Sick unto weary death and beyond...

In my younger days, when I was probably a much nicer person, I got a number of minor NEA grants. All this largesse had something to do with supporting art in the schools, art in the community, art in the nursing home and, it turned out, art among the criminally insane. To fulfill my Tinker Toy grant requirements, I was supposed to trip around from one venue to the next, lecturing or making a painting, or teaching a one-day workshop in something or other. Gruesome as it may sound--showing trembly old folks how to paint clouds and trees, or lecturing on Van Gogh to stoned junior high kids--even so, I was all for it. It fit with the times and it fit me, because, at my deluded core, I was something of a 1930's Woody Guthrie-type populist who really believed in bringing art to the masses. I may even have said those words aloud: I bring art to the masses. 

At the same time, being half hermit as well, I'd also become fascinated with outsider art. The art I was actually trained in had everything to do with culture. By culture, I don't mean culcha...the opera, extended-pinkie teas, formal dinnahs, and good books. I mean whatever swirls around us: the slang, the fashions, the food, the bad guys, the wars, the leaders, the news, the books...the perpetually moving stuff that gives our time a particular flavor. 

At the same time, I wondered about people who were utterly outside a common society: the bitterly poor, the jailed, the crazy, and the religious zealot. What kind of art did they have?

Because of one or other of my grants, but really to answer my own questions about the dispossessed, I agreed to a two-week residency at the Iowa Institute for the Criminally Insane. While the name conjures up a creaking Victorian manse, screams in the night, and chain-clanking inmates, it wasn't like that. It was a broad sunny place, painted bright yellow, with lots of arts and crafts rooms, and even a tattoo removal clinic. People got assigned to the institute to be evaluated as either too crazy, or not too crazy to assist in their own defence. Or they had already been sentenced, and some lingering doubt put them there, to determine their prison-worthiness, as the phrase went. 

I stayed two weeks and did a painting, one that was highly abstract. My painting was the cause of daily loud speculation among the inmates as to whether I could really draw or was just full of shit. I think full of shit won out. There's much I recall about that period, but mostly I remember dragging my ass home every night, bone-weary and dog-tired. I have a sketch-book from then that notes, I'm worn out from all the lying. It's as though everything is code, and I have to go through some weird deciphering to figure out the truth. And I'm exhausted by the time I do it, if I do it at all. It's a quality I learned all criminals have. They lie. All the time.

Today I said to my husband, "I'm already sick of Sarah Palin". "But the campaign's just started," he said. "Come on." "Doesn't matter," I told him. "I'm wiped. I'm done." And then I wondered, Where is this coming from? And it came back to me. "It's the lying," I told my husband. "It just clobbers me." 

I haven't figured out all the mechanisms that create my frazzled nerves and desire for a good long nap. It's something about my brain getting a message, then having it short-circuited by a tiny neural cop who hollers, Halt! Then my mind, which has already shoved the furniture around and made space for a new factoid, has to scurry about and find something to put there: like the exports of Bolivia, or a new King Ranch Chicken recipe. It's an unnecessary and stupid effort.

But right now, I'm just tired of Sarah Palin, tired of her self-satisfaction and bewildered kids, tired of the poor fools who believe her, tired of the newspeople who give her a moment's thought, tired of the sweaty flapping liberals.  Tired of the people who have forgotten about the war, the unjust taxes, the ill and sickening kids, the black folks in prison, the dying polar bears, the crappy schools, and the stacked deck. I'm tired of the house winning all the time. But most of all, I'm tired of the circus, tired of the tootling music, and the dumb magic acts we've already seen.

Like dear old dead George Carlin used to say: It's bullshit and it's bad for ya.

And it is. 

We need to get away from this bullshit and fast as we can.

We need to run like the wind itself.