Archive for the ‘Traveling’ Category
Barcelona, Gaudi y Mas –> Montserrat
In the Barcelona airport our connection meets us: she is a friend of a friend who will be providing us with a place to stay and a few pointerswhile in the city. She is holding a sign reading “Michael and Violet” in a big heart. Cute! With our bags in tow we ride a train through the uninspiring outskirts of the city (like most cities…) into the heart of it – the “Born” district where she lives: a crowded area of tapas and bars and cafes and shops and narrow rock paved streets and elegant cast iron lamps, gorgeously sculpted cornices and building facades lined with curving spiraling wrought iron balconies and lovely old embellishments. One building has 12’ tall griffins guarding it’s rooftop while another is curling, twisting leaves framing faces of gods. But who can pay much attention? We collapse into bed and sleep til ten pm and I have dreams of days and nights passing, the sun rising and falling. When we awaken, we go and eat dinner and Jami takes us for a walk. We have delicious gelato and admire the city, loving the energy. She leaves us to wander and we return to go to bed by one, crashing on the sugar.
Awakening in the morning takes a while and we spend the day with a visit to Sagrada Familia – Gaudi’s church masterpiece that towers with it’s archways and peaks that look like drip sand castles or rivulets of wax and inside of each rivulet is another masterpiece, another heavenly doorway, strange creature or beautiful saint giving praise and all of it built upon foundations of natural rhythms- architecture built on the geometry of nature. Park Guell is another masterpiece of organic design but this time snaking and winding it’s way through oaks and olive trees and succulents with whirlpool like columns and mosaic work that blows our minds. The next day we visit his two apartment buildings- Casa Basllo with it’s underwater/art nouveau style that is beyond anything we’ve seen before and La Pedrera, an elegant piece of curves and parabolas and a rooftop that is like being on another planet. In between it all are tapas, cafes, park benches, shops, subway stations, gelato and taxi cabs. It’s fun and noisy and full of people and things to look at and ancient architecture with layers of centuries of styles, compounding upon and referencing each other, communicating over decades and lineages… Later in the evening, while searching for the perfect paella and then watching the lightening from the shore, we get caught in a sudden downpour and, running across the sand, we make our way, soaked and wishing for the umbrella in our luggage, to a nearby awning. The rain vanishes as suddenly as it had appeared and we walk home laughing.
The next morning, it is time to go and we get our things packed, a tad later in the day than planned, and take a train the long way to the airport where we pick up a rental car, drive back in a spiraling direction to the apartment (which means we pass it from several directions a few times), pack up our things and drive northeastwards, out of town. Searching for a place to spend the night, I hit upon Montserrat in the guide book. We head there and arrived in the dark, high up in the mountains, to a quiet hotel surrounded by dark watchful shadows of monolithic stone. I get a tasty dinner of prawns, mussels and chicken in a delicious brown sauce along with a Crianza tempranillo wine from the restaurant in the hotel and bring it up to our room where we eat, drank and fall to sleep.
Returning Home
… after a long summer… On Tuesday afternoon, on September 23rd around 1:30 pm, much to our cat’s joy, we returned home at last: from Spain, the Honeymoon, from Burning Man, from everything. At this point it is not so much a blur as a whirlwind: In a nutshell about the size of a large coconut we left for Burning Man on the 22nd of August to set up McLightenment, our funded art project. That went like a non-stop drive/sleep/drive/sleep rotation til Reno where we all melted into a good nights sleep. The next day we are finally getting out of Reno at sunset and getting camp set up in the dark. The next day is camp and the next day is set up of project/kiosk/spiritual take-out drive-thru restaurant. And then Burning Man and dust storms and people and parties and walking and riding and playing and sleeping and, well, everything. And then we take it down. And then we skee-daddle on home, dust covered and worn, throw everything into garage, get rental vehicles detailed and returned, do some laundry, get a tad bit of sleep and get up and out and on a plane two days after returning. The plane lands at JFK in NYC and we visit a friend in Brooklyn, spend the night and, the next day, go to MOMA and view Dali and Film exhibit, including his film made with Walt Disney in the 50’s. Eat some food, grab our things and out the door on a train to Grand Central station, pause a moment to appreciate the architecture, this most hallowed of all of America’s train stations and buy a ticket for Milford to visit my family including those who couldn’t make it to our wedding and more specifically my sister and grandmother, and we show up late but that is to be expected. Visit with my parents in evening and next day they have planned a post-wedding reception for Violet and I for all the family who couldn’t make it to our wedding in Malibu a couple months before. Lots of people! I do not freak out which is good. Nor does Violet. Kudos to her! If I’d been her, I might’ve been freaking out. Her family’s nuts! The next day we chill then go visit my sister and her family (newborn baby and another little one) at the house they’ve been pouring all their energy into. The next day, Monday, we are on a train to a bus to a plane that whisks us to Amsterdam where we catch another plane to Barcelona. Royal Dutch Airline reminds us what planes in the states used to be like: meals and movies, warm napkins to wash your hands, free wine nd the stewardess seems genuinely sorry that he has no ginger ale for my bourbon… Ah the good ol’ days…
Those-For-Whom-The-Rules-Do-Not-Apply
I love Union Station in Los Angeles and admire the architecture every time I’m here. At the same time, I need to charge my laptop so I plug it into the baseboard along the floor and sit down against the wall, ready to watch the rest of the Mummy. After like two minutes these two young rent-a-cops (20 years old?) carrying badges and walkie talkies come walking up to me and ask me to please sit in a seat and unplug my computer.
