Are the paths we are intended to take in our lives clearly defined if we know where to look? Are there stale crumbs along the branch in the path we are to follow-- even years later when we finally know to look for them, or have the vermin come to nibble them all away? Perhaps only their repugnant droppings are left in the crumbs stead to drive us even further from our intended paths.

Sometimes, I mean most of the time, I feel as if I'm so disjointed from the life I live. A stranger in a hostile land that doesn't overtly swallow you. Instead it leaches the life out of you sucking the marrow of your bones with some demonic looking scolex. It feeds as much on your misery as on you.

Painting is my umbilicus, but an umbilicus is meant for the unborn and the strain on the chord to nourish this adult is strained. Sometimes I wish others in my family hadn't removed themselves from our lives-- for purely selfish reasons on my part mind you. You see, I can't put my family through that, again, knowing so very personally how deep that particular hurt is.

Fear has ruled my life. I didn't major in fine arts because adults in my life inevitably inquired, �Thats nice, but how will you support yourself?�

I didn't major in culinary arts because I was afraid of being so very far away from home.

I didn't pick any one of a myriad of other fields of high interest to me because i was afraid of the high level mathematics the course of study would require.

I didn't pick education as a last resort, it's my bit of service. My peace corp. But I'm tired of this life lived for others. So here I am. A teacher. I'm even generally regarded as a very good teacher. Not a great teacher, but still, as I said, a very good one. I teach students, who in general, have little to no interest in their education. Of course there are exceptions. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to teach in Africa, where it's my perception, children place little before their learning. Would I be an amazing teacher if i was surrounded by those who are truly starving for every scrap of knowledge? Who love you not because your a nice, or fun, or kooky teacher but because you have nourished them. You have fed them as no other can. Would I love teaching then? Would it be my passion? I don't know. But I'm afraid of picking up and leaving. I'm afraid members of my family won't be here when I return, that I won't be able to be there with them at the end. I don't ever want to be absent from the passing of a loved one again, if I can help it.

Fuck I need some full spectrum light. I don't know if this is the winter blues or not but I wish it would fucking piss off.

I've always loved the figure, and I'm so loving making these figurative pieces but there is this anxiety ridden portion of me residing deep in the very essence of me that is having a full blown, hyperventilating, panic attack that I'm not painting todays view of the cosmos through my inner window.

I think painting balances my soul. But for this miracle working balm to have full effect I have to commence with the brushes to the exclusion of nearly all other pursuits.

I used to say if I won a HUGE lottery I'd have my urban vegetable farm and orchard. It would be a oasis in the inner workings of a city. There I'd teach people how to supplement their diets with the bounties of the Earth in what ever space they have available. Now I know thats not what I would do at all.... I'd be a a developer. I might even be a loon looking to make his utopia. It would be a community that would revolve around the arts and sciences. A burrow to launch the birth of the New Renaissance. I'd offer full living and working endowments to painters, sculptors, performance artists, playwrights, cinematographers, physicists, theologians, chemists, nanoengineers. We would have communal meals and our dialogues would feed our individual pursuits. The magical alchemy of these scientists and artists would light the way for this new millennium.

I placed a piece of obsidian in my pocket today. It's a perfect little stone perhaps the size, a bit smaller even, of a peach pit. It's surface is pitted from eon's of-- sandblasting? It's surface is softly roughed, and feels comforting to the touch. There are stones around my house. They occupy no special shelf. Their here and there laying about in a way that might lead people to think they are meant to be swept up with the next dustpan of detritus but they are precious to me. O'Keeffe had her stones too. The shape of a stone can sometimes be the supreme embodiment of sensuality. A sort of sensuality that isn't sexual. Is there a word for that?