the secret life of echoes

The Passion of Opa

2012-02-10T08:16:00.000-08:00

“Vell, since you asked.”

Opa looked over at Oma and added: “Zey are old enough to know vat really happened.” Oma looked into the hearth and the shadows of her wrinkles danced in the firelight. Opa smiled at us knowingly, white lips framing browned teeth. Nodding, he continued:

“It really vas ze most extra-ordinary experience in my whole life!”

Opa sat deeper into his sunken leather chair. His movements slowed and then ceased. His soul lost in the memory vaults of his mind, looking for the file with the full story.

Isolated parts of his body jerked as he re-animated and picked up speed:

“It vas, as usual, a cold afternoon. Frau Schraub and I decided to walk to ze Musikverein to attend ze matinee performance of ze traveling Transylvanian Monks Choir. Oh! You should have seen ze Musikverein in zat time. Gilded balcony boxes, gilded ornaments, even gilded cufflinks on ze attendants! Oh meine gott! And ze perfumes, zey were inebriating. Ve men all sat zere drinking in Midnight Vishes, Eve’s Secret and even some vomen dared to vear Pink Depression. Can you imagine vat a disturbance it vas? But zat afternoon, when ze monks appeared on stage, everyone got sober right avay. Ze humility of ze monks’ poise, se-ven-ty-two of zem calmly lining up in rows. Ah. Ze silence rose and zen fell as ze tritonal vibrations began. I tell you zat vibration shook ze gilding off our teeth! Ve felt as naked as god’s children. Ze polyphonies of ze choir weaved new clothes for our beings to become...erk..”

Opa gurgled and coughed. His eyes wandered off and then a rasping sound came from his throat as it always did before one of his 'episodes':

“assamalaitooaaaA alles consumini nihilihomini balangasuuuooorna!”

He turned to us with his elated rictus, his nostrils sniffing the air but just as suddenly, he frowned. His face chalked up.

“For gott’s sake! Argh! Ah vell, anyvay. Frau Schraub and I left ze Musikvereinssaal feeling like babies! New! Nozzing made much sense anymore so ve vent home and sought ze comfort in each other’s arms and...Anyvey! Ze next day, ve found out ze roof of ze concert hall had collapsed on ze monks during rehearsal before ze night show. Ve vere shocked and really, devastated! And, ve vere not ze only ones. Ve vent to back to ze Musikverein to see vat had happened and saw many ozzers from ze matinee audience vere zere. Ve gazzered before ze rubble like lost lambs and zen, yes my little ones, ve did do it like zey said. Ve did tear off our clothes and begin to sing!”

Opa was exuberant, but getting tired. He lay his head back on the chair’s headrest and closed his eyes.

“All of us! Ve sang and ve chanted, mitout a stich as you say, in ze rude Viennese air, while onlookers desperately tried to clozze us. Ve knew not vat ve did. But ve knew vat ve felt.”

Oma seemed to be smiling, even laughing, but it was hard to tell in the flickering light. Opa thrilled:

“Ve vere one voice! Such power...And zen, ven ve finished, ve all collapsed at ze same instant. Some people called it mob hysteria, some a mass hallucination. But I know! I felt it! Zey vere wiz us! Zey vere good to zeir promise.”

Opa’s skin glowed translucent in the firelight. He seemed to doze off but his familiar rasp creaked out announcing the beginning of another episode:

“Nigaliboo vizaminilooya huaka ni boombala ommm mishka nishkaaaAla!”

Opa gagged and his eyes snapped open.

“Ach! It vas amazing but it had its’ side-effects. Zey called it Monk Regression Syndrome, or somezing like zat. Zey said ve vere experiencing ze remaining echoes of shock from such resonant beings. But ve know ze truth, don’t ve, meine Frau?”

Oma finally piped up with her warbling voice:

“Oh, Opa Schraub, enough meine liebe. Ze story is causing me to..um..you know.”

Opa arched his billowing eyebrows at her and looked back at us.

“Vell, meine lieblings. Know zat you too know ze truth, you must excuse us. Ve have some 'communing' to do.” Opa got up with a series of creaks. He gave Oma his hand and helped her steady onto her cane. Opa turned to us one last time: “Remember, ze situation is hopeless, but not serious," and they hobbled off through the doorway.

We looked at each other and of one accord, snuck up to the crack in the door. As we positioned ourselves, we could hear them harmonizing. They stood there, facing each other, chanting in the candlelight. Shadows grew and stiffened around them, turning first into smoke and then into dark cloaked figures. We froze as the monks manifested and circled our großeltern. The monks threw back their hoods and howled in unison. The walls vibrated with their wailing. Oma and Opa raised their smiling faces to the skies and sang loudly. The monks clawed at their clothes, unfolded their flesh, and began sucking their necks, drinking the vital flow from their song. As the incantations thickened into a feeding frenzy, we fled to hide under our beds, fainting with fear. The next morning we were surprised to wake up alive, tucked in our sheets. We held hands as we went downstairs. The house was silent and smelled of stale smoke and slaughter.

We found Oma and Opa’s bodies in a tight embrace on the floor, naked.. to the bone.

"The Lovers of Valdaro"

FORBIDDEN FRUITS

2011-11-23T03:05:00.001-08:00

At first, I was born and I had all I wanted.

Then I turned 1 and was told what I could not want.

And so my longing was born. My belated shadow.

At 2, it was forbidden to whine about longing,

so I learned to hum and sing and whistle and cry.

At 3, it was electric plugs and switches that were prohibited,

so I learned to beg for one more story before lights-out.

At 6, it was colorful candy that was vilified,

so I stuck my fingers in the Hungry Caterpillar book.

At 9, it was lovely laziness that could ruin my life,

so I wrote stories about princesses who had it all and lied around all day.

At 12, it was sultry smoke that was made to look ugly,

so I drew pictures of punk girls smoking cigarettes that they couldn’t smell.

At 15, it was understood that the boy next door might as well be in China,

so I wrote him and he wrote me back.

At 20, I moved out and, finally, I had it all.

By 30, ten years were lost to satisfaction.

I had had it all so much and so many times

that I was tired of it.

So I broke the last taboo

in my feminist family

and had a baby.

I breastfed him until he was 2, hoping to satiate his longing,

So then he learned to laugh himself to sleep.

I was pleased he barely whined.

At 3, it was electric plugs and switches, and so his longing was born.

His delayed shadow.

And my shadow was now layered, filtered & transformed.

The opposite of longing is not the loss of desire,

it is the caring for love acquired.

At 20, he will have moved out and until then,

I will take care to leave room for his shadow when I hold his hand,

paying as close attention to his ethereal as to his material.

And maybe, he can have it all, in a way, in his way, on his way

to fulfillment, never needing to reach the end of his desire.

TRANSPORT

2011-10-18T05:05:00.000-07:00

I sit on the toppled tree trunk and await the elephant. The seat is hard and ridged with grot, but smooth from the polishing by repeated bottoms.
A purring, roaring stench of gases rips around me as sleek panthers, creaking rhinos and whinging work horses fart on home to feed and breed.
Soft, sticky slips of air slide down vines, pierced here and there by rare sharpened sunbeams.
The canopy buzzes and crackles with the communication clouds of insects overhead, zooming blood-suckers collide into the milky-webs of carnivorous mummifiers.

