Circle of Hell

Two Foxes

I AM NO ANTHROPOLOGIST, but I have observed a particular social phenomenon too many times not to recognize it when I see it. I have been there, studied it, analyzed it, and classified it. My non-anthropological associate and misplaced daughter, Sophie has even given it a name. Like I and Sophie, you will know when you are there, but you will never know the anguish of being the subject/object of the Circle of Hell.

After learning about the Circle of Hell, I am certain you will want to avoid it at all costs. I can tell you how you can do just that. I have developed a simple strategy that actually works. Quite simply, you must never under any circumstances be the first to leave a social gathering. It's OK to be the second to depart, but be forewarned, you must not be the first.

If you are the first to leave, it will be your judgment day. The lights will slowly dim and eventually be replaced by the menacing flicker of candles licking the darkness. The chairs, which were arranged in amicable little groupings conducive to friendly chitchat while you were there, will start to rearrange on their own until they reconfigure into a circle. Their formerly pacific and lighthearted occupants will find their way back to them, but now they look just a little different, maybe a little haggard. The lips of these formerly gentle people are no longer turned up in smiles; their brows are harshly knit. Thus, the Circle of Hell convenes. What's that? You were the first to leave. Well, then, unfortunately for you, it is your judgment day.

Remember that charming, funny, easygoing young doctor with the buzz cut, grey tee shirt and cargo shorts.? He was nice, right? We-elllllll not after you le-eeeave. No way. No more Mr. Nice Guy now that you are absent. He is so on to you. He committed everything you told him to memory while he was studying your body language from head to toe. In your absence he is dissecting your conversation word by word, pointing out every discrepancy and comparing his noted inconsistencies with those noted by other guests. He told everyone that he was too polite to even mention the subject of your outfit and hair, but that if he were to mention it, it would not be favorable. Others were not that polite. How about that tall, slim pretty young lady with the wispy brown hair and dazzling white smile.

You remember her, the one wearing her pet fox around her neck and the ladybug jewelry? She was so friendly and interesting–lots of fun to talk to. I believe I overheard her saying to you "Let's do lunch." Well, after you left, she's having you for lunch, savoring you juicy tidbit by juicy tidbit. Hope you didn't give her too much information to work with. Didn't she tell you she thought it was charming and carefree of you to let your thong show? Suddenly, after you leave, she thinks it's not so charming at all and she's telling everyone in the throng you were wrong to show your thong.

That fashion plate who loved your shoes and asked if they were Manolos? Well, she is now asking "where in the world would someone find a pair of shoes that hideous–in some third world thrift shop for the fashion challenged?"

Do you understand? Fortunately, even you can evade the Circle of Hell. All you have to do is follow my advice and not be the first to leave. Then and only then, can you avoid being judged. It's as simple as that. You will still be little old you (and only you know what that actually is), but no one else will be able to judge you.

Warning: Do not be the first to leave this blog site. You'd be well advised to just keep going down the page reading all the posts. Repeat Warning: Do not be first to leave Depingo Ergo Sum. If you are, you will risk subjecting yourself to the virtual Circle of Hell. Yes, the Circle of Hell exists in cyberspace as well. You will probably have to stay online for the rest of your life and have meals brought in. You may as well do it right here on my blog. There are 67 posts to date and that should keep you busy for a while. You will not be missing out on anything in real life. I will continue observing life with a keen eye and will keep you posted. Thus you will not have to risk being called to account virtually and prematurely. So long as you stay on Depingo Ergo Sum, you will be safe–dum de dum daaaaa--from....... the.......virtual....... Circle of Hell.

Leave at your peril.

Paint on,

Depingo

To see more Depingo family portraits, click on the following links:

Bridezilla  

Mc LAUGHS

Jeez, We forgot the kids!

Spooky Housekeeping

One would have thought I had an ideal childhood. Though our home at 64 Standish was beautiful and comfortable in every physical way, it was not a peaceful environment for me. My parents were very busy, so I was on my own much of the time. I had to figure out a lot of things for myself. In addition to suffering the usual childhood traumas featuring imaginary villains, my brother and I noticed something spooky going on in the housekeeping department. Mrs. Foales, our housekeeper, and Faith, her household assistant, seemed to be turning our household into a battleground of good and evil.

The Angel: Faith took care of cleaning and organizing the house, the clothes and the children. Faith wasn't her birth name. It was given to her by Father Divine. She was one of his "angels" and lived in one of the several communes he called "Heaven." She lived in Heaven rent-free and was fed and clothed by Father Divine. If she hadn't had a job, he would have found one for her. In exchange, all she had to do was turn over her entire salary to him every week. I guess the thinking there was that you don't need money in heaven. He needed money, though, to maintain his extravagant life style. I don't think he was as bad as the press made him out to be. He actually was interested in civil rights and did help a lot of people to overcome poverty. Even if he was helping himself to his angels' incomes, he at least was providing them with services, religious inspiration, a place to live, clothes and food.

Faith was a delightful, happy and contented person who took very good care of us. She quietly hummed cheerful hymns to herself while doing her work. I was fascinated by the way she looked because I had never seen clothes like the ones she wore. Father Divine apparently picked them out for her and all his other angels at thrift and second-hand stores. Her outfits may have been mismatched, but they were always clean, well pressed and colorful. The clothes she wore made her look like a clown of sorts. That was OK–I loved clowns and was happy to have a clown in the house. Once she bent over and I could see that she was wearing red bloomers with yellow polka dots all over them. I thought that was hysterical and burst out laughing. Faith admonished me, saying that I should not laugh at other people because I might hurt their feelings and God would be disappointed in me. I wasn't sure if she meant the God or Father Divine, but I wasn't taking any chances. I never made fun of another person's clothing ever again.

Once when my mother was out, Faith made my little brother Tommy two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I could tell that she was not that familiar with food preparation or sandwiches, because this is how she constructed it: bread, peanut butter, jelly; on top of that bread, peanut butter, jelly, on top of that, bread, peanut butter, jelly and on top of that bread, peanut butter, jelly. Poor Tommy couldn't even fit his tiny mouth around it. Everybody loved Faith and we, as kids, thought the sun rose and set around her.

The Witch: Mrs. Foales lived with us. She managed the household, supervised Faith, ordered the food and cooked meals. She was as colorless in her attire--gray dress, pearls and a white apron--as Faith was colorful. When she first came to the house I was very excited because my father told me she was from England and had worked as a baker in the Queen's confectionery kitchen. Even at a young age, I understood the implications of this--we would have great desserts! "Great hire," I thought. If she could make desserts that were good enough for the Queen of England, they were going to be good enough for me. However, all of her deserts were flops; her cakes never rose. Nor did she in my estimation. She explained that in the Queen's kitchen they used the metric system for measuring ingredients and she was confused by our American system of measure. There went that sweet dream. Only years later did I find out that England used ounces and pounds, just like we did. Also, her accent sounded funny. I used to imitate her much to her dismay by saying, "Blah, blaaaah, blah, blaaaah, blah, bla bla blaaaah." Try it, it sounds just like an English accent.

