“What really got me,” said Myra, “was how that one woman was passing along those black canvases and, whatever she was seeing in them, I don’t know. But she was really trying.”

Yes, whatever she was seeing in them. She was trying to see into them, really. But what could that have been? She was seeing if these three long rectangular canvases, painted a thick matte and slightly chunky black, standing on the wall at six by two feet, really were worth the quarter million dollars or whatever was being asked for them.

Walking through the Art Basel Convention Center in Miami I got the feeling that there is no soul left in art. I had a hard time finding the love, life, energy, exuberance, exploration, joy of discovery and creation. It seemed there was only the academic and monetary commoditization of art as it is defined by whomever deems themselves to be the spokes people of the Art World. And between the two, all that is left is a lot of mental masturbation.

Blank canvases, framed and anointed. Small pieces of felt tacked to the wall. Little fluorescent bits and pieces of wire and scrap glued together to form a hoop or something garish. A giant word in neon. A cube. A square. A conflagration of paint. NOTHING. NOTHING. And more NOTHING.

Amongst all of this artistic drivel I found maybe ten really interesting pieces. Out of thousands. I found them interesting because these few pieces I saw had some sense of discovery, fine use of color, a unique view point and some actual skill and stood out like sore thumbs, or a welcome respite.

Yet, amongst all these people and all this “art”, I got the feeling that someone is tricking someone else. Someone is being convinced of the substance or lack thereof in all of this. Is it the artists, somewhere along the way, who tricked the gullible world into believing there is something to what they are doing when in fact, it’s just a naked and shameless attempt to make money out of nothing?

Or maybe it’s the art dealers who, not wanting to have to look any deeper, have decided to settle on something that is meaningless and, in doing so, have created both a market as well as the producers.

Quite possibly it really might be the public themselves who are at fault. Is this artwork, that which is presented and lauded as the creme de la creme of the art world, really just a reflection of the empty lifeless and superficial world we are living in? A vapid reflection of where we are as a people?

I watched a young girl, dressed elegantly enough but reminding me of the naive light hearted girl in the movie “Brothers Bloom” that I just recently saw, go walking through the crowd, holding a handful of roses, saying “If I had a billion dollars, I would buy all of this!”

I thought to myself that If I had a billion dollars, I would buy it all and burn it, although that might be terrible for the environment. Instead, maybe I’d just put it in a large museum. The Not-Art Museum.

But then, maybe in this who-is-tricking-whom game, maybe all of the players – the artists who have run out of ideas and regurgitate the past in weak attempts at the avant garde, the art dealers who then hawk it as the next big thing, the art collectors who salivate over another expensive object to acquire, the media who hovers around gawking at and applauding the spectacle, and the general public who just wants to feel like they are a part of something. They are all just agreeing to the same uncomfortable truth: let’s not dig any deeper, it gets hard to understand. Let’s not push any further, lest we find something meaningful and, should we find something meaningful, at which point we’ll have to confront the meaninglessness of so much that we do. And that would be a disaster.

The truth is, what is going on in the art world is very much akin to what is on TV, or is playing at the movie theater, or lining the aisles of the grocery store, etc. That is to say: it’s an empty sort of substance, seemingly lacking anything truly nourishing.

In the end, we left there, back into the slighly muggy Miami evening rather hungry. I  found the Cuban restaurant we ended up at, along with the company and the mojitos, to be infinitely more satisfying.

I love it. The drama! The controversy! Everyone is so disappointed! This isn’t how it was supposed to be! We were all gonna rumpus and stuff! But wait- there in the magical land inside the mind of a ten year old (?) are all the demons just sort of cavorting around having problems just like in real life.

O but i’m not that way, or my kid isn’t that way. They know how to deal with this stuff. Well, sure, the hippy yoga mom thinks her kid knows better but there are a million bazillion more who are just out in the driveway building a snow fort in the mound of snow left by the snow plow in the late afternoon hoping that big sister and her friends will notice and come play.

