Notes from the mystic a few doors down

Welcome to my wisdom archive.

2011-07-06T20:05:00.000-07:00

This blog has been dormant for a couple of years while I developed my skyway blog and photo sites. But there is a lot of interesting material here. Please make yourself and home. I will be right back.

2009-05-11T21:13:00.000-07:00

My homebrew ELF set up. The breadboard on the left is a Radio Shack Sensor Lab set up with an op amp for boosting the input from the sensor, which is a solenoid. That is run through an audio amp to an analog-to-digital data capture for my laptop.

The bluebird of happiness

2008-09-22T20:27:00.000-07:00

A still life is a study in what is known, what is seen, and what is necessary to see. I have done several versions of this, each progressively more "finished". In this case, that means smoothing the surfaces, filling in blanks between tones to establish continuity. I hesitate to overdo it, however, as the dappled sense of light and color is really the motivation for the work. To a certain extent, being as old as I am helps me judge what I want to leave in, what I don't mind working over, what I can stand and can't stand. But not as much as I would have guessed in my twenties. I think my conclusion is, work harder in your twenties, don't worry what others think. No matter what happens, you will still tend to think about and care about the same things at the end of the decades. Perhaps to your surprise.

The meaning of life

2008-09-14T03:37:00.000-07:00

The digestive system has more neurons than the central nervous system, according to a recent article in the New York Times. The ancients believed the seat of thought was in the belly, not the head. I imagine that by painting vegetables I am getting closer to understanding the meaning of life. The irony, of course, is that neither vegetables nor my digestive system care about the meaning of life।

Lao Tzu gives advice on diet and exercise

2008-09-13T15:28:00.000-07:00

Know contentment
And you will suffer no disgrace.
Know when to stop
And you will meet with no danger.
You can then endure.

Book XLIV
D.C. Lau translation

Lao Tzu on identity crisis

2008-09-13T15:01:00.000-07:00

Know the male
But keep to the role of the female
And be a ravine to the empire
If you are a ravine to the empire
Then the constant virtue will not desert you
And you will return to being a babe.
Know the white
But keep to the role of the black,
and be a model in the empire.
Then the constant virtue will not be wanting
And you will return to the infinite.

Book XXXVIII
D.C. Lau, translation

Lao Tzu on interior design

2008-09-13T14:49:00.000-07:00

Cut out doors and windows in order to make a room. Adopt the nothing therein to the purpose at hand, and you will have the use of the room.

Thus what we gain is Something, yet it is by virtue of Nothing that it can be put to use.

Book XI

Lao Tzu comments on American produce

2008-09-13T14:45:00.000-07:00

Hence the Sage is for the belly,
Not the eye.
Therefore he discards the one and takes the other.

Book XII

Questions from Lao Tzu's job interview

2008-09-13T14:42:00.000-07:00

When the gates of heaven open and shut
Are you capable of keeping to the role of the female?
When your discernment penetrates the four quarters
Are you capable of not knowing anything?

2008-09-13T14:27:00.000-07:00

The nameless was the beginning of heaven and earth;
The named was the mother of the myriad creatures.
Hence always rid yourself of desires in order to observe the secrets of the Tao.
But allows allow yourself to have desires in order to observe its manifestations.

Lao Tzu considers what is left when life has passed on.

2008-09-13T14:23:00.000-07:00

To retire when the task is accomplished is the way of Heaven.

A cloud doesn't look in the mirror

2008-09-13T14:19:00.000-07:00

wood kiss stone

2008-09-13T14:16:00.000-07:00

Love is a marsh

2008-09-13T13:51:00.000-07:00

There are collaborations in love, like light and water, wood and air, blue and green, that could astonish you if you quit thinking about yourself for one minute.

yes and no

2008-09-13T13:48:00.000-07:00

Yes and no are the same word. It depends on whether you approach it from the front or the back.