I frequently overheard Mrs. Folds doing something that I thought was really scary. She would lock herself in the bathroom repeatedly, sometimes for as long as half an hour and it sounded like all Hades was breaking loose in there. There were thumps and thuds and scraping sounds. But more frightening than that, her voice changed from that cheery little high–pitched English blah blaaah to a rough growl that might as well have belonged to Beelzebub, the Prince of Demons. Also the words didn't sound like any I had ever heard before. Might she have been speaking in tongues? When she emerged from the bathroom, she was flushed, sweaty and slightly disheveled.

I couldn't tell my parents about this, because I had already complained about the man with long, hairy, elastic arms and sharp fangs who lived under my bed and would try to hook me with his rubber arms and snap me under my bed, never to be seen again. This necessitated my jumping into bed from as far away as possible in order to avoid being ensnared and imprisoned. I might add that even when I jumped into bed I still was not entirely safe. As soon as I landed, the gathering of Golden Ladies convened. They would float out of the bathroom, giggling nastily with their high heels clicking down on the wood floor as they approached my room to get me. They made quite a racket bumping and stumbling against the long corridor wall and clicking their heels. I had never actually seen them, but somehow I knew they were beautiful, glowing evil specters with long golden hair streaming down their backs over their shimmering, diaphanous gowns. What particular brand of punishment they had in store for me, mercifully I never learned because just as the first one reached my door I woke up screaming. I complained to my parents about the Golden ladies, as well as the hairy, long-armed creep under my bed, every night.

In fear of losing my credibility with my parents altogether, I decided to keep my observations of Mrs. Foales to myself. Between Mrs. Foales and Faith, I believed that I was living in the midst of the classic battle between good and evil. After much contemplation, I was not that worried. I figured out–or at least hoped very much–that Faith's cheerful hymnal humming would overcome whatever evil Mrs. Foales was perpetrating in the bathroom. At a minimum, I hoped that the household would at least hold its own, remaining neither good nor evil but at least neutral. With that in mind, I kept my mouth shut and continued on with my daily life and activities. But I made sure I stuck very close to Faith.

Postscript: I lived at that Zoroastrian battleground of 64 Standish until I went away to college and then on to my own apartment in New York City. Mrs. Foales and Faith stayed in the house until my father passed away and remained there for about six months afterward to look after the house, receive real estate brokers and dispose of the furniture, furnishings. and clothing that remained. My brother, sister and I had left the house many years earlier, to conduct our battles elsewhere, and my mother was also gone. After the house was sold, I wanted to look at it just one more time, so I returned to my childhood home.

As I entered, I remembered how I had worried about everything as a child. I thought that I probably misremembered and misconstrued Mrs. Foales' nefarious bathroom activities. However, when I walked through the house, what I saw sent a chill up my spine.

Spooky housekeeping: The whole house was set up as if one person still dwelled there. All the furniture, furnishings and clothes had been removed, save for one of each item. In my parents bedroom, one suit, shirt and tie, hung in the closet with one brilliantly shined pair of shoes on the floor, and in the one bedside table that had been left was one set of underwear and one pair of socks. One of the twin beds remained and was made up with pressed linens and blankets. My father's pajamas and dressing gown were laid out on top and his slippers lay at the foot of the bed. In the infamous bathroom, there was one toothbrush, one bar of soap one towel and one washcloth. Strangest of all, in the dining room, the large dining table was gone but there was one place setting with a perfectly pressed napkin on our card table.

Outrageous! Dr. McLaughlin would never eat at the card table.

Mc LAUGHS - Politically Correct Science

No I will not because I respect the protozoa's right to privacy!

Binx Speaks

Some years ago, for an undergraduate class in cinematic set design I took at Parsons, I had to give an oral presentation to my fellow students. My professor was the Director of the Museum of the Moving Image. However, it really was not I who spoke. The words came from my mouth and sounded like me, but they were Binx's.

I was in such a panic that you would have thought I didn't speak the English language. My assignment was to analyze Hitchcock's sets to see how they supported his cinematic concepts. Once again, I, a humble artist, was in over my head and Binx bailed me out. He told me to come over to his apartment and said we would work on it together. I thought this would involve a lot of pedantic research. However, when I got there, we didn't go to his library. We went to his TV. Binx had three Hitchcock movies and a bottle of chilled wine ready. What a lovely way to prepare a talk!

The following are my, er...that is...Binx's, talking notes. He pointed them out and I wrote them down while we watched the movies together. All the points he made were from his head, not from any book. When we finished, I asked him how on earth he knew so much about Hitchcock. He modestly said, "I wrote an encyclopedia article about him."

Talking notes: When viewing Shadow of a Doubt, Binx made sure I noted the quote, "If you rip the fronts off pretty little houses, you find swine." That is important. In that and other movies Hitchcock made in the forties and fifties, that's exactly what he was doing. He placed the actors in, if not pretty, at least everyday, sets–ones which are so ordinary that we get comfortable and never expect that horror could happen anywhere within miles of such places, let alone inside of them. In films, Binx explained, the audience doesn't expect anything awful to happen in pretty, brightly lit frames. Hitchcock gives the viewer a false sense of security because of the hominess and familiarity of his sets. In Shadow of a Doubt, we don't expect a psychotic killer in that pretty all-American Thornton Wilderesque town of Santa Rosa. And in North By Northwest, in such a serene setting as a wheat field, we don't expect Carry Grant to be pursued by an airplane.

In Psycho, made in the late fifties, we see Hitchcock masterfully toying with our expectations through set design. Psycho was a low budget film made with a TV crew. It is different from his earlier movies in that it was meant to be shocking. He shot it in black and white because he thought seeing blood in color would be too shocking for the audience. His earlier movies were more of the suspense or thriller genre. It is rumored that he was jealous of the attention that Henri-Georges Clouzot's Diabolique was getting, so he made Psycho.

Sets: The architecture is presented with a strong feeling for the ways it restricts and regulates human movements. Hitchcock uses the architecture expressionistically, as does Douglas Sirk. Hitchcock's film architecture expresses ideas that do not depend on the architectural functions. He uses architecture more as a tool. For instance, the architecture in Psycho traps Marion. The small spaces through which she continually moves are a metaphor for her horrible fate. Her movement illustrates the inevitability of that fate. Also, the claustrophobic sets are so small that she seems enclosed, trapped, and unable to escape.

