Dante took this photo yesterday.  I wasn't aware of her snapping me as I worked, grinding the edges of a piece of steel.  

The steel was the last scrap of the rusted oil drum I bought the other week.  I'm pleased to say that I've used every bit to make art.  Two completed new paintings, one final small sculpture, and nothing left over to litter my studio.  

I worried that the place would end up as a junkyard, filled with piles of twisted metal.  It didn't happen.  With leftover wood I can always feed my stove during the cold months.  But scrap iron is a different matter.  Unsightly and dirty.  

When artists collect trash and try to turn it into art they often end up with more trash.  You have to be clever enough to transform each and every fragment, or why even bother? 

Artists don't re-use, recycle, or repurpose stuff.  They "artify" garbage.  The only purpose of art is to be art itself.  I strive to be an artificer.  All is grist for my mill.  

Taken on Sunday.  The two beautiful sisters sharing a feeling.  Hard for their dad to view them as women in their fifties.  They'll always be girls to me.  I guess all women are forever girls to someone.  Don't forget this fact.  Humanity is nothing more than children at play.  

"I can't believe that all these older men who like me are so SQUARE!" Dante said a few minutes ago.

"I understand," I said sighing.  "The weirdness of so many cool, promising, types ending up square.  Even the most idealistic free spirits.  They also turn into squares.  Discombobulating!"

"I just can't see myself having sex with them.  They look okay.  They aren't ugly.  But their personality!"

"Right.  Women aren't that different.  Time transforms them into squares.  Maybe not as square as men, but it's just as off-putting.  And shocking."

Here is a photo of Hannah, taken by Dante yesterday.  Hannah was giving another of her readings at a literary event in LA.  She obviously is happy doing such things.  She isn't shy about taking the mike and expressing herself.  Her acting skills come in handy.  Dante is very supportive of her sister, and has always been.  There is a complete absence of sibling rivalry.  They're very close.  

I read these words last night: "If I were young, how I would love you!"   

It sounds so believable.  But thinking it over I realize that it's only a poetic illusion.  

When I was young I couldn't love anyone more perfectly than when I'm old.  As a youth I often told myself if I was mature and successful then I could love a woman better.  

So, young or old, for this man it's never the right time for the deepest love.  I guess time and love don't mix very well.  

Finished this small one today.  I used the remaining pieces of the rusted oil drum, and after painting them, screwed the pile to a sheet of wood.

It turned out differently than I'd planned, but this is a good sign for contemporary art.  You need to learn as you go, otherwise it's just a craft item.  Whether you know it or not, if that is the case, you are stuck in a pathetic rut.  And failing to become a genuine creative spirit.  

The act of painting is like setting out at midnight on a stormy sea, alone, in a little boat.  You leave a safe harbor, and throw caution to the wind.  Everything where you left is now on fire, and burning to ashes.  

There's no turning back.  There's nothing behind, and nothing to be seen in front.  But you move forward, guided by faith.  

This is the destiny of a real maker.

Here is a silkscreen of Steve McQueen.  One of the first I made of him.  It's almost photographic.  But this is intentional.  

Some might ask what is so artistic about that?  I'd have to answer, well, not much.  It's a copy of a copy of a copy . . .  Like so many things in the world.  

Well, then, why even bother doing it?  Because I haven't done it.  And wanted to see if I can do it, and what it looks like after I do it.  Is this supposed to be forbidden?  Or a waste of time?  Should I be sent to prison for such a crime?

I liked making it, and I still like the way it might look today, and in the future.  I don't know where this work currently is, and who owns it.  Nor do I care.  

There is so much to say about the least important thing I create.  People might be surprised.  I could write a whole book about nearly any painting I've ever made.  I'm serious.  It's entirely doable.  

The paintings look so much better smartly framed.  Now they'd enhance any blank wall anywhere in the world, as far as I can tell.  

One of the better things about being an artist is having a long series of signposts marking your passage.  Photos can do it for other people, but photos of art tell a more complex story.  Each one reveals a landscape of the artist's soul: heights, depths, flatlands, green, black, gray, sunny, angles, corners, starry skies, and so on.  

What was the artist going through on this day, this month, and this year?  Take a look at the art.  It's all there.  It'll tell you everything you need to know.  Just use your interpretive skills.  You have these talents even if you seldom use them.  

I hope my daughter's birthday was fun for her.  I think it was.  She was in a characteristic good mood yesterday.  She's never been a moody type.  The same goes for her son.  

"He isn't one to complain," she said.

"I noticed that.  He likes being with his friends, but he's also content to be alone.  This is good."

I don't think I'm moody.  Not compared to so many people I've known over my life.  I suppose I'm a little critical at times.  But only when I'm exceptionally unhappy.  Which is rare.  

