jump out of your skin

backwards

hello soul - dream

a photograph

is a secret

about a secret

leica "100" years - video

Recreating iconic Leica images.

Eye. Hand. Heart.

http://youtu.be/ssN3BiBRISk

treehouse

I’m broiling on the balcony of my Oregon treehouse.

Getting down and dirty after 1,001 years away from the typewriter. Covered in construction dust and needing oil it’s a small portable dangerous machine. It’s capable of transforming life energies and weaving adventures. Threads follow the needle.

I am a peripatetic traveler, literary outlaw, photographer and journalist. I’m lucky to get it down now and make sense of it later.

I’m a mirror in the mandala of my labyrinth.

I am Labrys, from the Greek for a two-headed axe.

I write with passion and vision.

Short fast and deadly.

Punctuation is a nail.

My mirror reflects everything. I’m confidant and self- reliant. I explore the human condition.

Human energies, frequencies and vibrations reflect languages, lives and attitudes. I absorb being, joy, anger, jealousy, ignorance, desire, fear, passion and suffering. Hurl your thunderbolt unto death.

Meditate on the process of your death.

Suffering is an illusion.

I accept universal illusions. Wishes, values, attitudes, joy, belief systems and dreams project perceptions in my mirror. My mirror is free of dust. I evolve discovering emotional strength, trust, wisdom, peace and love.

I experience forgiveness with emotional honesty. I am tired of beating myself up. I know the words limitations,boundaries, vulnerability and creativity in multiple languages. These truths don’t surprise you after 1,001 years of wandering.

Keep a diamond in your mind.

A Century is Nothing

no metaphors

I'm one of those people who’s learned through living that there is nothing and nobody in this life to cling to.

I am a metaphor looking for a meaning. There are no metaphors, only observations.

I feel free to move away from safe familiar places and keep moving forward to new unexplored areas of life. Drifting some would say.

If I had one red cent for every time someone asked me when I’d settle down I could afford a world hypothesis! Settling down was never an option.

Yes. I could bid on blessings. I’d sacrifice pre-linguistic symbols and create silent metaphorical abstractions. My linguistic skills would evolve into love into discursive logic.

26,000 year-old Paleolithic iron and copper paintings create a secret symphony of ancient stories in a Spanish cave.

No lengthy drawn out off-the-wall abstract explains my small empty self to anybody by virtue of who I was, am and will be.

Life is a palimpsest.

“There are only two stories in the world,” I said to the Moroccan. We carried boarding cards through the Casablanca terminal. 

“A stranger arrives in town or a person goes on a journey.”

“Yes,” said Omar, a blind writer overhearing our conversation, “we might add there are also stories about love between two people, stories about love between three people and stories about the struggle for power. Stories are about characters revealing emotion through dialogue and action.”

The world is made of stories, not atoms.

He handed me a pile of yellow papers wrapped in rushes.

“A gift for you. A Century is Nothing. It contains a farrago of evidence. Keep it simple.”

“Thank you. Where do I find you?”

“In the caves south of Ronda. It’s a long walk.”

He disappeared into Baraka.

a 3,000 year old city

“Once upon a time,” Nino said one bright future day as the tribe rolled along, “and such a strange time it was, the gravity of thinking played music in a new century. There was a Spanish man with a hammer. At exactly 9 a.m. on an overcast Cadiz morning he began chipping away at unexplored caverns. The Alio modo Fugue a 2 Clavier by Bach drifted in the background.

“He was building an extension on a roof where housing was scarce and straight up. The only split-level ranch duplexes with multiple garages in sight were American reruns on old battered televisions. He hammered stone under a sheltering sky. It was over 100 degrees. His hands were bleeding. Blood seeped through an old Moorish roof splattering into a room where a writer in exile lived with a blind prophet. Hemoglobin landed on a keyboard. Directly on the letter B. He let it dry. He treasured sudden rare immediate insights. Drops fell and congealed.”

“Fascinating,” Omar said turning a page. “And then?”

“Down below in deep morning shadows Rosario swept her front stoop on Benito Perez Galdos. Her white apron was clean and starched. She swept away yesterday’s accumulated debris and the fine mist of pedestrians coming and going. Old shit, dog urine and dust received her mop’s holy water. Their accumulated real and imaginary sins littered Galdos, heading for the gutter.”

“Let me guess,” said Omar, picking up the thread, “church bells pealed eternal melancholy songs of hope and redemption across from the Castelilo de Santa Catalina, the main citadel of Cadiz built in 1598.”

“Exactly,” Nino said. “Inside tight white oval corridors, an exhibition of black and white photographs depicted Nicaraguan people fishing, polling canoes through tangled jungles, chopping down forests, sitting for the camera, living and laughing.”

“One room held beautiful black handmade fans in tribute to Federico Garcia Lorca. Considered the greatest poet and playwright of 20th century Spain, he was assassinated by members of the Escuadra Negra (Black Squadron) a Franco death squad in August 1936 for his left-wing sympathies and homosexuality.

“He belonged to the Generation of 1927 with Dali and Bunuel identifying with the marginalized Gitanos and woman chained to conventional social expectations in Andalucía. He wrote about entrapment, liberation, passion and repression.

“A long red scarf lay draped over a single rattan chair. Invisible wires held black fans decorated with peacock feathers and rainbow colors suspended in silence. Outside a dark window Atlantic waves smashed ramparts.”

Nino took a breath. Omar peeled an orange skin. 

A Century is Nothing