There are two different, contrasting kind of sets--horizontal and vertical. The Bates Motel and most of the other sets are horizontal and the Hollywood gothic mansion, home of Norman and his mother, is vertical--looming above it all. Hitchcock uses this contrast to misdirect our expectations. Again, we don't expect the horror to happen in the ordinary, sterile, well-lit Bates Motel. Once he shows us the gothic mansion, we are manipulated into thinking that's where the horror is going to take place.

The Victorian house is fully furnished. Again, with this densely cluttered set, Hitchcock is deliberately trying to misdirect us into thinking this is where the horror happens. The Bates Motel bathroom where Marion's murder actually does take place is bright and sparse in comparison. There is a jokey foreshadowing of this scene in the beginning of the film as Marion is shown in her own bedroom with a brightly lit bathroom in the background. Also, the viewing of the bathroom in this scene indicates that Marion is a transgressor, which we know her to be, namely an adulterer and a thief. "Good" women were not shown in the context of a bathroom in the 1950's.

Hitchcock carefully selected forties-style furniture for the contemporary sets even though this movie opened in the late fifties. That's the kind of furniture most people had in their home at that time. When styles changed into the kidney-shaped tables and such of the fifties, people didn't rush out to buy them. Most of America still had forties furniture in their homes. If Hitchcock had used fifties furniture in the sets, they would have lost the ordinary everyday quality that he was seeking.

Motifs: Throughout the set decor, there are recurring visual motifs: windows, mirrors, eyes, vanishing point perspective and vortexes.

Windows: Usually the windows are closed and Marion is being viewed by the audience as voyeurs. (Voyeurism is another recurring theme in Hitchcock's movies, e.g. Rear Window.) Initially, we are viewing Marion through the windows of the small motel room of her tryst. Then we are viewing her through the car windows, emphasizing that she is in a small place–like a cage–from which she cannot escape. Finally, we view her through a peephole, with Norman Bates simultaneously doing the same.

Mirrors: The mirrors in the interior sets deny the "reality" of architectural space in order to comment on the characters and their helplessness. The mirrors in almost every scene are analogous to eyes. In Norman's mother's room there is a double mirror which makes us anticipate another murder. (my thought follows) Also, I believe it is a metaphor for the split in Norman's personality.

Eyes: Hitchcock told Francois Truffaut that in an earlier movie he had attempted to create the image of a pair of eyes shifting back and forth by having two men in the back of a paddy wagon looking out the two back windows. He succeeds in doing this in Psycho in a different, more fascinating way. The windows of the vertical set of the highly organic Victorian house are like eyes and Norman's mother (very small because she is seen from a distance as she walks back and forth in front of the windows) becomes the pupils. The pupils (Norman's mother) seem as if they are shifting because she is pacing back and forth. That was my absolute favorite visual.

Vanishing point perspective: In any real tragedy, which Psycho is, there is a sense of inevitability. Hitchcock utilizes all the visual motifs discussed here to support the concept of inevitability. But we sense it unmistakably through use of vanishing point perspective. In the beginning of the film there are vanishing points in the artwork on the walls which frame (trap) Marion in her office. Then we see the highways on which she travels to her death as vanishing point perspective. We see it again reflected in the state troopers' sunglasses (which are also mirrors). These recurring pin-point perspectives are graphic indicators that she is on a straight-line, no-detour journey to her horrible fate. There is no way out for her. She can only go in one direction. In addition, the rearview mirror in the car reinforces this idea by reflecting the vanishing point of the highway, so we see it twice. This is Hitchcock's typical frame-within-frame approach of driving a concept home. Douglas Sirk used this approach as well.

Vortexes: The vortex appears at least three times - first as a flushing toilet, followed by water and then water mixed with blood draining in the shower drain and finally as Miriam's car becomes mired and is
pulled down into the marsh.

Hitchcock was insistent on having the toilet visible in the movie. In addition to the vortex it created, it is so mundane, it fools the audience into thinking nothing unpropitious could happen in the presence of something so ordinary. (The next thought is my second contribution to my presentation.) In fact, Marcel Duchamp had already rendered the toilet harmless when he presented the urinal along with other ready-mades as art. How scary is art? And how about the shower? They're pretty innocuous too, aren't they? If you really want to know how successful Hitchcock was at set design, just ask anyone who saw the film how comfortable he or she was taking a shower after seeing Psycho. And speaking of showers, I have to go to bed right now–as is–because there's no way I'm going to get into the shower in my brightly-lit, sparse bathroom so soon after writing this post. No way.

Oh, I forgot to mention that Goer was actually one of my classmates. Following the conclusion of my presentation, Goer said in front of the whole class that my presentation was "fatuous and extremely simplistic." Our professor, the museum director, disagreed and said that he was quite impressed with the originality of my ideas. When he asked what sources I had consulted, I simply replied,

"Binx has spoken."

All My Children

Probably nothing this deplorable has ever happened to you (and I hope it never does), but it did happen to me.

One day my entire family got killed violently and in one fell swoop. It was death in a most horrible way–by exsanguination. A vicious, untrustworthy editor stuck a knife in the back of every one of my children while I, their beloved mother, had to sit by impotently in a refined, business-like manner and watch the ink drain out of their tiny bodies until they turned white and expired.

Three months before the massacre, I had been hired to create my little family by this very same editor. She said sweetly they would appear weekly for a year in a four-panel cartoon strip in the newsletter of a renowned international law firm. I said, "Shouldn't we have a contract?" She replied, "No, a handshake is good enough for me." So we shook on it. Then she brazenly paid me to conceive them. I didn't like the concept of exchanging money for life. But knew that it meant that my children would have a good life, be comfortable and get to travel all over the world. Even if this evil editor did own them, I would still be their birth mother and in control of their weekly activities. So, I left with the check, set about my creative work and became pregnant immediately. Labor was not easy. I was paid for 35 hours of creative labor, but it took more like 355 hours to create my children and their strip. No matter, a mother loves her children, however difficult and long the labor.

At this writing, my drained, pale children have been living for some years (if you can call it that) in a storage locker in my basement. Sometimes, when I am down there storing a painting, I can hear their cries and whispers. They are barely audible (remember, they had all the ink sucked out of them) but they are there. If I listen carefully, I can make out the words and hear them reminiscing about their heyday--their 15 minutes of fame--in the newsletter. "Ah, those were the days," I hear them whisper amongst themselves. Their vitality, adventure, graphic beauty and moxie were unmatched.

