9:02 AM
It's another sunny, warm morning.
The California fires are still going wild; hearing about it on the radio. I sent a text to Ashley last night, but she hasn't repilied. Hopefully she's okay and the fires haven't reached her home.

9:47 AM
Drinking an odd concoction of coffees; the remainder of my "Hawaiian Hazlenut" and the beginning of the "East African Burundi" that I got at Trader Joe's. So far it's pretty tasty. I don't know if the Burundi was a good buy or not, and I won't know until tomorrow, but judging by how much better it made the Hazlenut I would guess that it will be good. But that's just a guess.

I'm on limited time today so I think I want to get some work done. I need to get pictures of "The Stick" to put on-line. I also have to reply to an e-mail from Sherrie.
I should rephraes that; I'm on limited art time today. "Limited time" implies that there is a conflict of interest between what I want to do and what I'm being forced to do. Everything that I do today is what I want to do, I just have to be away from the easel for a few hours so I can go teach. And I love teaching.

11:01 AM
From an e-mail to Sherrie:
"The beauty of what I'm doing is that I do as much, or as little, haggling as I want to. I'm inherently too shy, too mellow, and very jealous of my freedom to get too involved in the career side of all this. So many people try to tell me that I should push my stuff harder, make more money, etc. but I don't really care to. I've never set out to be well known, let alone famous, or rich, or even liked. I like what I do, I have a few followers.....I'm quite happy.
Plus, another benefit is that I get to control my own image. No one trying to sell me as something I'm not.
I'm certainly not going to stop producing if I'm unknown. I don't need the consensus of the public to justify why I do what I do.
Don't get me wrong, more shows would be nice, but I'm not interested enough in getting out there aggressively and begging people to justify me so I can say that I've exhibited in their establishment. I'd rather organize "art barbecues" at the park...things like that sound far more rewarding and real."

12:09 PM
Okay, for some reason iPhoto is acting wacky so I'm unable to get new pics on-line. So now what?

1:10 PM
Finished reading "No Way Out-Conversations with U.G. Krishnamurti". It is very excellent. I like to consider him the "evil" Krishnamurti, even though, of course, he wasn't, just a very cynical, funny man. In the last three years the philosophy of J. Krishnamurti has become important and influential on my worldview, and U.G. fits right in, albeit in a much more extreme manner.
I believe that many people have had what could be called "mystical experiences". Now, what those might be is anyones guess, whether it's brain chemicals, actual communication from something higher, a combination of the two, or who can say. For most it seems that this is a positive experience. But, if the Taoists and Physicists are right then everything has a positive and negative. I believe that U.G. had a negative mystical experience. Something happened to him and it colored his worldview. He's not the first person I've read about having that, Alberto Giacometti seems to have experienced something similar. You don't seem to hear about these as much as the more "graceful" experiences.

9:07 PM
My stomach is very full of Japanese food. Very, very full.