This should help you reevaluate your priorities...

Getting lost is something I try to do every day, even if just for a few minutes. It’s an art form I learned as a child. And in homage to an expression, we really learned everything we needed back then anyway.

As a child, we go outside and play, and everything is a new discovery. We wander around aimlessly, getting lost sometimes, happily, investigating. We find old chests in basements, discarded tires, ancient-looking utensils and tools. We look at flowers, grass, trees, creeks, turtles and spiders with magnifying glasses. Not that we needed magnifying glasses at that age, but the magnifying glass was a ponderous discovery in itself. Just as pondering, were other discoveries such as why dried out starfish won’t come back to life if you drop them in a bowl of water.

At the end of full days discovering as a child, all I could do to contain myself until the next opportunity, was to create. I reflected, wrote, drew, built, and constructed creations that mirrored my exceptional experiences from the day before. Wood, paper, glue, crayons, tape, boxes, pieces of old toys, trimmings of string and wire became my default media. I planned, designed, and architected various creations that I believed would make the world a better place, or communicate the world imaginatively. I made spaceships, creature habitats, water color paintings, elaborate mousetraps, musical instruments, communications devices—useful and meaningful things, aesthetically and/or functionally. A Bauhaus grad at age five. At age six, I was convinced I created the best secret message code/decode/transfer scheme in history—from Legos, rubber bands, paper, string and glue. Stores simply did not offer the kinds of solutions I sought.

At childhood, everyday was an exceptional experience. And it still is. Nothing really has changed, except the next new things that need discovering, experiencing, solving, creating. And so I explore bigger worlds, learn a few of its languages, cultures, methods, approaches, art forms, and perspectives.  Art, from one perspective, is about reflecting nature, life, our ingenuity and aspirations.

To help reflect and inspire, I recently began writing Haiku ( 俳句 ) every morning in both Japanese and English. Haiku helps me remember to appreciate, and focus on the macro- and microcosms of natural and hand-crafted beauty. To freeze-frame in technicolor the ways these different forces interact. To first get lost in order to see. Lost looking at an ant climb a blade of grass in a Spring breeze.

Haiku also helps with my artwork, my writing (Japanese and English), with client solutions, and perhaps most importantly my outlook on life.

Check out Morning Haiku ...

Click anywhere below to get started. Enjoy painting on my canvas :)

The Mai Tai may be Polynesian in name, but it's American in origin, created not on a tropical lagoon but on the mudflats of San Francisco's East Bay in 1944, by a legendary California restaurateur, the late Vic Bergeron of Trader Vic's fame.

VÖLCKMANN RESEARCHERS spent years searching for the perfect compound. Then one year, while on a group therapy excursion, our people discovered the perfect Mai Tai and vowed thereafter to share the concoction with the rest of the world. We believe this recipe makes the best Mai Tai we have ever tasted, and hope you will agree. Enjoy!

1-3/4 oz. light rum

3/4 oz. dark rum

1/2 oz. orange curacao (or Grand Marnier)

1/2 oz. Amaretto

Juice of a lemon

Juice of a lime

Juice of an orange (1/4 cup)

1/4 cup pineapple juice

a splash of grenadine

Blend and garnish with fresh fruit and mint sprig.
 

Greetings... Finally, finally, after seven long years, I had the chance to create a new website for VOLCKMANN.COM  [ beta ] with some portfolio at

http://www.volckmann.com

It's a start.

Russell