art party

saturday night we had an art party at our house, our guests were two beautiful women from city of angels, heidi and ilene, staying at "the inn of the five graces" and, our chef was the great johnny vee with his helper katie. johny vee looks like a big blond viking and has the personality of an impressario. vee has a fantastic new cook book out called "cooking with johnny vee," resplendent with his smiling face on the cover. the theme of the evening was cooking dinner with two new mexcio artists, that's me and julie. i wore my black high top converse and ilene showed up in white ones so our feet were getting along famously. hieidi and ilene love to eat and explore restuarants both here and in LA, ironically they live in the farmers markets area of LA where juile and i just stayed for our infamous downtown art show. here's our menu, homemade corn tortillas, chile con queso, chunky guacamole, grilled salsa roja, pico de gallo, mexican lime chicken scallopine, calabacitas, and chocolate peanut tacos for the finale. we started off with wine from new mexico and johnny regaled us with stories of our local chiles and then we all set to cooking dinner together. i was on the hand made tortillas, corn masas mixed with mexican oregano, water and mixed up like a thick mud, rolled into a large ball and then put in a press and flattened into a thick tortilla and then roasted over a hot plate on the flame. i also sauteed the chicken in a pan with oil, first dipped in flour and then egg batter, and then put back in the pan in a lime juice and vermouth sauce. the girls made the rest and and then we had dinner and more wine and told stories of La and new mexico until the desert taxi came and got the guests. the food was great, the new friends had fun,the art sparkeled on the walls and the evening was altogether wonderful fun. just another santa fe tale.

first day of the season

it's an old ritual that i've repeated literally hundreds of times. loading up the truck with tools and gear and getting ready for the work to come. i have to sort out what i've got and make a mental list of what i need to get, sheetrock blades, drill bits, tips for the screwguns, extension cords, throw out stuff, locate my tools bags, knock off the dust, retape the hammers, some things are missing in action, drills bit are broken, chisels need the edge put back on them, my leather saw case is awol, but most of the stuff is there. it's hard to believe but i've done this for almost thirty years, that's a long time even for a passion and i am marveling today that i can still get up for the work, but it's been the constant in my life for a long time. i know i can't do it as well as i used to or as fast and quick, but i can still work hard and i guess when you scratch me, i bleed contstruction red. jgk

stones for wendy

it was late afternoon, twenty miles off the coast of maine, I was on the far windward side of peaks island, the sea was the deepest blue. the atlantic ocean lay in front of me, and i could see one solitary island off the horizon and then nothing but that blue sea meeting sky and clouds. i was taking stones off the beach to rebuild the foundation of a farm house i was working on and each stone had to be hand picked and sized to meet the criteria my patron wendy had determined. wendy stood on the road above me, a short stout woman balancing on her cane and as i held a stone over my head, she would remark "that's a good one," and i'd throw it into the growing good pile, or " not that one", and back into the sea. the stones had to be longish, somewhat flat and well formed at the ends so they could be not only lay flat but butted up to each other in a friendly and firm fashion. technically we weren't supposed to be taking stones from the beach but wendy was a native islander and it had been a common traditon and long practice to build walls and foundations out of stone. knowing this i was making some haste, yet i was enjoying the whole process greatly, reveling in the selection process and the variety of seemingly endless colored stones, tumbled to perfection by the sea. i stood there letting the sun warm my face, maine was cool even in the summer, the sea breezes blowing away flys and knats, making the island a paradise. i spent the summer in the middle of the island, out in a forest of tall pines in a large clearing, tearing apart shipping pallets, giant timbers nailed together with spikes that i pulled out using a hammer and bar until i'd freed them from each other and they lay there in the clearing, long black thick chunks of wood i would later manufacture into new beams and support members for the house. i could take a steel spike out at the rate of one an hour or so, very rough sledding. the spikes were roughly 3/4 of an inch wide and driven a good six inches or more into the beam, and all i had was a hammer and a steel bar, the trick was to get another piece of wood next to the spike as leverage and then pry and bend using all my strength, pulling the spike out bit by bit, until it came loose, the forest surrounding me, the day cool and wonderful, seemed to cheer me on. when i finally had all the wood i wanted, i used a old oil drum and rolled the beams onto the back of my little yellow toyota truck and lashed them on and drove them back to the house, down twisting dirt roads and quaint farm houses through the middle of the island until i arrived in the back yard with my catch.jgk

great white hunter

I was up on kansas street, portreo hill district, the sunniest side of san francisco, although the dense fog hung over the street until noon and then the winds came, blowing sheet rock and plywood off the house i was building. i had a debris chute build out over the side walk to a dumpster and mark and i were shoveling bricks and old lumber down the chute when the winds come up in a gust and blew the chute and mark who was standing on it into a telephone pole and scared the hell out of me, thinking mark was going to get fried but he jumped out and pissed m e off running to his truck to see if it was ok, and left me holding onto the end of the chute. we got everything righted after some pulling and moaning. i used to eat lunch down the street at a place called the jackdaw which had a little outside attriam, lattice with plants growing overhead, it was warm there and no infernal wind. birds lived in the attriam and i noticed there were a lot of parrots and exotic looking types and they would drop down out of the thicket and peck away at bread crumbs on the tables when people left. this one forelorn looking parrot guy would end up on the table next to me and i eventually suckered him over my table with some choice crumbs and ate my lunch while he ate his, always with one eye on me. we had lunch together for a couple of weeks when it came to me, how was the little guy going to make it through the winter? he'd gotten out of his warm nice cage and wasn't going back. i took my laborer Angel with me one day, armed with a paper bag and my flat tin construction box, just the right size i'd determined to cover the bread basket. here was the plan, i'd coax my feathered friend down with the usual crumb entre, angel remains still, birdy climbs in the basket, eye on me, i give the nod to angel and he slides, this is important, slides the flat can over the basket trapping birdy boy. we praticed this a number of times on the job site in preparation, me holding my hand out making angel slide the metal box over and over until he got it right. the biggest problem wasn't going to be the bird but angel, he just didn't believe in it, i know he thought i was crazy, but i was going to catch my man. we went to lunch, had some pasta, i bought angel a beer, relax i said it's going to work fine, and sure enough birdy boy saw the proverbial bread basket, lighted on the table, crawled in and ate his crumbs, a quick nod from me to angel, the shiny metal can slid into place and i had my capture, quickly transfering mr. bird into the paper bag which i punched some holes in with my fork and then i sat back and drank my beer. this all created a big fuss in the cafe, the waiters went and got the owner who came back with a long line of waiters and demanded i let the bird go, citing animal cruelty, freedom for the bird, etc, etc. i said the bird was mine and i'd caught him, he was going to a pet store and if anyone touched my paper bag there would be serious, i mean serious consequences. i loaded my bird up in my jeep and we sped into the city where i found an exotic bird emporium and when i showed the owner my catch he said, yep and austrailian so and so, never make it though the winter and i'll find it a good home. the jackdaw never would let me eat lunch again. right to refuse service, to a ruffian trapper the likes of me. jgk

the holy wars part two

they weren't all bad. there were plenty of good times with the desperados. a lot of easy going back and forth fun on the job site, it's just that the contradictions in their characters was so great, but that was part of the interesting and compelling side of the whole business. a good number of these guys were smart and talented and some were brave, as well as greedy, and crooked. not out and out thieves, just changing the contract a little here and there so the client would never know, overcharging whenever possible. they had a certain cruel, ignorant streak to them. how can ignorance and intelligence and bravery live side by side? they can and do. once in SF while working on a three story victorian i slipped off the roof and got tangled up in the gutter and Dax shimmied down and held on to the edge of the roof and grapped me and said "let go" and i did and for a moment I was in his hands totally, swinging over the cement side walk and then he literally pressed me over his head and back onto the roof. "Don't do that again," he said. we built that whole victorian house together, and he made all the hard decisions, and I had to respect that. you could find up a bond pretty quickly with someone after they saved your life, but you could never forget you were working with a caged tiger. maybe it was just his nature, and i really believed Dax wanted to be good but it was not his nature, he'd told so many lies he didn't know what to believe anymore. anyway the lies were a whole lot safer, it's what he knew. Dax was one of those guys who had his bible in his truck and would spend time reading it while i was working, he worked at that bible pretty hard and i think it was probably the only thing that kept him from being worse than he was. one of those contradictions again, he'd be reading his bible, i'd get in the truck, and he'd say something about the nxxxxxs all being ugly and then the next morning our black cement finisher big earl and he would be in Dax's truck talking up a storm like old friends. Dax loved big earl, they'd worked together for twenty years by then if not longer. earl told me in the old days Dax used to come to work everyday with a case of brown derby beer under his arm and work and drink all day, Dax calling it his fuel. Dax was also cheap, he wore those wino sneakers to work until his toes stuck out and he had the same worn red flannel shirt to match his hair for years, and he never bought anyone donuts or coffee, a coke, nada. big earl used to say he was having an elvis attack and Dax would let him slip out and get himself a dozen jelly donuts while waiting for the next cement truck. " eyes goota elvis attaaack coming on." big earl was witty,lazy, smart and a genious with the finishing trowel, he could make cement look like glass. Dax had a little book where he wrote down everyone's hours and time, if you were fifteen minutes late he docked you half an hour, if you worked a half an hour over it was on you. this was a fairly common practice in consruction. it was called the cost of doing business, Dax's way or the highway. no complaining, period about anything. even i wasn' immmune to his method. i had to watch my hours like a hawk, a couple of hours here and there from ten guys each day is twenty hours say at 20 dollars per hour thats 200 hundred dollars a day times four, is eight hundred a week savings, compound that over a year that's ten grand or so, and on and on. once we were building a coffee and tea house in SF and Dax came upon the idea to pay everyone twice a month to keep the payroll down he said, payment schedule and all. he missed a week to me and owed me 900 hundred dollars and swore he'd paid me, but the little black book didn't lie, there it was, but he drove off and thought i'd forget about it. come friday i drove to his house in the country, he had this big stucco wall around his place, and i breached it with an extension ladder and saw him in his kitchen having diner so i put the ladder right up to the window and climbed in just as he was shoving some mashed potatoes in his mouth and announced "you owe me 900 hundred dollars," and he says" you're breaking and entering, i'm going to have to shoot you and went off to a room and came back out with a cowboy hat on and a holster and a pistol and took it out and pointed it at me. He looked ridiculous standing there in his socks with the inevitable hole in his toe and i started to laugh, "ok " i said, " what are you going to do shoot me in front of your family? go write me a check you idiot," and he did and then just as i was climbing out the window, he says, " see you on monday, don't be late." contradictions, you learn to live with them. jgk.