I was that kid. Cold gray wet days where the bare trees just hang and don’t even bother to move when the somewhat bitter breeze drifts through. And the afternoon is restless and I’ve made a snow fort but have no friends to share it with.

I watch a movie like Where the Wild Things Are and I see an extrapolation on a theme – the theme is very simple and not very nuanced – it’s a ten sentence children’s book. So the artist, the great extrapolator, reads into it. “Let’s do it like this,” he says. Some of us, maybe we can relate. Or we can recognize where he’s going with it. Maybe all of our entertainment doesn’t have to be escapist fantasies. Maybe our kids don’t need candy colored sing alongs that get all namby-pamby on us. Everyone has their demons inside… everyone has the characters that make up their psyche… yes, everyone has a few wild things inside.

Violet introduced me to the Round Table exercise in which you call forth the various aspects of your psyche to a meeting at your mental round table. You have them all sit down and see who gets along, who makes a truce or a deal or a bribe, who starts a fight, who feels the need to finish it. Then, with some work, with some frequent round table meetings and mediation, you work at finding some peace. You see where each persons gripe is, and why, and where it’s root is. You see who shows up to steer the ship at what time and when and why. As one progresses through these exercises, one might find the warring aspects of the psyche actually start to get along.

You might be surprised to learn (or you might not be at all) that not everyones mind is a copacetically calm pool. In fact, EVERYONE has some disagreements going on in there. They simply exist below the surface, riding the waves, causing us to act on what sometimes seems like instinct but is, instead, just habit, patterns. It might cause you to bite someone’s shoulder when you’re ten. And then, when you’re thirty, you just snap at someone when the same button gets pushed, biting their proverbial head off.

I know everyone was rooting for Max – yeah! when he goes away it’s gonna be great! He’s gonna be king! there’s gonna be a wild frickin’ rumpus. And then, we get there, and it’s just like home. Cause wherever you go there you are.

Then the masses gripe: well, fuck, if I was gonna write this story then there would have been a wild frickin’ rumpus for sure. But you know what, if you don’t have any choice as to how it gets written, if it just unfolds without a script and the various aspects of your psyche just come to life and you all go at it together, kind of like a kids version of the classic “Jacob’s Ladder”, if that was the case, you might find it to be a little more intense than you expected.

And, when it was over, you might want to be where someone loved you best of all… and hope to smell good things to eat… and maybe want to get back home and get back to that work that we all are doing. And then, maybe chocolate cake added into the mix wouldn’t be so bad.

Some people like to get a blog post sent right to their email. It’s sort of nice – a voice from the outside world. This blog is rarely, if ever, selling anything. Instead, it’s a bit about art, a bit about traveling, a bit of observations, a bit about life, a bit about painting. If you would like to subscribe to this blog and get it in your inbox when it’s published – entirely intermittently – twice a week then nothing for a month, for instance – please do so in the side bar, or, if you are receiving this email via Facebook or somewhere else, please go here: http://www.tenthousandvisions.com/blog and sign up.

I recently partnered with Conscious Alliance again (I’ve made a few posters for them in the past). The new poster is for Sound Tribe Sector Nine (who now goes by STS9) and was given out at some recent shows they played in Georgia. Conscious Alliance is a great organization based out of Colorado who gives out posters at various events in exchange for donations of money and/or canned goods. From their website: “Since inception in 2002, we have successfully collected and distributed over 500,000 pounds of non-perishable food donations to local food pantries and impoverished communities across the United States.”

Here is the poster, using a detail of the image ‘Standing on the Shoulders of Giants’.

I just uploaded a new gallery of photos to the Traveling section of TenThousandVisions.com. Funny thing is that for all the time spent getting to and being at and coming from Bonnaroo I took one picture and that was of a lacewing sitting on a print of mine. Too bad too because our set up this time around looked really nice – with our gallery walls, the Mirador Glass hand blown lampshades… lovely! But alas!

