Little things. When I was 8, I found these laser tops in a science museum gift shop. The top consisted of a flat metal circle with a holographic pattern sticker on top and a small depression in the center to let the disc spin. I collected 4 unique discs. Today I thrive on spinning light objects. Those tops are pivotal. When I was 10 a family friend named Maryanne Foster shows me a pair of yellow holographic viewing glasses. She gifted them to me because she could see how much I liked them. She warned me not to look at the sun with them. I still have the pair today. You can imagine all the holographic transparent things I have played with but my mind always returns to that moment of the gift of those glasses. A life changing moment. When I was 36, I traveled to Gowanus, Brooklyn. I was going to do an art show with lights, mirrors, prisms, glass castles, smoke ring shooters, parachutes inflated and hung from the ceiling. Early days there in the metal shop I built a mirror stand to shine sunlight into the shop. I built it from steel scraps and stray shopping cart casters and used the cold saw and tank sized drill press they had. The mirror stand was bolted together. I did not know how to weld. On a Saturday, one worker, Shane, was in the back doing machining. I shone a sunlight beam with my mirror into the shop. I went to Shane and said “Come up to the mezzanine. I want to show you something!” On the mezzanine railing, I showed him a smoke ring shooter I made from cutting a hole in a 5 gal bucket and screwing a paint roller handle to it. We smoked pot like delinquent kids and shot the smoke rings down the light beam! It looked so cool. I remember Shane was laughing and had such a big smile on his face. Comment continued…

The fish tank story. I am 39 and my father is 68. He has just had hip replacement surgery. I am back in Virginia from California helping to care for him while my mom is still at her job. I made him a turkey sandwich on sour dough for lunch. I brought it to him in his bedroom. He had the house phone , his cell phone and an iPad in bed with him. He says the sandwich is dry could I put some mayonnaise on it. I took it back to the kitchen to add the mayonnaise. After I give him the sandwich, I go upstairs to my room which is directly above his. I decide I want to fill a small 10gallon fish tank with water to make a prism. The tank sits on a little rolling cart that was only designed to hold folders. I carved notches in the tops of the plastic pole caps of the cart to keep the tank snug on top of the cart. I take the cart into my bathroom that has 4” elevated floor level compared to my floor boards. I sit on my closed toilet and with a clear pvc tube I shoot water from the bath nozzle into the air in an arc and into the fish tank on the rickety folder cart. It goes well spilling no drops but my fascination with the clear water arc lets me fill the tank to an inch of the top. Now I begin to roll the cart and full tank back toward the ledge from bathroom to my room. Hmm. This plywood board could make a ramp to go down. Oh but if I put the front wheels on it, it will spill from tipping. What if I hold the cart up? Ok this is going well… now the back wheels are approaching the board ramp edge… click click BAM!! Woosh!!!!! The wheels hit the board ramp knocking off the ledge the back wheels of the cart trip down the ledge and fall the 4”. The shock of the fall pushes the water down with enough force to break the glass on the bottom of the tank!! I watch as all 10 gallons gush through the broken glass of the tank! Continued in comments…

El Faralito and Vison It is 2014 I am living in the Mission district of SF. This is the apartment with all the reptiles and birds. A ball python lives there. He and I are best buds. I named him Vison for his powerful grip. On this late summer afternoon, I am going out to walk around the mission. I get him out of his tank and wrap him around my neck and tuck his body coils under my fleece. I put on my triangle tessellated wizard hat and set out. Ok hit the weed bubbler real quick and now I’m out the 117 door. Skip over to mission and see two friends coming up mission st. “We are going to El Faralito, Care to join?” “Ok yes. Let’s go” I agree. Crossing the street on the way there I spot a box containing an aluminum foil roll. I pick up the box and bring it along. Inside they order tacos and I don’t get anything because I am not hungry right then. We sit at the second table from the door. I open the aluminum foil box and there is only a single sheet of 16x12” foil left. I spread the foil out on the table like a place matt. I set Vison on the table and he shows how he can roll the cups and other sauce cylinders on the table in the coils of his 4’ body. One of my friends has a bike seat with him because he doesn’t want his seat to get stolen. He lets Vison play with the bike seat and Vison gets completely wound around all the bars supporting the seat. Now he says he needs to go and can he have his seat back. We try tickling him some to get him out and he comes out half way. Three quarters of the way out, at this point, I gently pull. As I watch, Vison pulls his underbelly hard over the smooth shiny bars of the seat. A huge amount of goopy brown and chalky white poop and oil drips out of him into a pile on the table! Continued in comments…