I loved my children and still do. My favorite is Attorneyman, the protagonist; he had beautiful, golden #2 Mongol pencils for hands; he was sharp. Let's say about Handria, what she lacked in body (her body was comprised of just a hand and an arm) she made up for in organizational skills. Gavella was born to be a judge. She got her name because she was shaped like a gavel. Using the top of her gavel-head she made legal points with a thunderous whack. But she only hammered for justice–either that or trying to knock some sense into Attorneyman's head. Loose Ends was my problem child, but I loved him too. He was very smart but couldn't apply himself--too many loose ends. He also interfered with others when they wanted to get something done by entangling them in his own loose ends. There were many other children, too numerous to recount, but I loved the first-born four the best.

My children were not born of a natural, nor even a Caesarian, birth. They were born of the pen. Although they are comprised of ink and paper, they are just as rewarding as if they were flesh and blood. Ink and blood are pretty much the same anyway. A difference in color and consistency maybe, but both support life.

My children were sophisticated, classy, clever and funny–just what the editor wanted. They enjoyed providing their rather humorless lawyer-readers with a laugh or two on Fridays after their very boring week of hostile takeovers, CMO's and REITS. My children were drawn into amusing situations weekly, some of which poked gentle fun at lawyers and judges. Actually, it was Attorneyman, not Loose Ends (as I would have thought) who got the strip and all my children killed when he referred to a judge as "a hypoglycemic donut dunker" who wasn't sophisticated enough to understand his legendary legal legerdemain. Apparently, some of my insecure, puerile lawyer-readers thought that they would lose all their court cases if their firm newsletter referred to judges as hypoglycemic donut dunkers. Did they think that judges were that sour?

I did what any mother in the same situation would do. I laid my children to rest in a basement storage locker, got hysterical, drank 52 white wine spritzers and slept for an entire weekend. Then I went to that lying, cheating editor's office and reminded her that we had a handshake deal that my children were hired for a year. She replied, "Do you have it in writing?"

Potscript: The international law firm in question left its posh quarters in one of the most prestigious office buildings in Manhattan, and is now conducting business in a sleazy, dark building on Sixth Avenue. Several of its lawyers are serving time in prison for various frauds and Ponzi schemes. The editor who betrayed my family lost her job and relocated to Saudi Arabia, where she had both her hands cut off as punishment for the many deceitful handshake deals she perpetrated in that country. Attorneyman and the kids are happy to be out of the basement storage locker and living with their Mom in her studio again. They are thrilled to be making a comeback on Depingo Ergo Sum, which by the way has readers from twenty countries, which is 15 more than the countries in which the law firm had offices. Soon Attorneyman will be made into a major motion picture with Brad Pitt playing the lead role. Angelina is hoping that Brad doesn't fall for Handria, who is even taller, slimmer and prettier than she. Mother is happily blogging, painting and gardening at Foxglove Cottage and planning to paint formal portraits of all her children very soon.

Mc LAUGHS

Modigliani finds the perfect model.

The Dilettante Lifeguard

A dilettante lifeguard named Tom admired
a pretty blond bather he really desired.
He saw with a grin, she was thin as a pin
but did not notice the circling fin.

~~~

Splashes and wakes of crimson transpired.
Tom blew his whistle--loud! and got wired.
He had to jump in and fight with the fin
Who swam off with the girl and ate her for din.

~~~

It troubled Tom his rep might be mired
He schemed and hoped he wouldn't be fired.
Encountering crying from her next of kin
He placated them....."at least I jumped in!"

Belle of the Ball, Shoe and Bra

PART TWO

Several other unfortunate incidents made me consider, with angst-ridden guilt, returning my willful pup to her North Carolina kennel. Bella, as if reading my mind, turned nice immediately. She became obedient, polite, calm, and devoted overnight. Night turned into day. Puppy love resumed.

YOUNG ADULT: She has replaced nips and bites with kisses. The word "kiss" is one of her 200 word-vocabulary favorites and she kisses on command. We never intended to show Bella, but don't tell her that. Her presence and commanding strut are far more seductive than any supermodel's.

Previously on walks she would tug on her leash while simultaneously tripping me and shredding my trousers. Now my little champ obediently heels all along the length of the Carl Schurz Park promenade. Her elegant gait, soulful eyes, alert erect head, stretched out tail , floppy golden ears and feathers gently blowing in the wind are an arresting sight. Everybody stops to admire her. She looks up at me if she wants to say hello to them. I give her permission to "break" the "heel" and she greets them enthusiastically. She looks at me again seeking permission to kiss them.

She has replaced her systematic destruction of shoes and underwear with careful and thoughtful management of these items. At night she secretes them in her den (which is under our bed). There they are safeguarded with her own most treasured possession, her tennis ball. In the morning she returns them to us. In addition, she has elevated herself from cat bad-deed instigator to cat monitor. If Blossom, our cat, starts manicuring her nails on our furniture or rugs, Bella officiously chases her away.

Bella has also taken responsibility for guarding the house. Foxglove Cottage is secluded and surrounded by woods and lake. Whenever anyone approaches the house via the long steep stone steps, Bella rushes the intruder and actually holds him at bay on the stairs, barking, growling and lunging. She has never hurt anyone but our visitors don't know that and are afraid to move. The only way she will let the visitor pass is if I put my hand on their shoulder or shake hands with them. It is our "safe" gesture. I did not teach her that. Indeed, she taught it to me.

SENIOR: Bella is sweeter and more affectionate than ever. Though she is quite lame, she keeps up with her self-assigned work. She does not have as acute a sense of order as she once did, so now we might find our socks, shoes or underwear in a neighbor's house or outside or not at all. Also, when she brings them to us now, they might be mismatched. Still, she guards the house when she is not in too deep a slumber to hear suspicious noises. She can no longer make it up the stone stairs without great difficulty. However, she now sits under an old three-trunk birch tree with a perfect view of the stairs. She will bark to alert me whenever she sees a car or person approaching. She still keeps the squirrels in line. She also swims many times every day, rolling in the grass to dry herself before returning to her post under the tree.

Now that it is spring, when I brush her, I leave the removed tufts of her hair on the lawn so birds can use them for building their nests. While reaching for my garden hose today, I startled a bird who was busy making her nest in a nook between our cottage's roof and drain pipe. I was startled as well. She flew down and landed on a branch about an inch away from my nose. There we stood beak to nose. Neither of us budged. It was among the prettiest sights I have ever seen. In her beak she had a bundle of Bella's hair, which she was using in the construction of her nest. It was also the prettiest sentiment. Bella has made a complete turnabout. In her dotage she has gone from birdivore to bird-adore -- benefactor of birds.

Belle of the Ball, Shoe and Bra

The best looking, sweetest creature I know is Bella, my yellow Labrador Retriever. Please note I did not say "best behaved."