Anyhow, tho, these are the illustrations I suppose for all of the blogs I posted along the way – from the Colorado Rockies to the Grand Canyon and Sedona. I really like taking pictures while traveling and see it as a way of framing an experience, capturing a moment for future reference. Admittedly my memory isn’t as sharp as I might like it to be. Or, rather, my memory for a vision or painting idea is sharp but my memory for events and places, well, not so much.

These are a few of those captured memories, our summer road trip through the National Parks: Summer 2009

On and On and On.
This is the last chapter. I promise. Cause we’re back and unpacked. But it was a while in getting here. The last stint of driving – from Sedona to San Diego with a stop in Quartzite to look at rocks in the insane heat went quickly, with us getting home at a reasonable hour. The rental car – that giant Toyota Sequoia we’d been driving – was returned without any issues the next day after a thorough cleaning but we left the Bonnaroo Vendor Vehicle sticker on it by accident. It drove off into the rows of Enterprise Rental car fleets, a little wiser, a good adventure under it’s belt. The other cars looked at it with respect.

Sedona was a treat. Tasting wine, looking at art, an early morning hike into the giant red rock formations and climbing up onto their curving feet – high up so I could see the valley. Breathing with the world – the birds and trees and dirt and bugs and rocks and clouds. I’d like to open a gallery there one day.

Stay focused. Work hard. The universe responded.

Check.

A day or two before we’d been at the Grand Canyon which, following my morning hike and our drive around to the South Rim, was a bit less impressive due to the fact that cloud cover diffused the light to such a state that depth was a bit hard gauge – the reds and purples and oranges along with the insane fractaling depth to it were a but hard to read. Instead we were greeted by the subtle fractioning off of every curve, every bend, every cliff and drop – it drops, it ends, it curves, it drops more… down down down… almost as deep as every canyon of my own mind.

They say the Grand Canyon makes one feel very small. I felt just the right size for it. Like I could stare at it for a long long time.

I’d like to mention that, while we were there, I learned of an architect whose work I admired for it’s nuanced attention to detail, no matter how trivial. That would be Mary Colter, the designer of the Watchtower at the Desert View area of the South Rim. Built in 1932, it’s a simple building that is delicately rendered. According to Wikipedia she was “a chain-smoking perfectionist, she cared about backstory and attractive features.” After the gift shop on the first floor – full of trinkets, knick knacks and expensive Native American pottery – the walls and ceilings of the subsequent levels are painted in Hopi murals by artist Fred Kabotie – delicately rendered, large, graphic, symbolic – they speak on many different levels and were something I hadn’t expected.

The view from the top was very much the same as the view from below. Gaining 50 feet of elevation at the Grand Canyon doesn’t change the fact that what you are looking at is very huge. At that proportion, your 50 feet higher is a drop in a bucket.

We enjoyed our last night camping, our morning breakfast, and then packed up, on our way to Sedona, where we spent the night at a hotel, tasted wine and at cheese at the Page Springs Winery (not bad, all things considered), poked our heads into a few art galleries, and had an enjoyable meal at ChocolaTree – a raw/vegan restaurant in town.

I woke in the morning, went for a hike, as I mentioned, and then, after a breakfast in the mountains, we were on the road, destined for home this time – as the final stop – to join our friends for a barbeque on the 4th. A lovely tour of the country. Our country might be short on brains sometimes but it has some priceless landscape. I hope it is treasured for a long long time.

Giant raindrops intermittently pelt our windshield while the sun still streams through the clouds, casting rays of lights through long cracks in the cloud cover revealing a blue sky beyond. We are driving through the western foothills of the Colorado Rockies. From Boulder the highway crested up and over hills into mountains passing Loveland and Vail and various other ski mountains with still snowy peaks and multi-million dollar condos butting up against their feet, occasionally a mine along the river mining gold or copper leaving obscene scars long the hillsides. The aspen and pine intermingling til the pine leaves it for the higher elevations. The mountains just as quickly turn into shear cliffs along the Colorado River – the cliff faces jutting out at odd angles and millions of right angles of every size. Now the cliffs have turned to arid woods, chaparral and tall wide mountains that will soon again change to something else- Arches and Canyonlands Parks, our next destinations.