garcia's

garcia's was a faux mexican restuarant down at four corner's in San Ramon where all the construction workers in the area used to go after work on fridays to eat from the free mexican buffett and drink. the action would get very animated as the night progressed and the drinking could get serious. lots of shouting, loud voices, postering, an air of unrepressed aggression would prevade. these guys would all be in their construction clothes and dirty but i would have changed and worn something like black jeans, boots, silk shirt. one hot summer night, I think something always happens on that turn of a phrase, a hot summer night, i was drinking to much with the koan brothers, matty and luke. matty had a degree in english and always had a novel in his back pocket, was an old eagle scout and a pretty damn good carpenter, with a hump back from some childhood disease that had curved him over just enough to make him pissed off at the rest of the world. he was clearly the leader and elder of the two brothers, luke the younger we called him, a big rawboned guy with tattoes and a false tooth that he took out and laid on the table when he was talking. he had the habit of waving the tooth around when he got mad shifting it from hand to hand, he was a big blond good looking kid, and mean as his brother. you can't blame drinking on anyone's bad behavior, these guys were mean before they started, nastiness just boiling just beneath the surface, they didn't need a reason to be mad, anything would do. we used to call them the riverboat gamblers, they had an old long buick lowrider they'd drive up to the job site and then unload their tools from the cavernous trunk, once i looked in there when they were getting their gear and saw a shotgun under a tarp. luke was also the boyfriend of Dax's daughter, so that's how we all knew each other. this particular night we were well into six beers and some whiskey chasers, when matty said they were part indian, maybe as an excuse why they weren't holding their liquor well or just pure postering, and luke regaling us about him being some great hunter up in oregon i think or northern california and how he lay in a blind all day waiting for just one shot, " just one shot that's all i need," and then the conversation switched over to god and religion and ole luke asks me, "do you believe in god?" "Sure" i said. he leans over with an absolutely gleefull look in his eyes, and lays right into it, the floodgates open, evil pouring out all over the drinks and the stale chips and watery salsa, right at me, proclaiming , " there is no god,i don't" and showing me a knife in his boot, " i can do anything i want and party as hard as i want like there's no tommorrow," and then matty seconds that and they were clearly trying to mess with me, intimidate, scare me for no other reason than pure meaness. It was the bitch theory, through and through. luke maybe pissed off because i was his foreman and a better carpenter than he was , petty rivalry theory, and matty pissed off about his hump which really didn't look all that bad, more like he had rounded shoulders. we'd all had to much to drink by then and mistakenly i went out in the parking lot with them. Matty asked me if i want to wrestle and said he'd been a high school wrestling champ, threatening me, maybe i'd back off and evil would win out tonite, but i said sure and took off my silk shirt and we went at it right there in the lot and after some fast action i got him upside down and pinned his head against the asphalt and he gave up. luke was snorting and spitting, couldn't wait to get at me, said he was a champion football player, and to avenge his brothers honor, how about getting down in a three point stance and going at it, a last man standing type deal and i said sure. I got down in my stance and i could see he was going to try run right threw me, and then i saw the knife sticking out of his boot, so when matty yelled "Go", i side steeped and luke went head first into a car door and the hard collision didn't knock him out, he just laid there for awhile, and then they wanted to fight but i said "i'm leaving," and got in my truck to go and I saw lukes tooth on the asphalt laying there white under the street lights and said, " hey Luke, you lost your tooth'" and drove off. another pet theory of mine in those days was the desperadoes who've lost faith in humanity, in life, seek out those who haven't and try to screw with them, to make themselves feel better, twisted I know, but I've seen it so many times out there. jgk

lets' get it over with

let's just get it over with, i'll line up all the fighting, wrestling stories i can remember. ok . there was my final row with my old partner Dax. let's get another thing straight, just because you were partners with someone doesn't mean you liked them or they liked you. you had something in common, that much is given otherwise you wouldn't be working together, but friendship that was a different story. Dax and i both wanted to make money, as fast and quickly as possible. Dax, he was a piece of work as my friend C used to say. to start off his appearance was rough on the visage. lots of missing teeth, bad tattoes of dancing girls on his arms, now faded by the sun and a scraggy red beard, a constant cigarette hanging on his lip, balancing there like a circus acrobat, and a glass eye that ozzed some white substance. big earl used to say, " that damn eye, he going to lose it, going to fall out i know it, right into the cee ment," but it never did, it stayed firmly in place and earl used to get all mixed up, swearing that Dax was looking at him out of the glass one. " I sure can't tell sometimes which eye is the dead one, i truly cain't, i swear he can see out of it, he's looking at me out of the glass one, see right through me. damn". with that one eye Dax could see a wall across the room one quarter of an inch out of plumb, he was that good. when we got to the end of the road Dax had by now tried to sue me when my father died thinking i'd inherited some money, had left me holding the bag on a contract for a job of ours that went bad, him not signing his signature on the contract, very clever, lieing about having a contractors liscense to god knows who and the whole world, lied again about having insurance, a bond, and being an engineer and my insurance company having to pay for damages on the job and among other things, lied about visiting his son in San Quenton, never having gone, and getting busted by his current wife, our secretary, with his ex wife crawling out from under his desk, whilest working on a bid and eventually losing his house on some mysterious deal to build a casino in Vegas on sacred indian burial ground which i forewarned him not to do, but him saying " if i don't do it someone else will". a piece of work. also a very smart guy, really, and intelligent, witty, even brilliant out in the field, vast experience, a better craftsman with one eye than most with two. dax was also a great talker, our clients liked and trusted him. he had a favorite saying that i came to love and mistrust, "well pisano" shortend to just "pie san." still all and all he had a sort of low down, feral charsima to him, and he really wore his amorality well, never deviating from it. he used to say i was weak, that i didn't have the killer instinct in me. his wife said he was jealous of me, because i was a believer in people and Dax had long since given up on the world and himself. "we all use each other," he used to say, condoning his own usary. we did a lot of jobs together, rode hard and traveled fast. Daxie boy was an old street fighter from Richmond a nice town he said, before the blacks moved in. I'd heard his stories about the beatings he'd laid on half the town, and how he'd never lost a fight and could have turned pro and sometimes after work we'd spar around, friendly on my part and he used to tell me i was slow. slow meaning I was weak. You've probably guessed Dax was a desperado, he loved money more than anything. when he got rich he was going to do this and that, cars, bikes, horses, planes. i heard he'd lost more than one fortune. he drank and when he did he was a mean ass drunk. we'd been through the mill by the end, his son, fresh out of San Quentin for robbery, and younger than than me was going to be his new partner and i was getting out. Dax was having a party and asked me to stop by and now i can see it was plainly a set up. when i got there he had a heat on, he couldn't hold his liquor anymore and after i had a few beers in the kitchen, and said "goodbye Daxie and good luck" and started to leave, he stepped in front of me and said, "well ya cain't leave until we settle it." "settle what ?" I asked. "you and me," right out of a western. "we got to settle it finally, who's the best," him talking loud drawing a crowd. " forget it," i said. "No." he says "right now", getting into a formal karate position. and that cold dead glass eye staring at me, i knew i wasn't getting out without something going down. right then i remembered something he'd said to me a hundred times before, that never in a fight had anyone ever touched his face, so i just leaned over and slugged him on the jaw and he went down in a heap and then struggled to his feet. " damn you i wasn't ready," and i laughed and said "this business is over" and walked out and him yelling after me, "i'm going to kill you, i'll kill you." right after that he lost his home I heard to the Mafia, but i don't know, Dax always wanted to play with the big boys. jgk

well son

i was 36 years old and i was my own contractor now, renovating some apartments in Concord and it was summer and hot as hades, and we were cutting out old rotten studs in a building, and replacing them with new ones and then resheeting the sides and then adding felt and lath and stucco over all this and then painting. it was hard work, old wood is like iron, just hell to cut through, it takes technique and a powerful saw and good blade and a good arm, along with patience. it's really back breaking, especially in the heat, and on a hot day in the summer, Concord was sweltering, maybe 105 with a high humidty. i had these three football players from Chico State working for me for the summer, really big guys, with the names of Samson, he went about 6 feet, 250 pounds and Andre the giant, even bigger at 6'3 ,260 and Tweeter more modest at 6 feet, 200 pounds. they were all of twenty years old and their girlfriends used to bring them lunch everyday and sashay around them, just to make sure the old man, me, wasn't abusing their heroes. i'm a shade under six feet and weight about 165, less i'm sure in that heat and my wife never ever brought me lunch. well one morning i was one side of an apartment building and Samson, he was their alpha dog, being the strongest and self proclaimed the meanest, and toughest, was on the other side and the other two were on another building, and we started knocking the stucco off with mallets and then cutting and pulling off the wire and nails and felt and then got to the task of the dry rot and pretty soon, i mean within a few hours i've worked my way on down to the end of my building and was framing in new studs and i went around to see how my boys were doing and they all were still within the first couple of feet of where they had started, sweating, and snorting, i said damn, and went and showed them how to cut through the studs, but they couldn't quite get the hang of it, and i said do the best you can and went back to work and by the end of the first day Tweeter had enough and quit with the excuse i wasn't paying him enough. the other two came back the next day and we struggled through the week. at the end of that first week those big old boys were tired, frustrated and pissed off. i had worked circles around them and they knew it and i was old and fresh, and skinny to boot and on top of it I was the boss. Samson remarked that men where afraid of him on the football field and just sort of fell down when they saw him running at them and i said "well that's not how it is out here," and I think this just pushed him right over the edge, so they challenged me to fight them both right there. i said that was impossible but i'd arm wrestle both of them on the hood of my truck and they couldn't wait to get to it and the girl friends were there by now, rubbing their men's backs, their boys would set the world right again, order would be restored. Their arms were bigger than my thighs, gleaming with sweat, their eyes piggy with hate and blood lust and i beat them both right handed and then gave them a chance left handed and whipped them again and we tried it again, them figuring it must have been a fluke and it having been impossible. the results were the same only worse, I pumped their arms like a water pump, now that they were as weak as those broken studs I'd torn out. I paid them for the week's work and thanked them both and Andre never did come back but Samson stayed and did well, he being stronger minded, better character, and curious. " how could you have done that to us?" he used to ask. "Magic" i'd say, kidding him, pointing to my bicep, "magic baby." he went back to school and I heard he did steroids and lifted massive weights to come back and try me the next summer and when he showed up he looked like a whale with arm the size of a Nissan. i figured there was no way i was messing with that, and never went there again. jgk