I notice that my usual alley cats have vanished.  I put out some food but the plate is quickly swarmed with ants.  The family of Siamese cats are gone.  Possibly captured.  They're worth money.  This brand sells for $500 to $2500 in LA.  Disturbing.  But maybe the cats would like to move into new digs.  Hard to tell.  

There are people in the world who can't accept freedom in other beings.  And definitely not in themselves.  Even if they don't know it.  A prison guard isn't free even if he imagines he is.  

Some days have a way of sticking out on the calendar.  This one does.  September 18, 1973.  My only child was born.  To underline its meaning, Dante arrived at precisely 9:18 during the night.  So, at 9:18 on 9.18.1973 a healthy daughter was born.  Very convenient for purposes of remembering.  I'm not a numerologist but I could become one because of this fact.  

Fatherhood has had a dramatic impact on my character.  It definitely made me less self-centered, more understanding, and ethically committed.  Without a child I couldn't have transformed myself.  I've always claimed that fatherhood is a sure antidote to suicide.  I stopped my dangerous adventures after she was born.  I wanted to live and raise my daughter.

As a mother today, Dante is as close to her son as I was to her.  Having fewer children probably helps.  I was one of seven siblings.  My father was one of nine brothers and sisters.  All this will count.  It'll affect who we are.  

Yesterday was good.  From the point of view of buying books.  I was out of reading material, and went to my nearby thrift store.  

And what a haul!  I stopped at eleven, because I couldn't easily carry any more.  Eleven paperbacks, all in perfect condition, for $11.  (I added one more from my library to make a symmetrical photo.)  Several I've already read, but fresh copies were hard to resist.

I was in the middle of writing the rest of a story I started on the previous day.  But instead of rushing to finish it, I asked myself: is it really necessary?  Further, is it even a good story?  What makes a good story?

I guess a good story is one that can be retold.  And in order to be retold it must be simple and straightforward.  You tell it to someone, and make it possible for them to tell it to someone else.  And even tell it in a way that makes them feel as if they invented it.  

A story can be six or 600,000 words.

Or no words.  A painting can be a story without language.  Just shapes and colors.   Sometimes nothing more than stains and cracks on a bedroom wall.  

Hannah, from the other night, at her literary event in Barnes & Noble.  There was a packed audience as she read from her best-selling memoir "Strip."  

We've loved Hannah for over fifty years and now the world gets its chance to do the same.  

I guess it might be my time to pause and cast a glance over the family's shared destiny.  I notice a change in my own life-style over the last few years.  A mixture of recollection and a keener sense of the present.  

Here's an example:

It was late Sunday afternoon.  In between NFL games.  And I was getting hungry, with nothing much in the fridge.  I didn't feel like my usual shopping trip to the supermarket.  Too involved.  And I hadn't eaten a pizza lately.  They have a Little Caesars on Whittier, less than a mile away from the studio.  If there was available parking I'd stop, otherwise drive to the Food4Less.  Okay.  Get moving.

I like Litte Caesars because of the $5 ready to go pizza.  But now it was up to $8.  Disconcerting.  A turnoff.  

But then again, I read where the owner had paid the rent of a cultural icon, Rosa Parks.  Quietly paid it for many years until she died.  A beautiful, intelligent thing to do.  

As I stopped at the corner of my block before making a turn, I noticed a small huddled figure in the doorway of a building.  It appeared to be a baby carriage covered with a cloth and a woman sitting on the concrete step.  I turned onto Whittier and traveled east.  But still thinking of the woman and baby.  You don't see that many homeless in my part of town, even though it's one of the poorer sections of LA.  

(to be continued tomorrow)

A photo of my stepdaughter Alexis on the wedding day of her oldest son Tyler.  It took place this week in Israel.  I wasn't able to attend, but she wore one of my bronze pendants.  Alexis is 59!  You certainly wouldn't believe it if you saw her today.  She could pass for 25 years younger.  I have to say that her mother has some unusual genes that she shares with her three daughters.  Too bad that she can't bottle and sell her essence.  The world would be happy to pay through the nose.

Crazy.  I seem to favor this word.  I like the sound of it.  Until it veers too close, and too intensely.  Too much or too little bewilderment isn't that desirable.  I can vouch for that.  The perfect amount of wildness is what we're looking for.  

I notice it in my alley cats.  Who quickly appear when I place some food on my doorstep, but just as quickly leap back if I reach out to pet them.  

They're wild, but not too wild.  

I also love people like that.  

A shelf in my personal library.  The books shown here deal with the WW2 era.  I was born in 1941, and I must have been very affected by this moment.  I keep returning to it.  Studying it, and trying to make the best sense of it.  

Hence part of this collection of reading material.  I've gradually started to gain a greater understanding of all the forces that go into the complicated subject.  And how my own existence was impacted as a result.   

