fracture, continuum and impulse withheld.

i.

Her eyes were wolflike, her eyes were aquamarine and howling, her eyes were blue sky behind smoke or fog. her eyes were wolfsex and wolflunge and brimming with crystals that had once pummeled someone toothless and bloody-mouthed. Her eyes were unsplintered rays, diamond light, were yesterday. Were blue like a false sea, a mountain collapsing, were never mine but as myth. Wolf moon with cadmium red figures poised and deliberate. 

Another series of faceless nudes, the sex of caryatids.  

Ink, charcoal, gesso.  On paper.

ii.

Grandfather mountain marathon and 26.2 miles ascending some 3000' called “america's toughest marathon.” that may, unfortunately, be true. More to come.  

Copperhead run on at poplar grove. Exceeded 700 miles for 2011.

iii.

Indistinct images.

on the side of the road is a dead fawn. with close scrutiny, the visual enigma decodes to twisted sheets of brown paper entangling fractured strips of wood. Dead deer averted. Next, old chair deteriorating above wooded shoulder trail becomes stormtwisted treetrunk. Tiredmind blurs & detaches object from reality. The senses, like the mind, like the self, needs distraction and satori and hallucination and lapse.

excerpts of thought.

April 27^th. Morning of ny ing marathon lottery begins with six miles at 5h30am.  running in the early dark is an eerie thing, entirely different than running in late dark but still vulnerable and primitive and revitalizing.  raw. an interesting mantra cycle/ chorus of fragments: 
silver scythe cutting spring wheatsky.

Harvest a field of pthalo blue.

Kicks through an empty, echoless world.

May 3^rd. Ran nine at brunswick nature park in slow/fast clips hurdling horse-scat and roots and eventually (felt it coming) broke a quick bend to the right as a black snake raced beneath feet off trail and swiftly ascended a net of branch and vine, his climbing form like a heavy black rope pulled in strange jerks through the tangle of growth. Unlike anything i'd ever seen before.

lotus blooms in marshland of bnp

trail shot on bnp with new growth in may.

May 6^th. A dozen miles at carolina beach state park with the great punctuation- the pause, build and break of the momentum- being a large deer that surprised me on a bend in the sand-bermed turn. She jammed through the thick of trees as a quick-paced percussion of hoof, her form dissolving immediately behind pines and crag oaks. . . reminded me of running pennsylvania when a huge buck and two doe stood on a gravel farm road in early morning, within twenty feet, a shock of deer when a doe sprang sharply ahead and her hooves where eye-level in effortless power and ee cummings poem 'bout the lithe light deer the fleet flown deer but back to carolina beach on a hot friday morning when I kicked slow and meandering like a heavy thing falling down the trail to be mocked by nature's brutal if not ungentle wit.

on the occasion of the assassination of bin laden.

everyone seems obsessed and maybe a little haunted by bin laden and his death.  his assasination is no attrition or redemption or justice, it is no testament to america's power. it is the end of a cycle of propaganda. bin laden is  by now deified (to use a christian term), declared a righteous martyr, and replaced not by body but by a body of ideals dessminated across a huge sect, a following.  bin laden is a symbol, and a symbol is an abstract and ironic thing. a symbol is only as powerful as the energy asserted by others.  he is a cult of personality.  a plastic thing.  to some he is a folk hero: a trotsky (assasinated), che (assasinated), a siddhartha, a guthrie.  to others he is an embodiment of pure evil.  posters portray a face of terror, display horror and atrocity and murderous contempt.  they neglect his dimensionality as a prodigal son of saudi aristocracy. they neglect what al queda may have done to improve things (if anything, if nothing).  he is no longer a man, he is a Symbol.  and i say leave him a symbol, just a symbol.  a cycle of propaganda. . . an act of war, a brutality, a target. (the language of propaganda is the language of war.  rhetoric.  the war of language.)  the ideals and energy and symbolism of bin laden is a power-narrative pushed against a face now decaying beneath a massive news camp (perhaps it should be broadcast in latin like traditional catholic prayers, or hebrew like judiac readings, perhaps we should display images of schoolhouses destroyed by missiles).  in the end, there is only force and consequence and retalliation.    there is only the abstract notion of who is a terrorist and who is an avenger. and while i do not subscribe to al queda thought nor bin laden's philosophies and means, i am wholly unconvinced that this is a great day in history.  just the end of a cycle of propaganda on which another cycle will begin.  there is no spiritual principal at work here.  

the one good result may be that our military can return home.

Bob Bryden's Recent Work at Caprice Bistro, Opening May 1.

