scent of water

i got up early
sprayed the patio
still in shade

and waited for the scent
of water to draft inside
sipping hot espresso

july

july's sun has breached the horizon. i feel the heat that is about to come.

church

it sucks
when you
can't say, "dad you told me once…"
because it never happened
it didn't happen
it never got the chance
to happen this
this in this moment
i see the point
i become gabriel and
i pierce the flesh i kill god
all becomes ash ash turns
into slurry turns into river
turns into a sea
i charred perfection from
this comes life micro organisms
fucking the wrong cells
because fucking doesn't exist yet
but they go on and on and on and
in millions of years later fucking
still goes on in light of the roman church
it goes on and on and on and life in
the foreseeable future continues

30 may 2011

Double Suture

(I think this has been brooding in my head. Last night in my sleep I had the vision of two sutures going through the same hole in bleeding skin. It was time to put it down on paper.)

This kind of pain is
like the pain of birth
but there is no new life.

It is pulling a double suture;
two needles, two threads
but one hole. It bleeds just the same.

The cries are mournful
just the same as those who cheer
in the streets though unaware.

Those getting drunk in musty bars
finding only blinding fog when they leave,
their path home is unclear.

The sand gives no direction,
their path shrouded in freedom
in a land with no compass.

3 May 2011

in the dark places

this is so haunting and beautiful i can't get it out of my head

Laura's Xmas Movie Bloopers

What if you ordered chicken fried steak and the server tells you the last one is gone?

What if you ordered chicken fried steak and the server tells you the last one is gone?

Answer here

formspring.me

Ask me anything http://formspring.me/equusignis

"All those experiences in life that i accumulate definitely gives me maybe we can call it a cooking wisdom." — Eric Ripert

fog

early morning
dense white fog
matches the limits
of my waking brain

16 january 2011

the night is not silent

(merry christmas)

the night is not silent.
this world remembers little peace
yet beneath the pale moon;

between riffles of bare branches,
between cold winds there are
adamant flames

unwilling to extinguish.
there are old memories
unwilling to surrender.

silence is only a state,
not destinations of our efforts.

(christmas eve 2010)

Laura's Xmas Movie

Yet another one of her creations... Enjoy!

at dawn's light

at dawn's light
there was a sliver;
a thin momentary view

into the night that preceded,
into the shadows where
faces and eyes have been left.

i stand in magenta rays
of this mourn's break
watching them recede,

watching lost desire to
thread on coarse gravel paths
barefoot, inhaling risk.

17 december 2010

A Sense of Accomplishment

Is what I'm feeling after finishing doing updates to my online folio and revising my resumé.

equusignis.com

Of Different Worlds

A short piece I was asked to write for the 10th Anniversary of ICAN (www.ican2.org)

--

I arrived in California in 1975 at the age of eight. I grew up in this country for many years in places where there were not many or any other Vietnamese people. Over the years, I was very much part of the melting pot that is America. I learned English and to this day it is my best language though I never lost my mother tongue. While I don't have the vocabulary of my Vietnamese friends, I feel lucky to be able to speak, read and write though I stopped school in Vietnam when I was only in the third grade.

Culturally, I became a mutt of sorts. I grew up among people from various origins. I learned a bit of this culture and that culture. I became a mosaic of many sources and was quite comfortable with that. It was not until 1999 when I returned to Vietnam for the first time that I experienced a stirring inside that had been dormant for a long time. Like a sleeper awakening, through the people I met, the places I visited and the home that I grew up in as a child.

It struck me that even though I have had so many other experiences in various countries and with various non-Vietnamese people for so long, there was still a very large part of me that remains Vietnamese. It was the start of a journey that I will be on for the rest of my life. However, it is not a simple journey of finding what bits of me connect to the culture I was born into because after all of these years, I realise I am a product of many roots.

I am not Vietnamese like the people who never left Vietnam. I am not Vietnamese like the many friends I have who grew up there then came here. I am not fully American either and to a great extent, it is a cloud of thoughts that has and still does sometimes blur the sense of who and what I am. There is not a simple easy answer but over time, I have come to accept the complicated nature of belonging to more than one people, than one place and culture at the same time.

There is richness in it and I know it will always be an adventure and learning experience.

— Dao Thai Son

Three Hours

Three hours was the time I spent talking to an old good friend last night. It was wonderful. It was like finding a cache of dormant energy I had put to safe keeping long ago. Step by step, embers of power and courage are revealing themselves to me, mostly because I am letting them.

The path is rocky and often steep but these eyes are open.

Reconnections

I reconnected and caught up briefly with a friend from art school that I haven't spoken to or seen in years. Of course we are thousands of miles apart, this sort of thing seems to happen a lot in my life. I wouldn't say it is a curse but most of the people I would like to spend time with are always so far away (or it is me who is always distant).

I don't know what to make of that thought. I do know that there has always been a strong nomadic streak in my life and I don't see it changing anytime soon. It is okay, it is a big wide world and much to see and experience. This makes me feel good though I can't say I exactly understand why. Sometimes it is not necessary to know, it is more important to just take the step forward as the path reveals itself.

