To find a way to turn the signal back to heaven sounding blue

A detour off the ramp because the front end was dragging on the ground, trying to find a parking lot to examine the damage in a neighborhood of abandoned buildings and skeezy strip clubs, and everyone's cars look better than mine in the hood so The Local Kids were scoffing and the men in cadillacs disdaining at my duct tape repair job (incidentally Family Dollar sells the duct tape in the automotive section so there!), but we turned around and got to the museum where the Finster exhibit was everything I hoped for and more, paintings on mirrors with truck enamel, cheetahs as guardians of paradise, visions of spaceships and the towers of Planet Heaven, whimsical hellfire and brimstone, an exuberant and consistent strange vision part Flannery O'Connor, part William Blake.

We decided to make a day of our time down south of Clevelandia, and detoured through lands of strip malls that haven't changed since the 1960s to Grace Cathedral, home to the local toupeed televangelist who's gotten a bit senile in recent years, and despite scriptural admonitions about gluttony and greed, has a buffet and gift shop full of cornball crystal jewelry, sentimental tchotchkes, and shrinkwrapped tissues for when the sermon gets emotional I'm guessing.

I only had the giant camera, and said gift shop, buffet, and wax museum were closed and despite theoretically worshiping the same God, we probably looked more like snarky jaded heathens than actual acolytes, and so we headed north to Kent, land of bibliotheque school and frat party rioters extraordinaire.

Much of downtown has been torn down and redeveloped and while I'm generally not a fan of destroying old buildings, there's actually stuff downtown besides Bars for Bros and aging punk townies. The best burrito place ever satisfied our hunger, we ambled through sundry stores and then down to the river where the sunlight filtered through the trees,  the honeysuckle smelled incredibly good and there were teens being angsty under the overpass spraypainted with graffiti.

 (as I didn't get the pictures off the memory card, this photo is courtesy of someone on flickr)

We drove up through Ravenna, hometown of a certain singer, marveled at the signage and the proliferation of non-vacant storefronts and this strange sculpture on the children's elementary school playground.

 Someone's not Thinking Of The Children.

Drove back through the darkness and the heat lightning, spent the next day errand-running and filling out the garden with okra plants and mini pumpkins and hanging out at my favorite record store talking about literature and outsider art and listening to the Rolling Stones before heading up to the lake on Sunday to hang out with the family and sit alone on the breakwall in the darkness with the swirling of the waves like a Winslow Homer painting, to contemplate and re-examine some already existing sad things that swirled to the surface in the past couple of days that have left me a little wrecked and questioning every interaction and motivation. It's not that it isn't good, it's just that this growing up thing is really hard and painful. 

pattern and movement

Along with all the other madcap schemes of Learning How To Do Stuff that I think is cool, I've got bits and pieces of broken dishes and such that I'd love to take the time to mosaic someday. There is something beautiful to me about the repurposing of broken useless things into work of incredible texture and pattern.

I love the greys and the industrial palette of rust and aged patina, but there is a part of me that's also starved for the color and texture that's not as often seen here in Clevelandia. The closest we get here besides the multiple old churches is the Tiffany-designed chapel at Lake View Cemetery, with its pews made of cedars of Lebanon and the multiple spiritual metaphors pieced together on the walls.

I'm assuming with beauty such as this that Ravenna Italy is a far cry from the Ravenna that I knew from my Kent days as a sad and dreary county seat with a scary Wal-Mart and a Goodwill where I acquired quite a few goth rock cassettes that got much use as a library shelver.

The ancient art section of the art museum, where sadly the art from the Middle East and Asia is still not back on display, I loved the patterns and calligraphy of the art and the cool colors.

Gaudi was a master of this kind of thing in a more abstract yet just as lovingly detailed way, these colored tiles broken and reconfigured.

I stumbled across this place in a Taschen coffeetable book, of this glass studio in Kenya. I may never get to see Kitengela Glass with my own eyes, but at least others have been there and share the magic.