Excerpt from Forthcoming Blurb Book, Happy Future

Spring was the Star of the Evening Revue 

Confused so far?

                                     I was.

　No; no good reason why.

She and I talked like we’d never been apart and hid ‘neath a veil 

　of tasty nocturne silk. 

I knew her mind and she knew why and how we both tasted when spring

was still the main character

and reality kept its haughty distance 

Unexpected Magicks: Prose and Photography

January 13-30, Marion Oliver McCaw Hall Grand Lobby, Seattle WA

I’ve always been in thrall to the Written Word. It’s nothing short of a miracle to me that a jumble of symbols—if they’re hurtled together with enough passion, vigor, skill, and imagination—can reach into the deepest most guarded recesses of your soul and pull out an infinite universe of emotions and pictures. And combining visually-charged words with actual imagery was a siren’s song.

Writing’s been second-nature for me for as long as I can remember, but I only began documenting the world around me photographically about a year-and-a-half ago. A soon-to-be-demolished building a few blocks from work was emblazoned with the image of a sad-eyed goblin (painted by some enterprising tagger); and I wanted to preserve it. That goblin—and seismic changes from within and without me—opened my eyes. Soon, pockets of wonder, mystery, romance, and beauty greeted me ‘round every corner. And I began capturing scores of them, with a massive equipment arsenal comprised of one well-worn Pentax Optio camera and an unjaded set of eyes (a few of them were collected in a book, Neighborhood Metamorphosis).

If there’s an aesthetic to what I’m doing here, I guess it’s just the simple act of seeing beauty and wonder where it’s least expected; and using all of the creative tools at your disposal to unearth it. Few of the words that accompany these images entail your typical “I was feeling this and thinking this when I took this picture” harangue; at least not in the literal sense. Some of them are meant to evoke a mood, the way a melody thrumming through a scene in a movie can evoke unexpected layers of emotion beneath the images. In other instances, the words just represent my imagination running rampant—seeing barnacles on a discarded pillar as romantic offerings from a love-struck sea god, or viewing a hard-luck case’s entire life in the reverse reflection of three numbers through a glass door.

Whenever I place pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) to compose fiction or poetry, whenever I look through the camera lens and depress the shutter, I’m placing my palm upon the earth to transmit my feelings to others. If that sounds pretentious or soppy, so be it. But the intent–with all my mind, heart, and soul—is to telegraph magic.

I hope you enjoy experiencing the spell as much as I enjoyed creating it.

Medjool via Hindi Rope Trick (Tendril Fetish Still Being Explored)

Local Storefront; but it’s where your mind goes.

He was a date, or a fig; all deep brown skin wrinkled yet shining like the skins of those divine fruits that’d been sitting seductively in the earthenware bowl at the center of the plain wooden table. I noticed movement outside the window. Randhi laughed: The teeth still residing in his head (the fronts and one canine were missing–I never thought to ask him where or when they’d left his mouth) shone in the fuzzy Bombay afternoon like freshly whitewashed fence planks. He walked over to the window, sat on the sill and looked up as I pinpointed the movement–it was a dried-out vine that slithered up the side of the temple like one of the cobras that the charmers in the marketplace below lulled to submission with movement and the whisperings of a Hindi flute.

 

“This serpent,” Randhi said, “will not bite. But you’re welcome to follow its brown scales to the top of this temple. You can see the whole of the Untouchables’ district from here. And from there, the view inside yourself is most pleasing.”

 

He stood up from the sill, and gestured at the window. It was an incongruous movement, florid and almost show-business-y coming from this turbaned and sari-clad Indian. But the leaves looked sturdy and ready to carry me to someplace wonderful if I just clambered out to them.

 

I stepped through the window, my right hand hooking into the mass of leaf, stem, tendril, and root. And as I began climbing, I glanced back into the chamber.

Randhi’s resonant laughter filled the room, despite the fact that the shiny and wrinkled Medjoul Date of a man had disappeared.

Vines Caress Above, Oil Water Below

I warm her ashen skin with each flicker; each touch
impregnated by the earthy scent of vegetation.
There’s a shallow pond somewhere below

and the sunshine showers

over the surface,              turning the water and the oil within it

eighteen different colors;

scales on a lysergic serpent

Jellyfish Devourer Devil

I have come to swallow your civilization,

It told me before slithering, gelatinous and

implacable, towards the salty lip of the ocean.

Sandstorm, Digits Coiling Through

 Her mermaid hair caressed by the gale

I will run my fingers through the locks and when we kiss we will both taste sand and salt;

                                                                                             neither of us will care and Neptune’s hard and heavy breath will excite us so

 

that we’ll be unable to breathe

 when our lips part if they part.
 

Bug

He hid cleverly from the toadlike pink giants that surrounded and cloddishly stomped away ’round his home, ’til I polymorphed and turned my camera into a compound eye. He relaxed and I captured him.

Prelude to Halfway to Hell

Ten minutes. Less.

The crescent moon swings its pendulum blade across the pale skin of cumulonimbus

and my foot slams the gas pedal down to the carpeted floor.

I feel the car hop into the air as I soar over the dip in the road. Tires smack into the asphalt,

wounding their ebony flesh on the merciless surface while the music throbs incandescent and the cops trail

wanly after me.

Long after me.

Fuck you.

Walkway to Mermaid Meeting Place (can’t leave the water quite yet)

The waves gently licked at the barnacle-caked stairs. They led downward. Heaven wasn’t supposed to go downward. A fat lot the Christians knew.
 
