Kate.Sedgwick

Views from the Rooftop - Boca

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 16:37:40 GMT

Though living in this big apartment renting rooms can be a pain in the ass, there are times when I emerge from my room to feel as if I'm walking into a dream. Sometimes the views stop me breathing for a moment and then I run for my camera, hoping my disorganized mind hasn't left it without battery and that I'll have the opportunity to capture what I see.

A surprising fog one morning erased the city in the distance. View over Barracas.

This is the view over Boca.

This bird held still for a while. The fog seemed to muffle the sounds of the city.

Pressure on my bladder had me sourly getting out of bed, but seeing this made it totally worth it.

More of the same morning.

Once in a while, it looks like there's a bubble over the city and the clouds are prevented from entering by it, leaving the city in black and the sky a whitish grey.

Home from a night out with friends, I was impressed by the clouds.

Psycho decoration for jagged re-bar.

The sun was shouting out of the sky.

What is this rainbow pointing to?

Antennae with the Moon

Boca - My New Neighborhood *** Boca - Mi Barrio Nuevo

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 20:15:19 GMT

False Moon - Luna Falso

Children for Scale

Argentina a la Mexicana

Defunct Florist

"Don Coco" I pass him all the time and am intrigued - Paso todo el tiempo y me intriga.

Typical Argentine Colors - Colores Tipicos de Argentina

30KPH

Cielo Raro

Monstro Verde

Flor Metalico

El Viejo y la Bicicleta

Your Death

Puerta Ornamentada en un Pared Amarillo

Reflejo en Laca

Rayas de Escalónes de Color Naranja

Glad Not to be Living in Once/Abasto

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 13:16:21 GMT

One afternoon editing in my room as I often did, I heard a ruckus, looked out over the balcony, and this is what I saw.

First of all what the hell happened to this cop's head? Was he attacked by his friends when he was passed out drunk? Was it a medical condition? Why didn't he just shave the rest of his head? All of this will remain a mystery.

The man on the ground was drunk and had set up shop on the stoop of the hair salon across the street, closed for Sunday. See how he removed his shoes to get more comfortable?

After this shot was taken, the cops just moved along, the man continued to sleep it off on the curb, and his shoes were stolen.

I'm so glad not to be living in Once where I saw two robbery/assaults from the balcony and regularly saw scenes like that pictured here.

Slumdog Millionaire Weak on Character

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 20:16:03 GMT

Slumdog Millionaire has everything. Suspense, intrigue, romance, heroes, villains, betrayal, poverty, and astonishingly gorgeous cinematography. Reviews are strong. It received ten Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director. I was riveted until about twenty minutes before the end when any sense of suspension of disbelief I was able to maintain up until that point was systematically destroyed in a way that can only be illustrated with other chain reaction cliches such as a house of cards falling or a destructive avalanche set off by a yodel.

A movie with destiny as the primary message is sure to stretch the viewers’ suspension of disbelief, but Slumdog Millionaire is more like a children’s fairy tale than a movie created for an adult audience. Why are people so gratified by the improbable outcome? Are we really that uncritical and naive? There is not a single loose end left hanging by the end of the movie. Each and every character with a speaking role gets his comeupance and these fates are delivered in rapid fire sequence so there is not the faintest question left hanging in the viewer’s mind at the end. I estimate that any credibility the film has begins to slide when Salim decides to redeem himself by helping Latika escape and snowballs from there.

Let’s start by examining the problematic Latika. We never know her origins. She appears outside of a train car where the two brothers are sleeping and is invited inside to escape a torrential rainstorm by Jamal against his older brother Salim’s orders. Here we have the precident set: Salim is a bastard, Jamal is a do-gooder and Latika is a victim in need of rescue. Why else would she be crouching alone in the rain as if she had no sense? Surely there was other shelter to be had in any number of places, but she squats helplessly as she is pelted by the rain, staring vacantly into space and waiting for an invitation into the train car that the brothers share. This points to Latika’s complacency, idiocy and inability to act with any sense of autonomy.

Somehow, though everything in the movie points to the fact that Latika is a dim bulb, washed to and fro by waves of fate and the male characters' whims, we are also meant to believe that she still has an untouched virgin heart that has prevented her from becoming consumed by the evil and corruptive influences around her. Yes, even though she hasn’t got the common sense to find shelter from a violent rainstorm on her own, she has the steely resolve to nurture and protect the love she has for her childhood friend even though she was forced into prostitution as soon as she budded breasts and has been exploited, raped and abused ever since by vile gangsters.

Talk about a hooker with a heart of gold. Even the vengeful slash left on Latika’s face during her first escape attempt is conveniently placed in such a way that she is still stunningly gorgeous and able to mask the flaw with her hair, remaining superficially worthy of rescue in the end. Not even her beauty could be compromised to allow for one lesson to be imparted to the viewing audience. She has apparently escaped being destroyed by sexually transmitted diseases despite years of prostitution and is still gorgeous though her face has been mutilated. Convenient.

Her escape at the end is engineered by the evil Salim who has magically come to understand the error of his ways in such a profound manner that he suicides by gangster in a final fuck you gesture in which the even more evil Javed’s money is spattered with Salim’s blood.

The deeply conflicted Salim treads the line of evil bastard and heroic rescuer. He kills the child exploiting, suspiciously Michael Jackson-ish Maman as a teen, thereby rescuing Latika only to claim her as a personal possession, raping her before selling her into prostitution. He is then “destined” apparently to repeat this series of events in order to set her free as he takes several bullets after murdering her most recent exploiter in a blaze of glory fit for a Bon Jovi video. Too problematic to live, apparently, the only solution for such a complex character in the world of Slumdog Millionaire is to be riddled with bullets soon after realizing the futility and folly of his existence.

Finally, Jamal. What can be said about this Pollyanna? Jamal has a clearly defined sense of right and wrong, putting his life at risk several times throughout the movie to stand up for his principles, for love and out of sheer altruism. We are led to believe that the only reason he even tries to get on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? is to use the popular platform of the show to contact Latika. How this would result in any ability on her part to contact him after seeing him on the air remains a mystery. Apparently, since his motives were pure in going out for the show, he succeeds not only in becoming a contestant, but also in winning the highest prize on offer.

One is forced to wonder if the police who are questioning Jamal throughout the movie are on to something. A clever conceit indeed to insert the unbelievability of the plot into the movie as critical to the story structure. Following the “whoever smelt it dealt it” line of logic, you have to assume that the makers of the movie were well aware of the implausibility of the major plot points and went ahead and inserted the fact that Jamal is under criminal suspicion of lying and cheating into the film in much the same way a thief may call his victim’s attention to the fact that something is missing to deflect suspicion from himself.

There is no deep reflection to be had after watching Slumdog Millionaire. There is no work to be done by the viewer, no question to be resolved and no real lesson to be gleaned or understood by the movie. The message seems to be that if you can keep your intentions pure and refuse to be corrupted by a cruel world and incredibly difficult circumstances, then you will be the recipient of extraordinary rewards, monetary and otherwise. If, however, the world puts its dirty, greasy thumbprint on you and you end up spiritually sullied in any way you will be punished.

The real mystery is why America so eagerly lapped up Slumdog Millionaire and awarded it so thoroughly. The pat solutions it lends to existential questions cause disappointment and anxiety in the thinking viewer. Is the moral lesson that we are meant to come away with the juxtaposition of the evil “blood” money with the “clean” money earned through Jamal’s purely motivated game show appearance? Money seems to be the central issue. Clearly this movie deals with conceits such as “right and wrong” and “good and bad,” and yet it deals with them in such an overly simplistic way that intellectual gratification is sublimated. Slumdog Millionaire steals any conjectures from the audience of what any of the suspenseful and interesting action leading up to the grand finale could mean by tying it up with a shiny bow that answers every question before it is even asked.

Addendum: Though Salman Rushdie wants to take credit for being the only nay-sayer of this movie and I’m sure I would agree with many of his points, there is plenty of criticism for the shallow treatment of these Indian characters at the hands of Hollwood to be read by critics in the Indian world. Rushdie conveniently takes credit for being the only critic of this movie, though perhaps he is merely the only critic who is famous thoughout the western world.

Lost in Translation by Mukul Kesavan of The Telegraph, India

Slumdog Millionaire: A Warped Picture of India
by Gautaman Bhaskaran, the Seoul Times

Why Slumdog Fails to Move me by Soutik Biswas, BBC News

I will be interested to read Rushie’s criticism when there is more available than the vague allusions to his recent speech at Emory.

Obsesionada con Reflejos en Cemeterio Recoleta

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 03:06:34 GMT

An absolutely beautiful day, I wasn't shy here like I was in Chacaritas. This cemetery is teeming with tourists.

Lens Generated Halo

The living city surrounding the cemetery juxtaposed here.

Dexterous Saint Head

Cobwebs

Christ in the Wild Interior of a Tomb

Welcome to My Tomb

Classical View

Cobwebs, Skull and Crossbones

Another view of the Strange Halo

Double Jesus

Cuadruple Jesus

Sweet Cemetery Kitties

Bust Triple Header

Half Heart Hole

Tiny Angel

Jesus Behind Bars

Skeleton Key

Black Cat

Tomb of Sarmiento

Skull and Crossbones

Gauchito Antonio Gil

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:23:15 GMT

The story of Gauchito Antonio Gil (pronounced "heel") is said to take a few different paths, but the common byline is that he was a Robin Hood figure who stole from the rich to give to the poor.

Legend has it that Gaucho Gil was a farmer who had an affair with a wealthy widow. When the affair was discovered, Gil fled and joined the army to escape the wrath of the townspeople and police (one of whom is said to have been in love with the widow himself). In the time leading up to the Argentine Civil War, he had grown tired of fighting and deserted. Upon returning home, he was detained and brutally executed for his refusal to continue fighting.

