Returning Home
... after a long summer... On Tuesday afternoon, on September 23rd around 1:30 pm, much to our cat’s joy, we returned home at last: from Spain, the Honeymoon, from Burning Man, from everything. At this point it is not so much a blur as a whirlwind: In a nutshell about the size of a large coconut we left for Burning Man on the 22nd of August to set up McLightenment, our funded art project. That went like a non-stop drive/sleep/drive/sleep rotation til Reno where we all melted into a good nights sleep. The next day we are finally getting out of Reno at sunset and getting camp set up in the dark. The next day is camp and the next day is set up of project/kiosk/spiritual take-out drive-thru restaurant. And then Burning Man and dust storms and people and parties and walking and riding and playing and sleeping and, well, everything. And then we take it down. And then we skee-daddle on home, dust covered and worn, throw everything into garage, get rental vehicles detailed and returned, do some laundry, get a tad bit of sleep and get up and out and on a plane two days after returning. The plane lands at JFK in NYC and we visit a friend in Brooklyn, spend the night and, the next day, go to MOMA and view Dali and Film exhibit, including his film made with Walt Disney in the 50’s. Eat some food, grab our things and out the door on a train to Grand Central station, pause a moment to appreciate the architecture, this most hallowed of all of America’s train stations and buy a ticket for Milford to visit my family including those who couldn’t make it to our wedding and more specifically my sister and grandmother, and we show up late but that is to be expected. Visit with my parents in evening and next day they have planned a post-wedding reception for Violet and I for all the family who couldn’t make it to our wedding in Malibu a couple months before. Lots of people! I do not freak out which is good. Nor does Violet. Kudos to her! If I’d been her, I might’ve been freaking out. Her family’s nuts! The next day we chill then go visit my sister and her family (newborn baby and another little one) at the house they’ve been pouring all their energy into. The next day, Monday, we are on a train to a bus to a plane that whisks us to Amsterdam where we catch another plane to Barcelona. Royal Dutch Airline reminds us what planes in the states used to be like: meals and movies, warm napkins to wash your hands, free wine and the steward seems genuinely sorry that he has no ginger ale for my bourbon… Ah the good ol’ days…
The Train, The Mummy, and The Mountains
Riding along the Amtrak on my way back to San Diego passing mountains and fields in afternoon golden sunlight. Rocky red mountains tinged with green, laden with it, draped over them. At the same time, Hard to tell if i am going south or north- the sun is to my back but the land passes me from left to right. This makes no sense to me.
Egyptian pyramids and kitchy lines of "The Mummy" play out on the screen of my laptop while my mind drifts to thoughts of the Casa Barranca Tasting Room in Ojai and the work I'll be painting a bit of detail work along the archways, stained glass looking motifs like tiffany windows or frank lloyd wright squares and rectangles or C. R. Mackintosh floralisms.
Hot Springs
Sitting in the hot springs this afternoon, sunning in the sun, warm waters washing over my being. Cool breeze over perspiration laden skin. Red dragon flies buzzing through the air describe curved spiraling lines that linger in my vision. Reflected ripples of water, on the underside of a boulder overhanging the pool of sulphuric hot spring water, intertwine in accordance to the motions and intimations of the breeze, my movements, and their own echoes. A bead of sweat drips off my chin and taps the surface of the pool, forming concentric circles that merge with the larger ripples. Silence resounds around me in the form of bird songs, rustling leaves, water rippling and rolling, sounds of life drifting through everything: the trees, the rocks, the water, me. I breathe everything in deeply and exhale everything just the same. I twist and stretch and sit still. I smile and relax. I sigh. I surrender.
