les temps perdus

les temps perdus
Originally uploaded by equusignis.

she sat on the bus across from me with her mom and little sister. the freckles...she had the greatest not quite pig tails! and her eyes were huge and hinted of mischief...

it was that day

i heard a fragment of something from the plastic radio hanging underneath the kitchen cabinet and above and near the stove.

i might have been making a sandwich for her, my wife at the time.

something on the radio, i couldn't tell what it was but my tissues told me it was not good.

it wasn't. it couldn't be.

i was supposed to meet the father of a friend for breakfast later that morning.

it was all a hurry.

and then my friend who lived in nyc started sending me pictures, there was mostly smoke.

he called and i can still remember the brokenness in his voice.

i am never offended, surprised, or moved by death.

but i am hurt by the ability of what we do to each other as humans.

once, i was asked what would i would do about the situation in bosnia.

i said, either take away all their tools or LEVEL the place.

absolutely pure destruction. enforced destruction if you aren't going to play nicely.

i still hold to the thought, being a child of war and violence.

so yea, i wanna play god. actually, god is a fucking wuss who has let herself be manipulated by stupid men.

so i'm not really manipulating.

i just wanna kill.

years later, i am only beginning to come to terms of the horrors of that morning.

and it is a lame thing to respond with violent thoughts but it is also human.

how sad is it to be in this state and to know the truth of the matter?

i've decided

Confucious was and is an asshole.

one day, when i can go back in time i have a sliver of steel for him. yes, i hate him and i hate all that he has left behind for many asian cultures. and for that, i hope i never get to meet his descendents. because i'll have more than words for him. and because i know human anatomy. and because he was a freaking mysoginist. i'm sure i could come up with more reasons.

what do you call someone who is a socio/cultural bigot? just a bigot? hmm...maybe that is just what i am.

just a flashing moment of brimming anger in me.

i think it is healthy, for now...

quote of the day

"Even the Pope wants to halt the hostilities. The Pope is on the side of peace and progress and the British Left is on the side of USA Neo-cons. Oh God." – Jeanette Winterson (in her August column)

i gave her some color, she needed it

i gave her some color, she needed it
Originally uploaded by equusignis.

grit (2006)

she rolls on the grit, from cheek to nose,
from lips to ears and finds herself still,
lying barren on silica seas.

the grains scratches her eyes but it is
more important to see the thing that
might end you so she looks up into
the bitter baby blue horizon.

it is that time of day where there are
no shadows of the sun to protect
and only the gaze of a white hot
observer like your old grandmother
watching over you playing piano.

so she remembers giving up the
instrument long ago but the bars,
melodies, rhythms never left.

they refused the abandonment.
they refused to be unraveled
like strands of cultural DNA.

they believed that the physical
are just canvases for something we
aren't meant to really understand.

they believed that this is all a
test for which we will never, or should,
want to see the outcome of in our life.

no song*

no song*
Best viewed large, click on picture. Originally uploaded by equusignis.

the bird has no song so it holds out its wings, aged and tattered primaries.

the multicolored refracted rainbow has left its barbs.

black is now black.

the color of starless midnight, not the shimmering seven mystics of transparent rainbows nor the pretty of the ugliness of the surface of an oil slick.

gloss and shine given to a dusty pallor, the texture of coal in an abandoned shaft.

the bird has lost its voice, replaced it with gestures.

the movements of a crippled crab.

the shuffling of a wounded sidewinder.

he sits and watches the once glorious creature, stealer of flame, bringer of light now at the end of its short reign.

he sits and watches unblinking, dry eyed, afraid to lose the images.

he sits until the predawn dew replaces the moisture abandoned by his tears.

--

*this was a sketch of someone i spied sitting on the train. he had this intent but aloof gaze as the train moved. i made a quick sketch of him and then added watercolor while waiting for a friend at a café afterwards. later that evening on the return home, he was on the same train. he saw me playing with my tarot cards and asked if i would do a reading. i declined but he pulled out a deck of regular cards of his own from his pocket and started an impromptu reading on me as we chatted. it was an interesting conversation but what was stranger was he was reading things correctly that he never could have guessed so i showed him the sketch i did. we continued to converse until we reached our stop. he gave me his email after i told him i was going to post the drawing. it was certainly a serendipitous encounter. there was more to the conversation but that is another story...

hesitant, expectant and intent

hesitant, expectant and intent
Originally uploaded by equusignis.

they didn't mean to cross paths or even directions yet sometimes intersections can't be avoided.

sometimes separation is not measured in degrees but in speed and direction: velocity.

sometimes we don't really know our personal velocities until there is a collision.

collisions sometimes can be a creative force.

collisions can create entire universes...

sleepy

sleepy
Originally uploaded by equusignis.

she was hip and classy. she wore an embroidered silk cap along with headphones and an ipod. she carried a fold-up scooter in a clear vinyl tote bag for that last stretch home.

