~ Father’s Day ~ that was two days ago. A year ago I published an article “They have called me Degenerate,” https://avproductionsblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/01/they-have-called-me-a-degenerate/

in it I express my desire to see my son again one day.

I never really did receive a lot of feedback for that article and I wonder as the years go by if it is a day easily forgotten? Have we become so desensitized to the idea that crime has been on the rise due to the lack of fatherly influences in the home and the mounting prison institutions replacing fathers in the home with state regulated representation?

Personally I have not gotten to the point where I don’t want to talk about it, or the tears no longer spill when I think of him. I’d love to no longer shed tears over him, my William. There is just so much men like me are supposed to say, are expected to impart, that I’d rather not because of my hypocritical position.

He is going to be nine come Christmas. That is nine years I have not been in his life. Come 2020 it will be a decade and the time will continue to stack against me. “Black Amethyst,” https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/adventvoice/black-amethyst will mean nothing to him by the time his is a grown man. If my words have no effect on his heart, as they have waned against the hearts of the average person, there will be little I could say or do to excuse or apologize for my absence.

Of course I can’t possibly beat myself up year after year for not being there or doing enough to declare my right to influence his life.

Karlene Turrentine is a lawyer, supposed to be a friend of mine, but after she accused me of running from God, I am not so sure. It isn’t funny. What could she mean by that?

Does she suggest that my life is not a reflection of the Lord God of Isreal working in my life?

Outside of reuniting with my son after years of separation and little to no money to support him, building her aunts dream and staking my claim to a piece of that dream, Liberation: I could not imagine what more she’d want from me. Does she want me to bring followers to her church? Is that the reflection of the power of God? A million dollar church? Cause if it is, I doubt my beliefs will be the piece needed to aid such ideas.

Sure I’d love for the world of art to intergrate and permeate throughout the Christian Community, but as long as they remain cloistered in their desire to ignore the views of the relations between people, holding onto the themes of the secular culture, video games, and creativity of any kind being inspired by the devil and demons, then the rift will remain and any desire I have to share of a world in which those made to feel marginalized, disfranchised, and devalued, finally achieving their realization of liberty on the Holy Hill of Zion, now and not having to wait upon their death’s to be remembered for influencing their corner of the universe, will have to wait until they are in a position to hear anything of worth from someone ten to twenty years younger than them.

I am very careful about not allowing my overly zealous friends of the Christian sect having access to some of my more revealing pieces of art. That is why I can’t imagine what she could have gleaned from me, outside what I’ve told her or desired to share to suggest “I’ve walked away from God.” To publicly pray I return from my wicked ways and preach the word of god.

Preach the word of god! I say that with contempt of Christians whom heard my declarations and desire to express 1 Cor 13:12 through my art and have either missed it or believe, the Prostitutes, Ex-cons, drug addicts the uneducated, the college dropout, the Vegas stripper, the derelict bum, the vagabond, the starving artist, the politically moderate who lives in their sheltered middle-class fantasy of ‘live and let live,’ attitudes towards the mounting distresses plaguing the poorer communities. The constant dross that would drive a sane man crazy to deliberate over everyday. Would suggest their loving God placed the judgment that is their lives of depression and denied them charity because they are sinners and deserve it.

Knowing Christ died for us all, redeems us all and because they remain enthralled in the hope televised by the world, then they are to perish in their deception.

I have not walked away from God or his people. His people are my people, that includes the Jew first. For the promise is to the Jew first and then the Gentile.

You know my people are gentiles? That secular, Roman-Greco, African, Latin community that still teaches me how to express charity. The need for it. Those that knew God, never needed that kind of love, they received it freely. Their is an ocean of people that have yet to receive but they must see before they can hear.

But I will not cast my pearls among the swine made fat on the word of God and never exercise or stretch their spiritual muscles.

Never dared to dream.

It is not depression or unhappiness that makes me reflect on the realities of my life and seek to find comfort in my art and the community that supports the guild.

It is my frustration with communities outside of the world of art that will find every excuse to curse me into poverty, dysentery, a card board box or indentured servitude because of the preconditioning of a society that associates any form of craft with the occult and deviance. Then after condemning me to the outskirts of the metropolis and reach of the center of the marketplace with obscene regulations of where and when I can present my talent, encourage others to not pay me or entertain my interests because of a disagreement that remains unsettled.

At the moment I can a caregiver of an 84 year old woman who does not have much longer to live. When I am done here I would not have earned enough money to settle in an apartment any where in the city and the rural towns are still holding onto a dead past. I will be no better off than I was in 2010 after leaving the University, because I could no longer afford it. I am not alone in this mind you. There are a lot of 30-50 year olds that came from upstanding backgrounds, were princes and princess’s of their generation, who’s parents left them with no outlet for financial gain. Have to bust tables in restaurants or work and have worked ten years in the same registry position in Whole Foods.

I did not go to college and spend that money, time and energy to glean fields in the country or bag groceries to pay my bills. I am not above doing it. I have worked some bull-shit jobs in the past. It is not ideal and so I continue my search for more.

The four pieces of art https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/adventvoice/juicyjolene-chicago https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/adventvoice/sweet-dreams https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/adventvoice/glamour-girls https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/adventvoice/gypsy-love featuring the two Gypsy’s of Chicago was attempted for many reasons.

I can’t put the idea in a nice package or article and say, this is why I spent my entire weeekend drawing instead of looking for a better avenue to pay bills or just put more money in my pocket.

1. I don’t want to lose the knack of being able to pull my sketch pad out of my bag and draw the people, places, and things I see.
2. A day is coming soon when I will have to pack my things, bend to the eviction notice and while finding a new place to live, encourage someone to buy my art and help me pay my rent.
3. I was a vagabond from 2010-2015 and never picked up the pen to write or draw the world as it was. I had many friends, lovers, and as a lone gypsy desired to have someone I could share my tent or abandoned city roof top with.
4. The “Gypsy’s of Chicago,” have their chosen profession because where ever they are, there is no other recourse. She may be denied the support of Christian organizations because of the representation and stigma that comes with the field of sex-work but everyday they breathe, can eat, and keep out of the hands of institutions that would much rather see them imprisoned, working in someone’s coffee bean field, or driving an 18 wheeler filled with produce to feed the masses, they can continue indulging in their contemporary field of study.
5. Three of those years as a vagabond, after the loss of my son, family and friends, I spent them in prison. There were a few years of travel cross country and abroad when the poverty was so thick and the city streets filled with the deification that you did not mind paying $40.00 a night for a place to sleep. The last 4 years was a prison and a make-shift interment camp, that the only reason I am still not there is because an elderly woman took pity on me and said I could live with her for a while. She helped to keep the State out of my hair.

I now work my mind and fingers to the bone seeking to understand how to stay out of a place like G.E.O and make enough money to earn the kind of affection as shown in my “Gypsy’s of Chicago,” compilation with a woman with a face as beautiful as Jolene’s twitter.com/thejuicyjolene Oh what a dream. To have her say “Yes I’ll marry you, keep you safe, allow you to suckle my big breasts when ever you like, to draw me as you see fit and promote you like you promote me; when the wolves come for us sex addicts and deviant lovers, I will hold your hand while you use your broad shoulders to pave our way to freedom, to live another day seeking the riches of this world so we can eat a $45.00 corn beef sandwich without battling an eyelash. I will stand with you as you have stood with me. Loyal to your love as you are loyal to mine. Your my kind of guy.”

I would remain putty in her hand. Never wanting to wake from the dreams we weave.