For Sarah...

That first chance I was rising early, earlier than the sleep deprived might want me so as coffee rich and strident raced through me beckoning me into a day I asked what I might do if I arrived whilst the sun hit the trees side on.

'Take a spade' was the answer, simple and to the point. 'To dig a hole?' was my reply but being so close to the quietness it rolled into this mind and found purchases eloquent and expansive of which I have learned to ride without questioning beyond a vantage of my own simple mindedness, my dumb naivety and a love of tools.

And with that I seek only to find the core, the source where fingers and thumbs learn to feel and my eyes watch with a sense of wonder that my mind can know so little.

So while the others sought to impress the experts with their knowledge of the current currencies I just wondered why must we have coins and what are these notes that allow our conversation.

So that's the first term over and I've found some minor celebrity which somehow allows me to be more obtuse, be seen pointing to dense thickets like brer rabbit knowing he can outwill the fox but the fox unheeding. I can play an even more irrelevant hand because people are curious.

But the march of the making of plans and being careful is full and strong and maybe even see's me as an enemy. Why? I know why because even though we might choose to start from stupid it doesn't mean we aren't allowed to see the map from higher elevations and if you drop that dull little pebbl;e into the wide stagnant waters you are allowed to stay and watch the ripples.

I see the place you choose to put me and I can be my own spy and secretly shine up the dull trinkets we all carry... and move them slightly so notice is thrown into corners.

Second term and madness is a conviction, though free, I am reminded of but threats are always a shining light for me... the jitters are appearing. But I'm enjoying my holiday, the world is a wide wide place and these freedoms given by a government have me playing in parks and discovering alcoves and I'm forgetful of serious intents.

Last minute I'm called to the stage, still in residence of privilege, so I find tools and just paint pretty pictures, old scores not even settled but dug up, possibly tired, for new action. And they yawn and stretch never realising that spinning new lies of consequence again wakes the sleeping giant.

Not even a photo hidden of the plank of wood and the spinny thing never mind the dull lump of mud but the encircling watchers have watched... the giant is waking.

What is the Giant? It's a giant.

It is the bored world with niches carved out and no interest in widening. Dull savant's only interested in their own glory asking for excitement for plunder for their own hordes. Pirates with big treasure laden but grounded ships expecting my little racy yacht to smash into the fatness of their relevance and renew the tired vigilance.

But I have no interest in this, I'm already gone and can see your broken hearts and my choice is even less for I must break them even more. I've tried to show you the tools I use and that's as far as I can go because I think I understand the questions you're unwilling to be seen asking.

So I'm gone but not easily forgotten. Maybe I'll go back... maybe I won't. I have a stash of good mud but it's quiet, it's resting. I'm uncovering the foundations of precious moments which will be the building of walls, not to hide a horde but to glorify and uphold, trinkets glued in and almost hoping the crowning ramparts will see me allowed to be mud frozen by fire... but that's still a future far off.

(That's my story, Sarah, of a year at the ASP, where I found technical stuff so utterly univigorating while I just wanted to play. Matt McLean was a hero, he's cool and Peter Lange had the blarney goin' on but seemed a little tired.)

300 words for an exhibition next July at Fresh.

I have what might be called a Love/ Hate relationship with Art though it's never really veers into hate, well, it never does, but it does go well into not caring much.

What that means is that I never stop being artistic, as such, I do very much stop caring about having a career in Art especially when I go into territories which could only be called craft and even into what might be called restoration.

I think what it is is that first and foremost I love stuff and how it relates to us as humans in the world we are constantly recreating around ourselves and Art, as a career, can be a part of that for me but it's merely a tool and not a product or end in and of itself. And that stuff, whatever it may be, always has a story. It either came to me with a story already told that I might frame and re-appraise in some way or it is in need of a story and, for me, that seems to be the all-encompassing life that is an Artful life. It's not the end product being sold in a gallery that be added to a CV, even though that's part of it, it's me on this planet, in this body, living in this country and finding ways to be best at what I do and passing those insights and discoveries around for discussion and review so that we all might find better ways of making this life, we all share, enjoyable and interesting.

So fads in the Art world have no real consequence to me. Yes they can be invigorating and inspiring and I'm more than willing to steal what I need but in the day to day experience of my life they're just like anything else on the periphery, mildly entertaining but essentially reasonably remote to what I see and feel everyday.