making those ole bones

you might get the wrong impression of me, thinking i was some sort of a thug beating up poor ole Mark, but it's just that for some reason some people just have a hard time with me, call it my presence i don't know, but especially in construction i just galvanized people. most people i got along with but there was always someone i pissed off to the point of them trying to do something about it. you could put it down to the bitch theory, that is the alpha dogs wanted everyone to line up behind them and be subordinate, to be their bitch, their follower, their yes man, yes mam. i just couldn't go for that. i am the cooperative type, i'll help you, you help me we'll get the work done, only that theory didn't always hold water, some guys, a lot of guys just couldn't deal with that, they wanted to control, dominate, for you to be less than them, to be their little man. I put it down to outright control through fear. the struggle for power always came up no matter how civil, how kind, how cooperative i was. one thing for sure, difference of any sort was not tolerated, it was considered a weakness and to be exploited. i swear more time was wasted on the sorting and ferreting out of power on the job site than actual work getting done. there was lots of arguing, everyone protecting themselves, the constant trying to get over on you. maybe it's a guy thing, i don't know, i thought it was stupid, god knows the work is hard enough, all i know is sooner or later some shit would come up, you could bow down and take it, run, or deal with it. you can say I was short sighted myself, i could have solved my problems with more sophistication, used powers of persuasion, explained myself clearly, tried getting along with peace and harmony, and i did all these, and more, but every once and a while, a desperado didn't give a shit about my sweet talking, kindly cooperative ways and just wanted to kick my ass. well son what are you going to do about that? jgk

making my bones

the hammer came crashing near my head a foot away, thudding against the wall, scaring the hell out of me and then this big ex marine came over and picked it up and swaggered back across the floor of the job site. this had been going on for a week and i was getting to the breaking point, and i was afraid of not only getting my ass kicked but losing my job. i went and saw the big boss and told him my problem and he told me " out here you settle your own, don't be bringing me your problems, " just after i told him that Mark didn't like me for some reason and that i hadn't done anything i could think of to piss him off. Mark just didn't like me and i was stuck with that and the flying hammer or i had to do something. i'd tried talking to Mark, a thick, muscular guy, shaved headed, a real jar head and none to b right, but the hammer just kept getting closer to my head on a regular basis. i was on a renovation crew at a VA hosptial as a common laborer but i was making more money than i ever had before , a whole 15 dollars an hour, benefits, sick leave, vacation pay and i wanted to keep my job. I had to keep my job, i had no where to go and i was working hard and doing well even though it was scut work tearing out black iron and plaster walls with a sawzall, and loading the debris in portable dumpsters and then off loading them in a big dumpster outside the hospital. a couple of days later the hammer bounced off a stud bay next to my head and before ole Mark could swagger over i ran over to him and grabbing him by the seat of his pants half dragging him, i launched him off the building, this from the second story. ole mark lay below in the dirt, crumpled on one side, and then I went and got his saw and his tools and threw them off too. the rest of the carpenters and laborers all had their mouths open, no one said a word. mark crawled off to hoots from the crew and told our boss some story and went to the hospital to have his arm put in a sling, but nothing ever happened except my stock on the crew went up, and i noticed everyone treated me differently. i thought i was done with Mark but he was hardheaded and after he came back to work, mopeing around trying to work with one good arm for weeks and then finally healing up, he kicked me from behind in the locker room and proceded to get yet another beating, this time driven into his locker. still not getting the message, he attacked me at the company picnic in the horseshoe pit and got pounded yet again, finally deciding he really liked me and we were the best of friends. strange, I never did learn why he disliked me so much. by this time i had unoffically pretty much taken over the whole engineering departments labor pool, now with ole Mark as a fast ally. you can never figure how things work out. i never ever went looking for trouble but i found out, if it came my way out there, i would be ready. I had problems later with Mark, and should have realized, people don't change. Mark could have been a good enough guy if someone could have kicked his butt everyday. jgk

easy money

the toothless wannabes were just a side show,contruction was all about the creativity to me, the chance to express myself three dimensionally. it's not really anymore than that. i got a chance to use a lot of my talents everyday and make money doing it. all that fresh air, working on my tan and getting paid for it. i looked like one of the gypsies, long hair kind of american dreads down to my shoulders, no shirt, cut off jeans and tennis shoes, socks by god, and some sort of talisman around my neck, beads, a tooth, a chunk of silver. call it the loin cloth years, i felt like a damn savage out there, a natural man in his natural environment. i've still got the assorted scars from not wearing shirts or pants, you can follow the trail of them from ankle to shoulder. my old partners used to ask me " don't you think you should put something on, we're going into a nice neighborhood." i never answered them and nothing more was said until the next time we went to a nice neighborhood, which was hardly ever. once we were in a wealthy upscale town in the East Bay and the partners were licking their lips thinking about all that money we were going to make, all those rich people just waiting to give us their work and their cash. I was tearing out dryrot at a newly married couple's home and i had cut a big hole in the bathroom floor and was cutting out some damaged beams below and it was summer and hot, the air wasn't moving down there and i was sweating like a pig so i decided to take my clothes off, you know to keep cool, so i'm working down below naked with only my shoes and tool bag on and i had to get some nails so i crawled to the hole i'd cut in the floor and stood up to refill when the new young bride walked in and saw me standing there naked and gave a scream, the doors slams and that was the end of the nice neighborhood and all that easy money. i sure did break my partners heart. but like i told them it was hotter than hell, what was i supposed to do, and anyway i had my shoes on. jgk

desperados

construction is filled with desperate men. desperate for money, running from personal problems, running away, and in my case running towards something. drunks, dopers, racists, wife beaters, psychos, liars, thiefs, born again christians, preachers, wetbacks, washouts who couldn't make it in the real world, pretenders, want a be's, the toothless. lots of these desperadoes are talented, intelligent as well as lazy, bullies, cheats and generally no one you would ever hang out with off the job. I never did. at the end of the day i'd climb in my truck and say "later", and drive off and shake my head, telling myself did you just see that, can you believe that? It was a rough and tumble world and an a easy one to navigate if you were big and strong and could take care of yourself or at least look like you could. it was never boring, you never knew what was going to happen, part of that being the nature of the work changed constantly, unforseen problems on the job site made it almost impossible to predict the days outcome. remarkably I found that the worst characters, the truly dispicable, the sleazy drunk, racist, wife beater, liar, cheat, was the best man for the job, the coolest head out there, the wise man. my ticket to respect in this world was my strong back and big heart. i could outwork three men, i made my bosses money and they knew it, i was a glimmer in their eye and maybe, just maybe I would end up being as bad as they were, although to hear them talk, they were virtous and god fearing men. A tell tale sign to watch out for was the inevitable bible in the truck. i'd seen it many times sitting on the front seat, a well worn book for effect, just after getting shorted twenty bucks for the week. if pressed why i was getting shorted they'd call it the cost of doing business. i'd call it thievery. that's how things went out there. on one hand it was thrilling, surrounded by all these pirates and wild men, at one point I named us the killer gypsys, yet beware, it could all turn on you in a moment over anything, politics, a bad hangover, someone coming down from a meth high and you'd have to fight or run. jgk

in the blood

the more i think about construction the more i realize how much it got into my blood, how it got way down inside of me so much it became my passion. and then it was something i had to do, and for the life of me i'd never ever have chosen this way of life. it must have chosen me, there's no other way to describe something that powerful, the all encompassing feeling that gradually took over me until i had to build, had to. needed to as much as i breathed. that's a funny thing to say, but it's true. construction was the one place where i knew who i was, where everything was absolute. you either did the work or you didn't. i loved everything about it, from my tools to my boots,flannel shirt, and my truck, work jacket, to my gloves, from my saw to my wrecking bars. i loved the fact that everything i saw, and could touch i'd paid for, working with my own hands. i loved being out there in the field, using my aggresion to raise walls and climbing and crawling and feeling tired but good because i'd worked hard all day and overcame so much. those feelings crept up on me, i always thought i'd do something else and then damn it was twenty years gone by and an ex wife and some scars and broken bones and i was still out there, where did time go? jgk

