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Snapshots, February 23, 2005
what day begins this well
i'm musing on today
a midday
lit-say
on writing
then the screaming:
'i told you i hate you!
i told you i hate you!
you can bugger off!
you can bugger off!
go to hell and stay there!
go to hell and stay there!'
she spits it out
rhythmically
making hate while
the sun shines
this flat life has its ups and downs
i tell my girl hunter has killed himself
and she says
i don't think i like writers
and she says
that i laugh at the funniest things
lumpy news i agree
but it's better than
a double bill murder at the local
Andrew Burke
***
SITE DORIS SALCEDO
Speak slowly so you can understand
I would like
to focus more on the positions.
Every one of my pieces
decided to become
our selves in an effective position
rendered intelligible because
I talk
searching for bases.
Self is within
all
life
capable of awakening solidarity.
Ephemeral communities.
Disappeared people. I tried to assemble all
of them in a single space.
SITE DORIS SALCEDO
See the work as an encounter.
Historical.
materials, concrete, and wood.
Have absolutely nothing left
defense (the victim cannot use language)
focus on specific cases of violence.
Person's partial negation >
indifference.
Time's correlation not between past & present.
So I
make a piece. I try to find individuals /
all I can find is absence.
Traces
sacred.
Sacred
therefore.
Barry Alpert / Silver Spring, MD US / 2-23-05 (9:39 PM)
Written during a talk by this internationally-visible artist based in
Bogota, Colombia. I had been haunted by the one piece by Doris Salcedo in
the Hirshhorn Museum's collection, but aside from thinking about the
connection between her work and that of Juan Munoz and Guillermo Kuitca, I
really wasn't prepared for her powerful and articulate presentation in very
lucid English. Those qualities, plus her overt indebtedness to poetry and
philosophy, gave me the confidence to attempt a diastic in medias res after
initially feeling I'd be lucky to complete an acrostic sixteener.
***
The track to Warburton
green parrots fly
at my side
for a while
before perching
in those tall
chattering trees
the white cockatoos
eat wild red
apples then fly
into the dark clouds
gathering along
those moist amphitheatre mountains.
Robert Lane
***
A Dream of Climbing
In my dream my strength surprised me.
I reached the river pool, not breathless.
Everything to myself! A still,
warm day. My tan was my best ever.
The rope hung there clear of the cliff.
With both hands I gripped it high
above my head, gripped knees and feet
to the rope. It was strong, warm, dry.
Like a circus gymnast I climbed steadily
up. Soon I was at the top, stepped across
to the rocky platform, breathing easily.
I woke, tottered palely to the bathroom,
serenely reconciled to being old,
the dream effort tingling still in my limbs.
6.30 am - 3.30 pm, Wednesday 23 February 2005
Max Richards at Cooee
North Balwyn, Melbourne
***
Wednesday, February 24, 1999
Nothing quite compels on a gray day: the apprehension of warmth, the quiet
indulgence before spring turbulence; no baroque, dark cloud play not even
a rain of pure imagination.
Why, I continue to wonder this morning, this fascination with houses? This
urge to examine their anthropomorphic details? In a city in which so much
life remains anonymous an absence of public life so much can be read
into the facade, the details of a house, or what can be barely glimpsed
through a window. Last night as I walked home on Chattanooga Street, through
one window, through a door into someoneıs hall way, along the wall were two
large, dark African tribal masks. With narrow slit eyes, thin pouted lips,
and white cowry shell necklaces, they both looked ready for war, at least a
village parade. In the living room, along a wall with a mirror, were three
multi-layered wooden picture frames, each layer a different color red,
orange or blue. Curiously there were no paintings inside them, only the
sight of a white wall. Turning the corner, inside the large front window of
my across the street neighbor the architect, Anne Fougeron is a large,
un-framed white canvas in which the artist has painted downward swipes of
red and black paint in uneven, parallel rectangular blocks. This morning,
walking up Sanchez, near 22nd I find a Victorian eve under which over blue
they have painted a yellow crescent moon and stars.
What is viewed/seen? Are they not decorative emblems of community? Or, at
least, the brief revelatory moments in which we uncover our neighbor?
Stephen Vincent
***
1. Perth
The Doctor is in, blowing
its cold Indian breath
along Adelaide Terrace
and over the phosphor of the Swan.
Thereıs Saturday nightıs slabs
and plastic wrap at lamp posts
broken jewels at the grating.
A Holden hums at the lights.
The generator plant next door creaks
trees at the car park edge
blow like clouds of smoke
to my muddy eye near midnight.
The ABC tower interrupts water views
and the sky is padded with cloud.
Itıs too hot for a festival.
