(See what I am saying?)

summer time driving

all the windows were down and the sunset, queen anne's lace, eager fireflies, summer's silent grace was blowing in. the whole world was blowing in. my little sister was sitting shotgun in her boyfriend's borrowed fleece.

the church steeple in alcony pointed towards the sky. but for a moment- though i couldn't be sure- i thought i felt who it was pointing towards was right there between us and flowing through the blood in my veins, in the chlorophyll in the maple trees fat green leaves passing by above us, and perhaps even the hum of the incandescent filament in the faded white porch light that accompanied the fireflies shine. it burned faintly as we drove by and decorated summer's silent grace at dusk as it blew in all the windows and pushed my little sister's hair across her boyfriend's borrowed fleece.

i thought about space and history and the real meaning of the definition of forever as we drove the road with no yellow lines where our parents first lived together. my mind ached with recognition of passed time, school bus rides, and transparent memories seen like a carousel full of kodachrome slides. the sun was gone but it wasn't yet dark. the summer solstice overlapped daylight into darkness and left the light to flicker and vibrate like if light were sound and it was vibrating off a tuning fork hit as hard as the weight of the world would allow.

dirty windshields dandelions and knee high corn fields scrolled past the open windows and suddenly i became tired of remembering too much. tired of seeing so much. tired if feeling so much. tired of allowing the whole world to blow in my window.

i wanted to be stubborn and confident and smaller minded and not think twice, let alone once about everything and accept and allow myself to fit inside this short little life. i wanted to drive down the road with no yellow lines quietly and sing with the music and not have all four chambers of my heart hurt and have my tired and worn out mind try to understand international calling cards and country codes and keep track of 6 hour time differences and have every memory sit in my head like a blood stain on a white cotton collar. i didn't want to stretch my ideas as wide as the opposite coasts of this continent and and i didn't want my feelings to stretch even thinner across the atlantic ocean. i didn't want to think about later in life and all the health hazards of living now and then both involve. i didn't want to count carbohydrates and read cnn ticker tapes. i didn't want to see the patterns made by the county road crews when they poured tar across the cracks in the faded asphalt and be reminded that everything that seems so new and strong will someday be old and broken. and be patched by people in fluorescent mesh vests. i wanted to be unaware of this world and of beds baths and beyond.

all i wanted was to rely on something.

i wanted to be able to assume at least one thing to be sure.

i wanted something i didn't have to question. something that didn't split my mind wide open and take me all over the place and something that gave an excuse to be stubborn and confident and smaller minded and shorter sighted and make it easy to live with and have it be right there in front of me.

i wanted to be right there singing songs with summer's grace blowing in all the windows with my little sister singing and sitting shotgun in her boyfriend's borrowed fleece.

the definition of desperation and loneliness according to Sprint PCS

i have never felt less than complete in any of the various situations and predicaments in my life. it has been me and what i think and do and where i am and that was always, if not great, very fun and fine.

in other cities, it is up for debate, but in columbus ohio, the axis line for the cultural, social and economical activity of the city is high street. and there on high street i stood with my heart wrapped in up in whisky like barbed wire and saturated in nicotine. my veins on my arm felt hollow and looked like cracks in the sidewalk as i clenched in the palm of my hand the small chance at a connection across the northern hemisphere to the only thing i could imagine that could make me feel better. inside, there was nothing on either side of the bar that was working.

i leaned over the newspaper boxes and ignored the drunks and the gays yelling at me through the back seat car windows at the red light as i pleaded with the sprint operator to activate my account for international calling. i had negotiated a 89 cents per minute, no monthly fee upgrade, but no matter how much i insisted, no matter how detailed i explained my story, no matter how hard i tried to simplify my monosyllable speech i spoke into the cell phone, i could not get any better than a 4 hour lag in the enabling of the wireless service upgrade. by then the hotel room would be empty and the work of Apollodorus, Damascus, and the ancient and unknown would be echoing the unanswered telephone ringing in the sunrise. and i would be left standing on the sidewalk outside the bar on high street, in columbus ohio.