One of the lawmen who had been responsible for the death of Gil returned home to discover his son was deathly ill. The lawman prayed to Gaucho Gil and the son's health was restored. The lawman then took it upon himself to give the Gaucho a decent burial.

In Buenos Aires, you will see the image of the Gaucho reproduced in store windows, on trucks and vans throughout the city as a sticker, on flags and painted on businesses. Figurines deck the windows of homes and stores.

On visiting Chacaritas Cemetary, I spotted a large altar dedicated to Gauchito Antonio Gil. It was difficult to get shots without capturing the images of those who had come to pray to the Gauchito which seemed a disrespectful thing to do. Waiting for my chance, I observed a steady stream of people step in to make their requests and give thanks.

Hand Painted Gil

Illuminated Thanks

Appreciation

Ornate Tribute

Inside the Altar

Flowers and Red Flags

Another Miracle Fulfilled

The prayer to Gaucho Antonio Gil (from http://olydan.iespana.es/publifacil.htm):
Gauchito Antonio Gil: Humildemente te pido intercedas ante Dios para que se cumpla el milagro que tanto necesito. Te prometo que cumpliré mi promesa y te brindaré mi fiel agradecimiento, hoy y todos los días de mi vida.

English translation:

Gauchito Antonio Gil: Humbly I ask you to intercede before God that He will fulfill the miracle I need so much. I vow that I will carry out my promise to give to you my faithful thanks, today and every day of my life.

A Lit Cigarette as an Offerting

Transcribed from my notebook:

A woman sees me taking photos and says the altar must have burned. There was glass and now there's a warning about leaving things that may burn inside. She says she goes to Corrientes every year and Gil is very miraculous.

A young woman lights a cigarette and leaves it burning below the altar. I don't feel right taking pictures of the people inside. I wait for them to finish and write this. But there are so many people. A steady stream since I arrived 10 minutes ago. I feel like an intruder. It's obvious that Gil has a lot of miracles to his credit and loyal believers who continue to return and give thanks and ask favor.

Layers of Thanks in Red

More on Gauchito Gil:

Gauchito Gil on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauchito_Gil

Gauchito Gil Gallery from Frank Graziano's Website "Cultures of Devotion" dedicated to the book by the same name:

http://www.culturesofdevotion.com/

(Go to Galleries and then Gaucho Gil)

Great Site (en español) with a wealth of info on Gauchito Gil:

http://www.santogauchitogil.com.ar/

Election Night In Buenos Aires

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 02:33:31 GMT

Crowd at Club Sacrimento in Palermo, Buenos Aires, Argentina - This was earlier in the night. It became much more crowded later.

All day I was on edge about the elections. I tried what I could to soothe myself. On the long bus trips to and from my volunteer job, I tuned into podcasts of News and Notes and Rachel Maddow. It didn’t help that the kids were rowdy as hell. There were two boys in the class I taught and when I told them there was 5 minutes left of class, one of the boys said he was bored. I asked him if he wanted to leave and he said he did and I ended the class. Once I got home, I tuned into NPR and just let it run.

Looking the other way

Always skeptical about the government of the United States, these last two elections have made me disgusted and completely disenchanted. I have been thoroughly conditioned to believe that elections are not made to be won, but stolen - that every policy the United States implements is simply for the sake of making money for the rich without regard for it’s own people, never mind the lives of people abroad. I have come to believe that our people can be fooled into cooperating with any foreign policy without protest as long as their basest fears are appealed to in a rainbow of colors of terrorist threat. I had come to believe that the government didn’t even need to be clever in concealing this, that no one even cared that they were being blatantly lied to.

It has seemed painfully obvious to me that the demonization of Arab and Muslim people has given the Bush administration the public support necessary to use imperialistic force to attempt to secure the resources of Iraq for themselves and the others who profit . Meanwhile, they branch out into the Middle East, exploiting age old strife there to exponentially increase their net worth and personal power while pouring American tax dollars down the toilet at the expense of our country’s educational system, our people’s jobs and security and health. They kill in the name of the people of the United States and tell us it’s necessary. They tell us it’s for our own good, and it has seemed that the country has been lobotomized, nodding their heads. We have been able to focus on minutia and celebrity gossip as the luxury afforded us by virtue of the fact that we are in the United States makes it seem as if the world’s problems don’t exist.

I have come to view our nation as a land of babies with no spine who care nothing about the world at large as long as Wal-Mart is open 24 hours and cable television remains entertaining. I can’t say that I have been that much different - because when you believe that it doesn’t matter how you vote or if you protest - when you come to believe that corruption has the upper hand and playing dirty always wins, it’s hard to keep caring.

People will say that Obama is not that much different from McCain. I met a woman last night from Norway who says that the two are regarded as being nearly ideologically indistinguishable there. I guess I can see that as being the case as far as our foreign policy looks - at least as far as the Middle East goes. But while McCain seems to relish the prospect of war, Obama appears to view it with more gravity. Obama has a stated date for the withdrawal of our service men and woman from Iraq and seems committed to offering incentives to Iran to cease its nuclear program. Obama has some answers for us.

So when I left yesterday, I made sure to wear blue. I waited for the bus by myself and I felt worried. I could not expect Obama to win, but I could not stop myself from hoping. This feeling was so foreign to me - I haven’t risked any hope as far as the United States government goes for a long, long time.

I got to the bar where Democrats Abroad were hosting an event. I did not settle in and talk to anyone. I could not share in the ebullient sentiments of those around me. I had a rock in my chest. I watched the returns for Kentucky begin to come in and saw red.

Oh, Kentucky. You suck.

I felt like the people around me were being incredibly naive when they would cheer to the CNN projections of state wins. I thought, “Jesus, people. It’s a projection. It doesn’t mean anything.” I’d see Obama’s smiling face with a green check-mark and the word “winner,” and I would focus on that little word nearby: projection. Waves of enthusiasm spread through throngs of people. It was hot as hell. Argentinean television media were covering the event, shining hot lights in an already sweltering atmosphere. It took at least five minutes weaving through people, their bodies rubbing against me on all sides to go from one end of the bar to the other. I couldn’t hear the television at all. I was dripping with sweat.

Supporters of Obama as seen on TV

Obama Supporters with the help of the light of the TV crew

At one point I thought, “Is that Princess Leia?” It was CNN correspondent Jessica Yellin “via hologram.” I said, “Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope,” to a guy near me. But I think he was German with little English because he did not seem to understand me and I later heard him talking to someone else in a language other than English or Spanish. I was also struck by a Columbian Tourism commercial that stated, “Visit Columbia. The only risk is wanting to stay.” Tell that to the civilians killed by the Colombian military and presented as insurgents for a reward.

Was it my attitude that had people from the United States asking me things in Spanish with the worst accents I could imagine? Did I seem too separate from the goings on to be another American? Or is it simply polite to speak Spanish here? Badly conjugated favors were asked of me more then a handful of times, mostly requests for cigarettes. Other than that, I spoke to few people during the 8 hours I was out last night.

Hopeful Democrats riveted by the coverage

The news is looking good

A CNN projection is announced in Obama's favor

At a certain point, the heat and the crowd became intolerable to me. I headed out for another nearby bar that was showing election coverage. I ran into someone I knew outside, but went in by myself. I was brazenly assaulted with a kiss by a guy who seemed disappointed to find out that I was 32. His friend asked me if I was there to photograph the culture of the United States, and I said that I guessed so, if the United States could be said to have a culture. My advanced age did not seem to be enough of a deterrent to prevent the kisser from doing it twice more, though it sent his friend running after he groaned loud enough to be heard in the noisy bar. I had to laugh. Never in my life has a thing like that happened. I had to yell, “no” in the end. The last time, I thwarted him before he got near my face. I know it sounds horrible, but somehow it seemed good spirited. It didn’t make me angry.

View from down the stairs at Sugar in Palermo, Buenos AIres

This club was just as large, but the area dedicated to the Election was much smaller. Where I stood upon entry to the room had me constantly threatening to stomp on the fingers of a doe eyed guy who kept seeming victimized by my presence. (See there at the bottom of those stairs above?) I kept shrugging and making sure not to lift my foot, opting instead to chance nudging him as I snaked my shoe along the concrete each time someone pushed into me or squeezed between me and the person next to me. If I were able to, I’d have pointed out to him that keeping his hand outstretched in the floor in that high traffic area just wasn’t very smart. But if he insisted on sprawling there like some one was going to feed him grapes any second, there was little I could do. Eventually I was able to squeeze into a seat on a hard bench with a lumpy cushion. At this club there was concerted chanting. “Obama” and “Yes we can,” and “Si se puede,” were often repeated by many. Here again, each projection resulted in an eruption of cheers.

The people behind me (I eventually got the spot of the guy in the brown shirt)

A television personality

The crowd from where I finally sat down

Latino Voters elicited a huge cheer

After quite a while I decided to beat it back to the other club. I didn’t want to walk, so I hailed a cab, and it’s good thing that I did otherwise I would have missed the announcement that Barack Obama had been elected President of the United States of America. I still didn’t believe it until McCain conceded. I was impressed with the absence of pettiness in his concession speech in light of the way the campaign was conducted. I feel like a lot of the vitriol he spouted was orchestrated by his people, but at the same time, what kind of leader allows himself to be puppeteered that way? I think we have gotten a clear answer to that question over the last eight years.