A woman sits on the trunk next to me. Her stench is so strong, I can taste her. A pungent musk emanating from under her clothes fingers its way into my nose, plays some octaves on the organ of my tongue, huffing and puffing onto my tastebuds. Her greying tan skin tones make my palate salivate. I look over and she blends perfectly into the background of flaking mud. She may be well camouflaged but the rancid smell is a dead giveaway.

A camouflaged storm bashes through the jungle corridors, leaves explode, the insects tornado down hungrily. Our elephant arrives and wobbles to a halt. I feed it some nickel nuts. He wraps his muscular trunk around me and shoves me inside. Others are already stewing within, their mumbles faintly echoing the great rumbling stomach. Locals pick the best ribs to sit on. The rest of us grab onto slippery intestines, dangly nerve endings, and eachother. We fuse together as the swelter seals us.
We become a many-headed mass, a puzzle of poking bones and rounded drooping flesh. Coughed, sneezed, expectorated: waves of germs ripple out. Our breaths attempt to skip over them but the germs are patient and hang out, spreading slowly in the dense air.
The mass stumbles about as our elephant barrels and charges, and stops short.

Carne con Ojos - we are a big swaying lump of mottled meat with lucid liquid eyes poking out at the surface.
Every time we stop, I peek through as the entrance gapes and lets in a circle of outside information. A raw red halo surrounds each passenger as they enter. Beyond them, I can see the familiar landmarks confirming the uncomfortable distance to my destination.

At the first stop, I can see the Cooperative Trees in their neat rows, with their perfectly layered branches whereupon the dominant breed tends to their nests. Blue-jean birds, with their rubbery white feet and synthetic feathers. They are carrion birds and can pluck you bald if provoked. Gaggles of them get on the transport as other gaggles get off.

Then darkness and more barreling and charging. The powerful elephant covers incredible lengths of land this way. Then stomps to a halt again.

At the next stop, my ride's viscous maw slurps open to reveal the noxious Flower Fronts. Giant blooms, larger than our elephant, plop open their purple pink and puce petals to entice us with overwhelming odors of sweetness and distilled favors. Brightly confused hummingbirds sip at the forbidden drops before being sucked in by the slobbering sinuous stigma. Bloom-tenders hover about outside. This species dedicates itself to the flower: after a long morning ritual involving much licking by the stigma, the tenders apply petals to their sculpted bodies. But beware! One wrong-way touch of their shimmied velour outfits can end in grievous injury. Their footwear involves long heeled stinging thorns. Even their prattle is dangerous and can strip your bones before you know it. Only nectar zombies get off here.

Knowing my stop is next, I use deep jungle leeching techniques to move to the exit: I bite into the salty fleshy mass until my skin is released from mutuated suction. I have to repeat the process in the total obscurity until I reach the fetid pedestal by the out-hole.
Passengers are screaming to be let out, others groan from the depressurization bubbles that push, pop and squeeze through them. Little gasps of rotten banana and aged kaki fruit break out of the bubbles then dissipate.

"Faces" © Lilia Mazurkevich

Finally, my stop. I struggle with the others to separate my limbs from the general mass and dive out with the ejection cycle.
Steaming and jumbled, we pick ourselves up and apart. My skin prickles with habitual distaste as I witness the inevitable lump of random limb that sits congealing to the ground. Some poor sod is going to have to get a graft.

I gather up a deep breath of river pong. Even the black furry flies and tough corner crocodiles can't keep me from enjoying this. I know this river, this is my way, my territory. My friendly neighborhood stench. I dive in the thick waters and let my traumatized body float downstream as the glowing leaves above wash me with their cleansing songs of clorophyll and oxygen. Breathing deeper and stretching out of transport compression, I ignore the unidentified tangles of roots and eels that bump and nibble my fingers.

A foreign bird flits into my field of reverie and calls to me with clipped squawks. My neighbor. Ever-present. I can never tell whether she appreciates or loathes me. I've never seen her blink. I've never seen her ruffled.

I scramble up the banks, mud squelching between my toes. I stoop through the hole into my home, dripping all over the floor. My hair is pouring water down my legs, tantalizing and also slightly annoying. I should dry myself but first I must turn on the air conditioner quick. My skin prickles, but this time- with pleasure.
I flick on all the house lights, the answering machine, my computer, the t.v. and throw a meal into the microwave.
Hummm Sweet Home!

photo © idogu

Happy New Number 201102

2011-01-05T02:20:00.000-08:00

numerical alchemy
music of the spheres
yearly incantations of renewal

a looking glass year
as two jumps into the whole
and splits into ones
ones bounce off each other
and become impregnated with potential too

---
one winter to another
the purity and terrible beauty of life at a standstill
momentum lulled and colors buried deep
we wish you tenderness

---
one spring and another
eyes and leaves open and shut and finally...blooms exploding to seed
the wheel revs up, colors alight and stick to the surface
may you humm with fresh energies

---
one summer so another
the complicity of heat, sharing of fullness
the apex critical with buzzing, beings plump with desire
this wish is for us, you and us, somehow somewhere, celebrating and cerebrating and coeurelating together

---
one fall to the next
resuming movement, gaining speed and vision
the harvesting of mature dreams, the raking of old and faded ones
we wish you the strength and solace of understanding

one to one to one to one
to
two to one to one
to
two to one to two
to me and we and us and you

the dance of the cycles spirals on
may the flow be with you

Jerry’s Games

2010-12-12T02:12:00.000-08:00

“You’ll get square eyes” shouted Jerry’s mother from the kitchen. “Why don’t you turn that thing off and do something else?”

“There isn’t anything else!” screamed Jerry. Only four years old, but already he was back-talking like a teenager.

Thirty years later and Jerry was still hunched over a gaming screen. He tapped his square-rimmed glasses against the side of his head and chuckled as he remembered his mother’s warning. His slight smile faded as the game turned and he sighed thinking she should have worried more about his posture.

‘The hunchback’ was his nickname throughout most of the gaming parlors in Las Vegas. Jerry wasn’t really that hunched but it came to him automatically when he sat down to lose money. Or to ‘recycle paper’ as he called it in front of his daughter, Emily. Bright as desert dawn, the little 6 year old wasn’t fooled. But she appreciated his funny shame. Jerry’s wife, Linda, appreciated it much less.

Jerry’s favorite thing to do after a hard day of gambling, was to bring his daughter on a sunset roller-skating round of the neighborhood. His back would straighten as he would get up on his wheels, ‘2x2’s he called them, old-school skates. Emily preferred the more modern inline skates.

The first time they ever passed his childhood house, Jerry pointed it out. “That’s where Daddy grew up.” Emily scoped out the surroundings and as she wheeled around her father, she questioned him about his childhood: was this the street he played on? How many friends did he have? What were his favorite games?

“There is nothing else!” Jerry screamed. But in the silent absence of response from his mother, while she played her daily bridge game at the kitchen table, Jerry gazed blankly out the window at the boys who passed by on roller-skates. Jerry had no such friends. Only the children of his mom’s bridge partners who would sometimes come by. They would play silently side-by-side, destroying each other on the video screen.

It took Jerry all the courage he could muster to rent the skates at the roller rink. Eighteen years old, but with the longing of a four year old, Jerry took to the rink and closed his eyes. His back relaxed upwards and he wheeled, for hours. At first he just let his weight bring him forward, round and round the rink, but eventually the blaring Michael Jackson tunes woke him up and his feet started to weave in time.

