POOF

 

9/24

Thirtieth Open Studio coming up in ten days and the world has changed. The invisible Lady In The Park didn't tell me about the transition but I'm not complaining. She told me the important part, that things were finally going to turn around, that all the misery and bad Karma was going to reverse itself and it did. We now have enough money to be comfortable for the rest of our lives. Thank you, Chris. When I told him in the hospital that he'd saved us, he told me we had saved his life many times.

I can't really complain to anyone when we have gotten so lucky but I can to you. I don't know whether it's the isolation of not seeing or participating in the antique business that has been half of my life for 35 years, the isolation because so many of our friends are dropping like flies, the isolation because I have produced too little artistically lately and have written almost nothing, the fact that my mind is operating differently with no booze for over a year after a lifetime, or maybe I'm just going senile, but there are times I can't think straight and that is why I have come back to you. I've teased you now and then over the last few years, but I have come to the conclusion that I need you too much now in order to organize and plan for what little time I have left. Thank God I've got a lot under my belt so when I finally break through and am recognized I will have enough to throw at the world while I start again. My God, all that I have written and painted over the last fifteen years has been fifteen years ahead of the world and only now is the world catching up to my warnings. I'm pushing for agents for DANCING again. I should push OLIVER as well though it might put me in a camp if the INFECTION is elected. Hell, I'd end up there anyway being a pervert and all. I guess I have enough money to flee the country now. Shades of Justin and Courtney.

Abstinence has brought back memories from long ago including my childhood that I think I can use. My pre K babysitters have bubbled up. The one who would take her entire charge out to the backyard when one poor kid did something wrong and make everyone watch as he selected the slip from the willow tree, pulled off the leaves and handed it to the scowling hag who whipped him with it in front of the horrified little witnesses comes to mind. How about the Seventh Day Adventist towering over me threatening me for sitting on the floor crossed legged like an INJUN? The same monster who overheard me mutter "Darn!" when I tripped and fell on my knee, and promptly dragged me into the kitchen to shove a bar of soap in may mouth and scrub my teeth and tongue with it. Another one who said almost nothing as she stared at me the entire first day sending such a stabbing warning to my intuition that I was in tears when my mother picked me up. We marvel in horror now at the monsters who have appeared in the last few years but they have always been with us.

I am starting this journal sitting in my17th century Italian side chair I just bought and restored at my early 18th century child's/ship desk signed "DAWSON" in one of its drawers, in the living room, so the antique business is still with me and it has left me a haven. And away we go.

9/26/24 Depression. It started in my mother's womb as she walked alone pregnant with me on the beaches of Santa Barbara wondering how she could possibly make a marriage to an alcoholic right, a depression that started almost upon my conception when she abstained from the diaphragm, got pregnant and told my father who immediately left her. Going through her things when she died, I found the letters to her family in Idaho pleading for help and asking what she could do. Six weeks later, he was back.

9/28/24 Yesterday we went downtown to the Elks Club for a goodbye to Mike Barrett - a couple of dozen people, many sharing stories about his insane, furious dementia outbursts over the last several years. Thankfully, I never witnessed any but they sounded the same as Chris's screaming in the gas station in the farmlands outside Chicago in 2015. What a horrible burden to bare. Hell on earth. Good bye, my dear friends. Goodbye, my dear friends.

12/2/24 I was the one who warned all I knew about Project 2025 but I was unprepared for the immediate organizing by the the monstrous cabal around the Great Carbuncle for the "Day One" putsch. I don't know which is more terrifying, the zombie picks for the cabinet or the gleeful acceptance of the Republican congress or the timid response from the Democrats. As prepared as I was, I didn't really think there was a chance it would win. I'm still suspicious, yet the fact that it won, the fact that almost anyone who looked at the scowling face and heard the demented, hellish voice could do anything but turn away in disgust and fear, let alone vote for it was the biggest shock. I have since realized that the vast majority of Americans don't get the news from anywhere, let alone the standard sources. The most googled question on election day was whether Biden was still on the ticket. Another big factor was republican television adds, few of which we in California or any other blue state were witness to as it would have been a waste of Elon Musk's money, specifically the gay/transgender bullshit threat. How can any one believe public schools will change the sex of your children? But the Carbuncle's claim during the one debate, that Haitian immigrants were eating people's cats and dogs barely raised an eyebrow. Those disgusted and in shock about what's coming are for the most part not yet facing reality and I understand, but it must be faced. And it will be when the monsters turned loose on ten million immigrants start building and filling camps, when millions of government workers are fired and they and their dependents can't buy food because they can't afford it and because there is no one to harvest it, when it can't be imported because of tariffs, when the media is shut down and reporters are jailed, when the Great Carbuncle announces that he is King and he can do anything he wants because he will never be punished. Even I have had some trepidation about putting up political cartoons on social media. I've asked myself is it worth it now that I am supposedly set for life and must take care of Bill. I have put a couple up. I would go crazy if I didn't. Speaking of going crazy, I had a drink the tortuous night of the election, a couple of sips at lunch following John Plynick's funeral, a glass of wine at Thanksgiving dinner at the boys place with ten other guests while I sat next to a silent guy giving off closet case hatred vibes and one more shot of bourbon a couple of nights ago. That last shot left me with a taste of the morning depression that convinced me to give it up a year and five months ago. And that was the end of that. I hope. Now it's day to day. I'm coming to terms with the fact that I can't produce a masterpiece ever other day, that I work my ass off taking care of Bill, that if I do a little bit of work or maybe nothing each day and just read and watch the horror unfold, it's okay. I need to save up my strength, to recover from over two years of settling the mess of Chris's estate, of taking care of Bill almost dying three times, to adjust to a life without the wonderful, fascinating and inspiring and breathtakingly challenging antique business of the last thirty eight years. Typing at my little three hundred year old desk sitting in my four hundred year old chair helps. I whipped out a pallet knife oil of a Turkey on Thanksgiving day and got the best response on social media in years. Avanti!  

