The Trickster Diaries/Chapter 76
Hanging with Jones was always — ALWAYS — a far more exhilarating and fulfilling experience than hanging with anyone else. El, my mentor at SMC, ran a close second because, as an artist and an intellectual, she viewed the world from the top branch of the tallest tree on the highest mountain. A place few others felt safe even knowing about.
Jones and I danced around in similarly deserted terrain. Our monthly trips down the hill to Palm Desert, (to In & Out Burger and Trader Joe’s, specifically), had the quality of two Zen monks being cut loose from the monastery and dropped in Las Vegas for the day.
Jones, aside from his real life adventures in ashrams in LA, upstate New York and elsewhere, was an exceptional visual artist. His work could stop you dead in your tracks, then rearrange your brain chemistry. Yet, like me, his path to relative contentment hadn’t taken the predictable course. Our work existed in almost total obscurity, steered clear of market formula for personal reasons.
So he was delighted to hear my new friend, Juliette, had found a brilliantly deceptive and powerful, selfless way in to the subconscious through her GIF art. I suggested sending him a link to her Ello feed so that he could witness the magic for himself.
“OK, yeah,” he said, looking straight ahead, hands on the wheel, “I’d like that, except I doubt I’ll be having the same experience as you.”
Me: Oh?
Jones: You’re in love with her, man.
It was the first time someone had just come right out and said it, though no doubt Liz, queen of romance, had guessed.
“And then there’s that,” I conceded.
“If I were you, amigo,” said Jones, “I’d make two columns. In one you list everything you know about her for sure. In the other, everything you don’t know.”
Me: Yeah. I get it. The “know” column would be blank. It is strange, the whole disembodied experience. Just two or three days ago we were having a conversation about a recent canvas by a woman we’re both following. Gorgeous piece. Negative space just as interesting as foreground. Subtle, contrasting colors and textures. Black outlines. One of those rare pieces, really, where your eye wanders forever, then returns to the place it began, you know?
Jones: I do. Of course I do.
Me: Problem was it was so fucking close to standing in an art gallery with her it hurt. It seriously hurt because I wanted to feel her leaning on me, whispering those words in my ear.
Jones: (Throwing his happy bald head around, slapping the steering wheel with his right hand) But there’s no sound except you typing.
Me: Right. (Laughing along with him) No sound, no touch, no smell, no nothing. Or not enough of something. So after Juliette’s last comment I write: “May I buy you an espresso? A croissant perhaps? Must be a nice cafe around here…”
Jones: Let me guess: no reply.
Me: Poof. Gone.
Jones: You broke the spell, man.
