This is all verbose juvenile sludge, but its my juvenile sludge, so it goes on the website regardless. granted, a lot of this work is borrowed voice. 

Sundial 

Top down light. Theres a lot of kinds. Top down, Lights! - boudoir photo shoot. Top down, light - top chop shop slogan. Top down, lite - discount top chop shop slogan. But im most interested in the top down light that occurs at high noon in places like ecuador, or ecuatorial guniea, or any other place on the earths belt that isnt named for it specifically. ( i have since realized that due to earths tilt this does not occur at the equator but instead at about 23.4 degrees north or south, hence the term lahaina noon, named for lahaina hawaii). Everything looks like a poorly rendered video game, or like when you were a kid and put a toy in the bathtub underwater and it seemed to be cartoonishly flat. I like the idea of complex events removing information. Usually flatness is unintentional, or a symtom of a lack of budget or whatever, at least artistically. Maybe not for concrete pourers or roof installers or computer chip builders. I stand corrected, flatness is rather rare, its noise that isnt. It all comes back to noise. Anyway, overhead light, the world looks rendered poorly or whatever and then you see the people. Noses casting shadows down the face, cheeks hollow. everyone looks gaunt at high noon, especially with the sweat of the heat. Of course, bodybuilders prefer overhead light, makes their striations pop and their viens defined, but everyone else hates it. The recently bedded especially, " why the hell would you turn on the big light". Im not actually much of a lamp person. I mean, I have a few lamps in my room and sometimes Ill turn them on to read if I have allusions about being quaint, rain pitter pattering overhead, symbols illuminated by the warm dull glow of incandescent filament filtered by a plaid lamp shade... etc etc. normally though the lights stay off completely, my room instead filled with the light coming from my window whose blinds I cant quite close. too high up, and too far away from my loft's edge to reach. makes me wake up at sunrise every day, id say with the birds but I have to drive aways to see them. surrounded by concrete without the people, not even crumbs for pigeons. Just office building after office building. maybe thats why I think about light, being awake when most people are sleeping, watching the sun creep across glass facades that reflect nothing back but more glass, more concrete, more of the same geometric repetition that makes you forget what organic shapes look like. The shadows move but theyre predictable, mathematical, like someone plotted them on graph paper and said "here, this is where darkness goes at 7:23 PM" Its not mysterious shadows, the kind that dance and shift and hide things. Its administrative shadow, bureaucratic darkness that knows its place and stays there until the sun moves exactly twelve degrees and then shifts accordingly. slow rotation of the sun across identical surfaces, marking time like a very expensive, very boring clock.

In defense of abstract photography- from the perspective of a (19 y/o) amateur figurative painter

For everyone outside the contemporary art world, in other words, those not subscribed to the dogmatic cult that believes in the reverence of found objects transubstantiated into the divine, those not contained in the basis spanned by deleuze and danto, (which, to the surprise of MFA’s everywhere, is most people), contemporary art is often unintelligible. We walk into the museum and we see great canvases covered in stuff and installations of more stuff, and we have emotions ranging from indifference to bemusement to the occasional huh thats kinda cool, laugh at the competitive bibliographies and lexicons of the labels, and go home, or just beeline to the permanent collection to look at the impressionists. People are generally aware of the game even if they dont know the specifics, the corrupt appraisals, the curator as canonizer, the gallery the alchemists round bottom flask, yada yada. For the longest time I was perplexed as to why art critics and aesthetic philosophers did not maintain their own artistic practice until I realized that they’re the ones with the craft- its a writers game, and if you don't know their language, forget it. The art itself is fish fossils, the artist the pure intentioned village idiot who digs up these permineralized chunks, it is only when taxonomically categorized by the scientist do the bones come alive, imbued with context, history. Those who actually draw or paint or sculpt or engage in some sort of artistic craft (which I guess am semantically separating from an artistic practice) feel, I imagine, quite similarly, although they might perhaps have a little more anger at the current state of affairs depending on how moralistic they are (french accent: You call zis good art?) and if they depend on their craft for a living. I'm mostly ambivalent about it all. I like some contemporary art, and most of all I truly appreciate bullshitting for the love of the game.

