flame-broiled unicorn and dragon drenched in awesome sauce
Author: Ward
I’m the creator and operator of this little corner of the internets, writing on all things related to art and more specifically my experiences trying to figure this whole thing out. I guess I’m trying to figure out life, too, but mostly I just post about art here.
Me and my foe foo row ramma. I dish and you dash and I know I got to go hoe and come on to do all that. I have no idea. No clue. Notta respectability, neither nor all there or even some that. But still I here while you but there. And you ever so wanna correct me. Because you got that standard stick and schtick and a sense that says there must be a sensibility to this sentence, a sentience to this my sentiment. Might that I entertain? And might more that you over contextualize this and this and then all more that? You think you know me, do you? You think you have the cliff and that ever so brash cleft to find in your own shadow my mingled mo’ matta? You do not know me. And you sure as hell do not know him, any more than I know that whore of a bastard on 2nd street selling the smell of sunday streets slick with salaried succubus sweaty on her own way to salvaged service. These are just words. And still here you are, you who jingle and then jangle like Dylan and his bo’ dangle, a rhymeless tune to a hairless tongue. I ain’t no nothing and I ain’t more than not these words. You never will find me here anymore than in there, in your mind and its blind eye that from syntax thinks it snaps shut on semantics and so knows my synapses. I wanna help you, really I do. But you ain’t going to understand this, is ya?
Here under weight of suspended waters in crushing lightness I lay buoyant drowning. How sublime this that blankets an existence in brine turning bone to gelatin mass and rubbers tallowed skin, deforming into elastic tendrils seeking up to the green green light above. I would that I might swim in waters warmed but instead relent and sink back into craggy darkness, a sleep enriched coldness seeping into tendons raw and tight from a life long of running out front doors onto streets all doors locked, no light escaping from windows shuttered to wash out shadows made under enfeebled stars roaring possibilities, embers in breasts heaving to suck air, a light touch knocks with plastic consequence one chance at a time waiting for nothing but to move on and on and on ever anon.
I took a little over a week to go and visit my friends and family back East in western and central New York including a quick trip up to Niagara Falls while there. My parents, having been married for now fifty years warranted a celebration by the family. My sisters and their children all converged on Skaneateles, New York to quietly celebrate and reminisce under the humid warmth that is central New York. The humidity of New York cannot be fully described; it is better left to the uninitiated to experience. While the humidity saps you of your strength the heat and light breeze under the shade of a tree nestled into a hammock soothes and sends one into a bliss that cannot be simulated by spas or any other proxy: sun’licious.
As I meandered down Route 20A from Orchard Park to Skaneateles I was reminded of how much of western and central New York are places of rolling hills, small villages and independent farms. On my morning runs from my parent’s home it took me less than 90 seconds to be running along farms and up over hills with vistas that stretched over miles and miles of tilled earth. My father’s former office is within 2 miles of the house making me envious to think that sans the 190+ inches of snow they got this winter one could easily run to work every day; the only dissatisfaction is that it is too short (a quick 2 miles) to make a worthwhile morning run. Equally surprising to me is I could have circumnavigated all of the town and some of the surrounding farms every morning in one of my middle distance runs of 15km; back in Seattle I barely get out of my neighborhood with one of these runs.
On my return from far afield I found myself yet again under the less than welcome long hand of overcast clouds that have become my personal scourge over Seattle. While I had hoped to camp at Olympic National Park for a few days I opted instead to drive down toward Bend, Oregon to Goldendale, WA for an overnight camping trip. I love a good roadtrip and the vistas once you get over the passes on I-90 are well-worth the first 90 minutes under the pending hazy gloom of rain and clouds. The near eastern side of the Cascades is one of arid color and a valley irrigated with farms both independent and incorporated. I must confess that the campground I hastily found was not one I can recommend to anyone, but even still I did find a quiet meadow a few miles from the campsite that allowed me an unobstructed view of Mount Hood while enjoying many, many hours before and after the sunset at 9pm. I had hoped to get some astrophotography done that night, however I had neglected to note it was near full Moon and thus there was little in the way of crisp dark skies to photograph. Nevertheless, the hours by myself in the dark reminded me I have an over-active imagination: I was quite certain aliens were on their way to abduct me.
I woke early on Friday to drive back to Seattle. Instead of retracing my steps I instead took Highway 410 out of Yakima to drive through both Wenatchee and Mount Rainier National Parks. It might surprise people outside of western Washington that much of the mountain trails are still inaccessible to hikers due to the some 80 or more inches of snowfall resting on trails. And while there is a warm front that has settled itself over all of western Washington melting much of this as I write and you read and which means that Mount Rainier is primarily covered in clouds, the drive is still worth the time and $15 park fees. In some ways seeing Mount Rainier shrouded in clouds is paradoxically a better way to appreciate it. Clouds come and go within minutes and sometimes tens of seconds. The view now obscured will snap into shades of snow blue and sky azure that require you to remain ever vigilant. And it is not just the moments waiting between and amongst clouds that deepen your appreciate, but even on the road itself can surprise and even transcend the ordinary. As one point when Mount Rainer in the near distance, two crows broke off from a tree and flew in front and above my car. For a mile or more we glided in formation down the road while we three enjoyed a quiet moment with Mount Rainier framed by trees appeared in front of us.
There in the jars on the shelves amongst the specimens rests things; things that are more than not not kept but instead even more forgot and never more than least remembered and that till the light of a setting scene lays them out in pink and auburn hues in alien silhouettes dancing to music you cannot hear but still your heart knows and finds sympathetic beat. In your hand now lays the room ruddy temperature glass jar, your thumb wiping back the years to peer inside, inward through hazy fluid to what lays innermost and indiscernible. It jostles and tries to find a new equilibrium amongst the halting steps of this, your renewed waltz, that it from slumber it finds itself awoken to. One. Two. Three. Four. Onetwothree. One two three four? Who awoke whom? And who leads whom? And who has been shelved and put away to become in some later days, days that now converge today, foreign object to a landscape barren except for the endless shelves of jars?
On July 8th I drove up to Niagara Falls while out visiting my very good friends in Buffalo, New York. Like so many things that when in your backyard you often do not see it in the same light and joy that visitors do; until that is you return as a visitor. And Niagara Falls is, or was that is till Friday, that way for me. Having completed by undergraduate studies at SUNY Buffalo and being born and raised in central New York I never truly appreciated Niagara Falls as a destination spot; nor could I ever get past the kitsch that is Niagara Falls the tourist trap city, both US and Canada sides. The summer heat (read humidity) is back on in New York and thus it was a bit overcast when I drove up from south Buffalo. I parked on the US side at Goat Island where there is a US reservation to take in the US side. And like everyone will attest the falls is a subdued affair from this side. Where it is at, as it were, is over on the Canada side. So I decided with only Washington state driver’s license in hand I would see about getting past the border patrol. After a gentle reprimand that I needed my passport and a smile from myself I was allowed across into Canada. Oh Canada! Home of half my heart. I was back and ready to take some snaps. There is something lovely about the Canada side besides the grandeur of the falls; it is the simple fact that Canadians, unlike Americans who assuage man-made order for nature, love gardens and managed greenery and thus the path up along the way to the falls has all the appearances of a lovely stroll falls or no falls. On returning to the US I was more firmly informed that I needed some form of identification identifying I was a US citizen. When asked what I looked like on my passport I quipped “goatee: like a member of Russian mafia” to which he immediately laughed and let me (re)enter the other half of my heart’s home.