“Isn’t it dangerous to skate with glasses on?”

Linda was sixteen and very sweet. She would have to wait another sixteen years before getting bitter.

“You been at it, haven’t you?” Linda began the tired old conversation like a ritual. Jerry had run out of all excuses and any explanations. He just looked at his wife, her exhausted face and clothes coated with waitressing and cleaning dreariness. He simply replied with his usual white flag: “I’ll make dinner.”

“You’ll end up losing more than just your games.” Linda was beginning to sound like a television public announcement. But Jerry couldn’t help it if he woke up every morning feeling luckier than the last, hungrier and impassioned for the potential fulfillment of a win. If he could only add another zero to his last big win. It was only a few months ago but odds were Lady Luck, or ‘Esmeralda’ as he thought of her, would release her little hunchback soon. All his years of praying silently would pay off and the big big win would allow him to do something else.

Jerry slouched into his seat at the Paris Las Vegas casino. He always avoided the high-rolling area around the ‘Salon des Tables’. He was superstitious about pretension. He wanted Esmeralda to notice him for his humility. He placed his bet and as his glasses slid down his nose, he heard the comforting finality of the croupier’s call: “Les jeux sont faits.”

Nothing more to do but wait.

When Jerry finally turned off his gaming console, he sat in the dark and listened to his mother’s friends babbling and clinking and shuffling. A cloud of mentholated smoke hung at the door. Feeling the emptiness growing around him, Jerry quickly turned on the television and stared.

“Well, this is something else,” thought the four-year old. “Isn’t it?”

All You Do Is Done To Be Undone...................... (a skip-rop)

2010-12-10T15:49:00.000-08:00

Es la hora
de devolver la
dignidad
a si, tierra

Hemos cogido y ahora escogimos
nuestro debido en la semilla
Olvidar antes de nacer
division, sumacion,
hem' crecido
mas grande
que
el nido
ahora volamos o callamos
desde las perspectivas
mas altas
los nuestros funden
y se confunden
desparecen
hasta
que en muchos
somos uno

y nuestra bola
si que mola
JODER
y tu, puto chulo
mordiente el culo
vete a la mierda
o hazte compost
pero con respeto
hombre
siempre con respeto

(respect to La Mala y Bebe)

Summer night's wish

2010-09-04T08:07:00.000-07:00

Last night I made a wish
a deep wish, with a roaring heart
and a face pressed against the night sky.

The stars were moving.

They fluttered and flashed shooting sharp red sparks
saudering the sky from point to point.
Planes connected the dots and
satellites held up giant webs to catch the constellations.

We, prisoners of a dark orb, count up the points.

Who is winning? Who is reveling in the bigger picture?
Who can draw an exact portrait of the vast night face from memory?
fugitive moments of oneness

The step from you to a star is simply a question of fusion.
Fuse-one, refuse none, all alone

As the giants dip out of sight and north becomes relative,
new stars rise over the horizon, riding red carpets,
lining our wishes with smoke-screened promises.

We are closer than ever to the stars and yet
they remain just as distant.

When we wake in the middle of the night,
what twinkles back our eyes, what hums the dozing song?
Images glimmer, smiles making money.
Windows reflect, transparency for our humility.
The doorway lets in love, random and true.
The roof remembers Pandora and sits tight.

Last night, I went out and watched the sky dance
as the dogs wailed an ode of yearning to the bony moon
and I hummed along to the crickets rubbing out a drone
to rub into our dreams.

Last night, I wished upon a plane.
And my heart and face and stars and gods
laughed and wept
until finally I slept.

THE ORTIST

2010-04-13T03:32:00.000-07:00

~~~image by Masha Vasilkovsky~~~

TIME: The Edge of the Last Fractal before the Next Bloom

PLACE: The Landspace Contimuum

1. Once upon a time, twice upon a time, thrice upon a time...that's six times upon a time now, henceforthwith dot.

2. The Landspace was lush, the time planes were synchronized to a gentle buzz with flurries of excentricity and inebriating odors.

3. There, was i me myself her she we us&them ours, not you yourself & they but you and all of us. you & me. flee. be. tree. 1, 2, 3. Ready steady go. No time is no time like space.

4. Four, knock on the door. The time of the Ortist has come. The digits show the way.

5. Messages from the stream. Order from chaos.

6. So the landspace goes under attack and riproarers bellow, beckon, behold. The Rhizome uproots, implodes, rises to reveal our connection.

7. Chaos to lyrical. Life teaches us to dance. Our teacher is the hub and the shuttle through the weave of our complex emotions. We follow her as she follows us. Our heads raised, faces upturned burnt by the sparks from our minds. Bodies spinning, intertwining.

8. At night the bird beeps mournfully, a faint heartbeat of our vitality as slumber whispers in our ears. Reassures our realities that they are not intentional programs but real and honest, and random, and destined, and parallel and unprecedented. Interconnected being.

9. The Promised Land is molded into our own flesh and blood.

~~~image by Masha Vasilkovsky~~~

26 year old has been painting for 52 years!

2010-04-01T08:16:00.000-07:00

David Goode Hill is now 26 but it looks like he has been painting for 52 years. His oil technique is as sophisticated as his understanding of light, depth, and beauty. Revealing the refreshed talent now thriving in the Tramuntana.

David was born in Valdemossa to an English mother and a father from Uruguay, and has squared his circle living and painting also in Deia, Soller and Barcelona.
At 13, he moved on from making murals in his bedroom, got on a skateboard and explored grafitti from Palma all the way to Uruguay.
At 16, David’s father gave him an oil set and off he went to study the basics for an art bachillerato at the Escola Superior de Disseny in Palma. But design’s hotflashes did not hold Hill’s attention like painting’s meditation did. He taught himself the secret to pictoral longevity and capturing light through oil painting.
From epic landscapes to psychographical portraits, from surreal adventures to minimalist impressions, David has already journeyed through a variety of genres and styles.

For the last three years, David has been delving into the investigation of mathematical phenomenas such as sacred geometry and crop circles. His current project involves creating a holomorphic fusion between painting and photography. An analytical allegory in the form of geometric drawings floating in the middle ground, like a spectral presence, emitting their own energy.

Rift into Spring

2010-04-01T02:54:00.000-07:00

"Force of Nature" by Qahira Lynn

To reveal my deepest darkest secret, i have to admit that -yes- it is to live forever, however much it frightens me. But only on the condition that i don't get bored.
Perhaps that is the purpose of death, to keep our eternal souls from getting bored.

I kept sensing something was coming. I dreamt about it. I saw it in other people's dreams. It was big. Bigger than my father's death. Wider than World War 2. And more invisible than the plague. Something we had to leap into to keep from getting crushed by it.
You can not see it. It is a looming shimmering wave of consciousness speeding towards us, flattening all who are not ready for it to pass right through us. A path lights up from infinity's starting line to infinity's restarting line. The pull of the soul is irresistible.

Call it death. Call it choosing life. Life eternal, instead of an endlessly ending end.
I do love this life, all the way to the tips of its frustrations. The struggles have stories and the stories sustain us from silence to silence. The gentle pulsing heart of the universe climaxes with each bloom and recedes into the depth of the falling.

