Piestewa

  19:46

City of LIghts

No Phoenii* were harmed in the making of these photos, taken at Lights of the World, currently at the state fairgrounds behind the old Coliseum. It's, like, bad-ass, dudes. 

*Plural of Phoenix, duh**

**What do you get if you combine more than one Phoenix with a ring shaped island made of old Barbie's? 

A Phoeni-barb-atoll. 

What? 

Lights of the World

Chinese Acrobats  

The Local

Met mom and Jean in Prescott yesterday for pre-holiday festivities.

After eating lunch at a place called The Local, organic and tasty, we walked down the street to find her favorite vacuum cleaner repair place.

"Neighborhood looks right but I think they're closed," said mom as we walked, hoping to recover her wayward Electrolux, left some weeks previous.*

We found 'em 2 blocks down, around the corner, and they were open!

The not-quite-ancient lady behind the counter had waxy, maroon colored hair and abnormally long, hairy forearms - a bit lycanthropic in retrospect.

Mom, hard of hearing, shouted out introductions - mentioning I'd come from Phoenix.

To which the lady said, "my son lives in Phoenix. It's his birthday today but I tried calling him and he won't answer."

For some reason, I imagined an aging man - weathered and perhaps hungover - staring through slitted eyes at the ringing phone. He'd escaped his parents and small town life but mortality loomed.

Roger, her husband, came out from the back - tall, slightly hunched, with a furrowed brow and peering eyes that looked everywhere but at us.

He was also hard of hearing. Or maybe just in a marriage where the wife addresses her husband in third person.

"Roger's in a real mood today," she announced as he came out.

At which point he stopped, took us in, then headed back from whence he came.

Moment's later he re-emerged with mom's vacuum and turned it on. The noice was horrible - a combination of grating and grinding.

Then a little plastic chunk flew out and it purred like a kitten.

Mom handed over her card and after some shouting:

"Card doesn't work! How much?! Sign here!! Doesn't work?! Merry Christmas!!"

We left with a thud of the door and a clang of the bell.

"Don't make 'em like that anymore," said mom.

True dat.

* A real life, actual Electrolux Vacuum Cleaner!

Coffee w/Max

4am

this morning
I dreamt of an elk
with a cougar's face

super imposed
over
it,

which was, either:

1. a cougar come back as an elk...  

2. it's spirit protector -or-

3. two narratives, mixed:

    {an elk hunt I know of
        -and-
         a large cat spotted recently at Brown's ranch}  

My friend was in the dream, showing me the cat-faced elk he'd just killed.

And was it him or me I was dreaming about?*

Very David Lynch**


*Freud might've said they were all aspects of myself. Or was it Jung?
**I did recently see photos of the little man in the red room from the last episode of Twin Peaks, so there's that. 

In the now

Thanksgiving Eve

I want to be Rilke

a god in my own right,
perched atop death and human experience

- as Thanos enthroned
upon a mound of gleaming skulls

eyes, glowing and smoking
like embers in a pipe,
well drawn...

eyes
with the stars
showing through them;

infinity reflected

inside
and out -

and in my posited Rilke-esqueness

(silk smooth,
wise
and resolute)

I'd shit
easter eggs of encapsulated existence,

and with assonant assertions

rise
whispering
from the depths
of archetype,

embed
myself
-entire-
in the collective
subconscious,

Id, ego, etc.
et al.

...of Behavior

Hanging at the office

Novel Idea

If I were ever going to write something, it might be about a 40's detective - champion of the people, with large hairy ears and a propensity for lupinism.*

Kidding. I'm a kidder. 

But sometimes its fun to just let the mind's tongue loose and see where it leads. 

Albinism, too, might play a part in this ism-esque foray. 

And If I were to write this novel, it would have to include threads of anti-elitism, though these days... 

Trump might be considered the champion of the anti-elitist by some. 

Which is not exactly the direction I was heading in, but sure, that's one way to go.

And that, in turn, reminds me of an NPR interview I recently heard.** Believe the dude's name was Hari, though I may've murdered the spelling just now. Anywho...***

He's done a movie, I believe, based on the character Abu, from The Simpsons, who, he points out, is a caricature. 

'Duh' you might say, to which I retort, yes, the use of caricature throughout the show is acknowledged in the interview, however...

Hari contends this caricature is put forth entirely by white folk - Matt Groenig, the writers, Hank Azaria - and will always lack the depth of other characters, who are occasionally fleshed out and even dip into underlying truths.****

And while the interview runs a tad bit PC-ish, he makes an excellent point at the end that stuck with me...

