from rust to sun

I''m going to California with a banjo on my knee/with an aching in my heart/ for a few days to see some old friends and bought my dad a ticket because I suck at getting him Christmas gifts and this year I could get him something really cool. He needs it too, he's been unusually depressed which may or may not have to do with Teamster fuckery, my sister being in rehab and not wanting to talk to them, and just being older and tired and all that comes with it. I don't blame him, that rehab place is dismal, and while I've seen people strung out on heroin before, it's still devastating to watch and to see my sister there completely miserable (because it's like a culty AA nursing home and she's the only one there for booze, a soft suburban girl who's not nearly as hard-bitten as her floormates).

I haven't seen these friends of my folks for at least fifteen years. They were the most liberal of my parents' circle (he dropped out of seminary, she went to Oberlin, and I inherited a bunch of their books and Persian rugs and Ravi Shankar records when they moved), and while political arguments would come up, it was never enough to torpedo a wonderful friendship. Through the wonders of facebook I got back in touch with their dad and took them up on the annual Christmas card offer to come out and visit. 

I used to babysit their kids who are now old enough to vote. The two girls both have serious 90's nostalgia and love bands that I thought The Kids didn't care about, like Pearl Jam. I didn't know My So-Called Life was still a thing, but I guess it is. The girls are taking me to Los Angeles to see their aunt's play, and then after my dad gets in, there's plans of going hiking in Joshua Tree. It's going to be strange to be in the land of stoner rock, the first Douglas Coupland novel, and a lot of rich hippies, but it's good to see good people and get some adventure.  I could use the change of scenery because the obnoxious yuppie gentrifers are getting on my nerves and me and a friend's observation that we're hitting "the rust ceiling' here is feeling all the more acute.

So this week has been packing and sleeping and PMSing, recovering from finals week, trying to stay warm, being glad that the snow and the flu is cancelling all my plans, pretending like I don't have holiday consumeristing to do, and trying to figure out how to pack for a climate completely different from here. I plan to take loads of pictures and soak it all in for a few days.

the morbidity and mortality weekly report

As a lowly undergrad, I used to shelve the government documents on a dark and spooky tenth floor of the Kent State public library while listening to mixtapes in a seemingly indestructible cassette walkman that went through a pair of double-A batteries once every two months. Most of the items were congressional hearings in paper that was falling apart but there were also volumes of statistics involving Schoolbus Rollover Fatalities, a journal called The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report,the PRMC hearings featuring testimony from Zappa and debates about the cultural merit of Twisted Sister, and Reagan-era coloring books to educate The Kids about drugs.

 Ephemerals are one of the reasons why I've opted for low-level bibliothequery, and why thanks to Arabella, I ended up at the medical museum last night for a free lecture involving swank and morbid photos from the Burns Collection of opium dens, world leader pretends, and dead folks. I get to see some of this stuff in my line of work, but not much on this level of swank. Most of the ones from last night are in this slideshow (be warned, there's some ickiness in there)

After the talk, we noshed on good food (because fresh berries, pear tarts and pumpkin ravioli are not regular things in my world) and wine while looking at archaic and disturbing methods of contraception in the medical museum (what the hell people shoved that up there?), straunge and vvonderful tomes about monstrous beasts from the Elizabethan era, and surgical implements of old.

Was in no mood to be inside on such a beautiful almost-summer feeling night so I called my partner in adventures and diner geekery and we met up at Algebra to catch up, talk girlstuff, and play scrabble and jenga, which quickly became slap-happy constructions of blocks and chess pieces.

 

It was almost balmy outside and the air was so fragrant with autumn leaf musk that we took a long walk through Little Italy looking in shop windows and soaking in the beauty of the last warm night of the year. Everything felt just a little bit magical.

Drove back to the west side, stopped up at the radio station to guest DJ a fill-in slot, played absurdity, no one called in. Reduced to giggles with the selections "Baby Bjork" and Old Skull. 

 

Somehow not ridiculously tired. Looking forward to the weekend, need to find the little sis a nice birthday gift and get into the whole Halloweenish thing. Nights like yesterday remind me of why I'm glad I stuck around Clevelandia.

what immortal hand or eye...

These nature illustrations are far more gorgeous than anything my brain could ever dream to conjure and the intricacy and practicality and the sheer exhuastive amount of species and interconnectedness that we humans somehow haven't completely destroyed only cements my childhood residual notions of Creator design genius that the majority of folk in my world would scoff at and tell me to move to Texas or something, but hey I'd prefer the company of William Blake to Dawkins & Co. any day.

Someday when I'm not hovering above the poverty line I'd love to have these kinds of things on the coffee table along with Harry Clarke and Fursy. In the meantime, there's the Internet, and it's for sharing such wonders and frequent fearful symmetry.

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?


What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

koloman moser

beautiful stuff right here, deemed decadent by fascists, but when did they ever know anything about enduring art?

pakistan calling

I have a generic silver Toyota, that, unlike the previous vehicle, has no bumper stickers or much of anything else except for a duct-taped front end, but there's a part of me that loves seeing what other people do to individualize their modes of transportation. My Puerto Rican neighbors at a previous apartment used to customize their bikes, with extra spokes and boomboxes installed between the bars, and offered to do the same for mine, but it was a bike co-op Huffy that wouldn't have lent itself well. Maybe I should have taken it up anyway.

But I've always loved Pakistani truck art for reasons that I can't quite explain other than that the detail and colors are vivid and incredible and something that I don't see around these parts of Clevelandia, where most customized cars involve airbrushed wolves or stars and stripes or stars and bars, or the equipage to tailgate at Cleveland Browns games.