Old hippies

2008-09-13T13:47:00.000-07:00

Doug, on the right, is now Edwin and has never lost his beauty. He sings and tells stories, fixes things, and reminds everyone of the love right in front of their noses. I carry an old leather gut full of unfinished riddles under my shirt, and when I have indigestion, you can hear the words slosh around and expel the methane of fermented dreams.

2008-09-13T13:39:00.000-07:00

The tombstones create an x-ray diffraction pattern in the space above the soldier's bones. We look into the moire pattern, trying to read the approval of some god, or some principle, in the revealed geometry.

Life stone, tomb stone

2008-09-13T13:35:00.000-07:00

On memorial day, we found this birth announcement on a granddad's grave at the Ft. Snelling cemetary.

My love shows her face

2008-09-13T13:33:00.000-07:00

2008-09-13T13:31:00.000-07:00

Something fell down by my house. A ton or more of white oak branches fell in the gap between Florenzio's house and our's. It took out part of his deck, and left an arm-thick branch dangling on the roof over our bedroom. The wind blasted this improbable slotting, this insertion of the stuff of disaster in a space where no disaster is, or will be. It was a noumenal wind, existing only in the mind of the tree. It blew straight down, and in all directions at once. like Pico Della Mirandola's definition of God, its center was everywhere and its circumference was no where.

Our space was tagged by the infinite, and we felt more finite than ever.

A poem written in bone time

2008-09-13T13:23:00.000-07:00

Temp worker takes a break

2008-09-13T13:19:00.000-07:00

My love shows her face

2008-09-13T13:16:00.000-07:00

Wittgenstein's eyes

2008-09-10T13:08:00.000-07:00

This is not a sentence about Wittgenstein.

While there is a manga quality to the exaggeration of eye size, it is the subtle change of expression from patient auditor to surly interviewer that interests me.

Stations of a prophet

2008-02-23T11:55:00.000-08:00

One of my multipanel comix from around 1979. Read on for the story and more art. Click on the art for a bigger image.

2008-02-23T11:52:00.000-08:00

My first multi-panel comix from 1977. In fact it was drawn the day Elvis died. Read on for the saga of Bozo Soofi Mystical Instruction Comix, coming soon to a night stand near you...

A raft of comix old and new on a cold February day

2008-02-23T11:40:00.000-08:00

In 1977 I was sitting in my studio the day Elvis died, and was inspired to make a comix in honor of the event. It was the first time I had done the multipanel thing. I liked it and continued to do it for a few years. In 1981 my brother-in-law Dana Rotegard fronted the money to publish a book I called Bozo Soofi Mystical Instruction Comix : Propaganda for the Sleepers. A copy of it was on Art Speigelman's coffee table for a while in the early 80's. It was reviewed in a few places and was included in the collector's guide to American underground comix in 1984, which resulted in selling quite a few copies to collectors. I decided to upload a few of the panels here today to share the damn things.

Also, I started drawing again for the first time in over 20 years. I include one of my recent "new improved" Bozo Soofi comix at the end of this group.

If for some reason you want a copy of the book (11 x 14 inch, coated paper, black and white, signed by the author, first edition) it is available from me for $30 plus $6 shipping etc. You can get three for free shipping. There are only a few dozen left from an original print run of 2000 so act fast. C'mon, act faster. Faster!

Mystical Posture comix 1979

2008-02-23T11:31:00.000-08:00

Trend forecast comix 1979

2008-02-23T11:30:00.000-08:00

Thought is a process like falling

2008-02-23T11:28:00.000-08:00

Cold Facts Laffs 1977

2008-02-23T11:24:00.000-08:00

Bad News Sonata Comix

2008-02-23T11:22:00.000-08:00

More of my comix from the 70s

2008-02-23T11:21:00.000-08:00

Cover art of Bozo Soofi book 1981

2008-02-23T11:18:00.000-08:00

A full color bozo soofi comic from 1979

2008-02-23T11:16:00.000-08:00

My Drawing from 1978

2008-02-23T11:14:00.000-08:00

My Drawing from Sept. 1977

2008-02-23T11:13:00.000-08:00

My drawing 2.20.08

2008-02-23T11:09:00.000-08:00

This is a 21st century new improved Bozo Soofi comix panel. I created it by making drawings from very recent newspaper photos I liked or thought went together at some level. Actually one photo is from a 1964 LIFE magazine ad and the pieta is from a 16th century Italian painting. Oh well, you get the idea.

