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Subject to Change Subject to Change
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Entries in street photography (416)

Friday
Oct302015

draw the dead - TLC 54

Below shattered shouting Fujian mountains a patient Maija village artist sketched the dead near the university where Lucky and Leo biked through forests along narrow dirt paths seeing black and orange butterflies mate in dust as farmers planted, harvested and threshed rice. Women lugged exploding white cauliflower in bamboo baskets suspended on pliant poles balanced on emaciated shoulders.

 

Easy riders zoomed past athletic sweat shop shoe factories filled with morose girls and bent-backed forgotten women huddled over clacking Butterfly sewing machines making uppers, lowers, tongues and seamless survival wages until they reached a steep narrow street where they entered a small shop to enjoy high quality Fujian green tea with a purveyor of leaves. 

Uphill were red slat wooden home/shops, street noodles, rice, doughy steamed buns, appliances, a primary school filled with teachers screaming Blend In and hacking butchers.

The artist sketched dead people. His stoic art decorated family altars. Dusty faded ancestor images in temples and home altars ate bowls of fresh fruit and burning innocence. Death worship is a cultural way of life. 

The Language Company

 

Thursday
Oct292015

go slow

How slow can you go?

Walking at the speed of a camel.

Designing charcoal elements of crisp fire

Infants screaming at talking head women drives young ones crazy

In out in out their tongues banging like pistons on a desultory 125cc engine

Propelled by virgins returning home with their unblemished shy dignity intact.

One woman fans skewers buffalo meat to a crisp.

A grandmother suffering from diabetes Type II cradles an infant. 

Shuddering wedding photos are frozen on a wall. It never turns out like people imagine.

They breed, work and get slaughtered.

They trade hands and hearts.

She skewers another hypnotic form of laughter to preserve her ugh, ugh conversation.

Fat lost European tourists waddle past.

With an accusatory tone men get smashed on beer Lao.

A mechanic hammers one sharp line of description vs mundane observation.

Wednesday
Oct282015

Adapt. DRD4-7R - TLC 53

Adapt, the balloon man lived below the hammam. Yes mam.

Adapt, Adjust and Evolve collected everything for a fire. One morning he flamed his life below a stone memory hut where someone - he didn’t remember whom - lived, worked and expired.

Internal passions blazed yellow and red.

Sparking a majestic canvas Adapt carried his bouquet of air-filled flowers across spring fields firing dawn with pink, red, green, yellow, and blue. Dreaming purple violets and daffodils spilled balloon imagery into children’s retinas.

His voice sang across time’s river, Create like a God, order like a King and work like a Slave.

Walking through spring with Courage, a personal pronoun, his flowing mind-stream movie flashed into around through a fine unknowing knowing starlight universe. Pure images were diamonds in his mind.

First thought, pure thought.

Sky mind.

Cloud thought.

His flaming life energy sang, “What is life?”

A game of experiences we get to play. Help others.

Expanding energy waves created screaming eagle dancers.

Two Golden Eagles fought in tall grass to dominate a female. Flashing anger with yellow lightning eyes and striking out with a sharp talon she balanced on a strong extended leg. A curving white tip slashed at males circling with desire, cunning and stealth. Pirouetting she danced between them protecting her flank near a fallen tree trunk. Her wings extended over green forests, Uludag, blue shorelines and across oceans.

Nearby trapped behind high voltage fences on a desolate brown hill studded with boulders twenty wolves died of heartbreak.

One wolf’s eyes were a fluorescent emerald green Aurora Borealis retina patina, refracted surreal prisms.

“I am a lone wolf, like you,” said Lucky. “We share an R7 variant dopamine receptor gene DRD4, a chemical brain messenger for learning and reward. R7 is found in 20% of humans.”

“DRD4-R7 increases curiosity and restlessness,” said Lone Wolf. "Humans with R7 seek out new experiences with known pleasures, take more risks and explore new places, ideas, foods, relationships, and sexual opportunities. They embrace movement, change, adventure, migration and a nomadic lifestyle. I am dying here. I was born free.”

“I feel your pain and alienation.”

Wolves needed mountains, valleys and wild rivers. They were hungry to escape an artificial prison.

Lucky knew why midnight welcomed Howling Wolf.

Tuesday
Oct272015

the long now

Events, characters, setting, impressions. Energies and frequencies.

Remember Coco speaking in Fujian, China? She watched all the university students walk past the old village people. "They are all peasants."

Years later the rich Chinese man in Laos served you fresh green Fujian tea at the Luang Prabang guesthouse. "Children are tools," he said. He had two. They arrived in a Raging Rover using GPS.

Discernment with sensitivity.

Engaged by a stimulus. Disengaged from a stimulus.

Truth-Force.

Signal-Noise

High season in V. Perfect for drawing twilight as scooters mumble putt putt exhausted fear based laughter succumbing to circumstance. Yoke said a verb is a condition. Her insight was victorious. Word got back that all but three 8th grade students were caught cheating on their Lao exams. No surprise there. Delight in the sly, cunning attitude.

On 10 November determination chopped ice, shifting passive years, gears and fears into a zonal transparency of blank eyes. Is-land tourists became localized stimuli wandering blank.

