Sunset, Friday, 4 December 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

So, what’s the written equivalent of doodles?

Cat’s eye, golden, through an opening in his carrying cage, yellow.

Cat thought balloon: I’m almost 18 and doing O.K. What could they say that would make any difference?

Man thought balloon: I don’t know ... veterinary marketing ...

Elton John Christmas song (the one they always play) on the waiting room radio.

Sorry to do that to you. (Meaning you, the reader.)

I’m supposed to be writing today about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Now there’s something: Elton John and KSM, together again for the first time.

Client flies 757s and 767s and although, thank God, he’s not into ‘911 Truth’, he also doesn’t think al Qaeda remotely capable of what we assume they did.

Not a pleasant thought. Makes the prospect of a trial interesting indeed.

Vet waiting rooms make me edgy, much more than if it were just me in a doctor’s office.

Reading Jane Kramer in The New Yorker on preparing all kinds of Thanksgiving dinners all over the world. Very good so far, as you would expect from her, although – this may seem paradoxical – if she had to do a blog, perhaps she’d become a little less focused on the first-person singular aspect of things. (Revised from: “ ... if she had to do a blog, I think she’d become ... ”)

Blogging, one can become painfully aware of one’s self-orientation. Can’t always tell, of course, how one is doing with this on a given day.

Client’s book is here. Again, keep in mind, despite all the wacky stuff Amazon puts on the same product page (“Buy this book together with I Was the Shooter on the Grassy Knoll! by Oswald Rabbit”), the author is not in sympathy with the sad indeterminate notions of so-called ‘911 Truth’.

Got to clean brushes as soon as I get home.

Sunset tonight: supposed to get cloudy, then rain, then snow. After so many hundreds of sunsets, I have an idea what that might look like. It’s odd to think, first, I can never know what my subject will really be, and then what the painting will be, in response.

A thought: Just make it count.

The vet comes in: Dr. Richard Freedman. A prince, an archduke – no, better, a knight among vets. Makes me happy we made the trip. He loves animals. In his hands, veterinary marketing is redeemed.

On the way home, on the seat beside me, through an opening in his yellow carrying cage, a cat’s eye, golden.

Sunset, Thursday, 3 December 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Sunset seemed to be happening on schedule, but I had one more woodcutting chore. Lucky for me, because things really started happening during the twilight portion of the program.

Yesterday and today tempted me with different ways to say early December feels a little out of focus. Shepherding Flint yesterday on a five-mile-or-so off-leash ‘walk’ (his part is more like a run, and longer), in the rain, I had foolishly just believed the forecast and wasn’t dressed for 39°, and the low dark clouds (and my numb hands and feet) belonged to midwinter. 

This afternoon I had the impression of the sky as a big watery blue bog of early spring.

But then the days aren’t out of focus except in these conceits. Early December shows us exactly what it is, and these are the days – the days we’re dealt.

Sunset, Tuesday, 1 December 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Today is my friend Sarah Bruce’s birthday. Not sure about her age, except it’s somewhere under 40. Anyway, usually – in fact, always – Sarah, who controls the weather on her birthday because she’s some form of witch, contrives to deprive me of any sort of skyscape on December 1st except for a clear cold blue sky and that’s it, no clouds, no other color, thanks very much.

I guess this year she relented. I want to thank her for the sky.

Sarah moved north from here to be closer to Salem, I guess. If this sort of thing interests you, you might check out her blog, I Nap, Therefore I Am a Witch.

Around a week ago I posted a little item about the cover of The New Yorker and its image of a pumpkin pie – and a ‘pumpkin cloud’ – by Wayne Thiebaud and I made a wild guess that the original painting might run you $75,000. Now, thanks to a link in the blog emdashes, I’ve seen some of the actual prices for which Thiebauds have sold recently. Did I say last week that $75,000 was probably way, way off, on the conservative side? Well, out of some 30 Thiebaud paintings at what seems to be a sort of meta–auction site, I did manage to find one that had gone dirt cheap for $62,000 – and all the rest, forget about it.

In fact, speaking of pumpkin, a Wayne Thiebaud of slices of the pie sold for $1,900,000.

If you’d like to get in on the pop art action, but didn’t start saving 30 years ago, you can buy a Mike Fitts now and thank me later.

Sunset, Monday, 30 November 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Rain at sunset. The month of November can be seen in a calendar array here.

Last night I was reacquainted, via radio, with Tommy James and the Shondells’ “Sweet Cherry Wine,” which came out in 1969, a top 10 hit wedged between two of their monsters, “Crimson and Clover” (#1) and “Crystal Blue Persuasion” (#2). 

As great as his records were, I don’t think of Tommy James as the kind of artist who was ever ahead of his time or who would lead his audience in a new direction, except maybe in the area of guitar and vocal effects. Despite the trippy lyrics, in terms of depth or heft, he was closer to, say, Lou Christie than Leonard Cohen. But to me this just makes some of the things he said in his songs that much more interesting – because he wasn’t saying anything amazing or surprising, he was saying what ‘everybody’ (of a certain generation) ‘knew’ to be the case. And it struck me as a little sad to think how mistaken Tommy, and we, may have been.

About a specific issue like Vietnam he was completely right:

Oh yeah, yesterday my friends were marching out to war
Oh yeah, listen now we ain’t a-marching anymore
No we ain’t gonna fight, only God has the right
To decide who’s to live and die

About the underlying situation, I realize of course it’s hardly news to say that people in the Sixties were ... uh ... a tad overoptimistic.

Watch the mountain turn to dust and blow away
Oh Lord, you know there’s got to be a better way
And the old masquerade is a no-soul parade
Marchin’ through the ruins of time

(Having listened again to the song after going to five different lyrics sites, it really is ‘blow’ away, not ‘glow’ away as every site has it; I assumed it was a ‘no-show’ parade, but the sites are all correct with ‘no-soul’.)

In any event, it may not be just children of the Sixties – I think Americans in general are naive about power, and tend to assume, for example, that when a new party gains the presidency, the locus of power changes as well. But to touch only briefly on a huge subject, the international network that supported BCCI and Iran-Contra in the 1980s didn’t decide to fold up and go bye-bye just because Bill Clinton was in the White House. Add neoconservatives and the old masquerade’s new again.

I love the song, but the ruins of time may be holding up awfully well.

Sunset, Sunday, 29 November 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

The New York Times today has a story and slide show on a project of the photographer Adam Stoltman. Stoltman has been photographing the same view from his Chelsea apartment window almost every day for three years – basically, his vantage point has a clear shot at the Empire State Building, which he’s recorded in all lights and all kinds of weather. Stoltman says the view has “almost an infinite capacity for visual wonder.”

From the perspective of my somewhat similar undertaking, I would suggest that the wonder literally is infinite, and much more than visual.

Sunset, Saturday, 28 November 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Clear, with color and light draining, air turning chilly. If we manage to get a frost tonight, I’m pretty sure it will be only the second of the year in this locale, which seems remarkable. Maybe after all this time, with a little more frost, and if the deer, the bears and the wind have left me any, I can be persuaded to try, again, one of our persimmons – the native Virginia kind.