Killing me softly with his song...serendipity 2

Lesson for the day: the cosmic bulletin board is alive and well. A few days ago, May 24, I featured a postcard for the post-modern romantic. Today, by return mail, a rejoinder. A lover's serenade spanning the dimensions of ritual sacrifice.

Feel the love
Kill
Slowly

All those peripheral passions gone. Pure essence distilled:

From harbour to the kitchen where it all happens. By the light of the silvery fish. Dying to live. Masterfully.

Picture credits of the Grunter drawn from Port Elizabeth harbour at 3am: Robert the Incomparable of Port Elizabeth. Rickyloo, what a catch(er)!

Telling my whole life with his words

Da Oddah Guyz: got poi anyone?

Northwest Folklife is the largest free community arts festival in the United States. Happens every Memorial day weekend at the Seattle Centre. It is something like the 10 day Grahamstown Arts Festival but compressed into 3 days and in one 74 acre arts and entertainment campus (and site for the 1962 World's Fair): a huge, sprawling, chaotic spread of noise, food, crowds and confusion.

Free doesn't get any better folks! There is, however, lots to spend your money on.

Food and market stalls are set up. Stages grow on lawns, in tents and auditoriums around the complex. Crowds gather and behave or misbehave according to their bent. Buskers and beyond the fringe performers stake out whatever real estate they can find to put their tin, hat or instrument case. It is dancing to a myriad syncopations simultaneously. Crazymaking of a high order abounds.

The standard of art crafts is superb. Over the years I have developed favourites and now have festival friends whom I see every year. Generally it is performers from Africa (marimbas ah! that sound is celestial watermusic in my soul!) and India who draw my attention. This year traditional Japanese taiko drumming began the weekend for me. And the intensity grew from there. Light and dark, noise and pools of calm with an inexplicable undercurrent of sorrow and sense of impending loss.

A local group draw my camera. For their honesty, humility and simplicity amidst the frenzy. They self identify as a group of old guys who like to get together and play Hawaiian music. Integrity incarnate in an overpostured world. Da Oddah Guyz, from Aunty's backyard circa 1948. Got poi, anyone?

Monumental iconograpy: variations on the lion theme

In the Pacific Northwest one grows accustomed to bears and injuns appearing everywhere. In the iconography that is. Unless you know where to go and what to look for, they can both be scarce in everyday life. Though the Sometimes the best place to hide something is in full view rule applies here too.

Walking through Seattle recently, I encountered this fountain in Tilicum Place. For the first time in a long time the American Indian honoured in this piece of public art bears some resemblance to a real figure: 1800's leader of the Suquamish tribe, Chief Seathle (or Sealth or Seattle), famous for building relationships with white settlers, and for whom the city is named.

Looking at the 1908 date on this National Historic Register monument, I cannot help but rue the fact that in the intervening 101 years, the attitude from some quarters towards American Indian people in public arts has grown o so cavalier to the point of chain saw massacre. The May 4 post in this blog will attest to this

Across the water, I live within the hallowed precinct of this chief's grave.

The bronze life size figure, is placed atop a block of granite made classical in the fountain genre by bear heads spewing forth water in four directions. Makes a change from lions who have been conscripted into service as water fonts to the point of extinction.Set me pondering what the impulse drives the human hand in art of public statements? Do we make wild and dangerous creatures such as lions or bears into servants in our iconography through admiration? Or to use another kind of sympathetic magic and harness them thus to forever be our fettered minions spewing water?

Serendipity: postcard for a post-modern romantic

Inhabiting the outskirts of other lives

Though I know the same equation as eagles, crows, swallows, rain, it seems these days the human bonds have grown thin to point of transience.

Nothing for it but to delve deeper into the melancholy midnight fire. Solitary contrary.

Fearless, fatherless Friday: considering courage (equal to desire).

Rabbit came to me this morning in the soft dawn light, scuttling heraldic in haste across my path.

Set me thinking about fear. And freezing in the spotlight. Or running blind and wild ahead of namelessness.

Grabbing at straws for brief, balancing calm, I banish all possibility. Serve eviction orders on the fear-caller.Everyday courage, like Maud Gonne's beauty, is a rare thing. The true freedom fighter takes arms against the opportunistic colonization of the heart by selfishness and greed.

I have spread my dreams under your feet. Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

There is, it seems, a second Troy to be burned.

Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great.
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

Hunting Mister Heartbreak in a bad land

Out of an expanse of wheat and rolling prairie, somewhere in the nowhere between Waterville and Wenatchee, Eastern Washington, whilst travelling a seldom used secondary road : an abandoned one room schoolhouse.

