A Bull at the Edge of the Woods

I was hiking between Bellaire Drive and the Chisholm Trail Parkway along the south side of the Clear Fork of the Trinity River (la clara tenedor del río Trinidad) when I heard a swoosh through the riparian woods. 

I caught a glimpse of a cow moving at a clip from left to right; then, just as it was turning to glare at me, a bull. This bull.

Holy Zeus! Was it Apis, conduit to the gods of Egypt? Or was it Dionsysus or the Original Zeus, chasing after a nymph-turned-into-a-cow?  Or, perhaps it was Donn Cúailnge, the Brown Bull of Cooley, gone to Black?  

This bull is a fine symbol of today's American pickle, the Great Voting Pickle of 2016. 

El encierro:  will nearly half of American voters now Run with the Bulls in the shape of a man?  

Will the Trumpenproletariat drink Red Bull while indulging in fifty shades of phobia?

Luckily we may have an inkling, for a Sacred Bullhorn has provided the visible names of the first fifty phobic hangups of T-Bull-Woshippers: as evidenced in Cleveland on this very day and night: 

xenophobia, homophobia, neophobia, bogyphobia, hobophobia, sinophobia, tropophobia, porphyrophobia, kosmikophobia, bathophobia, medorthophobia, pantophobia, eurotophobia, xenoglossophobia, francophobia, hylophobia, zeusophobia, euphobia, stygiophobia, athazagoraphobia, lyssophobia, dikephobia, gnosiophobia, philemaphobia, geliophobia,  sophophobia, sarmassophobia, erotophobia, scelerophobia. psychophobia, selenophobia, euphobia, nudophobia, prosophobia, metrophobia, harpaxophobia, hellenologophobia, monophobia, spectrophobia, wiccaphobia, graphophobia, islamophobia, ecophobia, obamaphobia, hillaryphobia, fairnessphobia, compromisophobia, wisdomophobia, reasonablenessphobia and realityphobia. 

And if you don't believe it, see here for further cape-waving. Unfurl at your own peril. As for me, I will not be running with the bulls -- but I will be keeping my eyes on them, most assuredly.  I consider this one bull quite enough, as a sign and prelude to the shapes of things to come.

Today's Rune: Initiation.  

The Eyes of Texas: T Bone Burnett at the Lone Star Film Festival (2010)

In remembering that T Bone Burnett had brought up Marshall McLuhan during the 2010 Lone Star Film Festival in November, 2010, I dug up my notes from his talks. Saw him at three different venues on or around November 13, 2010. These scribbles were made during T Bone's interview with Bobbie Wygant. 

T Bone has worked on many projects, ranging from his own albums to the music for Coen Brothers' films (The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Inside Llewyn Davis) to Walk the Line and Crazy Heart.

Bobbie Wygant asked T-Bone about his inspirations while living in Fort Worth, Texas.

There was a place called the Capri Theatre and they showed [Luis] Buñuel films and [Jean-Luc] Godard films and [Federico] Fellini films and [Sergei] Eisenstein and [Akiro] Kurosawa . . . these incredible foreign films in Fort Worth, Texas, & it was like a portal into another universe . . . I appreciated it so much. I learned. I would say it was through these two places, the Capri Theatre and Record Town, that I sort of learned everything I've lived my whole life on.

[My 2015 update]: The Capri (which also went by other names) was torn down I think in the 1980s. Nothing has replaced it. Fort Worth needs independent "art house" theatres -- at least one, for God's sake. Fort Worth's three major art museums are wonderful resources, and "Magnolia at the Modern" screens independent and international movies on weekends. However, new art does better in less controlled, contained or restricted environments; that is, via more free-wheeling & Bohemian focal points.

At another venue in 2010, T Bone Burnett spoke of his agreement with Marshall McLuhan, that a new medium envelopes an old medium and lifts elements of the old medium into higher art forms.

Examples: TV becomes more engaging when eclipsed by the internet (The Sopranos, etc.); analog music (vinyl record technology) becomes more absorbing when made obsolescent by digital music. 

