brave, like looters in a burning town

Set 2 of Self-Portraits of You turned out pretty fantastic. And I've decided to add another level to the project by drawing/painting some of the portraits. Or maybe all of them, who knows.

So far, no one has refused my request, but a few people thought they were funny. haha.

stunning! (& not just because it was taken by my terribly beautiful daughter)

take 1 (pretty/gross)

take 2 (better!)

take 1

take 2 (disembodied head = better)

smiling bartenders make better tips

drunk patrons smile more (holy fingernail, batman!)

breathtaking (in a seedy nightclub kind of way)

creepy (in a Leprechaun meets Planet of the Apes kind of way)

trust me, he's the nicest dork you'll ever meet

two ghosts are better than one (that's my ghost in the background!)

"I don't do drugs. I am drugs." -Salvador Dali

isn't she lovely?

is this like some kind of social experiment or something?

so, you think you're a wise guy, eh?

some faces speak for themselves

even the bar took a picture of itself!

some people prefer to be in front of the camera rather than behind it

Overall, the results were fruitful, if a bit dark. But that's how I like it! And I think you're going to like my interpretation of you.

...

Beginning
Alden Nowlan

From that they found most lovely, most abhorred,
my parents made me: I was born like sound
stroked from the fiddle to become the ward
of tunes played on the bear-trap and the hound.

Not one, but seven entrances they gave
each to the other, and he laid her down
the way the sun comes out. Oh, they were brave,
and then like looters in a burning town.

Their mouths left bruises, starting with the kiss
and ending with the proverb, where they stayed;
never in making was there brighter bliss,
followed by darker shame. Thus I was made.

...

I had a compulsion to do it

I like serial killers almost as much as I like birthdays. So today is a two-for-one!

Ed Gein, possibly the most infamous serial killer who didn't really kill all that many people (he only actual claimed to have killed two women), was born today, 1906.

I swear he could've been my brother:

Except he was a supposed necrophiliac cannibal who liked to rob graves (including that of his mother), make pretty/fancy things like bowls, jewelery, masks, lampshades, chairs, bedposts, etc. out of body parts, murder women who looked like his mother, and dress up in a full bodysuit made of human skin. Ol' Eddy sure was obsessed with women! Especially dead ones. He also read anatomy texts & literature on the Nazi's, kept preserved vulvas in a box (just in case?!), & even babysat on occasion.

Thankfully, he and my brother have very little in common. 

Whether Ed actually did EVERYTHING he is purported to have done--he never admitted to necrophilia or cannibalism--or whether some of it is journalistic embellishment doesn't really matter. He was dedicated to his art.

Reminds me of someone else who was dedicated to his art:



...

In a Dark Time
Theodore Roethke

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

...