Ink on Paper

Yesterday while waiting for a friend at a cafe, I sat and pulled out my Moleskine and for the first time in I don't know how long I put the nib of my refilled fountain pen on paper and started writing. It was nothing in particular. It was about nothing and everything. It was about little things, little observations as well as grander thoughts. I was not sure where I was going but it didn't matter. What matter was that I was writing, letting my mind wander unrestrained by the narrow avenues of life, the obligations that I think I should be on top of. On those pages where the winding curves and percussive strokes of letters were forming was a freedom I had forgotten about. My mind was rusty but my hand remembered the patterns. My hand remembered the joy and reward of simply drawing letters and making them run like a snake in the grass.

In the last several days, I have had an inkling that something is about to start again. Call it the sleeper awakening, call it the phoenix's embers lighting up again, it doesn't matter. In this moment, all that matters is I know something is stirring and some things that have been dormant are coming out of hibernation.

awakening

there is something stirring inside. it is deep down and has been dormant for a long time. it is stirring and soon it will glow like embers before it explodes into flames and rise again. it is time.

i wander into the night
the silence holds me
almost comforts me
as when she holds my hand

— equusignis

i feel fragile
no god agrees

you all fucks
put dicks in

same old
fuckin

baggy sacks

Subtlety and Complexity

Subtlety and complexity live side by side, those who refuse this reality find it easier to gravitate toward attachments where it is easier to fear and hate than reconcile and build bridges among diversity in beliefs.

— equusignis

line

when you look up at the night sky
turn around until you start to get dizzy
you find there is a center and starting point
then you know you have a line to follow

11 july 2010

seeds

i'm not overextended
not in this world
i'm kind when blood
paints patterns so pretty

it's not my soil all this
concrete pretty pay shack
this godless mayhem joint
and they still want taxes

i pay taxes in seeds they
are too stupid to understand

there are those
there was me

came to this place
came to this home

i found a new soil
they found shiney cars

i found my desert
they found gucci

all that was good
about my new land

they fucked into garb
and knew nothing

of the places
they came from

wearing DG and
shit they do not

realize how they
are so proud of shit

New porfolio

I woke refreshed today after having finally completed my new portfolio site. Minimal canvas and to the point.

http://equusignis.com

calla

there is a delicate thing in my bed
the room's air wants to
move when she breathes
the gauzy curtains want to
fan her calla lily skin
outside the dawn light
is trying to graze her twisted locks
i watch her scapula
sigh with each breath and
find the golden mean embedded
in the space between us

27 April 2010

Lately

He has been dreaming vividly
She now walks with him always
Through passages of familiar
Bazaars in strange old cities

— equusignis

Ode To A Haggis

Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great Chieftan o’ the Puddin-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy of a grace
As lang’s my arm

The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
You pin wad help to mend a mill
In time o’need
While thro’ your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead

His knife see Rustic-labour dight,
An’ cut you up wi’ ready slight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright
Like onie ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reeking, rich!

Then, horn for horn they stretch an’ strive,
Deil tak the hindmost, on they drive,
Till a’ their weel-swall’d kytes belyve
Are bent like drums;
Then auld Guidman, maist like to rive
Bethankit hums

Is there that owre his French ragout,
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad mak her spew
Wi’ perfect sconner,
Looks down wi’ sneering, scornfu’ view
On sic a dinner?

Poor devil! see him owre his trash,
As feckless as a wither’d rash
His spindle-shank a guid whip-lash,
His nieve a nit;
Thro’ bluidy flood or field to dash,
O how unfit!

But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread,
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He’ll mak it whissle;
An’ legs, an’ arms an’ heads will sned,
Like taps o’ thrissle

Ye pow’rs wha mak mankind your care,
An’ dish them out their bill o’fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies;
But, if ye wish her gratefu’ pray’r,
Gie her a Haggis!

— Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796)

venom

it is the cold night i crave
the cold outside fires my skin
the cold is not the cold it is family
they call me cruel call me cruel
i'm the spitting cobra in their faces
i'm fulll of venom and it's all for family

happy birthday

i wonder what you would make of all this madness
i wonder if you would feel like you are missing out
i doubt it because i have a feeling that in your heart
you are sitting with all of monet's colours at giverny
i doubt it because i have a sense that on your tongue
you are tasting the sea and salt from normandy
if you were here now we might be sitting in the sixth
drinking dom and chewing on lemon after oysters

The Gathering

Outside, the scene was right for the season,
heavy gray clouds and just enough wind
to blow down the last of the yellow leaves.

But the house was different that day,
so distant from the other houses,
like a planet inhabited by only a dozen people

with the same last name and the same nose
rotating slowly on its invisible axis.
Too bad you couldn't be there

but you were flying through space on your own asteroid
with your arm around an uncle.
You would have unwrapped your scarf

and thrown your coat on top of the pile
then lifted a glass of wine
as a tiny man ran across a screen with a ball.

You would have heard me
saying grace with my elbows on the tablecloth
as one of the twins threw a dinner roll across the room at the other.

— Billy Collins

Believe nothing

Believe nothing on the faith of traditions,
even though they have been held in honor
for many generations and in diverse places.
Do not believe a thing because many people speak of it.
Do not believe on the faith of the sages of the past.
Do not believe what you yourself have imagined,
persuading yourself that a God inspires you.
Believe nothing on the sole authority of your masters and priests.
After examination, believe what you yourself have tested
and found to be reasonable, and conform your conduct thereto.

