Drive way painting angels in the 21st century

I painted this one in a drive-way fully open outdoor studio, while living in my art-truck on the street.... I'd been evicted. Palo alto... in the 21st century... par for the course.

Study history, and you will see that each time these kinds of economic events occurred, largely caused by machinations of the ones holding power, economic or otherwise, they expected the poor folks to pay the price. they wanted to never face a change in their lifestyle.

Exactly the same, here in good ole enlightened Palo Alto...
I'd seen it before, in my early days in the meditation community of Fairfield.

Back then, I'd directed and edited a TM business video for drawing in out of town meditators to "colder than a witch's teat" Iowa. Yes, there were many honest meditaors... many, many, many. majority , in fact... but I was apalled to hear stories of folks that later became friends, who were hob-nobbed as soon as they were flwon in... as if it was one of those resort communities crossed with Emerald City. Enough to turn your gut.

Among the people, there are so many who will work for the common good beyond money, so eager to overlook traits of the greedy. there are a lot more reasons behind why people are happy with less. I always have been. I came from those kinds of people. It takes years to realize that the very small numbers of greedy rich will always nickel and dime us good hearted folks... they will even go so far as pretend they are on their last dollar to get a bargain. Happened inthe land of "Heaven on Earth" ... and when it did, I felt partly responsible because it was my vision as applied to those big Maharisihi dreams that was drawing in people from all around the globe... and every so often I heard a horror story. It seems that even among the most enlightened intentions, you will always find a few who will feed "off of new blood". The less inventive, the least common denomenator hiding behind old money... scenarios like that... over, and over.

It's not "all the rich folks"... but I still have yet to find a rich person who doesn't partially try to pretend they have the same aspirations of the good-hearted. I looked into the eyes of a billionaire recently and told him I was soon going to have to hit the road again... and that kid, in theory respects me in a very deep way.... He has no idea I see him backpeddling as if I am going to soon beg him for charity. Not on your life.

In any case. I learned about that a long time ago. It turns my stomach to realize I can search the web and find videos I helped design and produce, and realize that some of the folks associated with my creative flow have become millionaires. I tremble, especially now, when I fully understand I helped them into positions, and now hear about them walking past folks with no conscience or banking deals with no mention of my past influence on their success.

Par for the course. this is planet earth. Wow... right on...that explains everything. I must have taken a wrong turn at another solar system, bounced off a moon or two... and now I understand just what goes on here, having tracked back through history...yes, yes, yes. thisi is what they call "human nature". I just call it greed.

anyway... when the times got tough, it was bound to affect me sooner than later... and it sure did... it sure did.

.....so there I was, painting my paintings in a drive way of a new friend... but fully limited and held in check. I felt like the pet artist on display.... later on I found out I was the 3rd in a row... and those other folks all left that neighborhood feeling afraid of the next one... so there I was, feeling studied from windows all around me, while I painted this.

So... my landlord had his legal right to come after me... but it wasn't because of the rent...that was onlyhis cover story. read on.

As usual, I knew it would take a few years for reasonability to re-arrive in this town of wealthy rich folks. When it all started caving, they were still running around and taking it out on the folks who were trying to work with them. I was being too honest about my life with "the man" who owned the land where my studio never fully got launched. True, I was in a holding pattern, working on this wildly successful info-mercial for a friend, while developing a tv series that was our real project. During the internet/tech stocks feeding frenzy, my share ws being lost while I waited. I could feel it... but didn't find out for 3 years... So I was there trusting friendship.

never trust friendship when it involves a few hundred mill.

... I feel like the stupid one... but it takes survivng this kind of ordeal to know that for sure. Hindsight, as usual.

.... since I have been evicted now, almost 2 years.... that studio is STILL empty.

the guy was so fearful about the environmental hazards, I now think he thought i was dying of asbestos poinsoning... so he sold it and the building has been gutted... all evidence removed...wow. How greedy can you get?

