It’s early in the morning here in the garden of eden and the white crescent moon fades away into the purple sky and the sun takes its place in the orange and yellow and blue sky and it peeks over the horizon and over the top of the housetops and mountaintops...I’m sitting on my garage sale tatami and looking out the dirty window dry spotted with raindrops at the makeshift zen garden that I made with stones and rocks from the beach, the Smoky Mountains, the back yard and a thousand places unknown to me...what I need in life is a minimalist painting for a mind--simple simple simplicity--no complications frustrations abstractions refractions—just a minimalist painting in an all too busy world of surrealistic zigzags with ten faces and a hundred eyes staring at me, but of course it’s not real because a zen garden doesn’t know anything about real life and I don’t either...it exists in a little dark corner of the world that tries to hide and just wants to be left Greta Garbo alone wearing a big hat and hiding her face...like some monks who wear holy robes and well worn sandals and who hide themselves away in a monastery for years and when they come out back into the real deal world, all the purity of the mind gets washed off with a fire hose and replaced by grime and perspiration from the world they’ve been avoiding—the real existence...sometimes though I fool my little fragile mind that can bust into little teeny tiny fragments of glass at any time--kind of an instantaneous combustion--into thinking that I can see a great deal...far beyond the garden and all the gardens of the world and all of the rocks, the twisted branches, sentry trees, and endless sky...oh yes, I have touched the realization of pure consciousness and nirvana, I am one with all and all is one with me...the birds--a choir in the trees, the early morning dew on the Sap Green grass reflecting an artist’s palette of Vermillion Reds--Prussian blues and Van Dyke browns...there are days when I see fire and I see rain, the sun rays slipping through the slender slats of the blinds on to the wooden floor and they shine peace right in front of me and I glow inside while they’re tiptoeing on little cat paws from one side of the room to the other...the candle burns and does the dance of the seven veils with no prior choreography rehearsal and the shadows are making Franz Kline lookalikes on the wall...smoke coming from the incense curling up like a poor dog seeking warmth on a chilly morning...twisting around and round and round, merry go round without a sound and floating in the air not touching the ground—a work of a great magician levitating above—just drifting...sweet fragrance...patchouli or cinnamon or cannabis...I think that I might just be finding enlightenment...I sometimes think I can see everything crystal clear from here to Tokyo and the bullet trains and noodle shops and the ten million people walking down the sidewalks...a crystal vision...but who am I kidding?...then life walks through the front door and doesn’t wipe its feet on the mat--unannounced and unwelcome, it intervenes to spoil everything and remind me that I see nothing...damned life...I’m reminded there ain’t no magic, no spells no potions that can keep everything in the distance out of sight, out of mind...the only thing that can do that is death.
