m o d o . & . t h e . r i t z

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It was late last Saturday night, and I was feeling a little soggy around the edges. There was still music playing in my ears, like as if the concert refused to end in the space occupying the middle of my head. It is said that the venue was once the Ritz, but I think it’s just a wish for old time glamour hunting in the world of rock and roll. OK, there was once a rock song called the Ritz on the ‘Psychomodo‘ album by Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel, but who remembers that Glam song and in whose hollow head is that song still playing? Ask the kids about Glam and they’ll just shake their heads, really not interested in old school stuff anymore, plus, the song was not really well known or talked about, but I like the sound of the world p s y c h o m o d o, especially stretched out and said really slow. That music is fading away, much like the Ritz of old, not the Ritz-Carlton, that’s not real Ritz, it’s just another way to make people with money lose it for a decent nights sleep, as if when you close your eyes and drift off to never, never land, it matters that the darkened room is $350 dollars a night, with a breakfast bar containing real cream, ahh … but the gated security, yes, that is what it’s most likely all about.

I am fading, much like the Ritz of old in the new plasticized world of Carlton, but that is the nature of walking on the planet, you fade, get soggy around the edges, bleach out and merge into the background slowly, hearing glam songs ricochet around the noggin for a night, fighting for space with the blues and punk, while the actor assuming the role of a person contemplating how fast life moves in time, so-so fast in time, says it long and soft … p s y c h o m o d o, and emphasizes the m o d o  part feeling pleased, like a mantra, for it fits the time long gone, yet still floating in some heads, like mine, only I would like to know what is causing the sogginess around the edges?

p r e s e n t

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Don’t look for me, I’m really not there, even when I am here. Don’t call me, the phone will not be answered, even though it is nearby. Don’t email me, though I will read what you have to say, I will not answer. I am on retreat, though not going back to where I came from, it is not that going backwards kind of thing, but neither is it going forward, just simply being still, being present. I’m here though, really I am, but am rather unavailable at the moment, though not hiding, just presently indisposed to the active world. It’s been this way for some time now, perhaps too long for my own good, for how can a career move forward when you sit quietly …  just being present. I hear the calls, I hear the whispers, even the shouting, but I can’t respond or react because that is my choice, though it will not last much longer. Just being is creating, all that is missing is time, and that is always there, ready to strike, ready to pounce in the wink of the eye, that is when—the I is ready.

s n o w . f i r e

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I’ve been walking a lot in snow of late, piles and piles of frozen snow. Having a dog that like to walk in any weather takes me into the elements in a way I have not done since the days of being a mail man so many years ago. I like the cold dampness of snow being all around, the whiteness of its layers and how it changes hues depending on the time of day or what light it reflects.

When I look at the snow intently while being surrounded by it, I feel like as if I’ve left the earth and am floating upon and within the clouds in the sky.  It is so ephemeral, this snow, much like life in general, always changing and shifting in its inherent nature … slowly going away with the mid February sun upon it, so gradual in its dissipation, up and until that one warm cloudless day comes … and it is suddenly gone.

b l i n d s i g h t

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Under the darkness of a rather cold night, I wonder just how much of the world I see when my eyes are open, and what are the things that I usually focus on? Do I have a natural proclivity to just look at the same objects and sites that come into my awareness, do I follow conditioned patterns, do my eyes have visual rail tracks that it normally runs on, or blinders to things on the periphery? It’s impossible to observe everything with two eyes, or perhaps that just happens when the eyes are closed? How blind am I really, and is that the reason I like to walk around with a camera, challenging myself to see things differently, framing the world to the size of a viewfinder, allowing myself to look in new directions, searching for the visual that usually gets passed by. Perhaps that’s why I keep shooting images, obsessively observing, letting attention flow free, allowing light into the unconsciousness blindness that often inhabits my sight. In many ways, the camera has become my guide dog to the everyday visual world I inhabit, leading me down roads that I would naturally not take, like water cascading down a hilly incline, always taking the path of least resistance.

When I see the blind, I wonder just how much of the world they are missing, yet perhaps the other senses compensate and allow sounds, smells and temperatures to form internal visuals that no camera will ever be able to capture. We need camera’s of the mind, image processors for the brain, ways of seeing the unseen … or is that simply what we call art?

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w e t • y e l l o w

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The fall rain has created some interesting effects on the sidewalks and streets I walk on daily. Both the season and the weather has a rather melancholy feel to it, for the time of sun and growth accompanying long daylight hours is taking a hiatus, leaving things brown, stark and dark early. Yet a good friend looks upon these events differently, saying that the sunny warm days of summer could be the Sun’s way of storing its bright warm colorfulness into the tree’s and plants, so that they would steadily seep out the bursts of warm color back to us in the time of Autumn.

