All we've ever had is now

Ferris says,

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

and he's right. So allow me to mark this brief occasion of sanity and look at the things surrounding my world and note them.

Congratulations go out to my friends Mr and Mrs B on the birth of their first child. He will be extremely well-loved and adored by thousands. I must make time to go and see him and his parents. It has been entirely too long and I missed out on seeing the Mrs. prego. No excuses, I need to go. Thanks for the call, by the way, Mrs. B, if you ever stumble across this.

I sold my first print ever directly from a kind person going through this simple but often convoluted blog. I do want to sell prints, especially black and white, hand-pulled, silver prints. From me to you, thanks. From me to all the rest of you four people who stop by from time to time, please, if there's anything you like...let's talk. Plans to have a 'first friday' print for sale every month have been thwarted (excuse coming up) by actual First Friday openings. This goes to my next point:

I have had four gallery exhibitions in three months. How can I not be pleased about that? In fact, I AM very pleased. Sometimes the work and money involved in producing the things occlude all the good things people say and the moments of people actually looking at my work. I got some love from friends that came out to support me though it may have upset their lives a little. That's huge. So THANK YOU. No, I have not sold anything at the galleries this year. Off-gallery sales this year have gone up though. Which is to say, 5 sales is far greater than 3. I'm proud. It makes me feel good. It helps buy paper and hopefully soon some photo-retouching pens/ink for when I don't notice that microscopic speck of dust on an 8x10 and proceed to print 15 of them. Hopefully, exposure will increase as it's time to go back to the seed, the East Coast and get some things out there. NYC was good to me the first time I tried it and with some help from a potential agent (please please please) maybe I can do well out there. Denver is not interested in my stuff right now. Who knows what the future holds? I'll be painting again this week. It's been a while.

A friend of mine is an amazing artist and I have not yet pimped him out here. No bloody excuse for that. Meet Shane. This guy spends time on detail that would drive me insane. I need faster timetables and gratification. It shows in his work. Some of the wildlife stuff up close is insanely good. Besides the fact that I am extremely jealous of his recent camera purchase, I have no excuse to not promote him all the time. We recently showed together last month at the brunalarru gallery in the River North Arts District. He is living the (my) dream, pursuing his art without a 9-5 and hopefully doing well.

My family loves and supports me and is fairly stable.

I'm not hungry, poor, homeless or any of the things that could so easily happen. I can communicate with people in London, Dubai, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Tokyo and even the Isle of Wight and do so. I have nearly unlimited technology at my fingertips to glean information or even help myself out of jams. I can do things so many people are not able to do and I take it for granted. For this I am sorry. I can't apologize to anyone for that, but I can show up in your lives, when possible and tell you that our time together is important to me and it surely is not unlimited. I can appreciate this moment,right now.

Now I'm going to go and listen to "Do You Realize??" by the Flaming Lips as loud as possible and let it wash over me like it always does and I will thank the stars for everything that comes into my mind. You could do it too, if you wanted to.