I’d spent day upon night upon week upon month strolling the boardwalk, north to south, carrying supplies back and forth from the hardware store to the shipyard. Even when The Point was packed with tourists, sailors, laborers, and vagrants it still sung with magic. On the loud, people-encrusted days I’d occasionally stop short of the cement stairs, dropping my stack of lumber or whatever thing I happened to be hauling over to the ‘yard to listen to the music of those waves. The din of humanity frequently forced me to descend the steps, to crouch with my ear near the submerged bottom step and bannister, just to hear. The tune always enchanted.
 
I was working late one night last week, schlepping three cans of paint over to Jan Buckley’s houseboat for some much-needed touching up, when I made my detour to the Heaven Downstairs. Not a soul walked along the boardwalk that night. A mustard-and-pumpkin-tinged harvest moon turned the salt water into pineapple-orange slush, and a lone fishing boat travelled the water’s length a good mile away on the horizon. On quiet evenings like this I could sit at the top of the stairs while the gentle sonics of the seawater seduced my eardrum. So that night, I perched against the uppermost step, tracing my finger against the sharp barnacles and the spongy/slimy emerald clumps of seaweed along the side of the walkway. Then I saw the water shift and churn.
 
A form popped up to the surface about twenty yards out. It moved with independent, graceful purpose; definitely not driftwood, definitely alive. It was a woman, and she swam slowly towards the bottom step. As she drew nearer her paddling became louder,  more frantic, as though she’d already been swimming awhile. I could see her features–fair and freckled–more clearly with each stroke.
 
I ran down the stairs and quickly descended into the water myself, swimming rapidly towards her. The water was chilly and I worried that she’d become hyperthermic if she lingered.  She smiled when I reached her. “Are you here to rescue me?” she asked playfully.
 
“Well, yes, actually,” I replied. She was relaxed now, and her amusement rubbed off on me. I found myself grinning ear-to-ear, gulping in and spitting out saltwater.
 
I wrapped my right arm around her, and we swam together to the steps. Her strokes were easy and comfortable. “Thanks,” she said. “The worst is over, but I appreciate you coming out to see me.”  Then she told me about how she’d nodded off at the wheel of her Honda Civic; rolled into the water, then rolled down her front window; allowed the car to flood; swam through the opening; and drifted upward some thirty feet to the surface.
 
“You’re lucky to be alive,” I told her. I squinted and gazed hard at the water, and thought I could kind of see the faint glow of the Honda’s high-beams streaking the seabed.
 
“It happened for a reason. I knew I’d be safe,” she said calmly as she walked up the barnacled steps, white blouse clinging to her frame and dripping furtively as she ascended.
 
God watches out for fools…and mermaids, I thought as my eyes followed her progress.

After the Pier

I reckon the scream of joy and relief and near-coital ecstacy came shortly after I put myself out there, into the water so glacially cold. Fell backwards into it, I did. Gleefully.

That periwinkle Seattle sky shifted its gaze at me between clouds. I’d been walking Westlake for awhile, the rippling sheet of the lake’s water refracting back all the buildings and bobbing/weaving boats as my footfalls echoed against the cement in the still autumn air. My suit was pressed and perfect, my face freshly-scraped and my hair lacquered to a faultless sheen; neat as a pin and ready to function productively, I was.

What possessed me? Hell, I don’t know. All I remember was the surge of uncontained joy I felt as I spun like an Olympic discus thrower, hurtled my briefcase into the lake, and watched the leather case smack into the water’s surface. It burst open, vomitting up reports, resumes, pens, and my cell phone.  Then the lake methodically swallowed the case with a few undistinguished gulps. I was a slave watching with joy as one arm’s shackles disintegrated and fell off.

Needed to purify myself, to feel the lake’s icy life’s blood wash away the antiseptic anonymity. The water–oil, pollution, and Godknowswhatelse-laden as it was–looked so very pure and sublime, like the holiest of Holy Waters, and its humble lapping at the barnacle-encased wood and asphalt along the dock made me swoon.

That was when I walked to the edge of the pier, staring into the lake mesmerised. Then I pivoted on one foot so that my back faced the lake. The water lapped away softly as the smell of the water filled my nostrils.

A track-suited middle-aged woman jogged by. Technicolor-red hair bounced on her shoulders as her green eyes locked with mine. She smiled politely at first, then her courteous mien segued to curiosity, and finally to shock. At least that’s what it looked like when I pushed my feet backwards and vaulted into Lake Union

The Smear of Blue that borders both sides of the gray was God not me

.

My  body smacked into the water, and the jolt of cold woke every nerve ending. I screamed reflexively, a loud whoop that felt like impurities being coughed out of me. For a few seconds I was fully submerged beneath the dark green water. The jogging woman’s form moved along the edge of the pier. I could see her through the film of algae and water, vague and diffuse: She gestured frantically and pointed, but the utter silence ‘neath the surface rendered her and the other forms gathering near her purely abstract.

All of the people at the edge of the water looked unremarkable and smeary even after my body rose back to the surface. They scurried around like perturbed rodents, oblivious to the fact that I wanted to be there; that I’d made the choice to jump into the unknown and chuck everything they’d built to shore up their dissatisfaction. I backpedaled away from them, further to the center of the lake. And I could hear the jingling of the last set of shackles as it left my wrist and sank to the lake bottom.