We left Boulder after a hike in Gregory Canyon and a breakfast of mimosas and eggs benedict at the Chataqua Gathering Place, a lodge built in the late 1800’s for the advancement of education and the arts. Their wide green lawn and the copper red Flatiron Mountains as a backdrop made for a lovely parting meal. The day before we’d woken at the Alps Inn, a bed and breakfast lodge up a different canyon outside of Boulder where we’d spent the night of our first anniversary as a wedded couple.

These trips we make around the sun leave markers in our minds and it’s nice to focus our selves and reflect for a moment and consider what comes next. It was both our anniversary and the Summer Solstice – something of a natural anniversary – the longest day of the year. A year isn’t a long time in retrospect but, then, in the middle of it, it can seem to stretch forever. There aren’t always agreements and sometimes there can be a fierce disagreement. But then – the agreements, the love, and the dance that we do through the nuts and bolts of our lives, is lovely and wonderful.

For our first year anniversary, we timed this trip to land us in Boulder and the Rockies. We’d gathered together a picnic lunch of cheese (a nice variety: a porter cheddar, triple cream brie, a sheep’s milk gouda, a red pepper havarti, and, our favorite, the Humboldt Fog chevre – a deliciously potent and creamy cheese.), wine, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, a sourdough bread, and other assorted tasty treats and hiked it up to the top of Alberta Falls, a fairly short hike to be certain, where we enjoyed the roaring river, the tasty lunch, the wine, the sun, and each other’s presence. The light green leaves of the aspen trees fluttered in the sunlight and cast dappled shadows over the rock strewn ground. Little wild flowers poked up here and there and the entire thing was such a lovely experience of sensations: flavors – the food, the wine, the taste of the breeze; sounds – the river, laughter, birds; scents – mountain air, pine, the cold water; textures of cheese and water, rock and leaves; amd sights – the colors of the rocks and the sun glinting off the endless river ripples.

We left the park early-ish and, on our way to the inn, stopped at a winery tasting room and picked up a bottle of a locally made Syrah along with some smoked trout, said hi to the geese along side the pond and then wound our way down the mountain highway to the inn where we enjoyed the wine, the trout, the hot tub in our room, the pipe in low volume Billie Holiday and other old time jazz and blues, and then, come morning, a delicious breakfast of quiche, coffee and scones.

That morning, leaving the inn, we drove to Twin Sisters Peaks with Violet eyeing the gathering clouds.

Looks like rain, she said. And then again. And then again, reminding me that she was not going to be stoked if she was hiking in the rain.

Yes dear, i replied.

And so we hiked up and up and up: the tumbled and strewn rocks and dotted with moss, the birds that darted through the tall pine that waved and sighed in the breeze, whispering pine secrets amongst each other. A few drops started to come down so we scrambled up to the top of a tall rocky promontory where we had an incredible view of the flat stone face of Long’s Peak in the distance with it’s snowy glaciers and years of compounded snow, and then further down – the valley the river, and other rocky outcroppings and the, from there, seemingly endless sea of pine.

After a quick hike down we decided to drive up further into the park and see what we might find. We took the 34 through the northern edge of the park and along the way:

• saw half a dozen bighorn sheep alongside a river where they congregate and eat mud for it’s mineral content
• were awed by the wide grassy meadows with the slowly curving river and fields of wild flowers and massive mountains that sloped down from either side
• stopped to hang out with a couple of really large male deer with furry antlers, grazing on grass and flowers.
• and on and on and on….

