Madman

Digital sketches.
Photoshop cs3

Meals are a ritual that came from our transition into eating meat/hunting.
Veggie burgers are a ritual by those whose psychology is inconsistent with their biology trying to bond with long standing traditions.
My dog is well.

Patience

A virtue I can't quite wrap my head around.  I see the benefits of it, hear the testimonials, the mantra that is pounded into our heads again and again and again... but I never practiced it.  Throughout my life I have been very impatient. I had it in my head that if I worked well, with care, with haste, and with focus anything could be achieved in a timely manner-
-and it could.
Until now. Everything in the past was with in my reach if I tried hard enough.   Well, besides relationships, economic stability, and a basketball rim.    But now I face my greatest opponent: my pride.
I have spent years and years lecturing about the importance of motorcycle maintenance, even to those that do not own motorcycles as I am able to use it as a platform from which to discuss philosophy, freedom, style, form, function, subculture, and an endless list of other topics. -And for years- I was successful at maintaining my motorcycles and felt successful at all other aspects of my life which I related...
But here we are; myself and this mother fucking motorbike. This god damned stubborn piece of shit motorbike. This abomination of human innovation and masochism.
-- and I'm having difficulty finding the Buddha residing comfortably within its form.
I have taken that engine out of the bike 3 or 4 or 7 times now, "fixed" the issue, and then put it back in the bike, reconnected everything only to find out that the bike still isn't functioning despite the clearest of my logic and my sincerest attempts to verbally accost the machine.  I have researched, I have talked with resources, I have read manuals, I dove down so deep into trouble shooting diagrams that I made Alice's fall down the rabbit hole look like a daring two year old on his first jump off the bottom stair.
I am STUCK.
I am at the bottom of this rabbit hole and it is less like an acid trip than the literature would leave one to believe...  more like being stuck in an isolated valley above the tree line, chilly, boulders dropped by glacier gods long since dead, all exits blocked by impassable snow.  You are alone in this valley, confined, but free to wander over a vast expanse of area that, at first glance, all appears to be the same damned near featureless thing.
I have sat in this valley at 3am, night after night. Staring at my STUCK. Searching with darting eyes for a quick answer, but with this repetitive landscape, there is none. For the first time in my life, I am forced to breathe.  To step back and realize that this valley is not in fact uniform.  The answer is there... but it is subtle, it is patient, it is comfortable. It is everything I am not in this foreign land, which is why we aren't finding each other...
-we've absolutely nothing in common.
It is time I learned my lesson.
With cut up knuckles from work done too fast. With bruised ego from assumptions proved foolish. With grease caught, seemingly permanently, in the creases of my damned hands.  I stop panicking, I stop running. My pace now that of an autumn walk in a familiar park. I am no longer looking for the answer. I am looking at the problem, at the valley itself, at the stuckness itself. I am appreciating it all instead of viewing it as something to be escaped from.   I may or may not be any closer to an answer, but I am more subtle. I am more patient. I am more comfortable. I am beginning to have a suspiciously awful lot in common with the answer.

Convenience

When driving alone or riding motorbike, or drunk, I fancy my words worthy of carrying weight. I speak as if I am being listened to.  I write as I am being read.   I draw as if I am being exposed.
I'm fortunate enough to have friends that entertain some of the delusions of grandeur from time to time. David Law and the Law Brothers being such buddies. Occasionally they take something I scribbled or wrote and hang it up on the fridge- and at 28 years old I am filled with the pride and appreciation of a 6 year old, crayons in hand.
The following made the fridge:

Times ain't that different.

People in every generation have preferred to place the blame on being born in the wrong decade, or century, or how much society had changed, as to why they lacked the grit or steel to do what needed done.  Yet,  throughout the entirety of human history there have been those individuals who, despite the decade or century, despite the advancements of society , despite all obstacles and INCONVENIENCES, have been able to do what needed doing. 

Those among us who would fancy themselves heroes, warriors, or the leaders of great revolutions if only things were more CONVENIENT... are day dreamers.

Nothing more, possibly less.  

-Nickolas Crosby 2/13/11

Man Alive, I Will Deliver.

I Will Deliver

Now,
right now,
I need a pretty girl to kiss
and a fist fight with someone who thinks they can win.

I need to let go of all frustrations by acting out.
I want to take you by your neck
and put my tongue in your mouth.

I want to take him by the shirt
and put my clenched fist in his face.
Really, I'm just degenerating into natural man.

