Wealth

I think the Earth's majority needs to start directing wealth into Earth and animals and plants and land and oceans and art and songs and everything beautiful that has nothing to do with a damn dollar.

Letter to a Friend

I'm cool with spiders. No fear of them. I just am not fond of the slowly moving innocent creatures that look slimy. I would probably leave my house if there was a snake in there until someone else fetched it out. Back in the early '90s, I was out in Joshua Tree this one time, out at my girlfriend's mom's desert cabin, out a few yards away making a painting of the cabin and the surrounding desert. Within 20 minutes I hear rattlesnakes coming up near me. So, I gathered up all my paints and everything and headed towards the cabin. What do I see? Two snakes slithering up the corners of the cabin. Both had stripes, one red and white, and the other brown and white. The doors and windows are all well closed, so I'm pretty sure none got in. Freaked me out! That painting never got finishes.
 
OMG, and once, I was driving to the cabin at night. Suzanne was already there. OMG, she was a humdinger. I need to write some short stories about all the girlfriends I've had. My friend Becky called me a weirdo magnet. Suzanne wasn't weird, she was just super wild, mean, and BTW, a great lover. I'm pretty sure I've grown out of it after the most recent, which was the Queen Bee! I loved her so much much. Anyway... you know how the road's in the desert or anywhere unpaved are lower than the surrounding area because it wasn't a road until a bunch of cars used it a bunch of times and made an indented pathway? And, in the center is a slightly higher area where the wheels rarely touch, depending on how straight or not the driver drives down that road. Real rocky too. So, this road was lower than the surrounding desert land by a foot or so. It had just turned past dusk to dark, so I put my headlights on and wtf did I see? A Sidewinder hauling ass across the desert. That snake didn't even dip when it crossed the road in front of me. It was almost a blur it was moving so fast...looked like a ghost. F'n awesome to witness. Or, how the young kids nowadays say, sick! Where the hell did that saying come from? When they see something "sick" it probably blows their mind so much they don't comprehend and put it in the mental illness category, subconsciously. I don't know...just want to make sense out of it. I need to make a motion graphic of that snake sighting that night. Coming soon! After the four other projects, I got going on right now.
 
Now I'm going to climb the ladder to get up on the roof and clean the gutters full of leaves. 

I think I have something, like a whole slew, in common with someone I met when I was 14 years old. We didn't stay in touch. 

One day in January 2021 late afternoon my cousin Dotty text messaged me informing me she received an email from one of our childhood friends and wanted me to guess who. It took me less than a minute to guess. Since my cousin and I were 3 years apart, and she had her friends but I really didn't consider myself their friend too. And, I was pretty much into my photography, my typewriter, and not gregarious, in the least, until in high school when Kathy Howard noticed me when I was wearing my homemade t-shirt which I had painted The Rocky Horror Picture, just like the movie's title, with the dripping bloody letters. I will save that for another blog story. 

It had to be Johnny Williams. The younger brother of the young woman who lived next door to me. Back in our childhood, I had a little crush on Johnny. Johnny had a crush on my cousin Dotty. Dotty already had a boyfriend. Secretly, I had a hard girl crush on Johnny's oldest sister Pat, who lived next door. I was tortured every minute of the day for as long as she lived there, with her husband, and adorable four-year-old boy, Mark. Totally and completely another blog story. Possibly a short story.

The reason for this text is so I can post my picture, taken yesterday. That's my tripping on the old days back in 1973/4 look.

 

S for sink

 Click: https://vimeo.com/418210280

S-only from Kat Joy on Vimeo.

Meet Lil' Ricky

 

My Beta fish, Mr. Kapoo, finally kicked the bucket. My friends at work got me a new beta. I think it was one of the cheaper ones. He's all red and his fins move like flames coming from his sides. Not the orange color like fire, but they move like fire moves that way, yet sideways. He's very active. Especially when he notices me coming toward the bowl. He doesn't even mind when I gently pet him. Then I let him kiss my finger. Actually, he may be trying to bite it. Feels like fish kisses to me. I've been called him Lil' Ricky. It may morph into another name, as my fish names seem to get called something different along the way.

 Sometimes you're in the shade, sometimes you're in the light.

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Tigger

Sadly, when I was eighteen years old, one night I came home after getting stoned on weed (but, not that stoned, you know how it wears off) and accidentally ran her over.

We had two cats, Tigger, and Loco. They usually both immediately moved out of the way when I pull up. But, I guess Tigger didn't make it in time, this time. I got out of the car and our next-door neighbor, my friend Parris, came running over to me and said, "Kathleen, I think you ran over your cat!" I got out and looked under my car, she wasn't there. Quickly we discovered she had made it over underneath my mom's car already parked next to my car. My mom, hearing what was said from inside the house, came out the front door with a flashlight just in time as we saw Tigger take her few last breaths. One of the most worse feelings in the world is killing someone you love.

I had to work the next day. So did mom. My parents had just divorced a few months earlier. The next early morning my mom called up my dad and asked him to please come over to take Tigger to be cremated. We placed her on a blanket in the garage that night before. He agreed.  

P.S. I took that photo on a film camera and developed the film and print it myself in Torrance High's Photography classroom with Mr. Steinberg. That's where I spent most of my time in high school - in the darkroom.