mad for tools

the first time i thought i wanted to be a builder was when i was at crown paint buying some painting supplies for a building i was working on and i looked in the back of this truck in the lot and saw all these tools neatly arranged in their cases and i said damn i've got to have those. i stood looking at them for so long the owner of the truck thought i was going to steal them, and i had to assure him i wasn't, i was only looking. i was getting sick of painting, god i hated cleaning brushes, sprayguns every day and getting paint all over my clothes and truck. i'm one of those guys who just can't keep the paint off myself. i am an always will b e an expressionist. anyway, one day i was that guy who had my truck filled with tools. i loved my tools so much i'd bring them in the house and put them in the dining room against the wall so i could eat my dinner and look at them, have a spoonful of carrots and then pick up my drill. my wife used to say i loved my tools more than i did her. i just loved them in a different way. some tools you have a special relationship with. the heart and soul of a carpenters rig is his saw. the worm drive skill saw, a big hefty hunk of steel that takes a strong arm and a keen eye to run along with some nerve. you're cutting wood all day and you and that saw became one, it's an extension of your arm. it's a damn fine thrill to use the saw, the blade whirring, chips and sawdust flying. the best saw i ever had was my first, a used skill saw i bought from some framers going out of business. i must have had that saw for ten years, replacing triggers and switches along the way. it just had this certain heft and feel to it, and it fit my hand like a big metal glove. i really loved that saw and should never have sold it, but i did when i went back to college, thinking i'd never do construction again. big mistake, never ever get rid of your tools, you'll use them in some way the rest of your life. i mean who are you going to hire to work on your house? yourself of course. jgk

the holy wars

i shouldn't ever overly glorify or romanticize contstruction, it was hard work. when i started i was clumsy with my saw, wasting a lot of good lumber, and my hammer and i were hardly friends and it took many poundings and bent nails, pulling them back out and starting over before i made any headway towards being a carpenter. whacking away at the nail, my buddy used to call me a girlie man, come on there girlie man you gonna let that nail get the best of you and he'd lean over from what he was doing and slam that 16 penny home like the pro he was. i was all fingers and fumble, slow and just getting my hammer out of my tool bag and back in was awkward, the handle getting stuck somewhere along the way hanging me up,and keeping the tools in the bag was a chore itself, pencils flew out and were lost, ground into the dirt, the tape measure was always trying to catch a ride in the wrong pouch, the damn framing square was always bouncing out and i'd have to crawl around in the dirt to find it, and then pretty soon i'd have too many tools in the bag and its hanging down my ass and what the hell, i've got a nail puller, dykes, three chisels, a screwdriver, a t- square, a bevel square, a 25 foot tape, a drywall knife and a pencil, and my hammer. damn, i needed an extra body just to carry my bags and then of course all the assorted nails and screws, which were all mixed up with the tools, flying out at the wrong time, oh shit i need a l6 penny not a finish nail and not a drywall screw either, and finally the hell with it and i'd dump the whole bag out in the dirt and start the sorting out process all over. the tools had to be the exact right one of course, they couldn't just be any brand. dig it, the nail puller had to a japanese niwatori, a long thin tool with a dragon's head, sharp, to really bite the wood and get at a nail and a long curved tail for hard to get at nail heads, a stanley tape measure that you could send out twenty feet and wouldnt' fold and so you could get a measurement alone instead of two men having to do it and waste time, a good heavy thick carpenters pencil, a retractable sheet rock knife and extra blades, and a buck brand chisel about 1 and a half inche wide and sharp, which it was only periodically, having hit too many nail heads and spent most of it's time asking me to sharpen it, and a hammer, your choice of weight, with a waffle head and the throat and butt taped with electrican's tape. the tape at the end gave your fingers something to hold onto and at the throat it kept nails from splitting the shaft of the wood. you had to climb ladders with this rig and through windows, kneel on floors and crawl under houses, constantly finding your spilled tools like they were lost children, swearing the whole time. jgk

where the bullet hits the bone

as soon as my hand slipped around the handle of that worm drive skill saw that was it. i was in love. all that power right at the end of my arm, it was my avenue for freedom, i could make money, express myself, i was a damn dancer climbing buildings i'd built, only i didn't know that then. not exactly. but later the saw and hammer became an extension of my whole self, my body an intstrument for self fullfilment, no it became more, the search for the grail, the best part of myself. half jokingly i called construction the holy wars. at first it was a practical thing, i needed to make money. but that thought never lasts in construction, it's to damn hard, it's back breaking, grueling, dirty, hot, sweaty and dangerous. make no bones about that, the saw will eat you, that high torque, all that horse power in about ten pounds, the saw will buck and wheeze and scream at you. i'd pin the guard of my saw back, an old framers trick, the idea being less drag on the guard, less time waiting for it to release, the more wood you can cut, the more money you can make. the only thing is it left the blade exposed, about four inches of solid razor sharp steel. it was a crazy macho thing to do, and i did it when i was young, you're standing there with that blade exposed, you're saying i'm bad, i'm not afraid, my sword is out, i'll run that saw within an eighth of an inch right next to my hand, i'm ready for anything, hell yes. one day on a remodel in Berkeley, i was cutting through a floor joist when my saw hit a nail and backed up the inside of my thigh, the spurt of blood hit my helper Mark and sent him screaming down the street, and after i tied off my leg i had to go and get him and damn he could'nt drive a stick and i had to drive and hold his hand, the blood pouring down into my boot, him sobbing i was going to die , and then i went and got myself sewed up to the tune of eighty stitches, and then back to the job. my saw lay where i'd thrown it, covered in my blood, one of those moments, and i picked it up and went back to work. hell there was two good hours left in the day. mark sat outside, sobbing and moaning like he was the one that had gotten cut. i took the nail out of the guard and let it down, you can't hold anything against the saw, it's only as good as the hand that guides it. i learned not to bully my saw, to listen to it, it's my friend, you've got to develope a relationship with it. i used to store my tools in my tool shop at night, laying in bed i could hear the saws talking to the screwguns, the chop saw talking to the table saw, they got lonely, i went out and talked to them, cleaned them, told them how great they were, admired the steel and plastic shapes, marveled that i could run them all, and for a long time, they were everything to me, with them i brought beauty into existance where there was none and running them some where along the line, i literally felt the harder i worked the better person it made me, the closer i got to myself. my tools took me there, and you can't tell me tools don't have a soul. my saw never bit me again. believe it. jgk

out of the subconscious

going back to the previous blog and my discussion with artist Z on my horse paintings and hers, i don't know how she got onto horses and i'm not exactly sure why i did, but here's a story. i must have been in my late twenties, post vietnam blues and everything that went with that, wanderings and the inability to see anything through, lots of wasted time, moving around like a gypsy. i ended up at my grandmothers place out in the desert near Phoenix with an old truck and not much else. grandma was special to me, later i'll tell you about our special relationship, but for now it was a place for me to go after so many bad starts and poor finishes, college lay like a mirage out in the desert and i had more units than the cactus i saw everyday, but no degree, and i'd tried every liberal arts major there was, art, dance, english, literature, creative writing, but nothing stuck, no direction. the desert was a homecoming for me, i'd grown up out here, near Scottsdale, and ran all across it's sands collecting horned toads and chasing rabbits, coyotes, and playing pirate in the canals, building my galleys out of old found lumber from the canals. and now i was back, a bit of a lost veteran syndrome, come home to grandma. she and i used to take drives out in the desert, she was so big and fat i used her old metal wash tub as a step to load her into the old blue ford, put my shoulder to her keister up we go and off, me, dark brown without a shirt and long black hair to my shoulders flying in the wind, a salute to my freedom, post service. grandma and i hardly ever spoke, but we had a deep and powerful connection, based on grandma's unconditional love that flowed from her to me and then back, in a rotating circle vibrating in the truck, we literally hummed along the desert floor, i wonder if even that old blue truck's wheels ever touched the road. grandma never dispensed advice, only love and food, homemade donuts brimming with powdered sugar, crepes stuffed with jam, chicken dumpling stew. lots of food, lots of love. the Black Canyon Freeway cut behind her little casita and one day buzzing along on it after a particulary fine day in the desert, we ran into some heavy traffic and loe, there ahead running wildly, rearing, bucking, snorting, was this huge white stallion in the fast lane, cars just missing running into it, there he was fifty yards in front of me. instinctively without thinking, i pulled onto the meridian and jammed the brakes, grandma you ok, and then ran out into the fast lane, cars now just missing me and calling to the horse, running towards him, calling Here come to me you'll be alright, you'll be alright. he stopped rearing and came right over to me and put his huge head on my shoulder and i put my arm around his neck and there we stood eye to eye for a full ten minutes, a centaur ,cars passing around us, but now i swear this is true, it was dead quiet where that horse and i stood, quiet and safe. i remember mostly his eye, big and white, like a whales eye, and there was something in it, something there, but there was no fear, there was recognition. after the cops came and the rancher took the stallion quietly away, after they barricaded off the road, grandma and i drove back to her casita. maybe something happened out there on the freeway, maybe grandma had something to do with it, maybe she set the whole event up, i'll never know, we never spoke of it and some time later i left and went north and got a job in construction and found something I could do and not run from. so maybe you could say that's why i paint horses. maybe you could say that.

