Category Archives: Artist

24-Hale

Ann’s Room

Attend to your breathing – whether thru mouth or nose doesn’t matter. Force inhale, do not force exhale; relax, repeat.

Inhale can be deep or shallow, fast or slow, your choice. Deep & slow is spiritual. Fast & shallow is animalistic.

How long can you keep this up before losing focus?

16-Dent

Gaskin

Rodeo Bronco

The gaskin is the part of the horse between the stifle and the hock.

So, now you know.

Update April 16, 2023: Things are looking up because the Lidocaine Patch relieved my back muscle pain from the bicycle accident of April 3rd , 2023, enough to allow me to finally get a good night’s sleep.

And life is beautiful, because nature can be beautiful no matter the fearsome forces at play.

10-Trap

Boredom

Too Much Coffee Man

My favorite cure for boredom is sleep. It’s very easy to get to sleep when bored and very hard to get bored after a long rest.

My next favorite is coffee. I usually keep a pot plugged in while working on the machine.

If these don’t work it may mean deeper Quality problems are bothering you and distracting you from what’s before you. The boredom is a signal that you should turn your attention to these problems.

Zen and the Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) by Robert Pirsig

18-File

Bibliotheca

Reading Books by Roz Chast

Things form in my brain. They get bigger & bigger until I must write them down to free up some space in my head.

It’s the same way a chicken lays an egg. When people eat that egg, the chicken is probably thinking, Really? You like that? It just came out of my butt.

Mike Reiss in Springfield Confidential

12-Gift

Blueprint

Brother Francis produced the blueprint. “The highwayman was kind enough to leave this in my keeping, Holy Father. He – he mistook it for a copy of the illumination which I was bringing as a gift.

You did not correct his mistake?

Brother Francis blushed. “I’m ashamed to admit, Holy Father –

This, then, is the original relic you found in the crypt?

Yes –

The Pope’s smile became wry. “So, then – the bandit thought your work was the treasure itself? Ah – even a robber can have a keen eye for art, yes? Monsignor Aguerra told us of the beauty of your commemoration. What a pity that it was stolen.

It was nothing, Holy Father. I only regret that I wasted fifteen years.

Wasted? How ‘wasted’? If the robber had not been misled by the beauty of your commemoration, he might have taken this, might he not?

Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (1959)