Wednesday, April 11, 2012

local black & white and color

 I'm not a big fan of this holiday and don't hide it. As a North American, the "visual echoes" bother me.

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I didn't go to any processions this year. Went out for breakfast on Wednesday, sat at the counter of my nearest cafe, read the local paper and shot the images above and when I left, these:  




& last week, at a friend's apartment, these: 




2 comments:

  1. Oh Laurie, these photos are weird and terrifying who are the pointy hat people? Terrific photos. And then kitty after as a balm. Perfect.
    love,
    Rebecca

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  2. Hilarious! The "pointy-hat people" scare me to death at times, especially if I see one in my string-thin callejon. They're the Catholic penitents ... I dunno, you gotta live in this country to *get it* -- and even then, I don't think I do.
    This, from around 6 years ago, might fill you in a bit?
    BENEDICTION


    Letters flutter above a page in quiet meditation in Mediterranean drifts. Upward or downward sweep of circling air rearranges the letters until they form sounds. If words play with each [thought, if thought depends on breath] breath. If I dream with random precision. If verbs recycle like thought, not like thought, which, having no center, ebbs, drifts. If thought changes. [Recycles as breath, exactly as breath]
    Words swim. Liquid as thought, stropped. Dense.

    Carve land. Carry water. Air surrounds. [If life is mythical fire soon appears signaling that things are about to heat up. Okay, so] Later fire appears, flames fed by air as words paint each breath. Watch the striations of color and custom habit their tepid struggles warming to thought
    blossoms.

    Watch the temperature rise observe how it heats the flowering molecules. Expansion exacts dispersals. Again, thought blossoms. Motion in all moments extol the moment.
    Observed pollen bursts. [Mind the heat]

    There is no story that is not true. The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others. There are strangers everywhere. Strangers who stray from their clan on their way to where things are or aren’t the same.

    A full week of processions, horns, percussion – now a rag-tag orchestra – [listen to the trombone’s notes slide from its cavity] dominates a cobblestoned domain lit by perseverance. The penitents follow. Mournful mouthful. Narration as blessing.

    Week of saints. If with the passing of days penitents and bystanders drink the streets swallow or not an extraordinary quantity of body and other fluids. Weak of saints, the distance from church pew to trough, street.

    The penitents follow. Some wear cone-head masks above satin robes to hide their identity. Others, less shameful, merely drink to forget their identity. Optical illusions, guarded confessions. Remorse. Incognito.

    Jesus sexy on his cross, legs spread, arms open, worldly embrace? Penitence follows penis envy in the dictionary.

    God’s rays project through the lowering cloud mass alighting on rooftops and allegories, parabólicas and cables, tops of newly flowering trees. Lines thusly joined refute penetration. A geometry of incognizant shapes rent, meridian points intersect.
    What’s human? The answer is the question.

    As scraggly orchestra members limp off towards the edges of the city clouds part, seduced by temptation. Sun pricks through and men in lime-green plastic suits armed with enormous plastic bags, carrying big mops, scatter from the main avenues into all the sidestreets, alleyways, and plazas of Granada to begin their work. Messages code and uncode. Pass from one to an other. All we know just as we know it. Think we know it. Thought blossoms! Erase from these streets! Amen.

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