Thick head, sleepy foot on stair thud. Gronk he jumps high out of chair hearing too high bang. He’s in no hurry to get where she is or isn’t in most cases. Sweet but slow foot to mouth brain. Annoying cave dweller mountain climb take flashlight see the way no more to her only slow talk out of think head gone. Forgot underwear and didn’t find her under sofa either only the journal to keep him warm. Don’t fall through cavern crack spelunk boy, go only as far as your sofa will allow. Keep those feet up high on pillow heart on ice light feet on stair maybe you’ll get there in time next. Soon.
Interviewer – Here’s what you’ve been waiting for – the interview with God. Because we are mostly broadcast to English speaking areas, we’d like to concentrate on Western concerns. Welcome to WXYZ television, God. First question, what should we call you?
God – God is fine. Lower case, upper case, I’m cool. I’ve been called Y*hw*h, Chemos, Tengri, Baal. Baal, hah, hah, I always laugh at that Lord Of The Flies joke Beelzebub from the Hebrews. Don’t know that one? Look it up. If there is a point to all the names, it is lost on me. Different places think that I’m their God and I’m on their side. No, I’m the same one with different names. Tribalism caused naïve humans that couldn’t see the big picture to get it wrong. And holy crap, the “religious” guys really messed up. There was “fake news” way before the short-fingered vulgarian ever brought it up. All of their names are different local manifestation of the one me.
Interviewer: I’m quite surprised that you look a lot like the late, lovely Hammer Studios’ horror star, Hazel Court, but about two meters tall (close to 7 feet for Americans).
God: If you were to view my reality, you would go blind, your brain would boil and you would die a torturous death. Nah, I’m just yanking you, this is the real me. You got it backwards, since I’ve been around for billions of earth years, Hazel Court looked like me. Side note – I created numerous legends when I visited earth many years before. Lately, I hang out with NBA players and don’t create much of a stir.
Interviewer – So you are the real deal, the creator of earth?
God – Don’t sell me short, I created the whole universe. But don’t blame me for whatever happened later. Sure I messed around with various life forms on different planets, but I didn’t plot out their entire evolution.
Interviewer – I’m going to have to ask you to back up. First, you don’t control history?
God – No, what kind of monster would set Hitler in motion? I didn’t make plagues or invent rap. That’s on you humans. A lot of planets have done better. And I just started things and evolution and the physical sciences did the rest.
Interviewer – Wow. There is a lot I didn’t expect. For one thing, a lot of your fans say that evolution doesn’t exist.
God – Yeah, I know about those crackpots. One of the humans that I kind of like, Paul Simon, put it to music in his song “The Boxer”: “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” Every time some bozo “disproves” evolution, he disregards accepted science.
I’ll give you an example. Some argue that the human eye is proof of “intelligent design”. It has been incorrectly claimed that Darwin saw eyes as proof of my work. When some chemicals are light sensitive (ever take a picture?), given billions of years and lots of mutations eyesight has evolved several times among many different kinds of animals. This is well known to scientists, but not to the willfully ignorant.
Another thing – would an intelligent designer build in planned obsolescence? Prostate glands, appendices, cancer?
Interviewer – Are you telling me that Genesis isn’t the word of God and it is inaccurate?
God – Much of what is in the Bible is metaphor or parable, but some just don’t get it. You know the part about the pillars of the earth? That part is a rip-off of the Greek idea about the earth being held up by pillars on a turtle or some such claptrap.
Interviewer – Do any of the creation stories hold up? I know there a lot of different ones from different areas.
God – They may be good poetry, national myth or just jokes, but they don’t hold up. Sea monsters, ravens, parts of my body, voids, national heroes. Maybe good literature, but totally accurate, no.
Hell, I can’t even follow the Greek mythology. Weird stuff, incest, war amongst the gods. I may have different manifestations, but I am just one entity.
Interviewer – How did we humans get it so wrong?