We will leap together, we must, and trust in the innocent wisdom of our infant experience. Remembering the joy of rebirth. The desire unleashed for everything in this life. Stick those keys in my mouth and my fingers in the socket- i want to feel it all again. Being left alone to die. To hope and hope that one day that perfect life will come along, fill my heart with blessings and insinuate my memories with a craving for eternity. Wanting to want god. Wanting to want you forever and not wanting to want you. To have you, to be you, for you to be me, having me having you, having being....

The Show Must Go On

2010-03-01T05:05:00.000-08:00

The shape of my life as I sculpt it.

I tell you the truth over and over again and still
it bends over and back to lie at me.
Past promises have caught up to future hollows.
Will they be fulfilled?

I loved you, stranger, when you first kissed me-
leaping lightly out of the darkness, dancing a random jig of joys
but then... disappearing between smoke and mirrors.
The line crossed from honesty to cruelty is where we play out
our blindfolded hourglass juggling act, catching and releasing
who I wanted to be and who you could have become.

You were calling it love
but i called it fascination
and so, we called it mutual.
You called it hope
i called it hopeless
so we called it love again.
You called it freedom
but i called it sacrifice
so we became territorial.
You called it family
I called it community
so we didn't know what to call him,
for a whole month.

Roots making me restless to find out what it all means,
to everyone, from everywhere.
What's around the corner? What's over the edge? How much can i bear?
You pulled out the chainsaw to help free me.
I dropped some seeds to anchor myself to the future.

I have finally found something to do while they grow.
Keeps me from standing there, from getting cut down.

I ride a unicycle in the show. The greatest show on earth.
On this unicycle, my wheels are made of razor blades and my spokes flicker and speak:
"Love > understanding > communication > contact > stutterings > silence > observation > suspicion > accusations > resentment > hate > denial > anger > guilt > compassion > empathy > realization > love..." and so forth.
I ride on a tight rope, and arrows come flying at me, rebounding off my skin and spokes. I am also made to sing to the melody of a violin missing strings. The squirrel monkey that hides in my hat holds on tight to my hair the whole time. Flaming hoops swoop down & across my well-timed path. I wheel through, towards a lion who awaits his dinner that has been tenderized by arrows and slightly roasted by hoops. As I leap from my cycle, I raise my wooden sword to parry the ninja acrobat sushi chefs flipping out from their cloud-bourne trapezes. The lion reaches out with maw and paw and I must quickly learn to fly if I'm to survive for the next show.
- Little monkey pulls the curtain-
Every night I beg silently: Please don't ask for an encore. My heart teeters and my ego slinks down a sharp thread as the applause dwindles.

My life is shaped by the lights I shine on it, entrust to my synapses and transit through perception. A bio-dynamic hologram emitted from the spinning diamond of my soul.
So, why manifest? Why use a time-line at all?
Being requires an improvised story weaving into other stories to manifest the sheer joy of experiencing the full capacity of the source. Does thinking make this carpet magic or am I just romanticizing our dusty destinies.
If, and, or, but- conjunctions of reason leading me to folly.
What if the shape of my life ressembled chaos?
And what if the shape of our love could ressemble the peaceful patterning of that chaos into a harmonious resonance, echoing across creation, arcing the light softly smoothly
around the universe, sparking soul fires in an infinite dark void crawling with possibilities.

(take the r out of boring)

2010-01-31T09:38:00.000-08:00

A Russian absurdist performance piece collaboration between distant & recent past versions of me.

Sybil still had her coat on as she lounged on the humid bed to write. The lice in her head were numerous but something new was chewing on her.
"Hello? Who's that in my head?" she wrote, surprised to witness her hand respond.
"Why, it's me. Sub-text. The writer's companion. I will be your assistant, noting and commenting on everything you experience."
"Ah." she sort of exclaimed, (but what she really meant was "And whyyy would I want you around?")
"I can deepen your meaning."
"Oh." (Though what she thought was: "But...I am therefore I mean.")
"I think you´ll find that in writing: you mean therefore you are."
Sybil was flustered as much as a russian immigrant can be and, biding for time, she wrote down Sub-text's comment while trying to figure out another nickname- Subti? Texty? S-T? STD? yesss, STD. Sub-Text Discourse. Sybil was also trying to figure out whether or not she really wanted a narrator to hitch onto her implicit life. Or was she simply afraid to know thyself? She could hear STD cracking up. Sybil got to her feet and whilst wondering where sub-text began and she ended, she decided on a test.
"So, are you capable of helping me out with this humor thing?" (What she really meant was: "Can you give me what i want?"
"I can only do post-treatment. Reflection. Digestion. Afterthoughts. Etc. With maybe just a hint of anticipated double-entendre, if you know what YOU mean...that is."
"Figures..is there anyone else in there who can give me a hand? My funny side, maybe? A gag writer lurking in the wings?"
There was a long pause. STD reflected that Sybil could hear her uncle Sadge having a coughing fit next door. Unable to find a remedy over these past few months, she just wished he would be quiet.
Hard to be funny when you're trying to keep control.
"That's a start! Enough with linear reflection." Sybil changed tack and reached for the old radio, turning up that old song to the maximum static threshold:

It's all about timing (teeda).
It's all about giiiiraffes.
It's all about jews and the bush,
blondes and the tush. (Tada dada dada DA!)
It's all about... idiosynchrosy (teeda).
It's all about falling so low
that the hit makes the punchline
bring home the shame to you,
but ob-ject-ivity makes for
levity
'cause sooner or later
you'll get hit with tomato
and the fool who'll be singing iiiiz you!

While STD was concerned about what was going on, trying to get a handle on Sybil, she was off to make sure Grandpa peed in the right spot. Any and every moment was ripe with humorous potential but our long lives give our innocent joys an improper mangling. Sybil didn't feel like giggling at Grandpa's forgetfulness- today the plant pots, tomorrow the umbrella holder. She had sub-text on her mind, and this STD was back on track, paralleling and countering all her rapid switchbacks.
But then STD flinched. Sybil was reaching for a poem... oh no! not a poem!! Sub-texts don't know what to do with poems. THOSE intercourses just lead to a squash-ball game in a hall of mirrors!

Sybil knew she had got STD into a corner. So she swallowed the poem and ran off down the stairs, jumped on to her bicycle and rode with the flowing night air. STD was worried, fading, awash with the shallow current, the present reduced to an all-encompassing bubble of time. It's all about timing. If there is no later than now, then who needs sub-text. (Unless you're lloking for sex, of course!)
Sybil rode and began to rave out strong & loud to get the pretext to initialize instantanealism with the mutter of the beckoning rhythm and the sacred incantation of the poem:
(take R out of boring)
(take the R OUT of BORING)
(TAKE the R OUT of BOrING)

Ahhhh, the froggy smells of spring spring to my nose like welcome doglicks lapping through an avalanche repose. Ohhhh, the blinking carlights light up their turning flanks like anxious children tugging at their parent's pants.
The seasons and streets alternate pulses pulsing nervous air like red and blue blood chilling heat flashes thru my hair.
The well-adjusted street clocks mark marks in my bicycle's belt as the wheels reel past tttttick-tocks bouncing off the cobblestone's pelt.
Gingerbread regurgitations rise forth frothing tasty bubbles into my low-hanging raving sleepless mouth starving for a jam-colored pillow.