Bella is her "call" name. Her full registered name is Top Honors Belle of the Ball. She is canine royalty–a princess sired by BIS BISS Am Can CH Boradors Alligator Shoes JH, officially designated as the no. 1 Lab in the US for 2000. Her mother, Quintessential Caper, though not a champion herself, has an elegant bearing, an uncommonly pretty face and a pedigree boasting five generations of champions. We had to request Bella's adoption before she was born because puppies with pedigrees like Bella's go very quickly. Top Honors Kennel, where she was born, is in North Carolina, so we couldn't even see Bella other than in photographs for eight weeks because she needed to be with Caper. Her breeder told us that she matched Bella with us because she was fearless. The breeder, or " the food lady," as she was known to the pups, said Bella's littermates were too skittish to live in New York.

When finally weaned, the breeder put Bella in a crate and shipped her to New York. The princess flew cargo. However, it was special cargo (for princesses). The food lady trained Bella for her solo flight. She practiced with Bella by placing her in the crate and leaving her in it for increasingly longer periods so that she would not be traumatized when it actually happened. She needn't have done even this though. Bella is truly not afraid of anything.

Bella flew up to New York all by herself. I picked her up at Kennedy Airport's special cargo area. When I opened her crate, she came galloping out and leaped into my arms. Thirteen pounds of puppy kissed me all over with her long, wet, soft pink tongue. White as snow, she looked like a fur-covered basketball. She was soft and sleek. In fact, she looked more like a baby seal than a puppy. She had no doggy odor. Her scent was fresh as spring air, except for her oversized paws which smelled exactly like Fritos. It was puppy love at first sight. She could not stop kissing and nuzzling me the entire ride home from JFK. And that was the last time she was nice to me for the next two years.

PUPPYHOOD: Our relationship quickly deteriorated from love at first sight to love at first bite. After she rested from her long journey, Bella immediately set about trying to establish dominance over her new litter mate--me. She loved "play" fighting with me. That's how puppies entertain themselves in the litter. The only trouble was that I have a much softer hide than her original littermates and therefore sustained multiple wounds about my feet, ankles, hands, forearms and face from her sharp little puppy teeth–not to mention torn clothing and broken eyeglasses. She probably thought she was pretty scary because I never bit back.

Bella also liked roughhousing. Like Tina Turner singing "Proud Mary," Bella didn't do anything nice and easy, she did things nice and rough. She galloped around, crashing into things and breaking them. She chewed everything she came upon--doors, furniture, shoes (Pradas were her favorites because the leather was deliciously soft.) She instructed my cat on shredding upholstery and rugs more efficiently.

I was quite smitten with her anyway and brought her with me everywhere, sometimes with disastrous results. On weekends away, even though by this time she was fully house trained, Bella invariably chose to conduct her business inside our host's house. One weekend she had so many in-house "accidents" that when Bella "woofed" to go inside, our host asked, "Why does she want to go inside? Does she need to relieve herself?" When visiting other friends, Bella reduced their children to tears by systematically puncturing and deflating every one of their pool floats and toys. As if that were not enough, she terrorized their dog, a hyperactive and nervous terrier who spent the entire weekend in a kitchen cabinet, hiding from Bella.

I hired a personal trainer for Bella and enrolled her in canine charm school. She was an excellent student learning all of her lessons quickly and performing them perfectly, with a "ho-hum-big-deal- give-me-the-reward look" on her face. When she finished her performance, all canine pandemonium broke loose. A cacophony of growls, barks, snorts, and fang-bearing lunges from Bella's classmates accompanied us back to our seat. Unbeknownst to me, Bella had been flashing intimidating looks at her classmates on the sly as we passed by. When the trainer investigated, Bella put on her sweet, innocent "who me" face. Though an excellent student, Bella did not change her attitude and after a while we were not invited back to classes.

I could live with most of Bella's transgressions, but one day she crossed the line. I could see that she had a small live bird in her mouth. Labs have "soft" mouths, so I knew the bird would be all right if I could extract it. I approached Bella in a casual manner with a dog cookie in my hand and offered a trade. Bella sensed what I had in mind and, rather than relinquishing the bird, she simply swallowed it whole. Then she demanded the cookie.

TO BE CONTINUED

Postcard from the Sea of Life - Windy City

Like Janus,
the wind is two-faced
coaxing teardrops from my eyes
then gently drying them.
Windswept whitecaps on the lake
energize me
and refresh my spirit.

The Janus-faced wind fiercely
breaks my lilac limbs
and shatters my umbrella,
my protection.
Gnarled spokes point at the wind
accusingly.

Swallows defy the wind.
They shake their tiny feathers in its windy face
and pierce it with their beaks,
circling around its blustery gusts
engaging in demented dance.

Might I defy the wind?
No, I will acquire and sell it–
Twenty-five cents a blow.
The wind is cheap.
The wind is someone you know.

Killing the Comment

Don't let the comments get you down.

An acquaintance of mine, Comment, actually said to me, "No gallery has ever expressed any interest in you." This dampened my eyes as well as my spirit because, generally, Comment is quite supportive. It made me feel like never approaching another gallery ever again. Worse than that, for a while I did not even feel like painting.

So that I wouldn't forget those intentionally discouraging words, I hand-printed them on a paper and displayed them on my bulletin board. I frequently do that with remarks that hurt or baffle me. That way the comment cannot be denied. Also, I can readily recall it and analyze it for truth and accuracy. Usually, this way I can kill the comment.

My analysis of the statement, "No gallery has ever expressed any interest in you": Presently I am being considered for two prestigious and well known galleries for emerging artists -- one in New York and one in Connecticut. The one in New York has my digital portfolio. I guess there is a case for their not expressing any interest in me in that I have not heard from them yet. Upon submission, though, they told me that it would take a long time to get back to me because they get many submissions and have to review them all. On the other hand, you could say that they have not rejected me either and for the sake of argument that could be construed as interest.

The assistant curator of the Connecticut gallery emailed me after receiving my portfolio to let me know that their gallery schedule is filled up for this year, but said he will contact me with dates for a showing of my work for next year. Additionally, he provided me with an insightful critique of my work, let me know which of my paintings he preferred and suggested that I take my current work in that direction. I thought that showed a great deal of interest. Because his input strengthens my work, and so he will remember me, as I complete new paintings, I email the images to him. Comment referred to my keeping in touch like this as pestering the assistant curator.

Over the weekend, I delivered paintings to a local show. Despite the discussion that occurred initially regarding raw edges on my paintings, I thought my work was enthusiastically accepted. The show chair came over while I was registering. She said she thought the pieces were quite accomplished and that she agreed with my decision in not framing them. This I believe showed interest and was very encouraging.

A high-end event planner and florist in New York has given me his prominent storefront window to use as my own personal gallery because he likes my paintings and believes they will enhance his shop. This shows interest also.