But it turns you on, when I take what I want,
and I feel alive when I'm taking him down.

I'm so tired of feeling dead
that just about any option,
no matter how socially damned,
seems to make more sense than this.

You want my scarred up hands to grab your chest.
He wants to die a good death.
Today,
I will deliver.

Regarding Fate... and Robot Dinosaurs

God owns an Art Store.

Sketches
Ballpoint Pen, Round Rock
8.5x11

God owns an Art Store

Call it Consciousness
Because to blame all this on some sort of larger pattern
would be to ruin half the beauty.
The philosopher in me,
the part that's suffered the loss of loved ones
(long ago and more recently),
would really like to believe there is a purpose
bigger than I can presently comprehend.
But the artist,
the majority of who I am,
knows how most "perfect" brushstrokes
are fuck-ups gone good.
and most "mistakes" are actually areas that have been overworked;
fussed with by a perfectionist attitude
until it's beyond repair
-and then-
you're stuck.
To try and label every death,
every first kiss,
or in this case, every chance encounter
as destiny, fate, or something other than a completely mindless brushstroke
that just happened to be golden,
is to be fussing with that perfect brushstroke. 
Now, God very well may be involved,
but my money is on him being the owner of the art supplies store,
a seasoned painter himself,
who's just passing on past knowledge
attained through many, many,
many,
4ams sketched away
-and for a reasonable price,
supplying us with the means to repeat his success in our own right.
Call it consciousness,
because Fate doesn't entertain free will.
It's the accident of our first meeting
that makes it so wonderful.
The thought that we may have never achieved any of the things that we have,
we may have died as babies,
fever victims,
and never kissed anyone,
we could have gotten in terrible wrecks
with expensive cars,
died on impact,
and never gotten to lay on the floor discussing music with one another...
but we didn't.
We lived.
We told the "scared shitless" stories of the near wreck,
we listened to parents ramble on about our 104 degree fever that happened before our memory had kicked in,
we even dodged being born in a time before Sealab 2021,
and godammit,
that'd be a tragedy.
The important thing
is that we keep painting.
So the mindless brushstroke
is only mindless
so far as painting well
has become completely natural.

Amberfields Drive

"Old Rio"
Digital Painting : CS3
Concept Art
50% complete.
click to enlarge.

-Amberfields Drive-

"Black & White" does not equal artistic merit.
Sometimes it's the rust,
the sunsets,
that start to attack our long term memory,
burning images into spiritual matter;
spirtitual,
because you can't find it with your microscopes.
The classical mind
can never truly analyze
the self-sacrifice
that our body goes through
each time we remember
Amberfields Drive.

Oceans of wheat
widdling away at the sky.
"Now who's the sky scraper?"
It's the creme-sickle glow,
blowing down from the atmosphere,
that gives life
to those old crooked street lamps-
and it's about time that we started seeing
the world for what it is.
The Here,
The Now.
Stop trying to make everything look "vintage".
That fad is testament
to our inability to appreciate quality
at its time of conception.

Lets open up our eyes,
our ears,
our minds,
but keep our mouths
and our cameras' shudder
shut.
There is more to Amberfields Drive
than color,
but God, you'd be missing out
if everything fit into your photoshop filters.

Papermate Pen, Koyuki

Koyuki
2005
Ballpoint Pen
10" x 10" or so

Worked on and completed this drawing during my sojourn into the Mormon culture.
I figured it was important to fully understand something before writing it off entirely. As you can see, one lesson I learned from 3 years of complete immersion into the LDS culture was patience.

Sketches and a Word of Advice

 It is absurd to disrespect someone that has not earned such treatment. Similarly, it is just as absurd to respect someone who has not earned that, either. -- Handle strangers with a polite neutrality until their actions and words earn them either grace or disgrace.

Thoughts on Quality

When among peers, one should discuss, debate, and openly exchange ideas of learning, morality, and philosophy. However, when in the presence of Elders or  the more experienced, one should keep a closed mouth and open ears.   Most important in all circumstances, is an Open Mind.

Concept Art: Tree of life

Updated image
Click for fullsize Image
Digital Painting: Photoshop CS3
80% complete.
Inspired by some phony tanker in a "hurricane" photo that's been going around the internet for the last decade or so.

Self Portrait: Invisible

Clothes may not make the man... but his chair, his jacket, his gun, his satchel, his whiskey, his boots, and his dog sure as hell do.   Oh, and the paintings are mine as well.