Why?

 Well, I don't know.

I just know the arrival of each day is the opportunity to discover how one's being at any moment is important. I'm working on a song, a painting, and a...what? There have to be three things, don't there? 

What's the third thing?

The song is this (dashed parts are phrasings I need to remember):

If-I-had a timemachine clock

that ticked while it tocked

I don't think I'd turn back its hands

I many not have had

as much as I want

but believe it's bout all I can stand

Ahhhh, retirement

Stayin' alive 

is the sole requirement

I did my time walkin' the line

and now that it's mine

I play all the time

It's warmed up to freezing

which has me believing

that I may go outside today

I got nothing to do

but write this for you

to sing what I have to say

Although you may not hear it

or come anywhere near it

I'll quietly sing it and play

You-may-not-be around

to hear the sound

but that goddamn tree fell anyway

instrumental break 

Ahhhh, retirement

Stayin' alive 

is the sole requirement

I did my time walkin' the line

and now that it's mine

I play all the time

instrumental break

I will put on my hat

my coat and my gloves

and take my dog out for a walk

it may sound lame 

but just the same

sometimes I wish he could talk

Scheduliberation

the ultimate vacation

I did my time walking those lines

and now that it's mine

I play all the time...

The current painting is of my friend and brother Matt Melon, he of Magic Metal Designs fame, from a photo I took of him working while my friend and brother, Rocky Alvey, and I sat watching Columbo reruns on Matt's laptop, smoking cigars, and drinking bourbon in his makeshift workshop in East Nashville on a  cold November day. Matt is welding and well, I guess I just love the photo image and wanted it to be (more or less) immortalized in acrylics on canvas, as if my painting it would do that. When I finish it I want it to live on the wall of the big shop he's building outside of Lyles, TN. I'm still working on it:

The third thing is you. I don't thank you enough. I don't tell you I love you enough. I need to work harder to do both of those things. Thank you. I love you. If I didn't have a mental image of you I would not be able to do this. I do. Maybe I should paint that. Maybe it's too vast to reproduce, or maybe too miniscule.