Welcome to my second installation of images! If you’re on a computer instead of a phone, you can click on any image to enlarge it. Check out Images 1 here.
Abstracts
Monochrome & Minimal
Nature
People
Extras
21 comments on Images 2
-
Dark Marsh 
Twinez 
Frozen Movement 
Pinched Sky 
Grass Mirage 
Edge’s End 
Doors of Perception 
Dark Grain 
Lone 
Black Butte from Three Fingered Jack 
Early Morning 
Cloud Catcher 
Lost Lake with Sasquatch looking on. 
Winter on Coyote Wall 
Thoughts 
Dissenter 
Father & Daughter at the Ocean in Early Spring 
1st Annual Gothic Boat Paddle Race 
Switched 
Primitive 
Another State -
Aluminum foil-covered, cardboard stars above our heads and the basketball hoops have been drawn back, painted lines and circles below our feet. We dance in socks, leaving our shoes out in the hallway.
We mimic the leaves who aren’t ready to dance, because the air is still warm and we glow with a luminescent heat, moving in aimless directions as if the gym floor is a sacred grassland and the seasons do not exist. Our desires – a clutter of arms and legs. The sweat on our lips drawn down to our tongues, for the world has always been and always will be a dancer.
Winter will come.
We’ve skated on its skin before, scooped the marshmallows off countless hot chocolates, been told the stories of the wolf in the snow. It will change our waltz, starting when the rain comes. So, in this form, today, we dance in the body summer has given us and we coalesce to get ready for colder climate, dancing to escape the body, while being in the body.
When we look, it may seem like we follow the sun, aligning with the rising and setting of things, turning with the Earth. At other times, we are beings of our own choice, crisscrossing the paths of others. In these moments only movement exists, nothing else is real, we can only dance. The galaxies are no different.
Look. See them samba with our own eyes.
For all these moves are known by heart.
And when we sense we know our hearts, we feel the floor beneath our feet.
Image be me. -
Elvis can’t strum a note.
Still, many look for him
During a nighttime shanghai.
But these ghost-like hijacks
Excite only hipsters and bruisers
And cute, off-hour barista users
Wearing their best lattes
To catch the ships of myth.
Back on landlubber strip
Alcoholics look like pimps.
The 99 cent lady scratches
Lottery tickets, chewing on mints.
She yells at the gutter kids
Who pee on sidewalk cracks.
Children of insults and rip-offs
Selling newspapers to news crews
Their mouths askew with twisted views
Crooked grin from the bookstore girl.
Her windows bashed in for no reason.
Sells last year’s calendars & rusty rock pins.
The trattoria boils millions in noodles
Hiring from art school purgatory
Haloed waitresses with yoga mats
Channeling their inner schmooze
Living off deep-fried borrowed blues.
The mayor rolls out sorted plans
Sketches of the new Pantheon.
City council sucks sugar tits
From kiss-your-ass developments.
While food carts form shanty towns
For the visiting team’s hangovers.
Their mascot yanking on his head
Stuck
In a permanent state of cheer.
The old urchins on their last barnacle
Live back in the glory days
Of cheap chiva, bad Bud, & noses caked with coke
Taking bus rides to fake desperation
Basking in their burn out, dabbling in
Dysfunction. (A national holiday)
Celebrated with bogged down Bloody Marys
And get-well cards with handwritten
Apologies for nothing... that’s gone wrong.
Image by me. -
Simple melodies are the ones that are remembered. I offer one of mine. I hadn’t planned on releasing a composition so quickly following another, (July 15. It usually takes me a couple of months to complete an initial sketch) but I was rifling through old incomplete projects, when I stumbled upon this one that just needed slight editing. So, I decided to revisit it, think it over, and apply a narrative to it.
Instrumentation is two pianos, violin, cello, sample of a territory band from the twenties, Moog Spectravox, Behringer System 55 Modular Synthesizer.
“Power at her fingertips.” Made up of several found images taken by me and my two cameras. -
He’s in the peripheral of your lantern’s light
As his jump crests the undergrowth.
His business, a serious endeavor
Risking the watchful eyes of owls
He’s intent upon finding your trail mix.
You sit silent as he approaches,
Trying to impart a feeling of friendship.
You offer a nut and a seed.
He takes one at a cautious distance
Then darts back to the safety of tall grass.