2006-11-10T13:40:00.000-08:00

Who is that that dies? Who is there when the dying happens? Is that my friend the Maggie cat, giving up her tiny body in my arms? She rouses herself to push against my chin one last time.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T13:38:00.001-08:00

Is that still you, Maggie?
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T13:38:00.000-08:00

Is that still you, Maggie? Or did you leave a placeholder to say good bye?
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T13:37:00.000-08:00

Maggie flattens into the deck. She looks through this world into another.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T13:36:00.000-08:00

Maggie whittled away from within her fur as she died. She became a sharp bone armature beneath the fur, a sculpture of small dull knives with a will to live, a little will, growing littler.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T13:34:00.000-08:00

Sara, someone's Ford, and Sunday morning. This is where life emerges, and submerges into memory again. This is the opposite of dying: the chalice of time filled with the ordinary.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T13:33:00.000-08:00

This is me in front of Jonathan Edwards, who talks to the deceased and departed. In the picture, he manages to imitate the deceased and departed with a flair of light. I look passably sad, as though I knew him before he passed into the light flair.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T13:27:00.000-08:00

Maggie finds something. It changes her. Light starts to shine through her around the edges.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T13:24:00.002-08:00

Maggie is practicing to be a ghost.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T13:24:00.001-08:00

I am practicing to be a ghost.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T13:24:00.000-08:00

The symmetries in life are always hidden, except in textbooks. Real symmetry is both a mystery, and an answer to the mystery. The mystery is: how do we know that we are looking at a reflection, and the thing reflected? The answer is: who is knowing?
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T13:22:00.000-08:00

This is a carrot. It is the first vegetable from my garden. I am confident I will do better next year.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T13:12:00.000-08:00

Hello? Hello? I am sorry, you must have the wrong number. In fact, you have the wrong number system, the wrong means of representing "counting" or "order' altogether. Would you care to leave a message?
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T13:11:00.000-08:00

This is Sam on my roof. He grows, changes, heals. My chimney just gets old, and falls down. The antenna is just for decoration.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T13:09:00.000-08:00

This is Sam helping me paint the eaves this June. The scaffold was a spooky thing. It played tricks on me, and made me think that gravity was..well, arbitrary. I didn't know my own "down" any more, when I stood on it, on my old legs. For Sam it was a web, and he was its spider.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T13:06:00.000-08:00

Maggie had decided to die at this point. She had just decided, and we didn't know. She tried to tell us, by arranging herself like a shirt, in a drawer, like some inanimate thing that she was to become. At the time, she still had something in her, though, a spirit that could not help looking.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T13:02:00.000-08:00

Hey you. Are we father and son? Are we granite? Are we snow? Are the lines written in my face carved by skill or accident? Does Nick know how to hold his own sky aloft, and how will he learn it if he does not know it, if I can't teach him?
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T12:58:00.000-08:00

I sleep through the dilemmas of time, and Sara keeps my heart beating with her touch. She includes you in the story.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T12:56:00.000-08:00

Sam deflects judgment with a mask. Casey knows the drill, and waits for Sam to return from his gargoyle flight. She is a late angel on Amiens Cathedral, he is a griffen from Notre Dame. Mary suffers them both, she suffers the little children of all ages, in her suffering.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T12:54:00.000-08:00

They look silly for me, at me. But you see them. Who are you, that they might be worth your attention, that you might be worth their silliness? Ah, that is the wrong question. Who are these incarnate songs of consciousness, these petals on the crysanthemum of self-knowing creation?
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T12:51:00.000-08:00