It's a meaningful coincidence.

We are literary outlaws.

Explanation is a well dressed mistake.

The long now.

We connect the dots forward. Play an infinite game of chess.

Checkmate, said Death.

Content vs form.

Existence precedes essence.

 

Sunday
Oct252015

Street talk - TLC 52

Captain Tremendous Tremor here again with an update from the dead zone of grieving Chinese parents and crushed kiddies. One reality shows to go ya where Big Brother wraps barbwire around collapsed schools preventing parents from rescuing 10,000 kids. Educational corruption and fear thrives in a Brave New World.

If you want to play you must pay. We know so much and understand so little.

“I don’t understand a thing. Let’s take the day off and be creative,” sang Zeynep, “grab our cameras and tale a walk.”

Lucky and Zeynep passed through ephemeral effervescent worlds healing strangers. Free non-transferable luck was distributed to the needy.

Air simmered grilled meat aromas in a tomato culture as swirling silver musical spoons tickled tea glasses. Seven tonal notes create cosmic spectrums.

Inside Ulus alleys laughing blacksmiths with calloused hands burnished musical metallic containers. Friends forged balconies, grates, bars and enclosures on anvils with Thor’s hammer. Gateless gates.

A coal man loaded bags of black on his back. A cornered Russian mistress wearing diamonds on the sole of her shoes waited for rich monkeys. A weaver loomed geometric silk ikat threads. A father taught his son the art of carpet repair. Needle led thread. Dusty stories coagulated and copulated on teakettles rusting atop Roman burial slabs covered in binary codes.

Expanding universal maps and NSA spy satellites collected data.

Total information awareness. TIA.

A peasant woman rolled dough to make ravioli-like manta pasta. A brown snail carrying its spiral galaxy home scaled green and white stones as waving antenna received signals from orbiting space-time Dream Sweepers.

Head scarfed women inside stone path shadows near crumbling straw packed homes with broken wooden slat shutters sat in a sacred circle talking and rolling spicy grated seeds into grape leaves. Thick meaty fingers toiled. Heavy 24-caret golden bracelets reflecting scattered light led to undiscovered archaeological sites for sore eyes and a doctoral thesis on amalgamated dust.

“It’s true to report that everyone in Turkey is psychologically well adjusted, employed and content with their free life,” said Zeynep.

“You’re dreaming, delusional or telling real lies,” said Curious.

“Made in the shade, cool baby,” Lucky said. “This is to say with precise specific clarity they have the courage to speak, are never tired or afraid of falling in love and marrying someone outside their rigid social and/or economic class. They take amazing risks and suffer greatly with gratitude. Photographing the universe they rent time-share apartments in black holes sucking matter into a void. Some scribble or doodle unintelligible non-linear calligraphic ideograms. The majority disappears into phosphorescent television monitors where they absorb political blather and fake reality shows. Media buys them. They give up their consciousness and miss the show.”

In Bursa a father + two son trash collection team pushed a rolling cart loaded with discarded plastic computers past crumbling Ottoman buildings secured behind barbwire and rusty locks. Faded orange and blue pigments peeled a long lost hollow bell.

One freezing morning a grandmother staring at Ottoman history lifted her child’s child to an iron-grated window. Zeynep, an invisible street photographer present with empathy squeezed a soft shutter release. A whirling dervish painting with light in continuous mode murdered time.

“Freedom is essential in my life. I control the result with spontaneity. I develop real relationships and embrace extreme situations. I’m a photographer who needs to travel. If I stay in one place I go blind.”

“Our images communicate light, story, form, emotion, information and raw aesthetics,” said L.

“Emotional impact. Photography is more art and intuition than process and procedure,” said Z.

In a warm art studio overlooking a fast icy river flowing from Uludag a female flute player fingering emptiness explained melancholic notes. Her chattering laughing friend created marbled flower art using pinpoint dabs of color in a tray filled with hot wax.

A white seagull’s calibrated internal navigation system negotiated air currents with Winter Hawk, Lone Wolf, 101 Screaming Eagles and Labrys of raging violin string theories. Piano melodies and hard bop jazz improvisation reinforced Bamboo resilience.

A 19% waxing crescent moon danced with clouds. Moon remembered moons in Augustine Fujian. Eat moon cakes, said Curious. Feed dead ancestors with filial duty. A cruel heartless forgotten forgiving month heard sky welcome moon. Clouds explored atmospheric conditions.

HELP screamed in a literary agent’s slush pile. Help was a bulldozer leveling forests to harvest trees outside Phonsavan, Laos. Vietnam bought them all. One tree = $10,000.

Chopsticks chairs tables toothpicks. Wood you believe it?

Lighter than Winter Hawk’s feathers, HELP made fun of people. Invisible howling soft wing energy manifested Beauty. Letters. Signs. Symbols. Metaphors. Observations. Unpleasant facts.

Help expressed brevity. How are you? I'm short, said Brevity.

Help played with variable truth-value meaning.

Help, a landmine in Cambodia below the surface of appearances in a luminous landscape reaching infinity weighted for sensation.