Tag Archives: history

Photo of the Day- Apocalypse Now Sans Symphony

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Helicopter, constantly landing and taking off

 

 

Camp Pendleton, California. America is scared, in a constant state of readiness. The enemy is not an outside virus, but a cancer, unrecognizable deep in the capillaries and veins of the each state. And though, the painting looks unified from a distance, closer up, you can see the harsh hatch work of troops in green fatigues in well drilled marches, odd white bubble satellites  on the side of arid landscape hills monitoring each phone call where Russia is mentioned and Apocalypse Now helicopters, dark brushstrokes in the sky, up and down, every moment taking off and landing. It’s not entirely true and just gave me a chance to be a bit floral with language without getting too abstract, but there is something to it. Why is there this massive base in Southern California? A militarized city in the desert? A helicopter, so big, that if you hadn’t noticed it’s approached, you’d feel it, darken your skin to ash, eclipsing the circumference of the sun.

Photo of the Day – Rare Pines in the City

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This piece of beauty lies within the city limits of a sprawling mecca. San Diego to be exact, the last big American city before Mexico (there are a few smaller places before California ends and Mexico begins….unexpected, smaller places that you only find out when you think you’ve made it to Mexico by bicycle once you’ve hit San Diego only to realize you have four more cities, a least, to pedal through before your victory dance commences). Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve only is what it is because a few nature enthusiasts saw the importance of maintaining the rugged, natural landscape that existed before it was dipped in concrete, sprinkled with bits of steel and sold to aimless suits and ties and skirts, who meant to make it by building skyscrapers with windows facing other viewless windows on even bigger skyscrapers.

Don’t read into the description wrong, I love those big skyscrapers and their histories. I love hearing of the odd personalities that once sat behind the old oak desks and spewed out decisions to their underlings or the shoe shop owner who lost it all by investing in two million pairs of the shoes that didn’t make the fall fashion. The millions of continuous stories and people watching, make these buildings as vitally interesting to me as the “landmarks”, the religious centres, the “must see before you die”s. History is not too much different from gossip, with our interests lying in the unabashed, the more display filled and unbelievable epics, but also in the minutia of day to day life.  I find the functional and dysfunctional, the awe of the past and how the present came to be, the rust and the sheen, as equally as enticing and question riddled.

Anyways, I’ll get into that when I am not as zonked out as I am right now. Nature was something I had little to no desire seeking out before traveling. I liked history and nature to me was just untapped land that would look way better with, I dunno, a temple to Zeus to engage your imagination or an aqueduct running through it’s tundra or mountain scape. That’s before I travelled a realized that the shapes that I had associated with nature were as varied as the building styles of all cultures and that they too had their stories. In fact, much of what I respected in the man made monoliths, the variance, the impossibilities of balance,  were stolen from their larger, and more natural predecessors.

Torrey Pine Sate Natural Reserve was one of those places where it was as if nature took offense to my attitude toward it and and flung open it’s insides to reveal the dramatic curves of it’s jutting rock edges, where these rare pines cling desperately perched over thousand foot drops into the banging percussion of the emotionally churned blue sea’s clambering waves. Such a fool I was to doubt the thousands and thousands of whispering words that nature’s picture drenched my soul in. And yet with all the words merry go rounding in my innards, I stood silent, letting the my surroundings piously brag to me.

The edge and bottom of California - Torrey Pines Nature Reservation

Photo of the Day – The Legend of Crenshaw Blvd

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Crenshaw Blvd. Recognize.

Growing up as a big fan of hip hop I recognized the name Crenshaw Blvd as I pulled into the parking lot of a small strip mall on the corner containing a bank, a Chinese restaurant, a KFC and something that was either a laundry mat or an old folks home (hard to tell). The street’s name was synonymous with gangsta music to me with images of 2pac riding by in a Cadillac, screaming profanities at the 5-0 and Eazy-E playing bones on the corner with his homiez. I didn’t relate to that life style, no, and never tried to emulate it all too much (I did have a FUBU shirt, that was multicolored and glowed in the dark…I wore it once). I admired the spirit behind the music, the unabashed enthusiasm, a window into a world I didn’t know. I wasn’t interested in “the struggle”, “the hustle”, “the grind” or anything else political, economic or social relating to the music, I was infected by the fat beats and the stories from a place that was as far away as Mars.

So here I was. After biking through the pretty arty streets of Malibu, and catching the Bohemian vibes and reefer induced rhythms of Venice Beach, 20 minutes or less away, I was smack dab right in the middle of my musical oasis, something I had heard of countless times, but had never thought would ever live up to it’s hype. But with everything, that music describes no just a place, but a time, and a right exact time to be exact.

I had met up with my friend in Santa Monica and she was showing me around the city for a few days. Chance had it that I really needed to use the restroom. My friend spotted the random parking strip and pulled in. As I stepped out into the humid air, the glint of the blue, swinging sign with white lettering above the intersection caught my eye immediately. BAM. There I was. Crenshaw. I took a deep breath. My friend waited in the car, gave me the thumbs up. I looked around. Just an average intersection in a big city, nothing too special. My first choice for bathrooms was the Chinese restaurant.  Nope, no English and no bathrooms for non-patrons. Wasn’t too keen on entering the non-descript purpose buildings, men stood at the window staring out like inmates shoved into a holding cell that was too small to do anything but be squeezed against the caged walls, eyes bulging towards a dissipating freedom. So it was KFC.

And how gangster a KFC was it? It actually was! I entered into a stark room. There was no open counter, no waiters with smiles to greet you, just a two way glass wall with small slots in it. It felt like I had entered the visiting centre of a prison. I approached the glass, not knowing where I was to address, I started into my own reflection…..”Hello?”

“Hello, welcome to KFC, can I take your order?”

“I just need to use the restroom, please”

Click. Click. Clackity. A door, appeared out of no where.

“It’s unlocked”

“Thanks”

I braced myself, I expected a flickering fly filled single florescent bulb highlighting all the murky, gut wrenching details of all types of matter. Quite the opposite, I could eat, say, a popcorn chicken, off the ground it was so clean. Crenshaw, a real mind fuck it was, but I am so glad that the bottomless Mimosas had kicked in and I had to stop and see this shit hole to most, but this childhood fairytale to me.