God – Two things went wrong. Some groups just made things up to explain things that they didn’t understand. Say you wonder about how the world got started. Maybe you use reproduction as a model, so you guess that two things mated and made the earth. Could be you see a volcano erupt, so you decide that the earth was created out of a catastrophe. A mushroom grows seemingly out of nothing, so the earth is created out of the void.
Early on I talked to humans before it became obvious that it was hopeless. People that don’t understand nuclear physics or astronomy aren’t going to get the big picture.
Interviewer – How did the universe begin?
God – Both science and some of the mythologies got it partly right. It was the big bang. What happened before the big bang? I don’t know. Rumors of my omniscience are overblown. Still, I’m fairly sure I created the universe, because there wasn’t anyone else around.
The whole thing about the cat is in the box or not in the box, the speed of light and quantum physics in general make no sense to me.
Interviewer: Then what was or is your part of the process?
God – I didn’t say I didn’t have ANY powers. I just don’t remember creating the universe. I’m really good at biology. I seeded millions of planets with various forms of life.
Interviewer – That answers definitively what many of our viewers have questioned over the years. Could you give us some examples of your creations?
God – There are the liquid creatures on the planet I call Riverdale. They aren’t too smart, they just babble all day. Their life cycle consists of liquid, vapor and then liquid again. That’s probably why they believe in reincarnation or resurrection, I’m not sure which. Another oddity of the Riverdalians is that they are not exactly either individuals or one entity. They mix and mingle literally. You could be Joe, then Joe plus Jane, then half a Joe.
The Askari did not turn out well. They look like humans, but are even more arrogant. They claim to have spread their kind around the universe, including humans, when in fact they just moved some animals, human and otherwise, that I had created.
They are really mean to immigrants. Every once in awhile, they find refugees from some catastrophe and “save” them, but put them to work on the most menial tasks and offer very little sustenance. Later they kick them off on another planet to fend for themselves. Some of my gambles have not paid off.
One of the planets where they drop off immigrants has some of my favorite inhabitants, the Renn. Not too bright, but they are always Zen-like in the moment. They look like small Centaurs except for their dog-like faces. They spend their time running around screwing and not worrying about a thing. I wish more of my creations were like them.
The Randd were the smarter cousins to the Renn. They live on the planet Randdog and are probably where human conspiracy theorists get the idea about Ancient Aliens. As is so often the case, the theorists got the story part right. The Randd are brilliant and even though they resemble the Renn they deny the obvious kinship. A few thousand years ago, the Randd had accomplished faster than speed of light travel. Don’t ask me how, but they did it. Because they had all the material possession that could possibly want, they began to dream of kinky sex. Both males and females had none of the talent that the Renn had, so they decided to cast their net wide. As a result, they encountered earth. The humans at that time looked just like the rough trade that their jaded tastes wanted. Earth people and the Randd were surprisingly compatible. Earthers were quite taken by the savoir faire and bling that the Randd had, and the Randd were mad for the variety that the humans presented. The progeny of these unions had gained some of the intelligence of the off planet sexual tourists. The Nazca lines of Peru, the Egyptian pyramids and so much more are the result of the alien brain power. The misfortune of your planet is that after the Randd left, humans went back to hooking up based on gross sex appeal and soon lost all that they had gained.
Interviewer – If I may ask, what happened to the Randd?
God – The brilliant Randd had one big blind spot. Their sex drive made them stupid. They caught stds from all over the universe and infected a number of worlds, which is why the Randd are now extinct. Be glad that they visited earth before they picked up some really bad diseases.
Now if I may return to the original question.
You humans would probably like the Feline planet. It has all the variety of cats that you know and love, and some that you have never seen. Sniggle is short legged and looks something like a snake, but is covered in fur. A few hundred years ago idiot humans killed thousands because either you thought that they were familiars of witches or that they carried the plague. THEY WERE MY GIFT TO YOU, YOU INSUFFERABLE CRETINS. Sorry, I just got a little overwrought. I see that some of you have gone back the other way and worship them as the Egyptians did. I love cat videos. How can you not believe in me when there are cats?
