There were 22 reticent hawkers at the art association, and all besides a couple of us were Christmas heavy and creative art light. The closest I achieved any seasonal theme was a COVID snowman urinating his name, “Mr. C” in the fresh powder fall. The sale was four weekends long. During the week I painted downstairs and kept adding the days’ work to my little station. I wish I snapped a photo of the last day. Just stuff everywhere. Too much.
I made $382. Third highest seller.
Humans meet at a busy corner of the heart for Santa Claus gnomes and cardinals on greeting cards, and then there is that unbeknownst darker place where rare expressions of madness and light are found while traveling adulthood inside a crazy nation-state of dolts. I think I sold well because all is not lost, and the majority (whether they know it or not) have not yet been dumbed down to final annhilation realities.
Your regular you might not think about strangling each individual member of the military industrial complex for the crime of stockpiling nukes, but I am quite certain your subconscious does. The latter rips off all the vinyl siding in the neighborhood and wonders why it was ever made to look like painted wood. It would throw the TV out the window too if status didn’t trump clarity 99% of the time. We are all out of our minds, and this is a good thing to feed me, says the subconscious. Bad taste and murder are flourishing. So life craves change as a matter of it and death, while the constipated you in your life might not ever get the gist of a recent subterranean art purchase.
I am honored to have people want a hard copy of my (sub)conscious. To hang it on a wall, to pass by it in the night, to think with it… It’s not fine art, that’s for sure. So why is it ever tolerated on such a personal level? Is it more like sharing the obvious because what I am (the beautifully ugly), you must be too? Can my work, or just my working, be a reminder that bureaucracy has smothered our conscious life to barely breathable, and we better kick that killer in the crotch asap?
Don’t really know. Just very thankful any person would care as much as I do about the Texas-sized microplastic goop flow in the sea, and call (subconsciously) for the immediate eradication of millionaires cooking in three homes with 17 bathrooms flushing simultaneously. But I tell you, no more selling unless I can get rich—really, really rich. Rich enough to send Elon Musk screaming naked out into an ever-expanding heavenverse.
Please just come over and talk to me. Be open for conversation that stings. I might bash Christmas. You know as well as I do that Jesus hasn’t made a single true convert in 112 years. I might also remind you that the FBI is the people’s enemy, and mouth breathing will send you to an early grave. But I’ll provide the beverage and you can take a painting home. Our feelings will get hurt, especially the first few times around. Keep coming back though, and soon neither of us will give a damn about the state of human beings. We’ll graduate to boilermakers and sing out our sloppy song of the world, inebriately. What else is there to do while we wait for the subconscious to surface? Paperwork?
I made money at a sale I wasn’t supposed to make money at because human beings are way more complex than any trite bite Netflix can lay out to snap at. They often surprise because they must. To sustain a hopeful grandchild future, we just need to see more of the broken you (and me) that has not already become the suppressive them.
If you think my paintings can catalyst, then take whatever you wish. Here is a book that has helped me succeed. And here is a painting that has not:
Now for the true meaning of Christmas…
Robert Okaji is a poet living and working in a midwestern city. He sent me a letter once that I read whenever I am taken down low, low, low by the powers that be. I don’t know if he would want me to publish it, but today the wind is fierce, the skunk has sprayed, and I want to share what art is to an artist. Walt Whitman advertised Leaves of Grass with a quote out of a private letter from Ralph Emerson without permission. It helped sell a lot of books. Robert can sue me for publishing without an okay and I will send him honorable homemade pasta wrapped in money, sealed in spit, and call us even.
Letter to Throop from the Imperfect Stuckist Sky
Dear Ron: I no longer hope for brilliance; a slight
reflection would suffice, or a semi-polished glint
of the dew lingering in a cactus flower’s cup, just
enough to cause the border patrolman to blink and miss
what’s slyly hotfooted past the corner of his eye,
which is where I feel most comfortable these days:
at the edges. But really, at this stage all I can do
is keep plugging away, word by line, ache by poem,
submission to bruise, night after week after year after
decade. This is the point at which wax melts and feathers
flutter through their lonely plummets to someone’s
murky Aegean nightmare. Or should I just embrace
my ineptitudes? Those long, ragged nights and unraveled
days? The emptied glasses? What I love about your
painting is: it ain’t pretty. But goddamn it’s beautiful
and true. Each color, every brushstroke vibrates with
genius, with passion and honesty and a wit I can only
strive for. You pull the perimeters up close, push the
insides out. But enough about you. This is MY poem,
and I need to whine, to explain. What do I miss most
about Texas? The black vultures. The way they’ll
loop above a rotting corpse with nary a collision
or even a close call, sans radar or air traffic controllers.
Of course this sort of perfection eludes me. I’d be
the bird at the root of the pileup, the one that flew clock
instead of counter, while staring towards yonder horizon
rather than at the scrumptious, maggoty morsel below.
I guess that’s what sets us apart. Why follow instinct
when we can overthink and screw up? Just hand me
another slice of that imperfection pie. And a glass of the
bitterest, homemade, moan-inducing ale. I hope to someday
stumble into Oswego to cast an illegal vote or read a
poem, or maybe you’ll parachute into the middle of
flyover country and join us for gyoza or breakfast tacos
and a few bottles of bubbly Spanish wine. Meanwhile,
keep cruising against the grain, and observe those far away
edges. That lone stick figure where the corn dwindles out
at field’s end might be me. I’ll be sure to wave. Bob
Buy Robert Okaji’s latest chapbook here:
And join his expanding universe at O at the Edges
Lastly, some holiday work: