ornamental

ILLNESS

Saturday, September 24, 2005

The Madness of King George

Questions I'd like to hear at one of those press conferences:

"Mr. President, you look like Hell. Are you the Antichrist?"

"Mr. President, everyone would agree that a hurricane is an 'act of God', yet you did finally take ultimate responsibility for the Karina disaster. Are you claiming you're God?"

Of course Bush isn't the only one suffering advanced aging-syndrome. See Louisiana's Governor? Yeesh. Stan said looks like she's been visited by 1000 ghosts.

And I don't think that Bush actually envisions himself a supernatural being, yet I do think he has delusions of granduer in that "he has a direct line to God." OK, this is what Kings supposedly had. This is why I sarcastically refer to his term and administration as a reign. He truly believes he is American Royalty. King George.

Spoiled little brat.

Let them do coke.

Posted by Ann on 09/24/05@10:04 AM CST ..::Link::..Whisper or Scream?

Friday, September 23, 2005

Dice and Plants

The whole concept of Role Playing Games is quite the anathema to me. I'm sorry, I'm just not interested. The whole D&D thing was like a joke to me when I was growing up, a secret ritual reserved only for the most clueless of pimple-faced male adolescents who would rather live in Fantasy Incorporated than experience music and art and the world outside. It makes no sense. I'm sorry, but it's like the whole thing is in code. It seems very ruleless, totally unlike games I understand...board games, card games, backgammon, etc. I mean if you're going to make up characters, just write a story, dammit. Fine. I'm close-minded. Whatever. But I tell you what I do like. The Dice. I use dice in art to make random decisions and selections. I know it's a bit silly, but sometimes you just need a bit of random objectivity instead of your own prejudices (would Eno be proud?). I have also been fascinated by the beauty of Geometry and the Platonic Solids. And of course I love stones. Don't ask me why I was doing a search on this, but I found this site, crystalcaste.com, and they have the most beautiful semi-precious stone dice...unakite, rose quartz, carnelian, botswanna agate, malachite, tiger eye, oh man, I am drooling over these little objects!

---

This summer I found some incredible Coleus plants at assorted greenhouses around southern Wisconsin. By the end of the growing season, most had grown huge. I photographed them minutes before Stan gave them haircuts in order to over-winter them inside the house. Just an iPhoto webpage job, nothing fancy as I don't have time for that right now: Coleus 2005

Posted by Ann on 09/23/05@10:14 AM CST ..::Link::..2 Screamers.

Thursday, September 22, 2005

DREAM: The only Island in an Ocean of Relatives

Can't remember the situation much, but for some reason, my mom in conjunction with some of Stan's relatives, namely Suzy, were planning some celebration/get together. I know there was more detail than I can describe or recall, but the part that is easiest to describe is a large room with a big table with settings, and one small, tiny table set for one. And guess who that little table was for? Me. I was to sit there. Alone. By myself. Stan didn't even get a setting there to share my isolation. No, it was just for me. I was furious and cussing. I'm surprised I didn't yell and scream and cuss outloud and wake myself and Stan up.

Posted by Ann on 09/22/05@03:01 PM CST ..::Link::..Whisper or Scream?

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Mountains

Each year when we get ready for our trip to Colorado, I anticipate the trip more and more. Each year, I enjoy seeing the mountains more and more. I didn't miss them when we moved from there. And frankly, I still really don't miss the mountains that I grew up with, the mountains that were just 10 miles or so to the west of our flat, non-mountainous Front Range town. Those mountains, as I've derogatively referred to as "big grey slabs of rock", do not hold any magic for me. I lived with them looming over my shoulder for 17 years, blocking out sunsets.

My first encounter with mountains was when I was about 6. We had just moved to Massachusetts from Indiana. My parents took me up to Maine, the coast, to Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor. It was foggy and I think it was Cadillac Mountain that hid behind clouds and fog. Suddenly, it peeked out, a dark green, almost black humungous formation that loomed ahead of us on the road. It scared and chilled me, and I was fascinated by it. In the motels and cabins my Mom read me The Hobbit. She said the moist, mountainous land with moss and ferns and vegetation was how she pictured Middle Earth.

When I was 10 we moved to Colorado. We arrived in Fort Collins on a snowy day. I kept hoping that the mountains would make themselves visible to me like Cadillac did, a dark, tall, ominous being hidden behind clouds. I waited for the right weather conditions. It never happened. The mountains didn't appear abruptly from the flat earth, they appeared gradually, in the distance.

Adolesence is a hard time to appreciate nature. One is more concerned with how one looks and finding a good radio station while travelling than with the scenery. I began to despise the mountains because I only travelled there when in the company of my parents. I arrived in Colorado at just the wrong time, a pre-adolescent in the early 70s. By the early 80s, I didn't travel with them anymore. The Rockies reminded me of Granola, Hippies, Ski Bums on Trust Funds, and Bad John Denver Songs, all of which were a complete anathema to me. I preferred Denver, the city.

In 1987 and 1988 Stan and I took a couple trips out west. The first was up to Seattle, down the west coast, and back up through Arizona and New Mexico. It was an epic trip. A part of it that really sticks in my mind was when we left Ogden, Utah and headed up toward Idaho in the morning. Everything was so green and lush, it was nothing like the west. I loved the desert in Arizona...it was surreal. The following year we travelled through Colorado and into Utah to see various places like Arches, Bryce, Zion and to swim in the Great Salt Lake. This was the part of the west I enjoyed, surreal landscapes, red rocks, and just vast hugeness like Zion. This wasn't the hippie ski bum mountains of the Front Range, covered in grey and Ponderosas. This was what I liked.

