natural disasters

Once signs unfold and become clear and a part of consciousness there is little one can do to hide them or deny them. Like the Californians who see the clouds amass in January and know that the 90 days of sunshine is about to end and the flash floods about to begin, floods that produce muddy earth and slick roads and damp parties and damper spirits. Or in the dry western forests after 10 years of waning precipitation and a late spring of unseasonable highs with hard dry winds one knows, despite a strong desire to believe otherwise, that when the lightning storms come, and they always come, they will bring fire. Huge fires, the kind that level forests, destroy entire populations, choke out cities. Native ranchers hold out to fight the fire and the wind and dust and smoke in order to protect their holdings. And the bullshit ranchers, nouveau rich folks usually, hire others or mobilize the National Guard and the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management and any and all local, state and federal organization to retard the force of the thing. The ultimate cause of such raging destruction can be argued and is and will be, but once one has faced the reality and power of the thing, and after the flood or fire or wind or rains win and structures fall, whether they are yours or your neighbor's or your people's, ignorance is wiped clean from the equation. Facing it is all there is. When the heat does not relent and there is no fire, with each day passing anxiety builds. The prepared move toward safety. The ignorant, and that is most of us, remain for lack of resources or from sheer exhaustion or laziness or brazen stupidity.

A life in art is to live with signs of appending doom. The forest is dry and electricity in the air. Move toward safety. The signs came this morning. Over the past few weeks good humor has slowly been crept over by complacency and annoyance and for the second or third day this week Sara has left aggravated although she insists later, not. The signs to me are clear. It starts here. We begin to hate one another. Lose connection. Maybe that's why I started growing a beard, to hide behind it and protect from the coming blow. I mention these signs to her and she resists. Poor girl, I know she knows. "Pick a date darlin'. Time to move out. Clouds are amassing." "What the hell are you talking about?" She's got a point. "Nothing." In fighting, fear, superstition, anger, fucking, fisting, shame.

On the brink of total poverty, making inroads with the bums just in case the need arises to enter the homeless economy, I make a few calls and suddenly I'm fine, through the summer at least. I need the freedom, poverty is the price. Always relative. Pro Arté, flowery things hiding raw portraits coated in polyeurethane or the moving stills. I ripped the name off from the classical guitar strings. Pretty absurd so I thought I'd use it. Now I just need some injection molded frames – all renaissancey to contrast the mathematic algorithmic spooks that pixelly digi things wrought. Oy. If I were a horse I'd 've been shot dead years ago…