you said "spring".
Almost
spring enough
peppery air
almost, or.
Spring approaching                                                Now try to understand the
trees                                                                      seriousness of the adventure.
Spring
or                                                      
almost
spring enough
spring advancing                                                 dissolving yellow then blue then red again.
you said
almost
or
spring enough advancing                           a pediatrician had said the most dangerous
air budding                                                things were trampolines, even without nets.
trees newly peppered
said
almost spring
spring advancing.                                   The confection is afflicted with a mild psychosis.
                                                                 all quite worrysome.

                                                That's..."why," she said, "something or other about not qualifying".
TOOK SOME TIME FOR THE WHALE TO GET HER ATTENTION.

Awoke constantly stumbling over my own ideas and memories.  At once, internal combustion and suddenly the Yukon Territories in the spring.  Dense unforgiving mountains, glacial moraines.  I'm walking along the train tracks, high altitude sage brush steppe, surrounding low, low ranges silhouetted in the sun.  Careen in circles, light blue midnight glow the parking lot immersed, diesel idle brings me back to internal combustion.  Pressing out a gudgeon pin, seating bearings, the whole beast turned upside down its underbelly exposed, its intestines spilling out, yet clean.  Shiny clean.  Then again to the rafters of America, high above the ceiling below floating lazily down the inner passage like drifting down the Mississippi in the Cambrian, always squinting to see the pre-history oozing from above.  Forced into a period of stasis, trapped in the heartland I had to scrutinize years worth of stored images and events.  Why all this now?

Tomah, WI

 

 

The diesel jake brake from the distant interstate.  Far off train whistle blows.  The traveler cannot be suppressed.  Trapped on the skirts again, longing for an arrival, a departure, now any kind of motion to anywhere.  Desperation breeds desperate measures, viable farfetched solutions.  Put it all together in the cornfield, shimmering mud made deep by spring runoff.  Never seen so much I couldn’t humanize. 

“Visions from life’s other side.” 

Suddenly everything was hinged upon going. 

 Slugging rotgut from the bottle in the parking lot. 

Staring at the familiar blue and red highway compass as headlights reflected off of it dancing in the warm night air. 

 I have become a highway ghost.  Lost to the side of the road, the parking lot.  No one notices because no one wants to.  Just don’t ask for help.

Fragments, lines, and shapes became instantly more expressive, or at least more easily viewed at night.  Their form congealed to merely that.  Form, complex fractals of form no longer attached to identifiable imagery.

They seemed to "pop" more.
                                                                                          (I could see them better.)
I realized I was seeking to make images with no center, no identifiable form, no starting or ending.

Short distanced long walks to no destination. the forest is behaving exactly as it should.

Walking it seems is always attempting to lead me somewhere.  Even in it's most lax, recreational sense jaunting through the woods more often than not involves the inference that I will arrive at some vista point, or river bed or quarry or geologic feature.  Perhaps we have committed the fault of hard-wiring our species to seeking out vantage points, high ground, overwhelmed by the constant delusion of getting "somewhere".  We have created enough gadgetry to do our most basic of chores and automate our daily tasks so it seems that sometimes we can afford ourselves the luxury of walking for the sake of the act.  Wandering, peradventure.  Even so, wanderings seem to lead to the traversing of trails or meandering upon known roads, the mere destination obscured, but the terrain too obvious.

Central New York, a land of perpetual winter. Born of snow and ice, it has birthed a labyrinthine series of trails interlocking towns, villages, hamlets and boroughs.  They course through forests, gorges, and lakes. Behind the libraries and gas malls, and crossing the occasional general store, these bygone pathways serve the winter traveler solely and perfectly.  Hidden to all but the snow shoe shorn, cross country ski clad and snow machine wielding, in the deep dark woods of winter these trails explode with life.  The life of transportation, the life of travel.  I myself have used them on numerous occasion to journey from my parents home to the center of the village on foot, preferring a move through the solemn quiet woods to hoofing along the blind corners of pavement into town while unknowing automobiles gleefully speed by.

