'Candy Cigarettes—a painting—and other astutely random observations about art and Life

‘Candy Cigarettes’, acrylic, oil stick, 20” x 20” inches, 2022-2024. Photo by author/painter.

What is the job of philosophy? To follow other philosophers around, following their footsteps as rigorously as possible, to help show the rest of us the possibility that we too, can show all the flies buzzing in and out of our brains the way out of the fly bottle.

Then to look at art, verifying that to see something even remotely beautiful is not only our right but also the expectation.

I’m not much of a philosopher and I’m not much of a fly fisherman, but I can fish and have caught fish many times before. I enjoy eating fish once they’ve been caught and cleaned.

We’re all related to trees, that’s all I know for sure. And for some reason I like walking on cold floors.

Often, I wonder what happened to my life, where is it going etc?

It seems that so much in life is based on fantasy.

I’m adding meditation back into my diet, and sobriety, beginning in the New Year. Also, to stop using the word ‘fuck’, fuck this and fuck that, you’re a fucker, she’s a fucker, wouldn’t you like to be a fucker too? I’m renouncing fuckerism. The word fuck has gotten into my brain, a speech pattern, a repetitious little worm that crawls across the wet sidewalk where I like to walk, a slimy slithering little creature that might get stepped on by big mighty Brooks; in other words, a little fucker, a bit loathsome perhaps but with a place in the world ever bit as exalted and glorious as mine!