Note: As I do not currently have access to a scanner, I am not including the photograph that inspired this piece. I will post it when I again have access to the scanner.

Seth might have been born with a tennis racquet in his hand. The little toehead with the huge nose. That nose sucked in oxygen so hard sometimes I thought his head would pop.

That’s me on the left, all awkward and fat, even then. Mummy built the dirt court when Dad died in the War, and that afternoon one of the men who came calling was trying to impress her by pretending to teach Seth and me the proper rules of tennis.

I think that may have been the last time I ever held a tennis request. I found some baby bunnies off under the shrubbery and mashed them something awful with the racquet. That’s when Mum locked me in the closet. I came home with blood on my woolies and she cried, spilling her gin. Seth told me I should be ashamed, treating the racquet that way.

But Toby gave us the racquets before I found the bunnies in the shrubbery, I mean, and was determined to teach us how to hit those furry gray balls on that first day. He wasn’t so concerned with us trying to get them over the net, just that we could hold the racquets properly, Like shaking someone’s hand, he said, in his American drawl.

It was all so silly, expecting babies like us to be able to hold such monstrosities, but Seth tried, and that was enough for Toby. He scooped Seth up into his arms and swung him ‘round. Seth was so serious. Even then. He smiled, but didn’t laugh or giggle.

I strayed away, then to the garden which is when I found the rabbits. But I always get ahead of myself. I always do.

Though it hadn’t rained, the garden was wet with dew. I walked along, shaking the sparklies off the bushes with my tennis racquet. I put the racquet down and sat down in the lavender, which smelled like Mummy. And then I saw the bunnies. They were eating the lavender, and I got mad at them. Got mad that they would eat Mummy’s smell. They were so tiny, they could not run away. So I found my tennis racquet. And mashed them. Mashed them mashed them mashed them. Real good.

Words in italics are scraps from my notebook as I wondered the Chicago Art Institute. The rest are things that struck me in no particular order.

Been so long since I have been in a museum. Interesting to see how I was drawn to form, sculpture, Buddhist art.

In a museum, each brushstroke a revelation of inspiration and technique.

Take lessons. Work more with canvas + materials non-trad for me. OIL AND SAND in with paint.

Red figure technique of pottery painting.

Interesting that the interpretive signs, some of them, tell us how to feel about the paintings. “May indicate Man’s destruction of Nature…” in addition to giving us the history of the work.

Compare to the interpretive sign for Turning Point of Thirst, by Victor Brauner 1934, wherin the sign scratches it’s head saying, I just don’t know what this one means when it’s obvious to the viewer (at least this viewer). Um, hello? AA anyone?

The above was painted as a response to Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks” (below).

One of the current exhibits was of contemporary Dutch photography. I loved Wijnanda Deroo’s work. Photograph empty spaces Take tripod back to Prescott.

18th Century “I got my eye on you” came from a tradition of wearing a miniature photograph of one’s lover’s eye on one’s lapel. From the interpretive sign on Magritte’s “The Eye”, which was of his wife Gertrude’s eye.

I loved Joseph Cornell’s Soap Bubble boxes.

Pollack’s Gray Rainbow

Do a collage with 10 panels called A New Threshold of Liberty in the style of Margarete Top right is X, bottom R is backwall/sky (empty) w/ a machine gun shooting X.

Great sketch for the famous “Rape of Sabine”.

Angel Planell’s Midday Sorrow

Picasso Head Oil and chalk on canvas.

Albright’s Dorian Gray a painting he did for the film which was based on the book by Oscar Wilde .

Chicago was fun, but goddam Hotwire. Flight arrived Friday a touch early at around 10PM. 45 minute train ride on the Blue line, highlights of which included the homeless man, slightly deranged, blood on his hands and shirt, stumbling from one car to the next.

Please, just help out a fellow human being. I’m a gentleman, rather be working, just like you. I’m just trying to get by, trying to make the best of a bad situation, please, please, could you find it in your hearts to give a brother some change so that I can get something to eat?”

He was one of the more frightening characters I’d seen, but it was probably because of the blood. Made it to the hotel, checked in with the family, had a shower, went downstairs to the bar, paid too much for a drink, came upstairs + went to bed around 2.

