Maybe seeing all my interesting artwork you were wondering, like that one guy with the long grey hair always did at the library, why am I not a successful professional artist?
Or as he put it "You should do something with your art!"
I know.
I really should.
Mostly what I do is make art, and then occasionally I dip into thinking that a lot more people should like it. But I haven't gotten a ton further than that.
Until now!
Check out my exciting upcoming shows!!!!
Sometimes words fail me.
So I do something else, and then I have a lot to say about it.
I have been working on a self portrait today. And after creating, drawing, and designing many layers, I found myself having a hard time just being finished. Perhaps this reflects my currently unsettled feelings? So I have ended up with many different versions of this same image. Do I show you one? Or do I show you many?
I managed to get it down to four. I've arranged them into something that looks a little like a progression:
Perhaps my recent obsession with pictures of Doris here has its roots in the truth that...
I am an alien.
I am now an alien in an alien land!!!!
Thus our bond.
No, I am not a visitor, not a tourist, nor even an expat.
Just an alien, far from home. So far from home I don't know where it is.
Well, so it has always been really. It's just that now it's at a whole other level. When understanding that someone just said the number "85" to me is a moment of actual pride, I think it is fair to say that whether or not I belong here is beside the point.
Maybe none of us belong here on the Earth, anywhere. Maybe we are all a mistake, but here we are and everyone must deal with it. Mostly everyone and everything else.
I apologise, I didn't want to get in too deep. I just wanted to show you some pictures of Doris up to stuff around town.
As promised, Doris the super intelligent alien has come for another visit. Like most advanced lifeforms she prefers to communicate in cartoon panels.
With the inadvertant discovery that humanity only has a year left in existence, beloved and founding member of clerkmanifesto, Doris the super intelligent alien, made a somewhat infrequent appearance here. And I was so glad to have her here that I started making more plans for her. But I wanted some more reliable images of her to work with.
That's what I've been working on today. But alas, sometimes the broader projects here make it hard to get to the regular timely daily post of clerkmanifesto!
Which is where "work in progress" comes into it.
Work in progress is so fun! It's like a taster!
Okay, maybe it's not as fun as a taster.
Actually, what is a taster?
Anyway, here are some images I am working on of Doris. Soon there will be more, and cartoons, and great revealings of the secrets of the universe!
Or I'll just move on and never mention it again. It's a wild ride here.
It can barely have been a week since I was here telling you about the best place we have been to in all of France; Saint Paul de Vence. But lately we are crazy with all the train hopping, and off we went again today.
And where did we go?
The most confusing town in all of France!
Today's historic village was the home of Picasso for many years! He loved it there! For awhile, I guess. Then he left.
Yes, you of course guessed it...
Vallauris.
Oh, you didn't guess Vallauris?
Are you sure?
Well, I think you guessed Vallauris so we can just agree to disagree.
And what, you wonder, makes Vallauris the most confusing town in all of France (or the most confusing town out of the maybe 35 we have been to here)?
It's hard to explain. It was beautiful and scuzzy. It was run down and extrememly well taken care of. It was a thriving old town full of interesting ceramic shops and yet vaguely abandoned. It was an expensive Cote d'Azur historic town rich with history and art where aimless men, singular and in groups, wandered about with nothing to do.
I have to organize my thoughts and get back to you on this, but I took roll after roll of pictures (figuratively) of Vallauris, all trying to work out how to show you just what was so peculiar, so we'll start there with these four images, unprocessed out of the camera, and get back to the subject later:
I don't know where this one came from. But I saw a bench in the old city today, in a tiny and sort of oddly magnificent park shoved a bit aside from all the tourists, and I knew that there was a pleasant little scene I could somehow put together for you. So I took some pictures, came home, waited, and....
Here it is:
Down the street from us is the Rue de France. This mostly pedestrianized street runs parallel to the ocean. It is one of the beating hearts of this city's tourism, filled with cafes and shops and people.
Oh the people, a great river of people!
But it's nice to sit in a cafe there and have drink and watch all the humans of all the world go by. Many of our favorite places are there.
Once, a couple months ago, more towards the Winter side of things, we were walking down by the Rue de France and saw smoke rising into the sky down the street, and beyond the line of our sight. Distant sirens started rising. And then we heard an explosion.
What was that?
Does one walk towards explosions, or away from them?
What if there is no screaming?
There was no screaming. The streets perked with interest, but remained mostly calm, just filling with the thick smell of burning toxins and the rise of sirens. It had been a long day. We walked the other way, towards home.
And though we mentioned it for awhile, and I thought of how little resources I had to figure out what had happened, it was soon enough covered over by life and time. Surely we were down on the Rue de France in a day or two again, and there are close to zero days we live here where we aren't at least briefly on or along that street. But nothing ever showed of the mysterious calamity, and there was nothing to bring it to our attention again.
And then yesterday we were coming home along that street. We saw a shop that my darling wife wanted to look at. As it was small inside I decided to stay outside. Maybe I would find a few things to take pictures of. When you look around in this city there are always a few good things to take pictures of.
So I looked around...
and took these:
Holy crap. These seagulls are amazing.
I don't think there is a better bird for watching flying. I mean, around here, there's not much else. Am I going to watch the pigeons fly?
Yes, I am going to watch the pigeons fly! They're a lot of fun too, darting, quick, and surprisingly graceful. And if I'm lucky enough to run into a flock of starlings? It is absolutely mesmerizing! But I haven't seen starlings around here in more than a month. And pigeons are a little scruffy. Beyond that, there's the occasional crow or songbird, and none of them here are much about aerial acrobatics.
But seagulls?
They are the size of bald eagles. But seagulls look like something stiff and light that you could pick up if you wanted. And to compare their flying abilities to any other bird would be absurd. It's not quite that they look like they're doing it for fun exactly. It's just that they're so good at it. There are so many of these loud scavenging desperate birds around, and they can be obnoxious and it can be easy to take them for granted... but... they are so fucking good at flying. And the more you watch them the more you understand how good they are, their sheer complete understanding. Their mastery touches on art. They are beyond pride. And though full of all the craven natures and practicalities of living creatures, sometimes even moreso than many other animals, seagulls nevertheless slip beyond everything when they fly. It's not practical, or joyous, or thrilling exactly. Too pure to contain anything other than flying, it's that they are so good they think nothing of it. They are so good it just devolves down to... magic.
I painted one. I enjoyed drawing the stones of our beaches here about as much as I enjoy walking on those stones.
Maybe for the subject of this missive the seagull should have been flying?
But I am a mere mortal. How could I do that justice?