12/26/24 I had to do my annual Christmas card and ended up reworking the Zotts painting from 1978, replacing the naked pair sprawled on the bar with Santa and a date, then boosted it on Instagram for the first time and got 75 likes so far. I followed that with a palette painting of me as a kid in front of Ol' Tannenbaum, a big hit on Facebook. Out to The Sausage Factory for Rich Bailey's 70th in the Castro and the rain Saturday night, then Mike and Kai over for dinner Sunday. Yesterday was Christmas and lunch at Edgar's with Rich and his new beau, Horst along with Philbert and Lance. The conversation was a bit trying with Lance and Rich's seventies gay dick chatter. When something interesting finally came up towards the end of lunch, the election and impending doom, I was surprised when my somewhat hopeful prediction was met with surprise because "You're usually so pessimistic". I was about worn out by then and ready to go. Edgar asked if Bill wanted his coffee warmed up and I said no thanks. Before I could finish by saying we were going to take off, Edgar said, "Well, Bill, you soon won't have to talk for yourself at all." The Bitchy, Dick Talk then a Cunt Crack unnerved me and I realized I was changing, fundamentally changing, changing in a totally surprising and heretofore inexperienced way. I have stepped back and looked at myself as I have never done before. Hang on, my friend.

Poof! Seamus! Cyril! The Irish bartenders of my youth instilled the spirit of Loreley in me and it will never leave me!

5/26/21 Tout ca change, tout c'est la meme chose. "Get high on their radar screen and you’re on the no-fly list. Get higher and you might just disappear. And torture? Yawn. Habeas Corpus? What’s that?" from page 10,  Oliver's Illuminations 15 years ago.

And, "Ah, the mega store, that great, gray morgue. If ever there was my hell on earth it would be wandering the bottom of a giant, soul sucking cave like an ant numbed at the sight of row after towering row of identical detritus as you fill an enormous cart with the empty shells of things, corpses of merchandise all wrapped in miles and miles of plastic."

Today?  

Head of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem:  "Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country." (Does that cover blowing the head off your pet dog in an abandoned gravel pit?)

Holier than thou Democrats at Trump cabinet hearings outraged that nominees won't agree that Edward Snowden is a traitor and wide eyed MSNBC panelists amazed that Trump is putting tariffs on the wonderful chain that Americans depend on - Walmart, the Death Star that settles outside of America's small towns and destroys them.

I never thought I would be afraid to post political cartoons. I started drinking again.

Bill is wonderful as ever but needs both hands on a walker to walk, can't fix meals for himself, wash himself or go to the toilet without help. I got a text from Nell last night demanding if we plan on going to Mark's play in the Tenderloin. Hope to talk to her today and let her know how difficult things are.  