Nick, you have greatness in you. I tried to show you some of that, on wheels on highways across this whole god damned continent. I hope you saw a little of it, between dreams.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T12:49:00.000-08:00

Is the moment in which intense laughter occurs, as long as a moment of silence? According to my friend John Kellden, beauty and intensity are two other measures of time that do not show up on stopwatches. This moment has beauty and intensity, a whole day's worth. Maybe a week.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T12:47:00.000-08:00

Sam unties the joke, and it spills on Nick.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T12:46:00.000-08:00

Sara, Casey, Sam, Nick. I left a hole in the moment next to Sara. As I stand to snap the picture, everyone mistakes me for the future, for some observer who might react, or judge. I am only the point where their looks converge. Nick is in the picture, but he leaves a hole in my life into which phone calls, thoughts, and prayers fly like bats in the summer night, dark against darkness. I wonder.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T12:42:00.000-08:00

Sam turns 18. Nick shows up for his birthday dinner at the Thai restaurant. To my narcissism, they are my image in two very different mirrors. To my heart, they are my heart itself, without complication.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T12:39:00.000-08:00

My face of pleased parent and my son's face of graduating high school. I am shrinking in time and needs, while Sam expands to fill those parts of the world that are not full of themselves yet. Our conventional wisdom says the world is full. His soul, however, perches, and sees worlds where he can yet fly.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T12:36:00.000-08:00

Freshme. Exit. Choose.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-11-10T12:35:00.000-08:00

This is a big empty modern space. There is an achievement of heightened emptyness here. That is different from merely being empty. It is a representation of emptyness that overwhelms your personal relationship to space. You disappear, along with everything else that might have filled this space...ideas, feelings, memories...
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-09-17T12:34:00.000-07:00

Whomever created this start-up must have had an easy time selling the business plan to the investors....at least the part about holding employee costs down.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-09-17T12:26:00.000-07:00

Sterling finds pleasure at the end of a flower bag, emerging as though being reborn. The first time wasn't so great for him. This time the paper mother might stay with him longer, and prepare him better for the briars and brambles of life.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-09-17T12:23:00.000-07:00

This was an unbearable day for Sam. The first weekend in his dorm, the first year of college, he faced demons who had not applied, or been accepted, to his college. But they were there, the dark teachers. Soon he would dance with them. Then he will make the music that will send them on their way.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-09-17T12:19:00.000-07:00

This pie was one of my best. The filling was the right consistency from the time it cooled down, the crust was flaky, and the raisens in the bottom of the filling created a mincemeat counter point to the crisp, tart granny smith apples. Making a good pie resembles the construction of a good poem, except, the pie cannot proselytize any of our idiotic beliefs to others.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-09-17T12:15:00.000-07:00

If Jung is right, and we have shadow selves that rarely connect with our consciousness, consider this: Is it possible that the laptop generation will find ways to put their shadows into the little light boxes, and conjure them at will, by, for instance, letting them live on their MySpace page?
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-09-17T12:06:00.000-07:00

Urban life stretches us to the breaking point. We therefore imagine that living in the country and having painted iron door stops in the form of chickens would mean we had a simpler life, a life that wasn't stretched, but was safe, warm and bearable. If you asked the chicken, you might hear a different story.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-09-17T12:03:00.000-07:00

Who is to say that parts of us do not split off and become personalities unto themselves, carrying on their own conversations, making their own judgments, expressing in costumes and body language their secret dreams?
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-09-17T11:56:00.000-07:00

When I spent the month of July laid up with arthritis, the cats decided I had become part of the couch.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-07-08T16:32:00.000-07:00

My theory is that the minimalist art movement began in the suburbs, with a tired man who was wild in his heart and deprived in his senses.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-07-08T16:31:00.000-07:00

