.
Lo-Cost Liquor, Berkeley: photo by efo, 30 July 2005
Postcolonial history reads differently for the winners, enveloped in the conceptual transparency of their own guiltlessness, their difference.
Numbly so musing when a clumsy footfall in the night startles the mother deer out of her browsing covert on the hillside of the haunted house above Southampton,
a darker shadow against the deep background obscurity, and she springs from the concealing underbrush into the path of the approaching headlights,
her two maturing offspring follow and somehow as incredible as fairytale apparitions all three shadows emerge a long moment later on the other side of the road.
To every wild creature the signal of homo sapiens approaching is always a credible threat. The incredibility of the certainty
of the universal threat posed by homo necans hangs in the wet air under the thick umbrella of fog, far away across the invisible bay from the Season Opening Opera Gala
far from the warm virtual fireside glow of cell phones bathing patrons supping upon caviar and egg mousseline, Maine lobster medallions, seared squab and Cherries Jubilee, unseen
far away across the Bay, off the freeway exit, the cool neon azure circle of the Blue Moon Saloon floats in particulate city mist
above a shapeless homo-sapiens-size figure clutching a crumpled brown paper bag,
as though the contents of a brown paper bag at the bus stop on San Pablo were the Lotus, the last chance to be honest.
Numbly so musing when a clumsy footfall in the night startles the mother deer out of her browsing covert on the hillside of the haunted house above Southampton,
a darker shadow against the deep background obscurity, and she springs from the concealing underbrush into the path of the approaching headlights,
her two maturing offspring follow and somehow as incredible as fairytale apparitions all three shadows emerge a long moment later on the other side of the road.
To every wild creature the signal of homo sapiens approaching is always a credible threat. The incredibility of the certainty
of the universal threat posed by homo necans hangs in the wet air under the thick umbrella of fog, far away across the invisible bay from the Season Opening Opera Gala
far from the warm virtual fireside glow of cell phones bathing patrons supping upon caviar and egg mousseline, Maine lobster medallions, seared squab and Cherries Jubilee, unseen
far away across the Bay, off the freeway exit, the cool neon azure circle of the Blue Moon Saloon floats in particulate city mist
above a shapeless homo-sapiens-size figure clutching a crumpled brown paper bag,
as though the contents of a brown paper bag at the bus stop on San Pablo were the Lotus, the last chance to be honest.
Jay Vee Liquors, Berkeley: photo by efo, 30 July 2005
Performer at the San Francisco Opera Guild's Opera Ball 2011, "An Evening in the Forbidden City": photo by Hardy Wilson/San Francisco Examiner
Tip Top Liquor, Berkeley : photo by efo, 30 July 2005
Performer at the San Francisco Opera Guild's Opera Ball 2011, "An Evening in the Forbidden City": photo by Hardy Wilson/San Francisco Examiner
Statewide Liquors 2, Berkeley: photo by efo, 30 July 2005
These are powerful juxtapositions.
ReplyDeleteExactly as EKSwitaj says, these are powerful juxtapositions that seem like reflections and refractions coursing back-and-forth among mirrored interiors and exteriors of a world that feels like one large room where everyone is trapped. The sounds here are quite remarkable (mousseline/unseen must be a first). “The incredibility of the certainty" sort of says it all, but since that certainty is homo necans, that says it all in even fewer words. The colors are very powerful and right also, although I have to say that I feel a little sorry for the foolish society women who wandered in here. I assume there was something printed on the back of their ball tickets granting the world a license to view them; if they noticed it at all, I imagine they embraced it and looked forward to the occasion, but were imagining something quite different than their current frieze location. Another example of the incredibility of the certainty, I guess. Curtis
ReplyDeleteHello, and thanks, Elizabeth and Curtis.
ReplyDeleteCurtis, "imagining something quite different than their current frieze location" probably about covers it. Now that you mention it.
This could be one of those posts that are seen exclusively by the up-before-breakfast audience.
And then, poof, the unseen mousseline.
See what I mean?
ReplyDeleteYes, I do. It's a marvelous poem and was (and is) a revelatory assemblage. I think the main revelation (if I may be so grand) for me over the past several years has been my many unvarnished face-to-face (and knife-in-the-back) meetings with homo necans. I never knew, although I'm embarrassed to say, my mother always told me so. Curtis
ReplyDeleteShe was right, I reckon.
ReplyDeleteAnd in saying this, we have entered The Forbidden City.