If I were as good as I'd like to be...



Whirl
by CDM.MMXII

 ...... I'd be able to animate the image, show the right leg flashing into the high kick that pulled back propels her into the pirouette, the shadows from the sailing veil setting curves across the soft flesh of gender, the ripple of dancer’s muscle as she bends from the waist through the second revolution, the plant and leap taking her out the right side of the frame.  But *sigh* I’m not that good yet, all I can do is imagine the power and grace of her motion, and maybe, just maybe, you can imagine it as well...

Once More into the breach...

I know, I know
by CDM.MMXII

A painting a bit off my usual styles (or attempts at style), but fairly pertinent to the news of the moment.  It fits.  I’ve taken on a final labor of love, playing Mr. Mom for my brother and niece, taking on keeping house and coaching homework and driving the taxi runs and... and... and you get the picture.  He’s a single parent running himself ragged trying to earn a living, someone needs to step in as backstop.  What the hell, it’s life where pretty much everything else has run down into shades of slow fade to black.  Truth be told it’s as much for me as for them.

Yea, I can do this.  I kept track of a fifteen, twenty million dollar chemical batch plant for a decade, worked warehouse and receiving and R&D and sundry such related things... how much harder can a kitchen be? (Any mom’s in the audience: keep yer mouth shut, please, I don’t want to know just how cold the water is, I’m already airborne and halfway to the drink...)  It’s still working time figured against batch scale to match load demand and all of it riding a (insert fifteen favorite obscene words) JIT inventory system... yea, I’ve been there before.  But I’d bet serious folding green dear old Mrs. Cleaver never used words like that to describe what she was doing.  I just wish Betty Crocker knew how to write a proper annotated SOP... translating is a, well, just say it bites fleas and barks at the moon.  Oh, well.

Today was the first day of school... dear God, do all those soccer moms actually have a driver’s license?  Judging by the chaos of freaking idiots around that Jr. High I’m not convinced they should be allowed on the road.  Ten minutes of wading the traffic and I was wishing I’d driven the big truck... heavier, more power, and sheet metal I don’t mind bending... I was ready to put some serious push on the pavement to make ‘em move.  Took thirty minutes to make six blocks, and that was just to get to where I could cut to the back streets and make some headway.  What a circus.  Thank goodness the kid will be riding the bus tomorrow.  He (the driver) gets paid to put up with the idiots.  I don’t.  But it does explain why they’re always advertising for drivers.

Of Pain and Painting...

Look Up Sweetheart, Look Up
by CDM.MMXII

Another reflex painting, just letting the feelings fall off my fingers and into the colors.  It is almost time to tell her story, such of it as I know.  Almost, but not quite yet. 

Suddenly numb, Uncomfortably numb...

I got my feet kicked out from under me yesterday, got totally blindsided by something I hadn’t even given a thought to.  I was packing up my big desk, emptying the drawers, clearing and cleaning getting ready to move the beast to its’ new home.  The job proceeded as such jobs usually do, the things used daily, a few of the ok, that’s where that went kind of finds, a yuk or two.  The usual. 

When the last drawer was empty I took a break, when I stepped back into the room afterwards something slammed into my mood like a two ton wrecking ball, left me spinning hard for the remainder of the night and into today.  Not down, not blah or blue or flat or angry, just numb.  It hit so hard I was totally numb so suddenly it was a bit frightening, really.  It took an effort that carried through the night into dreamstate, almost Escherville, to figure out what had happened.  I did it to myself, but I never saw it coming. 

Sometime this morning a question popped into my head... “How many convicts get released from prison, and then get a job where they get to take apart the prison they were incarcerated in?”  Not very many, that’s for damn sure.  But that’s what breaking down that desk was to my subconscious, it was taking apart where I’d been imprisoned for years.  I walked back into that room and got smacked by all the things I’d felt sitting in that corner, and all the things I knew I should have been feeling but couldn’t acknowledge, not then, not under the circumstances.  All the despair of watching my wife fade into bitter senility, all the anger, all the helplessness of being pinned in a corner to get beaten daily by her attitudes I’m now convinced were seeded on her by a pair feminazi lesbian grifters working her for money, pinned there to endure rather than break the promise I made with God for my witness.  Sorry bitches (NOT), I’m stronger than you gave me credit for. But then again, you really don’t know much about men.  All you know are the steers and queers.  I’m neither. You couldn’t make me help you validate all your hatred for anything male.  You wanted me to abandon her so you could add my story to your list of justifications for your way of life.  Didn’t happen.  Might have, you got close, but it didn’t.  God gave me a couple of genuine friends beyond the reach of your poison, you couldn’t quite turn my sentence into true solitary where you might have had a chance.  I owe the Almighty another effort on His behalf, because all things taken into consideration it’s beyond believing Alex and Leia and Ira and Irisha were a coincidence, finding them then and there is just to far beyond the laws of averages to be believed a chance encounter... examples of good women to set against the influence of bad women on my life.  No, that didn’t happen by chance.

 

Anyhow, I sat numb all night, started painting by force of habit, didn’t have a clue what I was trying to paint until it was finished.  It came out almost what I didn’t know I wanted to portray, almost, so I figured I might as well post it along with the story.  Last night wasn’t a very restful night’s sleep, but it was productive.  Now I know just how deep the damage goes, I’ve found the bottom.  It can be fixed.

Gonna be interesting to see what expression winds up on her face the next time I take a try at capturing an image of Malaguena.  Very interesting.

It isn't your time...



Until You See Her Hands
by
Cyranos DeMet

 


  Originally painted on a long lonely night many days ago, partially painted that is.  I refound the file cleaning up the hard drive ( I do a lot of digi-doodles that never amount to anything but wasted drive space, have to go through and cull them out from time to time), and with the theme for that great television show "Mash" hung in my head finished it this morning.  Have you ever heard the lyrics for that music?  If you have you'll fully understand the painting, and why it is titled as it is.  ( Suicide Is Painless, the theme to Mash... I recommend the Johnny Mandel version, it's on uTube, of course).

I'm not sure what happened to the image quality... it's lousy... someone/thing totally fubar'd the shading.  Oh, well.  What do you expect when the subject is suicide?