CONTEMPORARY EXPLORER

  Kiosk man, kiosk man, what do you sell? There you are on center stage at the mall. Started with great hope. Each passerby a critic. Long hours spent hocking items, hoping for a few people to stop, look, buy.  Just a few words, like “nice items,” keep you going. Rarely a day when sales sizzle, spirits soar. You still believe. Long hours though, soon you get a chair, holding back despair. Hoping for those great rewards, the critics passing by…

  Sometimes you come upon random things that just seem to fit together. Different shapes, color and sizes, with no reason or pattern. Still they draw you in. Artists will tell you that “nature adores uniformity” and that like the forests of nature, harmony is found in the range of differences. Ones that play out in the world’s wind, rain and sun. The same can be said for people I think. Differences abound, but life can if allowed provide a canvas for harmony, a gathering if you will.

  Almost like an art piece it rested from the road. Never idle for long, wearing the long miles traveled proudly, it avoided the end of other trailers. Their numbers and markings all washed away, bay empty. "No portfolio, scraps, dead heads" they called them. To tractor rigs passing, this one still shouted out trailer 53101 ready. Still needed in commerce, that's all it ask...

  I was recently reminded of the importance of color in our lives. Allen Reamer, an art instructor, once told me you should always consider color first in your painting. This thought was echoed by Steve Martin of all people. Besides being a great actor and comedian, he is a noted art collector. Enough so that MOMA ask him to select two favorite paintings from their collection for display. He chose two by early century abstract artists Stanton McDonald Wright and Morgan Russell, both considered ones who were first to understood the importance of color in abstract paintings.  Martin used the term synchronism to describe their work, feeling it lent harmony to the human experience where color was so important. As important as music to movies and life experiences.  He's right, of course, mastering the mixes of color on canvas remains a constant challenge though. There is color theory, your sense of things, the subject, meaning, and nature itself to all consider. Not to mention how it is

“When old tech dies, it usually stays dead” - C. Platt. Or so it seems. Having acquired most of the Apple products available and traveled to what seems the end of the internet, I surprisingly found myself bored with it all. Even worse, I was actually considering purchasing a Chromebook just to have something different to play with. Tech had seemingly taken the brightness from my life. I needed an escape, a reason for getting out and doing something again. Somehow I longed for the old digital world. You know the one where you actually had to move dials to find results and sometimes even get a hard copy in the process. In sorting through this, somehow having a pocket transistor radio became an obsession, but finding one proved a challenge. Truly old things do go away. The young turk at Best Buy looked at me strangely when I asked if they had one. I knew from his look that I would never work there. So it was back to the wired pages of Walmart and Amazon.  There, under pocket radios, I fou

  You find them in off beat local places, ones that have been adorned inside with walls of graffiti, torn posters and other memorabilia. In slang language called “wall bombing.” It’s all about transporting you to a place of craziness, apart from where you are now, freeing you up to enjoy. There is so much that your mind fails to grasp it all, let alone make sense out of it. The message like “on air” standing apart from the other product tags and hand written comment. It’s all for fun of course, engaging you to like the place and come back, to drink another beer. Overtime though, the walls begin to loose their luster. As with all impermanent things, they fade and deteriorate. The wall still pulls at your mind. You think, what a “funky ” place and absorb past memories of being there. The word "funky” attributed to being abstract, unique, in the vibe. A closer reading of the meaning though is a sense of sadness, as in “I was in a funky mood.” Bombed walls take on a certain sadness w