Why should I sit in a seat? I ask.
Why should I unplug my computer?
It’s against Amtrak Policy.
This is a public building I say. Amtrak doesn’t own it.
Well, those are the rules.
Please sit in a seat and unplug your computer.
I’m a commuter, I say, I need to charge the battery so I can work (and watch movies!). Can I speak to your supervisor? I ask. (Always ask to speak to a supervisor, no matter what- on the phone, in whatever situation: every underling is always supposed to refer you to their supervisor).
What’s your name? he asks.
Michael, I say, and he proceeds to call someone over.
They go off, continuing to ask people for their tickets and checking and making sure they are sitting in seats (and not, say, leaning against the wall which is a considerably dangerous thing to do, or sitting in a seat, without a ticket, admiring the architecture which is exactly what a terrorist would like to make you think he’s doing… admiring the architecture and thinking about blowing it up! Mwahahahahah!!!! And he would have gotten away with it too if it hadn’t been for those meddling rent-a-cops)
So, in order, to at least create too much of a scene and buy some time in case the supervisor should be a dick, I put my laptop into my bag, leaving it plugged into the wall. I put my headphones in my bag too so there aren’t cords all over the place and I don’t look like some punk with big stereo headphones. The batteries gotta charge anyways; I’ve still got two hours left on the train and I hate working with a lagging battery. I lean against the wall and go back to admiring the patterns in the ceiling beams. Ever notice that they look like Navaho rugs? The architect used the pattern in the ventilation system, it seems, to mimic the frayed ends of a rug, with the nicely centered red and green toned squares and diamonds in the middle. It forms a lovely pattern that suggests deep southwest roots without looking too… New Mexican.
After a few minutes, the supervisor, an older, shorter, rounder dude, with the same rent-a-cop security badge, comes up to me, sorta annoyed.
You can’t use the plug here.
Why not?
It’s against the rules.
Why?
Don’t question the rules. It’s against the rules. I don’t make the rules.
Well, my taxes pay for this electricity.
If you want to file a complaint you can do so tomorrow.
Well, I don’t see how plugging my computer in harms anyone.
It’s rude.
How is it rude? I’m not causing anyone any harm.
It’s against the rules. You can file a complaint (visions of complaint form-C double stamped and submitted in triplicate in true bureaucratic fashion) tomorrow when the office opens.
Well, then I’ll submit a complaint.
Well you can’t use the plug. Don’t question the rules.
He walks off… grumbling about the rules.
But not once did he actually make me move.
The point is: the little guy, no matter what, actually, in the end, feels like a little guy and knows he doesn’t have much clout. Now, if he were an actual cop, I still woulda said everything i did, but with perhaps different results. (“Skkrch- we’ve got a trouble maker here, over”) Instead, I’m in a public building with rules made by a private company about how I can use the electricity that I am paying for and you are telling me to unplug my laptop? I think not, my good man.
The irony of it is that when I sit down in my seat in the train, there is a 120 volt plug sitting there for me to plug in my computer. Convenient, sure but the last car I was sitting in didn’t have an outlet. Another irony is this: in the station they were checking tickets of people to make sure there were no loiterers (?) yet, once on the train, there is an announcement of: we will be departing just a few minutes, if you are saying good bye you will have to depart the train at this time. Do these people have special “saying good bye” passes to allow themselves a seat in the station?
