A n i m a l m a g i c

Oil on concrete

manipulated to reveal

Bill the Parrot,

a recurring motif

in my mind.

Shorthand

Listening to David Bowie's "Low" this a.m. while perusing photos from Worldwide Pinhole Camera Day 2012.

Gotta make room for a little magic in each day.

Here's one I like*:

Has a delicate, faded quality that reminds me of a lithograph or old photo.

Did Camelback yesterday, in spite of soaring temps. Car thermometer read 116 degrees and I had 2nd thoughts.

Hydration* and a certain need to destroy/recreate myself, however, won out.

Shed my old snake's skin, at least for another day.

*http://www.pinholeday.org/gallery/2012/index.php?id=307 
**Drink enough water and you can seemingly exist on the surface of the sun. Hopefully not prophetic.

Running in place

Found a strange pair of jeans in my washer the other morning - stiff, thin, frayed and so dark blue they were almost purple.

Which freaked me out for a moment*.
Then realized they were mine.

(pause)

Yeah. A moment somewhere between nirvana and duh. 

David Byrne first alerted me to this phenomena, when he talk/sang:

This is not my beautiful house!
This is not my beautiful wife!

And I used to so-o-o-o dig that song. But when the amusing little vignette I found so entertaining in my youth, turned out to be a surreal preview of my own life...

Tomorrow I'll slip on a suit of skin and bones that is my 9 to 5 persona and I'll do that dance all day long; I will literally embody that role. 

And yet...

Bukowski wrote about watering the gladiolas (or whatever) one day. And the mailman came by.  Gave him a look.

It can't be war all the time, came the response.  There are moments in between.

And yeah, I am a frail little bag of bones and skin, arms grown thin, measuring out my life with coffee spoons. And this is part of that. My ministration to human frailty. J. Alfred Prufrock ain't got nothin' on me, baby.

But as Robert Downey Jr. so adroitly put it in Tropical Thunder...

"I'm just the dude, playin' the dude, disguised as another dude." 

And now the only remaining question...

Existential Crisis?

Or Master Plan?

*I live alone and random clothing don't normally manifest in my washer. Unless I steal them from my buddy T, of course. He's the same size as me but with better taste in clothing. That, however, I'd remember.