You hate mosquitoes because they vex you and ignore the fact that they are major player in the food chain. As larvae they feed fish and as adults they feed birds and bats. You like fish and birds don’t you?
Interviewer – You mentioned that the Randd became extinct. Is that common?
God – The latest report says that 32% of civilizations have become extinct. War, introduced toxics, plague, or just giving up has doomed lots of planets. A couple of ways things go south is like a couple of your movies. Some are defeated by an alien invasion like in “Independence Day”, but with a different outcome. Likewise sometimes it’s “Terminator”. There are enough replacements by the Askari to keep the number of populated planets fairly steady.
Interviewer – We can hope that our aliens are more like E.T. and that we aren’t smart enough to make machines smarter than us. I’d like your take on some holy leaders. Let’s start with Buddha.
God – I’m not really high on Siddhartha Gautama based on what I know. Maybe I can’t blame him. He may have been misquoted. The whole thing about Nirvana and rebirth is quite the crock, you know. Do you really want to know how to be a poor beggar with no ambition? No, I didn’t think so. Those that see him as supernatural are off their nut. He was just a guy with some ideas, some good, and some bad. Lying is bad – he got that at least. Despite his reputation as being peaceful, his followers don’t mind beating up minority Muslims.
Ask yourself, is some guy who has extinguished all of his desires and ambition, and has no interest in material rewards likely to invent the car, the internet, defibrillators and peanut butter? Didn’t think so.
Interviewer – Mohammed?
God – He’s one of the newer guys isn’t he? Can’t say I followed his career too closely.
Interviewer – Confucius?
God – Some of Kong Qui’s jokes are good. Just kidding. Some guy supporting the status quo.
Confucius say woman who fly plane upside down, heee – sorry, that always breaks me up.
Interviewer: Moses?
God – I think that his biographers got a lot of it wrong. I’ll give you a couple of examples from the tablets. I don’t care about the graven images. Take my picture if you want, do my bust – I guess that could be taken the wrong way. I already mentioned that we are all the same god, so no gods before me makes no sense. That bit was just put in there by the priests that wanted an exclusive franchise.
But Moses was a national hero. I don’t want to take anything away from him.
Interviewer – Jesus?
God – One of my favorite children. Wonderful person, but like so many others, mercilessly persecuted, misquoted and misunderstood. The world would be a lot better off if his teachings were followed.
Interviewer – Did you just say “one of my children” and “misquoted and misunderstood”? Could you expand on that?
God – I could, but if I did your TV station would be burnt to the ground and the land covered in salt. As it is, you will at least get death threats based on what I have said here. Have I mentioned that humans are not tolerant? Yes I did.
Interviewer – The founder of the Mormon Church of Latter Day Saints?
God – Joseph Smith Jr.? He’s another new guy that I have not followed. I do like many of the Mormons.
Interviewer – Did we miss anybody important?
God – You most certainly did. He had a lot of good ideas, and was largely plagiarized in other beliefs. Now he’s known from a book and a composition used in a movie and at concerts by the late, overweight Elvis Presley. I hope by now you know I’m talking about Zoroaster of “Thus Sprach Zarathustra” renown.
He originated the religion of the Asian steppes which was the principal religion of what we call now Iran. The Magis of Biblical fame were adherents, but little is known of them today. While other beliefs had a whole panoply of “gods”, Zoroastrianism realized there was just one, namely me. They called me Ahura Mazda. Now Mazda is known as a car, and not even a luxury one. Zoroaster recognized the value of leading a good life. It was not all about smiting ones’ enemies, although I confess there was some of that too.
Today, some religions have thousands of times the number of Zoroastrians. It makes no sense to me.
Interviewer – I feel stupid asking this. Is God dead?
