iris 3 (tangerine dream)

me, disguised as a tangerine bearded iris.

i had what i like to call ‘pizza dreams’ last night. “get out!!!” i shouted as i sat up in bed at 1 a.m. waking dramatically from a deep sleep, the back of my head and neck wet with sweat. sitting there for a moment trying to remember what had happened in my dream (someone/something had been trying to break through our double front doors — before we replaced the solid wood doors with glass ones — as i was gathering puppies and running down the hall to the bedroom, shouting) what the hell? i attribute it to the pizza i had made last night with roast chicken, avocado, tomato, and a liberal layer of shaved parmesan. do you have dreams that you can associate with the food you ate the evening before? i wouldn’t ask, but it’s almost a ritual with me dreaming a certain kind of vivid dream having eaten a pizza a few hours beforehand. <sigh> the dreams have not kept me from eating pizza and probably won’t, although at the moment of the dreams recently i’ve found myself thinking that maybe i shouldn’t indulge in this particular meal any longer, but i never think that when i’m making one. it must be selective amnesia.

sir gawain, the green knight, and other dreams of the dead

they were smiling at me, so close i thought i could reach out and touch them. their love emanating from their smiles in visible waves of air (a distortion of my psyche); i ached for it to be true, although i knew that it was only a dream and that they were long gone from my life and this reality. i like it when they come to visit, but i always wonder what they want when they do. what can it mean when they seem so alive, but i know that they are dead?

sir gawain and his pursuit of the green knight came to my consciousness without warning or prompting, they were just there last night at around 9:17 pm pst. it wasn’t an unpleasant visit, even though it has been more than 4_ years (yes, that is a 4 in front of that underscore, it is there because memory is like that) since i had met them. all things camelot were the rage, we were all reading t.h. white’s “the once and future king.” why i do not know. i liked gawain, his honor, his fears, his duplicity, and his redemption. its alliterative verse underscoring (in a john williams movie score kind-of-way) the valor and the grandeur of the court of arthur. did my thoughts of gawain prompt the visit this morning, just before waking, of my smiling, lovely friends? i do not know, but today i believe i will let them accompany me, their love my knight-in-shining-armor.

p.s. my interview at artist career training is up.

o pioneers!

gpoyw: the “o pioneer” version.

sometimes even an only child who was used to dealing with adults all of the time refused to enjoy their company.

location: at the ranch of the woman in the middle, whose first name i believe was florence, but i forget the connection she had with my grandparents–grandpa ralph to the left and unidentified woman to the right–in the foothills of the tetons, somewhere between cody and sheridan, wyoming.

did i mention that there were snakes, no running water, an outhouse, electricity just recently introduced, but she still cooked on a wood-burning stove and if ralph lauren had been there the interior of her log cabin home would have inspired his entire ‘chaps’ line of home furnishings for decades?  i didn’t?  well, i should have.

homesteaders, go figure.  the land was nearly free, it was beautiful in its own way, this then the time that even the lowliest could dream big (no longer, amirite?)

 

aspiration expiration date (10/8/2011)

mother, son, and dog walk toward their future

there is nothing i can tell you about this photograph other than the truth of what you see–a mother, her son and their dog are walking toward a waterfall;  it is more than likely somewhere in the black hills of south dakota and i have no idea who stood behind us and thought “that would make a nice picture” and pushed the button on a kodak instamatic camera, although i could hazard a guess that it was a grandmother or one of my mother’s ex-mother-in-laws (she collected them like trophies), but it is possible that that is fiction–judging from the back of my neck (and my height), it is probably 1968 or 1969; my mother is wearing brown stretch stirrup pants (which i always thought lent her a certain sophisticated air), with a pair of tan suede half-boots and a black light-weight quilted coat and as you can see i am in a red-hooded sweatshirt with gray jeans–i will make the call that it is early fall, the dog has a collar, but no leash–in fact, i cannot recall now whether we ever had him on a leash, regardless of where we might find ourselves, he always stayed next to us or would run ahead, but always stay in sight and would return at the slightest call or gesture, exactly as you would wish all dogs behaved.  now you know only what i have gathered from looking at it based on my familiarity with the subjects.  you may see something entirely different (it was not my intent to take away from your vision or to inhibit your imaginative powers, but only to share with you what i could that might enhance your viewing and understanding of the scene before you.)

