After leaving Cherry Lawn in '66, I sort of rolled off to Ohio University, trying as usual to spend as much time as possible stoned out of my mind. I guess my brain cells were in shock, because many didn't realize they were dead and went on functioning long enough for me to graduate. But it wasn't long before I went out of my mind for real, resulting in a year-long hospitalization. It was a nice place: they had many flavors of yogurt and not many people drooled. I started commuting to Columbia as occupational therapy and when I got good grades the fools at the hospital let me out.

Through several careers, including one painting faces on animatronic gnomes, my chemical makeup grew to include a large amount of alcohol and of course thorazine. At home, I practiced breaking various pieces of furniture with my face; even upright furniture, like bookcases and breakfronts. But I could see there was no future in either the gnomes or the furniture-breaking and I sobered up. And stayed that way.

With my trusty BFA, I eventually got a job as a delivery boy in a textile design studio and from there to a company where I ran a large art department designing printed fabric. I learned to speak Garmento, which is a sort of tribal dialect where every other sentence contains the word "goods", as in piece-goods: "So, read any good books lately?" "No, you ship my goods?". Sort of like that.

I did well, the company did well, we went to Europe twice a year to buy samples, my boss developed a cocaine habit, his wife started buying horses in Germany, the textile market dropped, they got a divorce, the company went out of business. My heart was never really into poly-rayon anyway.

Now I'm a multimedia designer. This means I make things people click on a computer screen to bring up other clickable things. With music. Last year I worked on the movie "You've Got Mail" in which I made it so no matter what the actors typed, the correct email would appear on the screen letter by letter as if they were actually typing it. Somewhere between gnomes and poly-rayon on the creative challenge scale, but interesting.

I've wondered about so many of you. I hope you're all well.

Love,

Arnie