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Life in the Empire

Been writing cover letters for job applications (two submitted yesterday). More of a movement artist than a wordsmith but, to get things started, here is something I wrote for Migrant, my section in Train.

Where is home?

Moved twelve times in the last 16 years. The transient in transit. Pierce Transit runs through it. Before I came here I was in Rush Limbaugh’s home town before I was surrounded by corn fed Norwegian bred Lutherans singing praise in perfect four part harmony to that Home on the Plain before I’m taken Home – Praise Jesus. I grew up in Iowa, Little Town on the Prairie an island afloat in the ocean of corn. Lived in SoCal, in the Desert where golf and plastic surgery reigns, might have the grit to stay in rainy Tacoma, but, I always say I’m from San Francisco - though I rarely visit anymore.

Home, where is home?

Home is where you are. Correction, home is where you and the two cats are.

What is home? That safe place. That place with love. I love that old car, it always brought me home. The ’75 Westphalia could be home. Or rather, the place that used to be home. Too old, too unreliable to be trusted anymore. Baling wire and duct tape. Just like the U-Haul I drive to the next place, hoping for home.

Searching for home. Migrants with heavy furniture. U-haul. Our orange travois with wheels keeps getting bigger. Full of stuff. Heavy Stuff. Stuff that anchors us. To a home of nostalgia. Anchors to a home that never really existed. That place. This is the place! Well bully for you Brigham Young. Bring ‘em young. Not young anymore, with more stuff each move to stuff in the moving van and every move leaves behind anchors that are mourned in passing.

A house burns down and the anchors are cremated and the past has passed on.

The bubble is burst. The house is on the market. The anchor is weighed. The trees we planted are left behind. Do the new owners love that Japanese Maple we planted as our 10th anniversary gift to our dream of home? Have they maintained the landscaping? Have any of the plants, the dreams, the love we planted been cared for in our absence? Or have they been torn up by the roots to make room for the next owners’ dream of home?

Where are the anchors? Is there a home port? Adrift. Without a home. Drift wood is picked up for beach fires to warm the beach rats without a home. Their shacks have been bulldozed like West Bank ancestral olive groves to make room for more condos and home-loving dreamers blowing a bubble. Pop!

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Cute and appropriate picture. Where did you get it?
a simple google image search. Although, I couldn't find an attribution on the site I stole it from. Us hobo artists like to steal band width when we can. It's like ridin' the internet(s) without a ticket...

Zevs, a well-known French street artist, started tagging Paris in the nineties and making certain spray can modifications to billboards. Liquidated Logos is the name of a current exhibition (but today is the last day!) at the Lazarides Gallery in London of his work with famous logos, plexiglass boards and his trademark paint. The logos drip paint, appearing to dissolve away, but we all know that this is but an illusion. Odd how something that looks so simple can say so much.


Artist: Zevs
+ lazinc.com
Art is a way of plunging into the pool of being with all your senses open and sighing a sigh that might resonate through the brushes if there is no overseer in the way, telling how this will be. If there is no one there at all to see or say then in the privacy of that lurch forward over the edge the embracing void fills you with its song, and familiar agonies wrack you double in waves out of which you clamber, panting, holding the brush aloft, stumbling forward.

That is my desired destination today. I shall post this to you my friends, switch off this machine and turn on the music or tune into silence.
aye, that's part of The Secret O' Life...
That song was so good.
This is one of the most delightful films I have ever seen: A Taste of Tea
" The mother, Yoshiko, is an animation artist that tries to resurrect her career while maintaining the daily tasks of her family in a rural setting outside of Tokyo."

That could be me. I'll have to see it to see if she pulls it off.
Got an invite to see Pan's production of 'Train'. How exciting.

Mrs BO and I want to reserve seats for May 10. Is it kid-friendly, or should we leave the little one home?

Is the great WaldoPaper gonna show up? Should we fly him out here? I can chip in.

I love these performances. Can't wait.
That is so good.
It is really nice to know you are meeting like this, in such a dedicated creative ethos.
Makes me dance.
Just saw L'Iceberg

Very finely choreographed physical comedy. High quality entertainment.

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