After a wait, there was the President Elect. I tried to stanch my tears, but I could not stop them flowing. I was so inspired to hear the words of Obama’s acceptance speech. I was so relieved to see the first family standing in front of the people of Chicago and the United States and the world. I was so moved to hear a leader speaking of personal responsibility and this version of the meaning of the American spirit and way of life. I want to believe that our country is better than it has been. I could not help but think of the children who will grow up, the first president they ever remember will be an inspirational and intelligent leader. They will know nothing of the hateful hypocrisy of the Bush administration. The first president they will ever know will be a black man. These are beautiful things to think of and to believe in.

Back at Club Sacrimento, Obama is announced the winner. I know these photos are poor quality, but they show what it was like:

Crowd here, crowd there

I can not help but believe that this administration will do a lot, will be progressive, will continue to inspire people. I feel a new day has dawned, that the American people have finally risen to the occasion and elected someone competent, intelligent, capable and ready to lead and light the way. When Obama’s presidency was announced and when I heard the acceptance speech, I realized that I will go back the United States one day. I don’t know what else to say. I have hope, and I’m one of the many, and that’s saying a lot.

Colonia, Uruguay

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:57:54 GMT

A tourist visa for Argentina is good for 90 days. A good way to extend your stay is by going to Uruguay and getting your passport stamped. That gives you another 90 days.

Though I've only been here for two months, I'm ready to start looking for a job and try to change my return on my round trip ticket. My friend Patt said she had a trip planned to Uruguay, and I figured it would be a good idea to tag along. This trip was made a month before it was really necessary, but the stamp will give me a little confidence in dealing with the airline. It's a time marker for me - one that plants me here for the next three months at least.

Here you can see Rio de La Plata separating Uruguay and Argentina

I wish I had gotten a good picture of the boat. Once we were on and ready to split, I took a picture of Patt and my camera informed me that I had no memory card. I was bitterly disappointed, my mind continued to return to this point over and again. I saw the card in the card reader in my mind's eye in the drawer of the desk in my room.

After we had shared a delicious lunch of seafood paella, a long chat, and a leisurely walk through the town, I was even more angry with myself. The town was so beautiful, and unlike at gatherings when having a camera can make you feel at a remove from the people around you, I find that with towns, architecture and places, the camera seems to focus my attention in a way that has me appreciating my surroundings more acutely than when I don't have it.

Walking through the more commercial district, I saw some memory cards through the window of a camera shop. Was it? Could it be? Was that a card that was compatible with my camera?

Oh yes.

Beach on the River

School

White Car

Wall

Here is Patt in a roofless building, the river and boats in the background.

Green

I wonder if this chain was hand forged? It is attached to a drawbridge I overlooked photographing.

Gaslights lining a street

Ivy covered wall

A street view

Boat

One side of the Lighthouse

The other side

The river

Pink House

a business

Rippling Clouds

a wall I liked

Orange

The inside of a business

The trees with these flowers were everywhere.

On the way back to the boat

A train station.

The outside of the boat station

It was a gorgeous day, and a feast for the eyes. After being in the city for a couple of months, it was just wonderful to have all the green and the water, the quiet and the amazing colors surrounding us. I did feel a little sad when I was walking through the city afterwards not to have stayed longer. I'm starting to see more travel in my future.

Cementerio de la Chacarita, Buenos Aires

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:21:51 GMT

Sunday I went to Cementerio de la Chacarita. Walks had taken me past the large pink entrance several times, and though I had expressed my desire to see the cemetery on several occasions, I hadn't known that the monolithic structure was actually the way in. A friend had speculated that it was a university, an idea I had no reason to refute.

Two subway stops away from where I live, the cemetery is enormous. I had allotted myself 2 hours to have a look and that wasn't nearly enough time to get a good idea of what there is to see.

This is two photos melded together to show the inside of a mausoleum. Without a doubt, this is the most beautiful cemetery I have seen in my life. The outsides of the mausoleums are incredible. The insides range from well kept to complete disrepair. If you look inside and down, you can see a grate (in some cases) that covers a hole in the floor. In many of the tombs, there is no grate. Lots of the tombs have visible stairs aside from the hole on the floor that lead to the lower story. If you look carefully, you can often see more coffins beneath.

The yellow area in this map is the cemetery.

Live ferns inside this well attended tomb.

In shambles, I was captivated by the inside of this mausoleum that houses the remains of many cremated individuals.

I did a poor job of stitching these photos together. Another mausoleum in disrepair.

This gives you an idea of the quiet and orderly feel of this area.

A very well kept mausoleum

Corner with domed crypts

Painting inside of a tomb

Angels and Sky

Captivating Exterior with the neighbors across the way reflected

Reminds me very much of Munch

Lane in the middle of a block

This was taken in an area along the border of the cemetery. I spend a lot of time over here, where many of this wall of tombs had been vandalized. Several of the crypts had been broken open. More than half the wall is vacant. Pigeons make use of the open areas.

I had to wonder if this was a human bone. No marble closure on this tomb, just a water worn board to hide its contents.

A broken tomb - the coffin inside is visible in the shadows.

I was struck by the way the rosary still hangs from the broken marble here.

Tomb 270

Out of focus in the background, you can see a mausoleum wall that is in much better shape than the ones before.

A broken mirror near the groundskeepers area reflects the half empty wall of tombs.

I might have taken more photos, but I felt odd snapping photos in view of people who were there to visit the graves of dead loved ones. I felt as if I were stealing somehow, or exploiting the dead. I think I'll go back though. Maybe it won't be so busy on a weekday.

Sign by the X

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 20:11:22 GMT

The emphasis on convenience in American culture coupled with the devaluing of intelligence has made the people stupid. Rather than looking for the solution, we are given the solution. Buy another one. Wait until the light turns green. Wait until you are called. I once knew a guy who had driven the same route in his car no less than 20 times and still depended on his GPS to give him directions. It is possible to cluelessly wander through America paying little attention to you surroundings without incident.

People don’t question rules that slow them down. They generally don’t question the waste they generate. So many pieces of paper have to be signed that we barely bother reading them anymore. More times than I can count, I’ve read a piece of paper that was presented for my signature to be told by whoever gave it to me, “It just says x, y and z,” or, “You’re the first person I’ve even given that to who’s read it!” Really? What are these other people doing? Every company is covering their ass in the most aggressive way, by fucking us, and we let them without question.

It seems to me that here in Buenos Aires, people trust the government and corporations less, and it’s no wonder, but it is a much smarter way of operating. At a gym, you pay by the month. You are required to go to a doctor and get a checkup before you join a gym, and once you do, they have a piece of paper that says you are in condition to do the physical activity. In the US, you sign a paper that absolves the gym of liability should you drop dead there, and guarantees that you will continue to pay them for a specified amount of time. If you don’t, you are beholden to them to pay, and it goes on your credit report. This is all regardless of your physical condition. If you dropped dead and they had your credit card number, I have no doubt that they would continue to charge you by the month until your contract ran out. Because if you dropped dead in the facility, you wouldn’t be there to present them with a notarized change of address form. We sign up for these sorts of things without questioning them and without complaint.

Before I left, I was trying to straighten things up with my mom’s phone company. The company required that the client would be recorded answering a series of questions for an independent contractor that handled the phone contracts. In order to use the service, the client was required to answer every question with the word “yes” regardless of what the question was. The woman I spoke with said, “When they ask you to agree to international calling, just say ‘yes.’ Even if you don’t want the service. If you say no to any question, you will be refused service.” When I expressed my disapproval of this policy, she was very evidently annoyed by me. I clearly was being unreasonable and holding up progress. She treated me as I were the stupid one, when what it amounted to was that at any time, the potential existed for my mother to be charged incredible rates for services she didn’t use based on a recording of my voice idiotically saying the word, “Yes” regardless of what I was asked. “Will you give us the soul of your first born child? In the event that you do not have any children will you give is the soul of the first born of any brother or sister that you may have?”

Most people I know have been hit by some kind of corporate screwing at the hands of a cell phone company or buying a car or joining a gym. Then the attitude seems to be “Well, there’s nothing I can do about it.” I guess there’s not - we all know we signed some piece of paper and lost our copy of it a long time ago. We know that these bastards have teams of lawyers that make it impossible for John Q. Citizen to contest being unfairly charged. What’s astonishing to me is the fact that it continues. No matter how many times we get screwed, we keep it up, keep throwing good money after bad and signing on the dotted line. We think we need what’s on offer so badly that it’s necessary to enter into a contract regardless of what the contract says, if we even have the capacity to understand the nuances of the legalese.

If there’s one thing that this impending economic crisis engenders in us, I hope it’s to exercise more caution - to be as suspicious of companies as they apparently are of us. Wouldn’t it be great if we all rejected the contracts, the rules and the restrictions - if there were a massive movement to pocket the papers we were presented to sign and said, “I’m going to have to have my lawyer look into this,” and walked out? I love to imagine a country in which people said, “You are providing me the service, so how about you treat me like a customer instead of a criminal.” I don’t imagine it will ever happen in the US, but it would be great to see businesses that treated customers like people instead of potential lawsuits really succeed and the rest go straight down the toilet where they belong.

Behind the Lens and Behind the Visor

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 02:48:31 GMT

My plans for the weekend were all backwards. I thought I’d be seeing the Melvins on Friday, but discovered on Thursday, an hour after they’d started playing that I had gotten the date wrong. So Friday was a blank slate when I got a message from Pablo that he and another guy were meeting some girls from Costa Rica at the Plaza de Mayo to do some sight-seeing, and asking if I would like to come along.

I arrived a little late, but the guys were later. The other guy turned out to be Guille, who bewildered me with his fast talking but is funny in any language - even the one you don’t know. We spend the better part of half an hour walking the Plaza looking for the girls who were nowhere to be found. Finally the decision was made to set off.

