Ian (John) McCleary (Son of the Cleric) Biography

I look at the work of college art students everyday hanging by my janitors closet. If no one were there I would say it was lifeless and dead like everything learned academically, copied out of
books.
I am beginning to sound like my art professors from college, washed up and without ideas, so I must attack the easiest prey.
This is the problem with art in college and maybe even outside of it.
...

In my mid to late twenties I lived the life of the poet Rimbaud, I lived a life of meaningless passion and aimlessness. Some of this later rebellion in my life was a self - conscious imitation of the young French poet. Around twenty years old, I had watched the movie Total Eclipse on the life of the poets Rimbaud and Verlaine with Leonardo De Caprio as Arthur Rimbaud and David Thewlis as the older poet Paul Verlaine, a mentor to the young Rimbaud. I learned a lot from watching that movie, it would eventually help me to sever ties with a college friend who I was hanging out with at the time I found that movie.
Those years after were some of the hardest in my life before I met my wife of today. I was looking for the next thrill. My job working at the supermarket, was boring to me, I wanted stimulation, something that would bring my life more meaning than it had for me at work. I got caught up in self destroying behaviors. Even when I met my wife and even into our marriage I have fought to keep this rebellion from ever coming out again in me.
Even years ago that message of sobriety came to me after a long night of bar hopping.
The year I took a trip to London, I will always remember this thing I said, which about sums up my twenties and the false promises that fleeting pleasures offer 'What is a butterfly if you take apart it's wings? '.
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What a poor representation of water, of canal water. It doesn't move with the stroke of my paddle. It stands still and frozen, what is it to do there? What is it to communicate?
The artist who painted this, do they know that this is not a painting?
Oh there's no use telling them, my face is one beige dab of oil paint, without eyes, a mouth to express my disgust for his rendering of me.
He is not yet aware of his creative powers.
...

It's very unusual weather for the beginning of January, tell the oracle of Puxatawney, that it seems to be spring already in the east.
I am out in sandals and a light sweater, I was sweating in my winter coat the other day I went hiking.
Who can deny the strangeness of this winter, it's topsy turviness. Even the once most embittered critic is scratching their head on this lions tameness
...

Genie, grant my every wish! Says the voice of Lucre.
And the piece of technology, as like rubbing the lamp, makes all wishes come seemingly true... well...at least for the time allowed him, without a trip to some place of wicked debauchery.
But the aftershock is cruel,
though he was relieved of all his demons in the moment, there is still one left he has forgotten,
...