“mother,” (it’s true, i called her ‘mother’ and sometimes ‘mom’, but never ‘mommy’ even when i was much younger), “mother, have your dreams come true?”, is the question i wish now that i had had the selflessness to have asked her then or even later, before she died.  how simple a question, how important an answer would have been, reassuring even if the answer had been “they have and they haven’t.”  i believe she would have said “i have you and that is my fondest dream,” but as sweet as that it is, it is a soporific used to deflect my probing question and dull my senses; if you think about it, parents are good at turning away their children’s truth-seeking questions using compliments and love to shield them from the sadness of the truth (of course, there may be parents out there who never use love to stop their children from entering the box canyons of adulthood.)

just as i’m sure there are those parents whose children truly are their dreams, that is something i’ll never fully understand as i’m not a parent, but something tells me that for many their children are but part of more complicated dreams and aspirations they had in their youth, their young adulthood, their maturity, just as those of us who have no children have had/do have.

recently we came into a cache of back issues of architectural digest.  it’s been a few years since i’ve had the leisure of paging through paige rense’s bible (isn’t she about as old as abraham now?) of all things decorative (she would insist that they are but the essentials of living a proper life.)  it used to be, when i was in my 20s and 30s that i could look through this magazine of home décor and architecture and think to myself “i could have that,” or “someday…”, but the last few nights as i’ve turned one heavy page after another (they seem to be using 80lb weight paper for every page–it’s nearly impossible to turn just one page they’re so thick), and in light of the recent economic situation so many of us find ourselves in, i wonder who’s looking at this and having those same dreams i did so many years ago.

it’s true that my life is nowhere near as impossible as many people’s (for instance, three of our neighbors have lost or are losing their homes due to the mortgage crisis/economic downturn, a disturbingly high percentage for our neighborhood.)  i have a beautiful home, a loving life partner, two sweet, wonderful pet companions (so PC!), a job that i love and a small, but close circle of friends.  i am challenged to excel creatively and intellectually by much of what i do which i believe are two luxuries many do without.  yet i find myself dreaming less hopefully of what could be and more despairingly of what will be.    when i read about interior designer mario buatta (also ancient) and look at the luxuriously overwrought interiors he’s designed for a 5th avenue maisonette (oh jeesh, wtf maisonette?) alongside the quotes from he and the homeowner that are so fraught with the importance of the correct tassel or proper use of chintz i have to laugh and shed a tear for the inanity of it all as well as despair at the realization that not only is that no longer aspirational, but also it is no longer inspirational.

for alongside the increased joblessness, homelessness, the disaster that is the middle class of america, we are in jeopardy of losing the one thing you’d never thought could be taken from you: your dreams.    i imagine that there will be pockets of resistance–i am resisting–but the fact remains that dreaming of what could be appears to have become a fool’s errand for anyone of a certain economic bracket–say you and your neighbors.    what i believe, should my mother have said to me, “you are my dream come true”, is that she truly believed that what lay ahead of me would fulfill her dreams, that my future was her dream, that she had left me with the hope that my dreams could come true.  i fear that is no longer true and hope that i will be proven wrong (so says a putative optimist who recently refilled his prescription for wellbutrin.)

horizontal vs. vertical

when i took these pictures of the sky last night, they registered as vertical images on the camera and when they were downloaded this morning, i contemplated leaving them as vertical images.  But after some back & forth, this way & that way, up & down, flipped vertically & flipped horizontally, i settled on horizontal (turned counter-clockwise).

why, you might ask, all the mishegas about the way the sky is positioned when it’s obvious to even the dimmest wit that the sky cares not a whit?  swirling, circling, stationary, flat or arched, the heavens (not in the religious sense) just are what they are.  and imposing my aesthetic (design sense-less) on it is like, like, well, it is senseless.

