if . . .

- See: Image :: note :: ... a wild few days around here ... high winds, tornado touch downs ... trees falling onto roofs & streets ... above is a picture down the street ... look through the window of the fire truck to see the fallen tree ...

"And so life is reckoned as nothing. Habitualization devours works, clothes, furniture, one's wife, and the fear of war. "If the whole complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been." And art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects 'unfamiliar,' to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object: the object is not important." ( -- Victor Shklovsky "Art as Technique" ) - See: Artists Speak :: note :: ... wonderful attending the Floyd festival (old link not up-dated) ... youth working in post post-modern ways ... ...

... imagine my surprise when out of the blue artist Chris Ashley offered to ship a work simply as an act of gratitude for my following his html pieces throughout the years ... asked if i had a request & shocked i replied whatever comes will be appreciated ... ... we don't "know" each other ... have never met ... a sporadic network connection at best ... the last few days he posted another of his gifts hanging ... here's where mine hangs ... above my computer work station flanked by my sons piece done at age 11 ... the reflected light line seems appropriate (to me) ... his recent work may be viewed at David Cunningham Projects in San Francisco & his most recent recent work may be viewed each day on his blog Look, See which links & reviews other work as well ... the last month has been particularly stunning as the daily practice demands & challenges both form & impulse ... daily looking means to see & to see I have discovered is to ...

There is the place we know and there is the place we live. This I realized staying the past fifteen years in The Temple situated beyond the CPR tracks, at the bottom of Caswell Hill just off of Louis Riel Trail in Saskatoon on the Canadian prairies. Something I've been reminded of as the walls flake and the roof falls. The Temple windows are a bit high meaning I see mostly sky and trees. Inside there is a story which remains mostly untold and not easily accessible. The Ladies Prayer Room in the basement with the now demolished bathroom, the attic with empty pulleys and asbestos, crumbling steps, fence planks missing, cracked windows and worn pathways speak of age and a relentless drive towards being junked or dispersed. Places vanish precisely because, a few years down the track, there is no 'guardian' left willing to pay the bills for the sake of posterity? There is no concealing the sourcing of alienation or the substance of tradition. Speaking in tongues the space...

free - a video poem of 'I want 2 b emptee' from narrativ enigma / rumours uv hurricane by bill bissett FLaRes - a video poem of 'ECHOGRAPHIES' from The House that HIJACK Built by Adeena Karasick - See: Video Poem :: note :: ... created these past early mornings ... inspired by an Adeena Karasick workshop presentation (not attended) at the recent EVOcative Festival/Conference ... the idea + my wife's discovery of sharing pictures using quicktime movies stimulated me to use the tools lying dormant in the computer ...

The Stranger. Camus: When was the last time? Shadow: What? Camus: The last time we talked? Shadow: Yesterday before the storm. Camus: And the last word? Shadow: What are you talking about - we don't talk. Camus: Do you remember then the last word you wrote? Shadow: No. Camus: You didn't even think about it. Shadow: (laughs) My name. How every correspondence ends Camus: Exactly. Shadow: Oh I get what this is about. Camus: Do you? - See: Plays :: note :: ... Suzan-Lori Parks wrote a play a day which inspired a nation-wide grassroots festival ... the published book acknowledges Paul Osher - who said it'd be cool. ...

"We are nothing alone. We cannot exist without reference points. We cannot know ourselves until another knows us. This is why we seek love - not just something to hold, but someone to know us and hold us as just us. Neither can we be together if we do not exist as individuals. Both are needed." "Dialogue is both our existence and what we do. We are beings in our doings." "Our purpose is to stir things up. The stirrings are the living edge of us. Where we leak into others, there we create new life. This is the work of conversation: to create new life. " "Dialogue then is not a mere tool, but the fountain of life. Drink from each other's mouths and ears the stuff of life." "The between is life. The between throws off life. The between lives. The between gives life. We meet in the between. We live in the between. What we do separately is done only to serve the between. The between is life." "Giving is what feeds the creation...

... clusters of interaction circulate around a deep, shared core connection & this "work" is where connection is maintained ... ... no place for psychological notions of the biologically tied family ... ... the noise of institutional hierarchies needs to be muted ... ... not easy as the traditional relationship canon demands a kind of cohesive, definable whole that is legitimized as fact & truth ... ... shape shift to negotiate a way to re-present ourselves in a credible manner ... ... link to survival, competition & traditional drives of monetary adherence to security ... ... replace convention with stripped, personalised, intuitive, introspective, living & open-ended actions (authenticity & inspired) ... ... replace status quo, comprehension, ease & predictability with chaotic, disordered and risky variations ... - See: Relationship :: note :: ... towards a manifesto of relations ...

She wanted to know what wind was for. On the island which stirred underneath the feet. Or, Does wind wish to be of the earth? Would oceanic be another sister? Is survival interesting as always was & will be? She once found solace for several years. Before she shaved her hair in the heat without wind. The scarf bound tightly a perceived protection. Someone could leave streaklines. Walls do hold the anemometer windows measuring promise. Each day nothing seems to blow. Gentle breezes deceive anyone who faces the other way inland or outing the change of direction. Maybe we're all wind. Whatever that's for. - See: Writing :: note :: ... in a time when no wind blows ...

Did you see the water streaming down the outside walls? Even in the heat of the night when the stillness hums loudest the ceiling cracks appear lost. The water drains down. Down, down, down. A studied run-a-way he could never slip through without scratching the cortical brain tissue. An image thought responding to delirium and drift. Just lie. Hidden in a canoe he criss-crosses sky rivers only to be countered by the vulgar and incoherent family. His brother's mother was a master of glib, good mannered indolence. She canonized deceit. Her marriage was a miscarriage. The run-a-way became animal staking out the path of escape in all its positivity. When do you leave she asked. When do you think - do you think he said. (He knew that resistance was surrender.) He said he was never born he escaped. Wrong. Don't deny your birthright. You always enjoyed suffering she said. Never look for shame in dark pines underwater. He stood high looking out over the river. Map the sandbar and cr...

two silences        the frozen first & last selves             reflections in cracked windows we look through & away        in hesitations & abbreviations              a shredded glaring resistance the framing warps in the heat        paint blisters & curls before              pleading naked exposure the problem with a door are the hinges. - See: Poetry :: note :: ... not to be confused with solitude ...