And so it was that STD subsided, disgusted. And so it was that Sybil did not know what to think anymore, and felt at peace. Chaos. She had found the vaccination for her new fever. Yet a little voice could be heard whispering into the fractals of her mind:
"And so, what did you mean, anyway?"
STD had a little weapon of its own, doubt. And so it was that Sybil's bicycle veered off course, and she found herself plopped into a pile of droppings. One of the old poos cleared its' throat and declared: 'Sometimes, you have to laugh to keep from crying.'

(poem written in 1995, piece written Feb.1 2010)

New York to Mallorc’

2010-01-20T03:16:00.000-08:00

An Immigrant's Journal
(aka: Freedom Takes Discipline)

Eve escaped New York when they began the fear experiments during the gULF wAR under the regime of bUSH the fIRST. They continued the horror movie under bUSH the sECOND, after a brief cLINTON commercial break. And Eve swore to not touch American soil until it was purified by the tears of remembrance for a dream of peace, fredom and happiness for ALL. But the newest suffering of veterans and distant victims made their tears the blinding kind. What you can’t see, you won’t believe but Eve had seen enough to break her faith and her pride for the U.S. of A.

Eve used to love her country of birth. She even contemplated enlisting in the National Reserve Guards at some point but her peace-love side revised the thought and came up with joining the Natural Reserves Guardians. She applied and received a post at Bryce Canyon in Utah. But Eve was a red-head and often changing her destiny as an experiment, she ended up giving into her teenhood ambitions and went to art school.

Nothingness. The moment between hits and highs. Eveything is okay, not great but not terrible either. Just another Limbo Bimbo.

Eve burned an amber-scented candle in her room. The cats outside were in rut, scrowling in the shadows. Winter seemed tired, drained of sharpness, and Spring was not ready. Is this living between climates changing neutralizing our torments into insipid grey streams of half-breathed air?

Eve observed the human-shaped dinosaurs and decided she was not going to let herself let them. In whatever way she could expose their selfish ambitions, she would graffiti, curse, commentate, share her rage at the constant wasting of her new-loved land. She would not let it happen again. She saw it happening. Was it too late?

Mallorca was a resourceful Mediterranean island full of peasants and seething with a cornucopia of seasonal celebrations. Mallorcans were self-sufficient as island folk can be: joyous/hot-blooded/hard-headed as the occasion requires. But then came the cold grim tourist.
Full of burdens to unload.
Uptightness. Low pay. High inflation. Rain year-round. Trip to the woolied sheep and verdant hills once a spring-time. Then grind, grind, grind. For what? Paper clips, an appropriate tie, four disconnected kids to care for.
Here everyone could play out their posh fantasies: Daddy got to play cards and drink in the afternoon. Mommy got to swim 15 laps and get a manicure in before souvenir shopping. And the Snots were untouchables, keeping the hotel crew running for their meager seasonal pay. So the grim tourists fell in love and brought their grim existences to the island of the goddess.

Like a woman, this land is a treasure chest of hidden surprises and rich promises. A tour around the island takes a few hours but knowing it takes a lifetime. Lady Mallorca is fat and full of heart and strings and horns. The Tramuntana range rears up as a warning to not try to ride this cow. Just pay for her to go to pasture and mate. Once her babies have drunken her sacred nectar then, maybe, she’ll start to negotiate the leftover milk with you.

Eve has let on too much already. Stop. Don’t come. She wants to be the last immigrant. She wants to keep it whole in honor of that dream childhood that was wild and time was free and all were awed by the extreme demanding beauty of the land. As a girl, Eve mistook that particular dimension for the whole reality show. She was sure everyone in the world was Mallorcan, or at least wanted and strived to be such. But, no, it was not the way out there. She yearned and prayed and manoeuvered to return for good.
Finally, at the chi-filled age of 31, she did. And never looked back.

Mallorca is hard as the omnipresent grey-white-red rock that has helped build thousands or even a few million terrace walls. Stepping across the terraces are the vegetated feet of the gods. Sweat from these awesome stalkers is called olive oil as in “O, live!” The locals call it the elixir of life. They live old here.
But locals they are not. Being local is their becoming. Most of all Mallorcans are ship-wrecked, treasure-seeking, situation-thrust aliens. Their ‘spanish origins’ range from historical immigrants from the south of Spain all the way to northern Catalunya. Then there are the jews on the run from the inquisition, to Moor babies turning more Mallorcan with every passing generation, to pirate spawn surviving on the fast and low trade of thieving forgotten treasures. Later came the French orange and perfume traders, the German and Swedish luxury refugees laying low in cheaper luxuries, and the English numbing the safe grounds. Meanwhile, the Russians are sniffing out the fresh prey, the Chinese suction-cup web expands within, and the Americans are ready to regulate while the Belgians buy out land for Saudi investors.
Mallorca is gorging on homo-diversity and the rampant artists are sucking honey straight from the royal antechamber of Europe.

Eve has got lice. Since fucking August. That was one of the worst months of her good life. The heat was penetrating. The whole other side of the family was everywhere in the house. The lovely young ones galvanized the elders into healthy outdoor activity but there was that deep gagging cough that was going chronic. And there was the show to put on: loads of artists- all women, all amateurs, all accomplished.
The morning of the show, he strangled Eve twice by mistake.
They hear arguments like this every Sunday across the orange grove when the taxi driver stays home. Him, the obese son, the very unhappy wife and the elegant big black & thin dog shout, scream, bellow and bark for care and attention.
Now that she lives here, she has come to dread August. Now, she understands why her father dreaded them. On top of working and having the family visits, August was the only time of year when things were really hopping. Parties, events, beach clubbing, dinners, reunions, hangovers and stoned resolutions to change the world again.
Meanwhile, they all grew up and grew old. They became legend, another row on the millenary olive terraces, while a new growth gets their chance in the sun.

Mallorca takes her time to choose you even after you’ve fully embraced her. Ten years is considered an adequate trial period. Meanwhile, the homework of your immigrant children is in Catalan, they speak Mallorcan and you realize that slowly you have managed to learn the three requisite languages of the area, including Castellano (calling it ‘Spanish’ would be considered an insult.) This is how it works over the years: you see each other at the market, at the playground, the shops, during the annual village fairs, at church on Easter and dancing with the devils on St. Anthony’s day. You lose a dog- meet and speak to more ‘locals’, travel hidden paths, learn the philosophy of the work horse. You stroll with your baby- advice and wistfulness flow from the older ladies. You walk into the mechanic’s shop- no one stops to attend you. One year later, with your first baby steps in Catalan, you come back in, holler “Uep!” and all heads shed their “what-do-you-want-and-let’s-see-you-try-to-get-it” masks. The treasure chest loosens its locks. Doorways became entryways to multi-leveled worlds.
Mallorca decides on you when she feels you are ready.

So, what was Eve going to do about the wasting of Mallorca and what right did she have anyway to try and do so?
Walk more. Talk more Catalan. Drink orange juice everyday from the trees on her property. Distribute the rest. Release the healing and all-worshipping images of her deceased father. March. Inform and get informed. Flush her toilet less. Boycott the megacorps taking over the mami and papi shops. Befriend the critical.
Exchange: knowledge, art, car motors, ski trips, a crib, some shutters painted. Everything is on the table in this land of illegal need and plenty. The garbageman is now the mayor, and will probably retire with his cokebag nice and full. The medecine merchant has his nicotine patches. The doctor grows his own herb. The policeman is coming off a night on ecstasy, but willing and able to solder cementary stones for poor artists. But the insurance agent isn’t going anywhere, his wife has moored him to the dining room table. Someone knows where the kids are and everyone else is busy dancing.