Saturday morning, up @ 6.30. Shower, shave, downstairs to meet my sister for coffee @ Starshmucks. (Her call, not mine. We had so little time together, I didn’t want to argue about “chains vs. independants”). I snuck up on her, having entered from a different door. She stood @ the window, latte in hand, watching for me. Put my arms around her, she knew it was me without looking, said “Where’d you come from?” “Missoula, Montana,” I answered. Then a woman who had been dressing her coffee said, Missoula? I lived in Missoula for 25 years! Turns out she was a Peace Corps recruiter who tried for a job in Seattle, but got into Chicago instead. We talked for a while + then I turned my attention to my sister.

By the time the rest of the family made it downstairs, I was getting hungry + grumpy. They had all been there since Friday afternoon + had a chance to see the city a little. And they weren’t leaving until Sunday afternoon. I had only Saturday to go exploring. (Hotwire’s fault, not mine). We had breakfast + then headed off to the the Art Institute. The In Sight exhibition was very cool — contemporary Dutch photographs. The family left after about an hour and a half. I stayed until I was heady.

Art is like that. After a few hours in the museum, I get to feeling almost drunk. I get overstimulated by the beauty and the emotion. Spent most of my time in the modern and contemporary sections. And the Warhol Chairman Mao was huge. I guess I just didn’t realize how big it was.

I also got to see Chagall’s America Windows before it comes down temporarily.

Then it was off to Millennium Park and walking up and down Michigan Avenue for a bit before heading back to the hotel to get ready for the wedding — The Main Event.

The wedding was the most elaborate affair I’ve ever attended. My cousin is so fine tuned when it comes to having things perfectly planned. Her own wedding was no exception. Huge Catholic Mass, then a trolley ride to see Chicago at sunset. Then the reception with a beautiful four course meal and an 18 piece swing band, dancing all night. Things wound down around 1.30, we grabbed a cab back to the hotel for a nightcap.

Changed my clothes and grabbed the Blue Line back to O’Hare for my 6AM flight. I love people watching on trains.

Got to the airport @ 4.30AM and checked in, napped till boarding, and slept in fits on the plane ride home. Arrived back in MSO around 11AM, slept till 6PM, up for a few minutes for some food, then back in bed until this morning at 0730. Worn out. Was fun, though. Will post the stories I wrote tomorrow.

Welcome to the Chicago O’Hare International Airport. To Chicago, where a double whiskey that costs $5.50 in Missoula costs $16. Enough to turn a guy sober. And smokes for $6.50? Are you (cough) kidding me?

Wrote a bunch on the plane. Will have a few stories in my traditional vein come Monday.

Well, I think it’s really dead. I can’t decide if I want to sell it for parts on eBay, take it out back and shoot it Old Yeller style, or strap nitroglycerine to it, take it out into the woods and shoot it Hunter S. Thompson style after getting good and loaded on Wild Turkey.

I can get it to boot into Classic with the Norton disc, so I was able to save all of my data. Forgot to save my email mailboxes, but cest la vie. Meanwhile, it will not boot from any of the original software discs I have. So I booted back into Norton + copied the system folder from my external drive. That got me booted into Classic without a CD, but the damn thing crashes when I try to save any work, upload anything to the Internet or download anything.

Canceling Internet @ home to save $$. For now, I just have a computer @ werk. NO big deal, right? The weather’s nice and I should be outside anyway.

Still, if you’d like to contribute to the “Get Marc Back Online” fund, I won’t stop you. Drop me an email and let me know how much you’d like to donate.

So, I got Classic to boot, and I was able to connect to the Internet. Attempting to fix this thing once and for all, and I run across this on the Apple website…

You agree that you will not export or reexport any of the software or confidential information received from Apple (i) into (or to a national or resident of) Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Serbia, Sudan, Syria, or any other country to which the U.S. has embargoed goods; or (ii) to anyone on the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons, U.S. Commerce Department’s Table of Denial Orders and Entities List, or the U.S. State Department’s Debarred List. By downloading this software, you represent and warrant that you are not located in, under the control of, or a national or resident of any such country or on any such list. You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons.

Nice.