Some days there are no big thoughts to ponder or your brain is just too overloaded with news of a fracturing GOP and the Cubs in the NLCS and on and on.  On those days, I turn to my navel and stare it down as if daring it to produce a sweater or something.

Here's a few answers to the Proustian Questionnaire and a formula poem I wrote about myself a while back.

Your favorite virtue:
Loyalty

Your favorite qualities in a man:
Grit, straight-forward honesty, industrious, tenacious

Your favorite qualities in a woman:
Grit, straight-forward honesty, industrious, tenacious

Your favorite occupation:
Art Maker (or Writer if that's too broad)

Your chief characteristic:
Brazen

Your idea of happiness:
A job well done.  A vacation earned rather than given.  Laughter. Cheese.

Your idea of misery:
Being a sales person for an oil company or working in advertising.  Being forced to play the upright bass.

Your favorite color and flower:
Dark blue and Dandelion

If not yourself, who would you be?
Ideally, Henry Rollins (but with a wife) or Chuck Bukowski (without the alcoholism).
Realistically, a different random white guy with tattoos.

Where would you like to live?
I live in Chicago.  Done.

Your favorite prose authors:
David Foster Wallace.  Mark Twain.  

Your favorite poets:
Mary Oliver.  Maya Angelou.

Your favorite painters and composers:
Renee Magritte.  Salvador Dali.  Edward Hopper. 
Gustav Mahler.  John Williams.  Ennio Morricone.

Your favorite heroes in real life:
My dad.  

Your favorite heroines in real life:
My mom.  

Your favorite heroes in fiction:
Rocky Balboa.  Obi Wan Kenobi.  Indiana Jones.

Your favorite heroines in fiction:
Beatrix Kiddo.  Jackie Brown.  Rey.

Your favorite food and drink:
Buffalo Chicken.  Coffee.

Your favorite names:
Coupe.  Dashell.  Wyatt.
Felicia.  Jessica.  Rhonda.

Your pet aversion:
I dislike fish as pets.

What characters in history do you most dislike?
Humbert Humbert.  Benedict Arnold.  Herbert Hoover.

What is your present state of mind?
Thinking.  Always thinking.

For what fault have you most toleration?
Over enthusiasm.

Your favorite motto:
Do it big or stay in bed.

I Am From...

I am from a mint-condition Fantastic Four Comic Book
From Apple and Easy Cheez
I am from the multiple landscapes of the South and the Midwest
dusty, antagonistic, flavored with cinnamon and brown sugar
I am from the cactus, sunflower, river rock
smooth, grey and solid.

I'm from watching "Christmas Vacation" and non-stop verbiage
From Jackie Lee and Sergeant James Bowen
I'm from the Irish Stubborn and Unparalleled Enthusiasms
From being able to make my hair stand up and toot your own horn
I'm from Deism
colored with hints of Humanistic Cabalism.

I'm from Tennessee by way of Dublin
Fried Chicken and Reuben Sandwiches
From the moment my grandfather drank a bottle of Jack Daniels
and waxed poetic to a nine-year old's tape recorder
The undiagnosed bipolarism of Betty Ashtray
and broken cardboard boxes, WWII Zippos, polaroids of smiles, all
swimming in the light of lives unapologized for and defiant in the face of death.