He'd tried to interview Hank Azaria re: Abu, but after no response, said (essentially):

Of course that conversation would be awkward. But we need to more conversations like that these days. 

Truer words were never spoken, at least from this old man's perspective.*****

So while my 40's detective might hang out - alternately - either at a bar or in the rooms of AA, so that Alcoholism too** might be added to the flavor of the mix, the most important part would be the ensuing conversations. 

Awkward little conversations that are not slick, composed, cool, tailored or what have you.******

Big pauses so long you could drive a truck through them, with plenty of time for character and reader to feel uncomfortable and just sit with it.*******

Yeah.

*Strangely, the photo above and this article have nothing in common. 
**Yes, I listen to NPR. No, I'm not an adherent. Humanist perphaps? Meanwhile... 

***My sister hates 'anywho' so this is somewhat of a back handed shout out. Yo!

****My words not his...

*****Turned 50 this year and while I feel fairly froggy, get a lot more 'sirs' and dismissive looks from the culture of youth than days of yor.
******All apologies to Elmore Leonard, and maybe Carl Hiaasen, dialogists extraordinaire.

*******Yeah, yeah - I realize books with large gaps in the action might be difficult to pull off - ooh! Maybe a blank page or 2? Anywho.... :)

Perspectivism

So...

I haven't re-posted or critiqued anything in forever -but- found the above artist particularly alluring.

Her name is Cecile Perra and at first I thought she was a he, which made me feel vaguely uncomfortable because I found myself wanting to hump the leg of whoever had created these playful, sometimes creepy, but always... authentic little figures.

Archetypal isn't quite the right term to describe them, but they have a certain... resonance.*

And yes, she uses similar elements currently popular among other peeps - old photos, bits of human faces in masks w/colored threads sewn in, etc - but time after time (whilst parsing Pinterest) I found myself drawn to her combinations of those elements vs. others. 

For me, it tied in a bit with Ram Das and "Polishing the Mirror" - which seems a ridiculous segue -but- something about Guru worship essentially being God and even self-adulation, with love and resonance being the common thread?

Basically, I hear the beat she's laying down. 

That, and the fact I'd been reading Ram earlier in the a.m., followed by a blissful siesta, and my first sighting of the artist...

Happenstance or synchronicity, you be the judge.

http://www.artperra.fr/?p=1751  

P.S. I'd be remiss to exclude Hanna Hoch, German turn of the century, Da-da-ist, who started me down the path of collage as High Art. If you don't know her, she's definitely worth a look see.

P.P.S. Should also mention that collage for me is the new Impressionism. Old bits of this and that  reconstituted with a hybrid vigor into something entirely new, at least to the mind's eye. Call it Perspectivism.  

I see

people moving

through a field of flowers

and dusty, stranded sunshine,

faces 

indistinct 

from flowers

moving in the breeze;

- all of us there:

you, me, everyone, 

in the field

and part of it

All.

Funtime w/Popi

  

Croatia revisited

Outside and Atop

The city walls of Dubrovnik
at the Buza

Dubrovnik

  

From the sky

a
spherical droplet
coalesces, forms and falls;
kissing
calm still water beneath;

in this moment:
singular
and plural,
part
and apart...

Edward Cronkite said it best.

"You. Are. There!"

Rovinj, Hvar & the Blue Caves of Vis

Upon the eve of Josie's Birthday

My sister says I should meditate then write down my thoughts...

No wait.

My sister says when I meditate, to write them down. 

Kinda. In brief:

I have thoughts.

She said write them down.

(after?)

Mental sketch book, she said. 

(back hurts)

(miss her -and- the girls)*

My sister says there is a place you can go when you meditate that feels like home. 

(no wait that's me)

Maybe she knows but I don't know she does.

***

What I know she doesn't:

I walked Suzie the dog this morning and visited her in my mind (my sister not Suzie)

at the house. And the garden. And the basement with the sheer curtains.  

(so lovely with the light coming through)

(making me feel right at home)

In my mind. 

Dad, too - in that loop (time suspended) where family-arity abounds. 

(home, after all - the opposite of strange)

***

We jostle and peck like baby birds in the nest

probing for weakness

and strength;

darwinian love... 

***

My sister has thoughts. 

But I cannot hear them. 

(jagged edges torn from colored paper, layered...

...the whuff and chuck of dark soil turned) 

But sometimes I can.

In my mind.

*the boys too, but you know how boys are - taught to survive by affecting stoicism; I too am one of those.

Sunrise Atop Shaw Butte

nocturn