Your lantern’s propane hisses
As you catch a glimpse of another of his small hops.
He’s heading in the opposite direction towards tall trees
With a bit of disappointment, perhaps, to his jump
For you are packing up, securing all food
And shutting off your lantern.
A new silence.
It’s darker than you thought darkness could ever get.
But you know he’s still there as you fall asleep
To the rustle of branches and the sly movement of the wind.
The beginning of an alpine meadow on the north side of Mt. Adams -
Charles is in the twilight heat
Where summer rubs
Like tectonic plates on skin.
He tells me stories
Of shooting people in Vietnam
During the war.
–
The rifle he used is under his bed.
I saw it once when he asked me
To feed his cat Molly while on vacation.
He took his wife to Canada
To watch the caribou, migrate.
–
It’s such a plain rifle, worn.
Wood stain nearly rubbed off.
Barrel dull, black and textured.
He drives hundreds of miles
To watch the caribou.
–
Through his kitchen window
He mentions how hot it is.
The sun is an orange throb.
He tells me how he used to hunt
in southeast Oregon, Steens Mountain
Hauled back all the animal
Limb by limb, organ by organ
Buckets of blood and fat.
–
I don’t like it when the morning sun is hazy
Before the heat proves
It can take the night.
Charles throws seeds to blue jay parents.
They’re always uptight, worried.
Especially if Molly chews grass near them.
A grey squirrel gnaws on antlers
Nailed to a tree in his backyard.
The antlers are decades old.
–
The goal in Vietnam, he said, was to maim not kill.
It ties up resources, beds, hospitals
Doctors, systems, and puts stress on a country.
Killing just needs a burial or a burn.
–
He’s in a wheelchair now.
Sits in front of a television, volume turned up.
Still feeds the blue jays.
The seed is stolen by crows.
A bus picks him up once a week
To visit the VA hospital
Treating him for dementia and heart disease.
Talks about how he watches the caribou.
Molly doesn’t seem to notice.
Dichotomies are an interesting feature of the human condition. In of itself, dichotomy appears as a binary, representing a contrast. In “Watching the Caribou” I explore a version of dichotomy which becomes blurred. Charles, a vet and an ex-hunter, is somewhat of a hypocrite. In life, he shot, killed, and hurt, yet he celebrates nature and life, via watching caribou and makes sure his cat is well taken care of. In a twist of fate, he becomes the very thing he was ordered to do in Vietnam, becoming “tied” up in social services. Irony. In many ways, this reminded me of humanity as a whole, where there is a side of our institutions set up for violence (e.g. the military, police, etc.) and another side set up for peace (e.g. acceptance, love, etc.). Irony? -
We fight amongst ourselves because there is no one else to fight, though we believe there must be…others. Our footsteps, indeterminate, conflicting rhythms, as if we are cockroaches running towards transformation, a change, of no presence, no reality. As if it is locked away in a room one wished existed. Still, we hear a song seeping through that room’s walls.
It’s her song, the singer who disappeared long ago, and it is a bitter elixir for our pang. We investigate its lingering melody and words like hunting dogs, but we can’t keep up with the number of wounds she sings into us, and our doctors can’t cure us of its beauty.
And now through our longing, she reveals herself or we conjure her, a semblance of her body, made up of spirit. We can see her open her mouth as if to sing but there is no sound. So, we put on the recording, and she sings along with herself, a self that was once alive… enough to place vibrations upon a static piece of media. She looks sad as her spirit mouth moves in sync with a mere copy.
This didn’t stop us from crowding ‘round her. We’re sorry but we can’t be destitute, can’t pretend, even if that would make her words materialize into harmony. Our crowd becomes thick, and her image disappears somewhere inside our throng. It’s too easy to forget to look for her, but we still hear the song.
We must have its sound and we don’t know whether it’s the song that inspires us to fight or our reaction to it. Perhaps it’s both that creates a hum in our ears. There’s no such thing as silence, no simplicity of solitude, no singular thought. We fight as a group. We fight amongst ourselves because there is no one else to fight, though we believe there must be…
(This piece is in response to Burke and Kant’s theories pertaining to the sublime.)
I have a few of these little creations. -
I recognize how she is carved
From the liquid that shapes her
Fashioned by countless tumbles & snow melts.
It as if her hair is combed constantly
For strands flow for miles, making a long tress.