— सिद्धार्थ गौतम (Siddartha Gautama)

stream

there is that waviness in the darkness you've been watching for you wait for its restlessness to absorb yours like a ghost hunting for emotions for it to take it away from you then you can fall into some sort of almost black indigo night that you imagine exists then all will be well all will be well not like the weird dreams of the night before when you sat next to bush sr then obama then it all turned out to be some sort of therapy cause the plane landed then we had to walk from sfo across the new bay bridge for some unknown reason and there was the one point where we were hundreds of feet up in the air around a turn and there was no railing and i looked into the water below all turquoise and green and it called me but i kept going cause i had to find some unknown on the old bridge and it turned out to be an old chinese woman with alms and some fortune telling then we got back to where we started and obama's secret service took us and we were on a helicopter then we were in some courtyard waiting and some movie producer asked us questions then someone else explained it to her all and she laughed then all these people all costumed up like they were in the next star trek movie which they were showed up and asked where was lunch then i realized i had left my house key at home

l'automne est arrivé

Autumn's first rain. She came in a violent passing, blowing droplets almost sideways and her chilling breath shocked all the complacent Californians. I loved every moment. I loved walking in the wet and windy air, coming home soaked and having to change into drier garbs and settling down with a cup of steaming sencha.

before dawn

it was so long ago. what do you remember in a dream but impressions? for me, obviously a lot more.

the white rose i photographed at the campground; white is a wild color, not something we looked for. it stared at me beneath the afternoon sun like the heart of honesty. i stared back but all i could do was to steal its image; i took a photo.

i go to some semblance of the wild to remind myself that nature is still out there. i go for trees, dried grasses, pine cones, the stinky smell that we have all forgotten in the wild. when the raccoon came the night before, i could not beckon it to stay though i had chicken roasting on coals. we of the suburbian cycle have lost what it is like to be among the trees.

i grabbed two leaves of california bay laurel and said to my friend you can cook with this and found it was something novel for her.

how have i gotten so far from the earth?

today i have tear stained cheeks because it is not where i want to be. give me the city or give me the country. this in-between land is for people looking for conveniences and i am NOT one of them.

if i have ever had enmity in my life i have learned that it has always come from my family.

In her serene display

In her serene display, originally uploaded by equusignis.

The parasol is the umbrella's daughter,
And associates with a fan
While her father abuts the tempest
And abridges the rain.

The former assists a siren
In her serene display;
But her father is borne and honored,
And borrowed to this day.

— Emily Dickinson

--

She's been gone almost two weeks and it seems so much longer...

woke with your name

YOU

Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head.
so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name,
like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables
like a charm, like a spell.

Falling in love
is glamorous hell: the crouched, parched heart
like a tiger, ready to kill; a flame’s fierce licks under the skin.
into my life, larger than life, you strolled in.

I hid in my ordinary days, in the long grass of routine,
in my camouflage rooms. You sprawled in my gaze,
staring back from anyone’s face, from the shape of a cloud,
from the pining, earth-struck moon which gapes at me

as I open the bedroom door. The curtains stir. There you are
on the bed, like gift, like a touchable dream.

— Carol Ann Duffy

Duffy became Britain's Poet Laureate today. The first woman to hold the post in its 341 year history.

I can't look at his face and not shed tears. I miss him...

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

— W H Auden

Ghosts

This autumn I won't be spending with ghosts
I won't be dancing with faces that have faded
the golds and reds of this season will fall
and be a prelude to the light of what I'll find
when these lids lift and the warm glow of you
touches my face, I'll know it is time to wake

11 December 2008

Best quote of the day

"Palin had her Cliff notes in order." –Robert Zimmerman, CNN Contributor

gaze

the space within his gaze
will be filled with a presence
that for now is only carried
in the organ beneath his ribs

Passings

Yesterday I received news from one of my cousins in France informing me that her father, my uncle had died the night before. He had been fighting an illness for a long time. His pain has ended finally.

We only brief periods of time together but over the years, I stayed in contact and felt a closeness to him because he and my father were like brothers and much of what I knew about my father came through him. (My father died a week before I was born).

I wish I could pour out some beautiful verses for him now but I can't. Perhaps it is still early, too soon. Maybe I'm in shock but don't realize it though I knew this day would come. Maybe it is because I've been wanting to visit him these last two years but couldn't. Maybe I was meant to not see him in a state of pain and remember him as I saw him last: Boyant at heart, funny and wise...

Two shades too light

He pours tea
Into pale porcelain
The green of sencha
Is two shades too light
So more leaves fall
Into the pot
So he can match
The hue of her eyes

28 May 2008

Fusion

The distance is the distance
And the time is a wait
The time is a fuse between
Two preternatural embers
So the distance becomes a touch
The distance becomes closeness
And the time becomes singularity
The fuse becomes fusion

19 May 2008

Hot Sand

Outside, the sun wants to cast
My shadow to the east
My skin is heated and seared
Like images branded into memory

I step inside to a sheltering shade
It is like waking from sleep
And finding her image, the way
She looks from her gilded frame

My skin still feels like hot sand
But it's not from rays of Summer

15 May 2008

Out of the Corner

Out of the corner of my eyes
I always think there is an emerald
Glittering in the midday sun
Out of the reach of my ears
I always think I hear a voice;
A bird of paradise in a tree
So I keep my senses vigilant
But when a breeze brings that scent
I know my favorite muse is near

13 May 2008

What would we have

A found poem:

What would we have to

hold in compassion

to be at peace right now?