…til we drove up a random road that dead-ended in a valley at the aptly named Endovalley picnic area. We parked and then hiked up a road for a ways til we reached Chasm Falls, a lovely roaring falls in the woods surrounded by rocks, no one around, the sun shining on us from the now bright blue sky and a lovely afternoon. We hiked back to the car, had some cheese, olives, wine, and then drove onwards through the park, stopping at a wide open meadow speckled with yellow, purple, and white wild flowers and ending in tall pine framing a panoramic view of the mountains with myself allowing promises to return for a longer multi-day hike. From there we drove back down through the park to my aunt and uncles house just south of Boulder where we had a delicious dinner, some wine, nice conversation and finally went to bed early so we could wake early and get to hiking in the morning.

Now, after all that we round the highway into a valley ringed by mountains to one side and lush fertile vineyards and farmlands and golden tinged mesas in the evening sun setting over the last stretches of Colorado, hoping to make it to Arches National Park before too late.

Driving through the mid west there isn’t much to look at. curving sloping fields segmented by barbed wire fences and oaks give way to neighborhoods, shops warehouses and billboards advertising Nostalgia-ville with it’s 50’s and 60’s icons – Elvis, I love lucy, Betty Boop and Scooby Doo – a time they hope to remember as simpler and more innocent. It’s never simpler and innocent. Only different. There were wars and torture and drugs and sex and crime and corporations bent on poisoning the populace in exchange for a hard-earned dollar from father knows best. After Nostalgia-ville, Winery billboards pop up, maybe every tenth billboard, advertising wines – non-organic and not too special. Then we end up back with green wooded areas and cornfields. Endless cornfields. Soon, in the distance, we’ll be in Kansas with it’s own endless horizon of green. For now, wherever we are – Illinois? Indiana? – has become nothing but woods surrounding us.

"The Move Over Law" – a rule we don’t have out in California but I can see the use for. However, I didn’t know about it until a police officer kindly chose to inform us of it on our way from Nashville, TN to Bonnaroo. I’d made it a long ways at that point – all the way from San Diego – without any hassles. Safe driving, usually over the speed limit (except in Arizona where the red light camera are waiting at, seemingly, every curve to pop you and send a ticket your way). In Little Rock, AR I picked up Violet perfectly on time, right as she landed at the airport. She’d had final exams to finish, was without much sleep and I drove us to Nashville where we found a hotel. The next day, after going grocery shopping at the Whole Foods and breakfast at the Waffle House (not an ideal choice) we were on our way to Bonnaroo, early Wednesday afternoon, perfectly according to plan.

I started noticing unmarked SUVs sitting every mile or so as we got closer to Manchester and we knew they were keeping an eye on all traffic. One pulled out as I passed him and I could feel him waiting for me to do something, anything. With out packed vehicle and California plates, we were a prime target. So we pass a pulled over police car searching someone and the lights go on. WTF? I say. I’d had the cruise control set to the speed limit so I wasn’t even a mile over.

The cop sidles up to the passenger door, tells us about the move over law and asks for some papers… So next thing I’m in back talking to the cop about how we don’t have that in CA and he’s asking about our business here – vending, art, etc – and what that’s all about.

No drugs? Guns? You’re not on probation?

No sir. (Of course not)

And if I brought the dogs around they wouldn’t get anything?

No sir. (yeesh!)

Well, see we don’t mind if people smoke for personal use but we are looking for quantity – weight. People coming out as "vendors" and then selling drugs.

I don’t even smoke pot (which is true!)

Can you open the back of your vehicle?

So i pop open the back and he can see that it is packed full tight. Who the hell would want to search that? I happen to have some small prints accessible and show him. I’m sure his mind goes to some interesting places but we check out so he sends us off with a warming ticket. Cool. Nice. Very little hassle.

So that was a new law and we were sure to tell some of our friends who were on their way. And now, with this long drive homewards, we see the "move-over" sign often when entering a new state and we’re sure to get over.

