The Longest Story...

I did not suffer this cancer by myself nor get to where I am alone. I have been married for over forty years, to the same person even! That is almost a record in our throw-away society, isn't it? It is not a perfect relationship, perfection would be South Sea Island beaches, gentle breezes, moonlit nights and soft lapping of the waves, footprints dancing in the sand. That idea is always there but somehow down in the stack of things necessary to do. First there were utility bills and rent payments, this and that, the necessary things. I promised you the story about how we met and it might be a long story, there is a lot to remember but I will begin it at the very beginning and tell you everything.

The Hat Story

Most Americans who go to Europe usually return with one special story. It is usually a funny one, somewhat anecdotal, or an account of losing one's passport, a language barrier with the natives or some story about the food. My story sounds rather simple and is called, "The Hat Story".
To make a real story out of it I have to account for more than just acquiring a hat and handing over six hundred and sixty two Pesetas. That happened in Barcelona, Spain. The story really begins Genoa, Italy, but I will begin it just outside Pavia, Italy where I was hitch-hiking East.
I say East because I seldom hitch with a definite goal, a place to be each night on a tour-bussed itinerary. I was going East, meaning in the general direction of Genoa, East Italy, Southern France, Spain, Morocco, North or West Africa. That direction. I didn't have a very clear picture in my mind. If I found a nice stream, a pub or an interesting person I would stop.
Sometimes I would stop for an hour or two to play soccer along some side street in no particular town with a name I remember. Once I stopped at a little Danish cove, a tiny little blue stretch of sea with fishermen's nets stretched along the sand to be repaired. It was quiet and isolated and I spent three weeks there doing nothing. It was wonderful.
It was only ten o'clock in the morning some day in May and the early Spring had been quite hot. I had been hitching for about an hour which normally isn't unbearably long but the trucks were whizzing past me and I was getting dusty without getting any place. This shouldn't bother a hiker but I had just had a shower and I didn't know when I was going to get another one. I started walking towards the train station. I would take the train to Genoa where I would grab a boat to Spain.
The train was almost empty. I got on it and the first compartment had only one person in it, a girl by chance, but I didn't want to talk to anyone and found the second compartment empty.
I just sat there and smoked cigarettes waiting to get into Genoa. The train stopped with a lurch that would have stopped an airplane. I put my pack on and walked into the hallway. Ahead of me was the girl and she had a pack on too. She got to the door and I expected to open it for her when she kicked it open with her foot and jumped to the station floor. I climbed down and starred at her. She walked off and I couldn't find her in the crowd. I walked around the station aimlessly
hoping to see her and to my surprise she came walking directly towards me!
"Do you speak English?" she asked.
"Yes, a little" I responded thinking now where in the hell will I take this? What a stupid answer, but I had heard it a million times. Street sweepers in Europe speak "a little English".
"You are American. Where are you hitching to? Do you want to take the train to Marseilles with me and hitch to Spain?" This was the '60's, we were open and honest and a bit naive.
I am really thinking OMG how do I respond to this?
"No. I'm going to take the boat to Spain. Why don't you go on the boat?" What a brilliant answer, an opportunity, an invitation, an adventure and I just rejected it!
We had two hours for my boat and her train to leave. It was two o'clock and my boat and her train left at four. I told her I would buy her a glass of wine and we could talk a couple of hours, but I didn't want to go to France.
"Why don't you like the French?" she asked me over wine.
We sat and talked until ten minutes past four. We missed the train and the boat. The next boat wasn't until three days later and the next train was at four o'clock the next day. We decided to hitch.
We bought some wine in a two litter bottle, some cheese, cold meats and a loaf of bread.
I wanted to cash a traveller's check as I had only about a dollar on me but we couldn't find a place open. She said she had some money and would support us through France if I would support us through Spain. Spain is much cheaper than France and I thought I had a good deal.
That is how we met.

There is a lot more to this story. It takes place over forty years and two continents, two children, various careers, dreams lost and found, death and rebirth. I will see what I can remember of it.

Film on the Editing Room Floor

picked up in segments and scotch taped together, run through an old 8mm projector, often blurry and with that continuous clacking sound, that is how these memories appear. I don't get the pure uncut version, they are memories filtered through time and I am sure, tempered by who I am today. Someone once said that when telling a story, "start with the now". Between this and my other blog I have gone back and forth searching for the beginning. I have been searching deep in that pile of transparent cellulose, cutting and pasting and taping when maybe the answer was on the top of the pile all along!

The most incredible fantastic thing is that I am alive at all. I had stage "three and one half"

Hodgkin's Lymphoma that had spread to my spleen and spine. There is no such thing as stage 31/2 but the doctor wanted to offer some hope. I fought that hard battle and the day to day account of it is here. Okay, that is a whole damned website, but at the top, where it says, "BLOG", that is it.