     I don’t know if I’m grieving for lost family or if I’m fed up with trying to find some sort of outlet for two books and a studio full of art after all these years of a hundred some agent queries, gallery tries, or if I’m going crazy dealing with a business that in spite of thirty years of hard work and constant learning, of surviving earthquakes and recessions, disease, lunacy and death seems to have run its course, or all of the above but I’m stuck. I don’t want to paint anymore. I can’t find a project for my writing. My mind goes adrift. I’m often exhausted. Bill gets tipsy and almost falls with a knife in his hand and I am overwhelmed with the feeling that I can’t take care of anyone any more, that I can’t face another disaster. Driving home from work, I feel sad that my dead mother will never taste a strawberry again. Dead friends chuckle in the back seat. I tell a dear friend who doesn’t want to hear it that the whole God damn economy is going to blow up sooner than later. I’m so fed up with reading and commenting and trying to do something about the fascists taking over the last vestiges of America and the world. It’s gotten so depressing, I just can’t seem to even research anymore. I swung a deal for a 17th century Italian cabinet and spent a week restoring it but the thrill seems gone and it sickens me. It scares me. It makes me feel ungrateful. By some incredible miracle, I have been saved from the street by Chuck moving out and leaving me this wonderful apartment with Bill whom I would have moved in with many years ago if finances allowed it, but I can’t shake the fear that I’m not on the lease and have no right to rent control if anything happens to Bill. And I feel like an idiot for not admitting that anything can happen to either or both of us at any minute anyway and not appreciating every minute I have left on this earth. Mostly I think I’m isolated. Friends have died or gone, new outlets don’t pan out. I have seriously considered writing about my high school ten day spring break field trip in the desert after dad died, especially considering the isolation, depression and feeling of entrapment that has slowly closed in on me as my mother withered away then turned into a monster, my money and ability to make it faded and friends began to die is almost identical to the entrapment I was fighting as I got on that bus at sixteen years old and began to pull myself together and put my life in the right direction after my drunken father blew his brains out and my mother and I found his rotting body in his apartment. The entire basis for that metamorphosis was the fact that the desert that I never knew though felt like I always had was the place where I spent the first three years of my life, a memory erased by my mother and father’s bitter divorce and dicey relationship forced on the two of them by their half an accident son. Just reading her letters to her family when my father left her after he found out she was pregnant was such an illumination into the bizarre dance of circumstance that has been my life. I took a guitar that would teach me music on that trip. I got my first crush. The energy and escape and rediscovery of my very beginnings in life the trip opened to me led me to force my way into a circle of older high school kids involved in theater and the arts. It released me from the prison fate and other people had closed me in and sent me on my purpose in life. I have worked and struggled and pounded on the door ever since, for close to fifty years now. Somehow, some way very soon if I have to kick it open, light it on fire or blow it up, I will open that door. Once again I will come home to one that never existed but was always there waiting for me. I learned to walk very quickly as a toddler for the only thing I had to lean on was the side of a trailer broiling in the heat of the desert sun.

  6/23/20
      That was five years ago and I'm still here and hanging onto a thread so much thinner and more fragile. I somehow managed to get back on track with my writing and went through and orgy of painting with hundreds of works. I started a third book and honed the first two. I wrote that short story about the desert and a collection more. I somehow managed to hold onto a corner in the upstairs of the store and get a job cataloging antiques for an online auction company in a warehouse in South City. I helped Bill through a heart valve replacement, two stents and a protracted six month diabetic sore that healed up three months ago and seemed to herald a new start only to be shattered by a mysterious paralysis that made him almost an invalid and unable to get the the hospital because of the plague. I worked through that and figured it was probably the beta blocker they put him on after the heart procedure that left him hobbling on a cane. Then the general consensus is that he got so weak with six months of not moving, his body started to shut down. Physical therapy seems to have started to turn that around and I pray he will get back to at least using a cane and being able to get out. My God, He hasn't left the apartment since the first of March. Oddly enough, the plague and ensuing nationwide riots have been a purge for me in a ghastly medieval sense. Americans are finally starting to wake up and the world that has been waiting for us for years is breathing a sigh of relief. Now my books that predicted this ten years ago are prescient. But the depression has descended again and with it the fear of losing Bill and the roof over my head. There is a ship's clock for sale.

From the Beginning

  

3/53 San Luis Obispo

9/53 Denver

3/54 China Lake

7/55 Marin County

3/56 Top of Lincoln Ave

3/61 Paloma Ave

4/69 Dad’s suicide

4/69 Desert field trip and the guitar

9/69 Patti Larrick and start my art career

5/69 Theater not even small parts offered

2/70 produce and star in Zoo Story, told by teachers it was the best theater they'd seen at SRH