Maybe then it's that my whole life is my own fad. I am my own fashion which is the sum total of the places I've been, the people who are there and what they do within there own lives. So I guess that's what I want this exhibition to be about. That I am a man brought up and living in South Auckland who has decided to do it my way and at this time in my life, and always recurring, is a love of furniture. My pallet to tell stories of the past finding its future, through the now that is always of the greatest importance, is that of the things we use to sit on, store things in and place possibly more important things on. It's like making art of the frame, being a bit hidy hidy about what I'm actually saying, hiding in plain site.

And what will I be saying with a few scratch built pieces of furniture, a bunch of experimental works made up from discarded chairs and tabled pieced together with extras and some high end stuff redone from 60's and 70's South Auckland sitting room classics... and a few paintings done with spiritual discovery in mind?

I'll be saying thankyou to South Auckland for constantly inspiring me to live here and, guess what, we have a totally unique view of life and we need to remember that, not only is it more than enough to be proud of, but it's also more than enough for more conservative and richer places to start seeing us as the rich and diverse culture that we have.

Ideas having their time part2.

I think what's more important than ideas being found and brought more into reality is how they are fitted into society especially ideas where we might need the help of others. If an idea is couched in the wrong way and meets the wrong person for approval then it's not that it's time is wrong but it's placement and as time goes on and the ideas I'm given seem to be much more in this territory then it behoves me to think more about this idea of placing ideas where theres more chance of them being accepted.

And I kinda realise too that the idea itself doesn't matter so much as the underlying understanding that'll come from being more realistic about applying ideas in a way that makes their approval content greater and more likely to see fruition. It's like the flow of water and paths of least resistance so the idea is just the little boat and the placement is putting it on the water to see how the stream flows.

Getting the buildings behind the ASB in Grey Lynn using the Mens shed prototype combined with a art gallery of sorts then is the little boat and the stream of water is the ASB management hierachy and the challenge then isn't so much just about the boat but placing the boat within the watercourse where it'll have the longest journey.

Now the selling point to get the ASB on board is somewhat convoluted and would require quite a bit of foresight on the part of the reviewer to even see the relevance of such a step and what I have found over the years is that foresight is not something in common usage at least not in the lower echelons of commercial life. People are just trying to get on with the work they're given within a structured and understood model of how it all works and no matter how efficient a suggestion of change is it'll rock that boat so any rocking of boats has to be in a place where the boat has a chance to rock, can be viewed rocking, and any ripples created allowed time to wash on shores that won't destroy the marine life living on those shores.

This is why ideas need to find the right bay to be tested in. The idea doesn't really matter even if it's brilliant and required and all that other stuff... that's completely beside the point and the point is that structures in needing stability will resist instability even if it offers a greater stability in the long run.

This is the thing with structures. Our most efficient structures aren't actually structurally strong until the very last piece goes in and makes them stable and this requires, this type of building, a soft touch and alot of effort put into stabilising networks to get this unstable, until finished, structure working as a whole.

Mostly, what we do as humans, is overbuild from the foundation up where each successive layer is a structure in itself that allows each individual part to stand alone whilst other parts are added. Immensely inefficient really but it's a way of building that while limiting height and adding inertia it's something we all feel is safe because we add layers of rigidity, rigid upon rigid, and so safe footings upon safe footings.

The trouble with this though is that it becomes very difficult to change the structure. It can only really be changed from the top down simply because the top is resting on all that below it and if you take out parts of the middle or the bottom so much above it is reliant on that foundation of overbuilding then the whole becomes unstable.

Whereas efficient design of structures where all the parts are equally stressed to hold up the structure any attempt to enact change or modify the structure is felt by the whole thing and to remove one part is quite simple as it's job is determined by it's use and so all one has to do is remodel the use and add the required support to undergo change.

This is somewhat the same as the overbuilt structure except the quality of perception of change is modified by the rigidity of the layers of structure which inhibit the feedback through the structure and so change acts in convoluted pathways and is more easily misunderstood.

So while I can stand off to the side of the ASB as a structure and see that the idea I'm carrying is valid, that the banking giant would be in the advantage by being associated with changes in the economic environment which are yet to be easily seen and the simple fact of them being in possible association to such ideas is an advantage they would reap the rewards of without actually doing much... it is an altogether different proposition to see the benefits from within the structure of the ASB itself with all it's overbuilt preponderance.

