Jekyll2023-11-20T12:38:42-08:00https://dioramas.space/DioramasContainers that express the observed world.302020-09-06T00:00:00-07:002020-09-06T00:00:00-07:00https://dioramas.space/30<div class="center-overlap" style="width: 800px; height: 600px;">
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<div class="overlap"><p class="significance" style="padding-top: 2em; color: #b3ff00;">it's important to me to be nothing that's part of something</p></div>
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</div>it's important to me to be nothing that's part of something262019-08-07T00:00:00-07:002019-08-07T00:00:00-07:00https://dioramas.space/26<p class="center-box bonnie2">my body lies under the ocean, my body lies under the sea, my body washes away downriver, my body dries up in the lake. bring back, bring back, bring back, bring back, bring back, bring back, bring back, bring back, bring back, bring back, bring back, bring back, bring back, bring back, bring back, bring it back. lies under the ocean, my body lies under the sea, my body traces the shoreline, and draws it perpetually.</p>my body lies under the ocean, my body lies under the sea, my body washes away downriver, my body dries up in the lake. bring back, bring back, bring back, bring back, bring back, bring back, bring back, bring back, bring back, bring back, bring back, bring back, bring back, bring back, bring back, bring it back. lies under the ocean, my body lies under the sea, my body traces the shoreline, and draws it perpetually.252019-07-04T00:00:00-07:002019-07-04T00:00:00-07:00https://dioramas.space/25<img src="/images/25e.gif" style="width: 257px; height:159px; position: fixed; top: 50%; bottom: auto; left: 10%; z-index: 100;">
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<div class="grid-item" style="background-color: rgba(255, 0, 212, .8); background-image: url(/images/24b.png); background-size: cover;"><p class="boot" style="color: #bcff00;">At Trona Pinnacles a bird approaches me to clean her beak on my boot while I stand there chatting. She wipes her face this and that way like you see others do on branches and for once I am the smoothest object around. Two days earlier I sat next to the mailbox in front of a Sinclair gas station in Alamo, NV to call home. I looked at the ornamental brontosaurus wearing a scary bunny mask in the parking lot. I looked at a <a href="http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM6E47_P_for_Pahranagat_Valley_Alamo_NV" target="_blank" style="color: #bcff00;">large white capital P</a> on the rise of a flat-topped hill straight ahead across the road and a ways up. Fires burned north of San Francisco and Peter told me he was having trouble breathing. I thought about Peter breathing on and off for the next two days without reception. <a href="https://www.quora.com/If-fossil-fuels-are-just-dead-dinosaurs-why-dont-we-just-make-more-dinosaurs" target="_blank" style="color: #bcff00;">"If fossil fuels are dead dinosaurs, why don't we just make more dinosaurs?"</a> That might do it.</p></div>
<div class="grid-item" style="background-color: rgba(216, 5, 255, .8); background-image: url(/images/24.png); background-size: cover;"><p class="boot" style="color: #edfff3;">We leave our campsite and drive to town for <a href="http://www1.iwvisp.com/tronagemclub/GEM-O-RAMA.htm" target="_blank" style="color: #edfff3;">Gem-O-Rama</a>. After getting oriented I walk from the Mineral Society show building to the Trona Branch Library to use their communal wifi. I text Peter hi and he replies hi, so he is still breathing and I try not to make a big deal of it. I text that I have been a useful part of the landscape and that I have met my internet friend who is a children's librarian in Los Angeles. I sit in the air conditioning for an hour, the air outside feeling very hot and possibly thicker than normal adjacent to the lakes of curing industrial salt. I can't say I know this place at all but I listen to the reference librarian help a woman get an affordable mobile phone plan. It's not like you can walk into a gas station and ask for help, I would know.</p></div>
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</div>At Trona Pinnacles a bird approaches me to clean her beak on my boot while I stand there chatting. She wipes her face this and that way like you see others do on branches and for once I am the smoothest object around. Two days earlier I sat next to the mailbox in front of a Sinclair gas station in Alamo, NV to call home. I looked at the ornamental brontosaurus wearing a scary bunny mask in the parking lot. I looked at a large white capital P on the rise of a flat-topped hill straight ahead across the road and a ways up. Fires burned north of San Francisco and Peter told me he was having trouble breathing. I thought about Peter breathing on and off for the next two days without reception. "If fossil fuels are dead dinosaurs, why don't we just make more dinosaurs?" That might do it. We leave our campsite and drive to town for Gem-O-Rama. After getting oriented I walk from the Mineral Society show building to the Trona Branch Library to use their communal wifi. I text Peter hi and he replies hi, so he is still breathing and I try not to make a big deal of it. I text that I have been a useful part of the landscape and that I have met my internet friend who is a children's librarian in Los Angeles. I sit in the air conditioning for an hour, the air outside feeling very hot and possibly thicker than normal adjacent to the lakes of curing industrial salt. I can't say I know this place at all but I listen to the reference librarian help a woman get an affordable mobile phone plan. It's not like you can walk into a gas station and ask for help, I would know.232019-05-29T00:00:00-07:002019-05-29T00:00:00-07:00https://dioramas.space/23<p class="center confession-imp" style="color:#000;"><img class="inline" src="/images/23.gif"> A scrub jay wakes me up at 6:35 a.m. Pacific yelling his head off from the back corner