All that said, there exists another, parallel community- contemporary Photographers, who seem to be affected by the inverse affliction, an amnesiac’s memory of their history and a pointless technical fixation. (Of course contemporary fine art photography exists, but it often feels subordinate to the 'major' mediums, segregated in specific wings, treated as the commercial cousin of fashion, or valued purely as an archive of things museum people find interesting (usually other artists). Contemporary photographers, as a population, seem to be rather obsessed with things that are, from the perspective of one who has spent ages attempting to develop skill in figurative painting, not that hard. I don't state this pejoratively, it is merely a state which results from the camera as a technology. “That democratic machine”, in the words of Susan Sontag. All of the technical elements of image making are iteratively made easier by ones own personal team of engineers, often to the logical extreme of dishonestly, the adjustment of the content of the image to some more perfect standard. Of course all of these adjustments are only  additions to the ultimate fact that the photograph is produced all at once in a single exposure, a half second at most, in all but the most extreme of cases. Practically the entire population has access to perfect cameras, it feels obvious that the point of photography now should be to subvert and obfuscate. Additionally, the medium is unique in that there is always a boxer's chance. It is simply impossible for a figurative painter to 'accidentally' create a masterwork; one either has the knowledge or the practiced intuition. But in photography, the technical barrier is so low that the execution itself becomes a non-factor. Because the 'how' is negligible, the weight shifts entirely to the 'what' and the 'why’, especially over a series of images that demonstrates consistent intention. Go be more conceptual. Stop with the sunsets, or whatever.

Short Story 1

He sits imprisoned in a foreign land, unknown vegetation under his feet, prickly, with a patronizing hostility, punishing those unaware of what is and what isn't. Men converse in strange tongues, lashing at each other with fricatives and guttural sounds from the deep recesses of their throats, ironically, likely uttering mundane actions, pleasantries, or anything uncharacteristic of the harsh wall of noise emanating from their mouths. The climate is cold, yet with a powerful sun, such that the world is momentarily plunged into an ashen winter depending on the clouds overhead, a nebulous reel of film modifying god's sunnier projections. The boy walks quietly along the white walls that enclose him with a languid expression on his face. He watches the other members of his entrapped clade toiling for as much as he can bear, then tries to dream as much as possible in an attempt to escape from the desolate reality that restrains him.

He has no memory of a prior experience, or from whence he could have come, possessing only the most rudimentary understanding of the local vernacular, enough to express desire for elementary substances: water, food. The other members, despite their suffering, care for him with a pitiful curiosity, and the wardens turn a blind eye to the ghost which encircles the world.

Once, in the boy's scanning of the walls which enclose them, he discovers a particular dark patch on the expanse of usually uniform concrete. Upon closer inspection, the patch comes into focus as a matrix of small painted strokes, and upon even closer inspection, the boy becomes surprised by his ability to comprehend such a random assortment of symbols. They speak of hope and splendor, of sorrow and tragedy, of love and hate, words that feel familiar yet unattributable, like the blurry recollection of a face one might have met, a reflection in water. Fragments of great tomes and scripture, some extensive record of a humanity reduced and flattened to some region of scrawled text, things past. Picking up a charred stick from the ground, he inscribes a reply, and begins the trudge to the glorious goal of slumber.

Over the course of years, they engage in their quiet conversation, leaving messages for the other to read. His correspondent writes of what had been, and he writes of what continues to be. As the boy becomes imbued with the context of history, of himself, he begins to age, flattened time expressing itself within the body, the awakening of some ancient, dormant pathogen. The boy, now the man, becomes more extensive with the length of his replies, the wall covered in miles of symbols, as if some mythological spider had danced around the perimeter with brushes attached to its legs, eventually becoming so densely overlapping that the walls seem to be entirely covered in random noise, only intelligible by those who constructed it.

The man becomes obsessed with discovering the identity of his correspondent with the zeal of an individual who finally tastes what they have missed, severed serene solitude. Denying himself his once prized sleep more and more, hoping to catch them in the act. Only when he finally succumbs to exhaustion does he discover another portion of the wall layered in barely intelligible script, and once he finally musters the ability to remain vigilant throughout the entire course of the night, the replies cease entirely.

The man’s insomnia becomes permanent, try as he might to atone for prior obsessions. As the mind becomes more and more exhausted, he begins to forget the meaning of things, the name of the grass beneath his feet, the food he eats, and finally, most destructively, how to interpret the expansive mass of black carbon before him. Reduced to an infantile state, he finally sleeps once more.

