Having become a fan of Mad Men and having lived through that whole period of time, I feel that I can speak about it from the heart … as my family growing up looked weirdly similar to Don Draper and family.

It is was very much my family … except my mother did not remarry. As a kid I watched the same TV shows, my father drank the same amount of booze and ended up with the same lipstick stains on his collars, and in the end they divorced just like Don and Bets. So everything about the show has the ability to transport me to my childhood … to the smallest detail … I feel I understand my life and my parents a great deal more.

Perhaps too much now.

My weekly therapy session continues thank god.

“ When we’re young we have faith in what is seen,
but when we’re old we know that what is seen is traced in air and built on water.” Maxwell Anderson”

“Only a few find the way, some don’t recognize it when they do – some… don’t ever want to.”
― The Cheshire Cat”

“Going for long walks is a good thing, because that is when the angels speak to you.”

I have left the door open, the welcome mat out, so that ideas could come to me. Until this morning nothing had decided to pay a visit. Having pulled out my drawings from ten years ago, to perhaps pick out a drawing for a  group show in Seattle, …I guess something happened. That river of ideas that flows just slightly above our heads decided to pay me a visit as I took my dog Gracie for a walk.

For the first time in ten years I saw a vision of where I should go with my art … and it came at me like a mad rush.

The vision I saw involves the static landscape that all of us … all who walk through space and time … as a backdrop for human kind as flitting ghosts. These would be illustrations of places with what looks like the apparitions of a person’s presence … in the act of doing something … a singular act … but with only the mere hint of the person.

It comes from my  seeing all human existence as apparitional … we are all like ghosts that are not really here … we just take up space for a short period of time and then we are gone.

After sending Egrek to where ever it is that we end up … I have pondered what relevance life has for anyone.

We’re all just blips on the radar screen of life … and I don’t even care if you’re famous because reading about famous people, is not the same as experiencing them, to being around them … and being in love.

I put my money on the fact that we only get one run at this, and you’d better find out early that the only thing that matters is love and your friendships, and the fun you can have.

Work is over rated and only satisfies the ego … and the ego is just chest thumping which eventually gets silenced by death.

I think back to my father, and his memory … because this is a prime example of where I will be soon enough. How do I perceive my father now? Oddly I see myself, and the things I do with my children, are at times exact mirrors of him with me. The times are slightly different, but we are doing the same things, and it leaves me to wonder if he felt exactly the same way I do now … but we’ll never know because we never talked about such things … he being a child of the 40′s and 50′s when discussions of inner feelings was not something done.

I will change that with my kids, because I think it’s important that they know the game we play here. The game called life. The fact that you need money to live, and the only way to make good money is to play the game and get an education, and then work that job just long enough so that you can enjoy life … with friendships and with loving someone … because without that this really makes no sense … no sense at all.

Yes, working at something that has betterment for mankind is a noble thing to do, but really … work just enough that you can still raise your head up and see yourself. Do not lose yourself to a bigger project because one day you’ll look up, and they’ll be wheeling you into a hospice.

The last bit of time I have here I’m going to have fun … to play with my kids … and seek an understanding of what my time here as meant … and to try to answer the “why” of my existence. But it may be that only my friends and kids can do that for me.