It is an interesting world we live in with Rule-Makers, Rule-Followers, Rule-Breakers and Those-For-Whom-The-Rules-Do-Not-Apply. I find myself to be fortunate to be in the latter category. That is the category for those who know how to govern themselves. It is unfortunate that, for the most part, many humans don’t know what self-control is as well as self-realization – the two things go hand in hand. When we realize Self, we learn how to control it with compassion and wisdom. Instead, those who don’t understand it devise very complex systems to govern themselves and everyone else and these systems are based on mistrust, envy, and, most of all, ego. Due to the lack of training in the area of self knowledge – nothing really in our system teaches us how to truly govern ourselves – such people know they would go nuts otherwise. All the Republicans and the Catholics. It is a vast system of gates and locks holding in their demons with chains hewn out of their own fears and misunderstandings. Most of them have never confronted those demons, never stared them down, reconciled with them, dissolved them, and so they stay locked away, living in fear. Thus, there is projected an outward need for order – an order based on arbitrary rules that help the inwards world to maintain a sense of balance. However, if people truly knew how to live in harmony with each other, take responsibility for their actions and treat each other as they would like to be treated (how hard that seems to be!) then they wouldn’t need rules, governments, etc.
Doesn’t that sound nice?
Then you could plug your laptop into an available outlet, take pictures of a famous park statue, or just stand along side a building without worrying about getting harassed all the while maybe musing about nothing more than the conjunction of colors on the pavement, the sky and a tuft of grass growing through the crack in the sidewalk.
The Train, The Mummy, and The Mountains
Riding along the Amtrak on my way back to San Diego passing mountains and fields in afternoon golden sunlight. Rocky red mountains tinged with green, laden with it, draped over them. At the same time, Hard to tell if i am going south or north- the sun is to my back but the land passes me from left to right. This makes no sense to me.
Egyptian pyramids and kitchy lines of “The Mummy” play out on the screen of my laptop while my mind drifts to thoughts of the Casa Barranca Tasting Room in Ojai and the work I’ll be painting a bit of detail work along the archways, stained glass looking motifs like tiffany windows or frank lloyd wright squares and rectangles or C. R. Mackintosh floralisms.
Nothing like the romance of the train to set the mind to drifing. This car with the windows that spread out overhead and allow me to get long panoramic views of these gold tinged hills.
I am hungry, and there isn’t a thing to eat except for pre-made, pre-prepared pre-packaged junk.
“Why did you kiss me” says the dame on the screen.
“Well I was about to be hanged, seemed like a good idea at the time.” Says the Brendan Fraser with long hair.
Passing oil fields and electrical lines. Power to power our world. Where is the truly sustainable resource we desire? Is desire a sustainable resource? It’s always there, ready to be tapped into. Which is a funny thing- it drives us onwards and we keep looking, uncovering and researching- to search and re-search.
Two little old ladies to my left, with their white white hair. Talking and talking non-stop. White shirts match their hair, accompanied by jackets a shade of blue it seem I only seeelderly folks wear. My Grandfather was a case in point. He had a jacket the same color – this light sky blue. The little old ladies point and gesticulate, occasionally holding hand to face in a look of being aghast at the cost or the nerve or who would have believed that one.
I love these hills with their sloping rolls that let the sun drape over them in long sinuous lines, tufted by an oak or madrone here and there. Occasionally parallel lines of orange trees create a patterned blanket in the distance.
We stop for a moment to allow a north bound train to pass and then on our way to Simi Valley, a place I will most likely never live, something that is fine by me.
I love this sunlight, this early evening golden wash over our faces, through the windows. In fact, this may be my most favorite time of the day. This, this right now, was worth the two-hour delay.
I had the option of staying in Oxnard for another hour til the later train came, at which time, I’d be boarding the same train that I’m going to get on in LA. But if I’d taken that one, I wouldn’t get a chance to spend at least a little bit of time in that fine train station that is Los Angeles’ Union Station – that gorgeous blend of post and beam Arts and Crafts style with Spanish Colonial stucco, red brick and painted tiles. Compared to the utilitarian feel of the Oxnard station, where it seems time stands still while we sit in uncomfortable park bench style seating, Union Station feels like a cathedral.
