My brother Reloj would be awakened in the middle of the night by the phone. Often in the late years it would happen, and he never doubted what was coming. On the other end of the line would be his longtime podnah Norman, who would be good for a three-hour rant about his various predicaments. They had grown up together, and now they were in their thirties and forties. While he held the phone, Reloj would doodle. Here's another of the results.
Have you ever noticed that eveything looks more or less like a Lute?
Reloj was at that time in Anchorage. He had his Masters, and was a teacher of gifted children. Norman was a writer who worked on various Texas newspapers, and complained of interference by his editors, which may have been true, and being fired by them, which certainly was.
They had gone to school at a nearby college without attending many classes. Reloj always said he had retired while he was able to appreciate it and went to work when he was too old to play. Norman never really went to work, although by natural accretion he came up with advanced degrees.
I can imagine the topics broadcast over the line might have hit upon what you see in the drawing, or Reloj may have created them out of either imagination or boredom. What I see reminds me of the vast power of translation at work on all our stimulus before we allow it into our homes. Simply, it has to follow the rules of our own private narratives.
Someone might detect in Norman's perreniel troubles his own substance abuse, which was monumental. Not so Norman. To him, it was always the barbarians at the gates, the Great White Whale which actually followed him from town to town, calling him by name. We all grew up in a bibliotic bathos, and some could never leave, no matter how far they traveled. There is a Phillistine in a line of powder.
The eye sees not itself but by reflection, sayeth Caesar, and nothing else neither. There is a great morass of data in that stream coming at you by the second, and it's up to you to decipher it all. Amazing we can do that, and some don't do well, and others not at all, at least by my specs.
This is the story of Norman, who is gone now, and Reloj, also, and the drawing left from one of their encounters, which we all may read and interpret while we may.