With help from others I came to discover my identity, and the identity of those in my world.  

This is only a single shelf of several.  I started out devouring literature, art, and philosophy, and have ended up with history.  It's as complete a picture as I've been able to piece together.  

What's the point?  Why so obsessive?  There's an answer to these questions, but it's as long as the pages photographed here.  

Do you comprehend who you really are?  Where you've come from, and where you are headed?  And how meaningful is the meaning of your life?

Here is a recent painting after it's been framed.  It'll look better hung on a wall, but I haven't gotten to that.  

We were going to have an opening tonight, but we called it off.  An example of planning too far ahead, and then not being able to follow through.  Lately my daughter and I have decided it will be better if we make fewer, and much simpler, shorter, plans.  Maybe best not to make any plans at all.

For most of my time planning was very necessary, and many of them have worked out.  But there comes a time when this way of living isn't that useful or intelligent.  

It's time to be more spontaneous.  As for the big picture, let God handle it.  Let him have the controls.  I've done as much as I can.  And taken it as far as possible.  From now it's going to be a different existence.

What kind of art is made by artists who no longer have the strength to don wings and soar?  Most art is a way of rising above situations, defeats, surrounding chaos, and mediocrity.  Maybe all art.  It's the one lasting path on which a man or woman can find happiness.  But there are times when even that avenue seems blocked.  

Upon close inspection there might be a whole museum devoted to such art.  Maybe there already is.  I admire how nothing can stop a person from creating.  Even if it's nothing more a short poem in his mind.  One that never sees the light of day.  

As we were driving on one of the many freeways in Los Angeles county, I started reflecting on my life.

"When I was growing up it was a big deal to go from a dirt road between cornfields to a paved two lane highway.  You sensed the meaning of the change.  Almost from one century to another.  From simple farming to modern reality."

Dante was driving and listening to the GPS woman's voice giving her directions.

"But today it's even a bigger development.  Navigating these crowded, elaborate freeways.  I could say that I've come a long way from my beginnings in Iowa.  It gives me other thoughts about the future.  I really believe in life after death.  But what could it be like?  Some might imagine themselves laying under a tree and gazing up at a beautiful sky.  I used to see things that way, but not today.  I think it might be harder and more complex than these freeways.  Ten times more difficult."

"Harder?"

"Yes.  Heaven isn't going to be some infantile picnic in the clouds.  It'll make staggering demands on us.  But it will still be heaven, and a far better place."

We framed this one yesterday.  Still could use some touch-up. 

When does the forest vanish due to the trees?  Or when do the trees vanish because of the forest?  At what point does the individual fade into the general, or the universal become lost in the particular? 

Finding the sweet spot.  The right choice, at the right place, the right moment, with the right person.  This is a combination of science and art.  And very hard to create.  

"To be aware of the problem is better than not being aware," Dante said.

"I agree.  Everything is always changing.  Bad into good, and good into bad.  Pleasure into pain, pain into pleasure.  But people seem to forget this fact.  When they're happy they think it will last forever, and the same illusion exists when they're suffering."

"But happiness is real even if it's only temporary."

"Yes.  And the same is true for misery.  It's smart to keep this in mind especially during extreme times.  Those moments can blind us to dry, everyday, life.  Making us eat our words."

We're finally getting around to framing and hanging the paintings.  Not all of them.  That we'll save for later, much later.  But 20, for now.  Here is a sample of one.  A simple, sturdy, black stained wooden frame.  Contemporary, but traditional.  

I think every one of the 11,000 plus paintings I've made would look better framed.  But I suspect that less than a hundred of them currently have frames.  

There was a reaction against painting frames in the last century.  Especially the ornate, gilded types.  They tended to diminish rather than enhance the far more important surrounded painting.  Plus the added cost was a nuisance.  Also, museum-style monumental canvases didn't require frames.  People were forced to accept the unadorned canvas.  And the public went along for the ride.  And I must say that it was refreshing to see.   But not necessarily permanent.  Tastes change.  

A painting from around twenty years ago.  Someone sent a photo of a painting that they own from nearly forty years ago.  I barely recall making it.  I think I originally sold it to a dentist.  When his wife found out she was outraged.  She hated it.  I guess she got her way.  It wasn't that great, and I can't blame her.  She'd have to be much more sophisticated to appreciate it.  And she isn't.  

Aren't there moments when everything whatsoever seems too hard?  Everything except breathing.  Nothing looks to be worth the effort.  Even suicide feels uphill, and too much work. A person can wish to simply cease to be.  Sitting in a chair eventually turning to a corpse.  With gristly, shriveled skin, staring eyes, and mouth hanging open.  I might make a sculpture of this.   

I'd title it "The man who no longer cared."