Mr. Butterfly The year is 2014. I am living on Bartlett st. The house has lots of animals and huge garden in the back yard. In my room I set up a big clear box for making bubble experiments. The clear acrylic box is 6’x3’ and has 6” high walls. It rests on a giant sheet of glass that has a slightly larger footprint so I can set implements down along the outer edge. I have poured 1/4” thick layer of my own bubble mixture into the box. I use a tube from a humidifier to make big vapor bubbles in the table with lasers and uv lights in the evenings. During the day, my side window to my room is open letting in a beam of sunlight from a mirror set up outside. I am standing in the middle of the room to watch a terrible moment. A swallowtail butterfly zips in through the open window. Flutters across the room and goes right into the bubble table!! The poor thing is thrashing around in the muck and when I get to it the lower right wing of 4 is broken and dangling by a small amount. I carefully try to lift the wet gooped insect out of the liquid. I try to dab him off with a paper towel. The broken part is now folded over onto the same wing. I decide not to pull that part off because maybe it’s better for the weight to stay balanced. Over the next week the wings and body dry out and he becomes very comfortable around me. He stays on my shoulder sometimes and others I let him cling to the wood post holding up my loft. Looking at his profile, I can see his proboscis coiling in and out in a rhythmic way. He is always calm around me but if others come close to my room he gets nervous and his wings jitter. Cntd..

A bird memory. I am 36. I live at 117 Bartlett st. I have been making the house filled with mirrors and fish tank prisms to make big rainbows down the hallways. Out front of our Victorian apartment we have a stone stoop. Many neighbors come to smoke pot or drink with friends on the stoop. I adjust the fish tank prism on the porch and the mirror hose clamped to the stoop railing and a bright spectrum shines in the front door down the hall, strikes a mirror hinged to the wall and reflects into my room where I smoke and make smoke rings into the light beam. The master tenant is just getting into her pet hoarding era. We have snakes, turtles, iguanas, rats, crickets, and some poor dying kittens that she is keeping secret in her bathroom. One day she brings home a single all white skinny little parakeet. I name him Pinocchio. He is unsure about me at first. After a few tries, I persuade him to hop onto my finger. I let him sit on my shoulder and he is very comfortable going around with me. The house mate clipped his wings on the ends so he could not fly away. When I do my experiments in my room, Pinocchio has a perch to watch me from. He is very chill to hang out with. Pinocchio sees himself in a mirror I have leaned against my wall. He sees another bird in the mirror. He struts back and forth in front of the glass and then walks around behind to see where the other bird is. I always feel bad putting him back in his cage because he shows such respect for the freedom I give him in my room. To own a bird is to be a jailor. Now she has brought home 30 birds at once!!! The love birds are so loud all the time! The house is in unrest. She asks me to catch the Conyer loose flying around the middle room. I get gloves and catch the fierce creature. It’s sharp black beak bites down hard on my finger in the thick leather work glove. I put it thrashing into its cage. The conyer is furious. The pet hoarder (H) decides she wants Pinocchio to fraternize with the new parakeets. The new male parakeets are much bigger wider thuggish males and the females all move away from skinny nerdy Pinocchio. Pinocchio is kicked off the perches to the poop floor of the cage. Ctnd..