regardless, whenever i look up into the night sky it always reminds me of childhood dreams (and some adult dreams, too) and the lazy days and nights of summers past.   the cricket of cicadas and the fairy nature of lightening bugs and the scratchy feel of freshly-mown grass on the back of your shorts-clad legs as you lay looking up at the stars and clouds and the movement of the trees along the fence line that shadow a part of your memory.

en pointe

are you what you dreamed of being when you were a child?

that undefined “fireman,” “race car driver,” “deep sea diver,” “soldier,” “tailor,” “tinker,” “spy,” “actor,” “dancer,” “translator,” “biologist.”

are you disappointed that you’re not?  or have you reconciled your you with the you you had seen at 4, 8, 12, 16?  perhaps you’ve shifted the focus or have you let it remain a blur of what you’re not?  no need to answer.

thursday (chapter 4)

if he looks backward at this morning’s awakening, he will realize that it was of his own choosing; the dream he was having deserved to be stopped, an anxiety dream, & one that has plagued (plagued may be too harsh a word, although for years it has been the go-to dream when his anxiousness overtakes his waking world); he stopped it then by waking up, opening his eyes & then closing them again, & a breath later, a deep breath later, the alarm sounded & as he turned toward the nightstand he sighed deeply, thankful that his waking (that conscious decision while in a subconscious state, a miracle of one mind over several other minds) had stopped the inevitable end of the dream, an end that he had dreamt too many times that the word countless would be an inadequate qualifier.

[as the author, i could stop now & tell you what the dream is composed of, although each time the circumstances are different, the framework, the spine of the story remains the same & that is the issue with its ability to manifest anxiety.  i remain uncommitted.]

it is language & actions as a result of language, & the failure, the constant, spiraling failure that are the hallmarks of this dream.  you would wake yourself too.

it starts out innocently enough, although if he were to more closely examine each of these beginnings, he would realize (& perhaps now he has, but will it register subconsciously?) that each of these dreams begins in brilliant technicolor, exuding happiness & the kind of “all is right with the world” good feeling that makes for such pleasant sleeping, but it can quickly turn dark, even while still light-hearted in color & tone & sweetness & light.  & that is how last night’s (but actually this morning’s) dream began & it was only his recognition of the warning signs (the unusual requests “i’ll have a diet pepsi on ice with a pot of hot water,” “bring me a cup of mild coffee,” to which he replied, “i’ll make sure to ask the coffee to behave itself as i pour it into your cup,” which, if you’ve been paying attention, would be the tipping point of the dream, & although there were smiles all around, the scene had taken on a carnival, evil clown, a freak-of-nature-on-display-roped-off-from-the-crowd (for their own protection) kind-of-atmosphere, there even may have been cage bars silhouetted on the far wall of which he was, in retrospect, only aware of their symbolism after the fact.

but even though he had quelled the dream before it could go any further, stopping it before its inevitable conclusion, it did not matter, his day was shaded by its garish hues & sulphuric vapors & clammy cold hand on his heart.

the button hook (dreams)

it started the other day when i couldn’t (but eventually was able to) button the button on the sleeve of my shirt (the one just above the cuff.)  as we do these days, i commented on the difficulty i was having pulling that particular button through the eyelet on the shirt sleeve on a variety of social media platforms that i am a member of & received little moués of sympathy from this friend and that one; one commented on the exasperation of modern dress, i riposted with a tidbit of information about the origins of buttons on jacket sleeves (originally placed there to keep soldiers from using the sleeve as a handkerchief or imagine if you will a dirty, unshaven, hungry cavalryman astride his warhorse, a strong wind blowing, bringing with it the ashen scent of fire, gunsmoke, the clanging & explosive sounds of cannon, the screams of the fallen comrade to your right–your nose running in sympathy & fright, of course, you’d bring your sleeve up to your face in a gesture of relief & defiance.)

all of that transpiring in a flurry of 0′s & 1′s, in digital time, beeps & burps from my computer (you’ve got mail!) alerting me to new comments, until one fine young woman said “you need a button hook.”