Art plays a big part in the make up of me. I have always liked a challenge, not in a competitive

sporty kind of way, but a personal best, doing more or better than I did yesterday. And I just plain like to make things, this desk I am writing on and the studio in which it sits, the house I call home and everything in between.

Art became powerful when I was fifty years old and decided to make my living at it. I threw away a career I grew to hate, completing the jobs at hand and laying off my remaining employees. That summer I became unemployed. I became an Artist! A work at home artist with a studio in my backyard, and a little pool, and a greenhouse, and the most beautiful of gardens.

Shortening the story a bit, it was all pretty easy. I used all my construction experience and applied it to my art, inventing some things and reinventing others. My "stuff" was available at

five local shops and two more down the valley a bit. One year I decided to try the Galleries just

for fun, just to say I did it. That was easy too. In a town used to $300 garden arbors I introduced them to $3,500 ones, always bigger and better, never imported, I made these. When giant entry gates were ordered from three designs I offered my own, and art deco, design with art, not just framed fence panels. My biggest thrill to all of this was in encouraging my competition to step up and do a better job. I kept no secretes from them, would happily tell them everything I knew. One can only copy what I have done not what I will do tomorrow.

I enjoy teaching and encouraging and inspiring others, that has to be a big part of who I am.

I'll tell that story tomorrow!

Old Girlfriends

Never die, in fact they don't even age. Caught forever in a memory they remain as we knew them, youthful, romantic and full of strength. I don't go to High School Reunions because I wouldn't recognize all the old people there. It is interesting how we see ourselves and how others see us.

I don't have the soul of an artist, that quiet desperation, that always hunting for something that isn't there, a need for silence and isolation and with all this a determination to become famous. I don't paint into lonely hours nor find much significance in the torrential rains pounding on my shop roof, battering my garden. I am only thinking I need to fix the gutters.

My paintings are fast and furious, an experiment in extremism, colorful, loud, nonsensical, without meaning at all. They don't exist except in this computer, the internet cyber world and maybe outer space if they get sent by radio waves. I make them quickly and while still wet, photo them and do it again, painting over the one just finished maybe seven times. The last one

might live the longest, tossed into a corner of my shop until I need the metal it is painted on.

This doesn't mean they are bad, misbehaved in some way. In fact I have sold some and do have a few that made it into the house. It only means they are not proper, oil on canvas, framed,

ready to be hung, established style and acceptable for an art gallery. OMG! That is IT! That is who I am! Now, how in the Hell did I get here???

My other blog where I share this thought.

Forever Young

On my OTHER BLOG I talk about my youth, reminiscing and reminding myself of my childhood adventures, and because I am a political animal, I throw some of that in too.
I have been to Europe several times in my life and each time I threw my watch away. I never had an itinerary, a schedule, a destination, no place I had to be and no time restraints. I think this is a key element to youth, an abandonment of time, playing outside until way past dark, forgetting to come in to dinner, and as we got a little older, "dancing the night away"!
Artists still do this, get so involved in their projects, just one more minute can lead to hours and time becomes meaningless.
Old age is watches and schedules and timetables and responcibility and that horrible concept that time can be wasted. We develop that notion that the clock is ticking louder and the hour will strike. When I discovered I had cancer one of the first things I did was to throw my watch away. Oh there are time pieces all over the house and on this computer so I was never late for the dozens of doctor appointments I had. I just never wanted to keep time with me like a chain around my wrist, giving power to that mechanical device. The time is now.

I want to see if I am clever enough to LINK this to my other blog! Now we shall see if I am learning anything?

When I had Cancer (it never had me!) I grew very old very fast. I went from being 63 to being 93 in six months. Cancer doesn't really do this, the cure does; it is a mean mixture of chemicals

derived from Mustard gas used in World War I. Why couldn't they have discovered a good cure made from a fine aged brandy! and I still don't know why they didn't include a few "Happy Pills"

into this recipe so we would at least feel good about the process! Doctors have no sense of humor!

Now I am getting younger every day! Walking again, taking in the neighborhood, doing a little welding and I recently got my paint out!

One Week to Live!

No, no, not me. At least I don't think it is me. We are almost never given this option anyway
and those that do get it are mostly beyond living anyway, too sick to create a "bucket list".
Actually I think this "bucket list" should be for the young, those eager and strong enough to accomplish their dreams. The dreams of youth should be huge! I am always saddened when they are limited to getting a job at McDonalds and buying a car! I am amazed that the Peace Corps
doesn't have lines eight blocks long to enroll in their programs offering a chance to see and live
another's life in a different culture on the other side of the Earth! Too many people live and die within 100 miles of where they were born. Horizons should be expanded, our experiences broadened, our curiosity awakened at an early age.
Youth is not determined by age, of course, and excitement and curiosity can be found in some
of us "older elders"! My mother flew in a hot air balloon over the Kilamari desert when she was
a mere 84! She gave up driving on her 90th birthday! When death took her I think she was ready and her bucket list was empty. She was simply waiting.