Ideas having their time.

I went for my big drive out to the Northwest the other day and two ideas found me whilst doing so. Ideas, though, are something I've never been short of and even get to throwing lots away but this isn't about that.

The first idea was pretty straightforward and might have been a logical extension of dropping in to Adventure cycles to get some ball bearings for a particularly nice rolling pin. After leaving and being well impressed by Bruce's place and all the youngsters he has working with him and seeing his particular form of education which always involves people learning to teach themselves by always going beyond themselves and having to figure things out, as in risk, it may have been reasonably obvious to see the next stage of a transport revolution combined with a education revolution which is what the idea I got seems to be about.

Simple really, just have buses that go up and down the motorway and have stations along the way where the buses can stop. But the important part is taking out 1/2 of the buses sides and installing bike racks. I then discussed this with my brother yesterday and the logical conclusion he had was to supply bicycles on a mass scale so then we don't even have to carry them. Oh, and have fleets of little buses, and slightly bigger buses doing small circuitous routes that feed into the big buses on the motorway. Okay well and good... sorted but it ain't going to happen and heres why.

It couldn't be privatised and if it was it wouldn't work and that's our main problem these days. The divide between corporate and social welfare is a divide that doesn't need to be there but is ingrained in our society especially with the decision makers that seem only able to function from one side of that particular fence.

Because the next idea which came to me was in the form of a response to the ASB bank after having asked if I could possibly rent the space behind the Grey Lynn branch which has three garages and a courtyard. They said, the property manager, that they might need it so, basically, no one else can then.

My idea for the space was to have a workshop and gallery space set up which would revolve around doing up old things that are broken and in doing so get into that whole thing about taking care of what we already have but the trouble with such a setup is that it would have to be non-profit profit making or profiteering non-profit.

Basically what that means is that as a maker of money you do that to be able to get what you need but at the same time you are there to help others as well as enable them to save money. Its seems reasonable doesn't it and many people are already out there doing it but it's yet, as a business practice, to be accepted as a way of doing things in the charitable sphere... and it needs to be.

At the moment you either set up something that's for profit and be charitable where you can or you set up a charity but it's not allowed to make money in the sense of individuals being allowed to do so within the framework... except they do and this is where we end up seeing large charitable organisations taking on business models and employing managers and marketers to expand the donations and therefore expand the 'company'.

So underneath all this we actually have people realising that profit making and being charitable can work together and theres absolutely no reason why they shouldn't but we have yet to legitimise the practise which might even be as simple as naming it.

Crossover economics just came to me... purple money! Where the red of socialism meets the blue of capitalism.

Mens sheds are a good start

But, dare I say it, it's a bit silly ruling out half the population but in today's economic climate could they have called it 'the peoples sheds' or is that just a little too communistic? Either way the naming of it doesn't really matter unless the slogan still reads as more important than the content and if we keep moving in these types of directions then wahtever it's called doesn't matter and the sloganeers who've managed to divide and conquer the free expression of individuals regardless of their race, gender or creed will have had their days in the sun and be consigned, by their own obvious ineptitude, to the scrap heap of been there, done that, and it's fuckin' useless! Why did we ever buy into it!

I'm not sure what to call this one...

I read something the other day about how someone else dealt with anger and it was that they waited for as long as they needed before taking the person aside and telling them off... not whilst the anger might fuel pettiness but when the anger had dissipated and they knew the actions and could state them fairly.

Though an incident I was part of a while back didn't make me angry it confused me enough that I'm now using, in a slightly different vein, the same approach to state what I think happened. And while it is about one particular person I want to try and state things more universally and have no interest in being able to do a one on one with this person. It's not that I'm scared or unable to approach this person but I'm just not bothered anymore except I think they might somehow appreciate my view of the situation that occurred and I've chosen, for better or worse, to do such in a way that suits me.

It was about work we'd agreed that I'd undertake and it was stuff I understand. I understand it because even while I don't know all the proper time honoured procedures I am of a bent that I appreciate the design and engineering practicalities of most things and can usually work out what was and is that needs to be achieved. In this particular situation the hardware involved is of a type where all one needs to do is go buy the stuff thats worn out and replace it without adding stress so the parts can do their job with the minimum of interference.