God – You got that right. You should feel stupid, but I know that you are asking because that was a movement of the moment. What is and was dead is the search for what is right and true in the world. So many people are sleeping through life making widgets, laugh tracks for bad sitcoms, or looking for a reason to go to war, that they ignore what is important. I welcome your worship of course, but ask yourself “Am I leaving the world a better place, am I just existing, or am I aiding my world?”
Interviewer – We talked about a lot of your creations on other worlds. How about us on planet earth?
God – I’m afraid that’s going to hurt. Some of you have been great. I mentioned Jesus already. Those that attempted to save the Jews in World War II. Those that wanted to prevent war or at least end it. Bill Gates did some cool technological things. People that grow healthy food. Employers that take good care of their workers and give marginal people a second chance. The few that work on a healthy environment. Nothing else comes to mind.
The bad list is much longer I’m sad to say. The worst of all is the misreading of “Be fruitful and multiply”. I think that I was misquoted, but in any case you humans way over did it. There was plenty of land for millions of people to live in comfort. There could have been enough for everyone, even if disaster hit somewhere. Just peacefully move some other hospitable place without conflict. Now places like Haiti and India are so overburdened, the people live in misery.
Partly because of the avarice for resources in an overpopulated planet, tens of millions died in the two world wars. If you don’t remember your history, WWI was precipitated over the assassination of one person. Think about the arithmetic, one death led to the death of over ten million. What kind of creatures would participate in that calculation?
Against your few saints, you have Roman emperors that ravaged Europe and beyond, Genghis Khan who killed millions in Asia, colonial powers that took the physical and human resources from Africa, Europeans that decimated of the aborigines in the Western Hemisphere and Australia. I could go on about China, Russia, Japan and the U.S.. All the great powers through history have a lot to answer for.
Interviewer: You don’t see any improvement?
God – With the current P.O.T.U.S? With the rise of anti-Semitism, attacks by and against Muslim factions? Have you no reason at all?
Interviewer: Don’t we get any credit for culture, Hazel? Sorry, God.
God – Some of your classical music is OK, some just puts me to sleep. Don’t get me started on rap, country and new age.
For every good book or poem, there are about a thousand bad ones. Romance novels? All the same. Have you read James Patterson? He’s a best seller. Even Stephen King wrote “Under The Dome”.
There are a lot of Ed Woodses out there. Stanley Kubrick, who did some good stuff, made “Eyes Wide Shut”. What was he thinking? Had he become senile?
Interviewer: But we’ve made such technological advances.
God – Your advances can’t keep up with your burgeoning population. When agriculture improves, the mouths needing to be fed outpaces it.
Do you consider the ability to receive phone calls around the clock from someone selling time shares a good thing?
Interviewer – This has been quite bleak, but I hope that we get another chance to talk. By the way, why did you agree to this interview now? People have wanted to talk to you for eons. Some have even claimed to have received your divine proclamations.
God – The reason that I have not talked to humans lately is twofold. As I already said, I am regularly misquoted in order to profit the reporter. Also, thousands of years ago, people couldn’t understand the truth.
I chose to talk to you now, because I didn’t think that you would be around long, and you should know the truth before you go.
Interviewer – Oh, my god – sorry – I’m going to die?
God – I wasn’t referring to you, I was referring to humans.
Liberty Mutual briefcase. Google thermos, Facebook key chain,
DropBox t shirt, Organic socks, Apple everything, NetSuite
ball caps.
Logos of belonging. They relish their bells, glued to notifications,
Texts, mail. Ninjas in their crowded fields, they
Take the searing poker bravely: tradeoffs. Paycheck, health insurance
Babies. A chance at the payoff, a wild ride, maybe, early
retirement.
At dinnertime, they taste the hint of something
Burnt under the sniff of grassy air, hear the faint
Jangle of the chain, the distant sound of bells.
“Peonies”
She won’t sell the country house. Not yet!
And not because of Locust Lake, sailboats in summer.
Alders in snow. Not because of the long view of the Poconos,
Those graduating waves of forest, deep green fading
To watery sage, tiered like a chiffon dress.
