Monkey X

My Old Man kept his sense of humor right to the end.
On his deathbed he beckoned me close and whispered with his dying breath, "I forgive you".

 For the next eighteen years I was racked with guilt, yet completely perplexed by his last words until
 my mother, on her deathbed, drew me close as well and whispered, "he was kidding."

I didn't say it was a great sense of humor, I just said he kept it.

(Acrylic and oil on board, 8" x 10")

The Old Man and the Road

I'm driving on I-40, past Santa Rosa, NM, feeling pretty good about my little hero's journey when a I pass this old man puttering along on a Vespa.   He's topping out at maybe 45 miles per hour, buffeted by hot winds and huge semi trucks roaring past only inches from him.    

We pull over at the same motel and I ask him what the heck he's doing.   He says he's on his way to Chicago from Los Angeles, trying to take as many side roads as he can, but sometimes he has to get on the interstate.   The guy's 74 years old and he's taken his mighty scooter across every continent.  

He says he  doesn't like to plan too much -- he just gets as far as he gets.   When he feels like stopping, he stops.   He says that's how treats every day, even when he's not traveling. 

Get Your Kicks

I'm traveling this week on a location scout in New Mexico.  This is the Blue Swallow on Route 66 in Tucumcari.    The angry skies in the background only talked a good game.

G.G.

Old Deacon Johnson was a preaching man

the black sky pilot of old dixie land

Had never missed a Sunday rain or shine

was always in the pulpit right on time

One day a dark-skin damsel blow'd in town 

Somebody started scan-da-la-tion ‘round

Next Sunday morn they found

 the church door locked,

and the only words the deacon left his flock:

 It takes a long, tall brown-skin gal 

to a make a preacher

 lay his bible down.

                         Words by Marshall Walker from the 1917 song "It Takes A Long Tall Brown-Skin Gal."

(18' X 12" Acrylic on canvas)

The Bird who Thought too much

You have to be always drunk. 
That's all there is to it—it's the only way. 
So as not to feel the horrible burden of time
 that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, 
you have to be continually drunk.
But on what? 
Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish.
 But be drunk.  

(excerpt from "Be Drunk" by Charles Baudelaire)
(Notebook page, watercolor)