It is 852 am. I am ten blocks from the ocean and I haven’t been able to peacefully walk and breathe in the astringent salty air after being here for over a week. I have, however, been able to walk on these not quite uniform brick streets and feel the squeak of sand in my shoes. Also, I have developed a gait. If I haven’t told you personally, after a week of being in this program I was informed that I wasn’t getting a certain loan. A certain loan that could make or break the whole education. I decided (well, someone else decided really) that the consequences of coming home would be greater than the compromises and consequences of staying here. The monetary struggle is worth the end result (or the absence of the potential result). So, I stay. I stay with vigor. I stay with an “up to here” daily mentality. More and more I am learning to mesh life and art and this  I have been working on for a long time. The night I found out about the loan it was recommended that I work in the studio as if nothing happened. So I did. I am coming to terms with the fact that my expression is my art. My art is so flat when influenced by philosophies alone. They become heavy and more approachable when entwined emotion. Even though the philosophy that I absorb is not logic or equations, it still maintains a sort of flat visual representation… for me anyway. So, the first night that I lost 7000 dollars I mentally sacrificed my place in Chicago. Mentally packed my bags here in Maine. Mentally said goodbye to this program with great sadness. However, I still wished with a process and that process was a string tied from my studio desk all the way to my wrist in bed. It took a skein of red yarn and an entire roll of white string, but it solidified my drive I think.

One of the neat things about living on the coast is the rolling in of the fog. Also, when I finally called my mom and told her about my wishful art she informed me that my father did the same thing as an undergraduate at Parsons, for different reasons of course. I found that interesting, considering that I had not been aware of that previously. Anyway, I wanted to post this process and that is pretty much all. I have no idea what will happen after this summer. I may have to stay in Chicago and work a bunch of jobs to finish off my lease. Or I may end up in Houston TX?! On that note, I leave you to start my studio work for the day.

I decided to give this self portrait to my mom. She brought up the fact that I have never given her an actual piece of art and since I will be gone for a bit, she can look at my gruesome face. So, I have shingles. Who is 29 and gets shingles? Anna Rae. That’s right.

I started packing and am nearly finished. I think it was the last thing I can use as procrastination. Favorite pillow-packed. gauze-packed. aluminum tape-packed. 15 books-packed. Cats-attempted to pack themselves.

Here is a picture of our living room wall. I finally got around to painting it however I wanted. Benefits of owning your own house!

I wanted to use colors from the India palette combined with my cartoony linear drawings.  Phil likes bright colors and I do as well.   This is the room where our fancy dining room table is in and I really enjoy having people over and this be the background.  The circles are actually a gold flake color.  One thing I would like to point out is that the tree is absolutely not a x-mas tree.  It is the pine tree in front of the house.  I repeat; not a Christmas tree.  Not.

When you listen to a song, or have some sort of interaction with a person/place/animal etc. do you ever think about how it is nearly impossible to recreate that moment? And say you did, your reaction would be skewed. I am gaining ever-growing respect for performance art and realizing the static quality of 2 and 3 dimensional art. There are less senses to pull on with 2 and 3 dimensional art and I find that limiting. If i haven’t made it clear as of yet, I find anything limiting to be a nuisance.

I added three new works to the gallery. They are flat, but they are in response to “The House on the Rock”. So, there is that.

In more perfunctory news I am leaving for Maine on June 14th. I have procured the keys to the Chicago apartment, took pictures, and measured for building shelves and lofts.From the bedroom:

PJ has had some employment issues and by that I mean that the company was purchased and the headquarters are in TX. No thank you (we both say((I think)). Regardless, Phil is staying here for a lot of valid reasons and I can’t take everything to the city, so I started an amazon.com wishlist. If anyone is in a strange but giving mood,

Also, as a sortof farewell and/or homage to Indiana I got more tattoo work done on my arm.

This first image is of a Hebrew word: Tzafah ; to gaze in a prophetic sense, root=to float. Mostly it means meditative insight. Also related to “spiritual pressure” as in the spiritual pressure of the “soul” or “mind”. Have a conversation about this with me. It is most welcome.

This is the bluebird. It is for Andrea and I in honor of taking the bluebird out of hiding in Charles Bukowski’s heart. R, N, and I all participated in drawing this. Also, J’s drawings are on there too. So all my friends are here. In my skin.

Also, Johnny Depp is still hot.

