it was super super easy right
And so I took him over and got him approved and they're like you know you didn't mix enough of this You want to have extra because you'll never be able to mix it again and I'm like I could absolutely mixed again and they're like no it's really really hard to mix the same color
and I'm like it's really not but you know I mean watching the other people in the room it seem like they were having a lot of trouble with it I think I maybe did end up mixing more I don't know any rate
I knew I had more of an aptitude for color than like most people
But just recently watching that video of her trying to explain to people how to mix a color All the stuff she was telling him it's like well of course anybody would know those things and indeed it's not even the way I would do it right but then I thought about
When I was at Starbucks and I was a shift supervisor I volunteered to do the equipment maintenance to be the one who was responsible for the ongoing equipment maintenance if they would teach me how to do it because I don't have an aptitude for that kind of stuff
I can't look at something and figure out how to fix it and I don't necessarily have any genetic predisposition for that either because my father would occasionally try to change his own oil and he would break the car
But when I went to the class no joke the guy was pretty much like you just take it apart and look for what doesn't look right and fix it
I did get to watch him take things apart and put them back together and in fairness we weren't taking broken things apart we were just you know taking the grinder apart and cleaning it and putting it back together
But it's super hard to recalibrate those things well it's not I guess if you have an aptitude for that but I didn't have any sense of you know this is how much you turn it to get it this degree finer you know and so it would always be just like a guess and it would be again and again and again and I would end up crying every time every time
But then I kind of realized that for most people
Oh and in these watching things there were some people who are more or less professional artists who were saying things like you know I like to have a lot of colors on my palette because I don't enjoy to mix colors it just takes too long and
Many people had colors on their pallets that were like those colors are too close to each other why would you have both of those colors All you got to do to get that color is mix a little tiny bit of that with it so it's a waste now I get how if it's a color that you're going to use a lot of that you know it's kind of a pain in the ass to have to keep mixing it if you need a lot of it again and again and again but
Anyway today for some reason I was thinking about it there was a kid in my fourth grade class well sometimes he was in my fourth grade class and I don't know what his actual name was but his nickname was Jupi
Which I think related to Jupiter somehow
and he
always got in trouble because he couldn't show his work in math
No he couldn't show the work because he didn't break it down into steps that way his brain made jumps
And eventually they figured it out and they moved him up first they just moved him
To like the 5th grade for math
And he was in fourth grade for the rest of his stuff
But then I think they decided he needed to be higher in math than 5th grade could handle so I think he started going to some sort of special tutoring or something so that he could get ahead in the other subjects so that he could move on to junior high or middle school or whatever the fact they called it I think it was Junior high
But I think I've got something like that with color
And I've been playing with a bunch of new paints
I'm trying to make a travel palette that has colors enough colors that I don't feel the need to mix
But that's super hard because the mixing is my favorite part and I pretty much can't use a color straight out of the pot
I mean I can I guess but I don't enjoy it
And so I've been trying not to mix
But it's not going very well
I mean I've got different kinds of paint different brands and so they've got different textures and they are they have different qualities so you know I'm trying to keep myself interested in the colors without being able to mix them but I'm still mixing them
But then I was like man I don't have a perylene maroon I really like perylene maroon
I'm not looking apparently maroon I'm just remembering it from my head which they say you can't do
And I'm using the colors I have pearling violet which I'm really really enjoy
So I mix other colors with it I don't know which color side mixed with it cuz I'm not thinking like that I'm just doing it so I don't remember what colors I used
But I mix it and I mix it and I'm like no that isn't quite right I guess I can't get perylene maroon not from these colors well you know I didn't really think I could I was just trying see what I could do
So I've got my color that I've mixed
and
I go get the purling maroon and I paint it next to it
And it is pretty close
I just didn't have the right colors to get quite the right undertone but it's the same value and it's very close to the same color I mean like surprisingly close
And of course it would be a pain to have to do that every time
And especially since I don't remember what I used and so every time would be a new mixing experience until I wrote it down which I don't know when I might do that
But
COLOR
it's a thing
My finger joints have been very sore
I think from carrying trash bags and boxes and whatnot
But there was already pretty bad before I got the COVID booster
This COVID booster was different from any of the previous shots which doesn't really surprise me because this one has omicron variants so it's different
