fantasies of a house painter

Lohbado worked for a painting company two summers in a row, then formed his own company. He remembered placing forty-foot ladders, climbing to forth and fifth story balconies. He would stand on the balcony rail to paint hard to reach spots. He also used a step ladder to paint the top of window and balcony door frames. Sometimes people were inside. He fantasized about being invited in to have some fun. It never happened. He painted many buildings. No drama, other than paint drips here and there, or getting hot, exhausted, sore muscles. He carried a lot of gear up the long ladder. He carried a step ladder, drop sheet, a bucket, screen, rollers, brushes, a roller pole, rags. He had to be fast and neat.

Why are you taking pictures?

Even though virtually everyone carries a device that allows picture-taking, paranoia happens when one pulls out a camera. Why are you taking pictures? To take pictures is not a neutral activity. It signifies an intention, which could be threatening.

medicine bottles

Lohbado pencil drawings

don't put your finger in the toaster

boo boo finger

rusty pipe

How do you feel about your body? What would you like to say? The body experiences many sensations of various functions. Digestion, blood circulation, heartbeat, breathing, nervous energy, hormonal ups and downs, sometimes the body is torn about, pushed and pulled, squeezed and bloated. This affects the mind. Often a cloud covers the mind. The mind floats, oblivious to sight and sound. The mind sinks into a stupor, soft focus, day dream, cloud 9. For a few seconds, the mind awakens from dullness, experiences a little awareness, then blurs back into dullness again, or into agitation. The mind alternates between dullness and agitation, between day dream and compulsive thought loops, memories, emotions, concepts, fantasy, endless mental activity, neither good nor bad. That’s how it is with the mind, most of the time.

Blabber Monster

Blabber Monster at Baby Bee Motel

Trucker Bill dropped Lohbado off at Baby Bee Motel and kept on going. Bill wanted to make time. Bill said he was glad to have given Lohbado a ride. Lohbado said he had enjoyed Bill’s company.

procrastination

three drawings

go team go!

Olympics are happening. Go team go!

here to there

The Chief Nomroh encouraged Lohbado to write his memoirs. He also said to forget about the past. Let go of the past. Don’t try to be somebody. Don’t try to do anything. Appreciate the world. Appreciate yourself. Don’t be dogmatic.

foot slap dance

ink drawings from Lohbado's sketchbook

Speaking of foot slap tap dance vibrations, which incidentally is invigorating for the nervous system and has a positive influence on one's health and well being, Lohbado watched another Luis Bunuel masterpiece called "Susana".

One could interpret the movie however one wishes. Gilles Deleuze writes about the movie in Cahiers 1, with a complicated sentence that is best understood after reading more than once.

Lohbado wrote about the movie in his diary. In Susana, a super-heroine of the Oogah-underground escapes the reformatory, which looks sort of like a mental hospital/prison from the fifties. Locked in the basement, in solitary confinement, she gazes at a bat, hanging from an overhead beam, then at some rats and at a spider. She sees the shadow of the cross on the floor and prays, as if to the Lord of Prisons. She prays a second time, asking the Lord to do a miracle. The Lord answers her prayers. The bars come loose. She escapes in a burst of thunder and lightening to a farm, where like the lovely Satan in Bunel's Simon of the Desert, she takes delight in turning the household upside down. She laughs at how easy it is to seduce and overpower the three main male characters. There's a scene like from a Dostoyevsky novel, when son clenches his fist against father, as they quarrel over Susana.

Susana almost succeeds in controlling the household as she unleashes the power of basic instinct, but then pushes things too far. It's almost like she's having so much fun playing the game, she doesn't really care how it turns out in the end. After her project is on the verge of succeeding, the whole thing falls apart. She's taken back to the reformatory. The household can return to its genteel, respectable routine. Even the horse that gets sick when Susana arrives and is on the verge of being put to sleep, miraculously gets better.

They should have listened to the maid who recognized that Susana was the adorable Satan.  But then they wouldn't have got to experience what happens... what lurks under the surface of bourgeois respectibility.

at the edge of an abyss

ink drawings by Lohbado

Lohbado read in the news about the drought in California. Ground water levels are going down. An epic drought has begin. We're on the edge of an abyss.

OOO Balance

image by Lohbado

Oogah and Oorsis each have two letter Ohs at the beginning of their name. The O is round like a planet, or a cosmic container, the mouth of a jar or bottle. Ok, don't belabor the obvious.

dream erruption

pencil drawings by Lohbado

Ooze, a little lake surrounded by rock. Lohbado walked to a series of rock hills on the rolling plains. When he got there he found a small lake of ooze. A navel opened in the middle of the lake. Bubbles and flower-like shapes were exhaled from the hole in the lake.

Later, Lohbado went to the plaza and read his own bar code. The bar code contained the story of his life.

Lohbado youtube video

Click here to watch video, Lohbado tries to explain. The idea for this video happened at a party, when somebody asked Lohbado what he was doing. He spontaneously tried to explain. The art session was done outdoors during a nice day last spring.

fun and games

Super bowl turned out to be a major event, with many parties and a lot of Internet and TV entertainment. Go team go!

dream doors

pencil drawings by Lohbado

Lohbado dreamed it rained hard liquor. Rivers flowed with wine. Lakes of beer decorated the countryside. Lohbado staggered through Drinker's Paradise.

Jewish General Hospital February 1, 2014

The core hospital extends from the corner of Cote Des Neiges and Cote Saint Catherine. Lohbado walked past the hospital complex just about every day. He often paused to take photos with his pocket camera. The pattern of windows, the beige earth tones drew his gaze upwards, towards the sky. The face of the hospital was like a cliff. He knew people who were born and who died there. Lohbado even went in himself a few times for various tests.