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Christmas - Marathon, TX

vibrant matter & the low cunning of the potato

 
Even a potato in a dark cellar has a certain low cunning about him which serves him in excellent stead. He knows perfectly well what he wants and how to get it. He sees the light coming from the cellar window and sends his shoots crawling straight thereto: they will crawl along the floor and up the wall and out the cellar window; if there be a little earth anywhere on the journey he will find it and use it for his own ends. What deliberation he may exercise in the manner of his roots when he is planted in the earth is a thing unknown to us, but we can imagine him saying, ‘I will have a tuber here and a tuber there, and I will suck whatsoever advantage I can from all my surroundings. This neighbor I will overshadow, and that I will undermine; and what I can do shall be the limit of what I will do. He that is stronger and better placed than I shall overcome me, and him that is weaker I will overcome.’ The potato says these things by doing them, which is the best of languages. What is consciousness if this is not consciousness?

—Samuel Butler, Erewhon

 

related: sentient root gnarls, the mandrake, eyes

face without fishes

hanging valley at the top of Buckeye Canyon, Eastern Sierra

tortillas

lucky eyes, evil eyes, third eyes

You know the bindi? The colored dot some Indian women traditionally wear on their foreheads? Ash is really into bindis, ever since she saw little girl with on in one of her story books. Now, for the last couple months, everyone she draws gets a bindi. Herself, me, Kelly, Tom, the Sun, Grandpa Rem. These are giant bindis too. More like great big moles, or dark, mystical third eyes. Here are a few examples, in watercolor and highlighter.




Tom's deal, on the other hand, is quite different. Earlier this year he started doing this thing (mostly when we're sitting at the table, trying to eat dinner or something) where he lowers his chin to his chest and says "two Moms," or "two Ashes," or "two grapefruits." We couldn't figure it out at first, but soon realized that he was going walleyed (I think the medical term would be exotropia/exotropic), giving himself double-vision.

I'm not sure whether it's fair to blame/credit the nazar charm a Turkish friend of ours gave him last summer, but it has been hanging over his bed from a mobile for the past year, keeping the evil eye off.

Should I call these things "talents"? If so, they're ones I don't mind encouraging, especially if, in Tom's case, it might eventually place him among such distinguished company as, say, Peter Lorre, Marty Feldman, and (Dad, you'll like this) Leo McKern.


related: ash draws

Chac Mool

A few years ago I wanted to read Carlos Fuentes' story Chac Mool to some teenagers at Birch Creek Service Ranch, where I was working. I looked for an English translation but couldn't find any, so I did my own. I guess I didn't look around that hard because it turns out there are already some good translations out there.

Anyway, this is the first time my version has seen the light of day since it put 6 or 7 boys to sleep--halfway into the story--in a side canyon of Death Hollow.

Enjoy?