Current Affairs (or the Clowns) 1m tall. Acrylic on paper

Nick the grocer and I spent several moments sharing a joke. He is proud of his shop and tells me which fruit is good. Later when I take the fruit or vegetables I have bought from him they are more. They are the story we shared. They are the joke and they are the promise of more of the same. They are something which came from the hands of a man or woman who cared what I got from them and who knew about some of it. I have in my mind a history of some part of the fruit’s journey. I know it is from farmers who grow it with care. That all sounds like an advertisement doesn’t it?

I get my hair cut by a barber called Warren just over the bridge. We discuss politics and life as he cuts. I never leave that place without feeling I have shared something. My hair never just ends up being cut and later, every time I look in the mirror, some part of that experience and all the past experiences as well as the promise of the future remains with me. It is not a big clanging bell that brings feelings of success or immense anything much. It is subtle and has a richness and flavor that require a little emotional depth to recognize and appreciate.

In the advertisement for some Kentucky whiskey I remember there is a man with a pleasing, slightly gravelly voice, at a mill in a grove of trees by a creek. He feels to some of us like a friend and as though there is some satisfying experience we could gain with him. The ad is crafted to link that experience in some mystical way to the drinking of the whiskey. Deep within us resides a need for such satisfaction and richness of human intercourse. The fact that we crave it so deeply and it is so subtle means we are seduced by the promise made by advertising. Advertising offers us the experience or richness if we only buy the product. It offers to make us a part in the flow a bright river of richness and depth. The product is a product. Nothing more. The vegetables I buy at the supermarket are vegetables. The experience of obtaining them is bare and often quite bitter as I review the contortions the marketers and price-fixers go through to reach me amid all the colors and lights and  tags telling me everything is so special. I often return home feeling violated. I have left a world of quiet living and entered the carnival. All within the carnival is shallow despite the smiling carnies and big, bright images.

We are in danger of losing the things we hunger for deep within our souls. The advertisements promise us the things we want most. Happy, successful, deeply satisfying, more especially nutritional foods and intimate friends. They promise us these things despite not really being able to provide them. Their brash clamor overwhelms the quiet richness of small stores and shop keepers who live for their roles in your life. Many have become blinded. Have you ever walked from a blasting nightclub into the fresh air and felt you were in a place almost empty of sensory input. That happens to us all now that we spend so long having our lives invaded and being jaded by television, radio, the internet etc. Our souls still crave the same richness. We are made for it. We are entitled to it and we are forgetting where to find it. Many of us feel empty and it is not at all necessary. All around us are people who live in the light of each others presence. They do not keep it to themselves. They do not store it and only serve it to the worthy. It is a part of their of their beings.

Many have forgotten or are overwhelmed by the speed and clamor of their lives so it is an island of peace to stop in a grocery store and inquire about the fruit or in a butcher store to ask what is good or cheap and how the hell are you anyway? It takes a while to get a feel for it. The people take a while to know what you are about but each little step completes some yearning in our souls. Something not filled by vitamins or ipods or television or better wages and for most of us it is not far away. It is in danger of being lost. More of us are forgetting about the richness of life and are simply pounding our weary way to the gigantic things that rip and snort and try every level thing they can think of to wheedle another cent from our pockets.

So treat your body like a temple and struggle with whatever regimen of diet, vitamin and exercise you think will save it. Grab at whatever wage you can find and toil until you can stand it no more. Remember though, it is the simple things that enrich you and make you whole. It takes a while but they kinda grow on ya. And finally, if you do not make use of them, those things that matter will fade and you will know real heart sickness with no way back!