Back from the Shadows again !
Out where an In-jun’s your friend!
Where the veg’tables are green,
And you can pee into the stream!
Yes, we’re back from the Shadows again!
—-Firesign Theater,I Think We’re All Bozos On This Bus
Every year, in the brief interlude between Christmas and New Year’s, I get sick. Really sick. Like clockwork.
For a long time, I didn’t understand. Then I realized it was the Cedar Flu. You see there are these cedar trees in the hill country and south Texas and in the winter they give off pollen – a lot of pollen.
Amazing. Sickening. One certain days the air itself feels like it is full of razor blades.
The last two years were particularly hellish. The congestion spread to my lungs and led to pulmonary and sinus infections. That isn’t good for anybody. The worst every year is the lack of sleep. If you start coughing uncontrollably every fifteen minutes it’s impossible to get a decent amount of rest. As I get older it all seem to be getting worse. Where I could just tough through it before… it lays me out now.
I looked all over the internet and found one women that suffered like I do and had found a solution. In January every year she went to the Bahamas for a month and a half. That sounded good, but I didn’t think I would be able to pull it off.
So this year, I decided to fight the thing. Starting at Christmas I:
Claritin and Ibuprofen every day
Stayed out of the cold
Extra Sleep
Neti pot twice a day
Humidifier by my bed and by my desk (this was new this year – worked great – don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier)
And hardest of all – no bike riding. That was tough, but that’s a lot of exposure to the pollen and the cold.
So January felt like a lost month. Basically going to work and going to sleep and not much else. But it worked. It’s February and I’ve been doing pretty well. The last few days I’ve felt almost human. I went for a long bike ride today and felt my lack of fitness, but otherwise it was glorious.
So February is the start of my new year. When I wrap this up I’m heading down to Deep Ellum for the annual For the Love of Kettle competitive shopping event with fifty dollars of Christmas money clutched in my fist, ready to get a piece of art.
Back from the shadows again.
Flock in Space, Ruben Ochoa Trinity River Audubon Center, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)
I like to use light as a material, but my medium is actually perception. I want you to sense yourself sensing – to see yourself seeing.
—-James Turrell
A long time ago(2004) , in a previous incarnation of a blog, I wrote about a trip Lee and I took to the newly opened Nasher Sculpture Center. The blog entry was eventually published in a local magazine. A highlight of the visit was my discovery of James Turrell’s work, Tending (blue).
Lee standing in Tending (blue) in 2004.
From the blog (I have quoted this twice before):
My favorite piece might have been the installation Tending (Blue) by James Turrell. We walked into a little opening lit by odd, shifting colors into the wall at the north end of the garden. The passage made a right turn and opened into a small room lined with dark stone benches. The walls on the upper half were featureless and smooth. A gray skylight lighted the whole chamber. The effect was strange and very peaceful. I liked it a lot.
Lee and I left the chamber and walked back up the garden and inside the building. We wandered downstairs and into the auditorium where a film was showing. It told the story of Raymond Nasher and his late wife, how they started out building Northpark Mall, acquired a fortune, and then became premiere collectors of modern sculpture. Mr. Nasher talked about his life, his wife, and his passion for the new sculpture center. The film then showed the construction of the center, how a handful of visionary architects and a few thousand men in hard hats converted a grimy downtown parking lot (I’ve parked there many times, put my quarters or dollar bills into a rusty numbered slot) into a thing of great value and beauty. They talked a lot of how it will be there forever. The film was fun and interesting – it really helped me appreciate the place.
On opening day Raymond Nasher said, “I put Patsy (his wife, the collector, who had passed away a couple years before) in charge of the weather today, and, as you can see, it’s beautiful.
One thing was odd, though. On the part of the film that covered opening day, Nasher and Turrell themselves went into the Tending (Blue) chamber that Lee and I had walked out of only minutes before. The benefactor and the artist sat on the benches and looked around. The skylight rectangle in the ceiling wasn’t gray like we saw it, but a deep cerulean blue.