Lost in those folds, the dizzy roller coaster
Of marriage, sickness, the push pull of desire.
Paul planted peonies. She, a lover
Of woodblock prints, bamboo, toro nagashi,
Candle lit lanterns
on a lake.
Her tears water the earth where peonies proliferate.
In life, he betrayed, but in death transmogrified,
Missed. At night, she denied him the touch
The skin he craved. You can’t have it both ways,
She chided. Just now, she wants it exactly
Both ways. Perfect in life. Perfect in death.
Now that he’s gone, her loneliness, tissue thin, blooms.
She is married to the million petal profusion of pink.
The peonies are her private grief, their souls, reunited.
She needs, him, and his perfect peonies.
“Besides,” she cries, “It’s such a short season.”
Tongass
In Ketchikan, flaming fireweed
Isn’t red but lavender. Pale buds
Luminescent against all that green.
They grow (but only in July) proud natives
Like the artful Tlingit. Erect. Stewards for ten thousand
years,
First Nation. Black and red. Carving, carpets, paintings,
poles.
Overhead, raven soars, screams!
Ever a trickster, he twists himself into seal, bear, shaman.
I don’t dare whisper pristine.
Tlingit voices reach. Nitchi tai tai/Ora nika ora nika/hey
hey hey hey.
Oh changing mother/Mother of creation/We call upon you/Waters
of our birth
Land of our sustenance fire that cleanses at death/Breath of
life”
Eagle screech. “For all we stand to lose.”
Raven talks story from totem pole, story guards history.
Did we fly too
high? Did we ignore the fireweed’s whisper?
Raven marries eagle and eagle marries raven.
It’s the law of balance, of love. Tribal codes for long
life.
Respect the seal, the whale, the forest, the bear.
Heed the screech, the call.
Praying at the Altar of Nam June Paik
Gunboat/day-glow/birdflock/drones.
Lotus blossom’s sharp/snub-nosed catfish.
Flashes. We are clones/Forty years after Aquarius dawned,
We become frozen psychedelic hearts/petrified/concrete
block.
Summer of love/revival/nostalgia’s sour. We starve but for
An altar. Fluxus sculptor constructed a tower
TV/consoles/fragmented images/sounds. Harmonic and
Found/art, these east/west wats become our galleries
Have busted out. Do it yourself. Reuse. Museums/immolation
Immigration dying on streets where/we refuse/petition. A prescient
vision
Paik named “the electronic superhighway.” I quit. Global to
drill bit
Amphora to inkwell. The long view just got myopic. School of
fish with no insight
We protest/resist/ our rage palpable/the turtle indecipherable.
The river, muddy as ever, sinking.
I am losing ground. Can
art save us from this circus act?
I’m lost. Listening to John Cage, I’m atonal, afraid to
glance
Sideways, back. Here’s that bird flock, limp cock/tails as black
as drones.
Everyone’s gone/viral/we are in the hands of a reality TV bully.
A hoax. All protocol tossed overboard/words useless/loose
Lips/sinking ships. Twitter/ feeds/ nourishes hate speech.
I’m praying at the altar of Nam June Paik.
Author Joan Gelfand
My reviews, poetry and stories have appeared in over 150 literary journals and magazines including Rattle, PANK!, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Prairie Schooner, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Dreams and Premonitions, The Meridien Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and Fire and Rain: California Eco-Poetry.
The author of three poetry collections and an award winning chapbook of short fiction, my recent book, “You Can Be a Winning Writer: the 4 C’s of Successful Authors,” published by Mango Press was an Amazon #1 best seller.
I coach writers and teach in the San Francisco Bay Area.
the stereo that ravishes the flimsy fiber of my walls
every second of the day,
the periodic cleaning of the communal toilet,
the frugal, frozen meals,
the droning laundry that churns my brain with twisted
sleeves,
the window-shopping that constantly reminds me of
aesthetic needs,
the constricting shoes that are past their retirement age
have all decidedly urged me to go on a three-day
retreat.
