Flea Market Hell

Despite the camera ready iPhone in my pocket, I took no photos. There was a feeling that nothing on film or memory card could sufficiently convey the cheap nightmare quality of my outing to Daytona’s huge weekend flea market.

It is spread over a vast area, probably five or six acres of merchandise that in my opinion would make an excellent bonfire. I suppose it really shouldn’t surprise me what people will buy. Ashtrays molded out of beer cans, keychains in the shape of names spelled out in pink and aqua plastic, baseball caps completely covered in sequins, cut rate make up and perfume, bundles and bundles of ugly socks, embarrassing sea shell “art” and other countless tables of rubbish. At each intersection are stalls selling funnel cake, corn dogs, curly-Q French fries and Coca Cola.

Off in one corner—a relatively small area compared to the acres of carnival goods—is a meager offering of fresh fruit and vegetables. But look at the prices and you’d think you had just crossed over to Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Why would anyone buy a basket of bruised peaches for $24.00?

I located the information booth to ask about fountain pens and books, but I might have gotten more information about spacemen and life on Mars had I asked. The lady didn't know what a fountain pen is, but said I might try Edna’s Jewelry Art on aisle D2.

Did I mention the heat? Within ten minutes my shirt was sweat soaked and perspiration dripping from my face. There are huge fans all about, but they do little more than blow hot air and spread the smell of popcorn and cotton candy. Add to that the generously proportioned people filling plastic shopping bags with funnel cake and painted seashell ashtrays, pushing a baby carriage and trailed by four juniors. You would think that people shopping for a tattoo would opt for an air conditioned place, but I noticed four different open-air tattoo stands.

I could take no more after forty-five minutes and turned for the exit. It took me another thirty minutes to locate my parking area and walk to my sun baked car. On the way I passed a man playing show tunes on an amplified electric violin.

Try to imagine hell.

Outlaw Painter, Caravaggio

Much of his life remains a mystery, but it has been suggested that Michelangelo Merisi of Caravaggio—the painter we know as Caravaggio—had a troubled childhood and adolescence. By his early twenties he had already become and outright villain, arrested and imprisoned repeatedly. Cardinal del Monte a powerful man and patron of Caravaggio proved unequal to the painter’s repeated brushes with the law. At age 39, a persecuted outlaw, he was finally murdered on a beach south of Rome.

Caravaggio is the quintessence of what came to be called “Baroque.” Coming on the cusp of the 16th and 17th centuries, it was a time of fury, ecstasy and excess, and each of Caravaggio’s paintings created a scandal. He name was lost, forgotten for three hundred years. Not until the 1920s was his name revived, his work reevaluated, thanks to the research and enthusiasm of Italian art critic, Roberto Lohghi. The painter’s contemporaries could not know of the influence that the scandalous artist would have on later painters, Rembrandt, Delacroix, Géricault, Courbet and Manet. One American critic declared, “With the exception of Michelangelo, no other Italian painter exercised so great an influence.” The influence that these critics speak of was a far-reaching refinement of the emotional/intellectual relation between artist and subject. But during his lifetime Caravaggio was considered provocative and unacceptable. His work was seen as a display of obese, vulgar models posed sacrilegiously as Christ or Apostle, severed heads, men and women in ignoble, drunken postures, and young rogues playing dice or cheating at cards.

This description is to some extent accurate, but the technical facility, or drawing, paired with the chiaroscuro, the light and dark of a Caravaggio canvas attests to his genius. He worked at great speed without first sketching out the main figures, so sure was his drafting. In his compositions, the painter created a theatrical realism, using player-models chosen from the street. Monteverdi had just invented the operatic form, which Caravaggio translated to canvas. Still, whatever he painted, precedence was always given to nature and truth.

Genius or debauched sensualist, perhaps both, Caravaggio’s paintings are now in their rightful place in museums around the world.