show time

julie and i both had shows up this week, i was part of the daily painters of new mexcico show, a group that does small daily works. i helped install the show friday at our art space, address 1228 parkway, a combination loft gallery down in the industrial part of town. we bought a warehouse and revamped it, polished the concrete floors, installed walls, a kitchen, courtyard and overhead lighting and made ourselves a little jewel to host our own shows and shows for other artists. anyway, i worked all day hanging the show and that night there was an opening and a small crowd but some very interesting people as usual poppped up out of the woodworks. specifically one artist who said she painted horses just like i did only she did them in the eighties and that makes her before me because back then i was doing graffiti like street paintings, but we had a really fine talk about how our images worked themselves out of our subconscious and onto our canvas. i think she was astonished that we both worked in this way, letting the image announce itself instead of ordaining it. the more painters i talk to, the more common this idea becomes. you have to work with what shows up, i know i do. that and i have to keep the image fresh, and not try to over work it. Gaugin advised a friend, Don't polish too much, the subsequent hunting out of endless refinements only impairs the first draft; that is to let the incandescent lava grow old, to petrify your foaming blood. very poetic. saturday night we hung julie's colorful abstract works in Starbucks downtown on san francsico street, which may seem like an odd place for an art show but they have this beautiful 80 foot brick wall which shows julie's work off beautifully and the amount of people passing through there daily is much greater than any gallery in town. we're headed down there this week to celebrate her opening. jgk

santa fe monday morning

you've got to listen to the last notes of the song until it bleeds into silence, let the petals turn brown and fall off the flowers, keep them way past when you think you should, sit in some cafe and drink your coffee holding the mug feeling the heat of it passing through your hands before you take a sip and eat your food so slowly you think you're going fall asleep, slow down and have nothing more than intent,let your body show the way to the day, does it want to sit or get up and move, even dance, sit with yourself for awhile before you make a move, look at your woman's hands and notice how beautiful they are, there is no hurry to get to anything. it's sad i've burned up so much of my life trying to get somewhere, and spent too little time on the silence. i've spent all morning just looking at my clothes hung over a chair and drinking a cup of tea exhilerating in the feeling of the hot tea gurgling down my throat, like the sound of the sea. jgk

one eyed jack

oh jeez, the con men ,drifters, artist visionaries, putting a wolfs paw in my palm, how you doing brother, just don't ask me for nothin, art is all and if you don't mind i'll have that latte now though all ive got to pay with is this smile and i'm still yours forever dont you know and i may or may not be there when you need me but damn i'll need you to come through for me cause there's a hole the size of a dog in my roof and ill be moving in to your crib to finish my novel and that's only going to take three months, that damn women she'll be sorry ,it's got to be worth 250 thou and she knows it, but man don't bug me cause i'm a medicine man and i'm up early saying my prayers to the spirits, daddy, oh shit well i'll pay you later and im a real socialist, half of my nothing is yours and i guess i'll tell you this because i was an apache in another life time but now i'm an artist, no anarchist, they should tear it all down ,no an indian chief and i can't, i'v e got drunk relatives in the back yard bedeviling me, oh man don't hold me to my word, cause there is no word, only words, it's like the wind man, dig it, i'll sign the damn thing only, i may have to spend the money on a good cause, yes i know, you'll wait, the weather changes, the shadows look kinda real and that's just the law of the land here, whatever was it sure ain't now and i can't help that, just let me borrow whatever it is you have, i said borrow. brother, i'm a shaman, ya know... jgk

what is beauty?

I got in an argument at a party last week with another artist M, about what was beauty. she adamently argued there was only one kind of art that was valid, old russian masters, artists she said who knew how to paint, and "I hate Picasso". i said hell Picasso was one great draftsman, and she said he'd done some good works when he was younger, this meaning before he became a cubist and the later Picasso, and i don't paint like you either jamie, i paint like the Russian masters. I asked, you mean you don't like any of the expressionists, the Cobra movement, karel appel, asgar john, george basilitz, anselm kiefer? oh you mean the german neo expressive dullards, oh course not, garbage she replied. we were interupted by a well meaning neighbor, mr S who said something i forgot before i had a chance to launch a reply. later in the week i was looking at fashion magazines in the book section at DTS and i noticed every model in every magazine looked exactly alike. exactly the same concept of what was beautiful in a woman. the magazines sang this is beauty, the beauty society has declared as beauty and if you don't look like this you're not beautiful and well, go buy something to make yourself look like this. M's way, one way. Look, every society has done the same thing, the mayans flatened their heads, tattoed themselves, the japenese bound feet etc, etc. o.k. but we never see traces of any of this other beauty in our cultures idea of beauty, there's only one way, like the artist M's idea of art, the old masters european model. To the conquerers goes beauty. sunday I was at the brothers getting my coffee and i looked over my shoulder and noticed this guy in a black sports coat, nice coat i said looking at the fiber, corderoy, he said and then i noticed his face, dark, very wide, high cheek bones, large ears and short hair, very indigenous , no trace of an acccent when he spoke and i was struck by the picture of the two images, one image i'd seen in the bay area every day, a young executive type in a natty coat off to work, but the face in the coffee shop didn't fit the picture of what i'd been used to seeing in that natty coat. I almost poured the coffee on the floor. see, even i had gotten used to looking in one way of how reality was supposed to be. i'd stereo typed my business executive. part of the problem is that's mostly all i'd ever seen before, that one way, the old european masters portrait of a young business executive. when julie and i took a trip to mexico we went in to a book store and bought art books on mexican artists we'd never heard of before, Chuco reyes, Lebeya, other great artists, and i said why haven't i ever heard of these people before, i've been robbed, kept away from these artists, cheated out of their vision of beauty. there's another party this weekend and M the artist has been invited, i've been planning my rebutal argument all week, and here's how it will end, with me exclaiming, so you're saying if i don't paint like the old russian masters and like you, there's absolutely no place for a painter like me and what you're really saying is i don't even exist. if you can't see it then it doesn't exist. man, that's arrogance. jgk

where hawks dare

When I was deep in the construction trades, up early every morning either out on the job or out looking for work, many mornings I’d be escorted to the day by a covey of hawks who would circle my truck and then follow me along my back road and then peel off before the freeway and head back to the trees in the hills behind my house. One or more hawks would fly over my truck in ever increasing circles and I’d remark, we're going hunting together. I used to get so much satisfaction in those days imaging myself as a great hunter, and the hawks were my allies in this endeavor, the natural world and I uniting as one. I thought i'd be out in the field forever, reveling in the powerful feeling of using my body to bring into existence something that hadn’t been there before. Make no bones about it, construction is a hard and dangerous business, I have the scars to prove it, they run along my body like a map of my life out there. You work like a dog, you work fast and you work past the limits of whatever you think you’re capable of and that's when it's dangerous, and your working all the time, day in day out, month after month, year after year. You have a perpetual tan, your muscles get hard and your mind becomes clear and you’re in sync with the seasons, you feel the warmth of the coming spring and the cold bite of winter, but you get used to it, grow to love it, you’re in the natural environment, you’re where you belong. I truly felt I was part of that endless tide of lifes cycle . The hawks would confirm this for me. They would be waiting in the oak tree outside my house when i started up my truck in the morning, I would feel the nip of the early chill , my saws, hammers , level, and all my other tools, ranging from demolition to finish work, were placed in their proper positions, shined and oiled ready for the workday ahead. I had my hawk’s blessings. If I didn’t have work that day I would travel up and down the county line scouting out jobs, talking to store owners, realtors, random strangers, confident, and determined I would find some work before I would come home. The law of the hunt was this, never come home until you had something, no matter how long it took, how far you had to drive, you had to have a job to go to, whatever it took. I did this for years until it became so ingrained in me that there was never any doubt I would come home to my hawks with something. A man alone with his instincts, loving the mystery and romance of it all, ready to test myself against the day. These are the times that made me, when I would find myself part of the natural world, waiting for the adventures ahead. The hawks and I playing in the fields .jgk

one day in santa fe

early a.m. phone call to my gallery owner in atlanta, i've got these paintings available you can have, 8 more on the way, i'll jpeg those to you and hand the phone to julie who has her question and answer period and the owner wants Julie's figurative work right now and no abstracts, thank you'll we'll be in touch and she liking my new figures wanting something different for her clients instead of that uptown thing she did before. ok with me. and then i call this gallery in NYC and tell them I'm not interested and the assistant sounding like she died on the other end when i said no thank you, and then i've got to make two more phone calls to my contact in town and say i was running late and then off to the space where i showed it to J who dug it for the antique trunk show he was having. he and his girl friend used to run a yoga center on the island of saba in the caribbean, and him an ex detroit auto designer who burned out and had a life threatening illness and then became a therapist. he and i talking about our paths meeting now and me having had a similar story which i may tell later but the pertinent part is my illness got me painting again which is what i'm doing. J. and the girlfriend are going to central america after the big sale to build a healing center, and me being an ex- builder also i said dang, i'd come down and help out, teach the natives how to build and he took our little contract off to read it at home with a parting beautiful space and then i call julie and tell her the heater in the space is working fine and i'm off to see wilem at cloud cliff cafe and discuss my play idea. when i get to cloud cliff wilem is in the attic of the kitchen doing some repairs and i say i'll get a cup of coffee, be right with you and oh yes i parked the truck at my old gallery across the street now closed and doing business at home and read the posted sign out front which said closed but we're going to reopen at the railyard later. strange to see the space closed. julie and i having a number of great shows there. i'm drinking my decaf waiting for wilhem and big mac comes in , one of my clients and buddies and we decide to have lunch together. big mac is a very literate guy, smart, a writer, so i tell him the problem i'm having with my play and he listens and comes up with some good ideas and then lunch comes, him a curry dish and me a chicken sandwhich and then wilem comes out and sits down and i'm telling him the problems with my play idea and then i start telling the play and it gets very emotional, wilem with good ideas and support, and i'm feeling a lot better about it and then big mac says you've got a lot of good issues there, but you've got a tiger by the tail and wilem says he'll put me in touch with some people, then i realize the enormity of the project. Damn jamie what have you bit off? just then my director comes in and sits at the table next to us, i'll see you in class, ok and then i get up and big mac pays the whole tab. i'm thanking him when i see A the artist having lunch and i go say hello and exchange the usual art small talk, where are you showing, oh serbia, and i'm going, and then A says she can't talk, which is usually how all our conversations end up. ps forgot the one hour rap with my buddy blind joe the photographer at his studio prior to lunch that went something like this, my art, his art, money, refinance, down sizing, him back from south africa, surfing, taxes, galleries, can he help me with our with my space, have you seen cyril he's changed but he's still afraid of you, the cellist michael kott being a true artist, checking out my new work, dig it, not that yellow and julie's work looks like cave paintings he took pictures of in south africa, and could i leave a flyer? and he gave me a cd of his new album when i left and then I went and bought jule some fresh chocolate at chocolate maven, drove home gave the chocolate to her and went out and painted for four hours. just your average day in santa fe. jgk