My aircon pushes the cold nicely
and youıd rather it than
sweat between breast and brain.
The concert tonight was a lot of
percussion and water and knew
when to crescendo.
Today I got as close to
the Rothkos as allowed.
His paint drips upwards
and the colours float
but seem kin to Rover Thomasıs
language dots, ochres
and black Lake Paraku
across the way.
Thereıs these notes
about Transcendence
but all around, smell the heat
touch the windy present
or it touches you.
I put my head in Hepworth
hear a rushing of metal time, air
and the stilled.
2. Adelaide
Change is moving across the continent.
You can follow on TV.
The weather page isobars wriggle
and colours eternally change.
The first whiff of cold is at the East End
waiting for the free bus
sky becoming crowded and breezy.
And like the weather
I leave a trail of myself
all along the way
though time zones and deserts
dust me up
and unsteadily breathe me
into nameless minutes
belonging to no-one.
Jill Jones
Snapped Feb 19-23 2005, Perth and Adelaide
***
WANTING TO BE GIUSEPPE VERDI
(on the author's 61st birthday)
While Verdi was dying in Milan in January 1901, the Milanese laid straw
on the pavement so the old man was not disturbed in his final hours by
the clop of horses on the pavement or by the noises of cars.
At the old man's state funeral Arturo Toscanini conducted a chorus in
"Va, pensiero," and thousands of Italians joined in, singing softly. It
was the unofficial national anthem of a 30 year old nation that Verdi's
music had helped bring about.
The old bastard ruined longevity for everyone else.
Someone wrote of W. Eugene Smith the photojournalist "He could have been
a Verdi or Picasso." They are the touchstones of creative longevity.
This morning, I got a call at work. The voice sounded like a black
female nurse's aide, asking when I was planning to check myself into the
same nursing home where my mother died 13 years ago. The voice had me:
"What the?...." until I realized it was my 26-year-old son calling to
wish me a happy birthday. The unprintable names I called him were
balanced by how hard he had me laughing.
It's too bad there's no market for that kind of pathological talent or
the kid could be the funniest standup comic at a Klan rally. He got
that manical humor from me. There's no market for that either.
I am not Verdi. I have made certain efforts to act like Picasso
off-canvas, but they were not a great success. I am not Eugene Smith
either. He took better pictures in his dreams that I take with a
camera. But I survived him. It may be an imperfect trade, but I'll
take it. I don't have a choice unless I want to be Hunter Thompson.
Kenneth Wolman
***
Quotidian Selves
Spring Street in late summer
at 9 a.m. was a handsome mix
of public gardens and stately state edifices,
and I was glad to have the use of my legs
as I toddled my quotidian self along,
looking about for perceptions that might
link to the word-finding part of the brain
now stirring after my first coffee.
My friend came to mind, moved this week
from the nearby hospital to its hospice.
Whatever I see is part
of what he has already lost.
I see a policewoman beside
a woman beside her car.
On the paving a small petrol can
and a patch of spill beneath the open mouth
of the fuel inlet. They have no funnel
and I know how it feels and smells.
Iıve got a funnel in my car
itıs just along there Iıll be right back,ı
says I, proud of my quick helpfulness.
Back in a jiffy, brandishing the black plastic cone
and its screw-on tubing, I masterfully jiggle it
into the inlet, while at my shoulder the woman
gingerly tilts the can and the petrol trickle starts.
That smell!ı says the policewoman,
my husband used to be a mechanic.ı
In my mindıs eye a dark-fingered mechanic
caresses a woman police cadet.
Donıt some people get high sniffing petrol?ı
(In my fatherıs day the phrase was motor spirits.)
The fuel has now found its way through the tube
and I can withdraw the black nozzle.
They offer me an old newspaper
should I wish to wipe it dry.
No thanks, Iım off, glad to be of service.
The funnel in the back of my car
sends fumes forwards;
inhaling them high-spiritedly
my quotidian self drives off.
My friend, I hear later,
has died this morning.
His quotidian self is stilled.
A sense of him hovers
for a time near those
who are glad they knew him.
Tuesday 22nd-Wednesday 23rd February 2005
Max Richards, North Balwyn, Melbourne
***
I watched Washington Journal on
C-Span with the sound turned down
looking past the sober, genial host
talking to the Washington Bureau
Chief from the German Press Agency
and then past the callers taken from
Nevada, Virginia, Taiwan, Ohio-- each
either supporting Pres. Bush, Democrats,
or Others-- I looked past to watching
"the wings of the sunny Dome expand"
through the window behind the set
8:34 AM/23 feb. 2005/West Irondequoit, New York/US
Gerald Schwartz
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