"Spring", she screamed, "Spring is only the beginning". She left the stage, pulled on her spandex stockings and caught a taxi to Houston where she went to start a fire with a man who had an ice cream mustache. "Let the flowers throw themselves into the air" she cried as the flames shot highter and yet higher, "because I will be gone by Thursday."

Stumble It!

The Cherry Blossoms are in full bloom here and that means a certain nuttiness is in the air. People come from miles around to look at the cheery cherry trees and think of Spring. In certain parts of downtown it looks like newsreel footage of refugees leaving, where?, 1940s Europe? 1970s Nigeria?, 2006 New Orleans? Except these refugees aren't leaving, and they're better dressed. And, they look happy because they're on their way with their digital cameras, kids, and IPods, to the Tidal Basin to see the blooming trees. In a week or so it'll all be over with until next year. In the meantime, it's the annual human migration on their way to commune with Nature, which is, I suppose, a grand and wonderful thing.

Stumble It!

A celesial light pole with halo.

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He said: "It saddens me, but I'm fairly certain that we will leave our children with a much different world than the one we inherited from our parents. There will be more disease, more hunger, more war, more displacement of entire populations and, most of all, more water everywhere. And there will be much less that can be done about any of it. Perhaps the changes coming will be gradual so that they won't be noticed, but instead will be accepted as the way things naturally are; the order of things, the natural order. It would, I think, be easier to accept in that light. The burden would be easier to carry, don't you think?"

Stumble It!

Stumble It!

I loved the Pop painters of the 60s. Their stuff was so alive with color. It threw back in our faces all of the stuff we threw away and I responded. I couldn't get enough of the stuff; would go to every exhibition/showing/gallery that I could to see it; started doing collages for myself using images from all of the cheesy magazines that were out there. The paintings don't happen so much anymore; we're in a different mode at the moment. But the images are still out there waiting.

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Stumble It!

She said: "You know what? We all gonna get there at exactly the same time. Nobody gonna win this. That's because it ain't no race. We all gonna cross the finish line together. Each and everyone one of us got exactly the right amount of time. No more. No less. We all get there at the exact same time. It's all time in one time. And if you think about it, you'll know it's true. Don't you think so?"

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Sometimes, in the city, it all seems to happen at the same time; a chaos to be navigated through, a noise to be heard, a hallucination to pass through, a light too blinding bright to see.

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Jurassic shadow play.

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Shadows tell no lies, but they don't tell the whole story either.

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She thought to herself: "If only I can have this diamond ring, then I would be truly happy." There was always one more step before true happiness was her's, it seemed; one more thing to buy, one more trip to take, one more diamond ring to wear. And they all did, in fact, make her happy. But the happiness did not last. After the adrenaline rush of buying, wearing, feasting, traveling, riding in the new car, the same feelings returned to her and she realized, once more, that she was alone, and empty, and not very happy at all.

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There was in yesterday's Washington Post a funny and interesting OpEd piece by Art Buchwald who is dying in place at a DC hospice.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/13/AR2006031301669.html

The link to it is above. The punchline he leaves us with is worth a moments thought, I think. "The big question we still have to ask is not where we're going, but what were we doing here in the first place?"

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Waiting for The Man.

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Joe Boxer

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They say that clothes make the man, but I'm not too sure about these particular clothes.

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He said, as he switchbacked up the sidewalk between H Street and New York Avenue, "I wants my money! Gimme my damn money! I wants my money! Gimme my damn money! I wants my money!"

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This is for the tears on Bourbon Street. This is for the sighs. This is for the people here who still ask themselves "Why?"

Stumble It!

Stumble It!

She looked out of the window and saw nothing at all. Nobody was walking down the street. There were no cars moving back and forth. Not even a bird flying from one tree branch to another could be seen. The sky was cloudless in the early morning light. It was like looking at a tableau or a photograph. She felt for a moment that she could fade away in the nothingness that she was looking at; disapear forever as though she were a character in a book that someone else had finished reading, closing the cover on her history and ending the story. Then the phone rang.

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More from Whitegrass X-country ski camp, Canaan Valley, West Virginia.

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He said: "That's what I'm talking about. You understand? Yeah. Pain, man. Pain is my Friend. You understand? Yeah, that's right. Pain is my Friend because it tells me something, understand? It tells me something that I need to pay attention to. Uh huh. Yeah. When I'm hurting I need to do whatever to stop the pain; to not hurt no more, understand? Yeah. No need to be hurting. Pain is my friend all right. It makes me understand something that I might not otherwise get. You hear what I'm saying? Pain is the wake-up call.

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Ensemble in gold and white, as the younger street lamp bows down in humble recognition of the elder one; all a part of the ongoing Urban Dialog.

Stumble It!