A layered palimpsest of graffiti, one corner burned, open to chill wind and weather, framing flat horizons.

The American romance as Desolation Row. When will I ever learn? So much for old school schooling.

This image essay is for Robert the Incomparable of Port Elizabeth as he conquers the Dragon by dictating to a machine. For the inscription in my copy of Bad Land on his bookshelf. It is all about voice recognition. You win the machine but lose the girl. Sometimes.

Desolation angel

Aaargh!....... Monday on a Tuesday. I am so late outta here, no time to play.

A working class hero is something to be. Durga to attention and a small, almost overlooked plea for peace.

A side order as it were. To go.

Turtle tsunami in indelible ink: picturing migration

The image speaks a thousand words. There was a time when Britannia ruled the waves. Now command is given over to a paniolo turtle to ride the salt water wave in indelible embrace.

A faded migratory swallow scattered so long ago by Victoria's pink paintbrush is encircled today by leaf and flower: ears tuned to the call of angel's trumpet
Finally I did that second tattoo which I have been promising myself for oh such a long time now. It was going to be done to mark a significant birthday but one thing and another happened or didn't happen and now here it is, 15 months late: completion. Fresh from the needles, the ink still wet literally, in the tattoo parlour.

After much thought I chose Suzy Todd who works out of Madame Lazongas, an all woman tattoo shop in downtown Seattle. Suzy has a sure and gentle hand. Whilst still wearing braces on her teeth, this young lady is radiant with a lunar luminosity of extraordinary translucent paleness.

I had forgotten how painful tattoos are. There's nothing can ease the self-invited pain, but frequent use of a soothing peppermint swab to clear the blood, ink and sweat helps. The procedure bordered on unbearable at times and had me playing with mental notions of what constitutes too much, leaning hard on those limits of endurance.

Before I forget again let me get it down in writing: tattoos HURT. A wasp sting kind of painful that goes on and on - especially if you have full colour as I chose to. The application of colour seems to hurt more than the cleanness of line drawing. Different parts of the body are definitely more sensitive. Those curving leaves and the angel trumpet flower over the top of the shoulder - they HURT. So too the waves breaking around the inner arm.

Actually it all pretty much all hurt. Repeat after me: tattoos are not for the timid. They hurt.And carry on hurting whilst they heal.

As much sweat, blood and far more ink today, than the first little swallow 30 years ago who flew in from Old Al (long dead now) in Lower Main Road, Woodstock, Cape Town.

This time around I sketched the design, emailed it and photographs of my arm to Suzy, who then adapted it for inking in a serene studio surrounded by Laxmi, Buddha and an abundance of peonies. Suzy did suggest recolouring the Old Al swallow but I decided to retain her faded glory intact.

Hallmark holidays: a rose by any other name

Make grim-happy face at Point-No-Point for Mother's Day.

Yes, yes I know I am a day late, or more for my ahead-of-the-clock readers, but hey! I came in under budget with the use of the photograph from the last beach walk in the Pacific Northwest with Lionheart-of -my-heart. The walk didn't strictly happen on Mother's Day. But as chronologically near as I have been to him for a looong time on this hallmark holiday.

Point-No-Point, besides setting the tone for a proliferation of hyphenated concepts today, is a sand spit beach and lighthouse not too far distant by road from Haleikeokekai aka The Little House on the Rez aka la casita. Oh! the delights of multiculturalism. All these different names for the same place.

Come the last afternoon with Lionheart, we decide on a beach walk. I had planned to go to Foulweather Bluff, a local nature conservancy and wetland. The thought was for a little forest walk, then a lovely crescent moon of sandy beach where one isn't meant to take dogs. As an aside: of late every time I have been to Foul Weather Bluff, there have been illiterate people flagrantly leading their poodles past huge No Dogs signs....Canine Conservancy Police where are you?

Anyway back to the beach walk journey: as we were heading up the road towards Hansville, Point-No-Point came up on a road sign. True to our road tripping always-open-to-serendipity-natures we took the right turning. Point-no-Point was once called Hahdskus by local Indian tribes.

In 1841, however, Charles Wilkes, whilst on the Exploring Expedition took it upon himself to rename Hahdskus, Point-No-Point, because in his view it was not such a promontory at close quarters as it had appeared at a distance. This Wilkes expedition was part of the official United States Navy exploration of the "Southern Seas" which took place from 1838-1842, and brought the intrepid gentlemen pretty far north into the Straits of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound waters on which I now reside.