Next week we leave for a five day trip to Portland Maine. I am an mfa candidate for Maine College of Art and will spend the summer there for “intensive program”. Ready for it. What happens when I come back is uncertain. I am fairly sure that i will be living in Chicago in West Logan Square in an apartment that is just perfect. I am fairly certain that there are buckets full of Montessori jobs waiting for a dedicated art instructor and or assistant teacher. I have had one interview and a few inquires. All is settling in. However, as per usual, the monetary situation (poverty) is never-ending. My financial aid is 2,000 shy of just covering tuition. I applied for a Plus Loan, but it is based on credit. And if you are banker, ‘we don’t like your kind’.

I have been busy with art, anyway. I worked on three large panels in response to my House on the Rock experience. They were in a poorly lit show. And by poorly lit, I mean literally and, that the focus was more on local bands than art. The good news is there are more people interested in making an established contemporary art scene here in Tippecanoe county. It really is a shame that I will be leaving. Next month, at Alchemy Salon there will be the “Gun and Knife Show” that I will be participating in. We bounced around the idea that someone just has to paint ‘the prying of the rifle from his cold, DEAD hands’ but I am fairly certain that the internet has beaten us to it, in spades. Other art projects range from dollmaking, papermaking, and a woodcut print that i made  for my friend’s birthday. I need to get over there and take a picture of it for my files. (edit: now in the gallery)
Back to House on the Rock for a moment. I am sure that I am not alone when I think that this place was just overwhelming. I cannot list the contents of this place. It would take away from your personal experience. I will say that if I am a filling buckets of interactions so that I can react to them, my bucket runneth over. As soon as I get to Willow Stained Glass Studio downtown (where they are hanging as a triptych) I will post the pictures of those as well as updating them to the website gallery. There is so much that isn’t on there.

Also, here is my first attempt at webcomicking. It really is a shame that the comments are disabled. Anyone want to email me and tell me how to fix this would be a doll. A real live doll. Well, anyway, here it is.

Choices are coming in the mail. So far, since I have not had confirmation from two schools as of yet, my choices are thus:
a. I could move to Portland (ME not OR, don’t fret) with Phil, find co-ops or work with what i have, or finagle my way into the undergrad facilities, find him a job, transfer to university of southern maine. +there are really great Aikido schools there. New energies as catalysts for our innate pliability in the definion of self.
b. I could move there alone doing the same thing but with much less moral support and a one sided experience relayed via instant messaging, surely. Distancing and bringing closer, potentially.
c. I could stay here, however demand that we move, get an adviser in IN and spend my low residency in ME. If I do this, I will find somewhere that i can have a real permanent studio and set my roots here. (that makes me sad).  But the benefit is that i can spend my loan money on building a real art studio of my own to further my art career. However, I could essentially do this in Portland too.
d. I could stay here, in this house. keep this house. use some loan money to fix up a room, some other things to make it more part of my heart and enough for support the idea of living in a house without roommates.
e. Wait to see what other schools say….? State school benefits: it has other courses i could take. 24 hour access, contacts, travel abroad, teaching positions, my own studio. i don’t have to move. Less money to owe later. downfall: it is here and not an art school primarily it is a big ten school. Other private leftover, would be the best option for obviousl reasons.
f. Try again next year to same/better/more schools with gusto and have more knowledge that I learned this first time around.

what do you think?

A thought I had today:  Every book is holy.

things are getting furnaced around like this

we saw the two doe that day. their white triangles leaning towards a suicide rock.

phenomenon and silence.

It may be worth it.

I am not sure if I have ever revealed here on the sigh-ed blog the news of my brother’s suicide. I found out on January 27th. The coroner called my apartment building because my mother did not have a phone at the time. I lived two blocks from her and I stood outside for what seemed like forever before I went to tell her the news that Micah Sol Landsman had expired. The next few days were blurry. People fed me pills. I sobbed and fucked and sobbed while fucking. What I do remember is the last day that I saw him. It was January first and he needed a ride home from my mothers house. The boy (berm) was with me and I had a futon that needed to go in my new apartment. It wouldn’t fit in the elevator and he selflessly carried it up five flights of stairs for me? What did I do for him? I have to fill in the blanks for that still. Right now I am suffering. I miss him selfishly (as per my normal persona would). I hope his matter has made Mount Baldi a better place. He came to me in dreams. Once in a library full of dark polished wood and good books. Once to go swimming with J. And once to look at me through a window with the biggest grin on his face. Sometimes my throat gets thick and I excuse myself to let the hot salt come down my face. My thoughts are to alleviate his suffering and the suffering he has left here. There are so many people he affected by this decision, and I know I am not alone when I am looking backwards.

