night moves

you'll have to excuse me,
been workin' on my night moves...
after you went to sleep so many things were happening...
moon-woken rhythms affected everything around,
our actions echoed back at us, vibrating along skin surfaces
tomorrow is forever tainted by what happens tonight.

"ain't it funny how the night moves when you
just don't seem to have as much to lose"

all about manuela

the other night i immersed myself in the beautiful drama
that is Pedro Almodovar's All About My Mother, a quick synopsis: a single mother grieves the death of her teenage son, Esteban and delves into her complicated past to track down the boy's father...

before the boy dies he expresses the intense desire to know his father and the movie metaphorically reunites the family in the end. but viewing the movie in this light glosses over other possibilities...

Esteban was enamored with his mother and imagined a fantastic
vision of her as a dramatic heroine despite her mundane existence... Manuela's reluctance to discuss her mysterious past inspired him to create one for her, passionately filling his notebook with a fictional odes to his mother

but the moment a taxicab violently takes her son's life,
Manuela is ripped from her reality and forced to inhabit
a tragic role straight out of Esteban's imagination...
her life is transformed by grief and she is swept into
an unfolding drama filled with theatrical divas and transexual prostitutes where she brings attempted rape to an sudden halt with a rock to the head, plays the midwife to a sick and pregnant nun, and even takes to the stage

it was as if Esteban's vision of his mother was unlocked by his deathp; his imagined world became his mother's reality or one could even understand the 2nd half of the movie
as some sort of fevered dying dream, Esteban's last thoughts...

this is not to diminish the powerful journey Manuela takes
but there are so many layers of possibility in this film
who's director was interested in the inherent
"capacity to act of certain people who are not actors."

mood lighting

thunderous lightning

tonight's storm, with its silence-shattering entrance
takes me back to a time of unfamiliar/aggressive surroundings
without any allies within our newly imposed walls,
something unspoken drew us out into the heavy evening
where we managed to find solace sitting under trellis,
ushering storms from the bay in over the river
teasing them into a super-charged stupor,
drawing strength from the unharnessed electricity
while contributing our own as well...

keep shining

following a DC Art News link about glowing jesus babies
lead me to discover the wonders of illuminated graffiti

which only leads me to the opening of firework season
in my neighborhood, the magical time of year when
the sound of gunshots could actually be firecrackers.

but one thought ignites another and all that i can think is
how comforting it would be to lie beneath the sky on fire.

i turn my camera on

"i turn my camera on..."
and the world wells up before me
filling the frame, fighting for foreground.
plants grow towards the lens,
colors expand & saturate surroundings
mythic moments play out in expressions & gestures

there is something about the summer
in all of its excited anticipation
that reminds me to reach for the camera.

heat-induced stupor

attempt to awake from a heat-induced stupor...
eyes still smarting from direct white sunlight,
skin squish from total humidity immersion.
jaw clenched tight in spasmed apprehension
time went soft and fell limp underfoot

what has happened and where to venture next?
fumble amid the foreign & familiar tools
that surround you, beckoning unique usage...
find your way forward with new knowledge.