Category Archives: Ethnographic Surrealism

Filtered Permeability

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The cul-de-sac is an archipelago. Each continental fragment host to another secret variant of a species thought so known. In this night, the lawn is not the lawn, but the deep rush and swell of aquamarine encircling. Our young dwell in trees, their laughter fracturable by birdsong and dragon tongue. Care should therefore be taken, for such formations are fragile and each delicate enclave, each tectonic displacement marks clear and pure on this strange map. If the field log makes note of a mystical voice, a creative heart, the turquoise amulet at her throat, the red saliva copiously lubricating the dragon’s jaw, the tiny carnelian breast of the unnested bird, will there exist any true understanding of pockets of joy, renewal, grace? Will the moon rupture the cool waters of the boulevard looping beyond? Will anyone guess or know what is contained in the scattered crash of this tidal crescent? A landscape internalized. Dense and saturated. Gush and roll of distant waves. Will the delicate displacement incite growth? Wisdom? Streaks of lush rain spilling over the megafauna? When the questions are put to her, she generously gives the long answers. A slight shift on the sofa, and a sideways smiling sigh that says she knows you’ll love everything she has to offer.

Notes from the Field Regarding Adaptive Strategies

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“It wasn’t the armadillo’s fault. Just a case of wrong place, wrong, well, you know,” she said. “We had to do it though. The way it just wandered in. Besides, we hadn’t eaten in days. We live like this sometimes. Why do you think the coyotes stopped eating all the dogs in the subdivision? Why do you think the cats can prowl the backyards in peace once again? Why do you think the deer have stopped stalking your petunias? We keep watch. You might not think it, living here, but it isn’t always easy getting to the supermarket. So, well, we just keep watch.”

Distilling Thisness

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Since you know a soul cannot be extracted or even quantified by anything like reason, or in these easy hours of starlight clothed with the hum of toads, you discard the charts and sentence stems and bask in the blooming sensuality of elemental radiance. You said, each thing is a thing that is never another thing, but always connected to every and all things. You are your own apparatus of embodied knowing and unknowing. This one and exact specificity. From the corner of your eye, or in what you tell yourself are dreams, the tiniest drops begin to fall. You decide to remember, or maybe imagine, it could be something like what you call real. More than an optical interference of liquid immiscibility. The astonishing essence. The everyday dispersion of color, light, ether, vapor, and heat. 

Ritual No. 51

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The last April rains pulled the warm perfume from the withering blooms. Subtle aromatic almost gone sweetness invested with a breath of stench. All goes green soon and even the rain makes it so. She said, “Remember the flowers,” but we slept and soon forgot. Stepping from linoleum to concrete to carpet to plastic to blacktop to concrete to brick to linoleum, we decide to play innocent with each inhalation of blueberry, celery, pepper, garlic, chocolate, lavender, bleach, meat and meat and meat. What trick makes us believe this is the world? What trick makes us never even ask such a question? She bathes herself in smoke and rosewater, drips essence of gorse, sweet chestnut, cherry plum, and crab apple. In the end it isn’t enough. The brick in her throat remains regardless of how much oil she swallows. Reaching up through the old gash in her belly, she can wiggle the nested brick, but never quite enough to mean anything like real movement. She doesn’t utter a sound. The roses puff and unfold. Understand, this was all we knew of red. Now, the books, these sheaves of paper, this floor, ceiling, walls, shelves, this door, all covered in an explosion of roses. Our eyes battered also with all we mistook for abundance. What glamour is added now and what hush? This place a pathway. What crushes us more, the intention or the loss? 

Ritual No. 72

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The strands of her hair are strung with a thousand eyes. Glossy wet marbles rattle and blink with each swelling current, each plume of hot vented air. All day the washing and now its reward. She radiates frenzy in blue orange flashes. There is safety in this. The knowing of what is done and what is yet to come. Her protective adaptation. Her cup is filled with new water and the ashes of stars. Above the wooden fence are eyes. Between the slit of the curtains always eyes. Next door every night constant smothering never turning eyes. The chasm in the brick wall breathes its balmy fragrance into her lungs. Vapor and dizzy and vision and gaze. Adder and moon snake perch peaceful on branches. Three doves swoop from the nest of lint in the dying oak tree. The slick grassy mud slides to swallow her feet. She slips, sinks, plants herself deep in the framed night garden. Her supplicants burn bay laurel, eat bindweed leaf and seeds. Swoon and stumble and watch and wait. Their silent earnest eyes ask and ask, pressed closer and closer against splinters and glass.