5/71 Graduate San Rafael High

6/71 Europe

 9/71 UC Santa Barbara, dorm

11/71 Leslie

6/71 First painting again, Scheherazade

9/71 UC Santa Barbara, Isla Vista

 6/73 Santa Cruz with Leslie, Cabrillo Junior college, German

 1/74 Europe, Bebe, Drew

3/74 Accepted to UC Berkeley

3/74 Break with Leslie

4/74 UC Berkeley dorm

6/74 Frat House, crazy gay friend attack

10/74 Berkeley boarding house

1/75 Chris Leidich

5/75 Graduate and move to Fulton Street with Chris

9/75 Cal Mart job

10/75 Bob Bendorff

12/75 Christmas Rush at Macy's

12/75 Move in with Bendorff, top of Vulcan Stairway

1/76 Break with Bendorff and move in bottom of Vulcan Stairway 

6/76 Jackson's 

7/76 Chad

7/76 Move to California Street

10/76 Break with Chad and start with Clauvdia

11/76 Stu

12/76 Move to Delgado Place 

1/76 Fired from Jackson's for being Bi

2/77 Move in with Stu at Larkin Street

5/77 London Wine Bar

3/78 Leave London Wine Bar

5/79 Rent doubled, move to Sacramento Street

8/79 Stu's Marina bar closes, looses Zott's

5/80 Scott's restaurant

12/80 Stu at Barrett's 

6/81 Stu to Tiburon with Barrett

8/81 To Tahoe to open The Cracked Crab, North Shore

10/81 Stu starts Beck's Beer Distributorship at Tahoe

2/82 The Roosevelt

10/82 Bill Kluver

1/83 Move to Bill's

3/83 Move to Jones Street 

4/83 Hawaiian honeymoon

QE II and Europe

6/84 Southwest with Edgar and Jack, Chicago, New Orleans World's Fair, up the coast to Manhatten

 6/85 Train across Canada, Maine RR convention, Manhatten with Bud on 98th floor of World Trade Center, DC, Detroit, Henry Ford Museum, Toronto

9/86 London to Greece with Norm and Joan, QEII to Lisbon with Stu, Barret, etc

9/87 QE II, Orient Express, Concord

4/88 Mexico 

7/87 Start my antique business at collective on Market

8/88 move business to Great America collective

3/89 Roosevelt sold, out of a job

5/89 Inheritance   

                                                                              
7/89 Move to Post Street

9/89 Cruise to Hawaii
10/89 Earthquake
1/90 Start at Harpoon Louie’s
4/90 First Mideast cruise
12/90 Gulf War
12/91 Move to Jones Street
3/92 Harpoon Louie’s closes
4/92 Second Mideast cruise
7/92 Baja Beach Club Commission
1/93 Start at Baja Beach Club
9/93 Baja Beach Club closes
10/94 First Open Studio
11/94 Sutter’s Mill offer
12/94 Sutter’s Mill falls through
3/95 Lose in small claims court
5/95 Award in Napa Fair
10/95 Second Open Studio
11/95 Win in small claims court
2/96 Ken, Bob, Australia, New Zealand
6/96 Two paintings in Marin County Fair
7/96 Permanent Gallery in living room
10/96 Third Open Studio
11/96 Pennsylvania, New York City
2/97 28K bankrupt
6/97 Marin County Fair
10/97 Fourth Open Studio
4/98 Computer
5/98 Antique and Art Exchange
6/98 Leave Great America
7/98 Three Awards Marin County Fair
8/98 Two awards Napa County Fair

9/98 SFADM
10/98 Fifth Open Studio
11/98 Mom’s hysterectomy
1/99 Leave SFADM
1/99 First Grant application
3/99 South America
5/99 35k left
6/99 Two awards Marin County Fair
6/99 Three Awards Napa County Fair
10/99 Sixth Open Studio
11/99 Face Off
11/99 Start work at A&AE
1/2000 Land Lord Fight
10/2000 Seventh Open Studio
6/2000 Itheo
11/2000 Pat dies
3/01 Recession
2/01 Paintings in Pilot
7/01 Stopped hard liquor
9/01 911
10/01 Rocky dies
10/01 Eighth Open Studio
1/02 Gallery in Hall
2/02 Laid off A&AE
3/02 Bill’s foot, six weeks attending healing
5/02 Stu attacked
6/02 Yellowstone/lodges road trip
7/02 Norm dies
10/02 Ninth Open Studio
10/02 $6500 in sales, Wayne Zion
2/03 Start Past Perfect
3/03 Mom’s ‘brush with cancer’
3/03 Turn fifty
3/03 Working at A&AE again
4/03 Lose tooth
5/03 Leave Past Perfect
10/03 Iraq war
7/03 Move to Franklin Street
9/03 Heart/adrenaline problem
10/03 Tenth Open Studio
12/03 Lose 17K First Merchant
12/03 Paul and Debbie
4/04 Bill only 175k left
4/04 28k left
7/04 A&AE moves
7/04 Chronicle article on my apt
10/04 The transition out of the business begins
12/04 Frames and surfaces
1/05 Cashed out
3/05 Best month ever: 10k
4/05 Betty: self sales ends
6/05 Truck totaled - silver lining
6/05 Landscape in Marin County Fair
7/05 Two months bust in a row
10/05 Driving again
9/05 American born paintings
11/05 Room with a view
1/06 The breakthrough
1/06 The guitar again
3/06 Into a corner at A&AE
5/05 Bill in ER - blood pressure
7/06 Galleries try
10/06 Computer
11/06 Skyline buys the building
11/06 Domestic partners
11/06 Congress
12.06 Sigmoidoscopy
1/07 Tenants hire a lawyer
4/07 Private car/Palm Springs/Wayne
5/07 Clean Stu’s place summer job
6/07 Third place mirror - Marin County Fair
6/07 Uncle John leaves me the family watch
6/07 Best month yet
9/07 Mendo, Benbow, Clear Lake
10/07 Twenty Five years with Biull and party
12/07 Mendo, Benbow
1/08 I can illustrate - start Oliver’s Illuminations
3/08 Denise dies
3/08 Make wills
4/08 Sell Bugatti table
8/08 Dale’s accident, coma
8/08 First Blog
9/08 Colorado with Chris and Rick, visit Dolly, Al, Dale in hospital
10/08 Market Crash
10/08 Spanish colonial desk
11/08 Obama
12/08 73 paintings so far for book
12/08 Bill’s portfolio frozen
1/09 Franklin Street foreclosed
2/09 Bill down to 61k
4/09 Sharon dies
5/09 Bill’s elbow
6/09 Everything for sale
7/09 Down to 13k
7/09 Over 14k month
10/09 Gum operation
11/09 Venetian desk
12/09 Mendo