Shortly after this picture was taken, I realized we were in route to Puerto Madero. I told the fellas I’d walked there the previous weekend, and the decision was made to turn around and go another way. And it was Rivadavia all the way to Cabellito on foot. We began at the pink X and walked to the green X.

The Plaza de Los Congresos:

Congresos

Pablo and Guille in the Plaza de Los Congresos

The Dome

Here You can see how big the structures are.

Pablo and Guille

Here, Guille is explaining to a woman passing by that he is trying to be like the statue.

And here he is being like the statue.

Gorgeous old building with a windmill

An intersection as we left the area

Cromañon

Here is a monument, tended to by the families of victims of a club fire that resulted in the deaths of nearly 200 young people.

This first site is mostly in Spanish, but theres a video that explains how it happened:

http://www.quenoserepita.com.ar/what_happened_in_cromanon

If you had trouble understanding that, here's an english version of the story:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/República_Cromagnon_nightclub_fire

I didn’t feel right taking pictures inside the courtyard and of the roofed area with all the personal memorials of the dead. The place gave me the chills. You can feel the gravity of the loss there and it’s very sad.

Reflection in the windows of the club Latino Once, a huge, pink building.

As we reached Cabellito, I recognized where I had been lost (see Villa Crespo and beyond) a couple weeks before. I thought it was very odd that we walked down one of the same streets where I had been, oblivious to my location. Instead of following my stale tracks backwards toward my part of town, we went across the railroad tracks on a little walking bridge.

Two out of Four Dogs Crapping

Wires

Pablo and Guille on the Bridge

Back on Acoyte St., Pablo and I said goodbye to Gui and hunkered down to make plans. Originally I had meant to get to a yoga class, but I didn’t know if the paperwork I was bringing could be processed at night. We decided to cook up some pasta back at Pablo’s and go for a motorcycle ride later to see what we could see. We grabbed the bus out there (Blue X). It’s too bad I didn’t take many pictures of his neighborhood while it was still light. It’s really appealing. An old Italian neighborhood, fruit trees line the streets - we arrived at dusk, the perfect light for showing off the pastel, boxy dwellings. It was relaxing to the eye to be in a neighborhood where the buildings are primarily one or two stories and the sky takes up more of the view.

Food, music, conversation, and a good hard look at a book called “Human Oddities” proved to be a really nice way to spend some time after such a long walk. Well into the hours of darkness, we took off on the motorcycle. Luckily, I’d brought my yoga clothes with me or I would have frozen in my skirt and tights, not to mention that it would probably have been somewhat indecent. I used my t-shirt for a scarf. I didn’t know it, but we were going to Rio de la Plata.

Before we left, Pablo getting his motorcycle going started the dogs on the terrace above his apartment barking at us.

I was laughing inside the helmet as we left. I hadn’t been on the back of a bike in about 10 years. I thought I wasn’t at all afraid and then we got on the highway. I was really freaking out. The wind through my clothes punctuated just how little there would be between me and the road if we should wipe out. I calmed myself by imagining that word bubbles in English were coming out of my helmet and word bubbles in Spanish were coming out of Pablo’s helmet. I put my cold hands into the pockets of his jacket and tried not to squeeze the life out of him.

Ever since the accident (I was hit by a car while on my bicycle), I have had a difficult time even in cars when someone else is driving. It’s irrational in many cases, and I know I’m overreacting. I just can’t help it. Impending disaster seems to be around every corner and at every intersection. This is definitely magnified on a motorcycle, but I powered through without overwhelming panic and we exited the highway somewhere near the top of the map and went down to the river (Yellow X).

EnRoute, we stopped for a minute and I took these (Purple X, I think).

I was captivated by this enormous building that P. said was a huge market at one time. There is a river that runs underneath the city directly under this building, but when Rio de la Plata (the widest river in the world) is high, like it is now, there is a huge risk of flood to the city because this other river can not empty into La Plata. Before I came here, I was doing an internet search of Villa Crespo and saw pictures of it flooded. Now I know why.

These are our shadows on the river.

This is the Fisherman’s Club.

This ghostly boat is very close to where the river under the city empties out, I was told by Pablo.

Dock Posts

Before we left, we split a bondiola here. Translate that as delicious pork sandwich.

On the way back into the city, we stopped for a minute here at the Planetarium (Turquoise X). It's really great! Just beautiful. It's got a little island all to itself here. Later, Pablo told me that couples park along the road there and get it on, and a waitress comes by the car an serves refreshments. What a city.

Walking around looking for a place to warm up with a hot drink, we saw this through a window.

This was the view from the window where we got some drinks. You can see our table in the reflection.

And then it was back home. The streets at night are so beautiful, I got distracted looking at them and wasn't scared a bit. What a great day. Great people, great city, great sights and tastes. I'm wondering if I'll ever want to leave.

The Anger

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:54:32 GMT

The anger, my good, good friend - the one I can depend on - the one who’s always there. She has been missing since I got here until yesterday. Yesterday I woke up angry and it felt good. I felt like myself.

It’s odd for me to be tentative. To touch objects gingerly, to be afraid of making a mark or an impression. It’s odd for me to be self conscious. In the US, I know I look a little odd and though I’m aware that I draw stares because I dress funny, at home I don’t care. Here I feel vulnerable. Though I carry the skill set to appear as if I am ignoring the attention that my funny shoes garnish, here, instead of feeling the ordinary flippancy and possibly annoyance, I would like to bury my head inside my lapel.

Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration if illustrative.

Still, I move differently. The way I feel is something like the way I feel in the house of a friend’s parents. On my best behavior - my precious cuss words inaccessible to me in Spanish, the arsenal of my personality locked away with no possibility of being expressed. I’ve grounded myself and am on probation indefinitely.

I clean my room every day. I’m usually an incredibly messy person. And while at home, I think that the messiness is an aspect of controlling my surroundings in a different way, here I think that the inverse is a necessary measure of control over my environment. I know exactly where things are when I’m in my room, be it messy or clean, but the orientation of it doesn’t matter at home the way it does here.

And though I’m a cheap bastard, my stinginess here is more a result of being a little embarrassed to go into a shop and not understand or misunderstand. I am not used to feeling stupid, and I do, and it’s uncomfortable.

So when I woke up angry yesterday, I sunk into the groove and relished it. Frustration resounding in my brain, I recognized myself. And though it was soon replaced by insecurity, bewilderment and mild self loathing, it was good to know that it’s still there.

Plaza De Mayo to La Peña en Caballito

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 16:13:31 GMT

I arrived at the Cathedral at just about 3:00 as Juan Pablo and I had agreed, though I wasn't at all sure I was in the right place. I wasn't the only one a little lost that day, though as it turned out that Juan Pablo had just been robbed. The plan was to take photos of the city together and walk around, and despite the fact that he'd been ripped off of pretty much everything besides his camera (phone, wallet, credit cards, money and jacket), JP didn't seem prepared to cancel our tour. What gracious guy.

This is a map of the places we went on Saturday. To the left of San Telmo is where we began in the Plaza de Mayo.

Taken at Plaza de Mayo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_de_Mayo

Some graffiti I liked in The Plaza De Mayo

A nearby statue

As we reached San Telmo, a statue of the saint was being moved amongst a crowd of onlookers. Also known as Saint Elmo, you can see that he is a protector of sailors by the boat in his hand. Read more about San Telmo here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petrus_Gonzalez and read more about the neighborhood of San Telmo here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Telmo

In the Feria, there were so many incredible things to see. In American Antique Malls and Flea Markets, you're going to have to dig through mountains of garbage to see a fraction of the treasures in plain view in the Feria we walked through in San Telmo. Here are a couple objects I just had to document:

A Beautiful Pink Building Somewhere

In Puerto Madero, JP explained to me that the contruction of the docks became obsolete shortly after they were built because ships got larger and the port wasn't deep enough. For a long time it fell into disrepair, but starting in 2000 it became a city project and is now some of the most prime real estate in all of Buenos Aires. Construction continues and amongst pricey boutiques and the Catholic University, you will see enormous cranes along the skyline.

In dock 3 of Puerto Madero, you'll see the wonder that is La Puenta de La Mujer, or the Woman's Bridge, designed by Santiago Calatrava. Juan Pablo told me that there are 2 stories as to what the bridge represents - 1) it is a boat 2) It is a couple doing the tango. Either way, it is a sight to behold. We walked across it and took photos from the other side.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puente_de_la_Mujer

On the Bridge

From the Other Side

Oh, yeah. Before we crossed, we passed some policemen. I couldn't resist their bright orange vests! Shoot policemen every chance you have, I say.

Glowing Police

As we were looking for a bus, I shot these ones:

We caught a bus to Cabellito, and running low on cash, ate some hot dogs in a little park. While JP called home I shot the corner where I was waiting for him. I was approached by 2 strangers - a woman who wanted a light for her cigarette and asked me if I wasn't afraid to have my camera out, and an old man who wanted to check out my camera and what sort of lens it had.

These are the shots from the corner:

At around ten, we made our way to the Peña - traditional music, food wine, dancing and lots and lots of people having a great time. I tried very hard to capture the festivity and the incredible atmosphere, and even though I know I've fallen very short of painting an accurate picture with these, here they are:

CouchSurfers

CouchSurfers

We met up with other people from CouchSurfing.com and got swept up in the atmosphere. So many great people and fun chats in the loud building. By the time we left it was past 4, and even though I felt a bit like I'd been hit by a truck, it was worth it!

Buenos Aires - Villa Crespo and Beyond

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 19:49:08 GMT

I decided to take the day yesterday and go for a walk with my camera. I became helplessly lost - once I realized this I was paying more attention to my map than I was my camera, but here are some of my favorites.