no stranger to the road

i was no stranger to the road by this time, i'd been out with freidrick, the road king i called him. he was this big german kid who'd come to see america, hitch hiking all over the country by himself and by the time i meet him down in mexico he spoke pretty good english. i was hiking out of baja the first time i ever saw him in a old vw bus that he'd painted by hand, an ugly unknown greenish color. he pulled up along side me and in this german accent asked me if i wanted a ride. when i got in i took a good look at him and was immediately struck with how big he was. his hands were huge, they held the steering wheel as if it were a saucer, he had long blond hair down to his shoulders and his face was all angles and the nose long and sharp, almost touching the postage stamp of the windshield, the bus seemed much too small for him, rather looking like a green turtle shell on his back and he was so wide i had to lean hard pressed against my door to fit in at all. We broke down a couple of miles down the road right after he picked me up and we had to leave the bus, pushing it behind a sand dune, the ugly green top poking out behind the dunes and then both us set out to hitching together across the border and into san diego. friedrick told me he'd been to every state in the union by then which if it were true would have been pretty amazing because we were both only twenty years old at the time. we hitched all the way up the coast of california having good luck with the rides and due to freidrick's deft and skilfull manuvering on and off the freeways. i started to believe his stories about being in every state and over the years of us traveling together would come to know it absolutely. so we hitched up the coast and the weather was good as it was early summer and we went all the way up to santa cruz which was where i was living at four mile beach, set up in a cave. we moved into the cave and decided to join forces and get some money together and go back and get friedrick's vw bus in baja, freidrick having some knowledge of cars having gone to a trade school in Munich before getting wanderlust. friedrick ended up gettting a job in downtown santa cruz in the Bug Shop repairing vws for these guys called the Smith brothers, two really low down looking dudes along with some mechanic named scorch, a short pug faced fellow who looked liked he was born covered in grease and lived out back of the quonset hut shop in a broken down camper. i was a gardener, mowing lawns, raking leaves, trimming trees and bushes and it was a neat trick considering i had no truck no car to get around town. we camped out in my cave at four mile beach that i had inherited from this artist from san francisco who painted these little tourist scenes of boats and wharfs and whatnot. we had a nice campfire and a big iron skillet to cook in, friedrick was a master at cooking potatoes, and making a big pot of beans we ladled onto tortillas. we got some money together after a few months, and i kept thinking was the vw bus still there after all this time, wouldn't someone have found it by now? finally having enough of the Smith brothers, this meaning friedrick having done most of the work while brother A and brother B smoked dope and Scorch did the oil changes, friedrick quit and we pooled our money, picked up friedrick's new vw engine that he'd bought and rebuilt the whole time he'd been at the bug shop, me having cleaned every part by hand with a toothbrush and solvent and friedrick putting the engine together in due course, i called it german engineering. we hauled the engine down to the freeway one late summer day, and we were off and set out back down to Mexico. at this point there was absolutely no doubt the vw bus was there, we were on a mission. we hitched down the length of california with the engine, which we named lolita and when we got down as far as Rosarita beach just over the border from san diego, friedrick meet janice a college girl from santa barbara in a bar where we were drinking, and she falling in love with him and now we were three. we had deposited lolita out in front of the bar where she drew quite a crowd to her gleaming shiny metal presence including the drunk Diego, who being fascinated with her, consented to give us a ride down the coast in his chevy pickup truck, repeating over and over, i jus don't believe it, friedrick and janice in the front with diego drinking Tecates and me in the back with lolita and we all went down the coast and without any problem and located the ugly green lost bus, and friedrick and i pulled out the old engine, replacing it with the lovingly reconstucted lolita and damn, gosh, lo and behold, the bus fired up on the second try and we were off, waving to diego who was shaking his head having i'm sure never seen anything like this in his life, and leaving the old discarded motor out there in the sand dunes. it's probably still there after all these years. we spent three great days camped out on the beach playing in the surf and friedrick and i having a footrace marathon up and down the beach, janice being our scorekeeper, friedrick finally winning on the third day, 37 to 36, and we ate a lot of bean burritos, drank beer and had giant bonfires on the beach at night, finding huge caches of driftwood thrown up on the beach. the best times are the times when you're young and you don't know any better. jgk

dirty water

coming out of north africa with freidrick the german on an old BSA motorcyle i named the witch because she had a habit of breaking down at the worst possible moments and she didn't let us down, finally wheezing to an oily finale, throwing a rod somewhere in afganistan. we walked for miles coming to a broken down lorry, the driver sitting along side the road smoking a pipe which is where we all sat for the next three days, and lay under the truck when it rained waiting for a ride. i had to clean myself in dirty water, and we had nothing to eat. we just sat and waited and threw stones across the road and periodically freidrick would go over and try to kick start the bike. the point of the story is sometimes you do have to clean youself with dirty water, make the best of it while you're waiting for something else to come along. i was really good at that when i was young, because i didn't have any money, i had to learn to get by, be patient, see what came down the road. eventually another truck came by and we left the witch along side the road, and the truck driver that picked us up had some food he shared and we ate. i had gotten to know the underneath of that truck we slept under pretty well and i was sorry to see it go, it had keep us dry. the witch, well she'd was another story and i'd love to say she was an adventure, and she had been a sort of transportation but she mostly broke my back. but i'm grateful to her, she taught me a valuable lesson, you never know when something bad is going to become something good. bless you witch. it's a good line for a blues song i think, i like the sound of it, you've got to clean yourself in dirty waaater, yeah baby. jgk

georgia was here first

This a continuation on a theme and I know it, but it’s one of those that keeps popping up in my life here as part of the flot sam jet sam of the great new mexico river that runs through us all. “We’re all independent people,” my friend victoria said, just after I told her she was one of those strong willed women who populate santa fe, and just after she told me there wasn't enough mud on my red truck. It must be the zeitgiest of santa fe, a spirit that permeates the mud city, floating like a halo over the moutains, you can't really define or capture what this mystery is and of course you're not supposed to but i see it tangibly in front of my face daily. all i have to do get is get in the red truck and go somewhere and there they are, I meet these women , and i won’t mention their names because they might think I’m doing a research project , but I’m not, rather I’m paying them my deep respects. new mexico is filled with beautiful strong willed, feisty, powerful, artistic, talented, business owners, house painters, trades women, tile setter women, writers, dancers, mothers, photographers, hikers, builders, sailors, chefs, visionaries, gallery owners, and I’m rubbing shoulders with these women daily, they’re all over santa fe, making it happen , and a lot of them going it alone without a man. Alone in a man’s world. That’s a saying. Maybe it’s always been like that here but it’s not what I’m used to seeing in the world I came from, the states, over the adobe curtain, the men were out in front, at least that’s all I ever saw, the wives were the supporters, and this is generalizing, most of the single women I met were looking for a man to do something for them, they would deny this of course, but that ‘s my experience. Not here, these new mexican women seem to love themselves. look I’m not saying they don’t have men or don’t want one, but they don’t seem to be dying for the lack of one, they’ll go on with the wind in their face, georgia o’keefe lived alone in a mud house in the desert in abiqui at ghost ranch and had to be dragged to town. maybe it’s a tradition in new mexico that if you're a woman and you're here, you're a pioneer, a risk taker, one of the women run their own galleries, paint, take photos, remodel houses, and for someone who has gone it alone much of his life and knows how hard that is and having run my own business it’s well, simply amazing . as one of them said to me, I prefer it that way. What a statement, I’ve never heard it said with such absolute conviction. Most men would run from it, but I found it very sexy. why these women could be my equal, no surpass me, be better men in the field, tougher, captains of their own industry and apologetic to no one, what a novel and fresh idea. goddess warriors standing their own ground, independent and competent, a good woman in the field. God, better than most men I’ve known . I really want to say all their names right now you , you, you , you , you , and you, it’s with the deepest respect I bow and say glad to know you. So what’s the point of knowing this? Am I making some statement about women and men, or about myself? Well it doesn’t take anything away from me, I’m still who I am, it simply adds to the richness of life’s experience, and I’ve discovered something new and amazing, there’s women out here who can do all the things I’ve come to expect out of myself and they can do just as well. Damn, now that’s a discovery. it gives me a great sense of freedom, I can look at myself through their eyes and find camaraderie. i'll keep you posted on their doings. Jgk

colors more colors

Color, more color


you never know when the floodgates are going to come loose, painting is like holding on to the the reins of a horse, or hunting big game, you never know when something is going to fall into your trap. A hunter needs his gun and his instincts, a painter needs his brushes and instincts, the more you’re holding your brushes, the greater the chance it’s going to happen, a painting I mean. Look, for a painter like me, and I mean an expressionist, a dude who can’t paint the same painting twice, I’ve got to be in the studio firing the paint on all the time. This doesn’t mean making art is purely chance, sometimes it is, I curry this, it’s like throwing the runes, or divination, I’ve got to throw the paint on, it’s got to be moved around, I’ve got to follow the paint, romance it if it were, interact with it and follow. Of course you’ve got to be in some control, but maybe it’s more like being with the moment, being in the moment, you and the paint doing this fabulous tango together, you’ve got some technique but at some point the technique becomes absorbed in the whole dance, yeah you’ve moving with your partner, and the music, and it’s up to you to make the dance come to life, to become majestic. All the elements forming the dance . No technique, and you have no form, but to much technique and not enough passion, you've got a lifeless and stiff dance with no soul. It’s never going to be uniquely yours, your voice. That’s it for me, I just can’t preconceive what’s going to come out of me. One of the things I almost always remark after a successful day of painting is “I can’t believe I painted that.” Let me say it again, GAWD, I CANT BELIEVE EYE PAINTED THAT! Is that loud enough for you. If I get in the way of whatever this thing is, this creativity, no, my creativity, then whatever I paint is boring, dull, and lifeless. Believe me I get in my own way all the time and head down the wrong road , and spend two days painting like someone else, well just not like me and I have to grab myself by the throat and paint that sucker out, out spot , out you painting that’s not me. When the work is happening I’m not in charge, I’m moving with the flow, it’s sounds corny but it’s not, it’s fundamental. You see the best thing you can be is yourself, completely totally you, well me and no one else and don’t ever try to . It’s tricky because you’ve got to look at other artists, it’s how you learn. van gogh, gaugin, god how I love them, love their colors, I eat their colors, but I’ve got to let them go at some point and look, as painters we all know how great they are but we’ll never be them and you’ve got to take a chance, the biggest chance you'll ever take in your whole life, the chance to be yourself. Being yourself means knowing yourself, what your strengths are, no more it's much more than this, it's knowing yourself inside out, what am I made off, what do I feel like, who am I? And trusting what that is, what james k is, is great enough and working with that whole thing that is you. Burn out doubt, trust your hand, trust your own knowing, no one else’s. it’s the only way, it’s the painter’s way, your own unique wonderful way. Damn, I did that? No, DAMN, I DID THAT! JGK

