Welcome to Xanadu. The Charles Foster Kane version.

Finally have hi-speed Internet. Thank you, Comcast. 
The moving van arrived. I'm speechless. I had finally gotten the house to a manageable place, PRIOR to the van arriving. It took them 5 hours to fully unload, counting at least an hour of locating missing items. My motorcycle is damaged. (Rearview mirror, tail light. Dude tried to fix it with a gob of Gorilla glue as though it were some punk ass dirt bike.) Everything else is still in boxes. The garage is filled with studio stuff in boxes. I saw my palette. It is still wrapped, and feels to be in one piece. All my paintings arrived safely, as did my Culver City baseball cap, plastic lids, a valentine's card and Johnny Cash fake tattoo. For whatever reason, those things were in the same box as My Chemex Coffee decanter. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I have gotten used to my Mr. Coffee brew.

I continue to be delighted, shocked, and simultaneously filled with apprehension. 
It seemed totally apropos that I would find Ruskin's Ethics of the Dust sitting in a bookshelf staring me squarely in the eye.
I did not realize having a diving board would prevent me from having homeowner's insurance, but apparently in the past 30 years, enough clumsy people have sued and spoiled it for the rest of us. I, for one, am thankful I have gators, double flips, and backflips on my childhood resume. I finally dosed myself in Cutters and persevered with a hacksaw. Victory.

I met an artist for coffee the other day and coincidentally another artist I have met here in town stopped in for coffee. It felt good to make some sort of contact with other artists here. So far, most of my conversations have been with repairmen. I’m tiring of my trips to Home Depo.

I thought I would try to go to Italy in 3 weeks for an art conversation as part of a project I'm involved in with some LA artists but the site sight (works either way) of the boxes is too much. I need to be out of boxes. I need to have order in my life so I can have a regular schedule again. I'm giving myself 2 weeks and then I will allow myself to feel like it's never going to end. 



My reality is rather harsh in the problems of abundance kind of way. I try and remember a few things:

I am grateful for what I have.

It's only stuff.

It's okay, everything is okay.

I am still a painter. Just because I have not painted anything of merit lately, I am still a painter.

Where's my documentary film crew?
eBay.