This hair of hers comes in an assortment of
Twists, turns, reflections, textures
Tiny waves, pressed, and curled.
Her body, cool, cold at times
Always in transit, flux, liminal.
Her banks, like persistent suiters
Follow her everywhere
Only interrupted by the abrupt advances
Of cliffs that dive in, but lose her
While holding her at the same time
For she is a trickster, more so than the ravens
Dippers, and geese who tease.
She will let me stumble
Upon her rocks and boulders
Like a babe learning to walk
Like an adult…learning.
You can see her inner personality
In the form of falls
Which roll over a series
Of large stones and hills
Or fall like a skydiver from
A precipice, landing in a boom and roar.
There have been times I’ve heard this
Rumble, as if she shakes the ground
With a message I must listen to.
I am small then, in her presence
My feet soft on her sides, my breath slow.
But one turn around a cliff
Into a secluded ravine
And she becomes quiet
As if she doesn’t even exist.
It is within these areas of silence
Where she tells me secrets
Of everything and all, an endless epiphany
And I realize I already know these things and have
Known them, but, once I leave her whisper
I will remember them only by what they felt like
Recalling her faint rush of current
An echo of the river she will become.
Spring is the best time to visit a wild stream. You can see how alive they are. -
Don’t sit and wonder why it’s gone
We did everything that’s wrong
Shades of black and white turn to color
Details of the reasons why we suffer
We don’t have to hold each other close
Those days are dead, like a ghost
We look like two (true) perfect lovers
But everything inside has been smothered
But I can’t shake…….
This love for you.
I don’t wanna lose……
What isn’t true.
Guitar Solo
I don’t have to sit and wonder why
I knew from the start this was gonna die
Things we thought we knew so well
Turned into reasons why we failed
Emptiness is a hollow thing to feel
Funny how nothing can be so real
It’s like the blue sky above us all
Gonna be the distance which we fall
But I can’t shake…….
This love for you.
I don’t wanna lose……
What isn’t true.
But I can’t shake…….
This love for you.
I don’t wanna lose……
What isn’t true.
Slow Fade Out
This poem is lyrics to a non-existent song. If you are a singer songwriter, please feel free to borrow it and arrange it the way you like. I’d love to hear it. …….Perhaps (and this is just a thought) there is no complete healing. We are meant to wear our scars. (Ironic for me to say. I have keloid). Healing is found in how we live with pain instead of how we cover it up or attempt to banish it from our lives. -
The rain became a light drizzle.
“Another story just started. You must think I’m weird.”
“Sure, I like it.”
“I’m weirder than that. I don’t feel anything, just everything. Or I don’t feel everything, just anything. Does that make sense?”
“Yes, kind of. I understand what you mean.”
The rain stopped. Only drips were heard, falling off gutters and tree limbs.
“It’s so humid. That’s not normal for around here. And it’s changing. It seems there’s nothing we can do about it—it’s like those stories. I can’t find an end to them. I want them to end, but I don’t.”
“You can try. That’s what you’ve always done. Don’t worry, it’ll work out.”
“They keep my interest, but somehow, they’re waiting for something. Or is it me that’s waiting? Look how fast the steam is rising from the streets. You know, I think we’re like steam. First, we hit the streets hard like rain, then we move on, lighter.”
The sun poked out from behind a cloud.
“Sometimes I want to touch you, like no one has ever touched you before, but I only have these hands and they’re like everyone else’s.”
“I like the way you touch me.”
“Are my hands warm? I know I can be cold sometimes. There are different ways to touch.”
A couple of heavy raindrops fell unevenly from the sky. As if another downpour was about to start.
“Is all rain alike? I swear each raindrop touches the ground differently. I notice stuff like that. It’s soothing to me to listen to each storm, how different they are from one another. Do you think it’s true, that each raindrop creates a new life?”
“I don’t know. I guess it could be like that.”
The clouds began to move further apart from one another, and spots of blue sky appeared.
“There’s a sound to the dry days. It’s like voices rubbing against one another. I can make one or two of them out, for a while. I write those ones down. Then, I come back to read them. It’s gibberish, all just a bunch of gibberish. I’m scared the rain will stop forever.”
A pause, slightly comfortable, slightly uncomfortable.
“Can I touch you now? I need to know.”
“Will it help?”
Underneath a “raining” fresh water spring.