The boy wakes from his slumber confused, no memory of prior experience, or from whence he had come. He settles into a kind of routine, the other members caring for him with a pitiful curiosity despite their suffering, and he begins to explore the perimeter of the gray walls before him. Once, as he walks, the boy spots a lighter patch in the usually uniform wall. Upon closer inspection, the patch comes into focus as a matrix of small carved strokes, and upon even closer inspection, the boy becomes surprised by his ability to comprehend such a random assortment of symbols. He picks up a rock and begins to scratch in a reply…

The walls are covered and uncovered by the shadows of expression, clouds overhead passing through the light of the world, marked and erased by an eternally restless figure.

Essay? the following was written when I was 16. A little angry innit. You can tell i was taking euro at the time, id edit it but it is what it is.

Nothing exists in a vacuum, and certainly not me. My character is my own creation- the thoughts, words, and actions said and done to me interpreted in my own patent manner, and yet the subunits of those perceptions are borrowed, their complexities divisible into common, shared elements, inherited genetically, socially, culturally. My grandfathers were awful men, by all stretches of the imagination. Arrogant drunkards, all 3 of them criminals ( 2 in the legitimate sense of the word), the third a soldier, and entirely absent in the raising of their children. The worst was my mother’s father, of the hobbesian persuasion : nasty, brutish, and short. As such, she developed a hatred for the virile latino, Ulibarrí’s (1) horse. Quick to anger and quicker to strike, patriarchal, womanizing, the universal constants of the struggling man. And yet, she married its mirror, masqueraded as a different flavor. Absent are the beatings, the confinement, the overt disrespect, but in their place: verbal lashings, a refusal to help pawned off as ‘inability’, and a hidden mistress. The origins of my existence are not love. The label of love was given to the fetishization of a foreign woman and escapism, packaged by gauze, traumatic adhesive, and delivered with an unconscientious acceleration. Of course, can anyone blame my father? Can anyone blame me? When does the child, dominated by its progenitor, make the transition to an autonomous body? Does it ever? Parental determinism extrapolated out from an original sin, the devil's serpent, Quetzalcoatl’s blood (2). Yet we know it has agency, almost from the very beginning, it utters sentences never heard before, has natural conceptions of fear, or love, unlearned intuition. Or are those yet another form of inherited trait, evolutionary instinct. 

I, naturally, attempt to distance myself from those who came before me. The pendulum’s swing, the Hegelian reaction, the third law pair. I lack the previously necessary adaptations of fiery passion, obstinate stubbornness, abrasives generated for the purpose of increasing friction, barely holding on. My disposition: agreeable, at times to the point of sheepishness. My appearance: softer. My romantic and sexual preferences on the periphery of the northern American zeitgeist, and certainly that of conservative-catholic-hispanics. Through the media I consume, I have attempted to find alternative role models for a more positive sort of masculinity, reading, watching and listening to all manner of different perspectives on what it means to be a man. In mere moments I encounter more varieties of opinion through the modern shifting kaleidoscope of information than my ancestors might have experienced in lifetimes. Hence the problem. Infinity equivalently comprehensible to 0 within the human psyche, indeterminate forms, the internet's firehose overexposing mental connections to null, to paralysis. What remains then, is the constant, generational influences. My relationships are consistently short flivers of sensationalism, antiquated biases are replaced with modern misconception. Youthful revolution exactly that, cyclical motion.

As I begin to grow into my body, to graduate from an androgynous, amorphous, state into a more clearly defined figure, the distrust remains, but directed at the self, insecurity, generationally sharpened to a point. Muscular definition derived from a late interest in athletics alien to skin and bone, the use of my anatomy upon another giving the sensation of self-violation. Introspection, like invasion.

These are the rivets of my armor, personal reasons, explanations and validations that construct my overdominant adaptations, useful only within the environment for which they were created. Your tone of silent anger, your tact, your political machinations of discontent were entirely alien forces. You are older than me, yes, but even if we were equal in age you would be still , wisdom a function of lived experience. Similar upbringings, but you have not hidden behind failure. 