“What’s up with that?” I asked.
“Let’s go back and check it out,” Lee said.
We hiked back down and entered the chamber again. The skylight was still gray. Something didn’t look right, though. I stood under it, looking up, trying to figure out what I was seeing and how it could change colors so dramatically. I was halfway convinced that it was a rectangle of light projected on the ceiling by some hidden apparatus (the upper walls are washed in subtle changing color from hidden computer controlled LED’s) when I was suddenly struck between the eyes with a big, cold drop of water. I wiped my face in surprise and looked down at some small pools of water at my feet.
“That’s weird, Lee,” I said, “I can’t believe it, but this roof is leaking.”
I looked back up, trying to find the telltale discoloration of a water leak, when, with a sudden shock, I realized what the hell I was actually looking at. That wasn’t a skylight, that wasn’t a projected rectangle at all, it was simply a big hole in the ceiling. I was looking directly at the sky. Once my eyes and my brain were in sync I could see the subtle variation of the clouds passing by overhead. The edges of the hole must have been cut back like razors – there was no visible frame around the opening, simply a featureless rectangle of light. It was amazing.
That’s why the rectangle looked blue in the film – it was a cloudless day. Now I want to go back. I want to go at sunset… I want to figure out how to go at dawn. The city sky at night… will it be brown? I want to sit in there during a rainstorm. I especially want to go there on that rarest of Texas days, a snowstorm.
The opening in the ceiling of the installation Tending (blue). A photograph does not do justice.
I returned to the piece many times. It became my favorite place. Then… horrors.
JAMES TURRELL American, born 1943 The Light Inside 1999 Neon and ambient light
But I remained a fan of James Turrell. Especially when I found out about Roden Crater.
Imagine a hollowed out dead volcano in the desolation of Arizona filled with Turrell’s work with light. Amazing.
It is one of the things I want to visit before I die. I was losing hope, however. The idiosyncratic artist was taking forever and only a handful of people (each making tens of thousands of dollars worth of donations) were being allowed to visit. That doesn’t… and never will… include me.
As much as I dislike the image of the isolated volcano surrounded by ugly parking lots – gift shop selling doodads and geegaws and rubber tomahawks – crowds of gawking tourists griping about the heat – tour buses idling to keep their air conditioning running disgorging their cargo wearing “I’M WITH STUPID” T-shirts into snaking queues of people staring at their phones…. All of that would be worth it if it allows one person (me) to actually visit Roden Crater.
Faster, please, I’m not going to live forever.
Now that I think about it there are three artistic creations I’ve know about for a long time and hope to live long enough to see finished.
1. When I was a little kid I read about the Crazy Horse Memorial Monument and fantasized about seeing the gigantic sculpture, probably as an old man.
Well, I don’t think I’m going to make that one – it doesn’t look like it has changed much since I was a kid. The other two, though:
“He always accuses me of trying to look’cool’, I was like, ‘everybody tries to look cool, I just happen to be successful.”
― Daniel Clowes, Ghost World
Two dancers from the Repertory Dance Company II, Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts – Arts District, Dallas, Texas
Two dancers from the Repertory Dance Company II, Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts – Arts District, Dallas, Texas
Two dancers from the Repertory Dance Company II, Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts – Arts District, Dallas, Texas
I am the least cool person in the world. I have always wanted to be cool, but have always failed miserably.
If you don’t know what cool is, watch the youtube video at the bottom of this post. It is from Bande à part – a film by Jean-Luc Godard. It is the coolest thing in the world.
The reason I re-stumbled across this scene is that I am collecting bits that I can use as inspiration for the Upcoming NanoWriMo. Hopefully, I can get a day’s worth of words out of this. I think I can steal this scene and move it to… let’s say a run-down diner on an abandoned highway in western Nebraska or some place like that. That sounds cool.
“That which is dreamed can never be lost, can never be undreamed.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Wake
Buddhist Center of Dallas
Today, after a lot of hard work doing nothing at all useful, I felt the need for a nap.
