New Art Blog!

Check out my art blog .... I might try somehow to integrate random reflections/writing/etc on it and make it a multi-genred blog. I haven't posted in writing in years (loss of confidence, not writing as often, computer self imploded and lost all scribbles i wrote, etc.)

Cheers!

America

So I'm back in the states. I guess... I shouldn't be updating on this blog anymore because it's a travel diary but... I think its time to break kosher.

Being in D.C. again is so strange. I feel like I'm in an alternate reality where I know the street names and the metro lines but something is terribly twisted. A twilight reality where everything is shades of grey, ashen, and empty. That's one thing Abroad has taught me, America is a oh-so quiet place. In my brief stint in the Texas suburbs, the houses loomed like impossibly silent brick gravestones. And the only sight of life was glimpses of Christian-radio listening, inward looking housewives padded, heated artifical autos and oversized suburbans.... I thought maybe it was just the suburbs, but when I came to D.C. the reality was unbroken. Instead of autos, denizens of D.C. had their ipods, iphones, and icy coolness towards strangers. Crowds brush up against each other on metros, street corners, while barely making an eye. The buildings were ashen modern things looming like mausoleums against empty vast parks broken by recreations of a greco-roman ancestory in the Old World.



I guess all this feeling I get about American culture cumulated in a visit to the Hopper exhibit at the national gallery. I think he felt it too. That lonely individual nature we Americans have. Even back then in the 20s... he was spying on people through urban windows, painting the silence in the cities and suburbs... In the end, America is fiercly individual, beautifully and tragically so. We are an introverted nation, idealistically believing we can do it alone.

Is there real estate development in Heaven?

So... I had a crazy dream last night.... In fact... its really weird, so maybe you should stop now.... Here's the scene:

An old warehouse district of a city fainting resembling Deep Ellum, mostly resembling Adams Morgan but meticulously clean. Businessmen and women in suits come, following a real estate developer who is converting entire portions of the area into old lofts.

The district is quite ancient... resembling something from the post-Civil War industrial boom. Its known as the area where parents leave unwanted children... In fact, billboards advertise this fact: A giant baby against a pale green background with bubble letters (We'll take care of them).

Wandering the streets are countless transvestites... dressed in glitter, lime green face paint, and ragedy magic dresses. They look less like homeless transvestites and more like androgenous beings- holy almost. (I think I was subconciously blending the idea of Hijra's in India with the androgony of angels themselves)


I'm floating above this scene watching everything unfold...

The transvestites have lived there for generations... taking unwanted children and nurturing them... and now there home and the children's only hope was slowly being sucked away.... the real estate developer is slowly destroying their home...

the dream ended with teh billboards of the giant babies starting to come to life.... and as I opened my eyes... The first thing I thought of... is if that is where all the babies that die young go. Do they go to a strange district of heaven inhabited by androgenous beings... angels... transvestites....? More importantly.....

Is there real estate development in heaven?

I'm blind.

The smog blows and my eyes water up into dust, I wonder why I’m here. The city teems with a competing beauty that tires me. I want so much for something unknowable to be.
I’ve found myself lately staying up late reading Origen or browsing through Gnostic theory. I wake up after dreams of other places and times. The back of my mind is never in the reality that I am in. It’s a strange adriftness, I’m so enwrapped in a dream here. It’s just a long still line that never stops.
Along university road, I saw a blind man - dark waves against fluttering lashes, round shoulders and a golden jaw. He saw right through me and for a moment I had a vision.
I kissed his lips, I painted his face on a canvas he would never see. I poured coffee into a never ending glass we shared, and drank from the cream jar straight. Our hands touched the sounds of the unknowable… A champagne covered sunrise filled everything with warm and bubbly loss. We drowned ourselves in all that was gourmet and left our walking canes at the door.
Then, I read his cards, and envisioned a future without us. Our lives parted over broken dishware and tainted evenings. Suddenly I was on a plane again running away to a new known – a place like every other place. Suddenly I was in an un-homely sanctuary. Suddenly, I was walking down the street again, passing a blind man I never knew, I never met... Back to the unreal reality and the daily footsteps of paced life.

Iceland?

SO....

I might be going to Iceland for Springbreak....


Anyone wanna join?!

Skype

I got Skype.


a_chamy.

There ya go. Talk to me if ya got it.

Feline cities with refugee reflexes

*** Will add pictures of recent trip to Petra and Wadi Rum soon*** This blog explains why I don't blog as much in Jordan:

It is true that Amman is a city of refugees. Every soul has been swept by all encompassing change, and altered their existence. All beings in this place are searching for a home… Some, the Bedu and Gypsies, were driven from their wandering by the fierce economics of the “modern” state. Others are Palestinians or Iraqi’s broken by violence and fear. Some are Westerners, going to the East to find meaning. All, call Amman home, all call Amman their refuge and sanctuary. Truth, in this place, is a matter of memory and a contrasting matter of survival. Everyone is pulled by false Eastern traditions and impossible Western futures. And so memory balances with sanctuary. The future balances with survival.
In this city of limbo, only the cats truly survive. For the month that I have been here, I have yet to spy even one dog or rat. Like the refugee-citizens, the felines are clever and abandoned. Dirty but not savage, and completely alone, they are fighting to survive amiss the unforgiving cement of the city.
Here, all are scared by visions of a darkened past and a cloudy future. Its strange, because by the mere fact of being here, I feel myself swept into this multilayered system of being. I am stuck in a strange limbo sanctuary where the sweeping pattern of my existence lays broken in a knot. Its all unchanging and in conflict. I’m double-minded, unwilling to look for solutions and dwelling hapless on the problems.
This isn’t to say that I’m unhappy. I am stuck. I am stuck on unchanging happiness and unchanging problems. I’m stuck on a cloudy future and a false history. I’m stuck in a limestone city with so much to offer but few open doors. I’m stuck searching for a future under relentless blue skies that stay the same azure.
This weekend I went to the Wadi Rum – an ancient landscape, the Bedu call the face of the moon. It was beautiful, it was stunning, but completely empty, overwhelming unchanging. That’s where I am. A place of monotonous joy and colorless pain. Everything is the same and everything is beautiful.