This is the wood shop across the street from the apartment. Gorgeous.

Tree

Building

Streetlamp

Broken Television

Pigeons in a Tree

Doorknobs

Literary Cat

Entryway

God is Good, God is Gay

Miami To Buenos Aires - The waiting is the hardest part

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:26:19 GMT

I awoke with a jolt sitting straight up in the bed with a drowning gasp. Instantly I remembered where I was, where I was going, and the morning dread came on. This is common for me, but it was amplified this day - it’s excruciating, but luckily it only seems to last for about 5 minutes.

Had to get a move on - checked the clock - 7 AM. Plenty of time - maybe too much time - 4 hours ‘til checkout - everything packed - the Holiday Inn across the way was not gracing me with an internet connection that morning. I opened up some american radio program on the computer’s music program and took a bath - hot to soothe the flaring pain in the ol’ shoulder and knee, get the sweat and piss residue off of myself.

Time dragged.

The plane for Argentina was not slated to leave until 6. The suggested time to check in was 3, but I would be at the airport about 3 1/2 hours before since I had no better place to be. Best to squeeze every moment I had coming to me from the hotel, catch the airport shuttle and bide my time in Miami International Airport.

And so I relaxed as much as I could. Nothing to be done but to wait and wait and wait, turn away the maid, smoke cigarettes, check the clock, write in my little notebook, turn on the radio, turn it off, look under the bed - make sure I didn’t forget anything, tweeze my manly eyebrows down, look out the curtains, try to shit. Tidy the room, empty the ashtray, check the clock, wash my hands, look under the bed to make sure not to forget anything, flip through a book about Buenos Aires, check the clock, smoke a cigarette, look out the curtains, drink a stale soda from last night, open the window, empty the ashtray...

Waiting is a form of torture - the inactivity of it, the paralysis. When there’s no way to speed things along, time stretching out - something specific looming.

But finally it was time to check out. Into the shuttle and out at the airport. Same two unwieldy bags. I was walking through, looking at all the glowing signs behind the counters, and I was walking - past Air Canada, past Lufthansa, past EL AL, and on. Finally I started wondering what was going on, and I must have looked confused, too, because a security guard asked me where I was going. I told him and he said that first, I should get a luggage cart. “Go on. There are some free over there. I’ll watch your bags. Go ahead.” Then he told me that Aerolineas Argentinas wasn’t open yet and that’s why I couldn’t find them. He wasn’t sure where they were, because they opened after he got off work.

It turned out they took over the slot Air Canada was operating in - then the LCD screens changed over to Aerolineas. And so there was nothing to do but to wait some more, with no specific idea of when they would open, light raking in through the glass front of the building, periodically wheeling out the cart like a very organized bag lady to smoke here and there, trying like hell to pay attention to the talk I played on the pod and not absorbing any of it. And what’s the point in describing the day? I woke up at 7 and waited at the hotel until 11. I got to the airport and waited for the Airline to open until 2:00. I checked in, went through a security check, and waited in the boarding area until 5:00. A good 10 hours with little to nothing to report.

Along the way, I started to talk to some people here and there. A very sweet woman from Chile was talking to me in Spanish, of which I may have understood about 30%. She’d been in Queens, someone in her family had had a brain annurism and she’d been caring for him. She was from a part of Chile where it rains once every 4 years and then flowers bloom all over the place. Her grandchildren were bilingual and helped her go shopping in New York. I showed her Kentucky on a map. Kentucky. What a place to be from.

I took 10 pictures with as many cameras of an international crew of high spirited twenty-somethings on their way to Peru to provide earthquake relief. Later when they asked me what I did and I told them I was a photographer (among other things) we all had a laugh since I couldn’t find my way around their cameras with a flashlight and a map.

My paranoia over my personal information extended to signing up to use the internet. Credit card between my teeth, I hunkered down with my tights around my knees in a toilet stall, typing in my precious credit card number while the busy bathroom bustled with the sounds of toilets flushing and a confused and crying child being told to sit on the toilet in Spanish.

A man from Buenos Aires spoke to me several times - with the accent I understood about 5% of what he said. Oh, yes, it was becoming obvious that my crippled comprehension would be compounded by the accent. A beautiful accent, one of the reasons I wanted to go to Buenos Aires, but imagine that you were just learning English - and what you had learned was standard American dialect - the way people talk in the movies - more or less - and then you went to New Zealand. That’s the only way I can describe the difference.

View from the Window of the Plane - Miami

So then I was on the plane - a gargantuan thing with three rows, the middle one was wide enough to use as a bed, and was by several people later in the flight. I had two seats by the window all to myself and it started to drizzle. I spoke to no one, no one spoke to me. All the announcements were in Spanish first and then English. I was glad to understand them for the most part, then to have the translation confirm what I had understood. It all seemed so easy, too easy. After all the planning and anxiety, the feeling that I was undertaking some sisyphean task, I was sitting in an airplane seat getting ready to take off, calm - bored even after such a long wait.

Sunset

Outside the windows there were clouds beyond compare. Chills ran through me, staring at them. I recognized animals and people in the clouds until it got dark, and as the sun set, I had to pull my camera out of the overhead and try to get a shot of the bizarre tableau - an endless landscape of pinks and oranges with fluffy beings seeming to inhabit the sky in a semicircle at regular intervals.

Another View

Our eyes are trained to recognize patterns, and what loveliness that is.

Creatures of the Sunset (That should be Donald)

In the dark, more stars were visible than I could ever remember seeing before. Odd square patterns of lights could be seen on the ground when we cleared the clouds below. The Bucket List played on the monitors, and audio was available in English and Spanish.

Intermittent cat naps were interrupted by turbulence, announcements, and a screaming 3 year old boy. He was in the care of a nanny, ignored by his mother and doted on by his conspicuously wealthy grandmother. His fits of disoriented bawling went unnoticed by the mother while the nanny tried again and again to calm him down. After about an hour of this the mother resigned herself to taking him in her arms. He immediately fell asleep. I think she was the only one in our area of the plane who managed to sleep through his epic, shrieking tantrum. Crescendoes were acknowledged wordlessly between passengers with disgruntled eye contact.

My first airplane meal awoke the familiar diarrheal cramping. Years of this sort of thing has trained me to contain the impending outburst for a more appropriate time, generally ultimately resulting in constipation. There was no way I was going to humiliate myself with an echoing trumpet of shit to foul the air of the surrounding 20 rows. No, somehow I have trained this testy container of mine that there are times when it’s urgent messages to me will go ignored, and this was definitely one of those times. It leaves me with the sensation of having a water balloon carefully contained above my pelvis, another item on my to-do list.

In Pistarini (the airport) we disembarked outside and took a shuttle in. Climbing into the shuttle I caught a glimpse of the woman from Chile and her male companion. They looked like they wanted to get on the packed shuttle and I felt I was deserting them when the first bus pulled away, but I smiled and waved. We were right on time just at 4:00 AM - a curse for me since my hosts would not be up and about until 7:30 - it would be a long wait at the airport - at least 2 1/2 hours until I could catch a cab into the city. Wholly unfamiliar was the process of the checking and stamping of the passports, but it went off without a hitch.

Customs was simply an x-ray machine fed by a conveyor belt. I am so used to being an american, ordered in airports and bank lines to wait until I’m called. I was standing with my cart of luggage, waiting for the customs person to call me forward when I felt a cart gently bump the backs of my calves. I rocked my knees back to let whoever had done it know I was there. And again, the pressure prodding me. There was a clear line on the floor - one that in America would mean to wait behind this line until you’re told to proceed. I turned to see whether this was done out of cluelessness or aggression and a woman who resembled a short haired version of Cathy from the Sunday comics asked me which line I was waiting for. I had seen a family split between two lines moments earlier, so I said in halting and broken Spanish that I was waiting to be called to the next open spot. The exasperated woman pushed past me and began unloading her suitcases onto the conveyor belt in front of me.

Annoyed, I moved to the machine on the right. The man tending to that machine said something I had to ask him to repeat 3 times. It was that I needed to use the machine on the left. I moved back over to the other belt, disgusted by that bitch of a woman who was now unloading her things from the other side of the belt. Why she couldn’t have simply indicated that I should go ahead rather than prodding me and then contemptfully cutting me in line, I’m not sure, but it gave me a little shot of anger and with this surge of energy, I wielded my bags onto the belt with enough verve to prompt the woman behind me to gently suggest that I be more careful. I realized then that behaving aggressively might land me in a fix in the customs line, though the woman watching the luggage go through was as passive as if she were watching a day-time soap. I never would have anticipated customs being so simple.

And with that, I was in the airport proper, exhausted and a little chilly, though 4 degrees Celsius is not nearly as bad as it sounds to the American ear, with my cart of luggage, taking the same routine as outside of Miami - out to smoke, in to wait. Out to smoke, in to write in my little notebook and wait.

And that was Thursday (and then some).

Edit: Wrong Duck

Desde Louisville Hasta Miami - From Louisville to Miami

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 18:58:42 GMT

The View from my Peephole in the Miami Hotel

First Leg -

After months of preparation that had me having two yard sales, a massive purge of my clothes and belongings, moving into Mom’s house and then moving out, finding someone to adopt my cat temporarily and a cleaning binge to end all cleaning binges, I was on my way to Miami. Dad came by to pick me up - the flight was at 3:45 and I wanted to get to the airport in plenty of time to avoid trouble. He was supposed to show up at noon but arrived at 11:15.