What would we have to

let go of

to be at peace right now?

--Jack Kornfield

If You Must Know

If you must know
I was thinking of her
The sun was setting
Sky turning into violet
And vermillion
Outside my window
And I looked
For the shades of green
That I know are in her eyes
If you must know
I was thinking of the distance
That separates us
And the closeness
In the words that we utter
And of how the deep ocean
Resembles our connection

(23 April 2008)

Found wisdom

*
Karma Is Not Fixed Destiny
Karma is often wrongly confused with the notion of a fixed destiny. It is more like an accumulation of tendencies that can lock us into particular behavior patterns, which themselves result in further accumulations of tendencies of a similar nature.... But it is not necessary to be a prisoner of old karma....Here's how mindfulness changes karma. When you sit, you are not allowing your impulses to translate into action. For the time being, at least, you are just watching them. Looking at them, you quickly see that all impulses in the mind arise and pass away, that they have a life of their own, that they are not you but just thinking, and that you do not have to be ruled by them. Not feeding or reacting to impulses, you come to understand their nature as thoughts directly. This process actually burns up destructive impulses in the fires of concentration and equanimity and non-doing. At the same time, creative insights and creative impulses are no longer squeezed out so much by the more turbulent, destructive ones. They are nourished as they are perceived and held in awareness.--Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are

New Line

I thought of: "Just because I read an article in NG on vaqueros doesn't mean I want a drink of tequila."

Now I have to think of a story around this...

Etsy!

Due to popular demand to purchase my work, I have finally set up an Etsy storefront! So please have a visit here or just search for the seller name equusignis and it will get you there.

Hold

if i can't hold you in my thoughts
then let this be all a dream
at the edge of wakefulness
let the glimmering images
of your smile be a phantom
in my imperfect memory
let it all pass like a handful of snow
melting through loose fingers
from your body heat and
i can be on my way down the path
between bare birches
their white bark reminding me
of your skin and once the shadows
have engulfed me wait for sixteen heartbeats
before you light the beacon
that will guide my frail steps
home to where you wait

Glow

There came a glow in these dark eyes
Because I thought of you
Even in this early hour
When the robins have yet to sing
Nor the ravens have yet to caw
There came a glow in this muscle
Beneath my ribs because
You visited me in my darkest dreaming
Bringing light I did not know existed
So in these eyes barely light enough
To give you a hue I think of you
And hope that when in your gaze
They will grow brighter and
In one day I won't see you
Merely through a photograph

6 April 2008

Astonished

It is astonishing
That in the cold numbness
Of your feelings
A passing bird

A bird in flight
Across your focus
Could change
The hues of your sunrise

It is astonishing
How your gravity shifts
Because you see a delicate creature
Unbound by the weight of the earth

Fluttering across your vision
Changing all of your dreams
What dreams have come before
What dreams will come after

In the turbulence of pale white wings
You'll never be the same as before
You think that the armor is thick enough
You think that experience

Has built enough cynicism
You think and think and then find that
Your eyes cannot look away
From the one fluttering feather

Passing through the air in the trail
Of the passing dove
In that moment
You find in astonishment

That your world
Your world has forever changed

1 April 2008

Ember

He stares out into the afternoon light
Thinking of her image
With eyes closed mouth parted

And forehead against the cold steel wall
Hands delicate as primary feathers of a swan
With grace in her neck to match

He stared into the image in his mind
And let lose his eyes
To the thoughts of her being

Trying to feel ephemerally
Her mercurial mood
Trying to close the distance

An expanse of continent and ocean
Trying to reach the source of the little fire
That burns beneath his ribs

Like an ember that sleeps for years
Before evolving into a forest fire

30 March 2008

mirrors

he

stood
outside

himself
hoping to

look

into the wells
of his own

eyes

but couldn't see
through mirrors

that kept
strangers

at bay

(26 March 2008)

Dream state intuition

Went to sleep very late last night though I slept well and dreamed of faces I have not seen in a long time as well as faces that I have yet to meet. It is strange how over the years of being a lucid dreamer, I have developed certain intuitions that become acute when in the dream state. For example, learning to recognize faces of people that are inconsequential versus people that I would eventually meet. When I first starting doing this years ago, I thought I was just having dèja vu's but upon going back to my journals, I discovered I indeed did dream of these people before I met them. The shortest time frame being exactly one year to the day and in other cases, there are periods of over five years before I met the person or people. How does this work? I stopped trying to figure it out and just record the dreams and go with it. The other sense I have in my dreams is that I always know my cardinal directions, similar to real life. In last night's dream, I was on a coast that ran north to south and the sea was to the east. I don't know where it was, I just know it was on the east coast. At first, I thought it was the west coast but "up the coast" was to my left, this I am sure. Strange as it seemed I lived there and I've not lived anywhere like that since Vietnam and then Scotland. It doesn't surprise me, there is that nomadic streak in me. I just wonder how long it will take before it happens...

Contrast & Classicism

A friend and I have been talking about some of the sci-fi books we read growing up and the cover art that opened the doors to our imaginations and influenced us into becoming designers. I remembered that I had found this in a bin of a waiting room a couple of years ago. It is definitely a classic both as a book and its cover art (which I believe is by John Berkey).