When we left Bonnaroo there were no SUVs looking for anyone (tho we did see a few people getting heavily patted down) and we collapsed at a Comfort Inn just north of Nashville. The next morning (because bedtime was 6pm or something) we went downtown to get some work done. Downtown Nashville isn’t, in my humble opinion, much to speak about. It was also mad packed with the Country Music Awards which we didn’t [plan to stick around for. Good stuff for those who like it. Anyways, we both had some things to finish – me entering data and emails from Bonnaroo and Violet still had a lingering paper to finish. We sat at a Panera Cafe, had some lunch (salad) some green tea and worked.

Outside the sunny day quickly turned dark. We heard talk of tornado warnings. The dark sky turned a deep charcoal grey and rain came down in sheets. We decided that leaving soon wasn’t an option and waited it out. Waited a little longer and the whole thing passed by – no tornado in downtown Nashville that day but it was quite a storm. We got back on the road as soon as possible, heading north east to Campbellsville, KY, a little town in the middle of not a whole lot and home of Violet’s Dad and (somewhat) younger brother.

We spent the next few days canoeing, kayaking and watching movies. The first night we went out for some decent Mexican food and then spent the night (and the next few) at a (very) nearby motel. "Lucky Vista" motel. The vista however was warehouses that cut the view between the hills and the observer and the subtitle sign to the main sign said "American Owned" " Country Charm". As if being American Owned makes a difference. I don’t care much one way or another who owns a place – if the person is compassionate, kind, caring, generous and patient (and at least semi-intelligent), then they get my business. The Comfort Inn we’d just stayed at was run by a couple who was of Middle Eastern descent. The woman told us she was from Riverside, CA and had lived in Nashville for 6 years and her daughter loved it. They were as American as anyone else I’ve met. Just because homeboy has a southern drawl, a pick up truck, and a shock of blond hair that doesn’t make him any more or less American than so many others.

And I could never judge someone on their race – whether running a hotel or not. Like I said, their compassion outweighs their skin color by infinite amounts considering that skin color amounts to zero in my book and compassion and wisdom are just about everything. Las night we spent the night at a Best Western. It was the last choice since everywhere else was full. We’d ended up in southern Illinois looking for a place to spend the night. Everywhere we went – right off the highway anyhow – was full. Turns out there was a giant amusement park right there. Holiday World. For people who it doesn’t take much to entertain. Anyhow, we get there at like 12:30am and finally get a room (last one and this is the third hotel tried) and we get to our room (pretty comfy) and the neighboring room to our right is a family that is arguing itself to hell. CRAZY! So a phone call to the front desk and it doesn’t end. That’s what you get amping kids up on caffeine and sugar water – i mean – soda. It’s nuts but we wear earplugs. We wake to the same thing. NUTS! So As I’m checking out I’m sort of filing a complaint with the front desk. It’s two older ladies and they say they’ll need to talk to the manager.

The point of this story is that his skin is just as dark as the extremely nice couple who ran the Comfort Inn but he is telling me "What can you do?". But we all know that if it were a bunch of partying kids, they would have been booted. But an arguing family? They should be booted too. Society shouldn’t be so accepting of such crude behavior. After some discussing and seeing that we won’t leave him alone, he tells the computer-inept front desk woman to give us a 10% discount. The point of this story is that, had he some compassion, he would have acted differently. Compassion is as non-skin color specific as being American or Indian or French.

That sense of compassion extends to Jarrod, Violet’s brother, recusing the dragon fly that had found itself drowning in the wide flowing river as we canoed downstream it. It’s wings fluttering, slowly drowning. We were in a canoe and a fair bit less maneuverable – at least for ourselves who aren’t super adept at watercraft. Jarrod, in his Kayak, paddled over and rescued the guy from the water. It was about 6 inches long and a beautiful yellow and black. Dragonflies had been landing on us and around us all day – buzzing through the air and tracing arcs and curves along the snaking Green River.