Mr. Bryden extended an invitation to visit his studio so I crossed the Cape Fear and its wetlands to his home. While near a busy section of New Hanover county, the home remains quiet in a thicket of trees bordering marshlands and estuary. “There are still many rice canals through the property” he says, explaining that the tract of land that was once a rice plantation now salted over. Parallel to the driveway is a weed-choked path that once nested the railroad tracks that began Wilmington's trade dominance. “You could take it all the way to Fayetteville,” and Bob suggests a day hike sometime.

The house lays into the land with a gentle footprint and pulls sublimely from the surrounding nature for many requirements. The construction conforms to practices of minimalism and has no excess to tame or muffle. The artist's home is designed from the same philosophy as his art, and that intricate weave of philosophy and design is a direct result of aesthetic maturity. Mr. Bryden is clearly a deep and quiet thinker of things, a still type, who moves deliberately and thoughtfully into a labor, whether designing a house or executing a print. And that takes us into his studio.

Natural light pours across the workspace from surrounding windows and a tabby cat rests in a corner beneath a chair. File cabinets roll with prints in various stages of completion. A new print hangs on a drying line, clamped with tissue between the rubber-tipped clip. Nearby are two floating frames exhibiting prints which baffle language, imposing a wordless appreciation for his work. Watercolor pencils flow through fields of wispy wash and burnishing, playing among numerous sequences of masking: a meditative scene of melodic color.

A printmaker's studio is a rare thing of meticulous cleanliness and methodical organization, harmony and balance: conscious placement. These terms are equally relevant descriptions of Mr. Bryden's work.

He rolls open a drawer to a new set of print-drawings that vibrate with turquoise and cadmium orange and new greens. Colors are bound in separate geometric forms with prismatic edges, sharp but for a delicate fray. Mr. Bryden says, “I don't like to work directly on the surface of the material.” Raw pigment is thus applied with unusual technique to fresh and luminescent effect with various cloths, inks and additives. Layers of masking and application. Images of brightly pigmented old-growth forests come to mind. Aquatic drifts of light. A centrifuge of linework gradating, a dizzy prism. He details his process and how the work from conception to execution can easily consume 50 working hours per piece. Distillation. When I ask if he could name an influence, he says “no.” He then laughs, pauses, “Maybe Kadinsky.” His work could also show unobtrusively with Diebenkorn, Rothko, Marden.

The pieces never display the copious labors. Instead the processes move and dance and gradate through layers into a smooth controlled image. The colors are dazzling and clean, really diamond sharp, with the world's spring in his palette, making it a perfect May show. The movement of the non-objective compositions is pure design, with an occasional landscape reference giving way to an enigmatic non-pattern. Explaining the prints, conjuring their effect by language, is an impossible thing, a strong indication of the talent at work behind these prints. You must really see them for yourself.

The opening reception will be held May First from 6pm until 9pm in the Sofa Lounge and Gallery.

Mangum Track Club-- a run with kindred folks.

Mangum Track Club held their shirt run on saturday and I am now a proud member, a lifelong member, of the Mangum Track Club. What is the MTC and what is the shirt run?  

The MTC is a self-described rural running group that has no dues or fees, no endless emails and  nothing to prove to anyone.  A history can be found at http://www.etinternet.net/~runrbike/.  Many of the members are ultrarunners, several are canines who completed the necessary challenge, and some are casual walkers who enjoy the roads.  Some members win 50k or 100m or 12hr races, while others sweep up the loose back-pack of runners, but everyone is open and kind and passionate about soles kicking the horizon.  

Completing the shirt run is the process by which one joins the Mangum Track Club.  Its a point-to-point run that puts one deep in the rural NC piedmont for fifteen miles.  Saturday April 23rd found 67 runners clogging down a road known merely as a state abbreviation and a number. I was one of the 30ish newbies and this is how it went down.

Work finished at midnight Friday and I drove home, set the coffee pot for 4am, brushed the teeth and readied the gear.  At 4h05am I downed a hotdark cup of sugared java and grabbed my running bag to cruise carbonblack Hwy 74 for 2.5 hrs to find an obscure intersection on the outskirts of Ellerbe NC. Did I mention obscure-- the sudden surreal village of runners roaming the road to the left was not unlike a rainbow gathering or a gypsy caravan.  Rows of cars were parked on each side of the road.  Runners entered and exited the woods and sat in lawn chairs in the middle of the state highway.  I saw Mark, whom I'd met at the gator trail 50k and who orchestrates the group, and he introduced me to some folks.  I joined other runners in the back of a pickup truck to tear through the wet chilly grayness towards the start fifteen miles away.  Six of us huddled and curled against the cold wind and tight turns, an occasional wave/nod to a runner doing a “double shirt run” (out-and-back 2x = 30m), and the truck came to a stop.  Here was another obscure intersection with vehicles parked on the shoulder, runners milling and stretching, and several structures around including a house, a greenhouse structure, and a church.   A NC DOT green sign ahead read "Mangum" to note the location.