i respond to common sense (from adults & children) as we all do with a sigh of ‘but, of course, that makes perfect & complete sense, i wish i’d thought of that’; in this instance, a spark appeared above my balding pate, a little flicker of remembrance, a tickle of delight, a feather under the nose of recognition, a sneeze held (remember the buttons on the sleeve!), a gentle nudge from my mother to move forward & claim what was mine from a pile of memories (a clothes bin at goodwill.)  “i have one,” i posted, “but i’ll need to locate it under the weary load of the fallen leaves & layers of things/objects/memories i cannot part with, not for anything. “

interestingly (at least to me) that evening when i got home i walked right to my bedroom, shedding the detritus of the day as i went, greeting dogs & lovers with equal affection (both getting a little scratch behind the ear) but with laser-like focus (the enterprise’s tractor beam pulling me closer.) the german jewelry box (handmade from exotic woods with the inlaid design of a simple country home on the lid,) my treasure chest (since forever) & there & there under the top tray, beneath the dried carnation from my mother’s funeral, the invitation to a going-away party from 1975, a dear, deceased friend’s driver’s license, a newspaper clipping from 1951 of my mother’s marriage to my father, my cub scout knife, (an archeological dig) lay my button hook.

why was it so close at hand and yet so far from being used?  you do know how a button hook works, don’t you?  you slip the hook through the eyelet & grab the button & pull it through.  victorians & edwardians used it to button up their shoes & the tedious line of buttons on the back of a woman’s gown from the time required, yea, demanded such a clever device. (i’ve yet to use it.)

this one, this one came from my mother’s mother (grandmother h.) my spiritualist (edgar cayce devotee) who loved nothing more than sitting in the afternoon (after dinner, the big meal of the day served at noon) on the  divan & under the painting of a southwestern desert with its purples & ochres & reading ‘the rubaiyat of omar khayyam.’

but here, now, a thought, a question,  came to me, one that i think is important now (freighted with regret): what were my mother’s dreams, my grandmother’s dreams, grandfather’s/uncle’s/aunt’s/my friend’s dreams?  what did they dream of hooking & pulling through the eyelet of their life?  what accomplishments?  what loves?

in all the conversations & times together, i don’t think once, not once, did any of them express what they dreamed their lives to be; what they looked to accomplish with their lives, where they wanted to be.   less so with my contemporaries, because we did share amongst ourselves our greatest desires & wishes & my mother occasionally would say, ‘oh, i’d love to own a mercedes benz, that diesel ping is the sound of money in the bank’ (this statement made when gas was but 35¢ a gallon,) but never that sigh of contentment, ‘i am where i always dreamed i’d be at this moment in time.’

if you have the opportunity today, right now, to call or turn to your parents/grandparents/aunts/uncles/cousins, your lovers, your friends & ask, “what are your dreams?” or “did your dreams of the life you wanted to lead come true?” do so, do so without hesitation.  i think it will make your life richer for the knowing.   i know i wish i had.

what i saw (in panorama)

Dreams come in panoramas (& dioramas, for that matter,) but real life rarely does.   That additional width of field, with its shallow depth & flattening of space lets you move around in a dream unhindered by spatial regulations & like a cartoon character in an animated  t.v. series you run past the same background over & over & over again, like treading water you’re not really getting anywhere, & yet, & yet, & yet you feel as if you’ve traveled far & wide.

The vistas of dreams (when not focused on emotions/people/objects/symbols) are not unlike these photos that I don’t recall taking.  I know I was at these places, but I do not know that I took these photos, I am even unsure of the exact year/month/day that they came into being.  & yet, here they were, in a drawer (like some dream tucked away for the right night, the white knight, the light to shine in on them) & waiting, waiting just so.

I know these places exist.  Other people have been there & can confirm their existence.   But naturally, emotionally, symbolically, they do not belong to my reality; they are outside/inside of my frame of reference; unlike other photographs that I have taken of places/people/things that I’ve done in the past which are triggers for memories, these photos exist outside the realm of nostalgia.

