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More Return to the Mountain...6/19/2013

A few months ago my daughter Kaia, while I was deep in the throes of the arthritis attack,  suggested I might consider selling my Ford Ranger to Anthony, Aaron's young nephew who would soon turn 16. I was offended and angry at the mere suggestion I give it up. A couple of months later Moses called wanting to know if I wanted to sell the vehicle. I turned him down too. As my affliction continued and Sue continued to drive me around, I began to soften up on the idea of selling the truck, as Sue didn't seem to mind driving me to appointments, etc. Another problem was my driver's license had expired while I was out of commission, so I just couldn't jump in the truck and take off when I was ready. This past week I was told the lad was seriously considering buying another Ford Ranger that had 180,000 miles on it. My truck has only 70,000 miles on it. That was the tipping point for me. He is a good kid and I thought back to the days when Sue's family gave us three cars and didn't charge us a penny. That was most generous of them to help us when we could not afford to buy a car. At first I thought I'd sell the truck to the kid, but after Sue and I talked it over we decided to charge him only $600 for the repairs we made this past week to bring the vehicle back up to speed. I bought the truck in 1999 and I have extremely good luck with it, putting very little money into it over the years. Hopefully it'll be good for Anthony also.

Facebook has been good to me lately. I used to wonder why so few people from Vegas had severed their ties to me when that was the place where I knew the most people. I seemed more connected with folks from California, Oregon, Racine, and a small handful on the east coast. Well, that has changed. In the last 6 weeks I have heard from Sharon Bergstrom (Murphy), Gary Gutierrez, Skip Wagner, Mike Pitt JR, and James Stanford. Craig Pyes was the only person connected previously.

Sharon looks as good as she ever looked, even though she is 69 years old. She still lives in Santa Cruz but is retired from HS teaching. Her two kids, Heather and Mike JR , still live there as well.  Heather teaches biology in HS. She sent me a book on Lee Miller the photographer who was involved with the surrealist movement in Europe in the twenties and thirties. The lady was extremely beautiful when young and was very promiscuous through out her life. Her father was fond of photographing her in the nude and a number of people think they had an incestuous relationship. No one knows for sure. Sharon knew the author of the book who lives in the area. I learned more from the book than I did from the Doc that I saw several months ago sponsored by her son. I don't know how to rate her as a surrealist, as I have seen too few of her pictures. She seems to be more notorious than truly famous. Sharon it turns out is as much a Herman Melville fan as I am.

Gary Gutierrez was a student I had to butt heads with, he was so full of ego and false certainty.He left UNLV after two years to go to SFAI. He has been married twice, with his second wife ,Kari, quite good looking. I thought I had a lot of women in my life, but I don't compare to his, for he had one daughter in his first marriage and 5 granddaughters after that. He has a 15 year old son, Mason, from his second marriage. As for his career, he is the special effects man for Francis Ford Coppola, and his office is at Zoetropic in SF.  He's work with THE GRATEFUL DEAD and has done some commercials. He told me I was one of three mentors that he has had, the other two being FFC and Philip Kaufman, another director.  That's astute company. I was humbled and honored. I sent him copies of my two books. He loved the drawings.

I got much the same treatment from James Stanford; in fact, he blew me away with praise, which I did not expect. He told me a story about an incident in a design class that I frankly don't remember. He said he brought something to class he thought was hot shit, but apparently I didn't agree. So I picked up the work, which was matted, and brought it down over his head, saying, "So here, wear it." He was so embarrassed he ran out of class. He added in his email: "But, I knew you were right and I grew to appreciate your honesty and respected you for caring. You taught me not to cheat myself. Thanks." That almost brought tears to my eyes. Forty plus years later I learned what impact I had. It's nice to  know my instincts were good. Some people might say, no wonder you didn't get tenure, but I got results, as James has been involved with art in LasVegas for all these years. He's also a dedicated Buddhist and is responsible for a Zen Center near where we used to live on Wilbur Drive. He has also written me some amusing emails about Dave Hickey who quit UNLV after 20 years. He and his wife moved to New Mexico, where his wife is teaching art history while he is writing a book on Christianity. I was surprised to find out James, after getting his Masters at UW in Seattle, came back to UNLV where he taught for 18 years, the same amount of years I spent at St. Andrew's.

Interestingly, we stole from each other. When I left Vegas James gave me a drawing that featured a lion-man whose chunky body looked somewhat like mine. One day in Tucson I decided to do a drawing using James' figure. It turned out very well, so much so it is the first drawing in EROS & PSYCHE, one of the books I published in 2012. The figure has a fish in one hand and has wings, so the image or icon suggests both depth and flying, some familiarity with the unconscious and some experience of elevation or spiritual insight. Accompanying the lion-man on a kind of raft are a few other symbols; a representation of the persona, a mask tied to a fat candle, the flame still lit but wavering in the wind. The candle sits on the edge of an opening that shows flames emerging from inside a darkened space below. A crown lies on the floor of the platform, along side a broken mirror, which is rectangular, like the opening in the floor. The top half of the drawing shows desert forms, what I call a midnight sky, that has an intricate mandala that has two snakes in the outer circle and then a cross with heart in the center of the fiery mandala. Finally, there is a small almost unnoticed bridge connecting the lower region to the upper world. End of story. It is one of the strongest and clearest symbolic narratives I've come up with. It packs a lot in one image.