Train II
Station in mexican adobe tile style with
octagonal cupola atop, curved windows
and mosaic designs along pillars and archways
palms and old men
looking like the building has built up around them
standing leaning against the support for support
oblivious to the kids running and playing
and yelling about trains or who said what
maybe you get old enough
you either no longer care who said what
or you care all too much
i'm working on being the former
old women who read magazines
and tan teenagers maybe on their way to LA
or further
to see a friend go to a party
always something different than the story they tell
on their way out the door to mom and dad
we've all been there
done that
the old man and
the little kids
the woman with the magazine
who told a lie about going to the store but instead
drove around the corner to cry
and while i study the congruous angles of the sloping roof lines
and how they interact with the clouds that tuft along in the sky
others lament on phones
wondering when
their train is going to arrive
Train I
train in the summer time along the california coast
passing an endless beach of turquoise blue water.
endless curls of waves and endless sand - miles -
people dot the beach then exist in swarms then fade
away again
beautiful girls in bikinis
tan fit boys riding waves
sitting like seals doting the snowy white surf
people fading away again and the beach is too short for even people
only odd people remain
little kids wearing black and red wetsuits like a little line of seals
walking along follow the leader don't get washed away
a pile of rocks
a discarded table
another lifeguard tower
small trailer homes along the beach front
very expensive trailer homes
blocking the view of sea
palm trees and bougainvillea
and that endless endless horizon line of blue
punctuated now and again by a speedboat, a freighter ship
an oil drilling barge (now that they open it up again)
and then people again in droves, in front of
houses that get battered by the wind during storm
but warmed by the sun and surf
during these endless
summer days
I love this state.
Magritte, LACMA and Pan
Yesterday we went to Los Angeles to stop by the fabric district, see the Magritte show at LACMA, Pan’s Labyrinth at the Arclight and then to visit our friend Robin over in Venice around the corner from where we lived last year.
Magritte…We think of bowler caps and green apples. We are not too far off and if we see the silhouette of a man in a bowler cap (as we did later passing some bar in Hollywood) we recognize immediately the icon as borrowed from Magritte. But to say he is all bowler caps and apples is to say Dali was all melting watches and ants. The difference between the two however is that Dali tried exhaustively to probe his own subconscious with his artwork, finding great meaning and relation between the subtlest of details within his work. On the other hand, Magritte on the other hand often took seemingly unrelated objects, created compositions around them and left the viewer to decipher their meanings, like gestalt ink blot tests. Now, while we immensely enjoyed seeing such a large collection of Magritte’s in one place- allowing us to see multiple nuances within his work and admire the fine subtleties of his uses of color and shadow, we found the “contemporary’ art besides which it was juxtaposed was, well, mostly crap. It seems the art world likes to over look the people like Vladimir Kush who, as far as we are concerned, is the artist most closely following Magritte in style, form and approach. Both of the artists have a soft and forgiving approach to their medium and a calm quietude about their pieces. Ah, but Kush is perhaps to fine an artist. There are the “inner circles” of the LA art world and they were strongly represented. They represent mostly pain, turmoil, a word under a photo, another that is a mirrored photo with a palindrome over it…feeble attempts to mimic a master. As I said, if they really sought to display the legacy of Magritte, the curators would have looked further than what the Los Angeles art scene had to show them…
Fall in Los Angeles
Some say there is no Autumn in Los Angeles. This may or may not be true. Techinically there is a "fall" everywhere. There are those of us who come from the Northeastern U.S. and claim to have seen THE FALL. The big hurrah of fireworks trees in orange and red and yellow and purple and gold and green. The carpets of color across hills or mountainsides or neighborhood streets. Remembering the kicking along of the crackling maple leaves underneath my feet as I walked home in fourth grade, fifth grade, whenever it suited me to shuffle along- even the forty year old buiness man likes to kick along in the leaves. The crispness in the air and the freshness returning to the cheeks as the last dregs of summer slip away...
Then, years after the fourth grade, I find myself here in Los Angeles, willingly of course, living in a sweet little pad a few blocks from the beach where a heavy blanket of clouds covers the sky for the past few days and maybe, just maybe, somewhere a tinge of color tints a leaf.