| i have a photo of my father at age ten/eleven taped to the frame of my computer screen. he has cowlicks all over and pale pale eyes, expressive and mischievous. one day he'll have a daughter age ten/eleven. there'll be pictures of her, too, with snarls all over and not-as-pale eyes. expressive. mischievous. maybe someday she'll have a son age ten/eleven and she will show him his grandfather, boychild of '62, and show him his mother thirty years later how many years since? the projected present moment in which maybe the grandson/son/(future father?)'s mind_will_pause, wherein all these frozen kids can play together on a farm in western north dakota, or maybe the park across the street in west fargo, or maybe oh man who knows where to start and end. would explanation pull a piece away? it apart completely from the fascination < pause > of held in time, holding me in time timeless in |
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i write at my desk surrounded by memories, literally, or as close to abstract as i can get through photographs of the once-was trapped, mementos of experience, vastness and vibrancy blanketing the walls in patchwork security—places i've seen, places where i want to be, and people i wish were around me in reality, friends and family on the other side of the city and in the middle of the midwest < nowhere > and country. little brothers race down a green world valley, sprawl before a tv still on somewhere, stumble with me to a colorless water where the ocean eats the sky we'll be running forever i still feel the sand against my soles in the heat and magic of a summer just beginning. the same sun is different in various moments rising or setting? there's no telling, only knowing we're the ones moving, that star < click > 's fixed like the sweaty bodies in moshpits, in pits smashing tv's, the snapshots catching us caught doing something clever or amazing or maybe just desiring to crystalize the partial second, to pin it down and post it up, to remember to remind to return to these times and continue to learn, to take away.
when age ten/eleven, i had a classmate-neighbor named daiko. come out and play with us, daiko. show us how you flip. frank and i would watch in wonder as daiko tensed up, priming leg muscles with bounces at the knees, then he'd all of a sudden... flip. just standing there. the ground would lose grip, and daiko'd twist through the air, suspended in space, in time. he moved away in middle school. could run like unbelievable. terrified of lightning, couldn't drag him out for anything, not to taste the rain, to play midnight games, as if he couldn't out-sprint electricity. but come to '92, the park across the street, you should see him flip, it's phenomenal. in the spring of 2002, i volunteered a few hours each week at the Minneapolis American Indian Center where missing little brothers aged ten and twelve, i joshed eleven year olds to make them laugh and prove me wrong then played literacy games with six year youngs who crawled all over me. i also processed library materials, gluing bookplates in donated items. This Book Was Donated by the National Home Library Foundation in January 2002: Aperture #139, Summer 1995. a photo journal with varying themes, this issue is called "Strong Hearts: Native American Visions and Voices." i attached a bookplate then flipped through express this. a young man in a headdress and a U.S. Navy suit put this in pictures old faces black and white in language shadows on rocks and soil. in time. i reached pages 48-49: Flip II, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1992, photographer unknown. it pictures a boy, thin, doing a flip forever. several minutes i stared, waiting for him to fall, to fly away 1992 we were the same age—are the same age, if he exists still, his hair a static halo, body curving flip, daiko, flip! against the gray sky goodbye gravity!
where is this boy... now a young man, have i taken a class with him? waited for a bus with him, or cut him off in traffic, or pitied or envied or admired or ignored him in a half glance dismissing just missing 'round a corner while a kindred glow was felt in west fargo, his freedom < groundless > won't fade. ...but does he know he's still there? strung midair that i still hold the book against my stomach, awestruck staring at the photo by anonymous of the minneapolis cityscape and anonymous escaping facefirst into a tree that falls from the page and grows from my belly. does he know a picture of this moment was taken? that this picture has taken moments out of me, wondering where i was and if i wondered where i'd be a decade later—somewhere between where i've been and where i'm going, desisting sliding back but can't resisting just looking < back > in transition without movement but knowing i'm changing. i alter. i open. photography steals the soul, some say, i say it only watches. puts it in focus. if i have a soul, it will show itself in moments, it will live in suspension to inspire and remind. finding the same journal months later at a library, i made several photocopies, copies of a copy of caught defying gravity, the pull of reality, the passing of time. i tacked one to my wall then gave some to frank when i next went to fargo but couldn't explain why it meant so much to pause with that pause. why i wanted him to see we were that boy's age why i wanted him to take them and we_are_still and tape them to the walls of his room where he disappears in the music he mixes, creates and recreates, just as i watch this boy fixed/affixed in the room where i write—create and recreate—where pale eyes watch me and wait for a daughter, where younger brothers don't grow up without me, where seasons don't change and feelings don't die, where dusks and dawns don't end.
'til then... flowt.
 Concerning the reproduction of photographs not my own, the purpose is purely inspirational and benign. I attempt to cite origins and make no personal claims to them. Contact me with any concerns. |