But upon pulling apart the articles it was obvious to me a different type of cowboy had been there before me and that this particular cowboy had been good at what he did but it wasn't a way of working that I'm either proficient at or fond of doing unless it's an absolutely last resort. This particular cowboy was a silicone cowboy and silicone is a very useful material if used in places where replacement isn't an issue during normal wear and tear but silicone cowboys are experts in using it instead of old parts in need of replacement and a direct result of this is that taking something apart that has been done in this way is usually a minefield of interconnected abuse that needs entirely new parts from beginning to end or hours spent cleaning off the old silicone and doing the whole thing again with even more silicone. It can be done but by this time the replacement parts are cheaper than all the cleaning required so it's entirely impractical.

At this stage I am trying to let the person I'm working for then to know this but they became irrational because they were unable to understand the practicalities of the work involved and it wasn't long before I was being mistrusted and almost attacked for being incompetent and about to cause huge problems that would result in certified tradesman charging huge amounts of money to rectify. So then I'm sitting there still trying to explain what for me is still a totally rational set of problems which can be easily solved but the irrationality gets even bigger and more awesome that I realise this has become a metaphor for something else... something no amount of rationality will ever solve.

But what I do know is that I can go out and find the part I need as it's inorganic time and these parts are available in good condition and in abundance so I try this as a way to leave what is becoming a totally untenable position on my part.

And I'm driving around and nothing is available... and they're always there! This then leads me to believe that theres more going on and metaphor is indeed doing it's merry dance but I still have a problem to solve and have to figure something out so I go to a suppliers and look at the prices of brand new stuff, the whole thing from start to finish, as we need one at home ourselves for complete replacement and given this person I'm working for is looking in that direction anyways it's seems a good idea to go back and suggest this. I will buy a new bit, put it in for as long as it's needed then take it out when you've chosen the one you want.

So I go back and it's not good enough. Still totally irrational and unable to grasp the actual reality of the situation so I basically do what I can and get out as quickly as I can.

And I need to get home and let it all go as it's doing my head in. This person who I thought was one thing turns out to be something completely different as the work I'd done took them to edge I hadn't seen before. I had seen traces of it and just thought it was silliness without a foundation as such but blow me over it's a complete and utter foundation entire and solid as a rock.

But that's not what this is about. That's their business and my business is figuring out why I so often get caught up in these positions where the world is falling apart for others but for me it's nothing more than a few simple problems that can easily be solved by a mixture of time, money and careful problem solving. Just going out to put out the rubbish it came to me and it's that I'm very used, within my own work, being able to take myself to positions of utter irrationality, attempt the previously un-attempted, and know within myself that I'll be able to come up with something at least able, and usually more able, to solve the initial problem. Sometimes I've failed miserably, and learnt so much taking apart what I was trying to do, but usually I come out on top... wipe my brow and soak up up all the blood from all the cuts and bruises, and sit back and feel wonder at how it all came together.

But what I haven't mentioned yet is a huge amount of faith that I have to have in my inner voice that urges me to take all these risks. Over the years the risks have gotten bigger and bigger but with that my faith has grown and the ride has been glorious. And I think that's what people subconsciously want of me, for themselves, when they commission me to do work for them. They want the glorious outcome but are often as unaware of the price as I am... but I'm used to the price and I'm more than happy to pay it, digging deep into faith and trusting myself and my instincts that what I hope is in my heart will find a way through. The unawareness then is different. My un-awareness is conscious, it's a choice that I know the price but don't need to think that I'm unable to pay... whereas in others the unawareness is often unconscious, and even sub conscious, and when the time to pay arises it brings up a whole bunch of other stuff... opps.

Is it my fault then when the shit hits the fan? Well yes it is, I am responsible for my choice to be there, and back to the story I go, and so the next morning, though my legs were trembling and I felt sick to the stomach, I was urged by that quiet voice to go back into the fray and do the best I could to make things at the very least as good as I found them. So I did go back and I did find the part on the side of the road before I got there. I walked in and did the best I could and even received an apology of sorts but for some reason it didn't ring true and again that's not my business. My business was to make fast what needed to be made fast (as in working) then inquire, given the change in circumstances, how much further into the work I might be accepted to participate.