Movies like “The Mummy” – I have such a soft spot in my heart for them… some romance, some action, some magic, some cheese, some corn, some retro vision… some fun… Horses and swords and guns and archaeology. There is nothing like archaeology to spark the minds of children (me, too, my inner child speaks up). I always loved the archaeologists. Discovering lost treasure… lost civilizations and then, greater than the lost treasures are the secrets and lost magic of those places – the ark, the underground cities, the holy grail, mummies and archways and cities buried in the sand…
It’s a great movie in the way that Indiana Jones is a great movie. Which is to say that it’s a terribly cheesy movie that strikes the right chord at the right moment.
The Egyptian Book of the Dead! This is treasure. “It’s just a book…” And as she opens it, the tell-tale whisperingly squealing wind blows by… And that mummy that was dead down below is now alive… NO! They scream… YES! Perfect. I would have read this in a comic book when I was young. It s like a Tin-tin comic mixed with Indiana Jones and a dash of spook. And revolvers. Revolvers are so much more fun than automatics or semi-automatics. Although these six-shooters seem more like… eight-shooters? Twelve? Of course, it never hurts that the heroes always, and quite by accident, make off with some loot.
Back to the landscape… mounds of rocks with trees growing in their crevices and cracks.
Back to the movie…
“We are part of an ancient and secret society…”
Yes!
The gold is always discovered but, usually, it ends up buried in a mound of sand or something and the adventurer is left with the adventure. That’s all drifters such as that really want anyhow. What use does an adventurer have with treasures or gold? A kiss from a beautiful woman, a chance to shoot the gun a bit, a few unruly zombies to talk to, shoot at… Not to mention the usual bondage suggestions- the beautiful girl tied to the table, a bit of cleavage showing, her breathless mouth wide open… Nothing like being an adventurer…
Hot Springs
Sitting in the hot springs this afternoon, sunning in the sun, warm waters washing over my being. Cool breeze over perspiration laden skin. Red dragon flies buzzing through the air describe curved spiraling lines that linger in my vision. Reflected ripples of water, on the underside of a boulder overhanging the pool of sulphuric hot spring water, intertwine in accordance to the motions and intimations of the breeze, my movements, and their own echoes. A bead of sweat drips off my chin and taps the surface of the pool, forming concentric circles that merge with the larger ripples. Silence resounds arond me in the form of bird songs, rustling leaves, water rippling and rolling, sounds of life drifting through everything: the trees, the rocks, the water, me. I breathe everything in deeply and exhale everything just the same. I twist and stretch and sit still. I smile and relax. I sigh. I surrender.
Train I
train in the summer time along the california coast
passing an endless beach of turquoise blue water.
endless curls of waves and endless sand – miles -
people dot the beach then exist in swarms then fade
away again
beautiful girls in bikinis
tan fit boys riding waves
sitting like seals doting the snowy white surf
people fading away again and the beach is too short for even people
only odd people remain
little kids wearing black and red wetsuits like a little line of seals
walking along follow the leader don’t get washed away
a pile of rocks
a discarded table
another lifeguard tower
small trailer homes along the beach front
very expensive trailer homes
blocking the view of sea
palm trees and bougainvillea
and that endless endless horizon line of blue
punctuated now and again by a speedboat, a freighter ship
an oil drilling barge (now that they open it up again)
and then people again in droves, in front of
houses that get battered by the wind during storm
but warmed by the sun and surf
during these endless
summer days
I love this state.
Magritte, LACMA and Pan
Yesterday we went to Los Angeles to stop by the fabric district, see the Magritte show at LACMA, Pan’s Labyrinth at the Arclight and then to visit our friend Robin over in Venice around the corner from where we lived last year.
Magritte…We think of bowler caps and green apples. We are not too far off and if we see the silhouette of a man in a bowler cap (as we did later passing some bar in Hollywood) we recognize immediately the icon as borrowed from Magritte. But to say he is all bowler caps and apples is to say Dali was all melting watches and ants. The difference between the two however is that Dali tried exhaustively to probe his own subconscious with his artwork, finding great meaning and relation between the subtlest of details within his work. On the other hand, Magritte on the other hand often took seemingly unrelated objects, created compositions around them and left the viewer to decipher their meanings, like gestalt ink blot tests. Now, while we immensely enjoyed seeing such a large collection of Magritte’s in one place- allowing us to see multiple nuances within his work and admire the fine subtleties of his uses of color and shadow, we found the “contemporary’ art besides which it was juxtaposed was, well, mostly crap. It seems the art world likes to over look the people like Vladimir Kush who, as far as we are concerned, is the artist most closely following Magritte in style, form and approach. Both of the artists have a soft and forgiving approach to their medium and a calm quietude about their pieces. Ah, but Kush is perhaps to fine an artist. There are the “inner circles” of the LA art world and they were strongly represented. They represent mostly pain, turmoil, a word under a photo, another that is a mirrored photo with a palindrome over it…feeble attempts to mimic a master. As I said, if they really sought to display the legacy of Magritte, the curators would have looked further than what the Los Angeles art scene had to show them…
Later, after some tea and cookies, we went to see Pan’s Labyrinth at the Arclight. The Arclight Theater is a pretty big grand theater in Hollywood and it was the only good theater to see the movie in. It wasn’t showing in San Diego and in fact was only showing in large cities. It made us wonder how many movies we miss out on down here… I won’t give anything away other than saying it was a powerful fantasy but suffered a bit of what “The Fountain” did in the previews we saw- more of the fantasy side of the movie and less of the reality while the movie itself is more half and half of both with some pretty gritty dramatic scenes… We left rather stunned and awestruck… a brilliant tragic fantasy and yet… not so tragic…
And that is the TenThousanVisions movie and museum review…. Mmmmm…..
