postcard from Planet Backwards

We may have been transported to another planet while we slept.  A planet where everything appears as it was when you went to bed, but the rules are different.  The certainty is gone, nothing can be counted on to be what you thought it was, including mirrors which show only your preening representative-self, but these mirrors now imported from somewhere gawd only knows, are part of the new, New World lifestyles we all lead helplessly where right is wrong and black is white.  I've said it before and will say it again, no one is immune.  I'm quite sure you know how it goes, these sudden spring days give us a nostalgia, a screen door barefoot kind of summery happy sadness, something deep within the heart wants to go home again, but we don't really know where home is anymore.  Perhaps it never was real considering how much is being revealed in the present, perhaps it was only a lyric in a song you resonated with or an artwork that spoke to you in a way that touched you and you reminisced about something hazy that was just a dream on your way to partake in continuing the dream as if it was endless.  And then, BRRRRIIING BRRRRIIING, the cell woke you up with a scam call, an 800 number announcing BofA was here to help.  As if anyone needs that kind of help.  "Your social please."

I'm thinking about the recent events trying to separate my own conclusions from everyone else's observations.  The problem seems to be that so many windup clacking dental jaws make their definitive pronouncements on these situations which muddles us and it takes a lot of silence and a good amount of disgust before strange new worldie ideas come creepin' round.  In the midst of this jibber jabber, we forge on with our normal routines, so following my own advice, I make a point to remember fleeting thoughts no matter how absurd because after all, absurdity is rational on Planet Backwards.

To begin with, I labored for years upon years under one set of inviolate basics and as I matured, I took it for granted everyone else matured mentally and spiritually as well. Oh, ho ho.  I blew off the Clinton years as a single parent which takes up a lot of attention and time leaving one somewhat ill-equipped to peer into the mysterious direction our world is taking, so when 2001 came along, and the bullhorner kept harping on attacks, I was stunned.  Did he mean war?  Had we not grown beyond that?  What?  That's video game nonsense, comics, sandbox bullying.  He couldn't be serious! However, obviously we had already been transported and 2001 was the wake-up year we debarked as unwilling hostages, searched and tagged into Planet Backwards.  Was it AD, BC, or NWO time?  We can't know for sure, that's one of the chief hallmarks of this joint, nothing is what you are forced into pretending it is.  Let's take this BP hit for example, didn't they used to be that gas station outfit with Swiss-style greenie graphics?  On Planet Backwards, they are a ludicrously wealthy and universally powerful energy provider which appears to possess enough chutzpah to claw a hole in the tectonic plates holding our previous planet in place.  And you know what that means, well the plates kept a movin' and a shiftin' until all those tender, flaming tectonic platters overlapped on top of each other and BOOM, there went Japan. Tragedy of all tragedies, Japan proved itself just as ill-equipped as I was to peer into the direction the wonderful wheels of progress had taken them.  During all the years they should have known better, they were desperately balancing non-existent yen from a bone dry piggy bank rather than thinking about their rice paper villages despite the 1997 Kyoto Protocols on Climate Change.  You have to imagine those very intelligent people that studiously researched the issues got an education that may well have saved their once exquisite paradise given the opportunity to speak truthfully where it counts.  Somewhere there are some sad human beings, disoriented and displaced to shelters asking themselves why they took no for an answer.

Then I think about us, what an unholy mess was made of that sweet dream, guaranteed to get messier.  Where does it end, you'll notice it is not even paring off, not in the slightest.  Is everyone supposed to be homeless?  They say this year is a bad one for housing, the word is foreclosures this year will beat all the previous years.  Our economy is still in the toilet and the cowardly laureate only worsens the wound with a little altruistic interventionism which when you think about it, isn't this exactly what ignites the bubble bath?  Well, around the hallowed dinner tables where pundits are not allowed, a big fat dose of grisly war is just the right prescription for an ailing economy.  From Planet Backwards where war is peace, our telescopic star gazers hint stubborn Col. Qaddafi may have given the interventionists (ridiculous label alert) the gift of continuing consumptive prosperity.  Does slave labor in China make those gilded plastic coffins for export?

Maybe it would have been more clever to save this entry for April Fools' Day, but many bloggers actually write posts in advance, and with the never ending advent of technology one simply clicks the mouse and posts appear at some exact time and date of their choice.  I always wondered on every April 1st, who is the fool?

the Kids are alright

Amos keeps an eye on his family from the big house

Mother Scarlett watches too

The sheep are doing very well.  All the kids are behaving like human children, busy, curious, enchanted, hungry, frolicking, joyous.  They never just walk, they leap and hop.  These particular sheep really have it good on Planet Backwards.  If we just had wool coats and three-chambered stomachs, we could graze our hearts away too, never having to worry about anything other than staying dry in rainy weather.  Although, with their extreme super-coats, rain water bounces right off.  The day pen was moved much closer this morning and they are practically grazing at our door.  I moved my drawing table right up to the corner windows for some gesture drawings of these guys.  Gesture drawings are quick, (one minute is too long) rough pencil sketches for the purpose of loosening one's hand as well as improving the eye's understanding of anatomy so that you learn to see what IS and how it feels, rather than what you thought it was or surmised how it felt.  Any art school worth its tuition fees spends the entire foundation year on Nicolaides gesture drawing techniques with live, nude models.  This is known as Life Drawing 101.  If you don't get to do this, you are condemned to spend your years on Planet Earth doing scritchy scratch on ruled notebook paper.  Heh, I am a purist. not.

Allow me to close this post with sincere condolences, comfort and love to the Beageant family and to our brilliant and talented friends, Brian and Chickory, on their recent losses.  Joe and those adored Mothers (great women who raised great people) are free at last.  Praise Jah and His compassionate benevolence, when we have finally had enough He is there.