Hardly any was the answer. The whole job was gone but I was asked if one particular slightly problematic set of doings might suit me... and it didn't so I left and haven't been back since. I was hoping this person might come and see me but all I got was an offer to visit them to talk things over and up until now I haven't felt comfortable that I couldn't bring myself totally faithfully to the problems that were raised. I can within myself for my own problems because not long after I called into someones elses life to refit their domicile. That one went to the cleaners too and I've washed my hands of it... I'm getting good at that.

And what have I learned? Good question. I still don't know exactly and I may never know at least not the full implications but what I can do is try to be more forthright, at the beginning if people want me to do something for them, of the way that I work and what it might possibly entail... huge risks and ultimate failure and if you think it might end in Glory then be well prepared to pay a price that makes you uncomfortable. That may or may not be true but being that kind of honest might make them think twice about what they want from me.

In the end I really do want people to have what they want and I do hope it'll be what they needed from that want... 'Cause between want and need always seem to be where the issues come from and my problem is that I'm often quite thrilled at the problematic nature of the difference between want and need so I'll go marching in regardless of the obvious difference between the two. Even when I realise what someone needs and see that their want's cannot give them that and I try to open them up to what they actually need. And how arrogant that is of me? To even think I know what others need... Hey Mister, I just do what I'm told.

Last nights dream info...

Sometimes I have these really coherent dreams where it seems it's somehow important to take reasonably seriously the information or ideas that are discussed within the scenarios. Last night's was one of those where I woke up going "Where did that come from?"

It came from a weirdness where I went swimming with an old friend who was somewhat depressed, which I knew why, but wasn't interested in telling him straight out, but was because he was suffering living a life he thought he was supposed to as opposed to one he felt from the heart... so he was living a constructed self as opposed to his real self... but it's really hear nor there and I just suggested we go for a swim and at the swim place, which was pools, the interesting things happened.

There was like two pools and after a dip in the big kinda normal one I decided to go do some jumping into the little but deeper pool but I was told by the residents, who were all Maori or Pacific Islanders, that it was not worth doing... but I did it anyways.

And it wasn't worth it as the water surface had a surface tension that was really high and it was somehow a whole lot harder and more viscous and it turns out that a few guys needed it this way to do their tricks. I then argued, with the locals, that it wasn't fair to hold this whole other pool in a condition that only suited a few. The locals argued back that I was being racist and didn't like that these few individuals could do something and make use of something I couldn't. I said it wasn't a racist argument at all and that the point for me was that special conditions allowed a few to use resources that could be used by many. At this point one of the workers came on my side and supported my arguments saying that he indeed saw the reasonableness of my arguments but also saw the benefits of the few being held as special and being an encouragement to the many. I was encouraged by this and offered it was the special conditions that were at fault here and whilst being encouraging in the skills shown by the few where also dis-encouraging in a real sense by creating a threshold it was harder and harder for the unskilled to attain.

Then I woke up thinking wow... that's deep man. I knew exactly what it all meant but also felt somewhat daunted by the extra depth of the information offered within the arguments. Now I don't have any idea where this sort of stuff comes from, be it me or some other reality I have no idea about but it always feels like it's from something deeper and more knowledgeable than me, even if it from a deeper and more knowledgeable me, I feel a certain obligation to bring this understanding to more people. It could be in places like this or it could be in normal conversations.

So I've had ideas like this in the past and don't really pay them to much attention but in this case it may be time to address such in more depth. I remember back a few years ago when I was doing some stuff down at fresh gallery here in Otara where I'd end up in arguments where my point was that any artist is there for his community and not for the art establishment because most of the artists argued that they needed to win over the establishment, and be accepted, before they could bring their art back to the community... which I thought was ludicrous and basically self aggrandisment parading as art.

It' never worked and it will never work when battling the establishment and the only outcome there ever is that the practitioners become the establishment. The new artists that come through don't then see art as something that benefits their community as something they can bring to that community but as a career in which they must spend years gaining accreditation as opposed to a set of skills already grounded in the community in a sometimes naive way that can be widened and encouraged amongst greater numbers.

And it's special conditions that create this divide.

And it's often in the form of positive discrimination that these special conditions are applied. But don't get me wrong... or do, it's your choice after all, I'm not disenfranchised from the positive uses of positive discrimination and see them as a fair and equitable way to redistribute wealth but I do think more attention needs to be paid to the uses of positive discrimination when all it does is create new elites where the conditions of entry become so high only a few can hope to attain them.