It is funny because in this last week several others have brought up the subject of classic sci-fi books and such. We such a bunch of geeks. I wouldn't have it any other way. :p

Serve

Midnight came too early
Dawn passed without sleep
And dreams did not come

Until birds ceased to sing
And I sit here feeling battered
As if night holds a grudge because

I was recapitulating my day instead
Of listening to her lamentation
Give me a hand or a cup of tea

To warm my touch and soothe my senses
Or give me longer days and nights
So I can two mistresses serve

25 March 2008

Dawn

Morning came sooner than expected and the dreams were late
Venetian blinds held back the light like a veil of the mind
Yet at dawn's close all truth became apparent

In My Dreams

In my dreams
It is a river lake or ocean
But always water
An edge a boundary water
Waiting for me to cross
Leave behind previous lives
Persons faces words touches
That vibrate as photons across cold space
In my dreams heart computer processes
Events situations desires
They leak into waking day
They seep to surface as indelible ink
Designs drawings seals
Sometimes others can read
In my dreams they are composites
No need for realism
They say the same things
Cut the same way carry similar smiles
Two three five persons into one
Efficient because there are only five seconds to draw
A 20 minute two hour six hour film
In my dreams i never walk swim fall drown into water
I move as shorebirds along its edge
Waking up never having
Drank cleansed re-birthed

25 February 2008

formations

lines ascend
accelerate
abruptly plummet
turn like eagles
in mating dances
slashes dots curls
congregate
a thousand bees
ready for forage
rows rows rows
of variant formations
yield at end of pages
what a single image
imprints into memory
of patient observant ones

–equusignis

Another life

I had a dream last night that I was living the life of a 19th century painter. I didn't know who it was supposed to be. The key details that were vivid were the colors, brush-work style and the fact that he lived next to the sea. The dream took place from the time he met his yet-to-be wife to the time he had two children. There were periods of turmoil which were intense. Now I feel compelled to research...

Weight of Attraction

Her branches broke
Under the weight of attraction
But he was; still,
A leathery countenance
Back-staging the luminance
Of her Winter blossoms

On waking up

To the muffled sounds of the Fox News Network in the other room:

THE SCORPION

The Scorpion is as black as soot,
He dearly loves to bite;
He is a most unpleasant brute
To find in bed at night.

Hillaire Belloc

The Kingdom

Tonight I rented the "Kingdom" just thinking of a brainless way to pass the time. I was mistaken. It was too realistic. Being a child of war. It just made me cry and the cold air seeped in.

This Valentine's day won't be like that

This Valentine

She said this Valentine's day won't be like that
The words create the presence of a ghost refusing to fade
But time ticked by has softened the edges
Of the tiny blades of remembrance from such words
She said there won't be any despair in my bed
It sounded like hope as much as a promise
But it was just another urge created in ether – wishful
Now they feel like old wounds and have new associations
Beneath a sky plenty of yet unacquainted stars

– equusignis

It had wispy clouds

Hey Hey Hey

He was staring at the sky
It had wispy clouds
Then the thought came to him
Or was it a memory
She said we are Neruda – I mean a Neruda
It caused a smile and he felt it even though
They had not yet met in person but he could feel
The pixels of her words on screen vibrating
In some unseen place inside of him
He fished out his camera
Uncapped the lens and slid the cover
Into a coat pocket the inside warmth
Felt like the caching of a secret
He clicked at the sky the shutter was percussive
In his head she said hey hey hey
Hey I love you
He lowered the camera
Replaced the lens cap
His hands now cold and a little numb
And turned away from the memory

5 February 2008

Orthorexia

Newly found word:

Orthorexia: An unhealthy obsession with healthy eating.

festoon and globes

festoon or globes
Originally uploaded by equusignis

This morning I spent in the city to attend a focus group. Afterward, I walked around the Union Square area as if it was a beautiful sunny day while almost all of the rest of the people on the streets were scrambling for cover and away from the dense but tiny sprinkles of moisture coming down. In fact, it was dense enough that you could tell that it was coming down at a 45 angle. Later, I came into this café that I have passed by countless times but have never gone in so I went in and ordered a pot of tea and watched the sparse traffic going by. After a while, I realized that I really missed living in the city. That is going to have to change.

Prose

A found quote:

"A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose."

– Samuel McChord Crothers

Love show

What I feel like today...

No shame (needed) plug. Brushes & Petals: A Benefit Show for Children in Vietnam

I am showing a selection of my photos and watercolors this coming weekend in a two person exhibit. The photography will be a combination of photos from last summer and fall as well as of a Ikebana arrangements by my friend Ivy. Part of the proceeds of the show will go to a non-profit called ICAN.

For those of you in the Bay Area, please drop by if you can. It's for a good cause.

RECEPTION
Saturday, January 26, 2008: 3pm - 7pm

EXHIBITION
Friday, 1/25/08: 3pm - 7pm
Saturday, 1/26/08: 10am - 7pm

ICAN is a 501 (c)3 non-profit organization whose mission is to help Vietnamese children realize their potential and become caring and contributing members of their family and community. ICAN's programs aim to create strong family and community networks to support the children as well as provide the children with skills, confidence and opportunities to succeed in life.

For more information, please visit www.ican2.org

Tragedy

found quote:

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die."–Mel Brooks

We are like sculptors...

found quote:

"We are like sculptors, constantly carving out of others the image we long for, need, love or desire, often against reality, against their benefit, and always, in the end, a disappointment, because it does not fit them."