The river was pretty high for the time of the year but rain had been coming down off an on for days and now it’d cleared and the bright sunny day, big lazy clouds drifting overhead, and the multi-colored temperate rainforest of the Kentucky woodlands on either side of us. Occasionally we’d pass farmland or cows grazing or pass under some old rickety bridge but for the most part it was just us, gently avoiding the trees hanging over the water or the logs sticking up from below, startling great blue herons who would come swooping out of the trees and soar further upstream and hawks who would pass overhead. Dozens of little birds of various shades of brown and black, variously striped and the occasional cardinal would dart out over the churning water.

We came upon a thirty foot waterfall stretching along about twenty feet – in alternating sections of water, moss, and dangling vines dotted with pink and white flowers. We passed it by, a memory of the river. There wasn’t really stopping and once you’d passed it, on the river, there was no going back. The river flowed at a fair clip and it took a bit of effort to travel upstream.

Eventually, sun-kissed and satisfied, we reached our stopping point, where we’d left one car to shuttle us back to the beginning. The big oaks and sycamore dappled in sunlight – golden green and glowing – fluttered in the evening breeze and we drove back to the beginning, passing rolling Kentucky farmland, little houses and weathered red barns.

I’m on my way to the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, TN where we are doing our tenthousandvisions-once-a-year-giant-festival-vending-experience. We went three years ago, had a great time, and now are doing it again with a lot more experience under our belts and a far more solid plan of attach. When we’re finished, Violet and I will make our way back home via Kentucky (visit her dad), then Colorado (visit the mountains) and finally to Utah and Arizona (visit the canyons). It’s work. It’s vacation. it’s a summer roadtrip.

I’m driving a giant SUV packed with all the necessary things for three or four weeks of travel- the camping/play time stuff and the vending/festival/art stuff. So much stuff! Some people continue on – festival after festival – but we have neither the time nor the energy for that. I don’t want to become a fixture anywhere, preferring the magic of a one-time meeting rather than becoming something that is expected.

I’ve written before tho about bringing art to the masses and Bonnaroo is exactly that. I find that the events that tend towards my own community of people out here tend to feel a little like preaching to the choir sometimes. It’s cool and fun and all – but it’s not different and that "different" feeling – that experience of encountering something entirely "other" and yet, very much reflective of yourself, is really where an energetic opening happens. I like that and I like being able to be that sort of catalyst.

Anyhow, I’m driving alone right now, an empty passenger seat beside me. But i’m not taking other passengers! Violet holds that reservation and I’m picking her up at the airport in Little Rock, AR on Tuesday afternoon because she has finals to finish and then is graduated, done with undergrad work at last! She’s worked hard at it for a long time now and I’m proud of her for getting through. But that leaves me on my own for now. However, while I do love the company – she is my wife and best friend after all – a little alone time, time to totally chill is nice. There’s no rush and I can actually relax for a bit til I have to kick back into gear in a few days for festival-public-relations mode. There will be plenty of talking!

So, last night, I finally got out of San Diego at 8:30 after stopping at Whole Foods and Kinkos and did about four hours of driving til fatigue started to set in. 6 hours sleep a night for the past week while busting my ass each day has left me a bit weary. But no rest for the weary, we say!

The humble little town of Blythe, on the CA/AZ border, was the spot on the map for me and I pulled into a motel. The woman at the window of the motel wore pants that could have fit ten of me. When she waddled over to the register, granting me a view of her rolls from the side and, with her thighs busting the seams of even those pants, I wondered if the slave labor in some third world country where those plus plus plus size dollar bin pants are made wonder just what type of creature wears those things.

Now I’m on my way to Phoenix (a city I vowed never to return to 10 years ago) and then north to Flagstaff and onto a campground in the CIbola National Forest east of Albuquerque where I can pitch tent under tall watchful Ponderosa pine.

The most recent tenthousandvisions newsletter is viewable here:

http://tenthousandvisions.com/newsletter/06.09newsletter.htm

and talks about new prints available and some upcoming events. Check it out.