Friday, February 10, 2006

Today it is foggy and that is kind of interesting

Ok, so we can hear the highway from where we live. That hum is the highway.

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Saw two snowy egrets coming home from work last night. Also, my employer mentioned that they can't let their dogs run around outside, because they are vulnerable to birds of prey--including red-tailed hawks!

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Last night we went to here David Antin and Eileen Myles talk/read at the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park. This is the 2nd time I've heard David Antin speak--one's always waiting to see if/how he is going to fit all of the themes and stories he begins together, but he always does. Because I became familiar with his work as a "poet," I always forget that he's an art critic--duh. His talk loosely centered around "museums" in in particular a painting in the museum's collection attributed to Giorgione.

Eileen Myles wrote a poem in response to some of the pictures in a room of devotional art, mostly medieval--so we walked around the room with her as she read. Then she picked some work not composed specifically for the occasion and gave a bit of a poetic history of herself relative to the paintings. "Who doesn't love devotion?" she asked.

We saw Roberto Tejada at the event--someone I met for two seconds in Buffalo once, maybe, um, three or four years ago. Phylum Press printed a really lovely chapbook called Amulet. By a copy if there are any left. It's helpful to remember that all these folks are in and around San Diego. I'll have to go back to his chapbook when I find it and unpack it.

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Oh yeah, you all should read about Myles' friend Rosie the dog.

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I find Balboa Park pleasantly disorienting. Most of the buildings were built for the 1915-1916 Panama-California Exposition (for the completion of the Panama Canal), so all the buildings are done in this ornate "Spanish Colonial Revival" style.

After the talk, we walked back to the parking along acorridorr between buildings (lined with outdoor colored lights). In thecorridorr we passed a woman in her late 50s or early 60s with curled hair and very red lipstick, singing a haunting,carnivalesque/burlesque song. Next to her was a basket that said "donations accepted," but in the light all I saw was "do---" and I thought it said "dozo," which would have been like the Japanese transliteration for part of "thank you." I didn't know where I was in time/space.

1 comment:

tmorange said...

the only home i've known, a three bedroom ranch on the southern edge of berea, ohio (pop twentysomething thousand, four miles in diameter, with a college and a downtown and an industrial section and a polish neighborhood and a black neighborhood, 15-20 miles southwest of downtown cleveland), lies on the corner of two cul-de-sacs about, i dunno, a quarter mile from the ohio turnpike a.k.a. I-80. during the muggy summer nights i'd lie awake with the bedroom windows open listening to the faint hum of the highway: very distinct sound, a consistent high-pitched drone.