The first half of the shirt run is a pure exercise of faith.  

The fifteen mile run traversed the bending highway by various churches named after old testament stories, paced across cement bridges above deep rivers of muddy slowness, geared up long inclines that folded back from hardwood thickets into vast flat fields of perfect green reeves that sweep like fine bristles against the wind.  One could hear civil war armies marching across the fields into the pine-and-oak perimeters. One could hear birds and endless birds and maybe a turtle scratching against red clay and then the footsteps of runners spread through the countryside like synesthesia echo.  A white truck lapped the collective body of the mass offering water and we encountered few other cars.

A lively group in a steady groove ran the ribbon of asphalt and stories were exchanged.   There were stories of the mangum track club ranging from a naked runner to the origin of the group, brainstorms of reasons why we run, explanations of various routes we passed over that MTC coordinates into other runs (ellerbe marathon, boogie marathon or the boogie 50m, derby 50). A dozen miles passed like a glass of sweet iced tea. 

I had to keep a smooth, working pace to finish within my schedule.  Eventually I turned into a hill that glimpsed the parked cars as the double yellow line jostled beneath me to a stop-sign end.  Runners had resumed sitting in the middle of the road.  Mark handed me a fine trophy, the navy blue shirt with strong white letters spelling Mangum Track Club.  The shirt is traditionally paid for by the existing members of the MTC, and the generosity is a trait common to these people.  He gave me a few stickers, offered black olive pizza, and I shook some hands and changed shirts before returning home for work at 3h30pm.  

All in all it was a brilliant run in a beautiful part of the country with good folks.  Several will I meet again to kick up dirt and slap asphalt, and I look forward to it.  I am still reeling on my belonging to a track club and I am grateful to Mark and MTC for including me. The energies of those kindred folks and the fields and hills and rivers and the porcelain-white churches stay with me now as I write this, and I think thats a big part of being a Mangum Track Club member.

prelude to a shirt run and a snake like a boschian corkscrew in the morning.

Saturday april 23rd is the 15 mile t-shirt run for the mangum track club and i hope to participate despite easter concerns and busybusy shifts ahead for that weekend. Running with these guys would be a marker of sort for my running, not unlike finishing a 50k.  A brilliant thing-- to be part of a running group so involved in nc ultrarunning and the long-distance running subculture for 20+ years.

Sunday april 24th.  An Easter sunday hike with the family brought the first water moccasin sighting for the year, and he was a fat one measuring ~2.5 feet and laying across the trail in abbey nature preserve.  My dog spotted him first, and we were thankfully leading kas and ky when maya paused- cocked ears-  lunged into the space ahead.  Only then did I see the charred vine slicing off the trail into a pile of fallen wood where he perched himself, nose in the air.  Still and wary and fully alert but now eight feet away, his hieroglyphic body was the color of burnt wood with black-beaded bands framing areas of dull ochre. his neck was gold stretching around swollen jaws with patches of dark stain. He was a beautiful animal whose eyes were bottomless sockets, like shark eyes, primordial.

you can't really see him, but he's there.  lurking. 

This is my third snake sighting in two weeks, with the most recent being a yellow rat snake at the nature preserve thursday on the same trails.  Southern snakes act on the runners mind with a bifurcating effect, the slippery diagonals cut the trails in half-- the first half being the free easy-moving trail before the snake, the second half is the paranoid searching of the trail's tell-tale scurry after the sighting.  A run can never be restored to a pre-snake condition following an encounter.  Heads up y'all.  (or heads down, 'cause snakes are on the ground, in the trees, eye-level and groin level.  Consider road running for the spring.)

roche. snake. ramble.

April 15 2011

La Roche.  Basque word implying the loss of senses, a sort of derangement of the senses rimbaud and later the surrealists strove towards.  Early coastal heat begins the assault of the senses, a mile-marked delirium, intervals of mindsmoke.

observations on a friday morning trail run at carolina beach:

1. a field of dragonflies blurred my vision and obscured my feet as I ran across a rooty passage of trail; must've been 50+ dragonflies.  Dali may have appreciated the image-morphosis of feet becoming dragonflies.  what freudian symbolism would be attributed to dragonflies? (ants = anxiety.  Melting clocks = mortality and flesh-decay.  Giraffes = ?)

2. a lethargic snake baked on the trail by a sandy bend.  Sand and pine needles and the leaves of dwarfed oaks had pushed up against the roots of a tall pine; and he folded into the bed of debris.  he was an optical curiosity, a pattern in a patternless array.  startled by his presence and my near-miss of his body, I assumed his dangerous nature and determined him to be a water moccasin.  But that wasn't the case; he was a garter snake: harmless, common, basking. An unfortunate ignorance on my part, a (fortunate) total immersion in the moment.  fear-defined moment.