of the roof over our bed and then again straight at the kitchen door. I say "scrub jay" as if I don't know exactly which one. I say scrub jay as if anyone would believe we are strangers to each other. <img class="inline" src="/images/23.gif"> This is not the scrub jay I worry about getting right. <img class="inline" src="/images/23.gif"> I get out of bed at 8:12 a.m. when I start to feel guilty about my undisciplined mornings and the unnamed birdie hammers something plastic with his face. Woodpeckers have sturdy skulls with springy linings that allow for a lot of wailing but I'm not so sure about this jay and in fact his attitude is a little fucking squirrelly. <img class="inline" src="/images/23.gif"> I am led to believe by her casual posting up on the roof that the crow has waited patiently all this time. One of us makes coffee and I manage to expand time and space first thing by drinking the coffee out of a thermos that keeps it hot forever. I am not saving a cup today; I am merely passing through. <img class="inline" src="/images/23.gif"> I started leaving unsalted peanuts-in-shell on the fire escape two years ago because I wanted crows to bring me tributes. What might a crow have access to in this city that would feel like a fair trade to both of us? <img class="inline" src="/images/23.gif"> The racist classist fever dreams of my neighbors' posts to Nextdoor fuel some of my imaginings. Maybe the crow is the succulents thief, the Amazon package thief, the magazine salesperson, the doorbell ringer. Right away the crow brought me one the greatest gifts of my life, a scrub jay competitor who I am not ready to eulogize yet. Apparently it's legitimate to mourn the distant as well as the dead. <img class="inline" src="/images/23.gif"> At some point in the last two years I walked out onto the fire escape and found a small orange pile of crisp-dried burrito rice on the rail and thought "the crow knows me better than I know the crow" but for the most part I stopped thinking about the exchange of goods. <img class="inline" src="/images/23.gif"> I haven't seen my friend who is a scrub jay for six weeks and the antics of this new one and the things I am supposed to be doing are distracting. I forgot entirely so the crow brought my gift: a packet of Cholula, punctured and desiccated. We distrust crows because they observe us so closely and value the enormity of our garbage. <img class="inline" src="/images/23.gif"></p>A scrub jay wakes me up at 6:35 a.m. Pacific yelling his head off from the back corner of the roof over our bed and then again straight at the kitchen door. I say "scrub jay" as if I don't know exactly which one. I say scrub jay as if anyone would believe we are strangers to each other. This is not the scrub jay I worry about getting right. I get out of bed at 8:12 a.m. when I start to feel guilty about my undisciplined mornings and the unnamed birdie hammers something plastic with his face. Woodpeckers have sturdy skulls with springy linings that allow for a lot of wailing but I'm not so sure about this jay and in fact his attitude is a little fucking squirrelly. I am led to believe by her casual posting up on the roof that the crow has waited patiently all this time. One of us makes coffee and I manage to expand time and space first thing by drinking the coffee out of a thermos that keeps it hot forever. I am not saving a cup today; I am merely passing through. I started leaving unsalted peanuts-in-shell on the fire escape two years ago because I wanted crows to bring me tributes. What might a crow have access to in this city that would feel like a fair trade to both of us? The racist classist fever dreams of my neighbors' posts to Nextdoor fuel some of my imaginings. Maybe the crow is the succulents thief, the Amazon package thief, the magazine salesperson, the doorbell ringer. Right away the crow brought me one the greatest gifts of my life, a scrub jay competitor who I am not ready to eulogize yet. Apparently it's legitimate to mourn the distant as well as the dead. At some point in the last two years I walked out onto the fire escape and found a small orange pile of crisp-dried burrito rice on the rail and thought "the crow knows me better than I know the crow" but for the most part I stopped thinking about the exchange of goods. I haven't seen my friend who is a scrub jay for six weeks and the antics of this new one and the things I am supposed to be doing are distracting. I forgot entirely so the crow brought my gift: a packet of Cholula, punctured and desiccated. We distrust crows because they observe us so closely and value the enormity of our garbage.222019-05-14T00:00:00-07:002019-05-14T00:00:00-07:00https://dioramas.space/22<p class="center-framed8 confession-imp">
I first met the imp of the perverse at Bob's Gun Shop in downtown Norfolk; my mother took me there to shoot guns. I had a terrible time at the range though I could send bullets through the paper body no problem. Almost any situation can be a source of bad ideas and once my bad idea arrived it was unrelenting—why not point the gun at my head. This is not a death wish. I dislike heights for the same reason; the earth's gravity only holds when you don't think about it, the earth's gravity is an involuntary muscle. Do you ever drive on the highway when the car stops moving and the ground starts spinning faster and reverses? That's what I'm talking about. The whole Earth is sealed in pulverized reconstituted rock in case of sudden gravity reversal, to prevent a freeing of the innards. Preventing an organic takeover. Today there's a heaviness to being in possession of a uterus even if you don't think about it, and I suspect a lightness to running around without one. I overheard a woman rant about the cruelty of having children given that climate change is real. The teenagers around her were quiet and calm. It might be nice to burrow into the soil so that no one could flick you off casually and you could relax and smell your vegetal provenance.
