Hotei, the mythical Chinese saint, represents the freedom and joy of Zen attainment.
The glaciers are long gone. Greenland is melting, the ocean is rising and Hong Kong, Bombay and New York have disappeared under the waves.

Does this man look alarmed, frightened, or panicked?
Does he recycle his shopping bags to save the world?
Come on, folks—we passed that point fifty years ago.

If you don’t laugh now, while your head is still above water,
you are missing the joke.

Every man is aware that underneath his conventional exterior lurks a dangerous beast, a heartless tyrant, a king of the jungle.

There are women who believe this! Some, anyway—and most of them in therapy.
The others have realised that the animal can easily be trained
to fetch a stick.

Tags:, sumi, painting,sumi-e, japanese painting, chinese painting,

Above is a true and authentic painting made by the Portugese adventurer Fernauo Mendes Pinto, who in 1543 was the first European to see Japan. He swears, this is what it looked like.
Those two olives on tooth-picks are his ships. The thing in the background is either a big nose or a mountain of sorts. We just don’t have any details.

Senhor Pinto “introduced” firearms to the Japanese.
That might explain the lack of detail; he was an international arms dealer!

When I was a child, there were still an abundance of dragons.
During the day they would be dozing on their cloud-pillows.
But as the sun moved closer to the horizon, they would eat pickled eggs,
light cigars, and begin a game of cards.

Bottles would be opened—and more bottles.
By midnight you could hear chairs splintering;
then chaise longues, canapes and other decorative accessories
such as curtains and carpets, seemed to fall out of the sky.

One day we found a table leg that had been bitten off!

One of the best kept secrets among cat lovers is that you can train felines to hunt.
Instead of going to the market, I unchain Gargantua and Goliath, after dark, and tell them what I want. Of course, they don’t pay any attention to what I say; after all, they are cats. So, I eat a lot of little song-birds for breakfast.
But occasionally they do bring in a plump little dog which goes right into the broiler.

And then the exotics.
You won’t believe this, but I’ve had everything from antelope liver to Cape Buffalo steaks. To subdue the gamey flavour of my Cape Steaks, as I call them, I smother them in a sauce made from Camembert and Mendoza, a robust Argentinian Cabernet.

I won’t mention the Ivory Billed Woodpecker.
I didn’t realise what it was, until I had finished the second drumstick.

Last night—to keep his feet from freezing—this hawk caught himself a sparrow to hold as a foot-warmer.
When the sun rises, the noble bird releases his frightened victim. Then he hunts opposite to the direction the sparrow took.
Don’t you just love the aristocracy for their virtuous ways?

As long as they will eat someone else for breakfast
we will worship their feet.

For an animal that lives in a diet of flies, the toad has remarkable attributes.
All you have to do is kiss one and BAM! you start hallucinating.
That, by the way, is illegal in Arizona, where most of the toads live.

Every now and then, instead of visions and delirium, you get a good-looking prince, who immediately proposes Holy Matrimony.
Accept it. Especially, if you live in Hawaii, where such things are now legal.

I, myself, live in Massachusetts; and for eleven years I have tried–unsuccessfully–to understand The State Tax Code.
So, now I do what everyone else does:
I hire a toad to fill out the forms.
The results, I must say, are most gratifying.

Beauty had been longing for—she didn’t know what—all her life.
When Light blew in on a breeze she knew it had been him all along.
He was so—so—capable. And his voice! When he sang her mind dissolved
and she could only blush.

Ahh, how we wish for a happy ending to this story! But that is not what fate had in
store for them.

For Light, it was a plate-glass window—
and for Beauty, something even worse…

You can create the world by naming it. We call that Poetry.
You can create the world by using the form of things. We call that Painting.
You can create the world by through motion. We call that Dance.
Or you can create the world by sounds. We call that Music.

I have given you the Secret of Art.

Notice, that I did not use the verb to describe.
The poet does not describe an experience.
He has one.

She was aiming for the highest. And the highest was to play the leading role in the Nutcracker.

After the audition the director sidled up to to her : “ Sweetie, you just don’t have the neck for a dying swan.”
“A neck?: she shrieked, “what do I need a neck for?” (She had pictured the nutcracker to be a sexy, divorced bird.)
“I din’t come here to play no wooden soldier, mister. Can’t we re-write this scene?
We call it THE SAFECRACKER. We blow that dying swan out of the water in the first act, and then we steal the jewels!”

