My space to work out some of my most complicated, nagging thoughts, not to mention a meditative opportunity to reflect on and examine some of my assertions, beliefs, assumptions, sentiments, feelings, plans, thoughts and relationships in a way that I might appreciate new, novel and perhaps helpful and informative perspectives. There is never any promise with this activity that I will come to any epiphanic conclusion; but conclusions are never good substitutions for trails of thoughts, pathways of reflection, alleyways of contemplation. Finding the ideal conditions for expressing and articulating thoughts is what is writing is about, limiting the form to a medium of a certain kind, much like painting. And, in my arrogance, I want to say that it is a preferred form: that, unlike painting or music, it provides us - its presumed users - with a level of precision, detail and pointedness (that is, in the most skilled and diligent of its users) hardly found elsewhere. But this, I think, is an unjustified conceit: it is merely another way to represent 'reality' or to muse on the features and aspects of the world, which many have long purported it to reflect and mirror cleanly: a whole issue on its own.
For now, all I care about is that writing is like prayer for me: my genuflection to a god that, in our creation, could be.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Monday, February 24, 2014
(Self) Transported
While walking in Oakdale, you might cross one person, someone you've likely never met before that likely lives just a block or two down from where you wake and sleep. Your interaction will undoubtedly be awkward, them dressed in sweat pants and being dragged along by a dog they can't seem to let go and you witnessing this in full force and view. As you pass an unnecessarily large illuminated marquee proclaiming the divine existence and authority of THE DIVINE BEING (hereafter TDB), wondering all the while why such a divine being needs that kind of publicity if he/she/zhe were all that divine anyways.
But that's aside from the point, and if you look too closely anyways, you must just be struck by a marauding truck, some monstrous beast of a vehicle that exists nowhere else on the planet except for warzones and this city, and while it careens on by, defying every extant cost-efficient, friction-reducing design and engineering recommendation, one can't help but sympathize - if just for a moment - with how cool it might be. But for every moment, there are ten others that stink of environmental degradation, general noisiness, obnoxiousness and unbridled masculinity. So this is what people think of you.
As dusk wears on, fewer people stroll the sidewalks, and more white and red lights dominate the streets. This is when one must be hyperviligant, observant on all sides of lurking beasts: you never know when one might pounce.
...
For a moment after passing the bike-topic mini-mountain hastily constructed outside of a 7-eleven in anxious anticipation of a slurpee, you recognize something that had been there all along but that from which all of the other sights and sounds had been distracting you: the profound stillness in the air, a cold coming on slowly but not forcibly or meanly, greeting you on your walk home from school or work (or both), casually talking up your flank as you tiredly shoulder the increasingly burdensome bag that you can't seem to empty too quickly of books. But that is your lot, you know, and you accept it, even welcome it. To cafes, to bars, to places where it really isn't socially acceptable to sit and read; even propriety doesn't stand in your way, old friend, you bookish one you.
This is how you end your days, sometimes how you begin your days, and you look forward to its anchoring function in your life, the time when you can think, reflect and ponder, make sense of and order your life, like you order your days with calendars and clocks; if only existential desires might fit the same kind of form. And you try to do that very thing, with varying levels of success. Let's see how it works this time.
Oh how common is such a world.
But that's aside from the point, and if you look too closely anyways, you must just be struck by a marauding truck, some monstrous beast of a vehicle that exists nowhere else on the planet except for warzones and this city, and while it careens on by, defying every extant cost-efficient, friction-reducing design and engineering recommendation, one can't help but sympathize - if just for a moment - with how cool it might be. But for every moment, there are ten others that stink of environmental degradation, general noisiness, obnoxiousness and unbridled masculinity. So this is what people think of you.
As dusk wears on, fewer people stroll the sidewalks, and more white and red lights dominate the streets. This is when one must be hyperviligant, observant on all sides of lurking beasts: you never know when one might pounce.
...
For a moment after passing the bike-topic mini-mountain hastily constructed outside of a 7-eleven in anxious anticipation of a slurpee, you recognize something that had been there all along but that from which all of the other sights and sounds had been distracting you: the profound stillness in the air, a cold coming on slowly but not forcibly or meanly, greeting you on your walk home from school or work (or both), casually talking up your flank as you tiredly shoulder the increasingly burdensome bag that you can't seem to empty too quickly of books. But that is your lot, you know, and you accept it, even welcome it. To cafes, to bars, to places where it really isn't socially acceptable to sit and read; even propriety doesn't stand in your way, old friend, you bookish one you.