right then and there i could see the earth and its continents and countries divided up like the diagram of a cow in a butcher shop. like broken china glued back together. like my heart broken up in pieces so small it won't ever fit back together again. like each piece of the whole world was painted in a pastel palate like on the globe on the reading table in the third grade. and there were too many colors and shapes between me and where i needed to be to ever hope of feeling comfortable complete and understood.

i sat on the columbus dispatch paper box with the saturday edition already inside, thanked the sprint operator for her help, hung up the phone, waited for international roaming to be activated, and watched the broken up world and all of the little and far apart pieces in it.

spelling it out in black (and white)

Welling took his shirt off and sat down in the pale yellow vinyl dentist chair on the black and white tiled floor. The walls were filled with a mental menagarie. The cultural cornicopia of harback books leaning lopsided on a shelf beside his skateboard under the black and white panoramic photograph of a third Reich assembly made it hard to start looking at any one thing in partuiclualr - and even harder to stop.

Pablo pulled out 3 paper cups more widely used under ketchup dispensers at hot dog stands across america and filled them with each with ink so black it seemed to suck the light out the room.

Pablo opened the valve on the gun. he put his foot on the pedal more widely used under the desks of seamstresses and tailors across the world. he taped the drawing of a horned beast on welling's back and put the needle to his tricep. he was quiet as he leaned down and laid the ink into the skin. welling sat like a stone in the pale yellow vinyl dentist chair. every so often Pedro wiped away the ink that didn't take like a sculptor wiping away the dust.

i asked him if there was anything he wouldn't tattoo on a person.

"You are a photographer." he said in his brittle spanish accent.

"you don't decide what to see. it is how you decide to make the best photograph of it. it is not my decision what to tattoo. it is is my job to make the best art i can. i have done swashtickas, stars of David, plenty of Christ's crosses. and i have done portraits of serial killers. it is their body. they have to live with it. it is art for me. like you, i am here to make the best i can."

*(http://www.ironcrosstattoo.com/)

Wondering on the 101

The drivers seat belt buckle didn't work, so before i snapped my in seat-belt, Welling looped his around my clip so when i buckled in, it held both of our bodies in the sheep skin seats should we meet a calamity on the 101.

being connected in this siamese seat belt arrangement was very intimate. every lean or shift on his part was felt like a subtle tug on my hips. and as he accelerated and leaned into the curve on the entry ramp from seaward ave., i felt like a figure skater in the double's competition sliding in a semi circle across the california concrete.

"i can't find the face plate either, so i don't listen to music." he said as he put his sunglasses on and spliced into the traffic and accelerated under the highway sign that read read: 101 North.

Welling is in a ventura death metal band. (they wear ski masks on stage) had the stereo been operational, the music heard would likely have hit me much like the wind blowing through the jeep as we sped north along the ocean to santa barbara.

we drove past the strawberry and mushroom fields and the workers under the fruit trees. i caught a glimpse of the ghosts live inbetween the letters written down by guthrie and stienbeck as they flashed through the rearview mirror. in front of me were brake lights and luxury sedan logos stacked up like soldiers marching ahead of me into the future tense.

later that night, on our return to ventura, welling and i sat silent in sheepskin, siamese seat-belted without a faceplate for awhile. the horizon across the ocean was a subtle change between black and indigo marked by the oil rigs running in a parallel line to the coast. they sat silent across the surface of the sea in both directions as far as i could see. they were lit like luminaries lighting a path along the edge of the pacific at christmas time.

at that particular spot where the water net the land, the california coast arches back east before falling again towards the baja peninsula. multiple plane rides and time changes sometimes distort my perceptions, and highway signs use directions in only 45 degree increments, when rarely in my life am i ever going so squarely in any direction. so my inclination was that we were headed south. the ocean was on my right. but modern cartography, and the thoughts crashing through my head, suggested otherwise.

there riding along the edge of the continent i leaned out the window to my right and tried to locate the north star in the black above the oil rigs. i looked for a frame of reference. i looked for my future tense. i looked for something familiar and constant by which to go by, to find some navigational help. i searched the universe above me. somewhere between there and new york, i wondered, somewhere above nashville that night, my star was burning bright.

as we rolled down the 101 in the dark, i wondered if my path will ever be lit. at least as far i could see, in whatever direction it was headed. i wished my direction was clear and my future tense was understood; at least as far ahead a week or two. i wished what i steered towards wasn't a moving target that was moving farther away. i wished the sky was clear and i could see the stars and what in the world was going on from where i was, heading in my own direction in the dark on the 101.

rash decisions

The day after graduate school ended, I promptly went to work.

