#615

everyone ‘belongs’ somewhere.
for me, that night, it was here, behind the bleachers, all by myself, surrounded by a halo of floating rubber...

#611 C-22

chairman of the environmentally armed services committee today announced introduction of the E-22 ‘Creosote Raptor.’ capable of miraculously tender air speeds and armed with simultaneously regenerating puff-ball soft bombs. the C-22, along with the specter jellyfish and special forces confusion monkeys will round out the recently developed envio-stealth branch of the military.

#612sound

someone i was just beginning to know sent a moment of understanding. it passed from one to another. it traveled across a compressed expanse of desert. it came vibrating, and wrote itself deep with barbs and hooks.
i looked for this picture so i could work it up and send it out, so i could re-live that moment, so i could better remember the lovely soul who made it, and with whom I forever wish to negotiate.
the succulent invites a soul into its well, and poses questions in the form of runes and quiet waits. understanding circumvents the gates of hell, and mocks bastions of scorn with tunes and kindly fates.

#613 Election

i fear republicans...

#610 Miss Butterfly

i love you butterfly. i miss you so much

#609 Fix-up

Her hair is like the economy
it shelters souls from plight
and once sought sober autonomy
till she teased with subtle might

Terri is sometimes my student and sometimes my teacher. She lives with husband and kids not too far from my mom in Phoenix. After we took this shot i followed her gang to Wallmart- and we shot in there.

#608 Spilled Whine Scene

a bottle of red for a sucker’s dollar
as a part of an end in a rotten day
washcloth time marks hysterical squalor
to next weeks discount on cheap chardonay

wish for time you supple kid
wish for response to eternal laughter
wish for a fork to eat what you did
and a knife to pardon this falling rafter

a bottle of red for a nick and a dance
the emperor’s dead from a fleeting glance:
i once was a parrot, learning to cry
but now i cry, but now i die, but now i lie

from a bottle of red, from a sucker’s dollar
keep the receipt after blush dismay
if you turn your head from the huckster’s holler
its the end of the show but the start of the play

#607 Moonrise Over Loop 288

moon butter floating
over flutter frost harvest
dissected by cars

#606 Floodgate

i haven’t been dreaming lately, so i just make them up in photoshop.
this imagined dream is about impending flood, or perhaps, flood restrained by men in towers.
if i get up from my computer and look through the kitchen window into the backyard i’m sure i’ll see a muddy mess. its raining here, and a hurricane fast approaches. i am digging a line in the clay soil out back to redirect a personal flood which happens because of poorly placed drainpipes. but i’m not finished- tools are out there, and though the pipe lays in its ditch, it remains unconnected, and unable to function its intended purpose. as vulnerable as it all might be, i am unwilling to don rain gear and gain control of things out there.
in photoshop i cut and paste a diagonal plank of wood into the composition: to add confusion, to mimic thoughts i’m having.
in this imagined dream men in towers push buttons that close gates to prevent flood waters from coming in.
but then, i mean, what if, i think i might be trapped on the wrong side of the gate!

#605 Dye?

I got a bouquet of flowers. I took them home cut them out of their plastic wrap. soon I separated some of the varieties into their own water vase. one group of flowers was ultra-pink. then, after one night the water that they were in became pink, same as the petals. Did some farmer put dye in the plant to make it more pink?
Pink came out of the stem into the water, just like one time when I left a pink marshmallow in a water spot: the next morning I remember a sticky pinkish stain. Then it occurred to me that I should make an image of that pink water, in the morning, as the sun came up to shine through my kitchen window, and I drank coffee with soy milk.

#604 Rest Stop

3 disturbing coincidences: the first brings perception of moral authority into question, the other two focus that perception, through surreality and then pin-point clarity. 3 events happen at a rest stop on i-10 as one travels North through the mesa chaparral, which serves as an elevator from desert to mountain, from Phoenix to Flagstaff.
The first happens in the form of a chance conversation with a silver haired big bellied retiree, through which you discover a mutual acquaintance. He clutches a styrofoam cup of cream powder and 3 hour old coffee, brewed by a volunteer from Black Canyon city. You finish a second can of sugar free Red Bull. If coffee cooks for 3 hours the molecules change, and it produces the shakes. If you drink two cans of sugar free Red Bull you get the shakes. The mutual acquaintance is a woman against which you committed an unforgettable wrong: and though you perceive he knows nothing of it, that refuge fades, as the details of a series of cold calculations slither into present consciousness, like so many rattle snakes on a warm sidewalk.
The conversation ends, and as he makes his way back to a royal purple Lincoln Town car you bend at the waste– an attempt to coax knotted lower back muscle into a neutral state. But when you rise the scene re-draws itself in a monotone of green-orange fade to black, here and there, back and forth, brought to you by suspended floods (paid for by tax dollars,) and Taurine, and memory. And your head thobs, and demands to be seated, and vision blurs at the periphery, and the drone of trucks in idle, once Catholic in their muted insistence, now become jury and appointed attorney. Will we ever escape judgement?
There is a razor sharp switch blade in my pocket that I have fantasized about brandishing, in the case of sudden attack in a rest stop restroom. There is a camera in my hand, which I have used to clarify and extend fantasy, that now demands my full attention. There is a series of cold calculations one makes prior to capture. They remain concerned about movement and time and narrative and relationship to some archive. There is a process of detaching from those choices so as to present the opportunity for a sweet loving bitch to lose herself in your soul. And there is a moment when that bitch, now your lover, coaxes a button push, sometimes in rapid fire succession, sometimes in detached refrain, and sometimes with reckless abandoned, without regard for consequence. And sometimes coincidences come together to form a vision of judgement, transcendence, guilt, folly.

