No Gangs in My Town

   There are no parks where you might get beaten up, no places you can't go.
   It is interesting how our lives are insulated and we can't really experience what another might know.
Even the constellations are upside down on the other side of the world.
   I have visited big cities, London, Paris, New York and others but I don't really have the experience of
living in a big city.  I have seen the countryside, been around cows but I have never milked one.  I don't really have any experience with a rural life.  When I see beautiful open fields of wheat I never think that it needs to be cut and baled and put in the barn.  I can see the beauty to it without getting dirty and tired, without dealing with the work of it.
   I can only see from a distance what you might see close up.
   "Empathy" is an attempt to see the world from another direction, to place me in you, to see through your eyes, an effort to experience another.  It is not the same of course.  It never leaves a scar, no bruises.
   Art is an effort to see the world in a different way. To find sense in the nonsensical.  Beauty in a junkyard.

 One of many, alone.

More of me HERE

Drop Outs!

Well, how fun all this blogging is! and you learn that people from all over the world are no different than ourselves! Ruby (I will soon learn to link I promise!) tells me she dropped out of High School, so did Ralph (our guru glue who holds these blogs together!) and me too! There must be others and I would bet there is a book here! I have never written a book but for some reason I often hunt for story lines. What is happening in the world that is not being told? Is there a connection to dropping out of school, not quite "fitting in" and becoming an artist?
Clearly we have all developed skills but what are we trying to say? Maybe it is just an affirmative thing, "I am different and it is okay!" But if you were a "dropout" I would love to know why?