If you are interested I have very much associated within the last three years with these lyrics by Belle and Sebastian. I know, blech, songs, blech. Poems and songs sometimes say it just as well as I could, though.

Ease you’re feet off in the sea
My darling it’s the place to be
Take your shoes off curl your toes
And I will frame this moment in time
Troubles come and troubles go
The trouble that we’ve come to know
Will stay with us till we get old
Will stay with us till somebody decides to go
Decides to gooo……

Soberly, without regret, I make another sandwich
And I fill my face, I know that things have got to you
But what can I do?
Suddenly, without a warning
On a pale blue morning
You decide your time is wearing thin
A conscious choice to let yourself go dangling
Hovering
It’s an emergency

There’s no more “wait and see”

Maybe if I shut my eyes
Your trouble will be split between us
People come and people go
You’re scouring everybody’s face
For some small flicker of the truth
To what it is that you are going through, my boy
I left you dry
The signs were clear that you were not going anywhere
Anywhere
Save for a falling down
Save for a falling down
Anywhere
Anywhere
Save for a falling down
Everything’s going wrong

Later on, as I walked home
The plow was showing, and orion
I could see the house where you lived
I could see the house where you gave
All your time and sanity to people
Then you waited for the people to acknowledge you
They spoke in turn
But their eyes would pass over you
Over you
Who’s seeing you at all?
Who’s seeing You at all?

Ease you’re feet off in the sea
My darling it’s the place to be
Take your shoes off curl your toes
And I will frame this moment in time
Troubles come and troubles go
The trouble that we’ve come to know
Will stay with us till we get old
Will stay with us till somebody decides to go
Decides to gooo……
Soberly, without regret, I make another sandwich
And I fill my face, I know that things have got to you
But what can I do?
Suddenly, without a warning
On a pale blue morning
You decide your time is wearing thin
A conscious choice to let yourself go dangling
Hovering
It’s an emergency

There’s no more “wait and see”

Maybe if I shut my eyes
Your trouble will be split between us
People come and people go
You’re scouring everybody’s face
For some small flicker of the truth
To what it is that you are going through, my boy
I left you dry
The signs were clear that you were not going anywhere
Anywhere
Save for a falling down
Save for a falling down
Anywhere
Anywhere
Save for a falling down
Everything’s going wrong

Later on, as I walked home
The plow was showing, and orion
I could see the house where you lived
I could see the house where you gave
All your time and sanity to people
Then you waited for the people to acknowledge you
They spoke in turn
But their eyes would pass over you
Over you
Who’s seeing you at all?
Who’s seeing You at all?

*************************************************

Also, for the permanence of the ethers I will post the entirety of the poem that was read at his funeral. It is by Philip Levine and is called “And the trains go on”

We stood at the back door
of the shop in the night air
while a line of box cars
of soured wheat and pop bottles
uncoupled and was sent creaking
down our spur. Once, when I
unsealed a car and the two
of us strained the door open
with a groan of rust, an old man
stepped out and tipped his hat.
‘It’s all yours, boys!’
and he went off, stiff-legged,
smelling of straw and shit.
I often wonder whose father
he was and how long he kept
moving until the police
found him, ticketless, sleeping
in a 2nd class waiting room
and tore the cardboard
box out of his hands and beat him
until the ink of his birth smudged
and surrendered its separate vowels.
In the great railyard of Milano
the dog with the white throat
and the soiled muzzle crossed
and recrossed the tracks
“searching for his master,”
said the boy, but his grandfather
said, “No, He was sent by G-d
to test the Italian railroads.”
When I lie down at last to sleep
inside a boxcar of coffins bound
for the villages climbing north
will I waken in a small station
where women have come to claim
what is left of glory? Or will
I sleep until the silver bridge
spanning the Mystic River jabs
me awake, and I am back
in a dirty work-shirt that says Phil,
24 years old, hungry and lost, on
the run from a war no one can win?
I want to travel one more time
with the wind whipping in
the open door, with you to keep
me company, back the long
tangled road that leads us home.
Through Flat Rock going east
picking up speed, the damp fields
asleep in the moonlight. You stand
beside me, breathing the cold
in silence. When you grip
my arm hard and lean way out
and shout out the holy names of the lost
neither of us is scared
and our tears mean nothing.