Anaïs Nin

Shadows (of things that get overlooked)

Today seemed overly productive, for a while there, so I decided by mid-afternoon it was time to stretch my legs with a photowalk outside. The sky was clear and cold so I walked. Oddly, I walked and walked and even got on a bus and I was uninspired to take a photo of anything. Not good. I boarded a bus and headed to a local bookstore. It was depressing. It looked like it was trying to regain itself from the Holiday rush. I considered seeing a movie but that seemed contradictory to my getting out of the house.

It was not until I was almost home that I started to click the shutter. It seemed odd because they were at places where I saw almost everyday and found a couple of new things. So...



And when I looked at the photo, this came to me:

Shadows as veins
Reveal past damage
Shadows as lines
Reveal ages past

January 7, 2008

Six of Swords

"...the Six of Swords shows the necessity to take a look at where you've been and where you're going. This mental clarity will also serve to smooth the way ahead, and make the passage from negative to positive as peaceful as possible. Though the waters behind are choppy, there are no rough seas ahead to slow your progress...Instead of ruling the emotions, the Six of Swords actually offers a highly controlled balance of logic and intuition. This is how true mental clarity arises; you can use your intuition to guide you through easy situations and call upon your impartial and analytical nature when it is needed for a more complex decision. Do not seek to suppress your emotions any more than a sea captain would want to eliminate the water. Rather, respect their presence and their power in your life, and use them to your advantage. When a balance between head and heart is achieved, truly great things can be accomplished."

–James Rioux from www.ata-tarot.com

The Pond

It has rained all day today. Feeling nolstagic, I donned my coat and grabbed my camera and went for a walk, half-heartedly wishing that my walk was taking place in another continent, in another place. The sky reminded me of winter days in La Tour-de-Peilz or Dundee. When I think of these places and all the moments of laughter I had there I find a bittersweet flavor in the core of my heart. Constantly we compare the moment of now in some sort of dissonance and look back to other times when we laugh as a matter of natural response, not a practiced effort. Still, I did find some kind of little joy in my steps today, listening to the rain drops pelting my hood even with earbuds in and listening to the moment's soundtrack from my iPod nano and feeling the swing and thump of my camera hanging around my neck and tucked in under my coat.

I managed to get a couple of photos without destroying my camera in the downpour...then when I came home, I found the poem.



The Pond

Night covers the pond with its wing.
Under the ringed moon I can make out
your face swimming among minnows and the small
echoing stars. In the night air
the surface of the pond is metal.

Within, your eyes are open. They contain
a memory I recognize, as though
we had been children together. Our ponies
grazed on the hill, they were gray
with white markings. Now they graze
with the dead who wait
like children under their granite breastplates,
lucid and helpless:

The hills are far away. They rise up
blacker than childhood.
What do you think of, lying so quietly
by the water? When you look that way I want
to touch you, but do not, seeing
as in another life we were of the same blood.

Lousie Glück

downtown

today's acquisition.

over the years, i've had the opportunity to work in manhattan, staying there just long enough each time to enjoy all the good and great things a huge metropolis has to offer but never staying long enough for the city to get under my skin and leave its bitterness. i remember coming across a review of this book a while ago and when i saw it on the shelf of a dollar store today, there was no question.

halves

they were like two halves of a missing sculpture like two halves of a perfect pear cloven and that was their story before they even knew it beyond distance they could trade words their thoughts meshed like the sea met the sky on a misty day as time passed they didn't know where one ended and the other started and they had this crazy idea that that was how their lives were going to unfold, like a piece of endless, elegant origami unfolding and with each leaf and crease undone there were to be art and love escaping from the thin recesses of their mingled lives and then the burr came it was not new it had been displayed or mentioned or talked about but it was not full so when it came it killed all they had together like a plague like a black death as if they were a continent of humans they all died he lied or he didn't lie he lived his own lie in his life so it was the truth so it came out as a lie even if he didn't want to lie there was the terrible fright there was the terrible fright of losing the only one he had met after all the years who was an equal there was the terrible feeling of wanting to tell yet it receded into the empty part of his soul where he thought it would not come out but it did and it did and it was horrible it was the crystal castle coming down, weighed with such darkness, it was like all the feathers of a thousand doves turning to lead and falling on the earth, falling on the earth when the earth is made of glass and everything broke apart and violently flew in all directions and it was the beginning of the end and it was the beginning of a new beginning and so he patiently, now, watches the sun and lets it set beyond the horizon and in the darkness he sees things and thoughts and emotions and realities that were too subtle for the bright light of day and his heart begins to calm knowing that it did not matter what he knew but it was about what he might see

i could not sleep in these hours before dawn

so i wandered and found this...

Demian

Some years ago, an old friend sent me a letter and she said I was her Demian. I had no idea what she was talking about. Recently, someone told me that was a very high compliment. So today, I went out and bought a copy. It's been some 16 years since that letter so it is high time I figure out what she was trying to tell me...

Happy Birthday Papa

For a moment this morning when I drifted from sleep to wakefulness, I thought what it might have been if you were still here on this earth. I thought how it would feel as an adult to have a close connection with my father. Thoughts as these give rise to ideas that make me feel that I should be a writer full time. That may happen yet...