By 7:30 am the next day i was digging a row of 24" holes with a post hole digger. my grandmother said it was the fastest she has ever seen anyone earn their PhD after grad school. (Post Hole Digger.)

what is even more humbleing:
i took the money in the graduation cards to the doctor's office in case i needed to pay for the prescriptions for the poison ivy on my right arm that became infected while obtaining my PhD.

and as i drove away from the emergency care office with my mother and my poision ivy, i put the passenger window down and hung my itching arm out the window to like drying white laundry you don't want anything to touch.

driving through the slow motion sunset, complete with country radio, my mother's harmonizing hum, and the smell of cut hay fields, i felt -for a moment-like i had set still and deep like a stain in the summertime of ohio.

playing the airplane wing-flap game with my right arm extended out the jeep window, i began to realize that extended stints in college don't equal knowledge. especially when you are studing something as subjective as the practice of making something look- in laymans and professional terms: "cool".

tibor kalman said, "“If you don't have an idea, all you have is style.”

and what's more, i am not sure anyone can be taught either.

i have never learned how to think. or to have an idea. at best i have learned how to make it happen after it seeped up into the the front of my head like poison ivy on my skin, itching at me until i do something about it. i have learned about apertures and f-stops and serif and sans serif. truetype, post script. pantone and hexidecimal. but it all means nothing unless i have something to say. it is like having a case of bullets with no gun. and even with the most powerful of an aresenal, and the ammunition, nothing will happen, unless i pull the trigger.

the keyboard i am typing on has 3 different type faces on it, 46 icons, and a 3 tiered color heirarchy. a living testament to paul rand, sits in the lower right hand corner. the injection molded keyboard is a PMS plastic color, is in the 440-445 range. i often feel like the entire world is a text book on design, and when i start to study the prescription labels on the tube of anti-itch creme and begin to feel foolish that i ever thought going to school to see what is everywhere anyways was what i needed to do.

people talk about "getting it". i hear that a lot. i get it. i get it. or maybe i don't. and so maybe that means that i do. but i have made a concisous decison and effort not to scratch my arm. to be a good designer. to see it like it is. or how it should be. and i ever want any satisfaction: i will have to load the gun, and pull the trigger for myself.

and so riding through the slow motion sunset, complete with country radio, my mother's harmonizing hum, and the smell of cut hay fields, i enjoyed the rewards of higher education, and my tube of anti-tich creme.

electrical storms and other little things

the daisies had begun to wilt in the genesee creme ale bottle on the picnic table. the moths floated above the lanterns hanging on the posts. their wings caught the light and looked like snowflakes falling in a clumsy fashion above the flicker. citronella smoke seeped through the air and the constellations began to blur above us as a thin film of clouds began to unroll across the lake. lucinda williams played easy on the radio as my father and I sat on the cabin porch in the dark. he kept time on the porch swing like a metronome with out noticing the rhythm on the radio.

above us, the stratosphere scratched and slid silently in the dark across the surface of this jagged, unfair, and dirty world. as the friction built up in the space between, it sparked quietly on the horizon above the tree-line in a purple flash. the light bled into the sky like ink dripped dripped on a paper napkin, like a tear in mascara, like blood seeping through a bandage. it lit up this jagged, unfair, and dirty world giving me a split second view the space above the sky where heaven is thought to be. the sight made my pupils dilate wide for a split second view before they were left to strain for something to see in this dark world again.

he sat in the swing and admired the view. I leaned back in the rocking chair and watched the lightning over the lake. the light flashed like bombs over the Iraqi desert without the CNN ticker across the bottom of the screen. everything was silent and its flashes made the FM signal flinch with static and crackled in the speakers reminding me there is power in this world that i cannot see that roars through this life beyond the narrow gamut of my senses.

