Art virus

Busy day yesterday, Thursday. I got back to Waihi from the printmaking course in Hamilton about three and dropped by the Waihi College office to fill out forms to enable me to get paid for the Life drawing course I run there on Wednesday nights. Then on to the Post Office to mail off some money to the dear old Tax department that Valda, my accountant says must be paid by Monday.

Been up since six as the printmaking course is an early start and more than an hours drive away across the drought stricken Hauraki plains. Every Thursday for eight weeks there and back across the plains with my artist pal Barbara and watching the farmers fields slowly start to turn green again after the hottest, driest Summer for yonks.
That was the last day of the printmaking course, I learned a lot and got some good work done but glad now to have a break from that long commute.

So it's four o'clock and I've heaps more work to do starting at fiveish and I'm now thinking how nice it would be to be sitting at a table outside the Sterling Tavern watching the passing parade on Waihi's main street and sipping on a pint of Guinness.

It's a spiritual world we all live in friend, a paradoxical place where we all exist in dimensionally and temporally limited finite material form. Growing, changing and eventually decaying and dying, but all of us endowed with limitless infinite imagination! O yes! Be careful what you wish for because all our dreams, good or bad, if we hold them dear, will come true pal, sure as eggs are eggs..

And it seems like no time at all till my pleasant wee dream of sitting outside the Sterling with a pint of Guinness is an actual reality that I am experiencing! Miracles! Every day miracles happen to us! Just imagine something and the bountiful universe makes it so! Just master fear and my what a strange and wonderful place we exist in!
I must admit I sometimes have a bit of trouble with letting go of fear and there are people, especially those involved in the media, politics and finance who seem to take a perverse delight in promoting fear amongst their fellow human beings.
Perhaps these sort of people are in the grip of fear themselves and are desperate to manipulate their environment and the people around them to ensure their own power and comfort.
All I can say to that is ignorance is bliss you stupid, blinded by your own intelligence, egotistical, idiots..

Meanwhile there I am living my latest wee dream, sitting outside the Sterling with a pint of Guinness, the sun comes out and a trio of hard working gold miners come out for a beer and a cigarette at the tables outside and we get into a discussion about the difference between the tent of the sky above us and the temple of the sky above us.
I can see that I am going to have to ask Denise for another pint of Guinness if I am going to make any sense of this conversation and before long we are all pals and do the handshake and intro thing and what do you do John?
Artist Dion
Hey you the guy painted the mural by the memorial hall?
Yeah that's me Jimmy
So Jimmy's got a house bus that needs a mural on it and I give him my card.
Jimmy's got a dream of a mural and I have a permanently running dream of making other peoples mural dreams become reality so there we are together discussing this....another day, another miracle....
As Warren Beatty says to Faye Dunaway in the movie Bonnie and Clyde when he is telling her how he was released from prison the same week he cut off his toe to get off work detail:

"Ain't life grand?"

Two pints of Guinness down the hatch and it's time to get back to work.
Home I go and start taking paintings off the wall, into the back off the wagon they go along with a ladder and hammer and my picture hanging gear and off we go to see Leah and the ladies at Chambers restaurant and spend the next few hours rearranging the displays of paintings that decorate Leah's restaurant. Leah is a friend of all local artists and musicians. She and her husband Kevin are from the South Island and friendly- as people as most Mainlanders are.
They live across the road from me and are trying to sell their lovely house because it has limited garaging and they have four vehicles but I hope it doesn't sell because they are good neighbours.

I get home from my busy day at 8.30 to find two missed calls on my cellphone from Sandra, and one text, as follows:

"Today i got a comment on blog saying click here. Checked it out on net & it could lead to virus site.
Best to have comment settings on word verification to avoid auto comment programmes. Can u tell barbara & let me know if u don't know what to do."

So I ring Sandra, my computer whiz artist mate, and she fills me in on this almost interesting phenomenom and she tells me her latest.

I ring Barbara and tell her about this possible art virus thing and she tells me that she got a comment on her blog from some guy in India with the click here thingy and she clicked it and now there is something there that she cannot delete.

Hmmm. An opportunity for fear to upset our three art bloggers peace of mind?
Maybe. Maybe not. I'm goin for maybe not myself.

First Friday of every month is music night at Chambers restaurant and about thirty local muso's take turns to entertain and Sandra and I go to draw the musicians and enjoy the scene.
I will be seeing Sandra there tonight and can update her as to Barbara's situation so Sandra can arrange to open Barbies blog and clean it up for her.

Art virus? What sort of person would bother to do something like that?

Ignorance is bliss I reckon.