I arrived in Largs on a very gusty, snowy day.
A female taxi-driver kindly waved at me
I inquired whether I could walk to the Benedictine
Monastery.
Viewing the piling snow, my slender frame,
she shook her head negatively.
I boarded the vehicle banishing all thoughts about the
fare.
I was always on a budget but it was high time I
loosened care.
Instead, I focused on the beauty of a snow-puffed
affair.
The first thing that conversed with my languid eyes
was the crow which rescued St. Benedict from harm,
serenely perching upon the saint’s shoulder.
Warmly received with the Madonna smile,
I was preceded by the Sister up the stairs,
then having inadvertently tripped over her habit of
grace,
I was instantly forgiven before I blinked a single,
apologetic phrase.
I had learnt from a song that silence has a sound.
It was true indeed of that realm of the devout,
so with attuned ears I began to learn how to hearken
to the peace of the un-worded.
Dinner was served with guesthouse mates.
No students’ broils, no mounds of plates,
but my days were spent swirling with snowflakes.
In a pair of navy Wellington boots,
I crunched my way up and down the unsullied coast,
a single tiny blemish on unbroken snow,
except for a visible dog now and then,
being walked to execute its needs.
The Sisters must have marveled at my eccentric need
to be constantly outdoors
when life was freezing to its very core.
I was bent on braving an inner storm
when people sat snug in cozy homes.
Grasmere
I constantly think about his inward gaze
that sees beyond all feminine grace
and the flamboyant phrase,
but Winter seduces him with voluptuous peaks
and Alpine skiing has never been my expertise.
Instead, I yearn to nestle to April’s daffodils
in Grasmere’s dales.
He loves to hear the wind buffet his lateen sails,
to expose his nimble limbs to mischievous air elves,
when I prefer to float on the placid lake
that Wordsworth and De Quincey used to contemplate.
A Water-Sphinx
I moon away my swimming hours
flirting with fish who dare approach,
viewing some seaweed or a fleet of clouds,
rippling the sea with arms grown bronze.
The lane I’ve chosen in this mass of waters
is the darkest, deepest and quite aloof.
An occasional splash from an efficient diver
or a professional swimmer would beat my course.
With a soft stroke I caress the flowers
that ripples have weaved with straying foam.
No need to speed or brave the miles,
no race to win, no end in view.
But whose breath has now agitated the quiet,
ruffling the surface with rhythmic moves?
Attuned, each ear begins to marvel
at this consistent, persistent tune.
The surge that precedes a Leviathan towers
before my eyes that catch a glimpse
of a figure resurrected from Roman times,
a Triton or Spartan, a moving myth.
Two orbs that see through films of water
assess the nymph that within me dwells.
A commanding glance beckons me to follow
to race this legendary water-Sphinx.
With eyes mesmerized by a giant’s biceps,
my hands then whisk the sweet sea’s blue.
An unwinnable race it is but now,
I have a mate with an end in view.
A Historian
Benignity resides in the gleam of his eye
that calmly views a slumbering mankind,
too loath to unfurl.
Anger has never diluted his avowals
against the falsification of historic files,
the forgery of dates,
ecclesiastical guile,
and Truth’s demise.
He wonders what makes most people so blind
to every de-shrouding he has espoused.
Is it a complacent way of life?
An ancestral dread of the Inquisitor’s styles!
A shield against psychiatric art!
Or the plights of irretrievable Snow Whites!
Celestial
Grant me that purple cloud
for a funeral shroud,
some Autumn rain
to anoint my name,
a pyre of rays
for immolation in space,
a harp of stars
to play my rites,
a chariot of doves
my celestial hearse,
a headstone of light
for my burial site,
a wreath of beams
above remains.
Comeliness
Comeliness does not gather dust.
Its innateness surpasses must
and the intricacy of rust.
Ornate is the translucent facade
that glows with jovial smiles,
and the efficacy of a glance.
