1949 water  I see the creek pool clear   willow pole  7 foot leader  black-nat floating on the mirror   7 inch rainbow bite and wiggle    sobbing

in the spirit of Jewish Jesus w Muslim cousins  y Buddha  Allah  et al   cool Folks w Ethos

let's lie down    now what

Early ‘90s  I was told to read "Continental Divide"
then red everything he wrote in published order 
town   folks  snow  ice  death
Dane Banks happens    why wouldn't it

Russel Banks was for me
my English teacher friend had him come to his seniors' class in '97
he told me after
I was fucking in class
he did not invite us
Good luck for all of us

"The fickle finger of fate
The moving finger writes
And having writ moves on"

jr high friends start saying this to each other in 1950s when life deals us a perceived shit blow

+- 2009, college and care.
I'm suffering from "Early Onset Parsimony", see:
"Contagious ! The Common Man's College Loan & Health Care Syndromes, Etc !"
Not covered by this criminal nation's non systems for citizen care.
Puke at will !

I hear:
... sex ? Are you sure they live like that ?
Maybe most people do ...

Childhood-Story:
1949-50 two, six week summers at Silver Pines Camp, 30 miles east of Redding
First summer I don't pay much attention to the Silver Belt Buckle competition.
We collect points for every kind of 'sporting' event over the summer.
We fish, swim, shoot, horse, clean, and big-points! = find an Indian Arrowhead.
Second summer,
I know I can win it if I find an arrowhead in the final days - our totals are posted.
There's a small small lake half a mile over the hill. I get permission to hike over.
Lost Lake is 100 yards long rock-stone shore the length - other side, banks.
I .hands-n-knees. back-n-forth . for three hot-dry hours.
This feeling of "I'm-gonna-find-it" has been with me since '38. I know it well.
Just have to keep on Truckin'.
Hour number four I find my no-doubt Indian Arrowhead.
Two and a half inches, brown-gray, shallow-notched-sculpted to it's point.

Two times I lie face down and cry out loud at my camp:
Alone in the woods, stick-leader-fly-cool-mossy-creekside - my first fish
Alone in the rocks and stones with the Arrowhead

Walked and hunted for three hours today
Not one single picture taken
This has happened before
Like two days ago
It's always exercise

I hear:
... She's ballin' him right now ...

I hear:
... four years ago I woulda gone back and burned the house down.
Not anymore.

APPROPRIATION​ - my Buddy !
I know people who Wikipedia: appropriation

I hear:
Please don't touch. He is our friend.

I hear:
... if you act right now ...

Robbe-Grillet, Duras, Beckett,
"Women & Fiction" Anthology,​ Boll, Pancake, Michaels, Banks, Et Al !
Love 'em - bet I couldn't pass an exam
Loved my Lit class at Cal - flunked it
It's in head somewhere

1968 In the hallway at U.C.
Kitaj finds me in the hall with two big paintingsafter sitting-in for our graduate seminar.
"Best stuff I've seen on the west coast, Bill.
You know, the heroics of what you're doing was
accomplished by Kandinsky and Mondrian."By late '69 this makes sense to me too.
I get a camera and teach myself to walk and look and see.

1967 my home & painting studio on Mt Diablo
I'm 2nd year teaching at Berkeley High
Three of us do a 6 session "District Seminar" with Herb Kohl and Allan Kaprow
Planning 'new-life' for the Schools
They fire me for staging lunchtime "Happenings" in the courtyard
The Union! gets my job back
Kaprow in my studio
" ... Bill, best painting I've seen out here in the west. ..."
Loved That Seminar !

Thank You very much for the Visit !.
And again,
I hope that my sense of this life in the form of these pictures
turns out to be worth sharing.

!حياة. Dure! . 生命!.Maisha!.जीवन!. Liv!..Saol!
Kehidupan! زندگی! Lewe! ชีวิต! Bywydau! לייווז!
жизнь! Buhay! ζωή! Leben! Vi! .Cuộc sống!Vida! .Vita!
Got to ..K.E.E P .O N .T R U.C.K I.N' . . .

We chase a kid who bikes into our neighborhood

He's riding frantically fast - hit by a car at the corner - broken leg

I meet him later in the year, by accident, and apologize

This Book

the compulsion ta keep stuff in order

i duck, he duck, she duck, inside, outside, then, now...

i shoulda learned from Gabriel Faulkner Morrison Erdrich…

after 3 years editing i'm believin i toddl in the shoes...

will find out where I go

ThankYouNick+++. . .

lookin heated...

webguru smokes atmosphere

li'lwilliam