It’s all a process, it’s all a cycle, things get born, grow to it’s potential and then decrease till its time or season is over, either going into remission or death. It makes you think about your own life, where it has been, where it is now and the path it’s taking for the future.

My Word Press blog is feeling a lot like Autumn as of late. The Posting trees seem to be more barren, many words laying on the ground, turning red, yellow and brown. I think it’s fine really, perhaps fertilizing the seeds yet to sprout, eventually bringing new buds cast as reinvigorated creative ideas, flowering in the seasons to come.

I’m feeling a lot like Autumn too, so many beliefs and comforts are falling to the ground, the body and mind branches seem more naked and bare, though germination is stirring somewhere below, feels like something new is being born, perhaps a new life direction, a new way of being, talking and walking?

Is it a state of yellow filled with caution, or maybe it’s just change, whose nature it is to be yellow and reddish brown before becoming the fresh aqua’s and greens coming soon to a body theatre near you? Is this all a metaphor for turning a new leaf, a sense of self turning in colors of bright reds and yellows … so when I spin real fast, the colors mix and it all turns bright orange, and when I face the sky, it’s all becomes green?

When the coming snows come, it wipes the slate clean, a new canvas, a blank sheet to work with, time to create once again, time for the birth of the new in the evolutionary circles I keep spinning in.

Yep, change is in the air, I think I’m ready … this should be interesting.

X – W A L K

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This is where they say it landed, one can still feel the heat emanating from the concrete and asphalt below, yeah, this is the spot all right. The mind wanders and seems to get hazy, what if it’s radioactive here? … hmm…radio is not what it used to be anyway, and the older I get, the less active I am, so why worry?

The spot almost feels religious, getting here is called the X-Walk, but this little pink marker surround by a halo of red seems to be all the info the authorities left behind. This spot is not officially recognized and for all practical reasons, does not really exist, but, like a secret pilgrimage place that beckons, they come to see for themselves, is this true, have they arrived, is this for real?

Some are calling this the pink deity of the streets, it speaks of events yet to come, yet all I can hear is what has already transpired. A new age, a new street, a short cut, a cut lip, a new way for lips to walk, a new way of seeing through other senses, perhaps via organic limbic fiber optics reaching speeds that boggle the mind but never actually uses it or even needs it. It is a sign with a hidden message, some secret or code to be unearthed, yet all I hear is the cries of all those left behind. Progress, yeah, heard that before, rated X, like anything deemed inappropriate viewing for those not mature enough to walk the streets to come.

It’s my walk, the single street that I’ve been on for some time now, it’s where I’m going and most likely the place I’ve always been. No stop signs, nothing yellow containing the message yield on it, just open space, the type between chapters, paragraphs, lines and letters … and somebody marked the spot, the space between, a contradiction in terms really, but could it be any other way?

r e v o l u t i o n • e v o l u t i o n

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When I was a young man trying to understand my place in the world, it was greatly informed by the culture around me in the streets of Detroit. I could either accept the Polish/Catholic/American working class heritage I was born into, or I could rebel against it by accepting the counter-culture vision that was alive in that day.

I chose to rebel.

That rebellion led to a local rock scene that was heavily politicized by Poet/Writer John Sinclair and the band he managed, the MC5. I believed that the youth of that day was going to revolutionize the world we lived in, by kicking out gross Capitalism, out dated religious values, corrupt politics, imperialism and wars overseas and the laws/social mores that no longer served the new enlightenment of the day. It was an amazing short lived mental/physical revolution that took to the streets in protesting against the Vietnam War, winding its way through the clothes we wore, music listened to, culture identified with and the means to change our every day awareness, well at least the socially legal acceptable means to do such things. It was youthful idealism that grabbed youth culture by the throat but sadly was eventually co-opted by the powers that be through advertising, mass media, political dirty tricks and drugs, not to mention growing a few years older and having to accept responsibility for ones own life.

Though I eventually saw the limitations of that particular cultural/political revolution, I wonder how much of that spirit stayed on by then personally turning itself inward instead of outward, going for spiritual revolution that took me to years of meditating and yoga, eventually becoming a Hare Krsna devotee? I somehow always believed that a large group of people could join forces and find a higher more noble vision to change a world of war, hate, prejudice, ignorance, sexism, racism and flat out distrust and injustice.

My last attempt at changing my consciousness and that of the worlds was through the teaching of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada, as taught by ISKCON and Satsvarupa Goswami. My, my, how much of dead end that ideal change turned out to be, be it in the consciousness of myself or the world changing for the better, though both have changed much in that time.

I have no regrets looking back, for I feel I had to lead the life I lived to get to the point I am at now, though I do wonder what would have happened if I chose differently, like would I have had more financial security at this point in my life, would I have stayed closer to home and family, would have I eventually had a larger family, would I be more secure, smarter and on top of my profession instead of wallowing somewhere in the middle ground of it all, still experimenting, still trying to find my personal/professional niche?