A young Siberian woman visited the Third St. Gallery a few times.  I took her out to dinner once or twice, gave her a painting of Kerouac, and even let her dabble on some canvas at the studio.  She left LA and now lives on the East Coast.  

She returns to her home in Asia now and then.  And recently was in Mongolia, which is next door.  She said she'd watch the Russian dictator arrive, since she had nothing better to do.  This is a still shot from her video.

She told me she can't stand Putin, and is a big fan of the activist female rock band "Pussy Riot."  It seems a little surreal that the photo was even taken by someone I've known.  

Is everything always moving forward?  The big picture says, well, yes.  But the small picture says otherwise.  There's so many backward steps along the way.  And not just for a day or two.  You can head in the wrong direction for years.  For nearly your entire life.  You're free to destroy or create yourself.  

I don't consider a pause as a misstep.  A pause makes a lot of sense in music, in building a house, in so many areas of living.  A pause is a way of progressing.  A naturally necessary way.   

There's a difference between a pause and simply throwing in the towel.  I've known several who have done the latter when it comes to painting.  That is, painting for a living, and never taking a job.  Rare, and very hard, to do.  But not impossible.  

Around twenty years ago I asked myself this question: what have I learned from my life?  I didn't even qualify it.  I didn't ask what have I learned from "this" life?  Why imagine that there is anything other than my life here and now?  It's not a matter of this life versus some other life.  It's life.  My unique life.  

But why bother with such a question?  Who wants to hear my answer?  No one.  Except me.  

Do I even want to hear it?  Yes, but only after I raise the question.  I could go to my grave without wondering whether or not I actually learned anything from living. 

The first serious response to this question would probably be to quote someone else.  Some great thinker, like Socrates.  Or some immortal teacher like Jesus Christ.  I'd say I learned how these historic figures were right.  I learned to understand their words.  Maybe I'd confidently quote them: "I learned to examine my life."  Or "I learned that we should love our enemies."

Wrong!  The question is not what others have learned.  Or others have taught.  It's what I have learned.  In my own words.  What I personally have discovered.  And taught myself.

Wisdom is non-transferable.  Wisdom only comes to persons through their own experience.  They need to authenticate their own life.  Not the life of someone else, no matter how exalted they are.

I began to look more closely at the received wisdom of the ages.  And how it's only the first steps on a tall ladder.  All of that treasured knowledge.  I learned to search beyond what others have perceived.  And to perceive my own truths.

It's hard to live, but it's also hard to die.  It's something that I've noticed over the years.  I see things that a young person fails to see.  It takes time to be able to gather enough examples, and finally draw some conclusions.  

When you switch on a light suddenly in the middle of the night you might find a cockroach looking terrified, and racing for the cover of darkness.  It doesn't want to be stepped on and smashed flat.  It wants to live as much as a young, healthy, human being wants the same thing. 

Life wants more life.  Always.  Freud writes about a death instinct, but no one has ever been able to detect its presence.  To want to die means a lack of insight, a failure to grasp the possibilities.  

But there's a segment of the population that seems to dwell in a state of suspended animation.  Just hanging between things, dragged along, floating in a void, very uncertain.  They refuse to live, and they refuse to die.  Both realities are unacceptable.  They're lost.

I know men and women like that.  The nonliving undead.

If you're a reader, I mean if you constantly, for years, read books, then you might be inclined to write one.  You can always write your autobiography.  If you don't, then no one will.  No one can.  They may write about you as if they saw you at a distance, in profile, walking along.  That's as close as anyone can get to another person.  In a manner of speaking.  

They aren't you.  They can't see inside you.  Nor can they see you as you see outside yourself.  

You remain a mystery to the most intelligent biographer.  Naturally.  You're a mystery to yourself.  It only makes sense.  

I love books.  A love that grows stronger with time.  Not like romantic love.  Even very passionately devouring love.  That type cools off.  Even grows ice cold.  But not ardor for a good book.  That will burn with a long, steady, bright, glow.  

I bought these six volumes recently.  Six bucks!  So many hours of pleasure.  How I pity anyone who isn't a bibliomaniac.  How can they possibly enjoy their life?  It doesn't seem possible.  

A charming look at a mother and daughter.  Judith and Dante.  

What else?

I am no Sherlock Holmes.  I have no observational powers.  I barely notice anything.  It's all a muddy blur, like a wet photograph.  The world races by.  Or maybe it's me who is racing.  What do I see clearly?  Nothing really.

People appear, live furiously, make a stir, move forward, and cause me to marvel at their success.  They're in the news.  On television.  Online.  Everywhere at once.  I picture them soon crowned in glory.  You have to be impressed.  