“That’s a movie,” he said. “Have you thought of starring in a low budget action film?
You got the legs, baby; and, hey, that is some good-looking tail…”

The Little Moth longs to spend Thanksgiving with its relatives. With the titanium stent in its aorta and the stainless-steel kneecap-replacement, it can’t get through airport security apparatus. It’s a long way to Petoskey, Michigan, especially when you have to wing it in inclement weather.
But at the end of the road there is a hot cup-o-noodles! Moths, as you know, don’t eat turkeys.
And for dessert a glass of home-made Khrenovukha*.
Powerful but just the thing to take away the cold.

*a drink made by steeping horseradish in vodka

It fills me with great joy to copy a painting by Sesshu (1440 — 1506).
It is a meditation to calm the mind.

Not that I think the fifteenth century was calm, oh no!
The country was torn by civil war. Every man became his own defender. Feudal lords with their own serfs, private armies and tax collectors ruled.
So where does the peace come from?
From the mind of the Zen monk Toho Sesshu.

When you copy his paintings you exchange your mind for his.

Behind in everything.
Procrastinating. Lazy.

…and that’s just how I feel today

Last week I sat down to paint a self-portrait. Disaster.
“Maybe I should look into a mirror”, I thought, Even worse! Immediately I started making faces at this thing I am dragging from one doctor’s office to the next. I realized my self was missing!

Finally I located it again. My self was sitting in the sixteenth century playing the Ch’in.
The Ch’in is an ancient instrument, capable of harmonizing with the breeze in the pine tree.
It can play the characteristic melody of noble rocks and the transcendent tune of the void.

I’ve been thinking of ordering my self back (sic) to the twenty-first century; but what do we have to offer?
Global warming and…and…well, you know what I mean.

And where would you get a thirteen year old girl—she smells so nice—to make tea for you?

“In the beginning was the word…”
This statemet is simply not true.
In the beginning were grass-clippings. I stumbled upon this when I was making the earth. Being humble I started out small: grass-clippings, leaves and the odd vegetable peelings piled up in my back yard make : THE EARTH.

Soon I will step up my operations. If anyone is in need of a mid-sized asteroid or a small planet, please email me immediately!
Stars and galaxies are still in the experimental phase, but will be added as soon as I can get them off the ground.

Reasonable fees.
Cash only.

My research into the origin of my family has taken me all the way back to a certain Adam Zaremba who lived in the vicinity of Bhagdad. Of course, Bhagdad—The City of Light”—wasn’t there yet. We have to thank this ancestor of mine for naming all the animals. He correctly named the ant “ANT”, and the zebra “ZEBRA”, without making a single mistake! He even named the RHINOTZEROSS, even though it is very difficult to spell.

Did he get payed for this? No.
On the contrary, The absentee landlord—a Mr. G. (who has more aliases than a dog has fleas)—accused him of stealing apples and threatened him with a flaming sword.
I ask you, what is a man to eat, when he doesn’t get payed and is so poor that he has to construct a pair of pants from fig-leaves???

If you put lines and dots on paper, you get a painting.
If you take the Lord’s name in vain. throw your brush out the window and promise to burn down Boston, then you have discovered the inner workings of creativity!

Let me name some of the dots and lines:

Hair-pin Curve
Bearers grabbing the Right-of-Way
Pellet Holes
Stains on a Leaky Ceiling

Painting is a method for representing the world in the process of transformation and interaction.
The cricket emerged from a sea of ink-tones—and now it is interacting with you.
Haven’t you noticed, it is looking at you?

On their thousandth birthday deers turn white.
That explains why a white deer is a symbol of longevity.

So where does the happiness come from?
From a peculiarity of the Chinese language.
The word for happiness (fu) happens to be the same as the word for bat (fu).
Logically, whenever you see a painting containing a white deer and bats—if it is in English—it means “Oh Dear, you are going batty!”;
but if it is in Chinese, it means “A Thousand Years of Happiness”.

The bats, by the way, are dancing around the moon.
Some personages have complained that those thingies look suspiciously like ink-spots.
These people lack true understanding.
Those are BATS!
If I say so.

Tags:, sumi, painting,sumi-e, japanese painting, chinese painting,

…but I fell asleep.
Instead, I dreamt two new paintings.


”A Painting Larger than itself”





“A Gordian Bird Contemplating Not”


When I wake up, I’ll explain to you what it means.

There exists a mistaken notion that Art is useless.
Well, not my art!
You could actually eat this painting without suffering any bad effects.
Really! It’s mostly fiber with a bit of inert carbon (that’s the ink).
The glue—a secret wheat-paste which I cook myself— is really nutritious!

So there are a few unknown minerals in the color.
Isn’t that what you are supposed to take, mineral supplements??

To preempt the possibility of constipation I suggest a spot of Beluga Caviar
and a flute, or two, of the bubbly…