reflecting on a dream

inordinate amounts of background time are spent for no apparent good reason in simply turning on my computer and sacrificing an occasional virgin for its appeasement. a wonderfully stupid thing to do (well, let's make that two things) is/are 1. click the 'next blog' button on the blogger.com site, which will likely take you to a site which will try to force programs on you and definitely install trojan viruses without any prior knowledge on your behalf. 2. open one's blog up to the general public, where some sad soul might post cliche and strugglingly blasphemous drivel as comments to one of your posts, with no regard to the content of your place. the obvious disadvantage to the beginner like myself is that the comment can neither be removed nor can the 'anonymous commentor' accept a response from me. thanks for the hosting, blogger.com, but these are serious faults in a shared environment.

that said, i had a great dream last night about a barren yet preternatural brick courtyard that was conceived minimally yet colorfully (purples and greens) in places. with a modicum of practice, one could (in the dread, mind you) manipulate a set of trinkets to acheive transcendence on various levels in this meditation environment, if it were only so easy. spirituality, as the word is lobbed around, is humanity's cruel dog, manipulated and filtered through thousands of minds and motives, losing meaning and connectedness on the personal and subjective level, replaced only with ritual. can't we just skip the pretexts and find the shortcuts? cut past the incentives and judging of others to the unquestionable contact that defies my description but not my memory? we have already died and/or not yet been born for its value on the trade in. it's not worth it, the drama.

collage with polyester background

collage

watercolor

collage with silver frame

(I know, it looks more like gold, doesn't it?)

watercolor with relief printing

another cushion, appox. 15 inches in diameter

this is a picture of a buckwheat cushion i made about a year and a half ago. i can be used for meditation, propping your head up while you crash out on the living room floor, or resting your feet on while you slam away at a keyboard, among other things.

loosening screws

As interesting as it was to buy a second hand digital camera off eBay and shoot a few hundred pictures with it before it went absolutely awry, it was equally as fun to remove 30 or so tiny screws from the thing and sniff at and otherwise examine the remaining parts. what a clunker, but lovely my canon powershot with the 2.1 megapixel and 32 mb memory card, and you might think it descended from the sea of europa if you got a close look at one of like 100 tiny parts. shiny copper tiny weaving bits coated in plastic. sharp soldered wires on tiny green boards with alien switches and silkscreened writing. the mad thing sparked at me a few times as i discovered several batteries located within, included one mega so flash battery that made smoke fly! how fun. now all the pieces fit nicely into a large yogurt cup on my bookshelf, as I hunt for its progeny behind glass cases, at the expense of precious time and of course, funds.

I opened my email after a few days of non-email-checking and was happy to see emails from friends and family i don't communicate with so frequently. i'm definitely feeling less and less so enthused with phones each day, and the obligation of having to pick them up when they ring, well that's almost too much to ask. my first impression of the blog reaction is like this -> one either has no idea what it is (like me) or they are savvy and generous with other blog places they've gone and seen. to get this out objectively, i have no idea and/or expectation of what this is going to taste like in the near or far future. i do want, however, to openly invite contributions from anyone who finds this blog interesting in any way (well, i may have just eliminated everyone!).

Lastly, per what might constitute as a request, i would like to post some more art on occasion up here, and may actually write a few words about it, provided i can get remotely proficient at putting images up to a URL and crash land them on this page. i plan on having a booth at the semi-obscure but so on Cherrywood Art Fair this solstice season - www.cherrywoodartfair.org chill, with food, live music, ALL ORIGINAL ARTS AND CRAFTS, and it's in an elementary school in east austin (how great is that!). i received amazing feedback from local residents, and would not pass up the opportunity to participate again this year. i'll end there, skaters.

moments before my canon powershot fizzled and croaked 

on relocating wild beasts

a wild creature one day just walked all four-legged into my reality, starved for dry bread and that, impossible to just shoo it away or ignore. instead, i wished to try to cultivate it like some wild onion. five years in the works, this silvery cat having had several more silvery kittens of her own (only one of which survived parking lots and precipes to my knowledge), a regular taming system was certainly set into place by yours truly. my wife and i moved a few miles south of where we spent that five years, and having felt certain obligation (and perhaps a bit of love) towards these anonymous beings, decided to move them where and when we move. several weeks was spent luring these two into humane traps so we could transport them, and once this small miracle was at completion, they spent three weeks on our back porch getting used to the new digs bit by scared bit. one morning we opened the cage and let them out. likely several days they spent slowly leaving the relative safety of the area. typically, a few days will go by before they return. for us it was several weeks, with only the mother returning to scarf down three times her usual quantity. moving is a most unpleasant experience for me, even if my new home were to be the Taj Majal. infinite unknown variables, most perceived as threatening to the increasing sensitivity I have to noise, draw me more towards my ideal of a quiet, plant-filled, and what passes theses days as 'hip hop'-free environment. cats as represented by wounded woodpeckers and soaking wet creatures who arrive at dusk in my dreams are my current perceptions of these pets of mine. the temptation of ignorance, and it's tasty strychnine, setting me off from a kind of independence.

Aziz's Blog

Aziz's Blog

does this interest you?

for the light few people who actually know me, and the other virtually 100% that do not, does this seem like some mode of communication you would like to investigate a bit further down that proverbial path? it may be time to turn this here computer off and get to bed. if this has meaning later, then it may go somewhere...

this is a painting that i did about five years ago that i sent to my nephew for his high school graduation. not only did he not get it in time for this fantastic milestone, it arrived 3 and a half months later! the reason? someone had spilled oil or something on the shipping address, and instead of contacting the person at the still intact return address side (me!), they just placed it in some random corner of the post office and clocked out for the day, month, or year. Überraschen!

hello o random individual

hey there. might i just click out these few lines for a bumbling pioneer or not of some newishly out of touch technology. where i am exactly, who the hell knows?