12/09 Two months bust in a row again, down to 13k
12/09 148 paintings and text
2/10 Rick dies
2/20 First self portrait in 40 years
3/10 First draft of Oliver’s Illuminations finished
4/10 Begin rewriting and re painting
4/10 Bill’s foot sore
7/10 Bill’s double knee replacement
8/10 Bill in ER low blood sugar
9/10 Down to 8k
10/10 DC with Chris, NYC, RI, Mass
11/10 Captain’s desk
11/10 Mendo
11/10 11k month
1/11 Tahrir Square
2/11 Android
3/11 Pandora
3/11 Start Cannibals in the Garbage Can
4/11 Tehachapi Private Car
5/11 Yosemite with Bill, Joanne, Dave Buechler
6/11 Agent query
9/11 Reno Private car - Edgar and Jack
9/11 Occupy Wall Street
9/11 Jack Woodlief dies
10/11 Mom looses driver's license
11/11 Mendo
1/12 Four Paintings to Spencer and Nancy
2/12 Rewrite Oliver’s Illumination
3/12 Sell the mustang
7/12 Bill’s foot - seven casts
8/12 Bill’s foot surgery
9/12 Down to 4k
10/12 Bill recovered
11/12 Stinky abuses me for how I voted
12/12 Sculpture again: Rise like Lions
12/12 Mendo
12/12 Stinky attacks over shipping problem
1/13 Stinky demotes me - can’t answer the phone
2/13 Bill’s cellulitis
2/13 Turn sixty
3/13 Finish Cannibals in the Garbage Can
4/13 Boer Table
6/13 Jack Hurrell dies
6/13 Sell Stu’s paintings to Spencer and Nancy
6/13 NSA
6/13 Decrease health coverage
3/13 Marriage equality
7/13 Cannibals on Facebook
8/13 Walter and David break 20 year friendship in an email
9/13 Cousin Gary
9/13 Computer Crash
10/13 New phone
10/13 Light flashes
10/13 Bill’s foot - three casts
11/13 Married
11/13 Covered California
12/13 ‘Today is a great day.’
12/13 Stiffed of  Xmas bonus
12/13 Mendo $6200
12/13 Lap top
1/14 Bill’s pancreas
2/14 Stu dies
3/14 Cliff dies
3/14 Move into 2110 Jackson Street with Bill
3/14 The Exorcist
8/14 Clear Lake
8/14 Cannibals ‘distilled’
8/14 Mom dies
10/14 House warming party
11/14 Thanksgiving with Sue and family
12/14 AAE reduced by a third
12/14 Mendo
12/14 Stiffed of Xmas bonus
1/15 Lose my desk at AA&E
2/15 Stinky attacks again and starts throwing things
3/15 Mary and I discuss lawsuit
3/15 Biedermeier bookcase
4/15 Bill’s cataract operation
5/15 KIA
6/15 Dunsmuir private car
9/15 Flood at A&AE
9/15 Chicago with Chris - Ina
9/15 Laid off
10/15 Open Studio again 5 sales
11/15 Mendo
12/15 website
12/15 Lose covered california
12/15 Mary
12/15 Worst business year
12/15 Instagram
1/16 Business cards
1/16 Health care nightmare
3/16 Healthcare back
4/16 New phone
3/16 First partial request
6/16 Selling at the flea market
8/16 Social security
8/16 Chuck dies
10/16 Open studio, four off street, two paintings
11/16 mendo
11/16 Trump
11/16 Amanda dies
12/16 Painting for my life
12/16 Thrown off covered Calif. Again
1/17 Pancakes and booze
1/17 First decent sale
4/17 Piano Fight Show
5/17 Mary quits
6/17 Galleries applications
8/17 Website Instagram link
10/17 Tiny/Studiio Gallery
11/17 Open Studios 1100
2/18   Short story
2/18   LA Mendo
3/18   Art Baazar
3/18   Cyst
4/18   Flash Fiction
6/18   Delicious Studio Gallery
7/18   Bill’s food poisoning and hospital 

