I wrote a small piece about “Quitting Like A Pope” a few weeks ago for the New York Times about my experience of quitting the tumultuous world of drama. You can read it HERE.

I have a habit of reading my horoscope before going to bed, and one of the apps I use also has a 3 card tarot reading as an extra feature. I often ask about the week and most always wonder about work. I was inspired to receive the Ace of Pentacles for the future… It’s a card of success and new beginnings.

I also want to point out that graphically the tarot deck I use, I believe it’s the Aquarian deck, is like looking at a Dali painting, reading a Garcia Marquez book. They have symbols that spread out like a riddle, and although they have distinct meanings, they subtly mold into the question at hand. I adore the Ace of Pentacles.

And with that, I bid you sweetest of all dreams.

xo

So.  So, I’ve decided to get back to painting.  Mainly it’s because I feel I need it to be healthy.  And that my neighborhood demands it of me.  My “Disco” series will be expanded to the artists of the 80s that I loved so much.  Keith Haring.  David Salle.  Francesco Clemente.  Jean Michel Basquiat.  Andy Warhol.  And many others.  It’s odd, the older I get the more I regress back into that child I once was, painting like Patrick Nagel and finding solace in its very act.

I am also very involved in graphic design as a form of elevated art for the advertising world.  I mean, why does everything have to be a schtick.  Shouldn’t a graphic designer work towards making the audience *think* on some level.  I think going with cliches like, “Sex Sells” is lazy.

Even at Dan’s Papers, I am always trying to find a way to communicate the clients’ product to the reader in order to compel them towards it.  Does it matter?  Probably not.  But I love the conceptualizing of the ad not to care about where it will take its audience.

Anyway, will have to work tomorrow, and it’s WAY too late.

Night.

Even more than the tree and the house that intrigued me was going to visit Pollock where he notoriously was laid to rest under a giant boulder.  So, after a few years of living here, and, for some reason, systematically finding myself making excuses for trying to find the grave, I decided one year, when Kyle was about 4, to visit Jackson.  So I headed over to the cemetery that I passed all the time, and drove in.  Lots of interesting looking headstones (there’s one with a faux movie camera on the stone, for, I guess, a director of movies).  Lots of “Talmage” and other local family names and military men plots.  But it isn’t until the end of the loop within the cemetery that I saw it.  A giant boulder with three dozen stones placed on top it, by far the most visited, it seemed.  I wondered how often people urinated on it, since Mr. Pollock is also famous for having urinated into Peggy Guggenheim’s fireplace during a party.  For some reason, it made sense, however rude it sounds.

And thus, I took Kyle out of his booster seat and we looked for rocks.  And we laid it ceremoniously on the colossal stone.  The distinct knowledge that this great man laid just below our feet was powerful.  Kyle took a lot of pride in visiting the painter that his mother mentioned every time we passed the house or grave.  In fact, for years, whenever we passed the cemetery in our car, we’d often say, “Hi, Jackon.  Bye, Jackson.”  Still do, our Patron Saint of Springs.

But then I noticed the smaller rock, dwarfed by the intense presence of the boulder.  And on it was the name of woman behind this man.  Lee Krasner was just a few yards away, a stone’s throw from Jackson.  I suppose she was always  in his shadow.  I don’t really know why I don’t sympathize with her.  Maybe it was because he didn’t give Jackson what he wanted, which was children, because she wanted only to be a painter.  Perhaps it was the crass way everyone always painted her as in movies and books.  But it was at the cemetery looking at her grave that I realized why she might have been angry.  Jackson was always the center of their relationship – the rockstar.  Even in death, she laid under his great weight.

When I explained who Lee Krasner was, he turned to find a rock and placed it on her stone.  And so did I.  God knows, she deserved our respect for having put up with Pollock, which was challenging, and still, and until eternity, she will always be lingering in his shadow.