savin lives

[http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1808435938/photo/490186]

want not

these lovelies by: Egon Schiele

What can a person really want after accepting that whatever it is, it's a far cry from what they actually want but is impossible to have? Is it raining out there?

howl at the moon

I Like America and America Likes Me 1974

"Joseph Beuys’s most famous Action took place in May 1974, when he spent three days in a room with a coyote. After flying into New York, he was swathed in felt and loaded into an ambulance, then driven to the gallery where the Action took place, without having once touched American soil. As Beuys later explained: ‘I wanted to isolate myself, insulate myself, see nothing of America other than the coyote.’ The title of the work is filled with irony. Beuys opposed American military actions in Vietnam, and his work as an artist was a challenge to the hegemony of American art.

Beuys’s felt blankets, walking stick and gloves became sculptural props throughout the Action. In addition, fifty new copies of the Wall Street Journal were introduced each day, which the coyote acknowledged by urinating on them. Beuys regularly performed the same series of actions with his eyes continuously fixed on the coyote. At other times he would rest or gather the felt around him to suggest the figure of a shepherd with his crook. The coyote’s behaviour shifted throughout the three days, becoming cautious, detached, aggressive and sometimes companionable. At the end of the Action, Beuys was again wrapped in felt and returned to the airport.

For Native Americans, the coyote had been a powerful god, with the power to move between the physical and the spiritual world. After the coming of European settlers, it was seen merely as a pest, to be exterminated. Beuys saw the debasement of the coyote as a symbol of the damage done by white men to the American continent and its native cultures. His action was an attempt to heal some of those wounds. ‘You could say that a reckoning has to be made with the coyote, and only then can this trauma be lifted’, he said."

Quoted from: http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/beuys/room4.shtm

Waiting for Her

A friend shared this poem she wrote:

Waiting for Her
August 4, 2009

I watched your first steps, first words, first days
Always so much more than someone else to me
When rains came and wind
Too much for you to hold all together
Almost dead in a crack house
Your heart beating again while a fist hits hard
Breathe god damn it. Breathe.
Returning on the freeway
Exits whist by
“I don’t know where I am” you’d say
“I fucked up…again”
The high daze still in your voice
“Just come home baby” I whisper
Into the airwaves between us
“Just keep driving, find your way back here”
A prayer, my voice a line to hold
You did. You always did.
And I would fold you into bed
Next to you, I’d say your name, touch your hair
While sleep dragged you down for days
Black with lights out I’d wait
For you to return to me
You did. You always did
How can you have slipped away?
Just like that. One day, and gone.
“They found her body”
Her body
Her body
Words I never want to hear.
That echo forever, ever, ever
“Just come home baby” I whisper
To nothing
No one
And you don’t
Not this time
Not ever
Again
What did I fail to say?

circle garden

This is a circle garden with the northwest corner dedicated to Alicia. The bone tree is driftwood from Lake Michigan. Appropriately a work in progress and very, very beautiful.

august

august is the hellmouth of summer. i'm sorry. It is Awful. it hurts. let the season reach its boiling pitch in 9 days and then i'll consider letting it slip into innocuous heat.