2000-04-28 - 23:22:50

April 28, 2000

Choices

All through my life it has been

choosing one thing instead of another. The reasons were

good, it was just so difficult to understand which way to

go. I have always been fascinated with making pictures

and all through school my efforts were to create something

meaningful and beautiful.

I could see it on my block, I

could feel it in my gut. The actuality was, I just

couldn't do it and suffer myself to see it, let alone

anyone else. It wasn't there, the thing was supposed to

be there for all to appreciate. It made me want to barf.

It was easy for me to see that the quality and delineation

was not good.

I was so very good at constructing the

perfect art class margins on the paper. But what I drew

was not good and received a D+ by the kindness of my

teachers.

Linoleum block pictures were a little better,

but my favorite print of a block of mine didn't hang on

the wall of my room more than a week until its obscene

absurdity consigned it to the waste basket.

I did well

in shop (industrial arts it was called then). I made all

the class requirements and did well, I could cut, shape

and polish, bend, twist and forge. Nothing of beauty

came of it, utility, yes, beauty, no.

That was in what

they call middle school now, junior high then. Sometime

before I went into high school I began going to the

museums, libraries, and the gallery or two existing here

those days. The main art museum then was housed in a row

of vacated shops near the downtown district. They didn't

have much room to display and very little storage space.

The main library was nearby and so was the state

historical museum where Indian and Pioneer artifacts were

on display.

One of the main facets of my learning was

whether tool, appliance, picture or furniture it was

easy to see the beauty of form that the craftsman / artist

had put into his work. Sometimes simple in form but with

lines leading the eye into an appreciation of pure

beauty.

I obviously couldn't make any kind of living out

of art appreciation or music appreciation. So, when the

time came I entered the real world and began to work for a

living. There were things I loved about each job I ever

had, but the hankering after the beautiful still drives

me.

Now, my attempt to shape beauty out of the massing

of words in their proper order and meaning is where my

effort is exerted. Result ? Maybe later, a little

childish, inocent offering. Who really knows the prospect

of writing something that moves some one deeply ? As

deeply as I have been many times ? To even come into the

edge of the area that written beauty is created.

There

is a poet in me somewhere crying for the time to be

trained in the use of the intracacies of the language.

So much poetry moves me deeply, something as simple as

the poem about the butter fly that is a feature of Mike

Leung's site. Such beauty, such feeling so simply said

that it can be seen, and understood. Recently I have

been reading Maya Angelou's poetry and I find it very

moving. One of her most famous I guess is her "Phenomenal

Woman," carries such a depth of meaning, is symphonic in

its execution, a thing of beauty and understanding. I

am neither colored (pink sorta) nor female but her work

seems to give me a better understanding of those

conditions. It takes just a little to please this

simple man, but it has to be good for me to enjoy it.

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