Then I notice that they've suddenly died.  And the entire circus comes to a halt.  They completely vanish!  I have to dig around for a small article about them.  Maybe someone will write a book?  And tell their story?  But does anyone care?   

No.  I'm glad they no longer clutter up my brain.  They were less than they appeared.  Not surprised, even if I didn't see it coming.

Sometimes I think every art style that's any good might be called "exhaustionism."  Because the final look, the completed work, always intensely fatigues the creator.  They stop when they're too swacked to go any further.  

Not that it's what they had in mind when they enthusiastically started.  In fact, far from it.  They've been led down a strangely uncommon road.  They tell themselves that they're not lost, but they are.  

Simply kidding themselves.  Whistling in the dark.  Heartfelt prayers.  Cries for help.  Hopelessness.  

Then a ray of light breaks through the blackened clouds.  Pointing the way.  On they go . . .

Sometimes you have to go crazy to become what you want to be.  This current piece just about drove me over the edge.  Then, out of desperation, I tried something new.  I ripped off some of the screwed down bits and I saw what was underneath.

What!  Hey, not bad . . . not bad at all.  

The rectangular sections were a revelation.  They turned the whole painting on its ears.  

I'll pry off a few more pieces, and work a little longer.  Whatever the case, the mixed-media steel painting suddenly feels like a step forward.  

And it's my feet, my route, my walk, my direction.  This is the difference between failure and success as a contemporary artist.  The more personal, the better.

I may have posted this before, but it can't hurt to see it again.  The studio recently.  Dante took the pic.  I really need to photograph some scenes outside my building.  I hardly bother leaving it these days.  I'd never leave it if I had someone drop off food and art supplies.  

A sign of old age, and disenchantment with the world.  

Eventually you realize it has nothing out there to offer.  I haven't seen it all, but I've seen enough to last me.  It's filled my belly and brain.  Goodbye, crazy world!  It's time to fill my soul.  

Several famous types, as they approach the end, choose this way to live.  John Lennon, Picasso, Proust, Georgia O'Keefe, Churchill, Greta Garbo, etc.  They barricade themselves inside four walls, and breathe.  

This path may be hard for others to accept, but some have found their peace and happiness.  They achieved self-companionship.  It comes with the richest possible inner life.  They need nothing but the chance to dream.  To remember and smile.

A small bronze I made last year.  I just wrote about it, but accidentally deleted several carefully composed paragraphs.  This happens now and then.  I curse, quickly recover, and start over.  

I don't know what to say about such things.  On the one hand I have no one to blame except my lack of skill.  On the other, it's good that I have the drive to keep working, and move forward without delay.  Also, that I never bother to repeat myself.  I simply write something else.  It makes me happy to imagine that I'm sitting on an ocean of possibilities.  I never run out of ideas.  Never.  I must be hooked up to something much bigger than this puny brain.  

I'm re-reading Freud's "Civilization and Its Discontents."  A smart book, although I can spot major flaws.  It has to do with his theory of the super-ego.  It's too one-sided.  I should write my own interpretations.  Maybe I will.  Explain what I mean, that is. 

Dante's pic of her best friend, Stephanie, trying on her new bikini.

As I lay in bed in the morning, right before getting up and making my breakfast, I often have new ideas for the day.  Insights, intuitions, concepts - whatever you want to call them.

This struck me a few moments ago:

The past isn't so much a matter of time, but rather of values.  Our dreams turn the present into the past.  More than days, years, or decades.  When a good situation goes bad, then it immediately changes from present to past.  

Or when the attractive is suddenly viewed as ugly, that will automatically turn now into then, or here into there.  This can happen outside every length of clock time.  It can be a matter of seconds, or fifty years.  

You might feel nostalgia for your old hometown, but if you revisit the place, and see a once beautiful garden overrun with weeds, the memory is altered forever.  The beloved image is replaced by a darker version.  Living becomes dying, and the past really is past.

When you no longer feel like having sex with someone you are instantly plunged into the past.  Day becomes night, with a thud.

The essence of time isn't measurement of motion, but rather the significance of this motion.  

A pic of Dante's living room in Los Angeles.  She lives in her Craftsman home from 1908 in Boyle Heights.  Her mother is an architect/interior designer.  My daughter gets her taste from Judith, with a touch of me thrown in.  

Everything in the photo was not expensive.  You'd probably be surprised at the prices.  We are, I suspect, anti-luxury.  And pro-simplicity.  We love thrift stores.  Bargain hunting.  

Her house could be just about anywhere.  USA, or another country.  North or South.  The old and the new intelligently combined.  I'm not sure what to call it.  Although I've seen a few places scattered here and there with a similar look.  

The best style has no definition, or label.   A personal, consciously chosen touch, all throughout.  