When I was in the process of being evicted, rich associates (not friends), and well connected citizens who all enjoyed my local tv show... some even said it was ready for HBO... and even though I did all that out of my own pocket, they had the nerve to rub this boys pristine record for community service into the mud. the put that salt in my wounds... saying, "Face it... you were evicted because you couldn't pay rent". Well. that's only partly true.

Look at this painting. Enlarge it. Could a painting like this have been painted by a loser-freeloader, leach type of person?

Do you get something when you see a painting like this? When was the last time you heard an artist referred to in a respectful way? have we been fully convinced that artists are that unnecessary that they should live in dirt?

What really happened to me, my dreams, my studio and my future...is this, the woman in my life started to leave me when my business partner ran with my share of the cash. Women do this. I feel like an idiot to understand that my style of devotion to the path of enriching the world through creative process is a perfect reason for a woman to turn her love around.

There I was, trusint a friend I'd known to come back after he was king sh*t golden boy after our shared vison was launched. What was I thinking?

The idea that it was actually going that way was crippling me for 3 years running, but I still stayed loyal.

I told him, consider investing in high tech... then later I warned him to get the money out of those stocks..... he never lsitened. From the first day he was banking that kind of change, he was pretending to be strapped. Can you believe it? Within a week of the launch, he was a millionaire.
Haven't seen or hear from him since.

Let me tell you this.

It will really cause you to questing your belief in this world, when you see a frind you trust that much actually hire folks to piss you off so you will say something on his voicemail that he can claim infers you quit the deal. I never did. For almost 5 years I endured the scrutiny of folks who thought I was also super rich and hiding it to avoid taxes. No way. that guy probably had me surveiled as well. I'll tell you what, you really start to understand the hide and seek world of mistrutst whe nyou have an old frind try to turn you against him, just so he can write you off.

That's what I lived through. Try it, if you think it's been a joy ride.
He used to call me "the man who knows everything" and he signed a t-shirt saying those words... here it is... you can't see it, but it's here... 3d.

He wrote e-mails that supported my conclusions that trusting him was the right thing. A lot of promises... no performance. He was even given a Ferrari, that from what I hear, he has been too busy to drive til this day.

I would not want his world. If the money ever came, I'd use it for the people. Like always. he never will. I am sorry I ever helped him. I feel responsible for the ones he destroyed. Including the woman I was with who wanted to start a family with me. she doubted everything about me, everything that was real and true got truned inside out when my good old friend stopped the monthly expense checks...yeah... he paid part of the expense for me... along with a lot of lies... but the truth was, he made it damn hard for me to ever reach him and he made me work to get his attention... then he finally hired a person just to push me away. If you think about it, it walks the thin line of criminal....yeah I know it.

but I realized this;

on good intention, if my ship had come in, I would probably have done worse damage than he has.

really.

I found out, because he found that "revenge nerve " inside me. And I knew I had work to do, or I would die of bitterness.

So, I got busy inside. Cleaning house.

I have never gone after him.... at least not yet.... I still can in New Mexico... but who cares... I mean really... who cares? When he caved in on me... my woman started to leave me, and from there, I rode that bull until I was evicted. In the process, ilearned who not to become. I knew that kind of success was not for me.

Tthe woman I was with was soo deep with me, that I was in complete shock after I regained just enough balance to try to reach her deep again... She was laready gone, but never told me.

I though we were still together, and I "rewarded" her for believing in me and not leaving me by giving her the baby she dreamed about having with me. Before she even knew we were pregnant, she turned all our shared friends and her family against me... And me? I was finally explaining all this to my landlord in a letter and thanking him for his patience.

After he read my letter, during a phone call, I realized he thought I would be dead in that studio....here's what really happened... I think he was so freaked out to read all those details in that honest letter, that he feared he'd find me as a dead guy in my studio and have to clean up the mess. The truth is, he nearly did find me dead... my world was blown to smithereens that far and that wide that I could not figure out where I was.

Yet I produced great paintings..... paintings like this one. do you feel the mercy in this painting? I wonder if you can understand that I was reaching for it... and in part, it was paintings like this that kpet me from driving over the cliff.