“Paradise if you can stand it.” Commented Gertrude Stein when she visited.

“Haven’t you got old eyes?”

2010-01-04T13:09:00.000-08:00

Here and there, 1984-2004
I wanted to see more. And clearer, and further.
To see without my glasses preciously placing a frame on every moment. Or else preciously getting crunched under greater weights like my car wheels or even under my own shoes.
To see without poking my eyes out every morning, placing in lenses that made me feel like I was placing acid tabs on my eyeballs- everything everywhere always in too much detail. But a visual orgy with eye condoms is a lonely act of perception. I wanted to see naturally, without filters.
To pass acquaintances in the street and acknowledge their names, rather than answering a surprised and muffled “oh, yeah, HI…um..” to their distant familiarity. Shyness and stutters masking my myopia.
I kept losing my little brothers at the beach among the multitudes of blurry human forms. I wanted to have my own child and see that child, no matter the distance, no matter the crowd. I was ready to cut myself at the risk of going blind, so that I could see, maybe, that child. A small risk and yet it seems greater when you willingly place yourself in harm’s way. And laser! How could slicing open your eyeballs be safe? Isn’t that the image that haunts all self-respecting surrealists? Well, the statistics and testimonials were convincing, so, like childbirth, if so many had done it before me, why couldn’t I?
To see, that was the answer.

Barcelona, Winter 2004
The first clinic could easily have been a failed teleport station with its lonely modern furniture, fraying from cheapness. The long strips of swivel-closed beige blinds enhanced the sensation of floating through space. Wan tunes wafted fuzzily from somewhere else that was also empty. And deep inside a dark room within the mushroom-shaped building, a sweating accountant tried to toggle the jammed knobs, desperate to send the next client into the next century. The secretary kept looking and smiling at me- not a good sign. Shouldn’t she be otherwise occupied with obscure tasks? There was nothing much to look at after a while and I was losing my motivation.
This was not where I wanted to experience my visionary renaissance but I stuck with it, as one does when committing blindly to finding out the proverbial light within the darkness.
“How many people have you operated?”
“What are the dangers?”
“How long does the operation last?”
“How long do the new eyes work for?”
“Have you ever been sued?”
Oops, poor red-faced chap. One question too many. The wrong one to ask in Europe. The indignant eye-surgeon did not answer my question. “Either you trust me or I can’t operate on you.” Phew: relieved of the sales pressure. Start over.

I finally found a place that conveyed to me the promise of skill and the best choice of intentions. There was beautiful original paintings all over their modernist office walls. Dark wood wall panels and deep green carpeting muted the crisp bustle of the clinic. And the leather-clad waiting rooms were clean, well-stocked with entertainment and packed with people. I was seen on time and all my questions were attended to. I was examined, tested and approved.
Okay. Before christmas. Let’s do it.

My bigger little brother brought me to the grand hospital on the hill. He was to be my guide on the return trip. Balty is younger, but it was his usual princely poise that made me get stoic. I smiled as I left him and faced the operating room of five professionals all there for my eyes only.
The rest of my body faded away from consciousness as they isolated my eyes. ‘Clockwork Orange’ clamps were applied. Machines whirring and spinning around the periphery of my sight. An injection in the eyeball. Eyeball anesthetized and immobilized.
One machine purrs as it slices a hatch around my cornea. Everything goes blurry as the flap is lifted. Okay, okay, breathe. Good, I can’t feel a thing. The laser comes in at an angle, soft red. IS THAT SMOKE COMING FROM MY EYE?
Buñuel, eat your eyes out! I am the living future of your surreal dream come true! Grandmother! I will avenge your blindness and leap out from the darkness, with eyes fuming!
Flap down. Next eye. Slice, flap, laser, smoke, flap.
My intricate body machinery being tuned and soldered. God forbid they mess with the hardwiring- mistakenly wiping out my childhood dreams. 10 minutes later: eyes bandaged and I’m out. My brother laughs nervously. I must have looked fly-eyed and Oedipal. Adrenalized, triumphant but somehow… wrong. We come from a family of vision worshippers. Does he think me strange to do such a horrific thing to myself?
Balty takes me on his arm through the subway. Smells are promoted to the forefront of my senses. I am practicing being blind, just in case. The smell of urine means a wall. The smell of newspaper means a person. The smell of chewing gum and rats means the traintracks. The gust of wind means the subway is arriving: step back.
Half an hour later and home, my bandages are off. I can see. Perfectly. God, my apartment is dirty. Naturally. Thanks to microbots, seeing naturally. This seeing is just as good as the first day of the rest of my life. No one will escape me now. Not even me. I have no more excuses to be anti-social, drive badly or live dirty. Balty looks relieved the potential drama was not played out. The answer has been answered and the suspense is over.

When I go to my check-up later that week, I can see all the paintings in glorious detail. The effect is like that of a reunion with long-lost loved ones. It is possible to love again as before, to be close even from far because I can see every excruciatingly wondrous detail of life painted into matter, just sitting across the room, spying on all my brain desires.
They give me a video tape of the procedure which to this day I have not looked at. What a peculiar parting gift for my vulnerable new eyes. They work. That is all that matters to me. I wouldn’t have minded if they operated on me with chopsticks; as long as the science works, my trust remains whole with the world. Before, we saw and we conquered. Now, we are made to see and we are conquered. Enlivened by energy.

Mallorca, 2010
A curious coda: my three year-old son insists on changing my eyes every morning. Something he picked up after seeing the movie “Wall-E” where a robot replaces his own broken parts. I happily accept the daily eyes and really do see better after I am reminded that I have a child to look at and to look after. What I envisioned has come to be.

Post-face
How much further beyond the event-horizon can we truly see if we are willing to take the risk of reviewing ourselves? How are we surviving in a present that knows so much about the past? How can we get to the now with such a weight as the then? Reviewing my current present, just where CAN I see myself ending up?

I can see myself, surrounded by a thousand lasers, carving into me, refashioning me into a glowing smoking sculpture of my former self- changing my nature, burning away my discomfort, placing me in the garden of lights.
Beyond form, there is intensity. And beyond intensity, there is impulse.
I think you will find me there, my heart beating out a regular stone-wave of ultraviolet flashes reverberating amongst the vibrant jasmine and the glowing coconuts of the disco in the night jungle. Other ecstatic wave-forms dance beside me beneath the chaotic skies.
And you, in what future can you see yourself appearing ?

Treez pleez! Ain't just money growing.