I am glad for this excess and wanton green. It contains me, but does not obey me. It is the mirror of my wife's soul. What I see, when I look into it, is the very texture of love.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-07-08T16:29:00.000-07:00

The crown of a suburban king hangs heavy on my head, and insolence is the fruit of my garden.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-07-08T16:28:00.000-07:00

The decay of my eaves is an object lesson in time, mortality and pride for me. I sit in my chaise lounge with my beer and rehearse the lesson: 1. time, 2. mortality, 3. uh....what was the third thing again?
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-07-08T16:25:00.000-07:00

This is my window. If it were your window, you would look more closely. All communication depends upon the narcissim of the audience to succeed. If you can't see yourself in the window, why look? Wait, is that you in there? Hey, who invited you over?
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-07-08T16:23:00.000-07:00

This tree: it cannot make up its mind what direction it wants its branches to grow. Sometimes they seek the sky, sometimes they follow the rifts in the earth's energy fields. Sometimes they follow a sharp tailed swallow, sometimes they follow a kiss escaped the kitchen next door and wafting over to this fool, here.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-07-08T16:19:00.000-07:00

Sometimes our backyard pictures look like evidence in a trial. We are accused of disorderly nature, and found guilty.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-07-08T16:16:00.000-07:00

This is the second year we have planted basketball bushes under our deck. We water them with gasoline, and in the fall harvest them in the darkness wearing Knick's jerseys. You think this is strange, but you haven't tasted our fresh picked basketball jellies. They slam-dunk your palate, and set your face on fire.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-07-08T16:11:00.000-07:00

We brought thousands of bricks here, and felt haste to build them into something plain and square. When we went home, we looked over our shoulders, and saw the ugliness was gaining on us. We broke into a run. It didn't help.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-07-08T16:09:00.000-07:00

Sara has discovered flight. It is like being born, although to a smaller world than the world in which she dreams.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-07-08T16:08:00.000-07:00

What a prim face. The distance between this buttoned-up Victorian mask and the truth of animals mating contains a long novel about the family farm in America. The last chapter reads "What we brought forth from the soil, we brought forth from our bodies. The end."
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-07-08T16:01:00.000-07:00

2006-04-06T14:59:00.001-07:00

In the prairies, Giants still walk, and still fill up at the C-Store in Comfrey, Minnesota.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-04-06T14:59:00.000-07:00

2006-04-06T14:58:00.001-07:00

These guys hang out where the giants let them. They knew the earth. They know the pleasure of each other's company.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-04-06T14:58:00.000-07:00

The guy in the blue shirt said he was wanted by the police, and if I took his picture, the taxpayers would have to feed him in prison. I wanted to remember these men, and the way souls are sometimes set down gently by the hand of time.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-04-06T14:57:00.002-07:00

When grasses die, they leave beautiful husks. When men die, their abodes decay, and become symbols of a fall from grace. Plants die into grace. Man dies away from it, and does not return. But that is his choice. That is how he chooses to put language and identity between him and the innate beauty of his bones.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-04-06T14:57:00.001-07:00

Sam gets away from me to speak directly to the sky, making it his. I rummage around in my things, wondering where my sky went.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-04-06T14:57:00.000-07:00

The shadow is a moment on the stones years and centuries.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-04-06T14:56:00.000-07:00

Between us, we have changed the century, the millenium. We have changed the planet and the idea of humanity. Can you see that? In the 41-year-wide space between us?
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-04-06T14:55:00.000-07:00

Someone has stripped and tied these saplings together to dry in the sun. Who will receive this gift?
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-04-06T14:54:00.001-07:00

2006-04-06T14:54:00.000-07:00

Dead grasses are space time diagrams of the speed of life.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-04-06T14:53:00.001-07:00

The prairie grasses leave these amazing structures behind when they die.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-04-06T14:53:00.000-07:00

Everything you need to know about growth is in this picture.
copyright@2006 Jeff Beddow

2006-04-06T14:52:00.001-07:00