she was trying to remember her lines from the script. it was supposed to be funny; a comedy and musical, Grease. but it was no match for the drone and rhythm of the train and the warmth of a summer afternoon...

lucid wanderdreams

sunday night's dreams:

i dreamed of being in france. there was a small house. well maybe not so small, more like an old house converted into three units. it was on a large field sort of property. no trees to be seen...

i dreamed of going into a bank with the intent of robbing it but the pretty teller only laughed at the idea and cashed a check for $14.23 instead. but why did she give me dollars when i was in france? i'm such a pushover for a pretty woman. or maybe it was because she was a redhead.

it is now tuesday morning at 4am and i find myself sleepless yet relaxed. i have turned into a vampire, being active at night in these last weeks. my mind is so much more alert when the rest of the world is asleep. peaceful. i leave the cacophony of diurnal life to others.

i've been dreaming of france a lot. the homeland calls to me. the other night, i had a dream that i was there but trying to order sushi in french and it was not going well then thought, what the hell am i doing trying to order sushi while in france? bring on the foie gras!

over there

over there
Originally uploaded by equusignis.

something for Magda...

Greater Than (2006)

In the last stretches of abuse,
she searches for sources of good and evil.
a long journey across the world
looking for clues of something bigger.

“Greater than you, that will save you,”
they said with insistence.

“You will find comfort in His presence...”
She makes it to the eastern peak,
trudges up Dong Shan, stands on granite shingles
atop the roof of the world.

She looked for something greater,
searched in earnest for something to fix her,
save her, comfort her like the scent
of a familiar bed, a familiar nest.

Conversations on a mountain peak
with a God she can’t see. Months pass;
fatefully, the only presence on the lonely shrine
is an expression, culmination of all she is.

The only God that exists has been on the inside.
All the good, evil, actions and
consequences in her existence were simply
results of her mind, thought and consciousness.

She lights the match, touches the paper
for moments she is reminded of a passage
by Bradbury and then she frees the book;
lit pages flutter away finding new freedom.

You

you
Originally uploaded by equusignis.

You are the whole building on fire.
You are the voice of sirens. You are
the dumb crowd milling, the capture
of Weegee’s lens. You are flames
licking up the escape. You're the hovering
of a mother at the cliff of her window ledge.
You are the choice to drop her baby.
You're the chance of a beckoning crowd,
six hands gripping a sooty raincoat. You
are the only option. You're a simple drop.
Ten stories below they pray you're like a cloud,
soft floating. You are like a cloud. Grey
and you don't hold anything. You are
that moment before a falling, the falling,
a whir of falling, wail of falling, the sweet
thud. You are black blood flaring
across the concrete. You are a needle
to the groove of a very sad song.
The whole building burns with you.

– Sandra Beasley

moi

moi
Originally uploaded by equusignis.

is that the look of innocence or intent?!

c. 1967. i started scanning in some old photos that my nanny sent to her grand-daughter from vietnam. more to come...

in the eye of his spit

or the spit in his eye...

this afternoon, i had a rather interesting observation of behaviour. while sitting at a bench waiting for my bus to arrive, there was a 15-16 kid (male) sitting next to me dressed in passé below the crotch baggy jeans, three times oversized t-shirt, white sneakers, etc...but it wasn't that. really it was not the dumb uniform that got my attention.

it was his spitting behaviour. being someone who watches animal behaviour, i wondered how often he spits for no reason because quite clearly he was no archer fish. he was too fat anyway, would have sunk and got stuck in the mangrove roots but i digress. in a span of 90 seconds, he managed to spit over seven times in slightly different locations. it made a rough arc. now it wasn't like he was chewing tobacco or anything, it was just a thing to do. who knows, in his mind, it might even have been cool. anyway, i tried very hard to watch and not interact. i even turned up the volume of my ipod to some rather menacing tune by the black angels. and there were three moments where i looked at the thick saddle leather shoulder strap of my filson bag and visualized how nice of a cravat i could make around his neck to stop the disgusting behaviour...but i didn't. it was only a passing fantasy. something i wouldn't ever actually do [?] hahahah...

anyway, i looked up at the changing of the sky and decided that it was going to be a nice sunset. and there was no latent agression. i was just looking forward to getting home and having dinner...

heaven's cloth

heaven's cloth
Originally uploaded by equusignis.

something for Kelley...

He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

–William Butler Yeats

pomodoro

sometimes i go looking for a new siren to occupy the vacant space of the warehouses of my heart. i'm looking for that new voice. the siren that will call the monsters back to sea, the muse that will make a song olympian and a verse that would make proust turn.

sometimes you have to think grand, not the grand of louis but the grand of elvis. and so sometimes you end up with gazpacho when you meant marinara; on either of the wrong end of the pomme d'amour spectrum.

oh well, sometimes it is just sauce...