I was talking yesterday to several people who wanted to know about my own artworks which were on display at the Titirangi markets. One of the things I hold high is being approachable and in this I mean not only being at markets but also such things as using commonly available materials and using tools that require skills built up over time. The anti thesis of this is this newish tendency to use digital tools and manual labourers to create art: this creates a special condition of required investment that raises the threshold of most people being able to see themselves capable of doing such things.

The only special condition I apply to my own art is one of time and this is simply because people must make that decision to use that resource themselves with the required sacrifice on their own part. Everybody has the resource of time at their disposal even while they might use the argument that they sacrifice time to obtain money so that they can buy time later... that's just silly.

I see far too much art out there that either relies on gender, racial or physical difference being of paramount importance or of some specialised knowledge and acquired intellectual difference which is then held up high by these special conditions and all it seems to do in the long run is re-establish an eliteism as opposed to widening and encouraging more engagement in the arts... in everyday life.

Not that everybody needs to or wants to be arty... that's not the point either, simply that societies that have alot of art going on always seem to simply be calmer and more confident about who they are.

I kinda found this with my year around potters and clay. There seemed to be far too much emphasis on the profundities of glaze technology, which required specialisation of knowledge, and the simple realities of being able to create forms with clay... but that's another story.

She's hard... and I told her so.

Without going into details I bought something somewhere that started a conversation ending in me saying I'd bring back two articles that the women I'd been talking to would appreciate adding to her collection. In figuring when I'd return with these articles I added to my list of needs that I could ask her if she sold stuff on behalf and if she did I'd give her these articles as a sign of good faith.

See, I want people to have what they want, I want them to achieve the happiness they seek and if I have something they want I want them to at least honour the fact that I possess what they want for some kind of a reason as I try to honour what others might have that I want from them. And it's about those relationships much, much more than the things themselves. It's like if something comes into my possession and I fix it up then I'm both finding it and fixing it up for someone somewhere and it is both an honour to be given that task and an honour to be part of  succession of events that lead to people relating to other people searching within life with that which might make them feel greater than they were and ultimately as great as they are.

Not that I'm a saint by any stretch as I suffer to from a sense of self without equal but I have enough moments of humility thrust upon me that always in the back of my mind, and trickling up from my heart, is a sense that I'm a part of something much bigger than just me and that remembering honour and trying to be honourable without thinking to much always leads to a greater peace and calm within me.

So when I found this woman and saw her joy at what I had for her it was slightly perturbing when she offered me a pittance for them and I told her she was hard. She said she needed to be because she was in business. What I saw, and felt, was that though she was collecting something that brought her joy she wasn't honouring the journey that brought it to her. She was working under a misguided idea that being businesslike, as in hard selling and buying (buy low and sell high) was the way that joy and accomplishment is achieved. Of course, such people are the last ones who'd ever get in a line to be told such so I just kept my mouth shut, accepted her amount and was told to go see the help to receive my payout.

Suddenly bells are clanging in my head as all honour I might have had in the handover is lowered to the floor of a cash transaction... and one requiring my identity be proved. But I still want her to have these pieces that gave her joy so as I stand there before the counter and the help does book things I figure I can just give them over and leave and hold my honour intact.

So I did. "Don't you want your money?" "No, I'm fine" and I leave. "You're sure?" as I walk up the stairs. "Yes".

It's not even that she who received what I left behind even has to consider how I acted. That's not my responsibility, it's hers to choose to or not but my responsibility is to honour my idea of what is worth honouring... which is just about everything even when people attempt to dishonour what I believe honour to be.

There's an old Native Indian farewell that is "Walk in Beauty" and this above is how I work such ideas into my own life. There is no dividing line between the crass reality of greed and selfishness and trying to live an honourable life. If there is it simply means you cross it more than you should... but in time one won't because the benefits of not crossing are far greater as what line there ever was vanishes.

And all throughout this experience the concept of honour didn't once cross my mind. I just did as I felt was right. Did as quickly as possible whatever sent doubts packing and got back to just being happy. In hindsight I can ascribe what might be honour to my actions but that's really just a word used to describe something after the fact. Who knows, maybe I was as self serving as she was and my actions have only made my delusions deeper and the truth, whatever that is, is still as plunged in the mud as it seems to be everywhere else in this mess we call modern life.

I don't know, I have no idea... but it felt right. I felt like a dog shaking off the water and mud and ready to go rub myself on some clean blankets.