</p>I first met the imp of the perverse at Bob's Gun Shop in downtown Norfolk; my mother took me there to shoot guns. I had a terrible time at the range though I could send bullets through the paper body no problem. Almost any situation can be a source of bad ideas and once my bad idea arrived it was unrelenting—why not point the gun at my head. This is not a death wish. I dislike heights for the same reason; the earth's gravity only holds when you don't think about it, the earth's gravity is an involuntary muscle. Do you ever drive on the highway when the car stops moving and the ground starts spinning faster and reverses? That's what I'm talking about. The whole Earth is sealed in pulverized reconstituted rock in case of sudden gravity reversal, to prevent a freeing of the innards. Preventing an organic takeover. Today there's a heaviness to being in possession of a uterus even if you don't think about it, and I suspect a lightness to running around without one. I overheard a woman rant about the cruelty of having children given that climate change is real. The teenagers around her were quiet and calm. It might be nice to burrow into the soil so that no one could flick you off casually and you could relax and smell your vegetal provenance.212019-05-06T00:00:00-07:002019-05-06T00:00:00-07:00https://dioramas.space/21<p class="center-framed8 confession" style="color: #ffd5d5;">
I went to see the dead gray whale washed up on Ocean Beach today. It's funny that the beach in San Francisco is called Ocean Beach until a gray whale washes up on it, dead. I took the bus to the beach and on the way we passed a wedding or a funeral. Mondays are for funerals but tuxedos are for weddings. I got off the bus at Great Highway and had a ways to walk. Ocean Beach is the perfect place for a highway; we put highways along all our greatest beaches. The sand from Ocean Beach drifts unchecked and I stood on a small dune and pressed the walk signal with my foot like you do in the public toilet. I don't know why the ravens out at the beach look so ratty. The mixed flock of sandpipers and whimbrels looked pretty good. I saw four dead seabirds before I even got within sight of the crowd at the whale. I saw many dead crabs and sand dollars and it made me feel good to assume they were all cracked and eaten by the sandpipers. By the time I could see the whale and her attendants I could also see the Cliff House behind them and an unsettled feeling that I was going to perform dead whale tourism coalesced in my binoculars hand. I joined the other lookers: dogwalkers of course; a mother teaching her son, both touching the gray whale's flank; a photographer from one of our dying newspapers, pants wet to the knee; some guys I wouldn't normally judge but couldn't help myself today. One man climbed on top of the whale. He crouched down and stuck his finger in a wound. A woman came from behind me yelling at him to get off the whale because in mounting it he interfered with science. I supposed the perfectly square hole in her flesh was the science. He said he was doing science too, and I guess he was if you count climbing onto a dead body for the hell of it. I would rather have seen baleen any other way. I had a new experience today: I thought "I could harpoon a man if I had to."</p>I went to see the dead gray whale washed up on Ocean Beach today. It's funny that the beach in San Francisco is called Ocean Beach until a gray whale washes up on it, dead. I took the bus to the beach and on the way we passed a wedding or a funeral. Mondays are for funerals but tuxedos are for weddings. I got off the bus at Great Highway and had a ways to walk. Ocean Beach is the perfect place for a highway; we put highways along all our greatest beaches. The sand from Ocean Beach drifts unchecked and I stood on a small dune and pressed the walk signal with my foot like you do in the public toilet. I don't know why the ravens out at the beach look so ratty. The mixed flock of sandpipers and whimbrels looked pretty good. I saw four dead seabirds before I even got within sight of the crowd at the whale. I saw many dead crabs and sand dollars and it made me feel good to assume they were all cracked and eaten by the sandpipers. By the time I could see the whale and her attendants I could also see the Cliff House behind them and an unsettled feeling that I was going to perform dead whale tourism coalesced in my binoculars hand. I joined the other lookers: dogwalkers of course; a mother teaching her son, both touching the gray whale's flank; a photographer from one of our dying newspapers, pants wet to the knee; some guys I wouldn't normally judge but couldn't help myself today. One man climbed on top of the whale. He crouched down and stuck his finger in a wound. A woman came from behind me yelling at him to get off the whale because in mounting it he interfered with science. I supposed the perfectly square hole in her flesh was the science. He said he was doing science too, and I guess he was if you count climbing onto a dead body for the hell of it. I would rather have seen baleen any other way. I had a new experience today: I thought "I could harpoon a man if I had to."