My final comment on Comment's comment?...No comment, other than... back to work for me and...

I killed the comment.

Mc LAUGHS

They're nice, but I prefer something a little more representational.

Mc LAUGHS

First I was into existentialism; then transcendental meditation; then zen. Now I'm into bistros.

Body and Soul

I recently painted my best friend, Kenneth Feldman, who I call Feldy. At the first session: I sit him down in a possible pose, studying intently every feature of his face, body and posture. I take into account all of this physiognomy and store the information in my brain. But now I must mix it with the intangible "patina" of Feldy, such as his personality, wit, intelligence, background–indeed, his soul. If a painter attempts to portray a person by considering only the body without taking into account the soul, she is no different than a house painter.

While we are deciding on the right pose, Feldy mugs. He pulls his lapel, which sports a boutonniere, up to his nose and smells the flower. I love this pose and and tell him that this is the way I want to paint him. Curiously, Feldy says "Please don't paint me that way. I'll look too fey." I am not sure what he means, but choose another pose. Even though he is a delightfully lighthearted and amusing model , I choose to show his more serious side.

In my mind I have blended his "patina" with his physiognomy, so I feel I am ready to block in the paint on my canvas. This involves exploring the shapes of his face and body and constructing them with paint, running my brushes up, around and over the various facial forms to "flesh out" the paint rough. I round out the cheekbones and forehead, I build up the volume for his nose and lips, and I darken around his eye sockets so they will appear sunken–on a lower plane than the rest of his face.

I continue the block-out of all of Feldy - his neck, shoulders, torso, pelvis, legs, right down to his feet. All these anatomical parts are merely shapes. But through my exploration and manipulation of them I know that I will reveal Feldy's soul. His essence, not just his form, will be reflected in his portrait.

Feldy patiently subjects his body and being to my artist's gaze. The work on the paint rough progresses smoothly and quickly. For me, the purpose of a rough is simply to get the paint onto the canvas. At this point I do not concern myself with any likeness these embryonic paint splashes might have to my model. However, in this instance I am struck by the remarkable resemblance between the painting and Feldy.

After that first day, I could not work on the painting for ten months. Sadly, almost immediately after, Feldy was diagnosed with late-stage melanoma. I did try to help his body though, trying to restore or at least maintain what was left of his health, by escorting him to and from doctors, keeping him company while he was being treated, transporting him to and visiting with him in hospitals, bringing him meals, newspapers and clothing.

On one occasion, I even bathed him when a nurse was not available. I was struck by the similarity between running a warm washcloth over his physical face and running a brush over his painted face. Toward the end, Feldy had to be moved to a hospice. While he was there, I realized that I had been so concerned with his body that I had forgotten the importance of his soul. Sadly, I then had to watch his soul drain out of his body bit by bit until it was gone.

A rabbi told me that I shouldn't feel so sad about death. It is not the end. Our bodies are just temporary homes for our souls. Therefore, we should view our bodies as just short-term rentals. He assured me that the spirit of Feldy lived on.

Soon after the funeral I got back to finishing the painting. Although I usually use multiple layers of paint when finishing a painting, Feldy's required very little finish because the rough was so "right." While working on it, I remembered that Feldy didn't want me to use the pose with him smelling his boutonniere because it made him look too "fey." I finally looked the word up in a dictionary and learned that the first definition given is: "chiefly Scottish: fated to die, doomed; marked by a foreboding of death or calamity."

Still, the spirit of Feldy lives on.

Laughing Lacunae

Some years ago, I briefly worked as the personal assistant to Dr. Nabil Elaraby, the Egyptian Ambassador to the United Nations. I was quite surprised that I got hired for the position because at the time I had no office skills and didn't even know how to use a computer. My most recent experience had been as a graduate student in art at NYU.

During my interview, I cagily explained to the Egyptian Mission's Minister Plenipotentiary (all the time wondering to myself "What on earth is a Minister Plenipotentiary"?) that I wasn't familiar with the Mission's computer system. Actually, I wasn't familiar with any computer system. Madame Minister Plenipotentiary replied that this would not be a problem because the Ambassador had many administrative assistants to do that sort of work. She added that he also had six secretaries. She further explained that the Ambassador wanted to seem forward-thinking and that he thought having an American, English-speaking personal assistant would help him in that endeavor.

The Minister Plenipotentiary told me that my principal duties would be to maintain the Ambassador's social calendar and field phone calls (which was fun because I got to talk with politicos and dictators such as Madeleine Albright, Hosni Mubarak and Joseph Wilson. I once suggested to Egyptian President Mubarak that he speak more slowly on the phone because I was American and couldn't grasp what he was saying at such a fast clip. He replied in heavily accented English,"You're American? Noooooo kidding." It was thrilling for me to have the President of Egypt speak American slang to me. It made me feel that we were on intimate terms.

The Ambassador was fond of saying that I filled various lacunae in the Mission. Perhaps the two lacunae I filled best were as mollifier and editor. On occasions when protesting groups showed up at the Mission demanding to see Ambassador Elaraby, the Ambassador would calmly stroll into my office, lean in and sweetly say, "Would you mind going down there and talking to them. I'm kinda busy right now." Like throwing a lamb to the lions, I thought. At first I was scared, but I soon discovered it was a brilliant strategy. When the angry demonstrators saw me instead of the Ambassador, it totally disarmed them. They had no beef with a mild-mannered, American girl with no political agenda. They thanked me and handed me a petition to deliver to the Ambassador. I guess that made me a force for world peace.

The ambassador frequently asked me to edit his Egyptian secretaries' correspondence, since English was their second language. The secretaries wrote many letters and generally delivered them personally. They were all extremely tall and powerful-looking men. I would go so far as to say intimidating. They always dressed in dark blue or black suits with long black topcoats and never smiled. When the Ambassador ventured out from the Mission, they formed a human barricade around him. Because I didn't want them to look like thugs when delivering their correspondence, I usually changed phrases like "Hand over the money" to "Kindly make arrangements to deliver the appropriate funds."

One day the Ambassador asked that I take a stack of letters to the fax room and have them sent to the Heads of State of all the members of the Organization of African Unity. The Ambassador was running for an office in that international group and was requesting their support. The fax room had five older Egyptian gentlemen in it, all of whom were sitting on a sofa chatting, drinking black coffee and smoking. I gave the letters to one of them and explained that it was a priority. Shortly after, I returned to my office to find that the letters had been returned to me with a note reading "Too busy. Fax you." (signed) Mr. Faisal." I returned to the fax room with the letters and saw the same group lounging on the sofa, still chatting, drinking coffee and smoking. I told them that I could see very well that they were not particularly busy. Snickering, one of them told me they were too busy indeed–too busy to work for a girl. The others all laughed, which I took to mean they concurred.

