You say it's Your Birthday...

Today is my birthday. I came into this plane of existence on Monday, May 17th, 1965 at 12:30 in the afternoon Eastern Time. I don't want to spend much time here dwelling in the meaning or the importance of one's birthday. There are countless resources on the web for that. I'd rather just focus on enjoying the day. George has wonderfully arranged a little soiree this evening in honor of my birthday which will include a gathering of some close friends. Two of those friends arrived last night and will be staying with us here at the beach over the weekend. I'm expecting to have a lovely day and evening, especially since I awoke this morning to a pristinely hued blue sky and golden sun which was a welcome transformation from yesterday's cold, gray, rain. The older one grows the more the meaning of one's birthday changes. I've reached a point now where I have very clear memories of my parents being the same age as I am now. It's an odd remembrance. I find myself thinking, "Hmm...Perhaps that's why they reacted that way" to this or that. I also find myself thinking about the way that they physically looked then and I begin to wonder if I look any different. I was with some friend's the other night and someone mentioned something about someone's hands. Inevitably, we each began to look at our own hands and I was struck by how similar mine now looked to my father's when he was around my age. In fact, it was a bit overwhelming briefly and I had to divert my attention to something else. For a moment, it felt as if my hands were not my own. I felt like a spectator looking at some other person's hands that were now part of my body. It wasn't disturbing or emotionally upsetting, just slightly unsettling. In fact, it was slightly liberating, and surely would have been even more so had I allowed myself to go fully into the experience. There was this sense of non-being. Not in the sense of not existing, but in the sense of existing everywhere since this very strongly grounded idea of "what" you are that we each have was suddenly shaken aside by the simple thought of "I have my father's hands".

With that being said, onward and upward with my enjoyment of the day. If only my guests would wake up...

Two Weeks...

What a way to celebrate a 3 year blog anniversary - by not posting for 2 weeks! I have been very busy however, very busy indeed, and I'm not finished yet.

So - The main reason that I've been absent for the last two weeks was that I was creating from scratch the web site for my new branding idea "itsbymichael.com".



Let me state first and foremost that I am not replacing my traditional work with the pet prints or the digital collage. This is in addition to my painting. In case you have been hiding in a cave for the last year, the economy in the states is beyond the valley of shaky. So, an artist has to do what an artist has to do.