Category: Writing

I am not the writer in our house; my partner is.  Nevertheless, from time to time I find myself writing a bit of flash fiction or even poetry and vignettes in a series I call The Sparrow Story.

I truly have no pretensions around the craft of the written word at either a sentence or paragraph level, let alone at something as grandiose as stitching all of that together into a written story.  Can you imagine all those words to write?  Crazy!

Nevertheless, given my obvious insanity and lack of sense of my limits, I do have aspirations of someday producing a written story or two that may not be a complete waste of another human being’s time to read.

Crisis of sorts

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?

Niagara Falls

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.

See all the pics of Niagara Falls.

 

Lake Serene

Lake Serene is situated east of Seattle on Route 2 a bit past Gold Bar, WA which is itself near to Wallace Falls State Park.  There is some 2,000 feet in elevation gain from the trailhead to the Lake Serene.  There is a small diversion of about 1 mile up to a viewpoint of the falls some 1.6 miles from the trailhead.  It is definitely worth the time it takes to hike up to see the falls up close.  Once back to the main trail it is another 2 miles to Lake Serene which, as of today, was just at the snow line.  I always love walking into a snow-line in the middle of summer after a few hours sweating up the side of a mountain; drenched in sweat there is nothing quite like walking into a natural refrigerator to spend some time relaxing.  Given that it was already 4:30pm when I arrived at the lake I did not spend more than enough time to cool down and take a breather before heading back down before the loss of light while in the shadow of the mountain.  It was an amazing afternoon all the more given that I did not leave Seattle till nearly 1pm and still got back to Rainin’ Ribs (best bar-b-que in North Seattle) before closing time to pick up some smoked baby-back ribs for dinner while working on these pictures.  And to the bit of sunshine in a blue jacket: thanks for the smiles.

You can see all the pictures here.

Wanna Be

You just wanna be a woman playing with a bow and arrow; you have been a temptress. In fields I smell desiccated flowers, poppies crumble under the laden gaze of youth remembered. Under trill and drummed beat query comes: “Did you really want?” Yes, I did and I do. How could I surrender? How can I ever?

There is just the remains, the remains of something I cannot hope to recall with ever less than clarion acuity. This scene languishes under the shade of trees drooping deeply into black waters near the shore, the pebbles jostle slightly under lapping pushed by a breeze from offshore, out of sight, beyond my reckoning as I am too cooled and brought to sway where I stand looking out beyond hope, over years to moments I wish to hang all the great moments that would make today instead That Day, Another Day, a day unlike This Day.

Or in other words, this is what happens when I listen to Portishead while reading “The Pale King” by DFW on my way to work.

Nekid Solstice

Fremont was once a place within Seattle that put the hippie in grunge. Or maybe that was the grunge in hippie. Nowadays it is, like much of Seattle, at a cross-roads between its past written in the PBR-soaked sweat of folks who, in their twenties believed that dirt under nail and in hair was simultaneously both a political and fashion statement, are now in their forties and fifties with an economic clout they once directed their art-vogue-french-laden-Leninist angst against. In a word, they have become The Establishment, even if the PBR has not changed. This is not localized to Fremont or even Seattle, it is just the nature of economic growth. Still, Fremont is a place where its past and present mingle side-by-side with a steady-gazed aplomb, contradictions never colliding on most days of the year.  Most days of a year except one day: summer solstice.  This is the one day when whatever ironies and juxtapositions might normally cast their shade over Lenin Square is forgotten in the streak of body-paint, glitter and bicycle parts. On June 18, 2011 some 500 persons elected to wake-up, grab their bike and leave the shirt and the pants at home, instead opting for a bit of body paint to cover up their naked truth. More so, this year was a celebration made moist in the irony that is the Pacific Northwest: it rained on the start of summer. Or as a visitor from elsewhere might note it merely misted; just enough to dapple the hand and blush the cheek to what wobbled to and fro and bo-jangled up and down under the cycled beat of individual expression.

View the rest of 2011’s Solstice Celebration.  And if you find tits and tats and bobs and babbles a bit too much then you might enjoy this instead.