I checked in - nervous as hell - a stewardess helped me negotiate the automatic check in. My bags were snatched up, weighed and tagged by a woman who noticed my incompetence and suddenly I was humping my much too heavy carry-on to the other side of the airport. When I got up to the check in counter, I noticed that the plane was delayed until 1:50. It was supposed to leave at 1:10. Further inspection of my ticket yielded the discovery that the plane was supposed to arrive in Miami at 3:45, not leave Louisville at 3:45.

What luck that Dad showed up early, and that I had planned to leave as early as noon. What luck that the plane was delayed! All the way around, I was first worried this meant I had transposed other things like dates and times - and I did in one case, but more about that later.

Waiting to board, a man with an enormous pile of luggage (I have to wonder now how they got it all on the plane) and the most adorable little boy, was muttering profanely under his breath and saying things like, “Where the hell did she go? Stupid!” and looking toward the bathrooms. At one point he let go of a rolling suitcase to get a better gander at the concourse after spotting his wife, and when he did, it promptly fell, hitting his little boy on the elbow and knocking him to the ground. The kid popped right up off the ground, gripping his elbow as his mother approached. You could feel each of them thinking the other was a total idiot. But the kid was still in great spirits. He had silver police badge stickers on his t shirt and kept asking me who I was. “Someone who’s on the same plane as you,” I would answer.

On the flight, at first I kept to myself. Though the tiny thing was half empty, for some reason the row I was in was completely occupied. There were 2 people - I thought they were business people - very involved with one another, talking. I had it sussed out in my mind that they were lawyers or something since they were filling out some worksheets with questions titled, “Interrogatory 1” and so on. There was something of the Moonie or the overtly corporate and brainwashed about them and I thought it best that I kept to myself. It seemed to me that the man (who was sitting next to me) had the hots for the woman (across the aisle) and he was turned in such a way to get the best conversational angle that his butt was jamming my thigh. My seat was already somewhat restricted as there was a giant lump protruding from the lower portion of the wall and of course I’d had to wear some frankensteinish platforms further limiting where I could put my foot. My right leg (the gimpy one) was at an angle from the knee down the entire time with this fellows ass jammed into my leg on the other side, and both of them talking pretty loudly. I turned the music up on my pod and mused over the random song selection that seemed to have more than a normal percentage of songs about leaving and flying popping up. I broke into a giant grin when I heard Chuck Berry singing, “Goobye New Jersey, I’ve become airborne.”

At some point there must have been an announcement as I took off my headphones. It was at this point that the woman began talking about me in a way that was audible to me. “ I bet she’s young” and then finally asked me, “How young are you?” What kind of a fucking question is that, I ask you? A calculated phoniness - don’t get me wrong - she seemed very nice, but was overly solicitous and she was winding up for the pitch. She explained to me that before she and her pal had left, her best friend had given her a barbie doll - and well, it was hard to explain, but that barbie doll had goth makeup and clothes and a big spider tattoo on her chest. After all, she hadn’t always looked this normal - and this was some sort of emblem of her mis-spent youth, I was led to understand. Because of this, seeing me was a good omen and she would just love to have a picture with me and the doll after we’d gotten off the plane.

The story with her and the guy was that they were on their way to Venezuela to give shots and baby wellness exams along a river on a canoe trip in less developed areas. They were going with missionaries, but they were paramedics - and wasn’t it just crazy - when he called and said “Hey, you want to go to Venezuela?” she said yes and then called him back later asking him what she’d just agreed to. Wasn’t that crazy?

And to every explanation I gave of my plans, I was treated to, “Well, that’s wonderful. I think that’s just great. Isn’t that great, Paul?” “Yes, it’s a wonderful thing. A great thing.” Though it’s not exactly a humanitarian effort - and with every compliment I felt a little more confused as I wasn’t going to do well baby checkups or inoculate people against fatal diseases as they were. If I were going to respond in a way commensurate with the wonderfulness of what they were doing, I would have had to jump out of my seat and whoop with joy at the sheer delightfulness of it all. But as it was, I was so low energy I was having trouble just maintaining conversation with strangers.

These are the sort of people that are so nice that they make it hard for you to respond in kind. These are Americans. And I don’t know that what they told me was bogus - but there was something so phony and overly friendly in a non-genuine way about them - especially the woman - that I feel like they were actually on their way somewhere else - to do something else. The phoniness made everything seem to be a lie. It was nothing about the way there were dressed, but something about the woman’s attitude that seemed to be a throwback to the 1950’s - Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best...

Even though I had promised her that I would take a picture with her barbie doll, when we touched down, I got freaked out about my bags going missing and had to get to the baggage claim as quickly as possible. It was a palpable need like needing to find a toilet - because if anything happened to them - I wouldn’t have any clothes - or anything. The barbie was dressed like whore anyway. What was it about my neutral colored clothes that had her seeing me as some parallel to her sluttily dressed trollop of a barbie doll with maroon hair and too much makeup? I wasn’t wearing any makeup at all. But my tattoos were exposed, and I had on the bozo platform mary janes. Still, it’s a bit insulting to be likened to a drawn on, club whore barbie in skin tight vinyl when all you’re trying to do is get from point a to point b and minding your own business in casual wear.

I got off that shuttle and I booked it through the airport. I felt I was hovering to the side because of my heavy bags. I was cruising around people and I was starting to sweat and practically running. I don’t know how far the baggage claim was from where we disembarked, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were a mile.

When I got there, my bags were just coming out and there was a man unloading the suitcases from a conveyor belt. I said, “Those are mine - the red and the green.” He handed them to me without comment. I was dripping with sweat and I buckled my bags together and pulled them out the sliding doors lighting a cigarette, not caring that there were no smoking signs everywhere. As soon as I stepped out of those doors and into the Miami humidity, it was as if I’d been hosed down. Every pore opened up full throttle, overheated as I was from my near run from the plane. I stood there smoking, sweat stinging my eyes and peering around trying to get my bearings. Where could that free shuttle to the hotel possibly be? After a few drags, I was sated enough to cup the smoke in my hand and approach some security guys that were chatting about 20 feet away.

Before I even got my question phrased, one of them started pointing straight up to the ceiling, and when I asked where they shuttles were, the other one told me, “Upstairs. Second Floor.” It was kind of them to ignore my smoking. I guess they had better things to worry about. But my nerves wouldn’t allow me to dilly dally just to smoke. Not after I’d chewed a dozen pieces of nicotine gum on the plane. I knocked the cherry off the tip, put the smoke back in the pack and went looking for the elevator. At this point, it became apparent that my fat bags weren’t going to stay together. The rearmost one kept falling sideways and dragging the ground. People were standing in the walkway, and every time I changed tack to go around them my bags would come apart requiring me to stop and right the one in back. Just when I would think I’d gotten the hang of avoiding this, there would be a change from smooth floor to tile and I’d be pulling a collapsed pile again.

When I made it outside, I just had to keep moving. I figured there would be some sort of sign that made it obvious where to wait for the shuttle. Over the bumpy, brown tile, around people staring vacantly into space, past desks with men in airline uniforms and hats - on the pavement cabs and busses and cars drove past in three lanes. I asked a man at a baggage desk where the shuttles came and he pointed vaguely into the street. I kept walking until it started to seem like I would run out of sidewalk and asked another uniformed man. He said, “You just wave them down.” I saw 2 women standing out in the middle of the road on a concrete island with a sign. Shortly after, they were picked up and I was still peering at every bus and van that passed looking for one with the name of my hotel.

Once I saw it, I couldn’t be certain I had been seen. The driver honked when I waved, but amidst all the cars, busses and vans passing, I couldn’t be sure he was the honker. I waved again and then he gestured for me to cross the street. After I was soundly inside under the merciful air conditioning that made me feel like I had a creamy center and a hard candy shell, it became painfully obvious that I was doing much too much. All I would have had to do was stand on the sidewalk and keep my eyes peeled and wave the van down. This was made obvious by each subsequent passenger who was picked up, likely right outside the door they walked out of. Instead I dragged a collapsing pile of luggage what seemed like the equivalent of 3 city blocks to sweat under the sun on a concrete island in the middle of the pavement. Well, live and learn. I was in one piece with all of my precious crap and on my way to the hotel.

One thought had been bothering me throughout the flight and I began to dwell on it inside the van on the way to the hotel. A week or so earlier, I had checked my e-mail and found a note from the Aerolineas Argentinas that changed the time of my flight. Having just woken up and not yet having had any coffee, I failed to see the month listed in the e-mail. Thinking it was my departing flight from the US, I called the hotel and extended my stay for an extra night. A day or so later, I noticed that the e-mail said November and called the hotel again to change it back. When I did this, I had the day of my arrival in Argentina (the 22nd) on the brain, so when the guy verified the date, I had a flash of horror thinking the wrong night had been booked. “No, not the 20th, the 21st!” I said. Wrong again. It was indeed the 20th, and I had changed my reservation to the wrong night. What if? What if? What if? What if there were no room for me? What if I was going to be turned away in this heat with all of this heavy stuff?

In the line, while the painfully long process of the two guys in front of me being checked in dragged on, my anxiety reached a fever pitch. When I handed over my ID and credit card as I’d seen the man in front of me do, the guy behind the counter said they had no reservation under that name. In the way of a sports fan watching their favorite team in the play-offs, each moment seemed to crest and swell with the possibility of disaster. “I think I might have changed the reservation to the wrong day. I was really nervous and think I might have messed up. My reservation number is 9000. I sent a package to myself here.”

“Oh, OK,” said the guy behind the counter, turning to grab the box laden with books for my new room mate in Argentina. “The reservation is for the 21st.”