The genesis of our argument was inconsequential, but I augmented its impact to an extreme degree, expecting reciprocal retaliation, as if I was playing an adversarial game. You looked upon me, a bitch unwilling to engage in the “playful” melodrama of her pups, an older brother doing schoolwork. For all my attempted auto-interrogation, I have only attempted to externalize the blame, to translate it upon another medium, avoiding personal responsibility at all costs. Even this admission is yet another way to accomplish the above,  selfish abuse to absolve a conscience. Such a ritual occurs periodically, the indulgent desire for reconciliation, a mind so egotistical that it believes acknowledgement of its own wrongdoing as ultimately effective, and the acknowledgement of the acknowledgement even more so. 

(1) referencing El Caballo Mago, a short story by sabine ullibari in which the horse represents masculinity

(2) another creation story 

Poem: What my dreams look like

Homogeneous uniformity 

Like groundhog days or dead horses 

Papal hymns, repeated verses

Isn't it funny?

Escapes wasted

“what has” 

Not what could’ve or should've or would’ve or wouldn't have…

Why bother really, with all future locations?

Suppositions and Propositions and Dispositions 

Bark-in’ general*

Obsession with advancement

Brittle little coverings

Can I not be left-

Bereft of prescience, of foresight

To my myopic deposition?

*bark in general (brittle little coverings), Barking general, as in officer  shouting orders,( obsession with advancement(

Short story 2

Every now and then I feel the urge to get all uppity and leave. Maybe more than now and then, the feeling can be all-consuming, like an instinct to sprout dandelion tufts and scatter my messages to sea, never to be read. The ocean is blue, or green, or Homer's wine-dark, but that's outside this park. I mean the letting-go: standing still while the water works on you. That's how I learned to read, I think: letting shapes settle on my skull and press their small indentations, slowly cutting grooves. The records are a little dusty, though.

I blow on them sometimes, the way you'd blow on dice for luck, or birthday candles for half forgotten wishes. What comes up is childhood: the smell of construction paper, pva paste in those little bottles with orange lids. The alphabet marching across the top of the whiteboard like a tiny immigration. Each letter a small country I had to visit, had to be visited by, really. They came knocking with their own weather systems, jetstreams and dead air, their own rules about when to be silent.

K was a particularly rude guest. Would show up with N and just stand there, arms crossed, saying nothing.

But S, S was the ocean again, wasn't it? The shape your mouth makes when you're trying to keep a secret or testing the temperature of something too hot. Sibilant, they called it later, which felt like putting a name to wind. By then I was old enough to know that reading wasn't about decoding anymore. It was about surrender. About standing in the park at dusk when the sprinklers come on and everyone's already gone home, letting the words soak through cotton white until you can't tell what's text and what's skin.

Rap on the door, timed to cliché. Call to action. What is it this time? He always has an imperative to go along with the remark. Like an improv artist. Yes and.. why don't we. I open the door a crack and let his sentence wedge its shoe in. He’s wearing that same uniform of urgency, neon verbs, reflective nouns like he’s here to redirect traffic in my head. “We’re moving,” he says without saying it. “We’re always moving,” I answer by not answering, holding the knob the way you hold a kite string when you’re pretending to let go.

 I walked into the exhale of the hallway, air brushing my back towards the vacuum of expectation. Following his steps, tempted to step on the back of his heel or mockingly imitate his stride. He's talking, of course. His mouth moves with the confidence of someone who's never had to wonder if anyone's listening. "—and that's why we need to be there by three," he's saying, which tells me nothing because I missed the predicate, the whole premise. I could ask him to repeat it, but that would be admitting I'd wandered off again.

We push through the double doors. Or single door really, the other door is there for some greater function besides entrance and exit. I leave it alone with religious reverence, clearly the decision of some higher power, like the appendix or the tailbone. His car is the gray one, they're all gray, really, even the red ones look gray in this light, and he's already got his keys out, jangling them like a question I'm supposed to answer.

"You coming or what?"

We drove on the overpass on the way into the city, the imperfect joinery between sections giving impressions of its own rhythm. Off beat from the music. interrupted with a loud "cathunk". 

"Do you ever try to match up your turn signal with the guy in front"

"What?

"The blinker," I say, pointing uselessly at the Toyota ahead of us, having indicated its desire to turn left for the past half mile. "The rhythm. Trying to sync it up."

He looks at me the way people look at the wheels of a grocery cart when somethings gone awry. Inconvenient, impossible to fix. perhaps worth switching out. 

"No," he says flatly, which is its own kind of music.