(daphne) blue girl

(daphne) blue girl
Originally uploaded by equusignis.

she is blue today.

daphne blue, because that was the color of ink i reached for of the selection sitting on my desk in front of me.

today, she is simplified.

she needs no cross hatching or strands of hair delineated.
today she is a verse of a poem, distilled and condensed.

and the depths of her need go any deeper than her hue...

Crush in the Ghetto

I'm floating with the birds
I'm talking to the weeds
Look what you've done to me

I'm still dressed up from the night before
Silken hose and an old Parisian coat
And I feel like a queen at the bus stop on the street
Look what you've done to me

It's a beautiful morning in the ghetto
Finer than the day before
The ants are crawling over my pants as if to say
They know where the honey is

There's really old roses blooming in the ghetto
Birds of paradise are taller than me
The weeds grow high, the birds flicker by
Children are walking to school

In the midst of all of this profusion
The bus pulls up to take me back home
The bus driver looks like an African prince
The babies have tears in their eyes

And I feel like a queen
On this sunny city bus
Look what you've done to me

– Jolie Holland

from the outside

from the outside
Originally uploaded by equusignis.

sometimes the view is from the outside. an outward station looking for a perspective; a perspective of the inside. but how often can one illustrate from the skin what goes on beneath the epidermis, beneath the vascular tissue, below the lipids and smooth muscle what we imagine to feel that is our insides experiencing emotions where we thought we didn't have any nerve cells?

we are creatures designed to explore the outside, the external environment. when we are aimed inward, most of the time we lose our way. who makes a GPS device to tell us where we are and how the map the cities of the interior? can those places, those feeling be put on any map, really?

perhaps we only get glimpses, like what was once a beautiful plant on the window sill that is now withering. can we tell from the outside that it has been dried out, left to die by mistake or on or with purpose? and if so, what does that mean? self induced atrophy? is that the bars on the outside that is meant to protect? is it?

spidery arms

spidery arms
Originally uploaded by equusignis.

it had been a very long time since i'd visited these trees. probably at least 20 years or so.

yea, a long time between visits for people. but for the trees, it must have been afternoon tea. it makes you look at things differently. i looked at the cross section of one sequoia that is around 2000+ years old. it is interesting to see milestones in terms of human history against its rings. while we were figuring out the printing press, the tree was in its adolescence...

yea, perspective...

to float

so you go on and on and on

that is the point, you don't lose the path
you don't lose the river,
it is the path of least resistance

are you floating?
are you drifting?

what if you are just a solar flare
one of those things that sparkle
in my eyes and in the half moment

in the universe
the dream of the
GUT scientist

drifts away...
melds away...

then you look back
then you see the eyes
the dark in midst of light

then the mirror breaks.

doubt and curiosity

doubt and curiosity
Originally uploaded by equusignis.

or is it curiosity and then, doubt?

ROUGH GUIDE
by George Szirtes

"Your image destroys itself, remakes itself, and is never weary."
– Octavio Paz, The Prisoner

Impossible to look directly into
another’s eyes. Impossible to look
into your own. You read the dense book
of being like a document you flick through.

Eyes, even an inch apart, are blurs,
clouds, like the concept of yesterday
which has an entity you sometimes stray
into beyond the limits of his and hers,

The unknown: the roughest of the rough guides,
and all it says is: you’re here, you’d better make
the best of it. You entered by mistake
and so you’ll leave. It’s what the route map hides

and languages obscure, the magnetic pull
of all you ever see of the beautiful.

-----

But I have seen the beautiful. I know
its contours and the rough guide it provides
is blissfully specific: the hand that rides
the ridge of the collarbone or moves along the brow,

the perfect form of momentary light
in this line or another. It’s what Blake
saw at the top of the stair, the terrible earthquake
at the root of the flesh we think of as delight.

It’s what you see when you shut your eyes and see,
the angel with the whip or a flaming sword
that burns your eyes down to the spinal cord,
the shit, blood, semen smell of mortality

you get used to because it follows you
everywhere and is both beautiful and true.

medusa as a young girl

medusa as a young girl
Originally uploaded by equusignis.

i love this poem. just haven't had a fitting image to go with it til now.

she sprouted from my head like the serpents in her mind...

Arms of the Snake

Because she has no arms,
she embraces him with her body,
crawls the distance of his flesh
like a light-starved vine.

Because she has no legs,
she coils through his thoughts,
like a root or a shadow
growing wild in his mind.

Because she has no words,
her tongue splits in anger.
She hisses in the dark,
shakes a rattle in his face.

Because he has no choice,
he bears both fang and kiss,
comes to crave her silver tourniquet,
savor venom in his veins.

Because she has no heart,
she sheds her skin to depart.
She exits through his fingers,
leaving only her empty sleeve.

– CHRISTINE BOYKA KLUGE