#603 Rooted

This is about Yuka– a beautiful, bright, shining star, who beats cancer. I think about her when I walk to the end of the block and the streetlight suddenly outs then flickers its way back to illumination. And when fresh cut grass sends up its scent.

over brown twist root
green stems of prosperity
attend lofty leaves

#602 Foreclosure Crisis

Yesterday I gained access to an ex-home, one where the family walked. I mused that perhaps the mortgage was worth more than the property, or some other financial/familial desperation had set in. The place rests on a once in a 100 year flood plane, but I found out from neighbors that it has knee-high flooded 3 times in the last 15 years. In any case the house was people empty, but not without it’s ambiance. I think the batteries were low in a fire alarm, so there was an occasional chirp, as if someone in sports shoes was turning a corner on a vinyl floor, or there was a bird trapped upstairs. My friend Jaynee, the real estate agent who gave me access to the property, said that that house wasn’t stripped, meaning that the people left without stealing fixtures or kicking in walls. She said that people are doing that less and less around here: which made me feel like everyone was giving up hope. Would you have your way with a dream gone bad, or just walk away? The property listed for 106 nine, which thought was cheap, given the size of the oaks that lined the street. Jaynee said that the only client of hers interested in the property, an investor, promptly withdrew his bid, after he realized that that he couldn’t make enough on the rent to pay the principle/fix-up costs. She mused that it probably wouldn’t sell at the list price, but the bank was unwilling to go any lower. She left and I settled into the empty space. It was hot and quiet and I felt as if I was trespassing. The place began to smell like mold, but the blood red walls kept me until the sun went low in the sky. As I made some images I thought about my place, my mom’s place and the American dream. I locked the door behind me when I left, and then felt panic for a moment, as if I left something in there. I plan to visit four more foreclosures next week.

#601 Theory

take a moment to look at this image.

let your eyes drift from bailing wire to wheel and then to the up-right loop-chord. let the diagonal scaffold let your eyes to do it again, distracted by a blue bucket. what’s in the barrow? an empty container in an empty container? consider the depth of the trees, the imposition of straight vertical lines. crosses, bamboo, a mess. where do the pillars lead –what weight do they hoist with such messy support? again the wheel and bailing wire, this time at the same time. what the function? what poise! what a chance stumble, into such beautiful digital noise... now you know the fullness of a conversation, or a moment of silence, with Bill Jenkins, my teacher and friend.

#600: Untitled

something broke today, well it's cracks finally gave way, and what it contained leaked out, and made a mess deep inside my mind...
a confusing mess that lapped against banks, dripped depletion, and now coagulates into lonliness.
if you look into it long enough you imagine bruise colours, but also dark greens, which remind me of life in the past.

after walking through a trail in the dark, arrive at a place to hear the sound of water.
soon an oval shape comes to vision. a flash illuminates the scene for a split second, but then darkness, again –post-flash darkness. look into the camera memory to see where you are:
darkness at the edge of darkness, water pool as arrival, departure through forest.
then friends
they gather outside immediate experience, but thier presence has its effect.
slowly back-step, without looking back, away from the well.

something to break, something to begin:
is belief the color of a bruise?
is green the color of a question's answer?
what color should to choose for guilt?

#599: Friend Opportunity

i used to shoot feet in secret, mostly on trains. because i rode an hour and a half one way, and i think feet are funny, with all their curves, secret spaces, and capacity for stink.

natalie is a korean girl who passed through chiang mai on her way to bangcok. we hung out for a few days- i told her about the way i understand the relationship between a photo document and the thing to which it refers. she told me about an abusive boss in singapore, and desire to end up in nyc.

one day she came with me to see the blind masseur, shinchai. it turned out that she got a treatment from his assistant, leo, as i got my training. later we took leo to a reggae bar.

i don't shoot feet in secret anymore, but i still love to look at them. i am convinced that a foot's attributes tattle on a persons secrets, and that one of it's parts is a window to the soul.

#588: Spring Swamp

"look! the horizon bisects an emerging circle!"
that is what i saw when i took made this image on a walk in the woods outside denton, texas.

oak, flood, sun, decomposition.

breathless, uncertain about the reality of the sudden vision,
i steal a moment and put it in a box.
who gets to say in what way we get to experience our art?

q. who mediates those moments?
a. muse.

thank you Rachel, lover of life, magpies, and for your overarching vision.

i want to make a big print of this image, on paper, and hang it in a quiet room- so i can remember the day a swamp suffused it's vision upon me.

or hang it in the bathroom: as a metaphor for a bowel.

#598: Toast

i did this shot as a kind of toast to myself, on my birthday: yellow napkin in kitsch crystal- that suits me at 43.
i did the shot in the kitchen, in natural light. the shot was inspired by the light.
at a certain time of the day, through a skylight, a brilliant beam shows herself, if only for a moment.
it was a nice moment for me and my camera. sometimes i use photography to order and extend my consciousness,
that is what was happening during the making of this image- the light and various elements in the composition,
and the color, and reflections and distortions... that’s how i discovered how i would feel on my birthday.
there was a song playing, with special memories for me, in the background. it's called duca. i discovered the song in
music store, listening on headphones. then the song became special for other reasons, and now, even though
the rhythm is upbeat, and the melody is j-pop cutsey, it is extremely sad...
bright, shadowy, empty cup, fill it with a new set of experiences. i drink a toast to myself, to life, to love.