Hahdskus aka Point-No-Point is across the Admiralty Inlet from Whidbey island. I am willing to bet good money that earlier names also existed for those geographic features. A squat little low lighthouse now stands at the pointless point. For all my readers from warmer climes: the low gray skies and log littered beaches in these images are pretty typical of these far northern parts. And, yes, I have learned to walk on beaches in coat, scarf, socks and boots, bundled against the chill.In 1855 a treaty relieving the Indian tribes of the area of ownership of most their lands was also signed at this site. Rumour has it that there was some disgruntlement amongst the tribe members about the content of the treaty and the signing. Another of the terms of the treaty required the Indians to give up all their slaves and only to trade with the United States.

Later! I am off to get bargains on all that pastel coloured, marked down, made-in-China Mother's Day merchandise in the stores today. Lucky for China the US hasn't signed a treaty with anyone requiring them to only trade with the US.

Love ya, Lionheart-of-my-Heart! So long and....glad you got the fish.

You know my love goes with you
As your love stays with me,
It's just the way it changes
Like the shoreline and the sea,
But let's not talk of love or chains
And things we can't untie
(thanks, Leonard Cohen)

Submission

Moon is huge again in a deep blue night sky. I am sold into white slavery and live longingly in neglect's domain, made solitary by the silly secret loyalty of the swanheart.

Bring me my destiny!

Venture to the interior: the Indian affair continues

This weekend just past, with Lionheart's last days in the Northwest dwindling to tail end, the nomad gene kicks in. We embrace a road trip over the Cascade Mountains into Eastern Washington.

Thank goodness for ferries. Whilst making the Kingston Edmonds crossing, we sit in the galley, sipping coffee (Lionheart) and tea, eating my famous vegan brownies, consulting the trusty Rand MacNally road atlas. I wouldn't leave home without it.

We stumble upon a sketchy itinerary: Hwy 20, North Cascades Hwy, Washington Pass, Okonagon, Methow valley, camping at a State Park somewhere, circle through Dry Falls and the arid glacial interior landscapes and back to the Puget Sound via Stevens Pass and Hwy 2. How one takes the gap across the mountains is important in these parts.

After successfully navigating the spaghetti of roads and highways which abound immediately across the water (never my favourite thing), and a short stretch on the northbound Interstate 5 we get our wheels onto HWY 20. Yes, driving in the USA is a process of running numbers. North-South routes are odd number. East West even. It is great to have a navigator to keep me somewhat on course.We are not long on HWY 20 before a Golden Indian cupid directs us to the interior from atop a Burlington area restaurant. Judging by the tiled roof, I suspect the theme could be more south of the border and thus the anachronism of feathers and bow and arrow possibly excusable. Weather vanes proliferate in these parts: eagles, horses, sailboats and injuns.....whatever's your groove it seems

Next town, Sedro Wooley, besides having a strange name, offers up another version of the American Indian icon. An 8 foot high wooden carving of Big Chief Generic complete with war bonnet and peace pipe stares with empty eyes up into the sky. On the corner of a real estate company office nogal. Admittedly this is a change from the badly executed totem poles which proliferate off-rez in my region, but I do wonder somewhat idly how many true war bonnets ever made their way this far north and west.

Perhaps the agency is marketing land remotely. Or what's the connection?? Wasn't there some question about selling the sky in a historic Puget Sound speech?

Tangled up in Indian affairs

One morning recently, walking down at the waterline, we find the flags in front of the newly opened House of Awakened Culture behaving strangely. Whichever way looked at, the Suquamish flag furls gently in the breeze while the Stars and Stripes is resolute in its refusal to fly.

Tangled up in blue of Indian affairs write large against the sky.

Crossing the water: stages of immigration

Last week, I had to cross the water to Seattle for yet another fingerprinting session with Immigration and Naturalization Services. Lionheart came along for the ferry ride across the Puget Sound and hung around downtown Seattle while I took the Metro bus to Tukwila International Blvd.

Ferries are a fact of daily life in these watery parts but for Lionheart it was something of a novelty. I am fascinated by his fascination.

We started off having some 10 minutes of time in hand for the ferry. Then Town and Country Markets coffee shop took so long chatting with customers in that leisurely Bainbridge island disposable time way, that we had to run for the ferry in the end. That was after we parked the truck in the cheaper (ie further from the dock) pay parking lot behind the thrift store where bees inhabit the money box and L/heart was fascinated by the mechanics of the process.It was a typical Seattle kind of day: cold, damp and gray. I waited 5 hours in a room full of world citizens for a few minutes of digital fingerprinting. And my letter for interview will be in the mail. They say.

My new Ethiopian and Somalian friends met in the immigration waiting room, have promised that we will be sharing injera soon. I look forward to that.