I dreamed of a house, one that is very familiar to me. It is a classic old wooden Victorian – getting long in the tooth. Like thousands and thousands throughout the center of the continent, the place I am so familiar.
It is larger than most, four stories including a dormered top floor with ceiling slanted to match the steep snow-shedding roof. There is an apartment addition over the double garage, reachable from the second floor. The main floor is completely encircled by a porch, with an old metal glider facing the road. There is an old-fashioned sleeping porch extending off the back portion of the second floor – a refuge from the hot summers, a peaceful relic from before air conditioning.
Walking the halls, I realized that I knew every square inch of this large-rambling house and remember all the repairs and improvements done over the decades. I even remembered how it used to be – I remember standing over an opening that led down to the floor furnace, the crisp white winter smell, the warm air convectioning up, the blue gas flame hissing away far below, how my feet felt on the hot metal grating.
Of course, once I ended my nap, stood up and entered the wasted day fully I realized that the house that I knew in such detail and remembered for so long does not exist. Has never existed. Could not even possibly exist.
Yet it feels more real than my actual home – or any dwelling I have lived in before.
“…the great floodgates of the wonder-world swung open…”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale
The ponds at the end of my block, Richardson, Texas
All my life I have wanted to live on a creek lot. I remember living in East Dallas and riding my bike along the hilly lanes east of White Rock Lake (back then I was young and thin and fit and I welcomed hills – now I’m afraid of them) and spotted homes along streams – some with little patios down among the trees perched out over the water. They would have a grill, some seats, and I imagined knots of people at sunset enjoying the setting – always wanted that sort of thing.
My wish finally came true, sort of, when we bought our house in Richardson. Technically it is a creek lot – but the creek (which emerges from the flood control ponds in Huffhines Park at the end of our block and runs a short distance beyond where I live to join with Duck Creek) has been manmade wrestled into an arrow-straight path. It’s really more of a ditch lot.
On most days it’s barely an algae and trash encrusted trickle. There are a lot of ducks and turtles (both the friendly box and the prehistoric snappers) with a nighttime cohort of opossums, bobcats, coyotes and an occasional beaver. There are a few trees – but the number is limited by the Corps of Engineers to insure proper flow. They only allow new plantings when an old tree dies. It’s a sleepy stretch, mostly useful to the local kids and cats, feeding and stalking, respectively, the ducks.
They don’t call it Duck Creek for nothing.
That changes with frightening rapidity when a big Texas thunderstorm strikes. The water rises and moves in a symphony of wet muscular gravity.
Last night one hit, hit hard. The ground was already saturated, the flood control ponds already overflowing when the sky dropped six inches of water in a couple hours.
I opened the garage door and looked out through a forest of honey globs of water caterwauling off the roof into the dark. Illuminated only by staccato bolts of lightning like a galvanic Gene Krupa, the bellowing water stilled by the strobing arcs into impossible waves rising above the creek banks and beyond. The usual quiet night lit up by blue thunder. The gleaming fury as millions of gallons of deafening water scream by is frightening and intoxicating. I watched from my house – afraid to get any closer.
This morning I walked around the strip of creek, grass, and trees. The highest water level was marked by a line of twigs and plastic water bottles. In several places the delimitation moved up over the bike trail and almost kissed the alley that runs behind the houses. By then the creek was down to its usual level, having dropped as fast as it rose, with only a little more water flowing by than usual.
The flow was a dozen feet below the level of the detritus line – which was in turn only a couple feet below the level of the houses (though it would take a lot – a lot – more water to raise the flood up that last bit).
I hope.
I did think of those little patios perched in the winding creek lots of East Dallas. I always liked them – but I’m sure they are all gone now.
