Peep Show (For Dad)

The petticoat thrills of hundreds of woman shine tawdry and ridiculous in the hot sun. This peep show feels better suited for a wet-streeted back alley theater, the kind where you end up and don't remember why. I am skeptical. And frown. I feel exposed. I am the youngest person wandering these rows, and around me I hear exclamations and thrills as they inspect the furled edges, and the explosion of color. It's almost too racy for me, and I am in need of a fan to combat the heat and hide the color in my cheeks. Names like Who's Your Daddy? All Night Long, and Poem of Ecstasy give the conservative in me, a smirk and a giggle.

My Dad sent me here, to the Shreiner's Iris Show Garden.  I know, it sounds like a child when I type it like that, but given this is his mecca, his shrine to the Iris gods, I thought I would pay homage for him, after all as he exclaimed I was so close. The show garden is only open for several weeks to the public, but besides being an opportunity to pomp and circumstance the vulgarities of color, it is also an opportunity to see what the bulbs look like in person, how do they fare in the heat, or how many blooms per stalk. See Dad I did listen...

I took a few requisite photos of the Iris's feeling a bit foolish, as if I was peeking at their legs, and had noticed a stray hair or something. Would I have been one to advocate putting the hem lines back down to the ankles? I came with my own tools though, and sat down to make a study of the lips of one of the purple and white varieties. It was as I moved the pastels in the directions of the veins that I began to notice how voluptuous the curves moved into and out of each other. The edges trilled with subtle color under the at-first obvious lip liner. Their throats were coated with shadow and they swallowed their own form. I could begin to see the attraction. I wonder how they would sell if the advertised the catalogue more like personals or perhaps maybe this reminded me of my own digital square pursuit of sex and love and what I chose to show of myself given my mood of the day. Suddenly, I am blushing again and I look around to see if anyone else notices, but I think, today, I am the only immature one in the art class.

Walking Sky- Fort Stevens State Beach

I am not sure if given wings to fly that I would immediately jump up into the air and flap myself crazily about. I would most certainly not be graceful about it if I did. I do dream, however of falling in flight. I do not remember if I smile when I wake up, but that might be worth the mental note to find out.  Regardless, wings or no wings, I still like to walk the sky.

Today I am at Fort Stevens State Park, on the Oregon Coast. I am walking in a world between two skies. My footprints behind me hesitate before disappearing into the clouds. Off in the distance the horizon smudges becoming more of a concept than a definition of an idea. When the waves roll out, people bend down to greet their shadows.

This is line I walk between the worlds, is familiar to me. I seem to be obsessed with the search for duality. When I was young at my elementary school there was a merry-go round. Late in the afternoons when I was waiting for my mom to pick me up, I would spin myself, lying my flat back to metal and falling, flying into the fathomless blue sky. The sensation of experiencing two places at once, the metal grounded earth and the equally airy blue sky, grounds me. When I lived in Alaska, I looked to the ice beneath my feet for glimpses at the cosmos, often drawing connections between the star patterns and the cracks in the ice. Here, along the Oregon coast, I look at the waves on the beach. When a wave slides back down the sand, a thin film of water is left, hovering, carrying a mirage of the sky. This is what I am walking upon.

The concept of duality seems to be emerging as a strong theme within my artwork lately. My suspicions are that since I came out, and accepted that once dual side of my persona that it gifts a clarity towards other aspects of my dual nature and it’s representation in the surrounding environment. There is a certain amount of distrust left within me since that experience.  I am grateful for the realization but also horrified by the mind, my mind’s capability to deceive itself. As I seek to understand the implications that has on my personality I find myself drawn to these sort of grounded sanctuaries where I can experience both sides of the duality at once, extroverting an expression of my thoughts as a realized environment.

 The beach is peaceful to me today. With the constantly moving energy of the coming and going of the waves, the tumbling and sifting of the sand, and the scrambling, picking about of the local volunteer group cleaning the beach, I would think I would be irritated and taking my anger out selfishly on a stowed away chocolate bar. But I am not. Instead I am at peace walking the between-the-worlds where the sun is a washed out negative and the sky ripples silver and blue beneath my feet. I am comfortable on the edge of this perceived sanity. I am comfortable knowing my shadow connects me to the ground and my feet connect me to the sky.

Drops From the Sky

 Drops from the roof splattered the sky into liquid glass. My hiking boots seemed small on the edge of the porch, where I sat, exhausted and watching the water. I am inside a wooden shelter built by volunteers and donors to the Audubon Society's Pittock Sanctuary Pond. The steps of the shelter, like a temple, lead into the water. This morning it is sunny, and quiet. The sound of the drops falling drown out the quiet hush of the nearby freeway. I breathe in. It is a cold morning as well, as stifle a cough. I breathe out. The clouds of mud part, and a mini- leviathan swirls and swims between the pond weed. The epiphytic chorus continues to drip and I watch the salamander hover in the sun. His tiny pink fists curl in and out. I am reminded of my niece Emily's hands when she squeezed my pinky for the first time- in, out. Skaters skip over the images, threading the clouds and weeds into the ripples. The sun is a sometimes friend. It is hard to breathe, but it feels good to be outside and slowing down. I think about what I want in my future garden. The light shifts again. The salamander is gone in a puff of brown, but the sky still remains. I listen for the next drops to fall from the roof. I breathe in.