Meanwhile, happy birthday papa.

grey morning, transparent clouds

rolled out of bed way too early this morning or at least that is how it feels. it wasn't too early though. it was 8:05am. my body was no longer interested in sleep even though i wanted to drift back into lucid dreams. there seemed unfinished business or lack of recall from some of the dreams. the whole night seemed to be some sort of odd recapitulation of excerpts from my life, actual characters replaced by new faces in some cases. the brain trying to draw lines between the dots and make connections while the other-reality part of the brain was presenting mobius loops and introducing unlikely or impossible trails to follow.

the strongest and most lingering recalls:

a woman who was either completely new or a composite of several people (i was reading about herman hesse's novel damien. perhaps influence by the character of frau eva?); an ambivalent relationship somewhere between platonic and intimate; a man who completed the triangle with more ambivalence; distances traveled everyday––something about the connection between a rural place and an urban setting; a place where everyone knows you; restraint in my own natural urges.

a return to art center, my alma mater. it was not clear why i was there. there were many familiar faces. we all came with our "kits," ready to design, draw, whatever. perhaps thoughts about me starting to teach next month. something i've wanted to do for a long time and it is finally happening.

in any case, my head was active and clear on this early winter day and i have the instinct that the feeling of this morning will stay with me for a long time to come...

Winter Sarabande

Strewn across his vision
are fragments of hues
and luminance; souvenirs
of the moments of a year.

White pale light conducts
fragments of remembrance,
matching chroma and senses
like a kiss telling a truth.

Written from Al-Zahra

a found poem

From al-Zahra
I remember you with passion.
The horizon is clear,
the earth's face serene

The breeze grows faint
with the coming of dawn.
It seems to pity me
and lingers, full of tenderness.

The meandering waterway
with its silvery waters
shows a sparkling smile.
It resembles a necklace
unclasped and thrown aside.

A day like those delicious ones
now gone by
when seizing the dream of destiny
we were thieves of pleasure.

Today, alone,
I distract myself with flowers
that attract my eyes like magnets.
The wind roughhouses with them
bending them over.

The blossoms are eyes.
They see my sleeplessness
and weep for me;
their iridescent tears overflow
staining the calyx.

In the bright sun
red buds light up the rose bushes
making the morning
brighter still.

Fragrant breaths come from the pome
of the waterlilies,
sleepyheads with eyes
half-opened by dawn.

Everything stirs up the memory
of my passion for you
still intactin my chest
although my chest might seem
too narrow to contain it.

If, as I so desire,
we two could again be made one,
that day would be the noblest
of all days.

Would God grant calm to my heart
if it could cease to remember you
and refrain from flying
to your side
on wings trembling with desire?

If this passing breeze
would consent to carry me along,
it would put down at your feet
a man worn out by grief.

Oh, my most precious jewel,
the most sublime,
the one preferred by my soul,
as if lovers dealt in jewels!

In times gone by
we demanded of each other
payments of pure love
and were happy as colts
running free in a pasture.

But now I am the only one
who can boast of being loyal.
You left me
and I stay here,
still sad, still loving you.

~ Ibn Zaydun
(died 1070) (Córdoba)

The River

for Benazir Bhutto

There is this sadness and comfort
As if everything is okay
Today when I walked beneath sheltering trees
The shade gave me a grace
I never thought was possible

There was for a moment
That I really am not alone
And tonight the stars
Would break open for me
And shed celestial light

I stopped in my tracks today
And looked down at a fallen leaf
So rusty and coppery in the midst of summer
And I saw myself in its colors
Always in autumn no matter the season

And in that moment
I let a bite of hope enter my heart
As if I didn't have to walk this path
With only my footsteps as companion
The road to the river won't be so far

all i ever get for christmas

touch

touch
Originally uploaded by equusignis

sometimes all you need is a touch...

movement

sometimes things have to be arbitrary or seem that way, sometimes enough is enough and you dust off your breeches, get up and go. the thing is you never know when it comes. last night, it came to me and from where i know not. maybe it was in the words of another but that is not as important as it coming...



The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee

I am a feather on the bright sky
I am the blue horse that runs in the plain
I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water
I am the shadow that follows a child
I am the evening light, the lustre of meadows
I am an eagle playing with the wind
I am a cluster of bright beads
I am the farthest star
I am the cold of dawn
I am the roaring of the rain
I am the glitter on the crust of the snow
I am the long track of the moon in a lake
I am a flame of four colors
I am a deer standing away in the dusk
I am a field of sumac and the pomme blanche
I am an angle of geese in the winter sky
I am the hunger of a young wolf
I am the whole dream of these things
You see, I am alive, I am alive
I stand in good relation to the earth
I stand in good relation to the gods
I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful
I stand in good relation to the daughter of Tsen-tainte
You see, I am alive, I am alive

–N. Scott Momaday

friday

today was marginally better.

i had to cry. i had to cut new quills and scribble thoughts on paper but it made me continue. at an hour before dusk, i walked and talked to the dying light to give me some interesting images. i walked and looked and shot while listening to suzanne vega and the shins. it is funny how simple things can make minutes, moments, hours more bearable...




Gold teeth and a curse for this town were all in my mouth.
Only, I don't know how they got out, dear.
Turn me back into the pet that I was when we met.
I was happier then with no mind-set.

And if you'd 'a took to me like
A gull takes to the wind.
Well, I'd 'a jumped from my tree
And I'd a danced like the king of the eyesores
And the rest of our lives would 'a fared well.