Today, however, I seek only motion, not destination.  It was necessary to remove myself from the trail, obviously in order to see what it was I had no idea I was seeking.  I think maybe it was spring.  I was hungry for the sight of fungi, the possibility that the warm spur awakened something, having bore witness only to perennial polypores, overwintered and left leathery hard like wooden abscess marring the oak and fir trees.  Among a winter of lifeless apparitions of plant life left as scrawny scraggly banners waving their malnourished shadows between the sunlight and snow I desired new flora.  I wanted to see some stirring after nearly five months of sub-freezing temperature and near constant snow.

A truffle misplaced in the brush?  Close examination shows it to be the dried remains of some fruit.  Splitting the skin yields olfactory response most akin to sucrose.  What was that thing anyway?

It had been winter since leaving Alaska in September and I had found it throughout the United states in five weeks driving to New York and then after a few weeks of beloved northeastern autumn winter had dug in deep again and this year wasn't letting go.

I was armed with pockets of cameras and dried mushrooms.  Looking for chaga, birch, any taste of the forest I think.  In my psyche the only cure for what ailed my flailing limbs was to imbibe some of the nectar that only wild boon can impart.  When you go in search of the minute you find such, but more so their position in the larger over arching systems that act on our landscape.  Seemingly barren, almost tundra like, plodding into the overburden that exists yields healthy interactions.  It's all there, the forest is behaving exactly as it should.  Climb a fallen limb...sixty degree angle, find the ensconced cache of some mid size mammals scat.  Bobcat? Coyote?  From the road we see only fields of white and lifeless limbs, upon a closer critique, the forest is behaving exactly as it should.

five/ten

Swelling of underground missives become overwhelmingly distressing. The clanking, grinding, churning of metal begins to rattle my joints and the fibers I call my own. I was nearly dead and dehydrated, I required the nutrients of an entire harvest, so clapping at my heels with feeling in hand I went upwards.
Expelled myself. Found not the expected metropolis but instead a foreign and mildly exciting, yet all be it dis-orienting land. It was comprable to the forest in some strange ways I can still not properly equate. The metropolis was dead, the environment fucked. This was the aftermath of the apex of maelstrom, the spitting, cud chewing, gurgling devil.
There was no longer a thread of what I once knew. I searched vaguely for a familiar face, but one I knew I should not see. Unfortunately upon entering the beauty of the canyon I was not able to gaze upward to what my minds eye had informed me was there.
ALAS AND HALT.
The face I was searching for could not be found. (Trespass un-obtainable.)
I now understand the key to seeing is being seen. Ergo, If I remain to be unseen it is only an effect of not seeing?! Awareness is a most fickle and interesting thing. Suddenly I breach my ground eye line of point of sight of view to hear and see a wheezing bear ambling along. I prepared a foreign tongue, but it was un-necessary.

Baskets of photos

A buttload of photos here.

White buns apr. 16

Also...zine got posted on crazy style type blog. check it out here!

schematic involving series of fragments of dreams

4 polaroids from the past=spring musings

Stumbling upon these four polaroids I recall very well the nature of the climate seven or eight years ago from whence they came. I recall voraciously attempting to capture everything on pilfered polaroid film, compliments of the newly constructed walmart in our town. I would run into the mega-mart and slickly slide the film out of it's security protected boxes and under my jacket and then make haste out the sliding glass doors. I recall also believing that shooting on polaroid film would enable me to recall exactly where I was and what I was thinking as I took the photograph due to the instant nature of it. As I look at these I am convinced of my thesis concaucted so long ago. I remember skipping school in the dense and mosquito laden swamp, and bicycling past the horse farm, and being alone in the woods gazing at the narrow valley and low hills below. It all comes streaming back to me...and years later the fermented essences of these spring time feelings still radiate forth as the first warm days hit. The infinite amounts of motivation and excitement. The new projects, and overwhelming energy. The desire to display a winters worth of hibernatory toil and creation. Every van that rolls down flushing avenue spins my daydreams into those of the west, and great exploration. Lunch on a sidewalk in Wyoming, scaling cliffs in Oklahoma, laying in high grass staring to the California sea, and trekking across endlessly infinite Kansas plains. It was all calculated and layed out for me...the moments just needed to be slipped on and settled into. Spring is struggling to emerge through the overcast chill of the end of winter, and the rain (a dear old friend) is washing the garbage and frustration of a populace battling the cold off of our sidewalks and into memoriam. My new england upbringing bred me to anticipate seasons with a fervor, and I now excite in the explosion of spring.

