Ramblings

Over the last few weeks, the local landscape has been fairly inescapable, or unignorable (thanks, ting tings!).  Fires, thunderstorms, hail, winds - the weather has been fairly apocalyptic as of late. Added to that is the fact that I've been  dealing with a pair of architects for the last few weeks, and most of our discussion has centered around green design, organic architecture, and landscape integration.  The end result, I guess, is that I've been feeling very western.

What I'd love to do is - well, it's not the "east meets west" thing, I know that.  I don't want to blend hinduism with SoCal organics, or smoke pot out of a hookah.  But there are images I love: a landscape that is incredibly familiar but somehow eternally alien, where you transition here between storm and sun and wind and rain and snow and fire like you wouldn't believe; it was 62 degrees and raining here this morning, and this afternoon it was 87 and hot hot sun.  You can't really get used to that; Colorado keeps you guessing, and the earth here is harsh: cactus, scrub, dirt, rock, pine - interspersed with marsh, riparian wetland, mountain streams, the Rockies...I'm up in the Park a lot, and I'm always strucked by how majestically [I]fucked[/I] you would feel if you were out there as a pioneer.  Likewise, standing out on the plains in the middle of a thunderstorm is a terrifying experience.  You can see lightning over the foothills, and everywhere you look it's either the exposed sandstone of the flatirons or the carved-out, eroded mesas of the cretaceous sea floor.  Seriously, it's pretty cool - visitors never expect to find trilobites at the ranch trailhead.

I would love to find something that taps into that sense of exploration.  I think that Damir, InAisce, and to an extent, M.A.+ all are searching for that - or, at least, they are all searching. Nicholas K also presented a beautifully "cowboyish" show  for F/W 2011 (in my mind, at least), down to the hats.  I like the idea that it's still [I]worth [/I]searching for serenity - there are places out here where you can really go to be [I]alone[/I], in the mountains, on the plains, even on the side of the road on the bank of stream on a rainy day, when there are no cars.  I don't know about you guys, but I get sick of having phone, internet, email, everything in my palm all the time.  What I want to to do is sit.  Sit and listen.  I'm so tired, all the time.  Two days ago, when it was pouring rain outside and all the creeks were flooding, I went outside and just sat in my car and listened to the rain.

Tension.  Always tension.  I want something that fits in between suburban technorasta-urbania, backwards cattle ranches, and the glaciers and moraines of the mountains.  I have been thinking of too many things, too many directions, too many futures.  Here are some pictures I took in my bedroom this afternoon.  I want to be all of them.

I still haven't read it.

I remember visiting the temple of Dionysus, and taking a picture of an eroded marble column that had been swallowed by grass and neglect.  That is an image I find eternally relevant.  There is a feeling I have, sometimes, when I am reading a book or standing on a ledge, of watching all the old gods die.  I love pillars.  I love decay.  Rather, I love permanence, but impermanence is beautiful and necessary.  Immediacy is...unavoidable, and pleasurable in its own right. I have a kitschy golden skull candle, but I think it looks good on this pillar:

That pocketknife was my grandfather's.  His parents were immigrants, and he ended up having to run the grocery store his father started to support his family.  He ended up in the merchant marines in World War II, and he probably purchased this knife in the 1940's.  The bird foot is a "lifecast" - the mold was taken from a catbird that no longer needed its foot.

Beauty exists with and without background data.  Again, tension - meaning is inextricably linked to and eternally removed from context. Do I believe in singularity? Unequivocally.  Do I believe in analogy? Wholeheartedly.  I want to wear Demeulemeester fringe shirts with TOJ leathers and bargain-bin pants; I want to wear capes and shawls annd urban cowboy boots while watering the tomato plant on my porch. I want to be self consciously romantic; I want to make believe in flight pants and aviator jackets on the plains of the West.  I want life to inspire - and I want to look like I give a shit, because I do.  I care about beauty.  I care about art. I care about life.