Inkling

This one breaks rules.  But there's a face in the clouds and deer in the trees (if you want them to be) and it's a good question - what happens when you follow the path left?

There's a Grizzly Bear song that goes, "Too young and thoughtless, to calm your memories." I'd like that.

Last Hurrah

Every year during 'the return' of the holiday season, a new spot calls, and so, there must be tromping further and further from the Sanctuary. Last year, the river down by Althea's revealed itself. This time, it was across the river, through the bovine gallery's stomping grounds, and into the pines for some old school RandR. Analog style. Tree groans and slatted beams from a seat of needle kush and count it, I'm golden in synesthesia.

But the crew needs love too, so the Triumvirate of Thrill (father, son, son) decided to take it to the man and find our way to I-64 in order to bask in some back-country TV. Go watch a highway one time, it's wicked fun.

It's only with a goal in mind that you can get lost. Without the growl of the interstate luring us, we could have spent more time checking out the dried up lake, following track leads, or just ninja kicking trees (per Dad). I guess the point is that it seems easy to get lost these days. Maybe even more uncertain is where the goals are coming from.

The solvent came when I remembered how, last semester, a good friend of mine shared, "stress is a product of comparison; don't live someone else's life." Tromp on.

Creature Fear

Staring down the barrel of another day in 'the life'...

Descarte argued that vision must be understood as simply a more refined, subtle, and extended form of touch -- as if a blind man had very sensitive walking sticks that could reach for miles. If that's the case, shit got real touchy-feely on today's gander.

I saw Hundred Waters last fall when they opened for Julia Holter. They blew her out of the water, and me out of mine. Here are some arpeggios that'll make you wonder if you're dreaming or not.


Hundred Waters "Caverns" from Yours Truly on Vimeo.

Finally

God he'll get you high. He's pure, ecstatic, conscious, energy. Glad I'm on the bandwagon.

self-defense

Smart phones might make for dumb people, but at least you can take cool pictures with them...

Slow Forward

Tony Z at his finest. Here's to summer -- cut grass and stickball, force kale chips down 11-year-olds throats, put fun out of business. The Lake. Lemme at 'em!

Mo' Road

Sanctuary Speak

"The most valuable thoughts which I entertain are anything but what I thought. Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled." 

That's Thoreau. Coming home again, and maybe caring too much. I'm swelling with memories and good folk (and quite literally ballooning with food) like a tongue, until it fills the mouth and heads for the throat; it's like the only way out is going back in. Home is someone holding their finger up between your eyes, just out of your range of focus, and hooking the ends of your periphery together until there is nothing but a singular point of fuzzy, visual white noise. This particular return makes me cross-eyed. I care too much when I walk, move when I should sleep, and have thoughts talk over the crackling of the fire. Christmas day bloated too -- fist-sized snowballs and their dashing in a myriad of poofs onto the ground.

Maybe I'll disintegrate too; maybe I have too -- I wonder, per Gretel Ehrlich, "Isn't everything redolent with loss, with momentary radiance, a coming to different?" Each snowflake may be unique, yet all of them, even these big ones, fall and burst or melt, freeze; and on it goes. Nature eats it's tail again, and I feel small, yet integral. I dilate and eventually wane, soften then harden, eat my own tail and find myself at home once again; and in this distillation process I find that sometimes you just have to walk off all the growing pains.

As always, the photo archives provide solace, this time via South Dakota's open spaces. That grass is still crawling and I can look out at the sky and breathe my own wind toward the horizon. Clouds for peanut gallery.

We're cool

Thank god human beings do strange, strange, things...