evening portraits

Christina invited Lohbado for a drink of Jagermeister

Christina invited Lohbado to sit on the back terrace to enjoy one of the days when the temperature reached 20 C. As the sun moved lower in the sky, it seemed like a good moment to take a few pictures.

a prisoner of his own thinking

Lohbado stood on a gravel mound in a vast rugged landscape exposed to violent north winds, which made it difficult for trees to grow. He watched a small dust cloud in the distance whirling across the uneven ground towards him. Particles spun around in the cloud. The sky darkened. His throat tightened. His heart pounded.

    He got hyper, too much thinking, mind out of control. Demons emerged from his mind and danced around. Drooling and laughing they stared at Lohbado. They communicated directly into his thought stream.

    You are a prisoner of your own thinking, they seemed to say. Why do you insist on speaking so much nonsense? On the other hand, it’s not important. No need to exaggerate. Just don't do anything you might regret.

hospital signs

Lohbado enjoyed the beauty of design in the hospital, the many signs and arrows indicating pavilions, wings, rooms, not to mention parking and exits. It's easy to get lost in a large city hospital, which is why at some hospitals, volunteers are available to help people find their way.

Lohbado in the gardener's pavillion

ink on paper

colourized Lohbado drawing

Lohbado moved into a gardener’s cabin on an estate partially ruined ten years ago during the Apocalyptic War. A gardener used to live there, in a white washed cabin with a green shingle roof, surrounded by a stand of fruit trees, crabapple, plum and a mountain ash. It attracted song birds in the summer and crows and bluejays during the winter.

movement

two pages from a Lohbado book

Lohbado painted and drew from one page to the next, one figure and set of words after another. Lohbado breathed in and out. Every twenty-four hours he went to sleep. This continued from the moment of birth and continues to this day, even as he stumbles through middle age in preparation for the final descent into old age and death.

more party pictures

Buckshot Bill

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Jan's Birthday

Jan taken by surprise

A surprise party happened last night at Casa del Popolo. Jan turned 50. He came out of a restaurant across the street and was really surprised to be greeted with a group of friends who sang happy birthday, plus a special song Joellen wrote for Jan. I'll post more photos later of the party that followed inside.

bathroom sink jewel

 Lohbado

Several times a day, Lohbado found himself gazing into the bathroom sink, usually to wash his hands. Sometimes he coughed things up, or rinsed his mouth and brushed his teeth. One day he saw a broach sitting on the edge of the sink. It began moving around and melting, as if about to dissolve into molecules and atoms.

cosmic road

lohbado on the road

from Lohbado's image library

No beginning and no end to the road, a while back, Lohbado drove an old road. Cracks in the pavement caught his fancy. He pulled over to study them and to take a few pictures. The road is an old analogy, driven to death, from birth to death. It gets worn, cracked and broken along the way.

Another analogy is food. Being born is like when a plate of food is placed on the table. One eats and gets eaten. One goes through the digestive tract of existence. One's corpse is buried or burned. The body returns to the elements. Another body is born.

The soul is like water in the glass. Identity is a like a glass container made out of DNA, education, economic and social status. One's consciousness is a set of opinions, beliefs, habits, thoughts. When the glass breaks, when the body becomes a corpse, the water in the glass spills on the ground, evaporates, flows back into the ocean, or whatever.

Lohbado's Confession

            For six nights, six hours and six seconds parasites attacked Lohbado, as he slept under the overhanging rock. He woke up, his skin burning. Dr. Stone pronounced Lohbado dead after he staggered into a walk-in clinic. He was dead, but had been given an extention, a kind of earthly purgatory, or a bardo, an in-between period of what could be happening between the end of life and the beginning of death.

appreciate the flowers along the way

Lohbado was struck by how light and sky reflected on the windows of a school gymnasium down the street. The beauty of the blue windows and pale red brick startled him from a day dream. It's strange how one spends time in various worlds. There's the immediate world of sight and sound. Then there's the world of thinking, day dream, fantasy or stupor. Lohbado realized he spent a lot of time on automatic pilot, barely noticing what goes on. After he retired, Lohbado slowed down and began to appreciate the flowers along the way.

brick wall

lost in the brick

After a Sunday afternoon of wandering around with his camera, Lohbado looked up. A friendly man waved and posed for the camera.

apocalyptic sensations

photos from Lohbado's image library

Lohbado contacted a virus, which developed into parasites, while crossing the Plains of Radiation. He awoke one morning, after sleeping under a rocky overhang, skin burning. Red patches and swellings itched from head to foot, another affliction, so be it. Lohbado squeezed cranberry and blue berry juice, mixed it with some mucous and mud and applied it to the swelling rashes on his lower back, shoulder blades, neck, chest, legs and arms. Little worms, about the length of a fingernail poked their heads out of his forehead. They nested in Lohbado’s frontal lobes.

Lohbado ghost

Lohbado walked half way across a bridge and leaned on the metal rail and gazed at the river. The bridge shook under the vibrations of traffic, especially when big trucks drove by. He watched the patterns of sun reflecting in diamond shapes on the water.

thought exhibit

thought balloon

thought balloon

Lohbado was invited to an end of term art exhibit of student work at the Concordia Art Gallery. Christina posed with some of her comic characters and the shadow of the thought balloons.