Matrix | Moscow, ID | November 2019
Trinity: I know why you’re here, Neo. I know what you’ve been doing — why you hardly sleep, why you live alone and why, night after night, you sit by your computer … It’s the question that drives us, Neo. It’s the question that brought you here. You know the question … (more…)
Castoff Couch | Moscow, ID | November 2019
More than 40 years ago, I found a flawless print of Picasso’s “Three Musicians” leaning against a garbage can at the curb. The art didn’t interest me much, but the frame did. So I took it home with the intention of replacing the print with a favorite photo. That never happened. The more I lived with Picasso’s weird cubist composition — masked performers in a puzzle-like array — the more it grabbed me. It opened my eyes and mind to invention and abstraction. And it helped cultivate an interest in art I didn’t know I had. Now I always wonder (more…)
Grain Shed | St. John, WA | November 2019
A wheat town’s skyline of grain elevators doesn’t offer many surprises. After all, function dictates form: Tall, so gravity does its job, and wide, so a gazillion grain kernels can be stored. One rarity is the turquoise structure on a hill near downtown St. John. The guy at the gas station called it a “shed” but struggled to add more details. “Looks like she’s lost a few teeth,” he said. “Probably vandalism, maybe storms.” I got the feeling that (more…)
Old Doorway | Palouse, WA | November 2019
Five days a week I walked to work through the French Quarter with Jules, an alpha-male executive who lived in the apartment above me. As I sat one evening in our building’s courtyard, Jules swept down the stairs dressed as Carol Channing, the Broadway diva. Platinum wig, heavy lipstick, sequined dress. He was scheduled to sing that night at The Hidden Door, a bar I didn’t know, and he invited me to go along. The bar’s front door was, in fact, very hidden — set in a plaster wall with no visible frame and barely a seam. It swung open with a slight push, and we stepped into a (more…)
Pumpkin Truck | Colfax, WA | November 2019
Roadside whimsy for the pleasure of passers-by is, in my book, an act of extreme generosity. Those Sasquatch cutouts in the middle of cow pastures don’t tromp out there by themselves. Some landowner had to decide that the surrounding miles of empty highway begged for something interesting, something to induce a double-take, something to make us smile. Thus boulders painted with eyes and teeth. Pig statues dressed like (more…)
Shoe | East Wenatchee, WA | November 2019
The mystery of fashion bewilders me even into old age. Every year someone declares which clothes are in style and, amazingly, people buy them. I can readily accept almost any apparel if it’s sexy, comfortable or practical, but so much of it isn’t. And so much of it costs an arm and a leg, appendages that don’t really need much clothing. I speak with authority from inside these (more…)
Cat | East Wenatchee, WA | November 2019
The big feral cat that bedevils our backyard birds knows her place in the world. She sits high on the fence to sun herself. She creeps low through vines to be invisible. She adapts to conditions as they arrive with no fretting over profit or efficiency or right/wrong. She surrenders to her own nature. After sitting patiently for an hour to pounce on a sparrow — missing by a whisker — she (more…)
Pot Farm | Malaga, WA | November 2019
The hillside glows with new commerce — a cannabis farm. I’m not a pot user, but I find this row of greenhouses to be an illuminating symbol of our state’s progressiveness. A step, perhaps, towards acceptance and non-judgment. Cops may note an increase in impaired driving but, so far, legalized weed has had few effects on me directly. No aging longhairs hallucinating on my lawn or munchie-crazed stoners raiding (more…)
Yoga Duck | Chelan, WA | October 2019
The contortions I’ve gone through at cocktail parties don’t make me proud. False smiles, affirmative grunts, an eagerness to excuse myself for a drink refill. For decades these party survival techniques helped insulate me from the smallest of small talk. Your kids did what? You really hate your boss? Can a rash actually spread that fast? Thankfully, getting older greases the social mechanism with a liberal squirt of (more…)
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