Dennis Hollingsworth

TimeLine

Just who is Dennis Hollingsworth, asked Trevor of K'aleb?l Blog?

I figured it's about time for a bio. So I thought I would draw it out.

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To Elementary School

1. First memory: Darkness, I was upset, exercised. Vertical bars of light, a figure opens a doorway, comes closer and a big hand rubs my belly.

2. Grandmother's Ticonderoga pencils.

3. Winner, drawing contest. A clown with one shoe larger than the other. Yet I felt jaded. I sat on the TV celebrity clown's lap and ate cake for that.

4. The last sentence in #3 is frickin amazing.

5. Papa teaches my brother Michael and I the meaning of life.

6. Wore a bow tie one time.

7. Papang looked like a laughing Bhudda. And he would task you, get in your face.

To High School

1. I thought Vegas was going to look like the Ponderosa. Imagine my surprise shortly after we crossed the Hoover Dam.

2. Pop music and figure drawing books, fused.

3. Papa returns from a firefighting contract at Quan Tri, furtive stories of pot smoking GI's at the sentry on point, crashed Cobra helicopters and sleeping with a pistol under the pillow.

4. Building a house in the Florida panhandle and one day Papa says we're immigrating to Australia, so we bum rides on Air Force flights through Europe to get there... that's when I saw "Saturn, Devouring His Children".

5. So one day, Papa comes home shortly before noon and says: "We're taking the 3pm Embassy flight, pack your bags!" Food on the stovetop, the uncles dispose of the apartment. Twelve hours later, we were sitting on our suitcases on a Honolulu tarmack, plotting our next move.

6. Nevada desert, forever.

Thru the Navy Days

1. "Make a hole!"

2. We said "Aye!" and meant it.

3. The sea to the horizon, the horizon all around you. As far and farther than you can see, the sea. To be a tiny speck in the vast Pacific, a universe of water where the closest land is directly below the ship.

4. Dark rooms and colored lights and urgent numbers and nautical miles and grease pencil and squawk boxes barking orders and funny stories.

5. Liberty and beer and pockets full of money and girls and "Me So Horny!" and bars and museums and taxis and buses and snorkeling and Coppertone and civillian clothes that never seemed to fit well.

6. I saw "The Last Detail" a month before I enlisted and discovered later that it was a faithful and nuanced representation of life in the Navy.

To Architecture School

Through Early Los Angeles

Through Art School

Early 1990's

The Turn of the Century

Looking Back, All Drawn Out.

'nuff said?

Maybe this more:
This is not who I am, but where I was... unless we are... where we were.

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Posted by Dennis at March 16, 2005 2:20 AM