Melifluous is its lingual form,
resonating through spinal cords,
a euphony of throbs.
Redolent is its lingering scent,
regaling the mind in its absence,
a cerebral incense.
My Umbrella
The story of my umbrella is not a romance.
It has nothing to do with recreation, leisure, or class.
Floral as it may look, it is a weapon that defends,
derails, defuses, debars and deters.
Though I’m nearing retirement, my feet still serve an end.
The sun is quite hot-tempered in this portion of the world,
so my umbrella is the armor that shields my arms and head,
but not my legs.
Though incongruous with my sartorial façade,
it has become an appendix,
a perennial blemish on elegance,
derailing the gentility of an academic.
For some it has defused many feuds
over the efficacy of learning.
If knowledge cannot purchase one a car,
then one can fare better as a clerk,
a plumber, a sailor, or attending a bar.
As for my gender, a housewife.
This colorful nebula encircling my head
has debarred and deterred the ones to wed
who seek in a nuptial life more than a bed,
a financial credit.
Susie Gharib is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde with a Ph.D. on the work of D.H. Lawrence. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in multiple venues.
I tell people that I am an intuitive artist… I make art by starting with a surface,
putting some marks on it and using the medium at hand to keep working on the
piece until I feel that it is done, or it “feels right,” whatever that
means… I am not a naïve or self taught
artist, as I have a Masters degree in painting and have studied art history all
my life… my area of study for many
years has been Pre Raphaelite art and I have traveled extensively to see the
original works by those artists… ever
since I was a child, I have loved looking at art, especially old master,
European art and more recently, 19th Century academic and Victorian
art… my roots as an artist are firmly in
the late 19th Century and I use materials and techniques from that
era… many people say that they see the
influence of Picasso and Duchamp in my art and I’m sure that is there as in art
school, I was given a heavy dose of Picasso and I have always thought Duchamp
was the only really great artist of the 20th Century…
I remember that I discovered the magic of drawing as a pre
schooler, drawing in the margin of books and on whatever paper I could
find… when I got to grade school (there
was no kindergarten in the country school I attended) I discovered the
encyclopedia which was full of information that fascinated me and pictures that
I loved… I began studying old time
sailing ships and tried to use the diagrams and pictures in the encyclopedia to
make crude drawings of my own invention which had the right sails in the right
places….
In 6th grade, I discovered Michelangelo and a
book called Anatomy for the Artist and spent the next six years studying
anatomy and attempting to learn to draw people by learning the names and
locations of all the muscles, sinews and bones… when I got to the University of
Minnesota, I discovered life drawing which I loved loved loved… I don’t know if they even do that in art
schools any more, but in those days (late 1960s) a life drawing class would
have a person come into the class naked for us to look at and draw… I learned to draw what I saw and
surprisingly, I learned that men and women naked do not look as different from
one another as I would have thought… and
in fact, from across the room in many poses, it was not obvious what gender the
model was…
so, given the importance of the nude in the art that I
studied and loved, old master and Victorian drawings and paintings, and my
fascination with how people look without clothes, I spent most of my artistic
life making drawings and paintings more or less centered on images of naked men
and women… I very early on realized that
this kind of art was never going to be very popular, would always make people
more or less uncomfortable and would not bring me much in the way of commercial
success in the greater world of art galleries and art shows… I also knew that
my sort of old fashioned way of working, making drawings and paintings which
were not formally innovative was out of step with what was going on the world
of contemporary galleries and museums
so, I decided to work first for 20 years in a factory printing telephone books
and then for 20 years in a civil service job and continue to do art as a hobby
i.e. something one does for reasons other than to earn a living…
Hewlett-Packard
I never expected to have an audience for my art work at all
so continued on through the years, making drawings and paintings, working
intuitively, trying to let images flow from my unconscious mind without
thinking much about it… I have always
loved music of every kind and found that listening to and thinking about music
seemed to facilitate the flow of images from my brain through my fingers onto
the surface of the drawing or painting that I was working on… I have not done actual “life drawing” from a