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s p i n • m e • r o u n d

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While walking down the concrete stairs of the local Metro station, completely lost in thoughts about mortality and failed spiritual quests of the past, I began to feel something unusual around my right ankle. I stopped and bent over to see that one of my socks had fallen below the ankle while rushing from the train in a hurry to get home. As I knelt on the gritty cement walkway to pull the offending sock up, I vigorously pulled too hard and suddenly found myself projected upward into the air in a surprising physical ceiling-ward thrust. My body started to spin around and around like a gear in motion, only to me it seemed like a slow motion merry-go-round, only I was not feeling all that merry about being the odd one spin-floating in perpetual motion.

Strange events were happening recently, but compared to starting small fires by staring too long at flammable objects, this newest gravitational head turner was not that welcome in such a public place.

I wondered if it was the worry of finances and the constant looking back at why I once belonged to a fundamentalist cult that was creating these physical feats of weirdness by the body and mind? Was it that once very vibrant life of taking images and matching it to the corporate creed on speed that is now dormant and more clinging to memory than actual presence? Perhaps some of the people that I once angered by telling them to be moderate in their preaching of either religion or science, were now gathering in a small secluded spot in Vengefulvania and practicing some cyber voodoo on this body of hoodoo?

Spin me round, spin me round this town upside down, where lights are always on behind the flickering windows before sets of eyes that refuse to blink, yet, it seems that someone is actually there, somewhere waiting, somehow almost ready to respond or actually create something new … knock, knock, knock … hello … anyone home … hey … feel something funny around the ankles, … oh, ohh!

w a v e y g r a v y

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Washed away by spirit, baptized by taggers and other destructors of property already deconstructed by time and space. Wet forms, washed up form, the wave of the future past tense, always tense, imbibed by tenseness.
Surf’s up, grab the bored and ride the wave of urban expression, concrete and spray can holy of holies, halliluehah of form, the wave of form made in the shade of night and shot in the day…all in the shadow of aerosol and the presence of pigment.

Wave, wave hello… then goodbye!

h o w l . b o u t . t h a t !

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Hollow everyone, hollow there!

Howl do they do it and once it is known, howl bout that.

My segment has been cut by the higher ups again, so I will refrain from interviewing the parrot.

Lunch was wonderful, if you like having your stomach turn by finding out how the young graphic designer that replaced you is so wonderful and talented, outside of the bad designs that the production manager does not like, but blamed a busy schedule for the outcome. Amazing what a promotion from the library will get you, that a few classes at the community college which arms one with the ability to become the next Milton Glaser of the machine tool world.

In the bunker again, the friendly place to put ones mind and heart when you become invisible at the lunch table. Former boss is moving back to Cleveland where homes are worth a fourth of what they are in the Washington DC area, and everyone else is just waiting for retirement, unless of course buyouts and layoffs come my former co-workers way. Is a buyout better than a sellout, but sellouts are able to pay the monthly bills, were buyouts give you a sense of wealth for a very short period of time, unless you die suddenly, then your rich for life.

I aspired to be a heckler but my shyness got in the way. The stage beckons but a debilitated Saturn cast its mighty shadow as a barrier on the street to fame and fortune. So I heckle when alone, sometimes even at myself, just for the sake of living my dream.

Old graphic designers, oh you know, those over 55 but under the radar screen who don’t dye their hair to look like a TV anchorman with roots that just do not agree.

Buy the latest software, keep current, create things because you have no choice, put a contract out on the editor, have an affair with air and quit falling asleep on the ironing board, where all wrinkles in the plan get straightened out.

I attract the homeless and the elderly on my walks with the dog, for some reason, either through a shared awareness of the hostile suits who drive their Beamers and Lexus SUV’s too fast through the neighborhood in order to get back to the room where the weekly quality meeting are held, or the fact that we detest personal ID’s hanging from our necks casting shadows on the newly bought Dockers which informs the world that this is indeed the uniform of choice for the pay the bills squadron.

We all do what we have to do, even if it is to sit quietly and intake the instructions of the latest Deepak Chopra fulfillment of desire meditation, while you consider cashing out the 401K to pay the mortgage next month, can’t loose my cable and internet connection just now—godless dammit! Om Mani Padmi Hum and sing a few bars before hitting one or two for the poetry jam segment that my tongue refuses to partake in.

Whoaisme, whoaisyou, whoa Nelly and Black Betty, well at least the one sung by Spider Bait. Conclusion, well no more lunches with the company that downsized me once and twice, for three times is a charm that I am allergic to … being pitied or marginalized, much like nasal discharge with no hankies or tissue available for the pick up lines that just do not work anymore, much like my runny resume that sits in file cabinets and hard drives, saying a mighty hollow … and howl in the hell did it get this way?