Let's be mindful that we are surrounded by an electronic envelope of many layers. 

There's more, but that's a taste of it.

Today's Rune: The Self. 

American Bison

A good day for hiking. And, for the first time since the beginning of summer, greeting the buffalo. Click for larger image -- if you wish. 

When I was hiking through the woods, a strong picture image of approaching bison came to mind, and fifteen minutes later, there they were.

A strangely flowing hybrid landscape in cloudy light. The black shadow is an idiosyncrasy of the well-seasoned camera. 

Today's Rune: Joy. 

The Eyes of Texas: Where the South Begins

Glen Sample Ely's Where the West Begins: Debating Texas Identity (Lubbock: Texas Tech University, 2011) -- as its full title suggests -- debates Texas identity. 

Which to emphasize?

Where the South Begins / Where the South Ends
Where the West Begins / Where the West Ends ?

Is Texas part of the American South, the American West, unto itself, or some other realm entirely?  All of the above. It is/was also First Nation country (Caddo, etc.) or passageway (Comanche, Kiowa, etc.), New Spain with a touch of New France, Mexico, Lone Star Republic, Annexed State, Slave State, Seceded State, Embattled State, Occupied State, cotton state, Wild West, cattle state, oil and gas state, drought, fire and Dustbowl state, and in some areas emerging -- eco-preserve state. 

To a large extent, Ely shows, determining where the West/South identity split ends or begins depends on how much rainfall arrives: less than twenty inches per year west of the 100th meridan: the West. Transitional zone between the 100th and 98th meridian: Shatterbelt Region. Then transitioning to East Texas = Old South. Let's not forget South Texas, either, which has its own characteristics.   

Upon closer inspection of Texas in its entirety, anyone and everyone would find a more complex milieu than that typically presented by either Texas promoters or detractors. It's a diverse place, with pockets not so diverse and other pockets more so. But why is it a Tea Party led "Red State" in 2014? Will it become a "Blue State" by 2020? How about "Purple" in between?  

The history of Texas has oft been violent and cruel and even downright stupid, but there is also a countercurrent of resilience, imagination, and adaptation to change. Plus good food and music, among other things. Some of Texas is Western, some is Southern, some is a mix or becoming very made over indeed, with a dramatically heterogenous inflow of new people.

Fort Worth, the place (or at least a place) "where the West begins" according to public relations efforts since the 1920s, is as good a place to point to the current diversity of Texas as any. According to the latest federal census reports (2010-2013), Fort Worth is (as of mid-2013) the 17th largest and most populated city in the USA -- one notch below Charlotte, North Carolina, and one above Detroit, Michigan. 

Demographics of Fort Worth as of 2010-2013 (rounded):

19% African American/Black
 3%  Multiracial
 1% American Indian/First Nation
34% Hispanic/Latino
41% Anglo/Non-Hispanic White
 4% Asian 

That's diverse by any standard. 

Today's Rune: Partnership      

Dreams of Daylight, Totems at Midnight

Seek and we shall find. . . Walking around in various places and at different times and seasons can be eye-opening, energizing to the inner realms of consciousness.

Seeing a great "tree" triggers a mirrored memory, a Gestalt effect, a tree totem, a symbol in a dream. We come to a "real" tree and its realness is refracted through our consciousness . . . 

In encountering a great oak tree, what is "real" and what is a "vision?"

The image of this "praying turtle" can refract through our consciousness into a totem, a symbol, recognizable to others by the Gestalt effect. Turtle clan. Cave painting. Cartoon "Reality."

All well and good about totems and dreams. But here, I wonder what this is all about? "The congregation of the turtles in sunlight." 

Saw the ears first, even deep in the woods. Pattern and shape recognition.

". . . many birds and sea mammals have the ability to sleep with only one hemisphere of the brain at a time, called unihemispheric sleep . . ."  (Kat Duff, The Secret Life of Sleep, Atria Books/Beyond Words, 2014, page 108). 

To wit, the phrase "to sleep with one eye open."

When night falls, follow the trail and dream again. 