ABOUT THE EXAMPLES SHOWN HERE:

1. The Musicians, 1595-1596—The singer, second from the right is a self-portrait of the artist.

2. The Crucifixion of Saint peter, 1601

3. Victorious Cupid, 1602-1603

4. The Cardsharps, 1594-1595

Thoughts on Pen & Ink

I try to jot down in a notebook words or quotations that either impress me right off, or in some way provoke thought on one, two or more ideas. The following six quotations are in no way grand or inspirational, but if nothing else are at least interesting opinions about the art of writing, and the tools we use to do that.

“There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen.” — Petrarch

“The Pen is the tongue of the mind” — Horace

“No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination” — James Joyce

“I am a man-pen. I feel through the pen because of the pen.” — Gustave Flaubert

“The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium.” — Norbet Platt

“My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ballpoint pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.” — Graham Greene

And one last excerpt from Jeffrey Deaver, which is something I included in an earlier post this past March. Again, the novelist wrote in a 1999 book:

“Handwriting is a part of a human being. Like our sense of humor or imagination. It’s one of the only things about people that survives their death. Writing can last for hundreds of years. Thousands. It’s about as close to immortality as we can get. Whatever somebody wrote is a reflection of who they are. It doesn’t matter how the words are made or what they say, even if they’re mistaken or nonsensical. Just the fact that someone thought of the words and their hands committed them to paper is what counts. I’ve always thought of handwriting as a fingerprint of the heart and mind.”

Dream or Reality?

Tired of waiting for a rainy day and fearful of nighttime crowds, I caught a matinee of the Christopher Nolan - Leonardo DiCaprio movie, Inception. Wow! Let me say that again. Woooow!

Imagine a future where espionage agents are able to enter the dreams of a target and extract bits of information from the subconscious. Take it a step further and imagine not the extraction of information via dreams, but the planting of an idea that eventually tilts the target toward a desired action. This is Inception.

Writer-Director Christopher Nolan drops us into a world where a razor thin line separates dreams from reality, a world where dreams are created layer upon layer, then entered and manipulated by ultra-talented and dangerous spies. But the subconscious is a dangerous terrain where a flicker of thought can crash the dream, and where players can end up comatose in a near permanent limbo. There are mazes within mazes and puzzles double-knotted with complication, and at times you ask yourself if the action is dream or reality. A literal understanding of the full-blown scheme cooked up by Dom (DiCaprio) and his team is out of reach, but somehow Nolan has crafted the story so that we know the what and why of their plan.

Inception is beautiful, chaotic, classy, and image-wise a mind boggling ride. In virtual worlds Parisian streets roll up like carpets, cities collapse, gravity is tamed, and locomotives grind high speed through traffic clogged streets.

If Christopher Nolan’s Batman picture, The Dark Knight gave you a movie thrill, Inception will cover it in aces. See it on the big screen, because a lot will be lost when it filters down to DVD.

Aug 16, 1920 - Mar 9, 1994

Yesterday was the birthday of poet and novelist, Charles Bukowski, who died in 1994 at the age of 73. To date, he has over sixty books in print—poetry, stories, novels and one screenplay—the most recent published in 2009. Bukowski’s wife, Linda Lee has continued over the years since his death to sort through the numerous boxes of unpublished pages her husband left behind, and to offer ‘new’ collections of his work. Through her, his readers have been treated to a new book almost every year, despite his death sixteen years ago.

The book featured here in the photograph is one I randomly chose from my collection, carries another typically Bukowski-like title, Septuagenarian Stew: Stories & Poems, and was published in 1990. I say randomly chosen only meaning that careful thought isn’t needed to pick a good book by Bukowski; they are all good, and all have their strengths. Septuagenarian Stew is an excellent example of the writer’s overview. There is also Run With the Hunted: The Charles Bukowski Reader, which many will recommend. Either one provides the reader an excellent introduction to Bukowski, if such is needed.

A short poem from Septuagenarian Stew, “cause and effect”

the best often die by their own hand

just to get away,

and those left behind

can never quite understand

why anybody

would ever want to

get away

from

them

Bukowski’s gravestone reads: DON’T TRY

He explained this phrase in a letter:

‘Someone at one of those places asked me: “What do you do? How do you write, create?” You don’t, I told them. You don’t try. That’s very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It’s like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks you make a pet out of it.’

