While I had posted this to my FB a little while back, I forgot to post it to my blog. Here’s the most recient painting I’ve completed:

“A Ghost in the Machine”

I’ve loved the move “Ghost in the Shell” for the deep philosophical questions and implications the movie explores. This painting was inspired by the movie as well as noticing how the drive to cling to the Dualist belief system plays out in society. The concept of self (the one who knows) is something that we’ve struggled with for a long time. I like the way Ghost in the Shell deconstructs Dualism.

So, this is a painting of both the ideal and critique of theory of dualistic consciousness.  Is the “ghost” an extension of consciousness or supporting it?

On my way home, I decided to stop at an abandoned industrial scale that looked interesting to me:

Front of Building

Rear of Building

Overgrowth

Inside: "Scales Closed Forever! Thank You For 9 yrs.
Joe, Rose"

A Nearby Train

After finishing the other painting that’s been sitting unfinished for months, I was inspired to do another one… which I churned out in only 10 hours:

“The Three Paths”

I’ve noticed something about taking pictures of my paintings: I doesn’t work. The above photo just does not catch what the real painting looks like. The top and bottom panels look more red in this painting because the way that I did it, the farther away you are from the painting, the more tan it looks. If you look at the same panels from a different angle, they take on a pastel greenish tone and when looked at at another angel, it takes on a more redish hue. Also, the luminosity of the paint is entirely missing. You don’t get that, “OMG! This is really cool” feeling from a photo… which sucks.

Another thing that sucks: I’ve run out of walls to hang my paintings and now I’m just stuffing them into my closet.

The title comes from Hindu mythology: karma-marga, jnana-marga and bhakti-marga.

This is a personal request. Below is an item I’d love to see belong to the community instead of an ebay dealer’s collection. This is a painting by a famous transgender artist and, much like the Lilly Elbe painting currently displayed in the TG Center, I believe that preserving and making the significant art of our community accessible is a worthy endeavor.

I’m writing to see if some of you would be willing to join with me in purchasing this item. I believe that this is something the that should rest in the hands of the trans community. Because I believe this, I’m willing to give $100 towards obtaining this painting. This is on top of the $200 I’ve already given this week to the TG Center in support of the good work it does (as noted in the TG Center email I sent out yesterday). As many of you know, I’m not rich. I live in an efficiency apartment and drive a 16 year-old car. I greatly value the various work the transgender center does and I want to support it to the very best of my ability. If you would like to join with me in saving this piece of transgender art history, please email me at my personal email address: gypsyrose1972@gmail.com and let me know.

You need not donate today. All I’m asking for is your pledge of support. Send me an email with your contact info and let me know how much you’d like to pledge to support the acquisition of this piece of transgender history:

Please send me your pledge of support now since the auction ends at 6 PM today.

Research this famous trans artist:

http://www.artnet.com/artist/654063/michel-marie-poulain.html

http://zagria.blogspot.com/2009/09/michel-marie-poulain-1906-1991.html

For the Ebay listing, info and various photos, please click here.

If instead of contacting me, you’d like to make a donation online, you can donate via the following special paypal link: Click here to donate Thank you!

Cristan

I just got done with a painting that I’ve been struggling with for many months now. Last night, in a flash of inspiration, I finished it up in one sitting:

“The Three Pillars”

The piece is around 5 feet tall and 2 1/2 feet wide.

The title comes from the 1965 Western Zen classic, “Three Pillars of Zen: Teaching, Practice and Enlightenment”.

Since I’m supposed to be off today, I only worked half a day. So, with a few hours to kill, I decided to take a drive down old Hempstead Highway. I noticed the highway has a lot of rundown buildings that looked like they were left over from the 70s and 80s and thought I’d check them out:

At the Car Wash

Car Ash

The Machine

Waiting room looks like it’s waiting for customers

The BBQ Place

Interesting abandoned structure

Menu is intact; trays sit just inside of the window

The Barber’s Strip

Barbershop on the corner. Note the intact Barber pole

Inside the Barber Shop. Note the filled spray-bottle

Whatever this used to be, it’s now a fern garden

At the End of the Road

Hempstead Highway ends just after Beltway 8. At the end of the road the highway becomes particularly junky. However, the wisteria vines add just a hint of color to an otherwise dreary scene. To me, it looked like nature was feebly trying to rebel against the litter:

Yesterday I saw something I’ve not seen in years:

You know, I even have one of those silver-head 101 KLOL t-shirts in the back of my closet. After Clearchanel bought it, didn’t they turn 101 into a Tajano station?

I spotted this old house today. I pass by it all the time, but I’ve just never seen it before today:

This old house is located just inside the loop on the West side close to I-10. The place even has a 1980-era car parked in the drive.

Carolyn and I decided to go to on of the old cemeteries on Galveston. What follows are some pictures I took while we were there:

- Carolyn sitting on a tombstone.

- A close-up of grave moss

Below are some pics I took of the gravyard…

- This is a statue of Jesus and baby… with their heads cut off.

- This was interesting… yet disturbing. Yes, those are very large snales.

The graveyard had many of these aboveground mausoleums. This one was quite interesting:

- Walking up to it.

- On the side of it

- A close-up of the weeds that are growing out of the concrete roof.

… This is the back. There was a hole where a window was at one time. I wanted to know what was inside these things…

… So, I walked up to it, and stuck my arms and camera all the way in and took a few pics:

And… this is inside the  mausoleum next to the one above:

I got the above pics because there was a space wide enough to stick my camera into to get some shots.

Carolyn and I went out to Bear Creak park on Sunday. It was the first day that I really felt like myself again. While we were out I got a few interesting shots:

You can see more at my TH album HERE.

Poem: “Fix” by Alicia Suskin Ostriker, from No Heaven.

Fix

The puzzled ones, the Americans, go through their lives
Buying what they are told to buy,
Pursuing their love affairs with the automobile,

Baseball and football, romance and beauty,
Enthusiastic as trained seals, going into debt, struggling —
True believers in liberty, and also security,

And of course sex — cheating on each other
For the most part only a little, mostly avoiding violence
Except at a vast blue distance, as between bombsight and earth,

Or on the violent screen, which they adore.
Those who are not Americans think Americans are happy
Because they are so filthy rich, but not so.

They are mostly puzzled and at a loss
As if someone pulled the floor out from under them,
They’d like to believe in God, or something, and they do try.

You can see it in their white faces at the supermarket and the gas station
— Not the immigrant faces, they know what they want,
Not the blacks, whose faces are hurt and proud —

The white faces, lipsticked, shaven, we do try
To keep smiling, for when we’re smiling, the whole world
Smiles with us, but we feel we’ve lost

That loving feeling. Clouds ride by above us,
Rivers flow, toilets work, traffic lights work, barring floods, fires
And earthquakes, houses and streets appear stable

So what is it, this moon-shaped blankness?
What the hell is it? America is perplexed.
We would fix it if we knew what was broken.

When was it that citizens became consumers? When was it that we began to believe that happiness is about stuff?

Getting, having, doing, debt…

What is it that we are really hungry for? When I am in my death bed, will I be thinking about all of my stuff or my credit rating? I hope that I would be asking myself “Did I love well… Was I there when it mattered?”

I wonder if other cultures suffer from the hollowness the above poem talks about?

“After” my transition, I was left with a quasi-normal life. I found myself being more cognizant of the overt pull to be a happy shiny person by buying the next newest thing. All of my life has been so inward-focused due to the management of my own gender incongruence that I had little attention left for the culture of need. When I purchased things like cars, the question in my mind was if it would fit the image I needed to project, not if a car would somehow equal a happy/successful/fulfilled life.