It is different
And I didn't really feel anything the first day except a little bit tired maybe
So I think I talked about it at the time I had symptoms but they were all pretty much things I had before I got the booster so I didn't really attribute any of them to the booster
And my arm never did really get sore it had a little tenderness like if you pushed on it but it wasn't like any of the other ones that were actively achy and couldn't lift my arm and whatnot
The next day when I woke up I was like oh I feel like I'm getting sick
But then by the next day I felt fine and I wasn't really fine because when I went back to lifting and toting and moving and whatnot it wore me out a lot faster but I didn't feel bad
But really ever since my fingers are just so bad that it's I mean it hurts to scroll on my phone you know everything I do with my fingers it just both hands they're just swollen and like arthritic or something
And I have this place on my back where when I was like I don't know 12 I was at a friend's house and it was kind of a bungalow so the tub was configured in a different way a different distance from the sink and I was looking in the mirror and I backed up what in most bathrooms I had been in would have been not a problem but this was and I fell backwards into the tub and I hit my neck back thing kind of where my neck and my shoulders join there's like a spot
I don't know if I've told you the story before or not it hurt it hurt really really bad
And when I wouldn't stop complaining about it hurting like 2 months later my mom took me to the doctor
She didn't take me to my regular doctor she took me to like a specialist or yeah somebody who specialized in bones or something
And they took an x-ray and said well doesn't look to be broken so soft tissue damage too bad
And I mean it hurt after a while it got to where it hurt like when the weather changed or when it was really humid or whatever but it you know it stopped being something that hurt all the time and you know after about 10 or 15 years it either stopped hurting at all or became part of the background so I didn't notice it anymore or whatever I don't know but I haven't thought about it for a long long time
But I had had pain there not bad pain not like you know I got to go to the doctor pain but well I mean that would have to be some pretty bad pain
Since you know a couple months after it happened there wasn't anything they could do although now they can do much more efficient scans I guess but whatever it didn't occur to me to go to the doctor
And that stopped after a day or two
But the fingers they are just not getting better
And it's been a week
And my hip is kind of jacked too
And the thing is these are all things that have been back and forth back and forth you know they're getting repeatedly stressed and injured because of all this stuff I'm doing
But I'm not doing very much of that now
So I don't know I'm not liking it
If you haven't gotten the new omicron booster
Then I'd say if you get it be prepared for all your weak spots to get an inflammatory cascade reaction
The dream I had about you
The one that kind of freaked me out so much
I was trying to see you
But there were all these women
Who were also somehow pans of watercolor paint
And they were like a hundred of them in this box
That was in front of you
And you could see all of them
But I was not in the box I was beside the box
End up front
Where you should have been able to see me
But you could
Or you wouldn't
Or you didn't
I'm not sure
And it just kept happening over and over
Every time I would try to see you
And then
Your wife was always there
Y'all would be like sitting on a porch swing
Or leaning against a wall somewhere
But she was just always kind of spread out all over you
Reminded me of that pre-Raphaelite painting
I can't remember the name of it
Hang on
Flaming June
And it would only be mildly annoying but I had said I need a sign
Not about you
About kind of what my next step and direction
More of a career question
Still kind of freaked me out though
Monday, October 3, 2022
Saturday, October 1, 2022
Can't remember the last time I was awake this late
Been kind of a strange mood
And kind of brain foggy
I don't know
If I can attribute any of this to the shot
I don't really even have pain at the injection site I mean my arm is a little bit feels a little bit heavier subjectively than the other one and it's a little bit stiff but
I mean I had a headache and brain fog before I even went to get the vaccine
And I have joint pain
That seems a little worse
But that just could be because I'm looking for symptoms you know
Like if I wasn't paying attention to it would it really seem worse
I definitely have some weird mood issues but I'm not sure that that's because of the vaccine I think it's more likely to do with the fact that I'm almost done with this giant project that I've been working on for like 6 months
I have all these feelings
And you know I've gone through my mom's stuff and I've read through a bunch of her papers and etc and I really don't know if I feel like I know her any better than I did before
And I feel like
I've become unmoored from myself somehow
Like I'm less certain
Who I am
It's like when Jason did that thing where he just magically took away my whole identity which was all tied up in my native American ancestry
And then it wasn't
Well there's something similar going on now but I'm not sure exactly what it is
It's really strange
Anyway maybe I'll figure it out
It's like I know what it is but I haven't told myself yet or something
It's very strange
Many many feels
Anyway I love you very much sweetheart 💋
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