nude model for many years, but continued to make images of figures because that
is what my subconscious seemed to want to do…
I often carry a small sketch book with me and find myself making
sketches of people I see around me, especially when traveling… I also found many years ago that I like making
imaginative drawings in public places, where there are people around to look at
and especially if there is music playing in the background… so, while traveling, I have made many many
drawings in the shade sitting by a pool at a Las Vegas hotel, or on the deck of
a cruise ship for example… sometimes using India ink and/or watercolor, more
often using ballpoint pen… just because
it was handy and I had developed a technique of chiaroscuro using ballpoint pen
over many years while sitting on an ink can in the corner behind the old
Wood-Hoe Telephone Directory Letterpress that I worked on for 20 years,
watching the rolls of paper wind down, waiting to splice the new roll onto the
old one… drawing with a ballpoint pen on
telephone book cover stock…
anyway, I was always a poet as well as an artist and after many years of regular submission and rejection of my poetry, I finally started having poems regularly published in the early 1990s and realized that some of the journals were using art and that the art they were using seemed less interesting than the drawings I was making… so I started photocopying the drawings and submitting them along with poetry… I found to my amazement that the literary people loved my art (while art people had never shown any interest in it whatsoever) and so now, nearly all of my 600 plus mature works of art have been published in the literary press – one place or another… and I have a small audience that is interested in my work… I also find that when I am drawing in public, people are fascinated by the images and want to talk about them… this, I guess is for me, the same kind of public interaction that a gallery or museum artist would get from their vernissage… people ask me “what does it mean” and I tell them, either, “I don’t have any idea what it means” or “it is an art work and you as the viewer have to decide what it means…”
Hewlett-Packard
so, what I was trying to do here was to write about my philosophy of art, my aesthetic, I guess you would call it, and what I wound up talking about was the history of my practice… which is to allow my intuition to work on a painting or drawing until it “feels right” or, “seems to be done…” until the piece feels done, until it feels right, I can as easily tear a piece up/destroy it, as keep on working on it but if I do not do one or the other, the piece will keep on bothering me until I make it right or destroy it… other than that, the only thing I have to say about my philosophy of making art is that it has to feel honest… if I am trying to force it, or fake it, I usually wind up throwing the piece away once I realize that it feels dishonest… also, the older I get (I am now 71) the more I realized that I do not understand art, life or philosophy very well at all and although I am a somewhat introspective person, I am not sure I really understand myself that well either… I do however think I get insight about these things by looking at my artworks and trying to figure out what they mean and, why they exist… and seeing them published here and there…
whatever broken spanish i remember she whispers to me in spanish when she’s feeling sexy i try my best to respond with whatever broken spanish i remember from school her kisses are like the sweetest candy of course, i’m a diabetic
the human condition i don’t mind the pain i have grown to accept it it’s part of the human condition it’s the price for not killing myself as a child my penalty for allowing myself to be stepped on, have my heart trampled and be constantly reminded that i was never good enough to begin with
this weird void another christmas alone stuck in this weird void all my friends live too far away there’s no woman on this earth willing to even take the chance with me too bad, i’m still a fucking dreamer skin tough enough to no longer give two shits
endless strings of lights i remember the dysfunction from my youth at christmas the eventual argument while putting up the fake tree and endless strings of lights i learned all the dirty words by the time i was five hated all the holidays before i reached ten years old not exactly good while trying to incorporate yourself into the world
the last hope i have i look in her eyes and see all the fantasies i never got to have in my youth the last hope i have at ever finding love her neon soul brings what little joy i can actually feel these days maybe one day i’ll convince her there’s actually a future we could share
J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is currently trapped in suburbia, wondering where the lonely housewives are hiding. He’s been widely published over the years, most recently at Red Eft Review, Under The Bleachers, Horror Sleaze Trash, Chiron Review and Yellow Mama. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)