This is how you end your days, sometimes how you begin your days, and you look forward to its anchoring function in your life, the time when you can think, reflect and ponder, make sense of and order your life, like you order your days with calendars and clocks; if only existential desires might fit the same kind of form. And you try to do that very thing, with varying levels of success. Let's see how it works this time.
Oh how common is such a world.
Sunday, February 9, 2014
Art Blog Introduction Statement: Oakdale Project (aka Reflections On A City Without a Place)
It's hard to say what any place is really about, so I'm not even going to try to do that here. I'm just going to leave some of my impressions of a place that I've gotten to know just a little bit too well, and I want to document some of my history with it.
The traces left here are little testament to all that I've experienced and done while living here and really only an introduction to a way of life, in some ways similar to ways of life elsewhere and in some ways distinct and remarkable. I do not purport to say or accomplish much with these transient, experiential ramblings, but I do hope something is 'gotten' or 'learned' or 'appreciated,' if all this means is that you liked the pretty pictures or how I used a verb in a certain way.
Otherwise, I do not have much more to say, aside from: Thanks for Stopping By and...
Welcome to Oakdale
(and please do feel free to leave traces of your thoughts, too: those are really what I care about)
The Art of Summer Survival; The Pools of Oakdale
Summers
Oakdale summers are hot summers; we are not talking eighty to ninety degree warms days punctuating otherwise pleasant, breezy, coastal weather. These are triple-digit summers, the kind we're later proud-to-brag-we-endured summers. Talking about the heat and cautioning others about it- and how we might avoid it - comes to replace 'take care' or 'have a good day.' Instead, we're left with: "stay outta the heat."
These are typically dry times, too, which is supposed to make the climate more bearable. All the same, the offending, imposing heat incinerates any possibility of real interaction with the outside environment. Taking walks involves covering every exposed part of skin, swiftly moving from dark shade-patch to light tree-cover and carrying gallons of water for fear of dehydration.
But it is not as though we actually have to face these treacherous conditions. One can, if they have the privilege of not working in the environment (which so many people do not), just stay inside. And, once done, the rest will too.
Pools
But we like to be outside. To cope, we've institutionalized pool-ing here. Pools serve as an oasis, a recreational opportunity to brave the warm weather, with a relatively certain promise of a cool outlet for these desires.
Pools come in an assortment of shapes, depths, colors, designs, layouts and yard-situations. They are, in a way, the symbol of upper-middle-class success. "We've made it, so let's get a pool."
There are 'doughboys', impermanent pools that sometimes pre-purchasedly inhabit the monstrously immense warehouses of Costco. Doughboys are smaller but a nice compromise, still providing a much needed sanctuary from an otherwise untimely heat-induced fate.
Inset pools have a longer life, and can often reach a greater depth, emanating a sort of religious permanence and a kind of human defiance of the local environmental conditions; it is, as well, a way of bringing and safeguarding water, what is absent, to the home, not even to be consumed but to be leisured in.
Spas and Jacuzzis are mainly nighttime affairs. They play on our bodies ecstatic and comfort-seeking obsession associated with being warmed to a certain temperature. The relax, calming effect of the Jacuzzi simulates that of the Sauna and doesn't require the same level of investment. It is also, status-wise, how one moves from solely having pool; that is, having the ability both to cool on warm days and to warm on cool nights.
Insulating its parishioners from the actual state of the local climate is as much part of enjoying pools as is any recreational activity facilitated by their presence, and the presence of water. It also seems to remind us of a primordial relationship with the stuff that we will never be able to escape, as much property values and urban flight encourage it.
Rivers and Reservoirs
In addition to constructed pools, there are numerous rivers, creeks, reservoirs, and 'naturally'-occurring bodies of flowing or still water. They are to be found both in town and outside of it, and if you move further away, you might even find a dam or two.
These might weave in and around roads or border long expanses of fields and orchards. Often, they are drawn from for irrigation purposes.