On a prior occasion, Abdelrazik, the office manager, had told me that in Egypt toilet paper was paid for by the user, so I would have to start paying for mine. Otherwise he would stop supplying it to my bathroom. I drew the line at paying for toilet paper, but knew that this new incident necessitated my doing the faxing myself. I am not a work snob and I am generally quite willing do anything to get a job done. However, I had never faxed before and was quite sure I wasn't going to get any tips from the professional faxers lounging around. On the other hand, I thought it was pretty simple: insert document, dial phone number, press start button.

Shortly after, I started getting phone queries from various African nations asking why the Egyptian Ambassador had sent them blank pieces of paper. I guess I didn't know which side was up. I pictured all the blank pieces of paper laughing at me---so many laughing lacunae--a veritable pad of paper mockers--as they exited fax machines all over Africa. First, I cried. Then I cried for my boyfriend. He can do anything, even fax. Why do you think I married him? He said it was difficult to explain how to fax over the phone but he had a plan. I was to smuggle the letters out of the Mission by hiding them beneath my trenchcoat. To do this, I had to pass by armed security guards at the door and the New York City police officers who were stationed at a security kiosk right across the street with a file folder full of letters secreted on my person.

As planned, my boyfriend met me on the corner. Just 50 feet away from the police and guards, I surreptitiously "handed over" the papers to him. My hero took them to his office, faxed them, and then returned to the Mission, meeting me outside in the rain to return the papers to me, whereupon I smuggled them back into the Mission. To complicate matters, during this transaction, the Ambassador, en route to the UN, walked out of the Mission flanked and followed by his tall, darkly-clad, non-smiling secretaries. "Who are those guys?" asked my boyfriend. I informed him, "the Ambassador's secretaries." To which my boyfriend, handing over the letters from under his coat, replied, "They're not secretaries, they're packing heat!" Somehow, I managed to smuggle the letters back into the mission without being apprehended.

A few months later, Abdelrazik came to my office and said, "OK, you can go home now." I said, "Why, is it an Egyptian holiday?" He said, "No. Ambassador very fond of you, but he go back to Egypt. You go home now and don't come back." So I did–and I didn't.

Mc LAUGHS

************The Flying Wallendas relaxing at home!************

Phantom Income .... or?

When I was working as an illustrator, one of my positions was as staff illustrator for the weekly newsletter of a major international law firm. At the same time, I was also working on a freelance basis as an illustrator for the New York Law Journal, a daily newspaper. Between the two jobs, I had to produce a minimum of four legal-themed drawings every week. Sometimes I did not receive an assignment until the day before the drawing was due. This necessitated many all–nighters to produce them. Generally, they were not easy concepts to draw either. (How I envied those other artists who got to illustrate puppies, flowers, or sailboats.)

One assignment was to illustrate a story on "phantom income." As in many other instances, I didn't even know what phantom income was. So I had to figure out what the term meant before I could even start drawing. After some research, I found out it is taxable income which does not generate cash flow. Even with my minimal grasp of finance I knew that this was always bad, never good. "Great," I thought,"How am I supposed to show that?" I decided to play off the phantom part of it. At the time Phantom of the Opera was having its moment. That Phantom was a familiar image, recognizable to all. So I appropriated that image for my phantom. To develop this pastiche, I added numbers to the face for the income aspects; a dollar sign became his bowtie. I added sharp discernible teeth between the eight and the one on the creepy side of his face to make him even more bad looking. Then I finished it with a couple more dollar signs in his hair.

I dunno....numbers on his face....frightening teeth....I'm beginning to get a little nervous. Does that remind me of someone else? Maybe I was not drawing on Phantom of the Opera after all. There is a one, a two and a three right there on his face. Uh oh ... I think I resurrected 1-2-3 Man through his offspring–Son of 1-2-3 Man!

I am going to add a pipe and a hat right now and find out for sure.

Bang!

Today's painting, Cowboy, is student work. I did it as an undergraduate in one of my many illustration classes with Jack Potter. He was my mentor and I credit him for any ability I have today as an artist. Mr. Potter was a successful illustrator, especially in the fashion world. However, he gave that up to become a teacher at SVA because he didn't like what was then happening in the field of illustration.

He yelled at me endlessly in class. Once I left my sweater in class and Mr. Potter asked his teaching assistant whose sweater it was. The TA didn't know my name, so he replied, "The girl you always yell at." When Mr. Potter heard that, he knew he had gone too far. The next time he saw me he apologized and explained that he always yelled at the "good" students. He said I in particular frustrated him because I was almost "there" but just short of it.

Back to Cowboy. In Mr. Potter's classes we were only allowed to draw models from real life, not photographs (as was being done at that time and was the reason why Mr. Potter started teaching in the first place). He always created elaborate setups with at least one live model. In this instance, it was the cowboy sitting in a chair, legs stretched out, hands in his lap. That's where this image came from. After making several life drawings from the model in class, we had a week to paint an illustration. At that point we were allowed to draw from photographs to flesh out our concepts and fill the background.

I designed the attacking Indian for the wallpaper and repeated it. That's from my imagination. Capriciously, I decided to have one of the Indians break loose from the wallpaper and cut a slice off the cowboy's back. That's what they used to do, isn't it? So that action is influenced by the movies. With all those Indians armed with hatchets chasing around, the wallpaper has begun to peel. The cupboard is from my photography clip file, but looks suspiciously like one we had at my family's lake house. I like birds, so that's why one flew in. I lost a loved one to cigarettes, thus the cigarettes.

I thought initially that the firing revolver suspended in midair represented the death that smoking causes. Then I thought for formal reasons, the composition simply needed that particular shade of blue in that spot. But it's actually neither. While writing yesterday's post about 1-2-3 Man, I concomitantly jogged loose another chilling bit of family history. I had read the incident in a saved newspaper article I had come upon as a young girl and the image it conjured up had been imprisoned in my mind ever since. I unwittingly exiled it into this painting. Only just now, while viewing Cowboy, did I realize the true meaning of the suspended revolver.

Apparently, a great uncle of mine had been seriously depressed. One day he called his best friend and said, "I need your help. Come over right away. Hurry. I'll leave the door unlocked for you. Don't knock, just come in." Unbeknownst to his friend, my great uncle had rigged his revolver up to the front door in such a way that it would fire when the door was opened. He then sat in front of the door and waited for his friend to "help" him. His friend opened the front door and--

Bang!

1-2-3 Man

I’ve never really liked mathematics, but I find those quantifying little symbols–numbers–of which mathematics is comprised graphically interesting and elegant. I therefore incorporate them into my drawings from time to time.