8/18  Hit by an Uber, car totaled

7/18 Catalog job

9/18 Bill's stents

10/18 Bill's valve replacement

10/18 Open Studios 1150

10/18 Building sells to Goldman Sachs

11/18 Attempted hack

11/18 Mendo

1/19 Blood pressure needs

12/18 Ken Grimes dies

2/19 Chris's leg

3/19 Studio Gallery

4/19 Short story collection

5/19 Dentist

1/19 Bill's hematoma

8/19 Mary back

8/19 Thad's

9/19 Bill's butt

11/19 Open Studio 1300

11/19 Bill's foot sore, insane podiatrist

11/19 New Phone

2/20 Bill's foot operation

3/20 Bill's Carvedilol balance

3/20 Plague

4/20 Revolution

5/20 Bill's intestinal bleeding and edema 

9/20 Bill hospital

9/20 Sixty pounds off in two weeks

11/20 Bill's pulse to 40, hospital

12/20 Bill's blood infection, hospital

1/21 Six weeks of home IV Antibiotic Bill Cured

1/21 Beat Corporation over garage

1/21 Insurrection 

2/21 Gutting of apartments

3/21 Chalazion

3/21 Cataracts

4/21 Third person for Dancing Around the Cooking Pot

8/21 Lost store lease

8/21 Studio gallery - sold $400

8/21 Lost store lease last inventory in warehouse

9/21 Open studio $1400

9/21 I'm out of AAE

10/21 Shower ripped out

1/22 eyes worse

2/22 Bill's #s

2/22 War in Ukraine

3/22 Bill's insulin starts

3/22 Chalazion again

3/22 Cataract operation

4/22 Second chalazion operation

6/22 Studio Gallery

6/22 Roe v Wade

7/22 American Art Work

7/22 Stokeld commission

4/22 Bridge replaced

9/22 Chris dies

10/22 The Estate

11/22 Open Studio

8/22 Captain's chest

12/22 Hemorrhoids 

1/23 Mary to Kansas

5/23 House cleared and redone

6/23 Sold after bidding war

6/23 Charlie's show (sold)

6/23 Read and organize Journals

7/28/23 Quit drinking

7/23 Accountant and Bookkeeper

8/23 Crown 

10/23 Genocide

11/23 Open Studio

12/23 Bob Knowles dies

1/24 New computer / Dave and Emory bankrupt

3/24 Elevator out 6 weeks, can't talk to or email a human, AI only

4/24 Chris Leidich 

4/24 Mike Barrett dies

5/24 Studio Gallery (sold "Oops")

5/24 New phone

6/24 Biden debate 

6/24 Project 2025

6/24 Kamala Harris

6/24 Ken Iverson visits

7/24 Goldman Sachs goes bankrupt, Royal Bank of Canada takes over, better management

7/24 elevator out three weeks

8/24 IRS rebate

8/24 Mobile Home sells

10/24 Gary dies

10/24 Thirtieth Open Studio, nine paintings, three to new clients 

10/24 Race neck and neck

11/24 Trump/start drinking again

11/24 Plytnic dies

12/24 Tsunami warning, tornado warning 

11/24 Mary to Italy

2/25 The coup begins

3/25 DOGE5

4/25 ICE

5/25 Tariffs

5/25 Studio Gallery

6/25 Josephine

7/25 Hearing aids

8/25 Perry 

8/25 Rosebud Gallery (sold)

10/25 Epstien

10/25  Rosebud gallery 

10/25 Open Studio (seven paintings)

11/25 Rosebud gallery

1/26 Venezuela

  

1/26 Debbie

1/26 Minneapolis

1/26 Kia failing

2/26 Elevator failing

2/26 Kia back

2/26 Rosebud gallery 

 

 

