Category: John Otter news

the end of the harvest season is here, in one form or another. I have no live stock to slaughter, but I do have old thoughts and concepts which are good and ready for the kill.
The boundaries between the worlds are apparently as open as they’ll be right now (according to some). Thoughts are fusing, slowly.
Last night I had the strange fortune of selling a drawing as I was trying to complete it. Strange in that I had a specific deadline (which increased as the night went on, due to drinking). The deadline was much shorter than any project I’ve worked on before – namely having the drawing completed within an hour (or something like that). In general, the drawings take roughly 4 or 5 hours until I feel satisfied with the results, but this “quick & dirty” drawing was one of exceptional quality considering the speed at which it was drawn. More interesting was the stimulus around the drawing, the banter and words needing something to stick to. Desperation in a voice, that perhaps I wasn’t aware of something that was very important. This combined with the speed of drawing made for something akin to a “cartoon” of a painting – a sketch or study of a complete work. There will be no complete work, and in that way the sketch, study or “cartoon” takes on the role of the complete work. Each items role changes dynamically with what comes before or after itself, like us humans in a way.
I’m not wearing a costume today, instead I’m dressing in all black. Its time to go to work now, later (at about 11:30am) I think I’ll post something I wrote back in 1997.

Trees bend low, uproot
and swan dive gracefully
into the earth’s
warm embrace.
Birds build eggs
around themselves.
Eyeballs turn inward
for introspection.
People sound asleep
are startled
by alarm clocks
and wake up into dreams.
Suddenly the slippery stones
in the sand at the sea
seem not so slippery.
The stars and the galaxies
the planets and nebulae
black holes and supernovas
reach their furthest-most
limit
beyond which they will not travel
they stand suspended in space for
less than a second,
and then retreat
to their inward journey
to end with the
universal implosion.
a butterfly flaps its wings
against a gentle breeze.

John Otter
1995

separate chambers of the mind slowly come together again,
as the sun begins to steal the nights reign.
A locked door with a broken doorbell.
A small window, just large enough to climb through
and a handful of pennies.
Leaping from stone to stone
as the mist from a waterfall
moistens the skin.
A fallen tree becomes
the site of a picnic,
or a throne.
Recycled words and concepts
dance around a haystack
in an old unknown tradition.
The changing of the time has changed,
leaving my computer with a stupid grin
and excuses as to why it would sleep in.

* * *

black tea is just not the same as coffee.

The other day when I was organizing stuff in my house (mostly paperwork) I stumbled across a folder jam packed full of old writings of mine – dating roughly between 1994 & 1999. I read through a few then and just now read through more of them. Seeing them the other day made me wonder why I don’t write as much as I used to. I wonder if all the drawing I’m doing lately takes the place of writing. Most of the writing is rather abstract poetry of sorts, but not all. My plan is to wake up a bit earlier than usual this week and start writing again. I’ll most likely post the writings as blog entries and if I become inspired I might even post some of the old writings. If I don’t have a new blog post by 9am tomorrow you’ll know I failed. I think I’ll set my computer to turn on automatically at 8:15am.

never ceases to amaze me. Maybe not life, but rather all the proceedings and activities, some conscious some involuntary. I’ve been extremely focused in certain regards and a complete space-case in others. Work is so busy its become like a meditation, where time slows to the pace of molasses dripping. Fires are raging around southern california, but here the sky is blue and the wind is calm, its hard to realize the intensity of the blazes just miles away. A day or two before the fires started I was out walking when I suddenly questioned whether I turned off the stove-top burner, so I walked home (which was only about 15 minutes away) – the whole walk home I was imagining the worst, the house ablaze and then rationalizing that there’s no way I could’ve forgotten to turn off the burner. I even questioned why I was walking all the way home when I was sure (or at least pretty sure) that I didn’t leave the burner on. When I got home I checked and it was off as I had suspected. I really wondered why the panic and then a day or two later all the repoorts of southern california burning came. I guess it is at least better safe than sorry. I think I’ll develop my own language and share it with the animals.