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…Richard and I have been very fortunate to have so much attention directed at our house and the work that has happened here.  This past week a blog entry about our house appeared in the LA Times…we feel blessed and honored to be able to create this folly.  The inspiration comes from every which way and most of all…the source that harnesses the intimacy that we feel with our dear friends and the critters that we get to live with….the dogs, cats, and burros.  What joy it is to communicate the gratitude that we feel.  My last entry dealt with a friend who passed on…may his being be free of suffering…I learned a lot from him and it was only this past week that I have been able to know that…thank you David Wojnarowicz, I raise a toast to your creative Spirit…here is a link to the LA Times blog and one of the photos that Ann Summa from the Times took of us…That's Richard and I with Barbarella and Lolita…

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/home_blog/2009/07/home-tour-casa-las-ranas-is-the-happiest-house-in-san-miguel-de-allende.html

…his name was David Wojnarowicz and I knew him back in New York during the 1970's. I remember him as this gangly quiet guy (this was before nurds)…with a dark edgy insight and a way with sketching the absurd and the dangerous. At that time Art had to have a sense of Danger for me to turn my head. David was living in an apartment in downtown Brooklyn on Court Street. The railroad flat was in the name of Dennis Deforge…a gifted fellow poet from Ohio. David was living there with his boyfriend of the time…Michael Morais. Michael was a friend of mine from my poetry excursions.  Michael is a whole other story, but it is David I am remembering. I recognized David's somewhat bent intelligence and I felt a kindred longing in both of our hearts for the Truth…I feel now that this longing was cloaked in his flirtations with the grit and grime of the gruesome gangway streets of not so pretty New York City. Some would say that David had his hand on the pulse of that urban corpse and he was dragging it through a spent rainbow of grays and blacks. My particular vision and yearning for something a bit more ultimate and glorious, weathered my enthusiam for this fading and temporary street life and it was time for me to split.  Through the grace of Existence I washed ashore at the feet of Bhagwan, my teacher in India. The last time I saw David was after I returned from the East in 1980, I believe. I was walking down 7th Ave in my orange sannyasin clothes…Long hair and beard…I noticed David loping toward me in his way. I happened to have a book of Bhagwan's (The Book of the Secrets). I never  tried to bring people to meet my Teacher…that was not my thing… My yearning had led me to India and I wanted to share that with David and not lay a "ya gotta find god" trip on him like a Hari Krishna, so I gave him the book. I told him it was his to read or throw away…we parted ways at that point…David continued on his path…over the years , I would hear things about his rise in the New York Art Scene…by that time I was working as a gardener in Marin County…reconnecting with the Earth…A friend gave me one of David's books to read one year…I probably read two pages and put it aside. I could not go there…I felt his longing had been replaced by anger…Anger at his situation…David had AIDS…what a drag for him and yet I can relate to his anger with the Government and Society…in his situation, Silence did equal Death…however, there was a part of me that knew a young man many years ago who could have transformed that anger…maybe he did…but the public David did not…I wish that his soul has met renewal and that his longing is causing sparks somewhere deep in a new heartland beyond the darkness and the grit and that his inner eye has reconnected with the Big Picture and that he brought his sketch pad and journal…and now that being can tell us all anew…refreshed in the Longing.  Richard and I wish his soul the rest it longed for….

…that I am really sick of this Michael Jackson frenzy.  Popular Culture is basically a cartoon…so welcome to the cartoon!  Everyone was ready to cut off poor Jackson's testicles and now that he has died…the whole cartoon is marching on their knees to the Staple Center for his memorial service.  Enuf already…I guess I can't say, "Get a Life"…how about "change the channel"…as Aretha would say, rescue me from this onslaught….Am I just a fuddy duddy curmudgeon?  An aging hipster with an ax to grind cuz of LSD brain cell deficiency?  Probably all of the above…but can we add some more depth to this cartoon?  I promise to be nice tonight when I am at the auctioneer at this charity event…I will be nice to all the aging gringos like myself and not point the finger at the glaring out of balance expat cartoon culture…I'll just breath deep…
 

One million years ago, back in 1969, I was part owner of a Hippie Head Shop in Oklahoma City.
The store was the hippest thing between Chicago and Santa Fe, or at least, that was our impression.  (The world is a small place when viewed through untraveled rose colored glasses and a few tokes of old school Mexican weed….).  We lived amidst a red white and blue wasteland where the corn grew higher than a Mastedon's eye.  That summer I was arrested in front of the store by undercover cops for selling Zap Comic Books…they let me go for some mysterious reason.  Our store was the hub for the Hippie Scene that was crisscrossing Amerika at the time.  Because of our lofty status in the Hippie community,we had the job of meeting the different rock bands who came to OKC at the airport and taking them to their hotels.  One evening I picked up some of the members of Three Dog Night in my lil' MG with my St. Bernard in toe….where did they sit?  I don't remember:  It was the 60's…a photo of that event appeared in the local newspaper…so you are wondering why I called this particular entry "Three Blog Day"?  Well…this is the third entry today in my blog and this third lil' ditty was inspired by a photo that Lovee sent me of Suburban Hell…I just have to post this…I know the kids are having fun…but I am delighted that they are there and I am here….Gracias Dios!

…got any good ideas how to get him out of this messy pool of interior addiction to thinking and writing about himself in this blog…and for that matter…pretty much all the time…..he is sitting here at the desk waiting for a call from New York from a writer who is writing about a friend of his that he last saw 30 years ago…this friend has since died…Anado is still alive and breathing…but we need to help him change the subject matter in this blog to more pertinent and timely events…

…sometimes I think I may know the answer to that question…but not always.  Answering that would be to live it.  And I guess that is what I am trying to do…but the catch is:  Live it…but without hooks….so that leads me to remind myself that this entity  that this  "I" inhabits, is just passing through on this mobile travel log through all of this.  And it is no big deal 'cuz everyone else is doing it and will continue to do it..No Hooks Allowed!….
Today is special…for the longest time I have been contemplating a Body of Work (outdoor installation) known as the Stations of the Groove.  Well, today, I made a breakthrough and now I know in which direction to proceed…So I congratulate myself without hooks or dramatic pause…it feels good!