Bigfoot | The Direction of Intention

Check In With Bigfoot [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on August 18, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

Last week we began each day reading a draft of a book written by our pal Rob. It’s about werewolves. At the end of each day we watched an episode of a television series about the search for Bigfoot. In the middle of the day we checked in with the news of the day. It occurred to me that I have an easier time believing in Bigfoot than I do in the daily horror of the current administration. I laughed when I realized that spending time with werewolves was preferable to spending time with cowardly republicans.

What does it say about current events when the werewolf escape fantasy is more plausible than the actual reality of these United States?

Plausible means something is reasonable, believable, or likely to be true.

Philip Roth wrote that “You can’t write good satirical fiction in America because reality will quickly outdo anything you might invent.” When governance becomes episodic reality tv, when leaders post for “likes” and troll for attention rather than lead, when debates are canceled because they have devolved into opportunities for sound bytes and no longer serve as forums to discuss issues…we are no longer dealing with actuality, we’re way beyond farce or satire and are solidly lost in the theatre of the absurd. The hyper-focus on the immediate gain destroys the foundational necessity of the enduring ideal. Beckett could not do justice to grotesque characters like Todd Blanche, Pete Hegseth or the mobster-in-chief himself. Up is down and down is up. There is so much gas leaking from the daily-gaslight that we live in actual fear of someone lighting a match.

“Absurdist theatre (such as the works of Samuel Beckett or Eugène Ionesco) relies on fragmented plots, nonsensical dialogue, and a radical breakdown of traditional logic and communication“

A radical breakdown of traditional logic and communication. Doesn’t that aptly describe the current republican congress and authoritarian administration? Nothing is reasonable, believable or likely to be true. And yet, the senate continues to vote to confirm the grotesques while the press core acts as if the crap-thinking is credible. The pedophile pretends to be president for yet another day.

The seals clap, the billionaires cluck, the hardworking people are scooped up by masked men and disappeared as flock cameras track women across state lines while trying to exercise autonomy over their bodies, now a high crime for a woman in a nation that espouses freedom. The purpose gets lost in the fragmented plot. Reality undoes invention.

Yesterday in the space between werewolves and Bigfoot we took a walk. I stood on the bricks while Kerri photographed the enormous Hibiscus growing behind the Art Center (now, doesn’t that sound like a setting in an absurdist story?). I was suddenly overcome with the impulse to toe-kick the bricks just to make certain that they were real. I breathed a sigh of relief when my foot met something solid.

Testing reality with my toe. Fact checking each and every bit that we hear as news. Walking to the marina to clear our minds and hearts from the constant onslaught of fabrication, propaganda and lie. Wide-eyed, watching the world of humans eagerly aim a phone-camera at itself, not recognizing the willing reduction of precious life, reality, to second-rate-performance-art-invention.

We are relieved each night to slip into bed, escape the daily horror story by asking, “Do you want to check in with Bigfoot?”

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE BRICKS

likesharecommentsupportthankyou!

Filed under: Edges, Two Artists Tuesday, Uncategorized | Tagged: absurdist theatre, artistry, Bigfoot, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fiction, gaslighting, invention, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Philip Roth, reality, Samuel Beckett, story, studio melange, the melange, werewolf | Leave a comment »

On The Mystery Trail [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on June 4, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

It’s no secret that we watch hiking videos before turning out the light for the night. There’s something comforting about people unplugging from the national nonsense and thru-hiking The Pacific Crest Trail. There’s something reassuring about people reducing their needs to the simple basics only to discover that the real essential – as important as food – is companionship. Giving and receiving support. There’s genuine kindness to be found on the trail that is not found in our current national story.

Last night we veered off trail and clicked on a story about Bigfoot encounters. Beyond the curious tales, a few of which sounded more extraterrestrial than large-furry-creature, I was struck by the process each person went through to make sense of their encounter. In the absence of a sense-socket-to-plug-into, they defaulted to something recognizable: a religious explanation or contact with an other-world-alien, Hollywood style. One man has spent years searching for others who had a similar experience or for someone who might help him understand what he saw. He admitted that his story sounded insane – and, previous to his encounter, he said, “Had I heard someone tell a similar tale, I’d have rolled my eyes. Not anymore,” adding, “It opened me,” he said.

People do not easily stand alone in the unknown. It is not comfortable. Not-knowing is more doable with company.

Listening to their stories I recognized that the unknown, like life on the trail, has a way of stripping us back to basics. When all of the layers of our mind-armor – our “knowing” – are peeled away, we do the most human thing possible: we reach for others. Even if slamming the door on the encounter is the initial response, the second action is to reach. To corroborate or to find comfort. To have companionship on the mystery trail.

This morning we sat in bed sipping coffee and told the unexplainable stories from our lives. Our coming-together-story is full of the impossible-to-understand. Sometimes we ascribe it to chance and sometimes to kismet. Good guiding angels or happenstance, either way, for us, it is a kind of miracle.

Hamlet always jumps to my mind when I dance on the edge of these delicious questions of guidance or fate or coincidence: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Hamlet sees the ghost of his father and asks: “Be thou a spirit of health or a goblin damned?” Is this ghost from heaven or sent from hell? The rest of the play is a detective story, a young Hamlet trying to answer his question, trying to make sense of his ghost encounter. He pretends madness in order to investigate, to find the truth of what he has seen.

Ultimately, like all of us, Hamlet finds peace, not because he finds an answer, but because he makes peace with life as an unanswerable question. “There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow…”

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE SUN AND CLOUD