When I am putting elements together for a moment, I try to consider what it will look like from the viewers perspective. Really though, I have to focus on accomplishing the task. The task was trying to make a cloud bubble. I carried the giant fog machine and its tripod up.I carried up newly mixed bubble material. I carried up a big dunking tray to dip the string in. I carried up my carbon fiber extension poles which increase my lightning strike probability. I brought my hue lamps up too. There was a pile of things and I brought it all back down after. The cloud bubble activity has become so elaborate. Reflecting, I learned the hot fog usually pops the big bubble. I achieved getting cloud inside about 3 times out of many failures. The giant bubbles worked fine with no fog. I would like to create a bigger reflecting surface for the bubble to be illuminated. Mostly giant bubble lives in darkness. Creating wonder in the world is a full time job. If your job is making things for people to see, keep making new amazing things to see. We all need wonder in our lives. If it doesn’t work right, think about why and work though the problem. Even if it involves a lot of carrying. 😁

The company Dangbei contacted me about using one of the projectors they make. @dangbeitech @dangbei_jp I have been curious about using a laser projector as a light source for my smoke projects. The representative was very friendly and recommended a very compact but very bright one that they make. Dangbei Atom Portable Laser Projector I think you can see that it’s pretty bright as a light source. In my room I am aiming it through a big 14” glass single convex lens. The refraction of the glass causes the white pixels to separate the rgb light into a spectrum of sorts that you can see in the smoke swirls if you pause the movie. I would like to say thank you to Dangbei for letting me try out their projector for the purposes of making art.

The little spider. In June of 2022 I was visiting Belgrade Lakes with my parents. Every year since 2007, we meet on a little island called Castle Island on a road the cuts Long Pond in half. There are 12 little cabins to stay in. We get to see the same guests year after year. My mother and father prefer kayaking around the lake over motor boats, jet skies or sailboats. I kayak with them. We don’t go very fast but the quiet aspect lets us see eagles and osprey and loons which we all like. On this afternoon, the three of us paddled to Frenchman’s cove. You paddle out into the southern part of Long Pond and then veer right into the marsh area. The mouth leads to a little waterway crowded lilies. You wind back along old tree stumps and very shallow water until finally the water opens into a 100’ round enclosure. There are trees on one bank and big fallen logs on the side. The area feels magical and calm. As I was gliding by the trees along the edge a little 14mm brown clear spider landed on my hand. I looked at him and he at me with his 4 little black eyes. I could see that he was missing his back 2 legs on his right side. But it didn’t slow him down and he was very quick and agile. I had my shirt off. He climbed up my arm and perched on my shoulder. He stayed with me all through the time we paddled back out of the lilies. When we got back to the open lake, I was concerned that I might be taking him far from his home and that if he blew off me in the lake he might drown. I put my hand on a branch of a bush for him to dismount my hand. He got off but then immediately ran back up on my hand. “Ok, hold on tight then. We are going out on the lake.” ….comment continued.

I love telling you stories from my life. I wanted to say thank you for taking time to read them. ❤️ I recorded this moment today. I felt like it was a special moment. The smoke swirls were chaotic and then for a moment they formed this structure. I got chills watching it form. When I played the moment back and noted how short of a time span, I thought that i must have been swimming in time. Some moments take forever for a bad reason and we wish they would end. Some moments take longer for a reason of awe. This is why I wanted you to see. 🌈🌪️

Bubbles have been a passion for me my whole life. I remember watching my father show me how to blow a bubble with the tiny wand in a bottle. I remember bending a coat hanger into a circle to dip in a tray. I remember the bubble thing product of the 1980s that came with the klutz bubble book. I remember in 2005 when I saw a YouTube video of a French man making bubbles as big as a bus in a forest. He was using very long poles and a very big loop of string. I made small loops and short poles at first when I lived in Berkeley. They were good medium bubbles. In 2010 I moved to SF. I had these long tent poles and I decided to try making a really big string loop that was 10’ across the top. I went out to try the giant bubbles in the middle of Precita Ave in the middle of the night. I was all alone. Then a white cat came and sat watching me make the enormous bubbles. Just us, so special. I made bubbles all the time in Dolores Park from 2010 to 2015 I was “Bubble Man” of that park. So many wonderful afternoons meeting people and making friends. So many amazing moments when we all held our breath to watch a bubble escape the trees. The best conditions were wet and misty or night time with no one walking up and smacking them. I always wanted to make a donut bubble. Finally, one night, alone in Dolores, I got it! I stopped trying to draw it around me. I made a U shape and dragged the opening of the sock into the toe. I let go and the barrier broke! It was a complete ring! It was wavy like a five glob baby chew toy. The waves growing and shrinking in a rhythm together. Then the hole got smaller and it popped! I couldn’t believe I had done it. I whooped for joy and burst into tears of joy and rolled around on the grass laughing and crying for I had been trying for so long. This lighting night bubbles with fog inside is a new fun thing I’ve been trying out. Bubbles can always be new and special.