prada sat in the dark under the table on the worn wooden deck boards. she wagged her tail against the wood uneasily, reminding me of her dislike for storms, and her ability to feel a little bit more of this world as it roars through us.

nothing was said for a while as the air pressure began to sink around me the candle flames grew taller. i knew it the wind would begin to move soon and it was going to rain and we would go inside.

suddenly it became clear to me sitting in the rocking chair on the porch that life is what happens while you are waiting for something bigger to happen. it is one little thing after another that is so often missed because i am thinking about what will happen next.

it is listening to lucinda williams on the radio with my dad on the porch.

it is what happens before the storm hits.

it is thinking about flossing my teeth while i am still eating corn on the cob.

it is wondering how i am going to fix it when i have yet to break it.

it is expecting my heart to break while i am still falling in love.

it is everything that happens while i am waiting to grow up.

it is what happens while i am waiting for everything to happen.and it is not thinking too much or too far ahead and trying to understand that this life is simply a sum of all if its overlooked parts.

...it was either brian stephey (who really should get a website) or bob schneider that said "seems like life is one big 'whatever' anyway". - i can't remember who said it. but whatever.

soon the wind came and the moths floating above the lanterns blew away. the citronella candles blew out. one little thing was turning into another. dad stood up off the porch swing leaving it to keep time with the radio without him. without a word he sighed with satisfaction and walked around the cabin to close the windows before it began to rain down on this jagged, unfair, and dirty world.

the ripple effect of life and death as seen from tompson ridge road

we celebrated me completing my master's degree by eating a banana and pink lemonade. i left athens - i am certain now - for the last time forever as a student of higher education from that esteemed establishment.

i bid her farewell at in a white castle parking lot south of columbus. i watched her jump in the back seat among empty beer cans and head for Cincinnati. i headed off to the left and crept off the glacial plane into southeast ohio.

the rain was still keeping my windshield wipers busy when the siren lights caught my eye just south of laurelville. the road was blocked at a sharp turn and several ambulances and fire-trucks were parked across rt. 56. i grimaced at the sight and knew that for so many sirens to be at one place on rt. 56 just south of laurelville the accident was bad and help had traveled from far away.

at best, i am patient with people but not traffic. i turned right after sitting behind the volunteer fire department pickup truck for 5 minutes. the side road forked. on side dead-ended in a creek, the other, the south side of laurelville, which lookied like one big reason to stay in high school.

i could see the ambulance and sheriff cars still blocking the road and a fireman had lit his flares and was pointing traffic in the other way. this time i turned left on tompson ridge road.

tompson ridge rose out of the treetops like the spine of a scared cat. from that vantage point off either side clouds sagged in the creases of the topography like stubborn snow sits in the shadows in late spring.

the white wedding candle rolled back and forth across the floor board on the passenger side like a sleepless sailor on the bottom bunk below deck on a stormy sea.

i followed the double yellow line as is unraveled like a ball of bailing twine through the fringes of appalachia. all four windows were down despite the rain that had not yet passed and the canopy of hemlock trees that shook like a wet dog above me. the evening was pale blue and NPR was playing some lonely lost Muddy Waters song on the radio. the back seat was folded down and behind me prada stood silent and straight legged as she leaned into the curves like riding out a pipe line on a long-board in a yellowed photograph from the south pacific.

i let the rain drops roll off the jeep and fall big and fat onto my arm. i turned the music up and watched prada in the rear view mirror as she leaned left and right like a puppet tied to strings. i drove down a slice of this green world i should otherwise never have known.

fatal automobile wrecks, along with other tragedies and triumphs in this world send life off in other directions. and as flowed through the rain falling down on the evergreen and blue evening, i saw the world as an infinite loop of causes and effects, put into motion long before i ever had any say in the matter. the events to that particular scenario under the hemlock trees along the double yellow line were astronomical.

fatal automobile wrecks, along with other tragedies and triumphs in this world that send life off in other directions reminded me that there are more than one way to get where you are going.

and sometimes, where you get to only matters because of how you go there.

and there is more than one effect to any cause.

and as this green world spins precariously between life, death, and muddy waters, for that moment on that evening in the pale blue and evergreens, i rode the ripple effect of life and death through this green world on tompson ridge road.