Friday, May 29, 2009
Living with 100 year old parents.
Sitting once again on this foreign bed at my parents place, may as well be foreign exchange. Moisture is building in all my crevices, it's gonna be a hot one today. Obsessing about the future, so afraid to make a mistake I can't seem to take a step, like climbing down a cliff side, one faulty move might send me toppling downward. Here I am, under the impression that I've been very good and very right, taking in the separate but equal versions regarding the course of life from everyone I've met, and trying to find the sweet spot where they all collide with my own cliff side trail. Being a creative person in an archaic world tends to create massive clouds of confusion and demoralization, but, historically, this is nothing new, and the beautiful minds that burst through the barriers so that I have the opportunity to complain so openly have surely faced greater obsticles. Thank you, my angels, for bearing the burden. I try desperately, in my moderate way, to walk in your footsteps and continue to blaze. From here, looking out to sea, it's a long way up and a long way down.
Monday, May 25, 2009
The Mission
It's cold
As cold as it gets on these wet streets
feces decaying in front of murals rain washing
the refuse of the unforgiven into sewers marked by stecils of dolphins
Heels click click hurried past spanish swearing
stopping only to admire a feathered cap
in the translucent mirror of a cell phone store.
The bar is a safe house
We drink and laugh and tell dirty jokes
the bartender yells the price with a wink
a good deal tonight
We chit chat and booty shake and talk shit
about the people we're texting,
easier this way,
they might hear it in our voice if we called,
the contact may vibrate through our subconcious,
though each syllable uttered positively,
the usual to and fro of polite conversation,
as we hang up we feel something, quick to ignore, like shame,
and we are afraid to speak again.
Perhaps I spend too much time trying to figure out that which has no equation; not a straight line of logic, but a collage of actions that spin and collapse upon themselves,
a social kalidasope, trapped in a pyramid that never changes structure.
All you can change is the light thru which you view it.
As cold as it gets on these wet streets
feces decaying in front of murals rain washing
the refuse of the unforgiven into sewers marked by stecils of dolphins
Heels click click hurried past spanish swearing
stopping only to admire a feathered cap
in the translucent mirror of a cell phone store.
The bar is a safe house
We drink and laugh and tell dirty jokes
the bartender yells the price with a wink
a good deal tonight
We chit chat and booty shake and talk shit
about the people we're texting,
easier this way,
they might hear it in our voice if we called,
the contact may vibrate through our subconcious,
though each syllable uttered positively,
the usual to and fro of polite conversation,
as we hang up we feel something, quick to ignore, like shame,
and we are afraid to speak again.
Perhaps I spend too much time trying to figure out that which has no equation; not a straight line of logic, but a collage of actions that spin and collapse upon themselves,
a social kalidasope, trapped in a pyramid that never changes structure.
All you can change is the light thru which you view it.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Safan
"It means Heaven in Indonesean," says the owner, Steve, as he dusts pot after pot preparing for sale. The pots are Indonesean, also, but not traditional. The traditional Indonesean pottery has a rounded bottom that you can sit in the ground to keep from falling over. He told the local makers they had to make flat bottom vases for Westerners, so he could sell them at local winery's--with his cut, of course, being far more than what he paid. He enjoys telling this story, since, to him, he is the savior of indigenous people AND makes a chunk of change!
Safan is the name of his ranch in the Sierra foothills, with goats and chickens and guineas and a few sheep. Everything has a purpose, even if the purpose is required by agricultural tax law, it still serves the ranch. Steve and Allison started the place together, and wanted to turn it into a graffiti art organic farm. He placed trailers throughout the ranch and tagged them, and the barn, and the house, and every surface on the property that could be tagged. After he ran out of surfaces he started to invite other artists to participate in the residency, along with some woofers to work in the garden. And truly, as a concept it's amazing. Really heaven on earth. But, after looking at all the dirty tagged trailers in the middle of beautiful outskirts of Yosemite, for some reason they looked ugly, and comically misplaced, like a bad joke. It's an urban art, and the city is it's frame. The trees do no justice.
This isn't Steve's concern, of course, graf art is the newest thing and he wants the newest thing. To be cutting edge with his organic farming and such. I mean, the one thing you can definitely say about the guy is if he thinks it'll sell, he will sell it. He loves sell-able art. Especially if you can mass produce it. One artist on the residence has 44 collage pieces, each looking almost exactly like the last one. He is Steve's pride and joy, and his work hangs at rustic themed winery, of which Steve gets a cut.
The rest serve a different purpose. 7:30 breakfast of oatmeal that could be as many as 7 days old. Steve doesn't like to waste, even to feed to the chickens who do not get feed at all. Rather, every day he takes the oatmeal from the morning before, stirs in fresh oatmeal, and cooks it again. Lunch is leftovers from the night before, or 7 nights before, same with dinner. The food, unfortunately, is old to begin with, because he doesn't grow anything in the garden. Instead he collects the rotten produce from the grocery store in town they put in boxes next to the dumpster. Of course, the woofers still have to work everyday for six hours, even if that means weeding empty beds and other forms of fruitless labor. One would be surprised how much work there is to be done in Safan.