When we arrived in LA over thirty years ago we faced the familiar challenges of seeking our fame and fortune.  The story of small town youth exposed to big city life.  This was a major theme in the literature of 19th century Europe.  Specifically French and English authors, like Balzac and Dickens.  Raw youth coming to dazzling London or Paris.  

The concept wasn't as artistically popular in the last century, but it did appear in films, such as Midnight Cowboy, Barry Lindon, or Pretty Woman.    

The situation still exists.  We once made short movies along those lines.  Yesterday Dante showed her son, a film-maker just starting out, "L. A. Ramble", where I provide a voiceover as my brother Matt took brief shots of the immense city as we drove through it.  

Apparently Amedeo liked watching our vintage efforts.  It's available on YouTube.  

A photo of Dante, soon after arriving in LA.  She started off as a young actress.  And even had success, but after a few years decided that it wasn't worth the trouble.  Too many days without anything important happening.  A small role or two: Forrest Gump, Showgirls . . . Then dry spells.  Why spin your wheels?  Try something else.  Life is filled with opportunities.  Thousands of available paths.  Keep adjusting.  

Anyway.  She's now a furniture designer, visual artist, and mother of a sixteen-year old son who's making his own films.  Even acting in them, writing the script, and composing the music.

Maybe to become a Hollywood star takes several generations.  Is that the key?  Grandfather Patrick paints, sculpts, and writes, daughters Dante and Hannah, design, paint and write, and grandson Amedeo is busy with his films.  

A tree isn't created overnight.  

LA changes, and we change with it.

I can't read the news without seeing articles about Israel.  Such a small, isolated, very significant country.  Not as many people as Los Angeles county.  But it fills the headlines, and has done so for almost my entire lifetime.  

And my beautiful stepdaughter Alexis lives there.  (It's her, on the right, in today's picture.) I looked at the map of the Golan Heights and tried to find her town, which has switched a few times.  Once it was Tiberias, oddly named after a controversial Roman emperor.  Today it's somewhere else.  She sends me photos of the border, armed to the teeth.  And writes about hurrying to a shelter during a rocket attack.  

Just finished reading a fine contemporary novel: The Reader, written by a German.  Once again, the Holocaust figures prominently in the book.  It truly is the biggest historical event of my days on this earth.  That and a two other things: LSD and the atomic bomb. 

Somehow they're all connected. 

What should I do about this personal realization?  

I don't exactly know.  But I keep making art.  And learning.  Always learning . . . 

My latest.  A chopped up and repurposed used oil drum.  You could call it a painting, a collage, or combine wall sculpture.  Framed and hung it'll look good as far as I know.  I'm rather pleased with it.  Especially considering how ridiculous I felt last Monday as I bought the rusty barrel, stacked at a large industrial business in the City of Commerce.  

The transformation is better than I could have imagined.  And there sure are a lot of empty drums piled up under the California sun.  I think the guy at the company would be puzzled to see me return so soon.  

I like the colors.  I'll start using them again.  Tastefully.  Only a few at a time.  I no longer fear having them fade or chip off.  Why should that matter, essentially speaking?  It doesn't.  In fact sometimes it can improve the look.  Amazing!  What an idea.  But why not cooperate with the actions of time instead of always battling them?

Dante took this unposed shot yesterday.  Cutting up the last of a rusty oil drum.  It's a little dangerous using a brittle saw disc on the angle grinder.  It can fly apart and deliver a violent blow, nearly chopping off my finger a few weeks ago.  

I need to buy a better one made out of steel.  I'll do that after I go through the last of the composition types.  You can never let your mind drift around power tools.  

But I can't stop thinking of other things as I work.  For example: you can love, and be loved.  You can love, and not be loved.  Or you can not love, and but still be loved.  Finally, you might not love, and might not be loved.  

But in each case, for certain people, myself included, these interactions simply aren't enough.  No matter what form it takes, or degree of intensity.  

Love between humans can only be so gratifying, or so distressing.  

Going beyond all that, I must admit one great truth: I love creativity.  Nothing can be a substitute for the artistic life.  No amount of love can fill the void where art doesn't exist.  Happiness isn't possible without creative fulfillment.  Not for a passionate maniac like me.  

Here is a photo of Hannah standing somewhere in Malaysia, where she was last week.  It was part of her job, as a guidance counselor.  I think that would be her description.  

Our small family, of one older man (me), two women (Dante and Hannah), and a young man (Amedeo), have been in Los Angeles for over thirty years.  

We've each followed our individual paths, and the city hasn't let us down.  I've flourished (more or less) as a full-time artist.  I couldn't have done it anywhere but here.  Definitely not in a smaller setting.  A giraffe can't live on a backyard patio.  

I'm working on my newest painting.  A few days ago I bought from a business in East LA, a rusty old 55 gallon oil drum, cut it up, and am currently turning it into an interesting mixed-media art piece.  I'll post a few photos this weekend.

