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A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist.

-Louis Nizer, lawyer (1902-1994)

I’ve been keeping things from you again. I’ve been holding back. Not every detail of my life makes it into this blog, makes it onto Modern Evil. Not even every anxiety-inducing, stressful, complicated, shouting, mindless event seems to qualify. Not every moment of happiness… though most do.

I don’t think I’m going to be able to go back and remember everything I never said, so … you’re just going to have to do without… Well, until/unless someday I get nostalgic about the things I didn’t say and re-tell them the way I remember them… and then you still probably won’t be getting the truth, due to the fallibility of memory. And I don’t know if I’ll be able to force myself to post about everything going forward, either. Just have to wait and see, I guess.

It isn’t about an idealized version of anything. For the most part it’s been about … discretion … and not wanting to go back over and over stupidly difficult events.

. . .

I’m not doing so well lately. Coming and going… but mostly heading down. The idea of getting a job I hate depresses me. The idea of selling this property has always uspet me, even when I was a kid and it was just the long-off notion that someday my grandparents would die and then someday even later my father would die, and if it hadn’t already sold it would have to be sold to split its value up among my siblings and I… I always wanted to live here. I suppose I got my chance. Got a year and a half. But now I’ve got to move back to Phoenix. And after not very long, this property won’t be in the family any longer. And I’ll either be working a job I can’t stand or working a job I can appreciate, but neither will be doing what I want to be doing for a living. And that’s not a happy thought.

Sleeping late… sometimes, but not always, with the corresponding staying-up-late… not eating properly…

. . .

I think I’ll try writing again. Maybe if I try writing I’ll get an idea for this canvas I’ve had waiting on my table for the last few days. On the other hand, maybe I’ll actually get some writing done. I recently recalled yet another idea for a novel I’ve got waiting for me to get to it. Since I know I can write a novel in a month, a novel in a week, in fact, since I know I can get to the end of a novel at all, I don’t know what’s stopping me from just churning out books as fast as the ideas come to me.

Some sort of over-developed sense of procrastination? Mental residue from the decades of my life in which my parents simultaneously taught me that creativity should be cherished and that one could never succeed being creative and shouldn’t even try? Some standard sort of writer’s block?

Bah.

And are the same forces keeping me from painting?

Perhaps this is the month in which I shall begin collecting entries from Modern Evil into printed volumes. That would be mind-numbing OR heart wrenching, one, then then other in cycle as I go from one entry to the next. Which will this be?

Just taking a brief break from not working here… maybe I should go pressure-wash the devil now… this whole furniture process is frustrating. Not as frustrating as the idea of working for some company is, but frustrating nonetheless. For instance, right now what my father wants me to be doing is watching him work on table legs. Not me working or having any part in it, and since he’s unable to communicate in any meaningful way I won’t be able to do what he’s “showing” me on my own later, either. I’ll have a general idea of it, maybe pick up two of seven vital concepts, but when it comes time for me to do it on my own, I’ll have to start from scratch and figure it all out as though he had never shown me anything. Hooray!

So, consequently, I don’t feel my time is being used effectively. And even if I were to spend all day just following my father around, watching him work, I certainly wouldn’t consider it “hours worked” since I wouldn’t have gotten anything done myself. I have … a few minutes work I could maybe do on my lamp , then it’s just … pressure-washing the devil. Maybe trying to find some aliens to pressure-wash. Because this whole “furniture” thing isn’t really working out so good. Time to move to selling the devil and aliens. Who doesn’t want to fill their homes with the devil and with aliens?

I’ve just come home.

I’m so tired.

I’ve been driving for hours.

It’s been a long, hard day, and I”m in a weird place inside myself right now.

I remember this feeling.

I’ve been here before.

This feels like…

…like that feeling of coming home.

…like that feeling of having been with the person I love and then riding the hours-long ride home in the middle of the night that was so worth it to have been with them, even for only a short while.

…like that feeling, a gentleness, a softness of breath and spirit, of wanting to call that person I’ve just spent cherished time in person with, to reconnect, to be reminded you’re not just waking from a dream.

This feels like light-headedness, light-heartedness, and a deep, deep peace all sewn up together inside me.

It is a good feeling.

…

There is a person I have been thinking of…

…a person I am thinking of now, because she is tied up in this sensation for me…

…I heard recently that she was moving from one corner of the world, half the world away, to another corner of the world, half the world away in the opposite direction.

She will not be more than a couple hundred more miles distant, though the distance between her points A and B are a scant 20% further apart than she will remain from me.

And in her heart?

The distance seems infinite.

…

I have not just come from her embrace.

I have not just come from any embrace, nor any love.

I am not pining, any more than nostalgia shares the same space.

There’s this feeling of euphoria, of a long day, long drive, late night, and like a certain scent or a certain spot on the map, it reminds me of a thing I once had, once enjoyed, thrice lost.

As I drift soon into sleep I wish…

…I wish for this feeling to leave me, to pass away into the night like the dream it calls up in my memory, to fade away as the night it calls up in me has been forced to fade as well.

…I wish for this feeling to live on in me, but with reality, with love, in it – I wish to love again, to feel this kiss of bliss that lingers on after lovers part, to feel love in the present rather than echoed from the past.

I’m so tired.

We’ve just gone through all our hand-crafted furniture and marked the prices as much as 20% off for the month of June! You can now get your choice of table lamps for $199, a floor lamp for $398, and side and coffee tables ranging from $99 to $349, plus a beautiful hutch built from reclaimed barnwood for only $1195. All my original art is also available for the “Internet price” you see in the Art section of Modern Evil through the month of June. For every two of these items (hand-crafted rustic furniture and original art by Teel McClanahan III, mix/match) you purchase, I’ll throw in a book for free! (Your choice of Lost and Not Found, Dragons’ Truth, and The Vintage Collection.)

Come up to Pine/Strawberry, AZ and find a great deal!