Ewww of the Day

i usually have a pretty good poker face when it comes to kids + the stuff they show me, but i gotta admit i had a strong reaction when i saw these two dried out frogs sitting in the palm of a third grader's hand. what a way to go.

OOJ: Fish I Have Loved

while i don't like to eat fish, i've always felt happier when looking at fish. besides just being inherently cool + zen, fish are also culturally cool for me b/c "fish" in mandarin sounds like the word for "luck", which is why ppl bust out tons of fish during big holidays. "fish" in mandarin also sounds like the last character in my chinese name- more points for fish. lately, i've been gifted with lots of fish prints- from pajama pants to a fabulous red carryall bag (look closely: the mouth is a zipper!!!), which my PR immediately pronounced "the most useless bag ever", which just proves how un-fishworthy he is.

OOJ: High As An Elephant's Eye

i know nothing about nature. i came up on paved streets + malls- i can name maybe 3 kinds of trees (maple, fir, pine- wait is fir + pine the same thing? oh, birch! birch is a tree) but i can rattle off 50 chain clothing stores. i definitely didn't know sunflowers can grow to over 10 feet tall. i found these sunflowers in the school garden, which owes its existence to Mr. Goss, 4th-5th gr. special ed teacher, who spends his breaks teaching kids how to grow stuff. (he's also the one responsible for the Matilda sculptures from an earlier post). 

my south valley kids, who live in a world of fields + ditches (every story they tell me seems to involve a ditch- "we were down by the ditch when..."), know so much more than i do about the natural world. some of it is accurate. one kid showed me how to pluck sunflower seeds from the middle of the flower- you can eat them straight from the plant! it's weirdly wet. another kid scoffed at me when i referred to these as "giant sunflowers". he claims he's seen ones that are as tall as a house. 

here's another find from school. this one freaked me out a little. 

i still can't look at the photo for very long. the kids say it's a crayfish, but how in the world did it end up on a bone dry, rocky patch in an elementary school? don't these things live in water? it looks like a lobster, so it must live in water, right? but scorpions do too, kind of, but they live in desert. is it a scorpion?

NFF: BWI Airport, Concourse C, Hanover, Maryland

sunday, 15 july 2012
12:46 pm

the most eerily empty airport concourse i've been in yet. there were maybe 7 ppl in line for security, so i found myself at my assigned gate an hour early. in a concourse with 16ish gates, only 3 were open. the other gates didn't even have chairs in them- just huge expanses of carpet and windows. two girls took advantage of the space to play a shrieking game of tag. i claim an empty gate for myself, feeling like a rock star- so much luxurious room to stretch + journal + reflect on the past weekend in maryland, where i spent sweet times w/old friends. after almost a year in a new city, it's a kind of relief to hang out w/ppl who know where i came from, both geographically + psychically. i don't have to explain myself.

another little girl in pigtails clomps by with all the arrogance that comes with being 4 years old. something is off about her gait; i look down at her feet and realize she's wearing a pair of high-heeled women's clogs. she is followed by a 10-year-old boy and a bag-laden woman with only brown socks on her feet.

view from airplane on the approach into abq

7.10.1981

grainy flashes, reel-to-reel
coconut cream frosting
my dirty nubby dress
you: silent
me: silent


evolution: spiky soft hair to high + tight
nursery rhymes to Nas
soft bone to hard muscle

i left you behind with violence.


i'm so sorry.

baby boy
come back

OOJ: Assvengers Assemble

Mark Bolk's brilliant re-rendering of a Marvel's Avengers cover illustration.

props to Mark Bolk, a Washington, D.C. illustrator, for spoofing Marvel Comics' Avengers by drawing the men in classic comic book female poses. i especially love the expression on Black Widow's face- "WTF, guys???" Bolk's version of Hulk is also endearing. brilliant stuff.