Sowing and Dawning 4

This is the latest issue of my zine, Sowing and Dawning 4. A year in culmination, it documents travel, tour, adventure, misadventure and the overwhelming reflection and introspection upon a year of living in New York City.

It is two books, threadbound, packaged in a home sewn, block printed brown paper envelope. Thick! It's text heavy, but peppered with lots of ornamentation and imagery.

$7.00 PPD

Tape Reels For Eyes 3rd annual company picnic!

That's right folks...this saturday. Last year ruled, this year will rule just as hard...

Noon-whenever

BANDS:

hermit thrushes

family arrow

muscle belt

prayer buddies

2 ton bug

jack callahan

dan witrock

reviver

d. gookin

female

devin disanto

colorguard

+a couple others

At clatter valley park on clatter valley road in New Milford CT.

Records- Zines - Food (bring some if you like!)

Readings by Wilde Uglies literary collective

New Developments

Ok, I just posted all of the current Tape Reels For Eyes Released items in this zone. The newest of the New...a cassette split (TRCS001) between myself and mr. crank sturgeon. Exciteable stuff indeed. And more sound stuff is certainly coming down the pike, I'm sure of that...
Dana just took off for a week giving white suns another little break and Kevin and I some alone time...rad. Speaking of which we got to play at Death By Audio with long time friend mincemeat or tenspeed.Davy is by far one of the most amazing solo performers of all time, and his schtick only gets better as it ferments. Deep polyrythmic trance inducing pedal fucking with techno undertones all under the curtain of some serious diy ethos. If you haven't checked it out i suggest doing so poste haste! now im off to search out a swimming hole near new york city.
rick

AH! HA!

I have just returned from a month or so long goofbang of driving my comrades family arrow along their tour route to the west coast. First through the appalachian forests for pennsylvania and Ohio dissipating to cornfields and the blue grasslands of Kentucky. Then on through lower Illinois where the civilizations of crops give way to vast open expanses and oil fields as we trudged through Kansas and the land began to humble us completely. From there it was into Oklahoma and more dust and weeds and the onslaught of oncoming tornados that feathered through the alley all the way across the panhandle of texas eventually spitting us out like a dry heave into the southwest. Low desert country and high desert country, to be flanked by barren cliffs and unforgiving mountains and at the same time to sleep in such lush pine forests and aspen groves where the moon lends a particularly clear luminescence to all. Then through the tail of Nevada by way of the hoover dam and through the ridiculous corridor that is Las Vegas, and real or not it filled our van with neon and awe and stained our eyes and minds before we made a quick escape into the brush of nevada dodging elk and wild mule stranded in the street along the way. We rolled onward over the mojave desert and finally got to the end of all land eternal, the rugged, wild, un-forgiving, gorgeous California coast. Big Sur held us steady and I clung to the sharp curves and hips of a wild and winding highway along the seaside. The redwoods assured us we were small and I fancy living in a hollowed out downed tree trunk someday. Then finally one long push not without it's inspiration to the gem of the pacific northwest, Portland Oregon. We arrive at one in the morning to a house that's gurgling strange characters and old friends out the front door and we settle into the porch and sip beers as the night becomes some essence of morning poking through the overcast and rainy atmosphere and then it was inside to let a collective gathering of records lull us all to sleep. It was a truly wonderfull trip. The land, and the sights, and the ever moving road, and the people along the way, and the punk houses and zine trades and records and cassette tapes and the wind constantly whipping across my body has filled my head to it's occupant load. My eyes hurt, my retinas are burning from it all and I am filled with admiration and love for all.
It was in Portland that I would jump ship and test my personal endurance by taking a greyhound bus home. Long long hours gazing upon the theatre that is the United States and all it's amazing geography. Every state I enter charms me endlessly, Idaho, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Wyoming, Ohio, Pennsylvania...I want to know everything about all of you. Your secrets, your people, your resources, your sights, your wilderness...everything. Now back in the New York town nothing feels the same and I feel replete with motivation and excitement. It's time to get some real good work for the world done.