I made this piece a number of times.  It doesn't fit into my usual style.  John Wayne is regarded as a right-wing hero.  A massive guy originally from Iowa, with a girlish first name of "Marion."  

For some odd reason he reminds me of my own father, who was the same size, and just as imposing.  A bit scary, actually.  But minus the guns, which my dad hated.  We never had anything more than toy cap pistols in our house.  My dad would not have allowed it.  

The silkscreened image is almost photographic, which can be a problem.  But effective, in its way.

The Duke works well as a father-figure.  A son will be very different from the father.  However there are many points of identity.  It's a relative universe we inhabit.  I no doubt have a conservative side.  Somewhere.  

Even if you don't enter the world, the world will enter you.  

This happens at the studio lately.  I stop typing and look to my left, and there sits a cat.  She just climbed through the door and sat down a few feet away, staring hard at me.  

It was dinnertime.  A way of reminding me that her kittens are hungry.  

But why me?  The alley cats make their home at my neighbor's somewhere.  Behind his dumpster?  Not that they respect human property lines.  

She never makes a sound.  Just ambles about, or sits like an ancient Egyptian sculpture. 

I researched some female names for her.  Thai names.  Formerly Siam.  I suppose I ought to bestow one on her.  

She seems a little glum.  A touch of post-partem depression?  Facing an uncertain destiny, without a male to pitch in.  Weighed down.  Overwhelmed.  Her youth passing.  But, as far as I can tell, she has her elegant looks.

With each day I see more life than I saw yesterday.  Looking back on myself it's like a highway of death and destruction, such as you see on the news, lined with blown up cars, trucks, and tanks smoldering in broken pieces.  My past self is a pathetic creature, bruised and bewildered.  

I'm happy that I've improved.  

Philosophy is different for different ages.  A person's thinking at thirty won't be the same at seventy.  If it is, then that person isn't a thinker.  Barely a person, in some sense.  More like ape than angel.  

A real human changes, more willingly than not.  Changing is living.  Like night and day, winter and summer. 

When you're young and naive, and you see something for the first time, it's original to you.  Because you're a virgin in life.  You're innocent when it comes to experiencing the billions of different choices out there.  As you mature you see that nothing is as unique as you once assumed it was.  

Original takes on a new meaning.  The more you see and understand, the less original everything becomes.  You trace the previous examples.  The prior instances.  Absolutes give way to relativities.  Comparisons keep springing up like weeds.  

Artists quit worrying about whether or not they are making something original.  The only original possibility left doesn't seem that attractive.   But the pressures of the moment don't end just because you wish they would. 

So?  Spit on your hands and keep working . . .

Here is a photo of my present work in a transitional phase.  

That phase has ended.  I've already painted over this moment.  It only exists in the photo.  The painting looks different today.  But some might say "it looked better before you changed it."  

In fact this is often the case.  It happens a lot with art that's in the process of being made.  

There's a huge amount of destruction in creation.   This is often painful to witness, or cause.  But it can't be avoided.  We see the creation, but the destruction is hidden, repressed, covered up to prevent any scandal from breaking out.  

Each creation feels like committing a crime, or sinning.  A drunken gamble.  Risky, mad, horrifying.  No wonder artists feel like outcasts.  Like people working at a slaughterhouse.  Untouchables.

A photo taken a few years ago of Dante.  It looks like a still from a contemporary film noir.  I think my earlier paintings helped resurrect this movie genre.  The term film noir is of course French and refers to a style of motion pictures produced in Hollywood.  Roughly from 1930 to 1955.  Its heyday was around the mid-1940s.  

I'm not a big fan of movies, for all that.  But I do see them, at least some of them, as art.  If anything I like a single shot, clipped from the action.  I can then make a painting out of it.  

Dark lighting, dark themes, dark behavior.   Basically, murder and sex.  Plus, money.  The stuff of human nature.  Human nature, that is, after the fall.  

I was surprised once when a friend of mine said that a woman had "betrayed" him.  It seemed to be   a little fanciful.  Melodramatic.  I had never heard anyone speak of such a thing actually happening.  I've never accused anyone of betraying me.  Nor have I been accused of betraying anyone.  As far as I know.  

Betrayal is a big deal in classic film noir.  

What is my particular path?  My own, even inimitably personal, way of living.  I'm not sure.  Maybe that's a real answer.  Because it's forever unfolding, and still hard to see in its entirety.  Like a complicated puzzle partly finished. 

This might help.  A photo of something I was working on, taken a few minutes ago, when the iron is hot.   

Logically speaking, a few pieces of steel being welded together.  Analogically speaking, it's something else, something more.   

Not much at this point.  But all beginnings look weak.  