New slang when you notice the stripes, the dirt in your fries.
Hope it's right when you die, old and bony.
Dawn breaks like a bull through the hall,
Never should have called
But my head's to the wall and I'm lonely.

And if you'd 'a took to me like
A gull takes to the wind.
Well, I'd 'a jumped from my tree
And I'd a danced like the king of the eyesores
And the rest of our lives would 'a fared well.

God speed all the bakers at dawn may they all cut their thumbs,
And bleed into their buns 'till they melt away.

I'm looking in on the good life I might be doomed never to find.
Without a trust or flaming fields am I too dumb to refine?
And if you'd 'a took to me like
Well I'd a danced like the queen of the eyesores
And the rest of our lives would 'a fared well.

–The Shins

Ludlow Street

sometimes...

sometimes one has to go back a long way and find some fragment in the past that helps to make the present more bearable. today, i came across the lyrics and music of suzanne vega again after having been far away for years.

i am reminded of being a confused 17 year old trying to make answers of questions he did not even know.

i am reminded that in art, i found help.

today, i found it again. for a moment, it makes the winter sun a little less harsh.

--
Ludlow Street

Love is the only thing that matters.
Love is the only thing that's real.
I know we hear this every day.
It's still the hardest thing to feel.

This time
When I go back to Ludlow Street,
I find each stoop and doorway's incomplete,
Without you there.

Another generation's parties.
And it is still the same old scene.
I can recall each morning after.
Painted in nicotene.

This time
When I go back to Ludlow Street,
I find each stoop and doorway's incomplete
Without you there.

All of the people I once knew.
All of the ones I was close to.

Love is the only thing that matters.
Love the only thing that's real,
And when I think about you now
Love is the only thing I feel.

This time
When I go back to Ludlow Street,
I find each stoop and doorway's incomplete
Without you there.

Tim, this time
When I go back to Ludlow Street
I find each stoop and doorway's incomplete
Without you there.

restless

it has been a restless day and it feels like the night shall be the same. there is a world of too much space around me and there is a universe too far away from friends i wish i were with; even if i didn't have the right words to say or the right song to sing to carry us through this strange season.

i tried everything to get me through these weird moments; scratching a quill on paper; drawing a brush across paper; taking photos of an almost empty sky all the while thinking of the friends i'd rather be with yet nothing seemed to work. if the value of a vessel is the void within then this vessel is full of void today and i wish it were filled.

for all that i have, i wish the best thoughts out to my friends so as to remind them that they are not alone. perhaps in this, i can be at peace below the yew tree and the pale moon

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.

it is that time of the year again. i don't know why death comes so frequently around the holidays but several of my friends have lost dear ones in a short time. or is it maybe we jus pay attention to it more? is it because we become more sensitive of how it is to be alone?

whatever the reasons, i feel for my friends. it is also because i have expressed the same, have known the thorn in the heart and the pebble beneath the saddle. i am a horse so all i know is to move ahead regardless of whether or not i know what direction i'm headed into.

unlike some journeys, some destinations can't be known...




The Moon and the Yew Tree

by Sylvia Plath

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.

The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.

The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God,

Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility.

Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place

Separated from my house by a row of headstones.

I simply cannot see where there is to get to.

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,

White as a knuckle and terribly upset.

It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet

With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.

Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky——

Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection.

At the end, they soberly bong out their names.

The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape.

The eyes lift after it and find the moon.

The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.

Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.

How I would like to believe in tenderness——

The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,

Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering

Blue and mystical over the face of the stars.

Inside the church, the saints will be all blue,

Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,

Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.

The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.

And the message of the yew tree is blackness—blackness and silence.

Epilogue

Those blessèd structures, plot and rhyme—

why are they no help to me now

I want to make

something imagined, not recalled?

I hear the noise of my own voice:

The painter’s vision is not a lens,

it trembles to caress the light.

But sometimes everything I write

with the threadbare art of my eye

seems a snapshot,

lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,

heightened from life,

yet paralyzed by fact.

All’s misalliance.

Yet why not say what happened?

Pray for the grace of accuracy

Vermeer gave to the sun’s illumination

stealing like the tide across a map

to his girl solid with yearning.

We are poor passing facts,

warned by that to give

each figure in the photograph

his living name.

Robert Lowell

calling it quits

encounters and musings

it is late and i can't seem to fall asleep.

i keep thinking about our two conversations since friday. they were nice though now i'm really curious because you wanted to send me a letter via snail mail. i'm like a cat and seem to have just as many lives. i wonder what this next life will bring me.

the "you" i'm referring you know who you are. after all these years you step back into my life and i don't know what to make of it. i hope you'll give me a clue. i still think about the shakespeare sonnet you sent to me years ago in a letter. it is one of the most endearing things anyone ever sent me.

as i've said before, karma is a strange mistress.

les temps pas perdus

it was a strange and rewarding weekend.

the expected things that were good were even better than expectations. to see old friends that you have had history together was even more than one could ask for especially when your connections multiply with new wonderful people. you can never have too many wonderful people in your life.

then to get phone calls from people from your past that you have loved and reconnect; that is so much. i lack the words to describe such feelings even though at times i think of myself as an artist with language.

so all in all, it was a weekend of experiences beyond expectations. or in the words of dickens, it was a "great expectation."