Steve is a miser with his money, his property, and his love. Nature proved the detachment he felt to the people laboring for free for him. By this time I had grown used to mom goats and the baby calling frantically and desperately for each other in the pasture. Like the sheep, they always kept taps on each other. When I hear all these noises of the animals together, speaking, I can tell what they're level of commitment to each other they are. And a love for those you love. An unbreakable attachment to another living creature. It all feels the same. The artists and woofers sat around camp fires together telling jokes and smoking spliffs by their trailers. Steve remained in the house, where no one was allowed after 9pm.
He became like the animals in terms of eating the crappy food he served, like it was compost, and wanting to fuck during rutting season, but he was really stingy about dolling out affection easy as you please, as if being open was earned after you've proven a certain financial equity. Perhaps that's part of why he keeps artists around him, and insist he keep a piece or a few pieces of work. Perhaps love and imagination are things he can't evoke on his own. To create without purpose, or plan, or financial intentions, is mysterious and foolish. Like the indigenous peoples, he tries to save the artists with coprorate values, which, to him, are the only values that make sense, and will gladly take your work as his reward.
I suppose it would be unfair to blame Steve for not sharing his Heaven with anyone around him. He is, after all, a short man in a man's man world and does what he knows to do. Like nature, we accept the way things are. The mallard duck will violently attack a mom and ducklings for food. To see it is enraging, but to interfere? Morality doesn't play into the mallards behavior. He is of a type of beast that acts in his best interest without empathy or reason. We must accept that, even in nature, some animals are just dickheads.
Safan is the name of his ranch in the Sierra foothills, with goats and chickens and guineas and a few sheep. Everything has a purpose, even if the purpose is required by agricultural tax law, it still serves the ranch. Steve and Allison started the place together, and wanted to turn it into a graffiti art organic farm. He placed trailers throughout the ranch and tagged them, and the barn, and the house, and every surface on the property that could be tagged. After he ran out of surfaces he started to invite other artists to participate in the residency, along with some woofers to work in the garden. And truly, as a concept it's amazing. Really heaven on earth. But, after looking at all the dirty tagged trailers in the middle of beautiful outskirts of Yosemite, for some reason they looked ugly, and comically misplaced, like a bad joke. It's an urban art, and the city is it's frame. The trees do no justice.
This isn't Steve's concern, of course, graf art is the newest thing and he wants the newest thing. To be cutting edge with his organic farming and such. I mean, the one thing you can definitely say about the guy is if he thinks it'll sell, he will sell it. He loves sell-able art. Especially if you can mass produce it. One artist on the residence has 44 collage pieces, each looking almost exactly like the last one. He is Steve's pride and joy, and his work hangs at rustic themed winery, of which Steve gets a cut.
The rest serve a different purpose. 7:30 breakfast of oatmeal that could be as many as 7 days old. Steve doesn't like to waste, even to feed to the chickens who do not get feed at all. Rather, every day he takes the oatmeal from the morning before, stirs in fresh oatmeal, and cooks it again. Lunch is leftovers from the night before, or 7 nights before, same with dinner. The food, unfortunately, is old to begin with, because he doesn't grow anything in the garden. Instead he collects the rotten produce from the grocery store in town they put in boxes next to the dumpster. Of course, the woofers still have to work everyday for six hours, even if that means weeding empty beds and other forms of fruitless labor. One would be surprised how much work there is to be done in Safan.
Steve is a miser with his money, his property, and his love. Nature proved the detachment he felt to the people laboring for free for him. By this time I had grown used to mom goats and the baby calling frantically and desperately for each other in the pasture. Like the sheep, they always kept taps on each other. When I hear all these noises of the animals together, speaking, I can tell what they're level of commitment to each other they are. And a love for those you love. An unbreakable attachment to another living creature. It all feels the same. The artists and woofers sat around camp fires together telling jokes and smoking spliffs by their trailers. Steve remained in the house, where no one was allowed after 9pm.
He became like the animals in terms of eating the crappy food he served, like it was compost, and wanting to fuck during rutting season, but he was really stingy about dolling out affection easy as you please, as if being open was earned after you've proven a certain financial equity. Perhaps that's part of why he keeps artists around him, and insist he keep a piece or a few pieces of work. Perhaps love and imagination are things he can't evoke on his own. To create without purpose, or plan, or financial intentions, is mysterious and foolish. Like the indigenous peoples, he tries to save the artists with coprorate values, which, to him, are the only values that make sense, and will gladly take your work as his reward.
I suppose it would be unfair to blame Steve for not sharing his Heaven with anyone around him. He is, after all, a short man in a man's man world and does what he knows to do. Like nature, we accept the way things are. The mallard duck will violently attack a mom and ducklings for food. To see it is enraging, but to interfere? Morality doesn't play into the mallards behavior. He is of a type of beast that acts in his best interest without empathy or reason. We must accept that, even in nature, some animals are just dickheads.
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