“Yeah, I know. I messed up. I just need a room for tonight.” Long moments passed before he slid a paper over the counter for me to sign.
“You’re in 204. Go down the hall, take a left and a right and another left and it’s upstairs.” Grateful, I took the key card and chucked my stuff onto a cart. When I got to a flight of stairs, I hefted my suitcases up, and dragged it all to the room. Once there I took off my pants in the cooled room. They felt like they’d just been taken out of the wash, but that’s not the way they smelled. After a few minutes I made a series of what would be the last calls I would make with my scoundrel of a cell phone company, leaking perspiration onto the phone as I let my folks and a couple of friends know I was okay.

And the rest of the night passed without incident. I would have expected to have some sort of emotional reaction to leaving, but felt nothing in particular but a sort of emptiness. The weeks and months leading up to this point had been full of worries, but now there as nothing to be done. All the loose ends had been wrapped up and the circuit board had been disconnected - and though I would have expected to feel excitement or anticipation, possibly dread or fear, what I felt was smoothness, placidity, and exhaustion. The rest of the night was spent repacking, jamming the books in with everything else, but mostly lounging in the dimly lit room, smoking too many cigarettes and taking advantage of the intermittent wireless connection from the nearby Holiday Inn.

That was Wednesday.

Abetting Idiocy Fuels Angers Fire

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 21:34:36 GMT

On my way home from work, leaving the bank there was an acre long line at the stop light on the side street leading to the main road that would eventually take me home. I pulled up to the exit where I needed to turn left and join the line which extended far beyond the point at which I hoped to join it.

I stopped. Anticipating a left turn into the endless line of cars idling, I made eye contact with a man in a beat up blue minivan. There was room for me to squeeze in. When he saw me, he pulled up about 4 feet. Now there was no way I was getting in that line until some observant driver noticed me waiting and flagged me in. Except...the guy behind him might let me in, I thought. Just as this thought crossed my mind, the giant pickup truck behind the minivan closed the gap, crossing into the left turn sweet spot. Neither of these guys were going to let me in.

For a moment I felt trapped. I know that the first guy had noticed me and had pulled up. "Nuh-uh, freak girl. I was here first," I could practically hear him thinking. I started to get angry. I sat there minute, stewing. And then I turned right. I turned into the parking lot of the chain store across the street. Sailed through their parking lot and turned onto the main road and was on my way while those dipshits were still waiting on the light - probably through two rotations - and I was cruising home.

Why do I bring this up? Simply to say this.

Small minded people will get in your way. This sort likes to wield the little power they have when they get the chance.

You do not need to participate in their moronic games by getting mad.

Go around them and leave them baking smugly at the stop light. They'll never even know you beat them.

Yard Sale Hell

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 03:01:58 GMT

Oh, Yard Sale Hell!

I dragged nearly everything I own upstairs from the basement I've been living in over the course of a week. Believe me when I tell you this was no fun. Editing your personal belongings to a precious few is a depressing thing to do. Boxing them up to allow strangers to paw at them and rudely insist on lower prices makes matters much, much worse.

I advertised the hell out of the sale. Craigslist, the local paper, and the alternative paper here along with 20 or so handmade signs up all over the neighborhood.

Thursday, an old professor of mine knocked on the door while I was watching a movie. I was shocked to see him, spine bent, obsequious expression, standing on the porch days before the sale to ask about my books. I told him to come back on Saturday. He recognized me and tried another angle by asking about the little personal information I'd placed in my ad. Again I told him to come back Saturday.

I knew it was going to be no fun. I woke up a bleary eyed mess after a few hours of sleep to a chilly, cloudy morning. Things I had laid out the night before were covered with condensation and it looked like it might rain. I had boxes and boxes of stuff to drag out of the garage in the cold, damp morning with less than one cup of coffee in my belly.

Before I'd even gotten the garage door open (over an hour before the posted time of the sale) there were slow moving yard sale junkies - their staggering gait like that of zombies - plodding toward me. I had to open the gate and let them in. And I was in no mood to deal with people due to my natural hatred for the human race.

People are bad enough. Cheap, whiney old people who feel entitled to pester me while I go about my business after politely saying that I was not ready for them make my jaw clench hard enough to snap a tooth.

Some highlights:

I

A man came by while an acquaintance and her very young daughter were in the yard. The man had a sort of greasy, hippie John Denver Wanna-be look, wearing a light tan parka and baggy jeans. Something interested him in a crate on the ground enough that he bent over several times to get a look. Each time he bent over, his entire ass was exposed. This was no plumbers crack. This was a full moon that gave anyone in the area a clear view of both lobes of his middle aged bottom, right down to the top of his thigh.

Let me be clear. It was a blustery day. It is simply not possible this guys ass was so numb that he failed to notice the chilly wind over his exposed pasty white emaciated buttocks. There is just no way he was not doing this on purpose. The first time I noticed, I nudged my buddy Chris and made a quiet, jocular comment about the full moon. The second time, my brow furrowed on consternation. Then, the third time I saw it - thinking of the little girl that was in the yard, I said to the man, "That's indecent exposure. I have belts for sale if you'd like to buy one."

The man reacted as if I'd been intentionally trying to humiliate him for something that was no big deal - like I'd out and out mocked him for having a piece of spinach on his tooth. Kind of rolling his eyes in a way that insinuated I was uptight, he presented me with a couple of tools and sighed, "How much?"

"A dollar," I said.

He bought them and was on his way.

II

A man drove up in a late model convertible midlife crisis mobile. Two small children tumbled out of the back after him. Bald and wearing sunglasses, his posture and skin belied a cushy life behind a desk supplemented by racket ball of the weekends. The mildly hostile disinterest in the attitude he had toward his daughter foretells a future of money from his bank account lining the pockets of some therapist who will be bored to tears by the tales of his snide superiority that never quite amounts to abuse.

Strutting in that way that skinny desk sitters have, slightly pigeon toed - king of all he surveys - he looked down his nose at my offerings. His enthusiastic daughter expressed interest in a green wig. He asked how much for the wig. I said fifty cents.

"Would you take a quarter?" he asked.

"No," I said, not unpleasantly, but in a tone that implied that might be a little silly. Chris was next to me, and there were 2 guys shopping the clothes - picking out a massive amount of stuff.

Next, the little boy had a brand new box of colored pencils and a never used package of markers. The man asked, "How much for these?" I said, "A dollar with the wig."

"We don't want the wig."

"OK," I said, nonplussed.

"How much?"

"A dollar," I answered. I was offering the wig so the little girl could have something too - not because I wanted to be nice to the man.

"We don't want the wig," he said again - as if I were too dumb to understand.

"Don't take the wig, then," I said. All the guys in the yard cracked up and the cheap lawyer was offended enough at having been laughed at that he told his kids it was time to leave and took off.

Oh, hell, I could go on, but these are my 2 favorite incidents of the day and the only ones with any real entertainment value.

There's so much stuff left over that I'm doing it again in about a month at another address. This time I will start the prices higher so I don't feel raped when people try to barter. I just can't take the cheapness any more! I make less than $400 a week and I'm not nearly that cheap.

These people sincerely disgust me in a way that I can't adequately describe. Stop whining at me you east end house marms! Your husband makes more in a month than I do in 2 years and your kind of bourgeois pseudo-christian idiocy can be credited for half my mental problems. It's the likes of you that made fun of me in school and your stupid income bracket and low intellect that all the modern media is geared toward - thereby forcing me to endure endless hours of horrible music and boring television programming. I am so tired of being condescended to by the likes of you that I might spit on you if you ask me for any further consideration. So do me a favor and get the fuck out of my yard before I throw this figurine at your nose job.

OK. Now I'm really done.

I mean it.

Sneak Attack Pelvic Exam

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 04:04:51 GMT

Oh, yes. The dreaded pelvic exam.

Like Christmas, it comes but once a year. Unlike Christmas, there is nothing to look forward to about it, really. Some preparation might be in order, however.

I had a sneak attack pelvic today. I guess I should have expected, going in to get birth control, that there would be some examining in order. I was screened for STD's recently - something I'd put off for too long. Knowing I was going in clean without any particular concerns, I thought they'd just dole those little pills out to me without getting under the chassis and giving the ol' gal a lube job. Wrong!

After a long conversation with the nurse about what kind of birth control I ought to use, I was told that I was going to have an exam and a pap smear. "Damn it! If I'd known that I'd have taken a shower," I thought to myself. Well, I'll just have to do my best in the bathroom.

I'm not saying that it's necessary to shave and exfoliate before a pelvic, but if you haven't showered in a couple days and haven't been paying particular attention to the maintenance below the Mason Dixon line - well things can fall into disarray rather quickly. That's the dilemma I found myself facing in a tiled, utilitarian, government bathroom this afternoon.

I found myself wishing I'd hosed myself down, that I'd avoided the onion laden meal of the previous evening (it smelled like goulash!), and that there was anything a little softer than the state issued, brown bag style paper towels with which to spruce up my lady parts. The wet towel quickly started to disintegrate against stubble and tissue-soft skin. "Gonna have to be good enough," I thought, deciding that presenting my vagina in a state resembling an over-washed sweater covered with nubby little linty things would be worse than whatever shape it was currently in.

So later, there I was - legs splayed - impromptu pup tent of an examining sheet erected between them, screening me from the nurse. A light was placed so near to my skin that I could feel its warmth - my vagina was about to be interrogated thoroughly, and the heat was on. The nurse was nice enough. I heard her rustling through the drawer, unwrapping the speculum. Then I felt a sharp pain as a rigid, sharp edged instrument was forced into the opening of my vagina.

I suppose the initial pressure and resistance weren't enough of a clue that perhaps a smaller speculum was in order, since the nurse continued to attempt to force what felt like a hydraulic jack in there until I nearly shrieked.