There's something about the climate on the Front Range that bothers me. It's a personal thing that I can't quite describe. But it doesn't know what it wants to be. It is sort of a northern climate; it has seasons, although not as starkly defined as they are here in the Midwest (Snow in June and September is to be expected as is suntanning in February). It's arid, yet deciduous trees grow. I guess I'm an either or type person. Either have your west with your cactus and red and pink and peach and gold rocks and oddly-shaped formations, or have your east with your lush deciduous forests and ferns and mosses and grass that never needs watering (except in droughts like this year). But this Fort Collins climate, a climate that can't decide what it wants is not for me. And so I'm here. 1000 miles away from wish-washy semi-arid land.

Maybe I had to leave Colorado so that I could appreciate it. The true appreciation didn't start until after Stan's dad died in 1997. That's when his mother moved from the little town on the Colorado Eastern Plains over to the Western Slope where her twin sister was living. That's when we started extending our yearly visits to include not just Fort Collins, but also Montrose. And some years, when vacation time isn't generous, it's hard to include both. Most of the time is spent in Fort Collins seeing people, but my favorite parts of the trip are travelling to and around the Western Slope. Heading west on I-70, the true magic of the mountains starts around Rifle or Parachute--along the edges of the interestate the beautiful formations start to show themselves. All colors imaginable are in the rocks, pinks, greys, golds, white, purple, red, orange, green.

Cortez is one of my favorite spots. From the highway you can see the beginnings of the incredible classic southwest land formations, the stone ships on the desert. If nothing was a barrier at this moment in time, I'd like to move there.

In anticipation of our trip, I did a maps.google.com search. Clicking on "hybrid" so that you can still see the highway markings, you will be presented with an aerial delight of mountain views. If you have never travelled in a plane over the rockies (which I never have), you will be in for a treat. The land is so dimensional and textural, like paint. Everyone has always told me that my art is like a topographical map. But they were wrong. My art is like a satellite map. Or satellite maps are like my art. Makes me want to paint again. Sometime.

Posted by Ann on 09/20/05@11:05 AM CST ..::Link::..4 Screamers.

Monday, September 19, 2005

DREAM: Tree Tornado

I was travelling with my mom, who was driving, although my mom doesn't drive. We were going west on Mountain Street in Fort Collins and were in front of where Steele's used to be when the weather got bad. There was a tornado in the former Steele's parking lot. It looked like a humungous poplar tree, as the funnel cloud was covered with green leaves, like a huge bush. I was confused and scared and felt we should get out of there, but she continued travelling west, which was probably a wise thing to do as tornados seldom track west. We end up at an old house; I can't tell if this is my house or not. It has multiple levels and is on a hill, but it has victorian built-ins like a strange looking wooden fireplace which has a piano-table type bench that fits into it. I was standing looking at this strange structure; there was still ash on the wooden floor from the previous occupant. I think Stan is there and he says that he can't find Plato. I'm thinking that maybe he got outside because the bad storm blew a window or door open. We call for him, and we go into a garage/basement type room that is halfway below ground. I see Plato, although his nose is longer. He looks like he has a sore on the top of his head which looks like a 3rd eye. I worry that he got injured from the storm. He is lying on a cot. It looks like people are on the cot as well. Somehow people from Depressions are there, and we're at some sort of presentation. I sit down on a stuffed upholstered chair. I realize another woman is sitting there too, but she says it's ok if I sit there. It was all a bit creepy.

Posted by Ann on 09/19/05@10:52 AM CST ..::Link::..A Whisper Inside.

Sunday, September 18, 2005

With Dreams Like These, You Don't Need Nightmares

I saw a list go by me; was it on a computer screen? Was it on paper? I don't know, it was a list of images, jpeg images, with prices by them. Stan made the list. What the hell was he doing, selling jpeg images? I looked again, they were images from our old import singles collection (45s with picture sleeves) and he was listing them on ebay. I got mad at him. "What the hell are you doing? You can't sell copyrighted images!" Oh, no, he wasn't selling the images, he was selling our singles--without consulting me first. OK, well, we could use the money, but at least consult me, huh? I got mad at him because many of those singles I purchased, so I would be owed a good deal of the profits. I asked him about this, and he sort of ignored the question, as if that wasn't in the plan. I then get mad at him and yell, literally yell out loud something like "You did this without consulting me...blah blah" but by the time I could yell any more, I had woken him and myself up.

She was quite bland looking, mousey blonde. I walked up steep stone and concrete garden steps to confront her in person. She didn't know who I was, she was my nemesis of her own choosing. Stan accompanied me. She had some strange thing that only makes sense in dreams...some rack with different colored pieces of paper or small books or bookmarks in hues and shades of assorted light greens...some artsy thing. It was as if we were in some art store. I leaf through these things and I say to her, "you forgot one." Puzzled, she looked at me and asked "what did I forget?" "You forgot the one where you talk about how much you hate my website." She feigned further puzzlement hiding the shock of embarrassment beneath. She'd been found out and now she had to cover herself. I forgot the exact course of events, but I know my continuing presence is making her feel very uncomfortable. I don't wish to stay myself, but I do anyway, just to annoy her. I probably say something about not saying things about people when you know they are in earshot, but I'm sure the metaphor goes over her head.

---

Edited to add: For some odd reason, I also recall (probably in reference to the 2nd dream) me saying: "Homey don't play that!" a few times in anger. That sort of makes the bad dreams all worthwhile.

Posted by Ann on 09/18/05@09:22 AM CST ..::Link::..6 Screamers.
By Ann @ 10:04 AM CST:09:24:05 ..::Link::..Whisper or Scream?

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