“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”
― Marilyn Monroe
Isaak at the NorthBark Dog Park, Far North Dallas, Texas
We’ve had Isaak since February or so. He was named after this guy:
He was a rescue from Dallas Animal Services – we don’t know anything of his story except that he was not an owner abandon – I guess that means the dog catcher caught him. We picked him up on half-price day; that means he cost: fixed, shots, exams and such, only ten dollars.
The most common question that everyone has asked, of course, is, “What breed is he?” We had to answer, “We have no idea.” If I had to guess I would have said German Shepard (because of his ears and the black along his tail) and golden retriever mix.
So many people asked about his breed we decided to send his DNA swab off and find out for sure. The results just came in… and we were completely off.
So, that’s about as much of a mutt as you’re going to see.
I’m not sure how accurate these things are (they said their “sophisticated computer algorithm performed over 17 million calculations!“- if I had extra money I would have also sent in my own cheek swab just to screw with them) – but this actually seems about right. Long legs of a Boxer, a bit of a Pit Bull face shape, Retriever snout…. But Siberian Husky?
“The universe contains any amount of horrible ways to be woken up, such as the noise of the mob breaking down the front door, the scream of fire engines, or the realization that today is the Monday which on Friday night was a comfortably long way off.
A dog’s wet nose is not strictly speaking the worst of the bunch, but it has its own peculiar dreadfulness which connoisseurs of the ghastly and dog owners everywhere have come to know and dread. It’s like having a small piece of defrosting liver pressed lovingly against you.”
― Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures
Isaak in the pond at NorthBark Park, Dallas, Texas
I came across an article the other day on favorite Dallas Dog Parks. Reading the list, I realized I had not been to one of them – NorthBark Dog Park in far North Dallas.
Isaak in the water at NorthBark Dog Park, Dallas, Texas
We have had Isaak since February or so. People ask how old he is and I say about a year. He was a rescue from Dallas Animal Control so we don’t know for sure – though I’d bet he is about a year old now. People ask what breed he is and we have no idea. We’ve sent his DNA test off, but haven’t received the results yet.
Isaak as a puppy, when we first picked him up in February.
It’s been fun socializing him – so I’ve been taking him to the Richardson Dog Park whenever I have time.
When he first arrived, he didn’t understand that a leash met go for a walk, not lay down on the ground. So I worked with him along the trail in back of our house. One day, early on, I picked up a book and dragged him to a little bench on the hike/bike trail that runs along the creek behind where we live. I sat there, reading, so he could get used to dog walkers, joggers, and such. He did good, interested in the passersby, but not going nuts.
Then a family of six on bikes came riding up the trail toward me. Two parents, two teens, and two little kids with training wheels in the lead. I heard the little boy say to his sister as they approached, “Don’t worry… it’s just some old man and his dog.”
Oh man… I didn’t like that. I especially didn’t like it because it was true. I was some old man sitting on a park bench with his dog, reading a book.
At any rate, back to today, I decided to take Isaak to the NorthBark Dog Park – since we had never been. It was farther than I anticipated, but after a wrong turn or so, we were there.
I took Isaak into the big dog section first and he had fun doing his usual dog park thing – running and playing dog dominance games with the other dogs there. After a bit he settled down and rested under a tree. I could see next door dogs swimming in the pond in the wet area – chasing after lures and retrieving them – thrown out into the water by their masters.
Isaak had never been in the water but I decided to give it a shot. We moved over to that part of the park and walked around to the back side where the bank was shallow. And, to my surprise, after a bit he jumped in the water and started to play in it. He had a bunch of fun running around on the bank and then plunging in. He would jump up and down, then dash out of the water again. Only one time he ventured deep enough to swim a little and was a bit intimidated by that.
Isaak swimming a little at the NorthBark Dog Park, Dallas, Texas
I walked with him around to where the real water dogs were swimming and retrieving and I talked to a couple of women about how to train a dog to do that. I need to work on teaching Isaak to fetch and return first, then start him off in shallow water. I think he’d enjoy that, I think. What do dogs enjoy anyway?
When we were done I hooked his leash on a pole and gave him a wash with a hose supplied for that purpose.