Do you ever have a feeling that you shouldn’t do something and then you do it anyway because being afraid feels cowardly. When I was 13, I joined my father on a high school trip to the western states. 10 other 14 year olds from my fathers earth science class drove around in a van visiting national parks like the Grand Canyon and Yosemite. In Bryce Canyon, my father rented bikes and helmets for some of the kids that wanted to ride mountain bikes. I really did not want to join. In the rental shop I could feel this feeling in my body and my head that I really shouldn’t go with them. “What’s wrong?” He said. “I don’t want to.” I said. “Why not?” He said “cmon it will be fun.” With so much pre regret “OK” I mumbled. The start of the ride seemed ok. We were going up some dirt tracks and it was hard for me to keep up with the others. After a while I felt better. Less worried and still a bit behind. Then I was at the top of a tall gravel road hill. The other boys and my dad all went down the hill so fast and were way ahead. I started down the hill after them. I started going so fast and there was a car coming up the hill towards me. Looking down at the handlebars the wheel started to wobble in the gravel. Back left right left right! Click! The wheel turned all the way and the bike flipped forwards throwing me face first down the hill. I slid along the gravel on my face, hands, elbows, Pelvis edges, and knees. I think I still have a tiny rock in my forehead today. I stood up and it looked like they were all still going on leaving me. I let out a wail of pain and dispair. I walked the bike down the hill to them and they all looked at me crying and bloody. I then had to ride another 2 miles to the end of the trail. That night I had to put Neosporin on all my scrapes. An old lady at our campfire said you look how I feel. She told us a version of the trail of tears and gave me an obsidian tear. I sometimes think about how I had the premonition that I should not go on the ride but that also maybe it’s good to meet your fate even though you can feel the fear. It’s often hard to choose the right path but you have to deal with the one you choose.

The Finger Story When I was 8 years old on Wednesday afternoons I would go to my friend Andrew Brown’s house after school. He and I were given horse riding lessons by a woman named Ariadne. I tried my best but I didn’t like it much because of being told that I was doing it wrong all the time. On this afternoon we had finished the lesson. Andrew and I were playing in the back of his mom’s camper that she used as a room when going to horse shows. We liked to pretend that the adjustable seat backs on the small wood framed, plastic cushion covered benches were our transformer toys fortress area. In order to prop the seats up, you lifted the seat back up on its hinges and positioned small wood flaps in place to support a more inclined angle. One moment I was standing facing the sink with a transformer in my hand. The next I had turned back toward Andrew. My ring finger on my right went into the hinge gap of the seat back. It was stuck mid nail. I screamed in pain. “Ahhhhh.” Andrew stressing tried to lift it to help. “Ahhhh.” The support flaps fell down. Andrew freaking out more dropped the whole seat back! The searing pain was horrible. He looked at me and then ran to go get his mother. Now I was alone with my problem. I looked down at my hand. I know I wasn’t thinking, just frantic. My left hand slammed into my right wrist and with all my adrenaline strength I yanked my hand away from the trap. Horrified I looked down at my ripped finger. I could see blood coming out of it and little bits of white in the mess. Andrew’s mom came out to find I had gotten free. I think she looked for the little lost part but didn’t find it. She took me inside and gave me a wet washcloth to hold on it. At some point in my screaming I started screaming, “It’s gonna be square, it’s gonna be square.” Andrew was crying in the car next to me. “It’s my fault, it’s all my fault.” “No it’s not! No it’s not.” I wailed. It was an hour drive back to Lexington to get the doctor. I think I screamed for a long time because a nurse came and begged me to stop screaming because she said I was upsetting the other patients. I think I finally stopped screaming. Continued in comments…