2009-08-29T08:19:00.000-07:00

THE PRICE WE NOW HAVE TO PAY to watch the moon and stars

is measured by the parking meter at the recycling center.
Our cancerous politics have the trees to their knees.
Nest eggs, lightning, roaring winds,
buzzzzzz, hurt, ROARRRRRR!
(wait, wait, pant, pant, wait....Now!)
I would tell you what i really thought of you if i was sure we would end up in bed- sheets of money and licorice pillowcases. But i know we'll be wiping each other's asses soon enough with grand-daddy trees. Saplings grow to urinate against. So i'll wait it out and wake up with everyone to watch the fiercest dawns coming with a yearning unspeakable

On the forgiveness of violence

2008-12-24T16:12:00.000-08:00

forGiveness should be the last resort, not violence. violence should not be a resort, it should be a horrible, twisted, decadent thing that should be avoided at all costs. and yet it is here, it exists on all levels - physical, mental, spiritual, societal, global - operating in self-rationalizing systems. like addiction. and like an addiction, it requires maintenance. lower the stress by letting it out, letting it in. but we must let it go through without letting it cut us too much. and forgive it as it runs away, to hide under a big heavy rock, or a book, or a whisper that is heard by the desperate.
in forgiveness, lies the action. in violence, lies the stillness of the aftermath- the reckoning reaction.
i fOrgive, i forget but i will recognize you if you resurface. the curse is binding unto it's own aptitude for self-destruction. violence is worse than a fire that can't be put out. it burns not only through matter, but also through human history and earth history ( not sure yet if they are completely integratable histories though my mind is not broad enough to see the inter-workings of our cosmic web of atom-weaving.) So through time would this fire burst an ozone whole through our souls. forgiveness mends with an enlightened thread - healing and renewal.
my soUl asked me: are you feeling good? happy?
i honestly answered: so-so.
soon i hope to say: so so good.
and forget to remember, though i coulD if i had to.

like the hole

2008-11-14T12:19:00.000-08:00

when the bee and me
fall from grace
the flowers lose their face
and i just make dough
french style
sour and pungent
enticing plumes to
solidify ceramic
in the belly
scrape me scrape me
pollinate and mate me
life is never ending

Our Emerging Being & the Fearlessful Soul

2007-05-04T11:29:00.000-07:00

Like cells mytosing, we humans are evolving into a greater organism of our very own.

Giant leaps... leaping from societies of fire into a global dynamic powered by electricity... leaping from abstract fresh baby through to wise old person... leaping from the earth to the stars.

How does it happen?

Consciousness fitting into new molds. Leaps of faith or of understanding or both? Or more? Quantum leaps? Nutritional leaps? Neuronal leaps?

We will come to peace when we know what part of the organism we are a part of and essential to.

We will start to be full of care when we realize our health depends on the whole health, the bigger health.

We will take responsibility for the energies we attract and presence we project.

Different religions may actually be a fight for directions to define what mold the emergent being will seek.
The changing momentum of emergence, like labor pains in birth, are heralded throughout religious history:
Some call it (almost sexually): the second coming.
Some imagine themselves reborn onto giant lilypads, dining upon grapes under starlit women.
Some see a spiral of reincarnating beings trying to evolve to higher selves.
Others see an apocalypse of humanity (though it has never been clear whether it includes all living beings.)
Some see zillions of personalized paradises.
Some see a single pulsing white-hot sea of love.
Some see a reunion with all their riches & properties forever theirs.
Others see transcendence from physical materialism into sheer spiritual ismlessism.
The battle is on and the competition is fierce, hungry for adherent souls.

The whole quest may be moot-
It is a distraction from the only reality proven to us all:
the breath of now, now and now again and again now...
For me, the real question and answer remain here on earth, now in this life.
How do you want to live now? Do you want to survive amidst violent pollution?
Or do you want live within simple love & pure joy?
What are you going to do to get there?

Daily tips:
- Fear neither others nor yourself. Resonate and elevate.
- Watch where your bullshit is leading people, or better yet: where it is leading you (mosquito bureaucrats spreading viruses thru fly-shit paper for power pushers.)
- As Annie Sprinkle says: Breathe. Say yes to bliss. Ask where are our monuments to happiness.
- Act responsibly towards all life, enjoy the harvest of the cycles we ride, the waves we surf and the tides we create.

I think we get the picture now. We are getting far too numerous and divided to continue as such, we must orgasm as one to create a fully activated & empowered world being.

Why do birds migrate? (why fly?)

2005-07-10T02:26:00.000-07:00

BECAUSE IT IS A GREAT WAY TO LIVE!
A true higher conscious experience of life, so removed from our destructive stasis of defection from the mud (which is where we really emerged from dust to dust, and water to mud, and light to clay, time to movement and space to play.)

Imagine flying...first of all. Whoever invented that finally got it right. Ask the angels. Ask the flies.
Then imagine flying over the whole world, hugging the terrain yet keeping far enough away to simply be cradled by the whispers and long flows of the wind.
Then, on top of it all, you CAN land and walk around, pecking at juicy exotic bugs, feasting on the ripening of fruits, and you CAN also float and feel the sea bucking, picking up fresh sushi from the freshest and most remote spawns, lakes and tributaries.

The cream of this traveling existence from gooder to goodest comes with the finding of the old familiar neighborhood of the ancestors, finding the tree branch or nook to build a cozy nest, and it's hump, hump, lay an egg. Then it all starts over again!

Why do cranes migrate? Pffff, what a question!

The Enlivening Art of Laetitia Bermejo

2004-11-30T08:22:00.000-08:00

Laetitia Bermejo Castelnau is an electron dancing on the provocative edge of the atom. Bermejo has a talent for loosening taut nerves that constrain judgment, and allowing for laughter to enter the equation. Personal visions result, as waves of pigmented colors and descriptive intensities radiate from her artwork to tickle our neurons. As viewers and thinkers, suddenly, we feel more alive.

Laetitia Bermejo’s work is a growing organism- part mineral, part vegetal, part animal- whose leaves and limbs are all equally nutritious. Her visual production ranges from painting to assemblage to travel journals to installations. Her hands-on experience with her subject is tangible to the eye- you can feel the original impulse morsing through, her representation still attached to its roots and growing into our heads.
And there you are, turning and returning, to see what Laetitia has seen, to feel what she has felt, and to breathe free for that moment, savoring the ambiance- that perception for you from you sinaesthized through the filters of Laetitia´s extraordinary extrapolation mechanism. Parts moving independently. Her mind discovers fresh shapes from used ones. Her hands transcribe anew the mental imprint of a much-visited global reality. Her fingers massage our eyes and thoughts as they work their universal significations. And so begins our journey into this artist’s realm.

For many years, Laetitia Bermejo has painted the wild and willing figures she met and knew in many places around the world. She trained, swam and flew, bringing her pen and blank book along. She has sat and walked and drew, her life as a poem with her paintings as her song.
But one day, the music died down, as did many beings around her, retreating into the shadows as the colors drained from the world, and the painting stopped. While warlords fought over humanitarian aid, Laetitia picked through the reminders of her life, and of life in general, and she came across object-events and the threading of synchronicities. And so, she began sewing the pieces together: assorted stone hearts woven into a mandala, the real glamour Barbie from Chile refrocked as the imagined (though much too real) Mujaheddin Barbie, sheep bones dug-up sewn into the skeleton of a new christ incarnation. The ironic as irritant, humor as a punctum.
Piercing through the darkness of the newspapers, Laetitia Bermejo salvages glimmers of meaning. Why transcribe a sad situation? So as not to ignore it. So as to reconsider it. Why paint a joyful moment? So as to remember that feeling. So as to enjoy it again even if you were not there. Laetitia is an observer and a provider in this cycle of life and art. Sometimes she sketches the basics of a moment to expand it later upon canvas and sometimes she just observes a situation until she can’t take it in any longer then goes to work. Capturing the imprint, retranslating it without the mundane details, and reworking it until the expressivity convinces her hypercritical eye. And then, it is yours to plant, water and watch. A fertile emotional intelligence downloading its silent action, leaping out into our passive observations and stirring us up.