Their spirit, now that I’ve revealed it, is beckoning, not welcoming, beautiful & flat & haunting (a rich scent of the perfume of the ocean shimmies from them/brian eno music for airports the soundtrack.)  It wiggles a finger at you, don’t come too close; they may be nothing more than a facade propped up by 2 x 4s & cement block, a desert behind them.

Motion careening around a curve the red guard rail leaning against your weight just barely containing your flight from reality.   Within this frame you could, as lightly as a meadowlark, lift off & swoop down above the roofs & the whiteness  & the towers to the sea.  That is what the panorama allows you to do in a dream.  In reality, vertigo is its companion.

But in reality, we do not see in panorama.  Our visual blinders (habit/fears/resignation/’being in the moment’) prohibit this wide angle view in real life.   Our everyday lives proscribing our vision of the world, a square, a rectangle, an oriel, even a rondo all circumscribing the breadth & width of the world.   Even now, to take it all in, we must section off bits & pieces & calculate their effect on the mind’s eye/our visual acuity demanding tidbits & not the whole.

travelogue

Before recording digitally every waking moment <insert nostalgia sigh here>, some of us wrote things down in a little black book of blank pages–mine started in Chicago in 197_ and ended in 197_.  Although I oftentimes missed it and attempted to restart it–it seemed that photographs, work, lovers, friends, living, replaced it.   Alright, I lacked discipline.  There, I’ve said it.

June 30, 1976 – Wed.   New York, New York.  Have been here since Sunday.  Monday night we went to Maxwell’s Plum for Dinner — it was outstanding.  I have seen so much and done so much and enjoyed myself so much — I don’t really want to leave  — but I can always come back, can’t I?

The view from R. & B.'s apartment on Morton Street in the West Village.

Life is so bizarre — before I left on my vacation Jim C. decided that we were no longer to be friends and I suddenly realized how very petty he is and it’s fine with me if doesn’t want my friendship.  I was under his control for too long.  I imagine that more of him was coming off on me than I wish to concede or even want to admit.  Let him go his merry way, castrating himself from other people until he is all alone–an island among the sea and we’ll see how long until he’s destroyed by the sea.  How long can loneliness be happiness?

Tonight I’m going to see “Three Penny Opera” [starring Raul Julia] at Lincoln Center — last night we saw David Rabe’s new play “Streamers” directed by Mike Nichols — it was so very good –

July 6, 1976 Tues. — am going home for a week now.  Will be nice contrast to New York — in the continuing saga of the aforementioned [trip to NYC] — I saw Tony Perkins in “Equus” — a marvelous piece of acting and a very controlled play.  I also saw Marcel Carné’s film — Children of Paradise — the New Yorker magazine says it is the perfect film – they were right.  On Sat. afternoon, B. and I saw American Ballet Theatre — Baryshnikov danced Twyla Tharp’s Push Comes to Shove.  It was an amazing concept in ballet!

What I didn’t record was that I was in New York for the bicentennial and witnessed the tall ships sail up the Hudson, along with amazing fireworks over the Statue of Liberty — and — that one day during my trip there, R. & I walked from 92nd St. and Broadway all the way downtown to their Morton Street apartment in the West Village.  And then, of course, there were the men–Christopher Street was filled with gay men (all with hairy shoulders–which at the time impressed me no end–today, not so much, well, okay, maybe a little.)

At home in South Dakota the following week, July 1976.

July 12, 1976 – Mon –

a dream – walking through slush and snow in New York City wearing black rubber galoshes — come upon Dean R. painting a fire escape, then I meet David B. and we sit and talk and then we walk through Washington Square Park and then into his apartment which is very gypsy-looking, lots of pillows and drapes–almost tent-like–I’m confused as to whether or not I work that night or have a dance class–the dream ends.  My dreams at home were terribly erotic and violent — but not in the nightmare sense.  I have the ability to dream and remember those dreams.

Flash forward 12 years–M. & I vacation in Puerto Rico/St. Thomas/St. John.  There is no journal recording my feelings, just photographs, but they, they completely define the time we spent there.  Which is better–journal or photos?  For now, looking back–I must rely on both.

Trunk Bay, St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands, November 1988.