Later we visited Robin…Shared some things about our recent trips to see our respective familes. How different we are from our families! How much we grow and change and how much we could share with them if only they would let us. Instead, they get so entrenched in their ways, in their “knowing how things are done”…
Later, after a quick bit of sushi, we were on the road again, on our way home, an hour and half, with the Talking Heads and Radiohead to guide us…
Fall in Los Angeles
Some say there is no Autumn in Los Angeles. This may or may not be true. Techinically there is a “fall” everywhere. There are those of us who come from the Northeastern U.S. and claim to have seen THE FALL. The big hurrah of fireworks trees in orange and red and yellow and purple and gold and green. The carpets of color across hills or mountainsides or neighborhood streets. Remembering the kicking along of the crackling maple leaves underneath my feet as I walked home in fourth grade, fifth grade, whenever it suited me to shuffle along- even the forty year old buiness man likes to kick along in the leaves. The crispness in the air and the freshness returning to the cheeks as the last dregs of summer slip away…
Then, years after the fourth grade, I find myself here in Los Angeles, willingly of course, living in a sweet little pad a few blocks from the beach where a heavy blanket of clouds covers the sky for the past few days and maybe, just maybe, somewhere a tinge of color tints a leaf.
A few days back we were out in the desert, in the Mojave. A Full Moon Gathering and a blustery day but not blustery enough for my sweet Violet to fly away while i held onto the unraveling thread of her sweater.
Look, here, said Violet to me, as we walked across the high desert, between chunks of quartz and prickly bushes, low to the ground. She was kneeling fingering a colored branch between her fingers. Look at this color, look at the subtle hues of the tumble weed or the peculiar shade of cactus, or the whiter than usual sages. There is a color shift even in the desert in the fall. The colors are all there- the dusky brown, the deep gold, the rich purple.
And the sage green, which i have yet to find much of in the forests.
Yes, they are there, they are everywhere, the colors of change. Yes, the air does not have the faint and ever so waftingly sweet scent of apples and dry leaves, but a small price to pay really for the sweetness nonetheless that we get to enjoy. The sunny days, and warm autumn afternoons and wide open skies which await above the blanket of cloud or marine layer fog which rolls in. This so-called mediterranean climate. Or maybe their weather there is just a Californian climate.
So I make some hot chocolate and clean my brushes and return to the canvas, painting a compassionate goddess decending over wash of greens and browns…
Bringing it to the Masses
I was a younger kid once (i’m still young and oftentimes still a kid), out on the scene, looking for something cool. After my favorite bit of music passed I ended up out again in the night looking for the next spark for my imagination. The nights would pass and some would end better than others. But always I hoped to find some bit of magical inspiration.
Now I’m older, and, I would hope, a bit wiser. I have learned a few things over the years. One of them is that in order to make the magic spark- I have to do it myself. No one else is going to do it for me. However, there have always been those who provided a few fans for the flames, fodder for the fire or bits of actual spark.
Now I take my artwork to some event, some relatively mainstream event- the kids there want to feel they are part of the underground, and maybe, in some ways they are, but nonetheless it is a mainstream event. It is not a party- I go to parties- out in the desert or maybe someone’s land… those are parties- where common intention creates a very safe and funky space. The djs want to be playing not because they want to be superstars but because they like what they do and they like people to dance and they want to have fun, get down, get high, be the light with everyone else- we are all one movement in those times. There is a familial feeling and I love it.
