Banksy Pranks Art World

If you don't know who Banksy is, check out his site, pioneer of Existencilism

These images - exclusive to the Wooster site and provided by Banksy - are of Banksy installing four pieces in New York's most prestigious museums - The Brooklyn Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Natural History.

Dressed as a British pensioner, over the last few days Banksy entered each of the galleries and attached one of his own works, complete with authorative name plaque and explanation.

He says - "This historic occasion has less to do with finally being embraced by the fine art establishment and is more about the judicious use of a fake beard and some high strength glue." Banksy continues -"They're good enough to be in there, so I don't see why I should wait"

Staff at the New York Met discovered and removed their new aquisition early Sunday morning while Banksy's discount soup can print took pride of place in the MoMA for over three days before being torn down.

As of now, the other two pieces currently remain firmly in place...
To learn more about Banksy, go to... www.banksy.co.uk

crazy talk

it's a juggling act, this art of alternative fatherhood in the 21st century.
lucky for me i have my friends who help me balance the bookstore business so's i don't stumble too awful much.
but we always stumble in front of those we love.
an audience full of strangers we can wow time and time again but when our family is watching we choke.
is it that those we love know us better and can see thru these disguises we throw up in vain attempts to cover that which we truly are? or is it the added anxiety of having all those eyes we hold dear boring into our being?
i take a break and muddle a few things out.
days spent playing on la alfombra with my twin girls, setting some stage for some show we do not know the half of.
i refuse to read newspapers. if i wanted to be lied to I'd partake in some good old fashioned phone sex.
no, these days my distraction comes in the form of comic books, a last stab at lost youth, perhaps? but more in the combination of words and images which ellicit more of a gut reaction than either could standing alone.
i thought that i had my words. i thought that this bookstore was my image. but now i have transcended both, left them behind in search of something more. which is not to say i don't still hold both as dear to my heart as lovers, tools, weapons, vehicles, cameras. but in the bottom of each beer i still find more of the anchors of my past lives, those selves i sold for visceral material pleasures of the instant. pleasures i was, for one reason or another, unable to retain even the slightest memory of. pleasures that surely shaped my being as much as any experience does. yet not a smell remains intact. barely a glimpse of the vast majority of my life can i recall. i try to tell myself that this is simply the way my mind functions, free from the constraints of that plethora of mind-altering substances thrust upon us by society's demons across all ranks.
my poems and journal entries provide me with the bulk of my memories, but i have to leaf thru their pages to grasp them. when my words fail, i search for images, those snapshots of high school wheat fields, those youthful, jubilant, ignorant faces on my friends of yesterday. and when my images fail... i wrack my brain for sounds and smells and tastes of alleyways in san francisco, of pine trees in the blue mountains, of stale beer in R dorm at Evergreen, of Brendan or Luke talking to trees on some abandoned Saturday.
As i grow older each day, my past changes with the present, creating the future. I sift thru reams of fabric, weaving the robe i will wrap my words in tomorrow.

flowers in february

Why can I no longer drink in purpose from the cherry blossoms?
My skin slowly grows more used to time's passage,
her robe of razors turning the soil,
making old ideas new again.
Perhaps it is because my brush is no longer forged from her branch
or maybe because I have not let her flowers adorn my temple as of late.
When I come across the February of my days will I be thinking of Spring?
Does some rogue cold snap exist out there with my name upon its icy fingers?
Tender pink against a cloudless blue.
Would that we could wade in such innocence,
that our limbs would reach so longingly for light,
that we could make of our impurities:
a flower
a root
a fragrance
a brush
with which to turn this old soil.

02.05

Those things which matter most

Those things which matter most: family, bread, clothes, a roof, clean water, a few books. Threads of the fabric we wear our lives around, knitted together with the strongest of bones: blood, and the saltiest of tears: sweat. We put these things down in a tale, in a tome, in our home, on the mantle: the cradle of our being. Etched with broken fingernails, each bite and blow: bedrock in the bosom of our beliefs. We claw our way into the light, blinking and thinking of the darknesses we have left behind, breaking and building always. We forget what boredom is because we find beauty in emptiness, we fill those voids with love and little bits of time: sewing a patch, watching the flight of a bumblebee, listening to static in the wind.

We write our paths by walking and walking we write of dreams and so we walk them and wake to them.We write of nightmares too and the woes of the ages press down upon our pens. Weary we still write, walking our way over a mismatch of fears and fantasies, waiting to be spellbound by the right combination of words to unlock our purpose and set us in motion. Our blood flows from our rivers of veins down, down thru time and trouble, a bubble here and there halting history in its tired tracks and saying: "this fork, not that one."

And so we learn to drive in automatic, steer by intuition and find joy in the setting of each sun. Obstacles arise along our path and we manuever around them or destroy them with words or magically befriend them, seduce them, bribe them with great truths whose opposites are also true. We walk around writing spells with our eyes and opening doors with this burden of blood. I bear history in my heart and tomorrow in my hands and in the tiny, grasping, thirsty hands of my daughters. I am but a river flowing to their ocean. My words and walk may resound in them, by them, become them. I carry what I carry because I must and I will give everything to get where I am going.