2015 I don’t know if I’m grieving for lost family or if I’m fed up with trying to find some sort of outlet for two books and a studio full of art after all these years of a hundred some agent queries, gallery tries, or if I’m going crazy dealing with a business that in spite of thirty years of hard work and constant learning, of surviving earthquakes and recessions, disease, lunacy and death seems to have run its course, or all of the above but I’m stuck. I don’t want to paint anymore. I can’t find a project for my writing. My mind goes adrift. I’m often exhausted. Bill gets tipsy and almost falls with a knife in his hand and I am overwhelmed with the feeling that I can’t take care of anyone any more, that I can’t face another disaster. Driving home from work, I feel sad that my dead mother will never taste a strawberry again. Dead friends chuckle in the back seat. I tell a dear friend who doesn’t want to hear it that the whole God damn economy is going to blow up sooner than later. I’m so fed up with reading and commenting and trying to do something about the fascists taking over the last vestiges of America and the world. It’s gotten so depressing, I just can’t seem to even research anymore. I swung a deal for a 17th century Italian cabinet and spent a week restoring it but the thrill seems gone and it sickens me. It scares me. It makes me feel ungrateful. By some incredible miracle, I have been saved from the street by Chuck moving out and leaving me this wonderful apartment with Bill whom I would have moved in with many years ago if finances allowed it, but I can’t shake the fear that I’m not on the lease and have no right to rent control if anything happens to Bill. And I feel like an idiot for not admitting that anything can happen to either or both of us at any minute anyway and not appreciating every minute I have left on this earth. Mostly I think I’m isolated. Friends have died or gone, new outlets don’t pan out. I have seriously considered writing about my high school ten day spring break field trip in the desert after dad died, especially considering the isolation, depression and feeling of entrapment that has slowly closed in on me as my mother withered away then turned into a monster, my money and ability to make it faded and friends began to die is almost identical to the entrapment I was fighting as I got on that bus at sixteen years old and began to pull myself together and put my life in the right direction after my drunken father blew his brains out and my mother and I found his rotting body in his apartment. The entire basis for that metamorphosis was the fact that the desert that I never knew though felt like I always had was the place where I spent the first three years of my life, a memory erased by my mother and father’s bitter divorce and dicey relationship forced on the two of them by their half an accident son. Just reading her letters to her family when my father left her after he found out she was pregnant was such an illumination into the bizarre dance of circumstance that has been my life. I took a guitar that would teach me music on that trip. I got my first crush. The energy and escape and rediscovery of my very beginnings in life that that trip opened to me led me to force my way into a circle of older high school kids involved in theater and the arts. It released me from the prison fate and other people had closed me in and sent me on my purpose in life. I have worked and struggled and pounded on the door ever since, for close to fifty years now. Somehow, some way very soon if I have to kick it open, light it on fire or blow it up, I will open that door. Once again I will come home to one that never existed but was always there waiting for me. I learned to walk very quickly as a toddler for the only thing I had to lean on was the side of a trailer broiling from the heat of the desert sun. 

11/17 Well, more friends died, the store flooded, I got laid off, my business dried up, Mary quit but somehow I’m still a dealer there. Still no agent but I’m painting for my life and have well over a hundred in this last year alone. I got into a show at a nightclub and a gallery and had a successful open studio last weekend where, most importantly friends who are left showed up and had a good time. I even got a call out of the blue from Perry who took Bill and I and Robin in from out of town, out to dinner. She’ll be ninety in a couple of weeks. With a couple of sales at the studio and a couple of sales coming through from the store, I might have enough for a month or so. I have to force myself to relax and get back to work. Depression pounds on me, paralyzes me especially in the morning. I’m down to no hard liquor, a couple of glasses of wine with dinner but I’m still depressed in the morning. I’m caught between a rock and a hard place because the two glasses of wine relax me but I’m wondering if they contribute to my depression. If I’m not careful, the stress will kill me. I’ve been feeling out a possible job working for a decorator who is friends with me on face book though I’ve never met him. I sent him my resume and he followed up with asking about my computer skills which I sent and he sent me a thank you back but nothing else. I should email a follow up but I don’t want the fucking job except I’m so desperate, I should be grateful to get it. It’s more than likely full time. I could handle part time. I don’t have it in me to work full time unless I’m completely committed. I have to throw self at my art and writing, have to try and make some kind of living at it. I can’t see any reason for living otherwise. I am taking care of Bill and am more committed and love him more than ever and that’s a good reason for carrying on. I have to find a part time job that will, with the little social security I receive, get me by. 