"There is the ordinary sense of time we share with others and experience as the passage of events with a distinct past, present, and future, and another extraordinary perception of a sacred time in which all that has been and will be is folded into the present moment . . . " (Kat Duff, The Secret Life of Sleep, page 97).

Today's Rune: Defense.   

Buffalo Stance

With statue of a White Buffalo a few years ago, Comanche Center, Lawton.

The American Bison / Buffalo was nearly wiped out, but thankfully, not quite. Most people have a pretty good sense, I think, of buffalo herds ranging in the American West in the 1800s, but I suspect that fewer have contemplated the reality that there were bison in the East, too: among the First Nations (to use a Canadian term), yes, but even -- through the 1700s into the dawn of the nineteenth century -- among the Europeans and Africans arrived or arriving from across the Atlantic. Of those Eastern herds, spectral traces remain. Some of my immediate family, for instance, lived on land that abutted a Buffalo Creek in North Carolina, in the twentieth century. Pretty mind-blowing, really. Before incoming settlers, servants and slaves arrived in North America, there had been an extensive range of European Bison, too.

All the above leads into me having the great good fortune of being able to hang out with these Bison (with accompanying feathered friends) today, after a 95-minute walk through nearby woods. Despite being almost destroyed at one point in the not too distant past, the American Bison, I believe now, is here to stay, in some numbers at least. If you click on this image -- taken on this very day, May 2, 2014 -- you'll see the whole thing.

The historical Bison range-- mostly before the modern state and provincial borders were even in place. (Source: Wiki Commons).

Bison grazing quietly in a field flanked by woods, much as they did in the East. Today, man!

Today's Rune: Joy.  

As I Went Walking

You are walking
Walking down this path
What's ahead of you
What's behind?

You are walking
What's to your left?
What's to your right?
What's above you?
What's beneath?
What's inside you?

You are walking
And the prairie dogs are saying 
what?

You keep walking
Walking
Walking in the sunlight

You keep walking
Till you come to this
And now?

Today's Rune: Initiation.

Cityscapes

Urban social space 2013.

From the steps of the Amon Carter.

Will Rogers Memorial Center (1936) and US flag at half-mast. 

Will Rogers (1879-1935): "We don't know what we want, but we are ready to bite somebody to get it." Killed in a plane crash in Alaska at age 55. 

Today's Rune: Joy.  

México Inside Out

México Inside Out: An Exhibition at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas. What stood out: noisy videos, big installations, color. Weariness of violence. 

México Inside Out: a Volkswagen keeps aiming to crest a hill to the sounds of a brass band learning to play together. Every misstep and the VW comes back down the hill. The Myth of Sisyphus made clear. And: a bullet-ridden wall, disassembled at some point and reassembled for here and now. Visceral response. Sticks in the mind like a jeremiad.  

Today's Rune: Strength.

The Age of Picasso and Matisse (Take Two)

The ticket's detailing looks like something out of the early 1980s. Computer World, indeed. A simple arti-fact.

This one by Franz Marc jumps out of the wall as you approach ~ Die verzauberte Mühle / The Bewitched Mill ~ completed in 1913, exactly one hundred years ago. How many enchanted animals can you make out in there?

Poor Franz was killed at Verdun in 1916, during the Great War, at age thirty-six.

Today's Rune: Signals. 

At the Kimbell: The Age of Picasso and Matisse (Take One)

Took a close look at the Kimbell Art Museum's latest exhibition, The Age of Picasso and Matisse: Modern Masters from the Art Institute of Chicago.  Though I remember some from Chicago during a brief Chicago visit in the last ten years, there are many "new" works to consider, enough to prompt me into joining the Kimbell as a "new member." Hence, I'll be back to see more of this soon, hopefully.

Suzanne Duchamp's Multiplication brisée et rétablie / Multipication Broken and Restored (1919).  Fun mix of color, shapes and text.

Flip the image surface of Multiplication brisée et rétablie and voila! La Tour Eiffel / The Eiffel Tower, as if crackling with elecricity. Are those planets and moons mysteriously manifesting?