Adding insult to injury, however, this was the second time in the past month that I've had an oversized speculum shoehorned into the most tender part of my anatomy. What gives? I don't appreciate having the size of my vagina overestimated this way!

And it makes me wonder - do I look big from the outside?

I have never even seen the dratted instrument!

Oh, no. My tender eyes are shrouded from the salad tongs or curling iron or whatever is being brandished - and possibly taking exception to its size - by the paper sheet masking me from - from what exactly?

Is this sheet to protect the examinee from the practitioner or vice versa? Is she possibly down there making faces at my nether regions? Is this some holdout from more prudish times? Out of sight out of mind, even though there's a stranger opening your vagina with a hinged piece of hardware, poking fingers into your pussy and extracting cells with a hard bristled brush?

Ah! Maybe I'll have enough foresight to request to see the damn thing next time.

Or maybe by then I'll grow so that I can live up to the nurse practitioners' expectations.

Doppler Radar Bastards!

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 22:50:52 GMT

Last night we had a storm here - a pretty severe one. Not an unusual occurrence this time of year.

Well, LAST Tuesday we had a storm that was really quite severe and I was caught in the middle of it. Driving to the gym, all the lights were out along my chosen route. Branches were down in the road, winds buffeted against my car. An asshole was driving full speed on the wrong side of the road, heading right towards my car on the unlit street to avoid a fallen tree limb. All signs pointed to chaos.

Caught in the middle of this, I turned the radio on. Flipping through the channels as my dilapidated car leaked rainwater on me through the missing door seals I could not find ONE radio station in town broadcasting severe weather alerts. Finally I approached the gym. The traffic to my left was at a standstill, and I needed to get over, but there was a downed line hanging in the middle of the road. People were allowing it to scale along the sides of their SUVs, inanely plodding toward whatever shelter they were on their way to.

The rain had stopped. I finally made my way over. I went into the gym. I grabbed a bottle of water and stood there at the counter while the aerobic crazed counter girls completely ignored me for what must have been two minutes. This is nothing new as I am consistently ignored and treated rudely by these children that work the counter. Get one alone and it's okay, but if there are more than one they will usually have to finish conducting their conversation about Britney Spears or a disappointing pedicure before I will be acknowledged.

At last, one of them deigned to acknowledge me by flippantly stating, "I can't sell you that. The register is closed."

"Uh, okay," I answered flatly, "Is the gym closed?"

"Yeah," said the frosted blonde child patronizingly, "There was a tornado."

"Really,' I said - more a statement than a question.

"Yeah," she replied as if I were the real moron. Thanks, bim. Great customer service!

I left. Traffic had been diverted off the main road right through the very parking lot my car was in and were moving about a foot every minute. Debris peppered the lot. Signs were down. A shed had blown in from someone's yard. I found another exit to the parking lot and avoided the worst of it - all the while scanning the radio to see if I could find any verification for the tornado I was apparently too STUPID to have been aware of if the counter child's attitude was any indication.

Behind the mall, and further and further from my desired destination, I continued to flip through the radio stations and the closest thing I found in 20 minutes of driving was a warning for a remote, sparsely populated county, cautioning against strong winds. Yes thank you. Spencer County may experience strong winds. What about Jefferson County, with a population of nearly a million? No news.

No news. No sirens. No warnings.

No power. No lights. No problem?

If the shoddy coverage by the radio stations around here was any indication, I guess so! 30,000 people lost power and not a peep on the AM or FM dial. Thanks a lot you doppler radar bastards!

Well, last night there was a storm. It was severe, but certainly not the mother of all storms. You wouldn't know that by the endless sirens, though. TORNADO WARNING! Yes, it was everywhere.

It's the Tuesday following the last tornado (which in the end couldn't be verified as having occurred) and I'm supposed to believe that there's another one? At the same time? On the same night of the week?

You sons of bitches are simply trying to gain back our confidence by blasting us all out of bed with you're obnoxious sirens. Yes severe weather, but aren't you overcompensating a little bit with 2 hours worth of bone numbing tornado sirens? We get the picture.

You can not predict the weather. You can not warn us. You can only conjecture and most of the time you are wrong. I hope the doppler radars are swept up in a tornado next time. That way, at least they'll have an excuse.

The Official Statement that Goes with the Piece

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 05:27:29 GMT

is as follows:

Signal Transduction is the process by which cells communicate. It is the shorthand for our internal language - the basis of evolution. When signal transduction breaks down, disease occurs.

Given the theme "Earth" on which to draw, I could not escape the idea of the spherical form - the way that cells relate, impulses to move, to grow - the way the planets relate in space, with gravity and movement. I was pulled toward a representation of the forms that make up and shelter life as we know it.

As new forms of communication become more pervasive, human communication is changing at a pace that is impossible to calculate. We ignore more written information in an hour than our forebearers were exposed to over the course of weeks.

We feel pressure to be open to contact via telephone and computer at any hour of the day.

Are we more isolated as a result or less so?

Are we more in touch or less in touch?

What happens when we fall out of the grid?

Do we feel helpless or relieved?

If we were cells in the earth's body, would we be improving with evolution, or fostering a burgeoning disease?

<.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.>

<.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.>

I'm hiding the words away in a little electrical box. I like the idea of someone being able to read more if interested, but not feeling it's obligatory.

<.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.><.>

I had thought that I would be able to let people pull them out of the installation and buy them then and there, but I have become so paranoid about snarling and tangling, dangling strings that I have decided against this option. If someone with some money and a yen for a ball covered ceiling happens to want to buy it in one go, I've put a price tag on it. Then I can go to their house and poke holes in their ceiling. None of this will happen, but it's nice to have fantasies.

Holy Hell! What an Undertaking!

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 04:33:04 GMT

If I had had to to this on my own I think I would have jumped off the ladder and over the edge.

I was so lucky to have the assistance of my friends Chad, angiereedgarner and her brother and my new aquaintence considerphlebas. It is such a cliche that I was too afraid to climb the ladder (being that I am in posession of a vagina), and that the boys did all the climbing.

Here is a detail. There are 125 of them. I made a stick so I could wimpily climb halfway up the ladder and pop them up there. It took me an hour to put up 5 - 4 of which were tangled beyond redemption and had to be cut down. Then Chad showed up. He shimmied right up there and started poking them into the ceiling.

Here's a view from below the stairs:

When Angie Reed and Will showed up we'd gotten pretty far in a couple of hours. I was so scared they would get tangled again, I might have been a bit of a Nazi, but an apologetic one, anyhow. In less than 3 hours, Angie Reed and I on the ground, measuring and tying off the string to the tacks and handing them up to the brave, ladder climbing, illegal wage earning Will, we got the rest up in less than 3 hours.

This is what it looks like from the side with a little help from Photoshop:

If you'd like to come to the show and are in the area, you can find details at: http://pyrogallery.com/

Man alive! I'm glad that's overwith and I'm glad to have friends who will spend monotonous hours laboring for the sake of art. That is all.

Signal Transduction

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 20:54:06 GMT

"Signal Transduction" Detail

"Signal Transduction" Detail

Signal Transduction is a process by which communication occurs on the cellular level. The term encompasses a variety of processes that keep us going, using enzymes, proteins and chemicals. When communication breaks down in this regard, it causes disease. This installation is a metaphor for the world and human relations at large. Verbal, visual and digital communications are ever increasing in emphasis and importance in our society, but what about the quality of the communication?

Interestingly, the most accurate method of tracking Signal Transduction is known as SMS which stands for Scanning Mass Spectrometry. SMS is a term commonly used as short hand for messages sent on cell phones (Short Message Service). I almost called this piece SMS.

"Signal Transduction" will be a part of Pyro Gallery's show "Earth" which opens on Friday, November 16th. The opening will happen between 5:00 and 8:00 that night, with a First Friday Reception on December 7th.
Pyro is located at 624 W. Main St. in Louisville, KY. Regular hours are between 11:00 A.M. and 6:00 P.M. Thursday through Saturday.

Each piece of this installation will be for sale and can leave with you. Viewers will be able to pluck them from their spot in the installation and pay for them on the spot.

My Work from "Five" at Pyro Gallery

Sat, 07 Jul 2007 15:56:02 GMT

I'm a member of Pyro Gallery in downtown Louisville. Last night was First Friday - a day when everyone wanders around grazing off the tables that have been put out by the galleries. Pretty much every time you go, you'll overhear someone say "How whimsical!" about a piece of work that is really not whimsical. Depending on your mood, this can be very amusing.

Keith Auerbach's show is upstairs. If you're interested, you can look at his work at the Gallery website at: Pyro Gallery Website

"Five" is downstairs. There are five people with work in the show, but I have only put my own work up here. To check out the other artists at the gallery, please check out the member's galleries at the Pyro website.

Here are a few shots of the work I have up now:

Guitar Amp

Closet (exerior)

Closet (interior)

TV Chair

On The Shelf

I was totally uninspired, but I wanted to make something different than pictures in a frame. The idea to glue the photos to objects was the impetus for the photographs themselves. To keep them all tied together, I decided to make the shots reflections that could be associated with or illustrative of the objects. What you see is the result.

~Car Makeover~~From Skull to Bunny Mobile*~

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 06:13:17 GMT

Silly me. I never took a picture of the car as it was. This is her 2nd skull. The checks are relatively new, too. Didn't think to take a picture until she was all papered off.

Ghost of the original skull lurks beneath the paint.

The new mascot. What's the new black, kids?

Here is the rear. I have been eviscerating Barbie and anyone else who happens to be the right size. I have a pile of decapitated barbies in my dwelling.

I HEART them.

Even monsters can have a whole new look with a makeover.

Side view.