7/18 Another piece accepted at Studio Gallery for their Delicious show, contacted by Artbaazar, an Irish online gallery out of the blue and have work up there. I entered my finally finished short study Beginnings to the Carver contest and also Water to a flash fiction contest. Week before last, Bill got food poisoning that stressed his heart. He woke me up in the middle of the night and said he couldn’t breath. Emergency room and three days in the hospital found a severely compromised heart valve -open heart surgery probably the end of the month. We’re looking at it as a (very painful) blessing in disguise. Phone quit, jury duty notice and a letter under the door saying the building is being sold. Everyone is finally abandoning windows xp so I’m making the transition to the laptop by the end of the month, new software, all files transferred. I have enough to get me through another month or so. Can’t imagine working while taking care of Bill’s recovery. I haven’t had a job going on three years and really have come to realize that, due to my age and the end of the antique business and brick and mortar retail in general along with my bad feet, I am unemployable. I got us on Kaiser medical assistance so we only have to pay premiums, a huge help especially for Bill, $100 plus per month for meds, another for Dr visits, blood tests, 2 - 3 k for this operation, I should at least feel proud of myself for that. Will look into city assistance supplementation for taking care of Bill that Sue recommended, maybe food stamps. Jesus fucking Christ, has it come to this? It could be much worse. I’d end up on the street if something happened to Bill what with only him on the lease. Friends have gathered round to offer support with the news of Bill’s upcoming operation. Why can’t I get a fucking break with my books? The time is perfect for them. But who the fuck even reads anymore?I’ve done some brilliant graphic political cartoons. The only response was from a well known periodical in the Midwest. The editor wrote “brilliant, chilling, sends chills up my spine but no, I can’t use them”.
I had a sudden revelation a couple of weeks ago as I walked across the park up the hill that this agony would soon be over and I would finally turn the corner.
I pray to God that he lets me give the world what I have to offer.

  6/23/20
      I'm still here and hanging onto a thread so much thinner and more fragile. I somehow managed to get back on track with my writing and went through and orgy of painting with hundreds of works. I started a third book and honed the first two. I wrote that short story about the desert and a collection more. I somehow managed to hold onto a corner in the upstairs of the store and get a job cataloging antiques for an online auction company in a warehouse in South City. I helped Bill through a heart valve replacement, two stents and a protracted six month diabetic sore that healed up three months ago and seemed to herald a new start only to be shattered by a mysterious paralysis that made him almost an invalid and unable to get the the hospital because of the plague. I worked through that and figured it was probably the beta blocker they put him on after the heart procedure that left him hobbling on a cane. Then the general consensus is that he got so weak with six months of not moving, his body started to shut down. Physical therapy seems to have started to turn that around and I pray he will get back to at least using a cane and being able to get out. My God, He hasn't left the apartment since the first of March. Oddly enough, the plague and ensuing nationwide riots have been a purge for me in a ghastly medieval sense. Americans are finally starting to wake up and the world that has been waiting for us for years is breathing a sigh of relief. Now my books that predicted this ten years ago are prescient. But the depression has descended again and with it the fear of losing Bill and the roof over my head. There is a ship's clock for sale.

 

2022 A part time job in a warehouse in South San Francisco got me through until the plague hit. All of 2020 in lock down with medical care only for life threatening issues. Bill got a lesion in his intestine, lost a lot of blood that resulted in edema. He gained forty lbs of water before falling in the shower and finally getting to the hospital. No visits during plague so I couldn't see that the bastards took seventy lbs off him in two weeks. He looked like he'd escaped a concentration camp and was so weak I had to spoon feed him in bed along with all the other necessities. Two months later he was unresponsive when we woke up. Two weeks in the hospital back and forth to the operating room to put in then not put in a pulse maker and they realized his blood pressure meds were too strong because he's lost so much weight. Another two months of recovery and he suddenly got a temperature of 105. Again to the hospital with a life threatening case of sepsis. Home after two weeks with IV ports in his arm for six weeks to administer antibiotics and he some how came back. He's still on a walker but back.  

10/01/23 Don't forget about the plague all the way through 22 when Bill in August told Chris who had been complaining about bad indigestion for a couple of months to get to the emergency room. He did and six weeks later he was gone from pancreatic cancer. We took care of him through the rapid descent into angry alzheimer and found that he had left everything to Bill. He passed in September and with the help of a real estate agent Dave found for us and our attorney we had used for our domestic partnership ten years prior, the same one Chris had, I got the house cleaned out, the paper work organized and the house ready for sale in a market that started to crash the day after Chris died. Somehow with all the wonderful people who helped, it sold for almost what it was valued for before the crash. Now we wait for the accountant to figure out what we owe for Chris not filing for ten years and a sale of the mobile home of Chris's stepfather. Bill is still on a walker and is not progressing. Bad hip pain the last two weeks and a month of tests and scans for liver, Barrett's esophagus, etc. Hoping for an all clear the end of the month and the first celebration on my Open Studios in November. The revelation in the park has come true.

7/2024 La Rondine