SPHINX

These humans are my parents.
This is a Christmas photo from 1985.
"I'd sooner fly to the moon than live with your father again!" my mother has told me.
"I don't know what has compelled me to mate with these strange men, except to bring you girls into existence."


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Proposhko Yezero

Tambura took off for the high hills with a plastic bag stuffed in his pocket, promising to return with blueberries. I walked lazily home, staring at the dirt road. I found a little black sheep leg lying in the lane, with its hard hoof, bloody at the top. In another lane, I discovered something that resembled a trachea. I watched a woman with a ruddy face, a face that may never have known makeup, wind a ball of fresh yarn.

These people spend most of their day providing directly for their personal survival. They walk with their sheep, shear them, milk them, kill them, make cheese and make bread by the light of oil lamps. They build their own houses and grow their own vegetables. They make medicine from plants. They boil their bathwater. They blow my mind.


Back in the cabin, I murdered a monstrous bumblebee with a splint of firewood. This made me feel somewhat rugged. But I felt empty too. I wanted to leave. “I like toilet paper,” I murmured to myself. “I like toilets.”

I thought of the world order, of the people from Mexico who pick my fruit, the workers in China who make the cheap clothes I depend on, and the maids who clean the public buildings I use. I thought of all those people who shrink-wrap food and deliver it to the store, who hammer and wire and weld and dig up oil from deep under the sea, who climb up poles to fix my telephone, who whisk away my garbage. My standard of living depends on how many people are working for me. Whose work makes your life easier? Whose life is easier because of your work? Could you be rich if no one were poor


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The Computer is Your Friend

Waller High School, the dog days of September. Late twentieth century. A load of freshmen enter the library for their library resources orientation. I am no musicologist but I can place their musical tastes roughly in the vein of: Puff Daddy / Snoop Doggy Dogg / Bone Thugs-n-Harmony with a sprinkling of Nirvana and Sevendust lovers. The librarian, a huge lady with a peg leg and the bewildered face of a newborn kitten, says, "Do you know the James Taylor song 'You've Got a Friend'?" The youngsters stare blankly. "Well, the computer is your friend." ***************************************************************************

THE BIG RUMBLE

On the day when strange, unforeseen forces of global warming pop the crust of the earth free, we will have to retaliate by stomping the earth. That's right! All 8 billion of us are gonna dance - some in sun, some in shadow - to save the world.

"The one thing that can solve most of our problems is dancing" -James Brown

ETERNITY WHERE?

This photo was taken in Albuquerque, a.k.a. “the end of the line.” This slow, dusty, spirit-town is where you go when you yearn to get into trouble, bang yourself up a bit, and become better acquainted with your shadow. I journeyed to the end of the line, and I have the scratch marks on my chest to prove it, but I was a resilient young maiden and I bounced back out.

The Albuquerque buses were good places to hear jagged, lonely ballads. My lady left me… I served my time… Heck a lotta dunbops and then you gon’ get whooped!... Don’t bend over in the showers at County… and of course, A young lady like you shouldn’t ride the bus all by yourself!

Buses were the province of men, bangin’ it to Metallica or strumming tuneless, abused guitars. But I remember one woman-rider who was as brash and scratchy as the men. She had the word BITCH tattooed on her moonhead.

The photograph in this collage is from one morning when I saw Bitch all alone. It was early and she was walking up a desolate main street. Her legs were bare. Just some patterned drawers. And she wore this sandwich board, ETERNITY WHERE?

WORLD TRAVELERS

My life-mate is watching a riveting drama, slick and high budgeted, about a great money heist.

Famous anuses thespitize. They are men driven for cash in copious amounts, tumbling and roping and machinegunning their way to a Better Life.

I believe that Dennis Frantz just made a 15-second community service announcement in which he informed sensitive viewers that cash is cool, but not even a billion bucks could save you from being hit by an asteroid and “expiring.”

The predominant colors in this film are gray and black. The color of technoempires, hollow, hygienic authority, and ash.

Our era is a medieval time, a Dark Age of Individuality, Personal Gain, and Home Entertainment Systems.

My life-mate farts. I dive for cover in a stunt worthy of the telethespians. I smell mountains of expired eggs, burning in hell. I scamper to the can claiming an urgent need to clip my toenails, but the smell assaults me even from there. Your farts aspire to be world travellers! I scream.