Easy as 1-2-3, my grandfather, Poppa, showed me how to draw a man using the numbers 1, 2 and 3. To do this, I had to draw the number 1 for the forehead; then I attached to its base directly beneath it 2. The interior curve of the 2 made a nice eye socket and the downward slope and pointy part of the 2 became the nose. I attached a 3 to the end of the 2, which represented the upper and lower lips and the philtrum. He didn't have much of a chin (well maybe a little receding one) because I then joined the 3 and the 1 with a half-circle from the bottom of the 3 back up to the top of the 1. We called him 1-2-3 Man. We loved him and Poppa and I happily drew 1-2-3 Man repeatedly.

After a while, Poppa told me that we needed to put a hat on 1-2-3 Man in case he wanted to go out. Then he said we should put a pipe in his mouth because he liked to smoke. After that he had us drawing sharp little triangles for teeth along the bottom curve of the 3–his mouth. This made 1-2-3 Man take a graphic turn for the worse. He now looked vicious with his 3, I mean mouth, wide open, revealing all those jagged, sharp teeth! Sorry, I cannot post the drawing of 1-2-3 Man with teeth to show how grotesque he became. I wouldn't do that to you. It is too frightening and the blog police would probably shut me down, citing abuse. But you can see from the original hatless drawing with the pipe that he was not too bad looking before the addition of the sharply drawn implants.

Many years later, after Poppa passed away, I was told that when he was a child, his father told his wife and children that he was going “downstreet" for some tobacco. He put a hat on his head and his pipe in his mouth and left his home, wife and three small children forever. He was never again seen or heard from.

After hearing that charming little bit of family history, I wondered, was 1-2-3 Man whom I had been drawing all that time, actually Poppa's deserting father?

**Coming soon (probably Wednesday)–Son of 1-2-3 Man! Even scarier than the original!!**

Mc LAUGHS

"This bill!" Do you take American Distress?"

Mc LAUGHS

"Psssssst! Wanna buy a refrigerator"?!

Dancing with the Devil

Painting a picture scares the devil out of me. I would rather dance with the devil. I never do any studies for my paintings. I am not Rembrandt. With the vaguest of notions in my head, I will start painting on canvas and then see where it takes itself. I refer to my seminal notion in the beginning of the work, but after that I am led by my brush and guided only by the shapes, textures and colors it produces. Writing this blog is even scarier because I feel that I ought to be more precise with words than with paint. You can't really read something that is abstract. This might be why a picture is worth a thousand words. One of the reasons a picture tends to beat out words is because of the variety of ways that artists can push and pull and interpret and reinterpret the various media used in painting. Because of the more limiting definitions of words, the same is not true with writing.

The Flexibility of Colors: The color red, for example, is the color of the devil and so we can use red to mean "evil" in our drawings and paintings. However, red is also the color of an apple–and what could be more wholesome and innocent than an apple? And so we can also use red to mean "good" in our paintings.

The Rigidity of Words: " Red," the word, means "any of a number of similar colors evoked by light consisting predominantly of the longest wavelengths discernible by the human eye." There is not that much that you can do with red when you think of it that way. If you write the word "red" it means only red, unless preceded by a modifying adjective.

"Devil" can mean pretty much only the devil, unless used in the context of deviled eggs. And even then it suggests a pulverizing beating one might get from the devil. The word "devil" can only be bad. It cannot be good and bad. When we hear the word "apple", we pretty much conjure up that delicious rosy, edible sphere with a stem and two green leaves on top– unless we are thinking of the apple of one's eye, or a man's adam's apple. Even then, the first usage indicates favorite and wholesome - "good" and the second a sphere - "good" also. Both phrases still suggest the basic characteristics of the word "apple." I cannot think of a way to use the word that connotes evil, unless perhaps in the context of the apple that Eve ate in the Garden of Eden–and even that apple probably tasted good. I guess an apple was "bad" for Snow White, but even then it had to be preceded by the word "poison." The word "apple" couldn't do it alone. It has its limits.

To support my claim that the painter's medium is superior to the writer's, consider the words of Roger Angell, the noted essayist and New Yorker editor: "Fiction is special, of course, for its text must retain the whorls and brush-splashes of the author: the touch of the artist." Ironically, on the same page, he recalls an editing session he had with a fledgling writer. He chides the neophyte "And then here's your "dirgelike darkness," right in the middle of your wonderful scene. Can darkness have a sound?" he asks the young writer. I believe it can and should, especially in the context of Angell's use of the phrase "whorls and brush-splashes" in his own writing.

One of my professors, Stuart Leeds, a New Yorker artist, always told us that only one of his students used black and white as if it were color. To me, that means that colors can not only represent multiple meanings, but can represent other colors as well. How versatile is that? I've tried to demonstrate this in my drawing of a red ..... er ..... ahem ..... uh....... black and white...... devil above.

Placebook 1.0

Are you tired of being able to see your friends only virtually on Facebook? Then the new app. Placebook 1.0 is for you. Only Placebook can transport you actually, that's right, a-c-t-u-a-l-l-y, from place to place wherever and whenever you want to go. Just enter your friend's address, press the "Go" button, and you will be gently sucked in, swept away and instantaneously ejected from your friend's computer. You will be there visiting with your friend - a- c -t- u -a l- l - y - not merely virtually as that dinosaur Facebook does it. Imagine how surprised your friends will be to see you in the flesh. Be among the first to install the release version of Placebook.

Are you worried that if you install Placebook, your many hundreds of friends will be popping in on you at all hours of the day and night? Don't be concerned. Placebook 2.0, currently in development, will include an optional feature–Macebook. Just one squirt and they're gone!

Placebook and Macebook are registered trademarks of Depingo Ergo Sum. You can only get them here. No guarantees. None at all. But they are reasonably priced.

Intoxicated

Age-0ld philosophical question:
"If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does the tree make a sound?"

My answer is "No." Without an ear-bearing person present, there would be no sound - only the vibrations that might create a sound.

Same question updated for the digital age: If a tree (one that I had drawn for University of Connecticut School of Agriculture's recruiting brochure) and I were toasting you on this blog, but you never visited, so that the three of us–artist, image and viewer– could bond over a drink during our philosophical chat, would the tree fall down? Would it make a sound when it fell down?

And now that we're really thinking deep thoughts, what would happen to me after my hysterical crying jag (brought about by a distressing lack of blog visitors) let up? By the way, would my crying make a sound? Would I fall down?

Answer: The tree and I would both fall down because we would be intoxicated after your no-show caused us to drink a whole bottle of wine by ourselves. It would be your loss because you wouldn't have gotten to share a delicious glass of chilled-to-perfection Sauvignon Blanc with us. And this sound would haunt you for the rest of your natural life:

HIC!