It could be a love story.  Between some common bits of little value.  Two losers coming together to create a winner.  Scraps of nothingness joined for a potentially long, and perhaps worthy, existence.  

Junk turned into art.  Another small aspect of daily life.  

The two pieces then connect with other pieces, forming a community, a network of similar types.   

My artist brother is a painter, musician, and photographer.  When we made films together he was always puzzled at my quick shots of overlooked details.  To me they helped.  I wouldn't say they were fundamental to the overall quality of the art.  But they added a distinguishing touch.  It's what I like to bring to the table, if if I don't do it every time.  It's what I notice, and remember.  Like the backgrounds in a Renaissace painting.  In fact I wish I captured more peculiar details, in whatever I make.  Individualization counts.

What does it take to give rise to a creative power?  How many generations?  Five, fifty, five hundred?  No one has the answer to this question.  No one knows the formula.  No one can perceive the developments over time.  Will my grandson become the final genetic achievement of our bloodline?  It would be very interesting if he did.

Darwin liked to quote an ancient remark: nature does nothing by leaps.  It's patient.  Even slow, but steady.  You can see this truth in action during your short lifetime.  

I almost forgot.  We experienced another earthquake.  I'm used to them.  They no longer have me wondering.  I knew what was happening immediately.  Years ago, as a new Angeleno, I'd say to myself "What in the hell!  A truck must have smashed into the building."  

I'd imagine that my front wall would have large hole in it.  I'd go outside on Whittier, and look for the accident scene.  But I'd see nothing out of the ordinary.  Everything was the same.  

Then I'd realize it was an earthquake that rattled the studio to its foundations.  I'd check for cracks, fallen plaster, broken vases, pictures on the floor.  But, again, there was no damage visible.  Life in California.  

One of Dante's photos from her thick scrapbook.  She has four of them.  A pile of older pictures from various times and places.  This one was taken in London.  Hannah and she were there on a European trip.  They went to quite a few countries for such a short vacation. 

They look younger, I suppose.  But to me they will always be the same, in some sense.  I don't notice them changing.  

When someone you haven't seen for years says that you've "changed" that must not be a good sign.  On the other hand if they say you look the same, it means that they still are fond of you.

Newest piece.  To me it's the best so far.  This is one of the most merciful aspects of being a full time, life long, practising artist.  You always are pounding, tramping, peering, driving, ahead.  Even as you instantly express yourself in the moment.

Creativity means never ending progress.  Continual improvement.  The most anti-nostalgic possible way of living.  The past simply has no hold over you.  It's unable to shackle you to whatever was.  You don't look back.  You don't go back.  You have no back.  You face the future.  You move forward.

One of the earliest photos of my daughter, Dante, being held in the arms of her mother, Judith.  I must have taken the shot, or maybe not.  I don't quite remember.  

It was in Canada, Victoria, to be precise, and during the winter of 1973, when she was born.  Everyone commented on her eyes, the color of lapis lazuli.  Deep blue.  There was no debate on who the father was.  

Photos, at least during those days, prove that something real happened.  They're mnenonic devices, among other things.  They can transport you back to a period, even if you weren't present.  But more so, if you were.  Blending the years together, making the past present, and the present past.  Collapsing outspread time into the eternal now.  

I have a hard time thinking that a woman would love this novel.  I just finished re-reading it.  I must have first stumbled on it over fifty years ago.  I didn't understand it at the time.  I mean the words and ideas made sense, but I had no inkling that the book would in some way foretell my future.  

The narrator, Bardamu, seems to have expressed so much of my own inner life.  His way of looking at existence is like mine, even if I'm inclined to hide the fact.  All that he loathes, I loathe.  And the few things he loves, I, too, love.  

But at some point the whole business comes to a halt.  Celine journeys to the end of his night in this novel, and in next great one, but then he enters an even darker night, and it destroys his reputation forever.  

His fate isn't my fate.  My dawn is brighter and more lasting.  His tragedy is his own to bear.  And I'll take my destiny any day over his.  The poor guy.

I can never make up my mind.  What is stronger, words or images?  You can string together four or five words and the whole world changes.  But one photo, or one painting, a few organized patches of dark on light, just like printed words, can do the same.  There's a lot of power in these small touches.  Just like the awesome energy in a handful of plutonium.  Enough to alter everything, everywhere on earth.   

At one time, around twenty years ago, I figured people will always find room for a painting of a beautiful woman.  Someone will always want it.  And buy it.  Then I made and sold plenty of them.  Until I got tired of this idea, and realized it was time to make more personal, original things.  Which is what I'm doing today.

But making paintings of beautiful women is more than a mere finger exercise.  It does take a bit of skill.  Not much, but some.  Most people can't come close, actually.  Kind of strange.