Chandler, Wife & City

Raymond Chandler is one of those writers whose books call out to me every couple of years, the answer to which is taking down one of his seven novels or several books of stories and submerging myself in the dank shadows of his landscape—Los Angeles, circa 1940s.

A few months ago a friend in Los Angeles recommended a book on the subject of Raymond Chandler. The book is one called, The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved, by Judith Freeman; published in 2007. It is a strange and captivating tale Ms Freeman tells, and it is as much about the city of Los Angeles as it is about Ray and his wife, Cissy Pascal. Geography, setting and corruption are central characters in the work of Chandler, and influenced his writing as much as the presence of his longtime wife. In telling her story, Freeman wraps the city and its tarnished personality securely around her human characters.

From early on Freeman realized that the mystery couple, Ray and Cissy lived a peripatetic lifestyle grounded in something central to their city view, to their understanding of the city’s first-of-a-kind development throughout the years from 1913 to 1954. During the years of their marriage (1924-1953) the couple never left California, while living a few months in one rented apartment or house, before moving to another. Freeman researched and visited most of the thirty-six places the couple lived.

The life of Raymond Chandler, as well as his writing were strongly colored by the woman he loved, a beautiful woman eighteen years older than he. From the beginning to the end, Cissy’s true age was a hidden secret, and it was some years before Ray realized he had married a woman almost old enough to be his mother. But to her credit, Cissy was far more than a pretty face; a woman of intelligence, talent and wit enough to bedazzle Ray Chandler. Not a storybook or fairy tale match, but one that included devotion and love, as well as need.

The Long Embrace gives the Raymond Chandler fan a bounty of ideas on how the stories and novels were conceived and written. We also see how an alcoholic bookkeeper fired from the oil business became the creator of Philip Marlowe, the iconic private eye. Freeman uncovers what was almost an umbilical cord connecting Chandler’s adopted home to his story settings.

‘A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness.’ — THE LONG GOODBYE

The Long Embrace is ostensibly about a writer and the woman in his life, but it is in every way also a book about the city of Los Angeles between 1913 and 1954, and it is a fascinating read. A big thanks to Shelby for the recommendation. I got the book first at the library, but ordered a copy to keep before I was halfway through the library copy.

More of Kawamura

Found a loose wire on a painting in the living room, so I took it down for repair. But as it happened, the time between taking it off the wall and tightening the loose wire got extended somehow, and for much of the day the painting lay across a table. That being a different perspective of looking at the piece, I stopped several times to look again at the painting.

The artist is one I’ve mentioned before, the still young Japanese painter, Chinami Kawamura, who I consider a bright light for the future of Japanese painting. There is a large amount of Western influence and style in Kawamura’s painting, but she is completely faithful to Japanese, or at least Asian subjects. Much of her work is in acrylic, and I can’t even recall seeing anything done in oil, watercolor or pastel. I have a very large pencil drawing of two nude figures, and I have seen other of the artist’s work in pencil. Her skill in that medium is equal to what she does in acrylic.

The painting here is in acrylic, measures 23 inches by 19 inches, and is done on board. The large brown, almost round area is a dish or plate, and the viewer looks down from a bird’s eye view into the plate, at an arrangement of three vegetables common to Japanese homes and restaurants: eggplant, lotus root and green chili-like peppers. The small daubs of greenish-yellow and white below are wasabi mustard and grated white radish. Turning to a Western technique, the artist spread an English language newspaper across her ‘table’ and created a collage effect with gesso. This gives the appearance of dish and vegetables laying on a newspaper covered table. For highlights on the eggplant and green peppers she used silver leaf.

I am forever happy that I stumbled upon an exhibit of Ms Kawamura’s work in a small Tokyo gallery. I bought one painting at that show, and in the next two years bought other paintings and drawings directly from the artist. Of course, I could be wrong in my appraisal, but I have great faith that one day Chinami Kawamura will be a familiar name among Japanese painters.