It is also widely known that Oakdale survives and thrives largely on the presence of an underground reservoir of clean, flowing water, without which, we might be be in the same situation in which unknowingly citizens of LA or San Francisco find themselves: up a creek (but really, just dependent on more hinter-landing batteries of thirst-quenching water).
Note: I've included a few photos here, but more will follow
Oakdale summers are hot summers; we are not talking eighty to ninety degree warms days punctuating otherwise pleasant, breezy, coastal weather. These are triple-digit summers, the kind we're later proud-to-brag-we-endured summers. Talking about the heat and cautioning others about it- and how we might avoid it - comes to replace 'take care' or 'have a good day.' Instead, we're left with: "stay outta the heat."
These are typically dry times, too, which is supposed to make the climate more bearable. All the same, the offending, imposing heat incinerates any possibility of real interaction with the outside environment. Taking walks involves covering every exposed part of skin, swiftly moving from dark shade-patch to light tree-cover and carrying gallons of water for fear of dehydration.
But it is not as though we actually have to face these treacherous conditions. One can, if they have the privilege of not working in the environment (which so many people do not), just stay inside. And, once done, the rest will too.
Pools
Pools come in an assortment of shapes, depths, colors, designs, layouts and yard-situations. They are, in a way, the symbol of upper-middle-class success. "We've made it, so let's get a pool."
There are 'doughboys', impermanent pools that sometimes pre-purchasedly inhabit the monstrously immense warehouses of Costco. Doughboys are smaller but a nice compromise, still providing a much needed sanctuary from an otherwise untimely heat-induced fate.
Inset pools have a longer life, and can often reach a greater depth, emanating a sort of religious permanence and a kind of human defiance of the local environmental conditions; it is, as well, a way of bringing and safeguarding water, what is absent, to the home, not even to be consumed but to be leisured in.
Spas and Jacuzzis are mainly nighttime affairs. They play on our bodies ecstatic and comfort-seeking obsession associated with being warmed to a certain temperature. The relax, calming effect of the Jacuzzi simulates that of the Sauna and doesn't require the same level of investment. It is also, status-wise, how one moves from solely having pool; that is, having the ability both to cool on warm days and to warm on cool nights.
Insulating its parishioners from the actual state of the local climate is as much part of enjoying pools as is any recreational activity facilitated by their presence, and the presence of water. It also seems to remind us of a primordial relationship with the stuff that we will never be able to escape, as much property values and urban flight encourage it.
Rivers and Reservoirs
In addition to constructed pools, there are numerous rivers, creeks, reservoirs, and 'naturally'-occurring bodies of flowing or still water. They are to be found both in town and outside of it, and if you move further away, you might even find a dam or two.These might weave in and around roads or border long expanses of fields and orchards. Often, they are drawn from for irrigation purposes.
It is also widely known that Oakdale survives and thrives largely on the presence of an underground reservoir of clean, flowing water, without which, we might be be in the same situation in which unknowingly citizens of LA or San Francisco find themselves: up a creek (but really, just dependent on more hinter-landing batteries of thirst-quenching water).
Note: I've included a few photos here, but more will follow
Rain, Rain (Please don't) Go Away: Come Again Another Day
Rain in Oakdale brings a new and different kind of reassuring, if unanticipated calm, and especially now. For some time, California has been experiencing routine and persistent droughts, as if someone on high is holding out on us.This issue, while an inconvenience to many, is felt all the more acutely in places like Oakdale, where industry is primarily agricultural, and our very subsistence, not to mention general economic improvement largely rests on a key variable over which we have no control.
If there is no rain, there is no Oakdale: the grass would permanently yellow, crops would wilt and perish, and animals would thirst.
Many who live in town are nevertheless often caught unprepared and the normal sartorial precautions one might expect to witness elsewhere are not even given a second thought (as if it were an affront to our sense of personal survivability to actually outfit ourselves in appropriate ways).
Nevertheless, we press on, while the rainclouds pour and the streets fill, patently surprised at the presence of a thing that they are incapable of swallowing: somehow we make it through.Many are annoyed, but those of us who are doomed to be kids at heart no matter what our age still take pleasure in pushing headlong in pooled bodies of parking-lot street water, lamenting its inevitable dissipation by the unfun gods of City Park and Rec.
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