the sky is beautiful today

today on the highway someone stole my soul

waiting in the long line of cars to go home. windows down, radio off. then i hear a click, a whoosh, a triumphant phrase. the car in my left lane disappears in front of me, as a camera with a detachable flash peeks out of the right rear window.

some of the time i worry that i am slowly slipping into becoming a hipster whose external appearance legitimates all other forms of her being. but then i convince myself that i have toughness and gumption, two qualities that are instilled over time and therefore, unrelinquishable.

(p.s. that's not a word? well, it should be.)

portrait of a french porcelain purveyor

her first and last name both have four letters and two vowels. she drives up to a shoe warehouse in a district beyond traditional abandonment, so i can pay her $10 in exchange for her grandmother's china. she emerges from her car with two mammoth labrador-poodles on a leash that look, feel, and behave like sheepskin rugs. oh, she always walks her dogs in these empty industrial lots at night, she says. she leaves the engine running and the lights on while she takes her dogs for a stroll around the parking lot, leaving me to examine the plates. oh, this was her grandmother's and she and her husband never used it when they were first married 25 years ago, but doesn't food just taste better when served on beautiful plates? i agree. she walks me to my car, wishes me a safe drive, and beams rays of sunshine at everyone in the parking lot, who are by now enthralled with her dogs. on the drive home i realize that she smells exactly like one of my old piano teachers. she is the reason i want to be 50. on a side note, the china is beautiful.

seen on the way to work today

directions to the land of booyah, fig. 1

observaciones en la playa: a haiku

iron swingsets by
the santa monica pier
creak like saddened gulls

the communist era beach playground is also the reason why angelenos are all ridiculously thin and toned. parallel bars--the paragon of childhood fun!

phrases composed while driving

i hope that you know there are many different ways to walk &
the distance between two places never seems so far as when you don't know where you're going

sadly, i spend so much time transporting myself from here to there that the drone of traffic becomes the place in which i gather all my thoughts, but never have an opportunity to write them down. more than once i've been caught at an intersection musing on my latest performance project instead of heeding the green light.

the weather

living for four years in a secluded hilltop town in upstate new york i learned to hate it awful much. the icy snow storms that would spring out of nowhere and relentlessly hail upon you without end and then fitfully change into humid summer without a hint of transition--those were the worst. today on the west coast i felt, for the first time in a while, what it meant for the sky to be pregnant with weather. the first phase of the gestation the stucco sides of buildings bore an eerily rosy cast. the second phase the sun signaled red in an lavender sky over a long line of unquiet cars. 3 traffic skirmishes were narrowly avoided. gradually the clouds rolled in until, with a sudden hush, the sun had set well before its regular hour of 8:45 pm. the storm never broke, but it sank down upon the rooftops like a rounded weight sinking into the curved fabric of the universe. we held our breaths.

on other news, i found the most awesome used book store 5 miles away from mi casa today, and i also took a really gratifying polaroid. small victories, small victories.

you were chosen to walk through the fire

driving down the freeway with the windows rolled up and all of a sudden you smell smoke through your car ventilation. your heart pounds as you sniff out each individual note of the smoke, wondering if your greatest fear--barbecued tire--has finally dawned upon you. but no. the smoke is too redolent of hickory and not rubber for that. you look ahead and realize the world is covered in the haze of a southern californian brush fire. relief is quickly tempered with foreboding. the ground, you feel, could rise up at any moment, burn up through your tires, and become absorbed into the relentless sunshine glaring through the fog. the apocalypse is near, and it will strike first in southern california. it is then you realize that the road to hell is probably paved with concrete highways.

my one complaint since moving to los angeles is that, for a city built on the film industry, no cinematic representation of los angeles seems to do it justice. all the movies shot in los angeles are too generous with their use of open space. the colors are too reserved and saturated, not blinding and washed out. the people are rosy-cheeked and happy, not tanned and determined. i want someone to make me a completely unromantic film which, i think, is the only way to fully capture the romance of this place.

built to thrill

so, oh my god, so like, my ridiculously hip label job gave me free passes to this ridiculously hip street festival in this ridiculously hip neighborhood and i thought how ridiculously hip would it be if i reinvented myself as a 35mm street photographer and plastered REALLY OBNOXIOUSLY LARGE photographs of my endeavors all over the internet? the answer is, i'm sorry. but i think these are nice to look at.


(the band is built to spill)






(can we marvel for a moment at how blatantly self unaware people are at concerts, when they believe that everyone's attention is turned toward the stage? naturally i find them to be more interesting subjects than the band itself. that, and i enjoy watching people make out.)



and now for someone who had a better time than all of us combined:

portrait of a usps postal worker

her name is caroline bull. caroline bull on the government-issue nametag, caroline written on masking tape stretching across her well-worn stapler. her countenance is, in fact, bullish. large eyes in an unmoving face with bristly hairs lining the upper lip. she thinks i'm mildly retarded at handling mail, but cracks a smile at the fact that i, like every other working class los angeles citizen, am not immune to the misfortune of a pay-by-mail parking ticket.

glimpses from the driver's seat cannot be photographically recorded

so words will have to suffice. i was on my way to that modern invention, the carwash, when i saw a car by the side the road far dirtier than mine, on whose back windshield implored the words, 'was me'. 'was me'. not 'wash me'. thrilling how a simple spelling error can transform a car into an existential agent with subjectivity and regrets.

tonight there were several accidents down the four-oh-five:

red and white jewels
set in a concrete necklace--
the highway at night

venus in warehouse districts

oh, you know, just another day hanging out at an industrial-goth fashion warehouse.

more haikus about the los angeles freeway system, composed while changing lanes somewhere between the 110 and the 405:

in los angeles
don't worry about speeding
police do it too

&

after driving this
lawless harrowing morass
nothing unnerves me

oh, and you know, job thing, but trying not to jinx it by saying too much yet :).

palette of a cloudy day

it's rarely cloudy here. so much so, that the sight of overcast, gray like the particles of smog that make their way into your daily layer of sunscreen, becomes a pleasant surprise. the air is crisper. no longer blinded by the sun, the birds gather on telephone poles outside your apartment.

los angeles freeway system: a haiku part II

single bicyclist--
beware, beware! my car nears
ever so slightly

also i made another mudra. because i think that, in trying moments, difficult moments, sometimes there are no words except for the humility of symbolic action. scale intentional.

los angeles freeway system: a haiku

today, a car crash
traffic halted, slowly passed
like silent mourners

thinks that tengo que buscar mi propia pasion en la vida, de nuevo. they say that art is a private moment made public. so it sucks if you're shy.

she looks like the real thing

venice-fucking-beach, cali-freaking-fornia.

when in doubt

today's project: public transportation, public library, would that i return alive, preliminary studies for potential video, PARTY. i am the picture of responsibility.

west where the sun can set no farther

it makes a lot of sense to me that los angeles became the epicenter of punk/ska during the 1980s. punk synesthetically sounds like well-worn tennis shoes hitting the concrete and taking flight into an unforgiving sunset. it is geographically bounded, evoking its dissonant tierra with the strike of a chord and the rasp of a voice.

all i do since i've stepped foot in here is think about urbanism and art and life. i've also been making my way through more neruda. current favorite line: come to my heart dressed in white (oda con un lamento, residencia en la tierra).