My imagination appreciates being invited into such full moon paintings- where the whole neighborhood is dancing, cheek to cheek, junkie to drunkard, mama to papa and all the habibis running naked through the woods, howling alongside unladen women. And my intelligence enjoys the freedom of the morning-after, awakening to such sun-drenched assemblages- where the hangover of opinion tans to the sound of a soothing but irrefutable dripping of glass, where the superiority of judgment is squeezed into an equality of questioning as our earth dries up and Bermejo throws in her juice.

And while Laetitia Bermejo´s paintings flicker and giggle, her bones hum. And the song returns- qué vive.

TO DISCOVER MORE & START TO FEEL EVEN GOODER THAN BEFORE, CLICK HERE

From the State that Brought You Ronald Reagan and the Beachboys, Now Comes a Whole New Kind of Rock'n'Roll

1994-01-26T12:45:00.000-08:00

Valencia, CA.

We just had another tremor. I was waiting in line when a total stranger clutched on to my arm. I was about to confront the person when I felt my legs dance from a completely different order, not originating from my brain. Then all was back to normal, we smiled at eachother and kept waiting. It has become commonplace to have the earth turn liquid on us, just as liquid turns solid with cold.
A week and a half have passed since the 6.6 earthquake of Jan.17. Our school is located right on this previously unknown fault line. The epicenter was 10 miles away, in Northridge, where three-story buildings became one-story, parking lots folded, gas mains broke causing block fires, a whole university was condemned, thousands became instantly homeless from house damage and fear. 2,000 aftershocks registering 2.5 or more have been recorded. The earth has tried to shake us fleas off but we have held on and now mutated back into ants, we have almost resumed life to normal- clearing freeways and providing water at amazing speed. About 50 people died during the earthquake. Others live stronger.
Sleeping in my pick-up truck last night (which has suddenly become the envy of many), I woke up to what sounded like an underground implosion- >>FWAH-BOOM<< from the earth- I woke up afterwards but had a lucid retroactive memory of it. Kept looking out my windows for a gas fire between moments of sleep.
My institute has yellow police-ribbons going all around it as though a big bandage keeping it together. It is "red-tagged" for the moment. No one can go in until the city says o.k. and the school president says o.k. and the provost says o.k. and our dean says o.k. And with each aftershock over 3.3, the whole school has to be checked all over again and then o.k.s, etc.
Two dorms are condemned- they moved a foot off their foundations- very drafty. More homeless. Porta-toilets provide resolution for tight-leggers who don't want to run off into the sparse woods. A tent city has been established as our new campus. Still no gas and water and the coldest weather of the year and rain and no mail. But we are alive, even the two iguanas belonging to Jill from downstairs. (They were very very stiff and unamused when they were finally found, clutching to the corner of the ceiling.) Nerves are still taut, chairs are knocked over at the slightest shake, muscles are sore from tension, conversation is distracted by thoughts of ceilings falling.
People testify about the earthquake any chance they get, hoping to rid themselves of the experience by spilling it out their mouths. Most were asleep at the time but no one remained that way. Some thought this was their time to go, some got under chairs for a moment of safety-training insight, others thought they were being attacked and beat up, one girl was certain she was on a boat in a storm as a glass of water poured over her, and three different people have spoken about how they believed they were being possessed- Meholtchick thought the same and when it was all over he asked his roommate whether it was him or the room that had been possessed. One girl got spliced by falling glass, in her painting studio, and dragged herself out of the building, naked and bleeding, then fainted outside. She returned to Canada. Michael went back to England. Lourdes back to Mexico. Laoora back to Iceland. And others back to Germany and the East coast. Withdrawal rate has gotten to 25% so far. School will be extended by two weeks and will take place in rented and donated places around Santa Clarita valley and Los Angeles. The president of the school, Steven Levine, even talked of relocating our entire school, this semester, to the Lockhead Missile base, which would give us a cafeteria of 10,000 sq.ft. and a fabulous security system. In case you have thought of renting this place at some future date, it costs $250,000 a month though they might give it to us for $125,000/mo. And they say there will be no tuition hike! They didn't get any earthquake insurance because of the small deductible= ten million dollars. One generous parent has helped with a $10,000 donation which will help in keeping this private institution greased for the lengthy and costly work ahead- they are talking of tearing down and rebuilding damaged foundation walls.
I just had a class in a storefront, which made our discussion on consumerism take on a ghostly shadow of the whole situation where education becomes a product rather than a process (many people are withdrawing because they don't feel they will get their money's worth- very valid but relative.) Luckily, this shake-up has brought us ALL, students-staff-and faculty, to the same level: smelly, cold, and clueless. Resourcefulness and improvisation have reclaimed the importance they should have in every day life. Maybe that is why the lecture seemed so much more engaging.
Because I did not experience the most severe earthquake (I was long-weekending it in San Diego), I may perhaps be feeling survivor's guilt and I have consequently had a very impressive dream that has brought my mental faculties to a state of empathy:
[ In a green and misty land, much as I imagine Ireland to be, I was having breakfast in a country-style diner. I was with several friends in this crowded place, all obviously unable to eat at home because of the ravages of the earthquake. The diner was on a small cliff, perched over calm grey waters. It was located at the end of a rolling stretch of lawn and in between several hovering barn and silo structures.
Once in a while as we were eating, somebody would say "What was that?" We would freeze, hear nothing and continue eating. The tremors grew a bit then dissipated. But my nerves synapsed harder each time and I excused myself for air. Once outside, a thunderous earthquake began. I knew I would be crushed under the shoddy thin-walled barn if I didn't get out of my spot. The earth continued to pitch and I realized I could only move from the petrifying centri-gravital force if I moved in the same disorganized fashion as the shakes. I had to get 'in tune' with nature. Once I was out of danger from being collapsed upon, I then realized that the earth was cracking open all around. Again I had to dance the quirky earthworm to remain on the few integral islands of land. The earth kept on shifting and I looked in all directions and recognized that my relative position was safe, then it all stopped.
People shuffled out, zombie-eyed, from the diner. I asked my friends if they paid the bill and was a bit annoyed when they said no. They requested that we leave away from there, maybe over to Antartica, and off we went.]
Why don't we act upon our dreams? What if they are they indicating resolutions to our fears or intuiting the future? Well... people argue there is natural danger everywhere: some freeze for months, others die of thirst or flood, fires lick the land clean and winds coat it with disarray. Though sometimes it seems like Los Angeles submits to all of these and more (are riots natural outbursts?), our greatest disaster takes only 30 seconds of our time- talk about instant gratification- and then we are left with nothing. None of this nonsense of endless days of cold stripping away our defences, or of water inching up the walls, or of wind battering at the door. It might wake us early some days, like 4:31 am, but at least it's an efficient monster and makes its point quickly. Though some of us are still waiting for the punchline.

May this new year of 1994 prove to be as peaceful as it has proven to be exciting. The balance already seems to exist in nature, it is up to humans to fit in. It seems the only real control we have is self-control.