The Promise--episode one

My 40 foot ketch the kitiwake was rocking against the pier in Grand Bahama and woke me up. it was sunday morning and i could hear the rigging bouncing against the mast in the slight breeze. i got out of my bunk and walked aft, past edwardo and dark john in their bunk. i shook edwardo and said, we've got to go, let's go and he moaned and rolled over. whaat, he said, with, a foggy voice. nothing, i replied, and climbed up into the cockpit of the boat, nothing, never mind. i had a promise to keep and i was going to keep it, you two slackers can stay asleep i said out loud and climbed off the deck and onto the dock. Grand Bahama was still asleep, the little harbor filled with sailboats of all sizes, and i looked at the Kitiwake, a pale robin's egg blue against the dark green of the harbor water. she had limp torn sails on her masts, the turnbuckle on my bowsprint was shorn off, the reason we put in here on our way up the Florida coast, the topside a pile of gear and line tangled and messy, debris from the storm lay along side beer cans, and my diesel was a wheezing asthmatic of an engine, having failed to start when we needed it most, almost resulting in our being cleeved in half by a freighter as we lay becalmed at night in the Bermuda Triangle. we were lucky to have made it this far, having set out from St. Thomas in the fall at the height of hurricane season, headed for Barbadoes and being lost instead in a huge storm and blow into the Bahamas. lucky or delivered, either way i was going to make sure i kept my promise. i walked past the other yachts in the harbor and noticed they all looked in better shape than mine, and myself i must have looked a sight after two months at sea, long shoulder length windblown hair, skin dark, no shirt, ragged jeans, and sandals. a dead sea turtle lay on it's back in the cockpit of a power boat, and i shook my head at the sight of it and headed out of the harbor, past the hotel and the outdoor bar. it never failed to amaze me that there were people bellying up that early for a snort, but this was the islands and everyone drank and i knew as soon as they woke up from last nights revere, that's where edwardo and dark john would be, knocking back some beers and trying to pick up college girls. God what crew we were. i should say what a crew we weren't, hell we should'nt have even been out here, no way, not ever. well, we should have had a lot more sailing experience, still even then to be honest, i'm no sailor, i get ferociously seasick, and though i love being in the water, me being a great swimmer, was no qualifier for being at sea. i'd never sailed anywhere before and edwardo had never been on a boat until he showed up one day from Ohio, standing on the dock in front on the Kitiwake announcing his arrival. dark john was a Virgin Islander from Antigua with a stutter and a mean streak we picked up off a boat he was 86'd and pressed some money in his hand to teach us how to sail and he sort of did barking orders here and there, we stuttered our way through his lessons, and arrogance, and in due course after a couple of passes around the island, and then a small passage to Tortola on a moonlite night, we thought we were ready for our maiden voyage and ready to sail to NYC, up the Atlantic seaboard. Oh god, i guess if you're going to make a mistake, make a big one. dark john talked a great game , snorting and throwing his head back, showing his big white horse teeth, telling us how he'd sailed to columbia and back by himself and he had, only later we found out he'd sunk his owner's sloop on the way back, having to much sail on for high winds and i think someone told me this just as we were leaving Charlote Aamlie harbor, and i either didn't want to believe them or it was a case of well what do i do now and it already late in the season and me having quit my job with the native construction company and being stuck with edwardo and generally sick of the island, i must thought, i'ts time to go and dark john full of his bravado and swagger, stuttering, i'm a great captain and what not. it was fool hardy, and i had a bad feeling about it at the dock fueling up with diesel. we'd find out soon enough what we were in for. To be continued------

no ordinary plumber

Jamie, you’re writing a play here, this is more like a novel, totally captivating, it drew me in and I couldn’t wait to hear the ending, but its’s not a play. He looked like a French cavalier with a van dyke beard and longish gray hair, with these intense blue eyes, he is after all, he says, intense. Look Jamie you’re dealing with a very deep powerful subject here when you’ve talking about war, remember no one really wants to here about it, they don’t care about suffering, your suffering, you’ve to draw them into this magical place so they can’t get out and then you leave them whipped in the isles, make your dialogue terse, cut it to the bone, your actors won’t be able to remember this long of a monologue, you’re the playwright anyway, you’re not going to be doing this yourself . help your actors out, give them something so they’re able to bring their own emotions and feelings into the piece , and by the way we’ll put on that faucet for you tomorrow, ten am. Don’t forget, it’s an 8 inch wall mounted faucet, you may have to go to Dahl plumbing to get it, and with that he gave me a hard knuckle to bone goodbye and nodding at me went out to his truck.

my impatience their incompetence

four items to remember on one of the most important days of the year, for our state, and for our country. election day, the primaries to decide who runs for next president of the united states, the most powerful, important person in the world. four items, the voter register list, a pen, the box to put the ballot and the ballot, and a simple one at that, fill in one box, and go home, only they ran out of ballots and we had to wait while someone ran off to arroyo hondo to get more , but wait, the rumor in the line is arroyo hondo is out of ballots also. julie and i got inside out of the cold and snow but there was a long line of eldorado-ians stuck outside waiting. just how long was the wait, not to long, two volunteers came in with extra ballots and we moved on. don't they know that el dorado votes at higher than 70%, of course they do unless they're asleep. how did this happen? didn't anyone count last year's register list, add up the numbers, add on say 20% for some error and at the very least have some sort of back up plan, like whose got an extra copy machine. hey i do, i'd have volunteered the use of it to preserve democracy and our way of life, i would have even baked cookies if they'd asked me to, but heck i had to get to the gym and then pickup a movie , go home for my shortribs. i'll bet the governor had a ballot, and not a zerox copy either. jgk

heading out

twenty feet and there's the dirt road, twisting through the cactus, duck under a juniper, and there you are, the open road. you climb a gradual slope and then come to the top of the hill, and you've got a choice to make, straight ahead leads you out into the desert, turn right and it's along the top of the canyon, a two mile circuit, but if you feel strong and want more you bushwhack across the up and down countryside, sliding and slipping on the stone and rock, find a little used trail and keep heading southeast towards the Lamy train station, past a ranch that heads down into a canyon, barking dogs come out to greet you, they're friendly, but what a ruckus, yelping away a quiet hike, no wonder the indians kept dogs around ,there's no way to get within a half a mile of them, no matter, the rancher lets us cut through his property, his ranch in a clearing surrounded on one side by cliffs, with some interesting rock formations. we climb up, skidding on the sandstone, small caves, erosion cuts into the cliffs adding to the strangeness of the place. we call them indian caves but they're not, maybe some animals could live in the small holes, still it gives us great delight to sit on top of the cliffs and imagine we were an indian, and being alone here, it adds to the wonder and magic of the place. we sit for awhile taking it all in, it's the same as it was a hundred years ago, i pick up a stone, has another hand picked it up, noticed the curve? certainly other eyes have seen the same hills, stood up here, headed down the draw for an evening walk, or a hunt for rabbits. i'm not foolish enough to think i'm the only one who's been here. continue down the draw and you come to the train tracks and you've got another decision to make, you can forge on in to Lamy itself and to the train station and into the town, or you can shorten your trip by turning back and bushwhacking the way you came , climb and scramble up hill and head home that way, or follow the tracks up to the highway and head over the pass until you come to our road, Old Road South, and turn off the main road, highway 285. If you choose to head to Lamy, a typical northern new mexican town, the required church, the mix of decent adobes and semi falling ones, with 10 cars, 2 of which work, the rest modern sculpture, and a horse, or burro, dogs and assorted junk which adds pure flavor, and then make it to the station itself and stand on the tracks alone, you're transported to another time. stand on the tracks amigo, take off your hat and look north and south, it could be any western you've ever seen. high noon, 310 to yuma. i love train stations, that feeling of going somelace, the romance of leaving and returning, coming home, but don't tarry too long, you've got a long hike out of town, past that closed church in disrepair, past the old saloon, the Legal Tender, it's shut down too, and hike two miles down the long narrow road out of town, another vision right there to be chewed on, its not just a road, it's the road of life and you'll have time to think about it because you'll battle a head wind all the way home, up the pass and you better be in shape, or the pass will suck the life out of your lungs, eight miles round trip or thereabouts and then home to sit on the back porch with a beer or margarita, and you take stock of where you've been. it's right out the back door amigo, and think of all the characters you've just become, an indian, a cowboy, a traveler on a train, a searcher, a climber, a spiritual wanderer, a lonesome hero walking into the sunset down a long road and the views you've seen, blue sky meeting your hat, boots on the grey road, rust colored earth, veridian trees, the soft clay cliffs leaving scars of your climb, the shiny miles of tracks, a listing church, the saloon, shutters falling off, oh those honky tonk nights, with that little missy from Lamy, a long kiss under the full moon, your old red truck, waiting like a steed, hank williams on the radio and heading home. damn the next nice day i'm heading out, twenty steps and i'm on the road. i'm gone. jgk

