Cities I’ve loved….
Someone asked me which of the many cities you have lived in and loved, do you love the most? What a hard question!As i experience cities as people, and i love many people–my heart has a wide circumference!In terms of daily living, i would say Antwerp and Prague, but Jerusalem was so layered, it was […]
Don’s lose your marbles!
Here’s to going back and recovering my marbles in life! When I die, I want people to have to go on an adventure to find all my stuff all over the world. Including the marbles I left buried in Jerusalem. I’ve lived a bit like my famous cousin Johnny Appleseed (Chapman).I used to give marbles […]
Julio’s teachings….
My crazy Polish Argentinian art and life mentor Julio, whose house had two headed brooms on the wall and a tree growing up right through the middle. We used to go sit outside in this little labyrinth he had built, and considering how to see art in everything around us. He would teach it by […]
Lumps and all
Lumps and all… Did the lump just go away in his sleep?He had been measuring it the night before, and imagining the worst.His friend in the wheelchair had given him flowers yesterday, out of her kindness. Was she trying to tell him something?He wasn’t sure. But the lump had vanished in the night, and he […]
That day she said the word
SHE SAID THE WORD THAT DAY She only said the word, when with her closest friends. It meant she was safe, alive and somewhat happy. Today she said it, to a stranger. What that meant, she wasn’t sure. Perhaps, she was losing her sense of appropriateness, or was simply becoming more comfortably being herself. Yesterday, […]
towards a short story
The tattoo artist was out of her depths that day. He was more than she had seen.Having written the stories of at least five people on their bodies that day, with such great articulation, that each went away knowing themselves much more; she was now exhausted from seeing.She grew up in a protestant church which […]
The girl who needed the world to Pause (first draft)
THE GIRL WHO NEEDED THE WORLD TO PAUSEA long short story: She had come to that place. That place in life, when everything just needs to catch up with itself. When you just need to play your favorite song over and over on loop, to let all the memories get into one room. So much […]
Notes on art as a lens on history
Art as a way of reading history! Studying art today; which outside of religion is my favorite meditation:Love how ideas and art work in tandem!I wrote down in an old journal what one of my old art teachers told me about reading history through art:“Art movements like philosophies, overlap and lap or sometimes clash against […]
Parables require us to leap fully
More of parables and why I like them:The late great writer, chef and clergyman Robert Capon breaks down the parables of Jesus pretty well. And puts them in the rabbinic tradition of the second temple period. Helpful that. Parables were a commonly used method of pedagogue or way of teaching.One key is parables are not […]
Us
My wife is a poet and seamstress. I am a clown and therapist, occasional poet and performance artist. We were married in Prague, then moved to Belgium and then returned to where we met in Austin, Texas. We ran an art community called The Bloom House for many years, trying to integrate the arts and […]