Suzanne Duchamp (October 20, 1889-September 11, 1963) had three older brothers, also artists -- including Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968).

Today's Rune: Protection.  

"JFK in Fort Worth: A Lasting Impression"

A larger exhibit than covered in the last post is "JFK in Fort Worth: A Lasting Impression" at the Fort Worth Library downtown. First of all, the library itself is impressive, its architectural spaces, staff and services. As for the JFK exhibit, also well worth a good look. Lots of photos and artifacts from 1963 and beyond, including many JFK-related things I'd never seen before, anywhere.  

"JFK in Fort Worth: A Lasting Impression" includes plenty of Oswald items, and various other local details of interest. 

There's more on Hotel Texas, too. Details like this: people kept calling the hotel during the Kennedys' stay, apparently hoping that John or Jackie would pick up and say hi. 

Artifacts included in the "JFK in Fort Worth: A Lasting Impression" exhibit include this stuff from Hotel Texas (now Hilton Fort Worth). Mad Men mania!

Bob Schieffer will speak in November. Fifty years ago covering the Fort Worth visit and subsequent events in Dallas, he found himself giving Margeurite Oswald a ride from the first city to the second. Odd anti-scoops like that abounded.

Today's Rune: Signals. 

Hotel Texas: JFK in Fort Worth, 1963

Up close and personal at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, USA.  Specifically, I checked out the new Hotel Texas exhibit and picked up a copy of its accompanying book -- Hotel Texas: An Art Exhibition for the President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy (2013). 

When the Kennedys stayed in a suite (Room 850) at Hotel Texas (now Hilton Fort Worth), they discovered -- on the morning of the assassination -- that their quarters had been fully decorated with original works of art specifically deployed for their stay. 

One of the pieces that sticks out is Pablo Picasso's all-blackened bronze Angry Owl sculpture from the early 1950s. Another little bronze: Eros Pellini's Girl from Lombardia (late 1950s). And let's not forget Marsden Hartley's Sombrero with Gloves 1936 oil painting.

It's a small, interesting exhibit.  

Today's Date: Journey. 

Interview with the Buddha

I go back to artwork and gardens -- antidotes to prolix patter. 

What is the sound of 

cellphone clapping?

Pablo Neruda, Muchos Somos / We Are Many (1970)

Of the many . . . whom I am, whom we are,
I cannot settle on a single one.
They are lost to me under the cover of clothing,
they have departed for another city. . .

De tantos hombres que soy, que somos,
no puedo encontrar a ninguno:
se me pierden bajo la ropa,
se fueron a otra ciudad.

While I am writing, I am far away;
and when I come back, I have already left.
I should like to see if the same thing happens
to other people as it does to me,
to see if as many people are as I am,
and if they seem the same way to themselves.
When this . . . has been thoroughly explored,
I am going to school myself so well in things
that, when I try to describe my choices,

I shall speak, not of self, but of geography.

Mientras escribo estoy ausente
y cuando vuelvo ya he partido:
voy a ver si a las otras gentes
les pasa lo que a mí me pasa,
si son tantos como soy yo,
si se parecen a sí mismos
y cuando lo haya averiguado
voy a aprender tan bien las cosas
que para explicar mis problemas

les hablaré de geografía.

Does wireless have 

the Buddha nature?

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune. 

Look Up: Der Himmel über Fort Worth

Archangel's proclamation. Look skyward and what do you see?

Taken from ground level, Fort Worth, Texas, USA, using natural light on a lucky day.

Today's Rune: Joy. 

In the Shadow of the Sun

When you can't beat the heat, perambulate carefully in the shadow of the sun. Here, stone and water, shade and verdure. 

Shadow and hot sun. Lyle Lovett comes to Bass Hall and above, trumpets blow. 

Flatiron Building (1907). Compare with the original 1902 structure in Manhattan. 23 Skidoo! 

JFK Tribute, Fort Worth, Texas. To the left, the former Hotel Texas, now the Hilton Fort Worth. 

Wood, cloud and shadow, sunlight and tree.

Today's Rune: Harvest.