Yeah, I thought Polly was the one who would ride that wave out with me... but she was followoing in the fottsteps of my ex-business-partner-trusted friends...she was selling me out at every turn and not even telling me. The one who promised never to leave me... Our rock was our love.gone... gone with the wind.

It changed me forever.

I am not the same person.

I may claim I am a better person for those experiences... but I'll have to see paintings like this continue to emerge from my heart. I'll have to see them ignite hope and promise in the eyes of others, especially women who are wanting true love someday. I will have to see them shifted towards believing they may find it... I will have to see people reflect that kind of beuaty and share it aroudn prints of this... before I can really be sure I am not gone forever.... believe it or not... I am still trying to figure out where I am... so sad... but now I know how those tsunami victims that survived feel. Here one day, all paradise... in a flash you find yourself in "death valley" everything good around you reminds you of what you may never know in your life again. With each passing day, you assume the best idea is First to survive.

If only this hadn't already happened in other forms, with other folks I trusted. ouch. It's a track record that seems to eclipse any art ever made, or any good song ever sung.

Who could survive being struck by lightning this many times?

I am so tired of retelling the overview.

Yet, it has to be told inlight of this much beauty.

Every person who walks up to me and says that seeing my art has changed them in a good way forever, encourages me to consider that I am not yet a fully lost cause.

But it's still tip toe, tip toe.... tip toe. I still get the chills when I see anything close to the depth of love I have already known in my life.

When you have this much to offer, and you've seen those vistas that many times... it's hard to believe you haven't used up all your chances.

so, why not set yourself aside and let hte flow through your own brushes and paint show you that grace is still all around.

Faith comes when you have no faith left.

All those preachers (and by the way I took those vows too, but I don't preach that way... I would rather build beauty than try to convert anybody!) All those preachers on tv, or in the churches... I can see how quickly they would be "dog meat" if htey ever got really challenged. But then again, how quickly they would actually make sense, if they truly srvived it. they, like me, would probably feel less inclined about assuming that bad things happen only to the ones God punishes. All things happen in all kinds of peoples lives.

It's not what you think you can do, or who you think you can change or if you can save the world in a tiny way. god/Goddess has that covered. What we CAN do, is try to find a way to walk with grace after we get shamed byu life and have to stand in the soup lines along with the ones we formerly judged.

yeah. yeah yeah.

anyway. back to the story. I gotta sleep. I got paintings waiting for me tomorrow.. I have to sleep to work.

I thought she loved me, yet she, and everyone who I knew as a friend (except just one or two) ran like hell.

So, I was scrambling not only to save my own life (because this had happened before to me... and I wasn't able to do it all this time around... I knew I was crippled... yeah yeah yeah). You never know just how vulnerable you really are until you lose everything including faith. so the landlord came after me. But halfway through him evicting me, I found out that he was giving the 3 other shops next to me all grace periods 3 to 4x as long as the one the one I was asking for (one tenant was 11 months behond and not evicted yet!)When I challenged the landlord about this, he went after the guy next to me who has a wife in a wheel chair and family. I felt responsible, so rather than save myself, I saved that guy and let the landlord rip me to shreds instead. Now all those other folks (including my former psuedo wife) are in the clear... 3 years later I am surprised to be breathing. As a salute to grace, I accepted a new friend's offer to paint in his driveway. I peed in a can, wasn't allowed indoors.. treated like a relative animal in many ways.. but at least I had a place to paint. And this was my offering to creator for helping me find a way not to drive off a cliff with my last gallon of gas. I'm still in my art truck. but a little clearer. I am still not so sure why I feel I failed. Certainly whil eall this was happening, I did what i could to recieve whatever has been offered. A free coffee... a place to upload this blog.... but more importantly I have been blessed with th eopportunity to "go to bat" for many people in my own anonymous way....maybe trying to earn my way back to the time when I get to hold that new baby... haven't even gotten a photo. And how many of you all think the life of somebody with this kind of talent is easy! If you secretly hope I suffer to match the price you feel you have had to pay to leave your art/music/potential behind.... thnk again! My truck has one more gallon of gas... be my guest. the cliffs are not far away!