The Portal

Sure, you can spend a lifetime in a ‘village’ and live an honorable life.

But, if you feel the wanderlust, the impulse to travel beyond, then the die has been cast. The enigma of a walkabout is that the destination remains a mystery until you get there—which also describes how my art comes into existence.

Have you felt the calling? What did you do about it? If the feeling was pure, untainted my laziness or the other deadly sins, then it will lead you to your dharma, you purpose in life. And what a reward you will reap.

Note: The Portal was featured on the popular Coast to Coast AM syndicated radio show. They also published it on their facebook page. You can see a larger image of the painting there, too.

Coast to Coast AM

Stealth

I watched a documentary the other evening featuring a team from the West who went deep into the uncharted New Guinea jungle. They were in search of a remote mountain Stone Age people who were untouched by modern times.

Trekking through the lush unmapped jungle was grueling and dangerous—from headhunters to poisonous snakes. When the team reached their destination, the tribesmen were not pleased to see them. Eventually, although there was an agreement to have a peaceful interchange, the air was rife with tension.

The tribe lived in a seemingly unbearable and inhospitable environment: stifling humidity, pestering flies, mosquitos, dangerous animals, diseases, and so on. They did live in houses built some 60 feet above ground; apparently, flies and mosquitoes did not often soar that high. These tribal people mostly segregated men and women, and they did not see a correlation between sex and children.

Finding food was the tribe’s main activity; the villagers ate most anything. If you were offered one of their ‘tasty’ delicacies like skewered rat, you accepted if you wanted to keep your head.

There were birds on the menu. No big game in this jungle, and no invention of the wheel either, which would be of no use in the nearly impenetrable harsh thicket.

Why were these Stone Age people living in this hostile environment in the first place? Yes, humanity does have a knack for adapting, but why adapt to such a dangerous way of life? Did ancestors from the remote past think that this was a good place to settle?

Except for some sort of payback in raiding another village and headhunting, it didn’t seem that any of the tribe’s people ventured out beyond their jungle turf to explore the world beyond. These folk, born and mind controlled from birth, accepted reality, and its seeming limitations as it was.

Are we modern humans any different? We are born to believe that we are a member of a country, a region, a clan, a belief system, a religion, a philosophy, name your dogma. How many question this cultural conceit? How many do anything about it?

The true artist breaks down the mindless artifices of civilization, and must pay the price for doing so.

Post Pop

More observations on the road:

Yesterday, I was in the left hand turn lane waiting for a long red light to give the green arrow for the turn. There, on the road divider to my left was a woman bundled in a big coat with a dog at her side, and a hand-scrawled sign that read: I’m traveling on a prayer. Of course, she was panhandling. There was a long line of cars behind and in front of me. It was a cold, windy day in Santa Fe.

I don’t often make such handouts because the panhandler isn’t offering something in exchange. But, I’m not stuck in my own dogma, either. For example, some time ago a young couple had parked themselves in front of a large discount store. Instead of begging, they were selling tacos stuffed with bacon. I’m not a bacon eater. Still, this ragged couple needed some help. I gave them $5 bucks, and said, please keep the tacos.

The lady with the dog stood on the windy road divider waiting. No one was offering alms. So, I waved her over, and gave her a buck, saying this is for your doggie. She blessed me and went back to the road divider. Then, suddenly, as if orchestrated on cue—one, two, three, four, and then five car windows in front of me opened in a cascade of generosity, waving paper money for her, which she promptly retrieved, blessing those folks too, I’m sure.

Finally, the green light arrow came on for that left turn. I drove passed the lady and her dog, we waved, and I was off.

Tron Poster, 1982

The new Tron Legacy film has recently been released.

I wrote about the original Tron movie in An Artist Empowered. Here is the excerpt:

There was another film that explored reality and truth nearly twenty years before The Matrix (1999) delved into the same metaphysical territory. In the 1982 movie, Tron, a young computer programmer gets sucked into the virtual world of a computer where he must fight for his life playing life-or-death video games run by the evil Master Control Program (MCP).

With the aid of a good warrior program named Tron, the programmer must put a stop to the MCP and set things right in the computer world before returning to his own reality.

The programmer meets many different programs (who have human form) inside the computer; these programs are looking to live and work within a free system without the tyranny of the MCP.

The programs in the computer machine are called programs; of course, this is a metaphor for people who are programmed to behave in a certain way. Tron presents us with another intriguing concept: the different programs that inhabit this virtual reality have a mythology about the users. Do they exist? The programs believe they do. Users, like the programmer, are the gods who created them.

Of course, the MCP sees the users as a threat to its ultimate authority, so it is eager to have the programs renounce the users, which it deems a superstitious and hysterical belief.

It is easier to see the machinery and values of another culture than it is to evaluate your own society where you can’t see what is going on because of acculturation, assimilation, and an ethnocentric bias—unless, of course, you can break free from social conditioning—the MCP—and see reality from the outside in, or, in the case of Tron, from the inside out.

Mr. Fox by Erwin A. Thompson

This darling fox (a genuine slice of Americana) whittled by ninety-something Erwin A. Thompson arrived in my mailbox the other day, a gift thoughtfully arranged by his daughter, Janet Riehl—the karma burner behind Riel Life: Village Wisdom for the 21st Century. 

I had told Janet that Erwin’s whittles of animals reminded me of native american fetishes—charms with magical powers.

Janet and her father work together on projects, including a major 4-disc boxed CD set called Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry & Music.

If you’re up for a poignant trek into the heartland, then you can find out more about remarkable Erwin, how he came to whittle his little treasures, and about gratitude. Click on this link and learn.