home cooking

The brothers’ breakfast café on sundays is our church. We call it the brothers because three brothers own and run it, they’re there everyday, smiling, rain, or snow. We’ve run all over this town looking for the perfect breakfast and there are many good places, but we always return to the brothers. julie says they have the best coffee, but its something else we’ve decided. On one hand you can say its only bacon and eggs, and toast, anybody ought to be able to do a decent job, but after so many meals around town we’ve come up with our own litmus test, the food must not only fill up your body, it must fill up your soul and it must keep you full for hours. The brothers fulfills this most basic test. We don’t know how it works but it does. The service is spotty but cheerful, and the place gets crowded, long lines, hustle and bustle, your order can get lost in the endless flow of eggs, bacon, toast, rolls, home fries and you can end up waiting forty minutes and may have to go back and ask where’s my food, once or twice, but ultimately your order will come and you may get a brothers surprise, 4 eggs instead of 2, and a pile of crisp bacon that must have been cooked for the whole table and the kind of coffee so good you can’t make it yourself that good no matter how hard you try. How does this happen? We don’t know, but we ask ourselves this question over and over after we get tired of the place and try another, but guilty we always come back. I call it the proletariat mess hall, the people mobbing in like russian emigres , a wild looking crowd , long hair, mismatched patchwork clothing, beards, rough hands, bad makeup, wools caps poking at the ceiling and an almost feral milling around, everyone jostling for tables, our orders. The walls are a bright yellow, housing lots of local art. Some sundays this guy shows up and plays 10 notes on a trumpet and announces, lets have a hand for the cooks and we all laugh and clap... . We’ve decided its as much about the atmosphere as much as the food, something happens in there, we come out feeling all warm and homey, its as if you’ve been eating in your moms kitchen,and we all know mom didn’t always make the perfect meals, but it was home, and maybe that’s what they’ve captured there, not just the feeling of home..it is home, its their home and our home and they love it and do the best they can, as mom did and those of us who eat there know this and we overlook our orders being late, because just like home we know its all about love. And the coffee julie says. Jgk

the early years

the first studio, a garage with plaster walls, and black floors and a wood stove and tracklights, white footprints painted down the alley walk, letting the world know i was here, a sandwich board sign singing out in front, art for sale, i'm here, jamie is here. early am coffee at DTS the local most famous hip meeting place in the universe, all the writers, artists, actors, hey that's ali and tommy lee and gene h comes in in a slouch hat but don't bug me man this is santa fe and it's cool to not be famous even though you are, and we don't care every one is famous here and i've got my rat pack, patrick fitch the art dealer from hawaii, billy the writer and michael b, traveler and klaus kinski look alike, and victoria the photographer, and stevie m, the remodel king, and stacy the artist builder, and the conversation hot and thick ranging from art to music to travel, to writing to women to camping out and reading art mags and the coffee flowing almost but not quite as fast as the rap and then Mar back from hollywood and anyone else who wanders into our fly trap, pass the chocolate, and the noise rising and reeling ,the real church i call it, fitch and i are the princes, us being there everyday, we are the poets, tribesmen, fitch dressed in alfani hip and come on sit down what do you have to say? and i'm letting everyone know i've arrived, the savant artist is here, i'm here, jamie is here and Mar telling off someone he calls euro trash and eddie g getting in a fight with some guy in the parking lot over a bike and the cops coming and who is the best artist in town? and did you see that guys show and being dissed by artist L who won't talk to me and everday patrick fitch and me holding court. Damn, patrick i need another coffee, how about you?

santa fe and adobe

if i had to say something definitive about new mexicans, i'd say we are driven by our passions rather than making money. it's a joke out here that a job is just something we do that gets in the way of us living life. it's an obvious answer when you realize there's almost 20 thousand artists living and working here out of the 75 thousand total population. this number changes the balance of the whole soul of the place. it must be the highest percentage per population on the planet, and throw in the assorted shamans, healers,alternative health centers, yoga studios, inventors, green party, left over hippies, spiritual communes, writers, it must up the ante even more, making this huge a stew of floating creativity. how could any one work when we have so much art to make, plays to write, ideas to put forth? new mexicans are also fiercely independent, resourceful and funloving, and ultimately survivors, finding ways to live their lives in an economy where there doesn't always appear to be one. well that's not entirely true, we have some new homes being built, the restaurants, and of course the tourists, but these seem like small industries when you compare them to California's giant business engine, and it takes a certain getting used to in being able to live here. i was in the post office one day and this guy was telling joe the postmaster, joe i'm leaving, i'm moving back to Philadelphia, i'm going back to the united states, and joe responded, oh, you're coming out from behind the adobe curtain. and it is all adobe here, adobe in all shades, all colors, adobe, new and old and a hundred years old, santa fe being america's oldest city. new adobe, cracked adobe, patched adobe, falling down adobe, the supporting cast of brick streets, muddy roads, and everything brown, austere. it seems tibetans love it here. we have a whole mini tibet working at cloud cliff bakery. you either like adobe or you don't. to me there's something comforting about it, the houses look like giant loaves of warm bread, and the stuff is durable and cheap. i've seen it cracked, battered, almost falling down and yet holding together to form a wall or what resembles a wall and all you have to do is mix some more and add, its the recipe for life in santa fe. we invite the broken, the imperfect, our eye turns it into beauty. when stucco gets old it takes on a patina, a coloring, and you can tell its age from the patching, the knitting and kneeding done to the walls over the years and it then takes on a beautiful aged rustic look, and it has the most wonderful round feminine corners. stucco is applied by hand with trowels and is very unique and individual, it takes on the signature of its applicator, and to me there's nothing more wonderful than a team of plaster men gliding the stucoo on walls like butter on bread, the trowel, the hand and stucco as one. a good plasterer can put it on faster than it can be mixed, and still be resting while waiting for the next batch. its a thing of beauty and i love to get a coffee and stand across the street watching a whole crew mixing, climbing, troweling the stuff on the walls, a giant moving creative dance of the grey stuff. plaster speaks to me, its earthy, rich and sensous, it's durable, and highly flexible, you can mold it into any shape you can imagine and it will last forever, each plaster artist adding his handprint as its applied over the years. that's its beauty, you can see the hand of the maker in it. jgk

painting is as painting does

I haven't painted for awhile, been writing on my play, the show in LA, cracked ribs, the flu, a cold and lingering cough has kept me away from the studio, and how ironic, what i've wanted is happening, galleries are beckoning, there's a new atlanta gallery. the studio dark and quiet lays await, she knows i've been gone and she knows there's no days off from creating, most of the times you've got to clean yourself with dirty water, that's a blues man's saying that painting doesn't come easy, it never has, and never will. for every one good painting i've done i've destroyed 2 or 3 or 4. i forget that, the pain of nothing happening , yet you must face it, the possibility of all that time spent and being left with a big mess, but there's no excuses, no perfect day, tired or not, nicked up, lazy, don't want to, i'd rather do this, no way, you've got to serve your talent, wait too long, it can all go away you;ve got to be alone to do the masterworks, you've got to put your time in and time in and time in. john coltrane played every day, heroin addiction or not and you've got to and you've got to paint like it's your last gig. today i ended up with that brown mess and the same feeling that goes with it, the same question, will i ever do anything good again, will i be able to paint? and as much as it hurts to answer that question, i'll be back out there. it's what we do.jgk

cowgirl on the beach

she looked like the figurehead on the bow of a ship, and she was wearing a cowboy hat,a black sweater hung down around her like an oil slick and a summer crepey dress went down to her toes. it was all of twenty degrees out, literally, and on her feet were a pair of those rubber sandals, the kind you wear on the river to scurry across rocks and wade in water, and i looked twice, no socks, the white of her ankle almost shocking. me wearing my flight boots, leather biker coat, gloves, three pairs of long johns, a scarf tied around my neck. she was in the salad section when i first saw her, and we both ended up in the meat department, the hull of her big body sliding next to me, her face lined from the weather, the cowboy hat sticking off her head like a bowsprit, when i said, i cant stand to be cold, much less my feet, and she answered me in an english accent, i have hot feet. oh my god. im roaring with laughter. we re in santa fe. the land of eccentrics. i went over to the mirror in the frozen food section and looked at myself. you look julie said, pure santa fe, jeans with paint spots , brown leather flight boots, a wool sweater with moth holes and more paint spots, a hoodie poking out of the sweater, the black biker jacket with the scarf tied low on the neck, and my silver goatee. pure santa fe, pure artist. if my father could only see you now julie said, he'd what? i said. where do they come from? the characters, the broken, the lost, the dreamers, the shipwrecked foolish, hopeless romantics that life, ah life, has washed up upon the desert shores. what are we, the sockless, that make our way here? in the winter, as of now, it's a cold austere place, all earth tones, the freeze hangs over us, we complain but we stay, others go. does santa fe choose us more than we choose it, is it alive the desert, do the pantheist gods decide our fate by what we've done before we come? what works back in the world doesn't work here. the street whispers, the rope goes up, the rope goes down, santa fe chooses you. what does this mean? all i can say is the place throws you back on yourself, theres no where to go. its the inner journey, as my friend kai says, tapping his big chest, it's all in here, and if you can't face yourself and dont really, and i mean blood deep, really want to be here, need to be here, must be here, and love the hardships, the austerity, the loneliness inside youself as well as the beauty of the summers, the brilliant sunshine, the people in the watering holes, the art, the potential and the struggle of creation, santa fe will find you. the spirits will show you a way out and you'll go. the endless tide of the desert sands will pile up against your soul, against your car, the snow will come, the ice will hide and bite and your own needs, nay weaknesses will come and sit like ghosts and you'll be gone without a party, a celebration. the rest of us are too busy dealing with what we have to do to stay. it's a rocky business. santa fe, how i love thee, i feel thy embrace, you've given my soul shelter and challenged me, rewarded me for parts of myself i thought were dead, and i never knew were there. my arms have grown strong, my back is straight and i want my bones here in the same arroyo along with cochise. jgk