the halloween house

I stumbled across this house last night while driving through a part of the neighborhood I was unfamiliar with. In the dark I couldn't fathom exactly what I was looking at (heads? Jack-o-lanterns!), so I made sure to stop by the house with my sister today on our way to the flea market...

At first all the eye sees is the sheer number of colorful bucket-heads - three rows-full, completely surrounding the fence on homemade PVC pipe frames and intertwined with old-fashioned Christmas lights. Upon closer inspection we could see that many of the lantern buckets had been customized with different colors, with a light inside of each bucket-head!

Here's a view of the house beyond the pumpkin-head barrier...! More light-up pumpkins amongst towering stands of cacti! What you don't see is the graveyard right below and the deflated blow-up Halloween figures. See the tangle of extension cords in the lower left?

We were having so much fun inspecting every inch of this delightful house!! However I think we disturbed the occupants, one of whom came out and regarded me coolly after I said "Hey, cool house!" but sister scoffed and said to me "Look, with a house this crazy, they've got to be used to dealing with gawkers." I didn't feel too bad seconds after that reassurance, heh.

This is one of my favorite things - finding unusual/beautiful/passionately executed sites to explore with my sister. We'll spot the same things and then notice other details which we excitedly share with each other during and after the siting. Hooray for super awesome detours...!

all along the I-40 east

My sister and I drove out to Arizona and New Mexico last weekend! Our main destination was the Lightning Field in NM, but along the way we stopped outside of Flagstaff to break up the drive. Time wasn't a luxury, but we managed to make all our stops while getting a seductive taste of the enchanting Southwest. It is magical, no question about it. I don't really know what it is, but it's inherent in the land. The light quality is arguably similar, if not the same as Southern California, which is largely desert as you go east, away from the beaches. Maybe it's the noticeable sparseness of the locale and the breathing room that affords, and knowing that you're outside of a big metropolitan area. Not to mention that some of the most badass and intriguing Native Americans lived on and with it, perhaps the magic comes from that history.

We stayed in an awesome little town called Williams AZ the first night. That afternoon we visited an outdoor drive-around wildlife park called Bearizona (!!!). As we drove through it (windows rolled up at all times) we saw bighorn sheep, mountain goats, bison, gray and arctic wolves, and black bears. It felt like Jurassic Park! Our feelings alternated between excitement and unease, as we couldn't figure out if this was more like a wildlife sanctuary or a zoo. Pretty sure it's the first one though, and it's not like these animals were captured on another continent and shipped here to satiate the curiosity of wide-eyed humans (I hope). I didn't get any shots of the animals I mentioned before, because I was driving, but in the walk-around part of the park I made sure to get a few shots of this snoozing lynx. I love big cats.

One of the best parts of the road trip was when sister spied piles of glass electrical insulators on the side of the road. We took a three mile detour, hopped out of the car and just wandered around this field of insulators, mouths agape and silent with excitement and wonder at our discovery. Had I not been collecting for years I think I would have gone crazy and filled my truck. But I just looked around carefully for models I didn't have and walked away with four. And yet I can't help but think that we'll be back.

On the way in we had noticed an abundance of chollas all along the highway, and a quick peek at the map noted that we were passing through the Bigelow Cholla Garden Wilderness. I wanted so badly to stop and wander around and admire the fuzzy glow of the teddy bear cholla, and got to do so on the way home, for a couple of minutes. Sure it was through the barbed wire fence on the side of the road, but when it came down to a trip this quick, I took whatever I could get.

golden haze

I recently got several packs of the Impossible Project's PX 680 and PZ 680 film and tried them out over the weekend. Unfortunately, I treated them like the defunct-since-2008, discontinued Polaroid 600 film and when I saw the dark blue emulsion face, was convinced I had gotten a pack of duds. Crushed as I was, I decided to finish off the rest of the box, only to research later and realize that it takes 30-40 minutes and preferably complete darkness to develop one of these Impossible Project images! Argh! So these turned out sickly and hazy, but I kind of like them. My unintentional self-portrait to the bottom right went like this: "Eh, fuckit, this isn't gonna turn out anyway (click)." I secretly enjoyed how carefree I was with these polaroids when I was under the impression that none of them would turn out - with the steadily rising prices of film and film development over years past, it seems like there's an inherently more careful approach to how one approaches a roll or pack of film. But that's pretty much how it should be. It's so easy to take 10+ images of the same thing digitally and choose the best one later. There's nothing wrong with that though, it's the beauty of the medium. 

salvation mountain

Y and I have had Salvation Mountain on our list of places to visit for years now, and two weeks ago on a whim we decided to make the drive out to Slab City, where it sits on the fringes of. It was about three hours each way - I drove, and Y snoozed as she had been up at an ungodly hour the night before. When we arrived I felt an eerie sense of excitement, and the bright adobe/painted hill welcomed us with crazy, earnest declarations of love for God, along with other Christian sayings and verses from the Bible. I admired the intensity and passion that must have filled Leonard Knight to compel him to create this art installation, though my own days of piety and prayers for salvation are a thing of the past. When the colors and sayings became too much, I focused instead on the construction of the piece - eyeing bales of hay, rolls of chicken wire and branches and imagining how the project would have been pieced together. We walked back to the car, but not after pocketing a few rocks, and started the drive back.

But who drives all the way out to Niland, CA from Los Angeles and skips a visit to the Salton Sea? Not us! We stopped at Bombay Beach, which was eerily quiet. It didn't have that fresh salty smell of a saline body of water - more of a rank, tired odor, and there were dried up skeletons of fish strewn all over the shore, as well as decrepit remains of houses and shacks sadly leaning over on their last breaths. It was weird and beautiful.

On the last leg of the trip, we made a point to view the Cabazon dinosaurs, but didn't feel up to paying $8 each to see what we assumed would be kitschy life-size dioramas of said dinosaurs in semi-realistic settings. We were happy enough to see the T-Rex and Brontosaurus at the entrance. As we left the heat of the desert and the swooping wind turbines, heading back to (at the time) rainy L.A., I exhaled a silent sigh - happy with the small adventure we had, and grateful for the freedom and panache we possessed to make it happen.

lysergy

Sister and I spent a good chunk of Saturday exploring the quieter areas of Eaton Canyon, listening to every sound and quietly forming thoughts and expressing them to each other. In the morning we saw deer! First I thought there were only two, but then three, four, five, maybe six all followed the first up their footpath, and they regarded us without fear; the littlest/youngest one(s) being the only ones to stop and stare. I loved hearing the sounds of the earth, and being there from the chilly morning to the dry heat of the afternoon, feeling the terrain transform, elevated and differentiated the experience from the other visits I had made to this site.

otherworld

A forgotten adventure from May - my sister and I went for a short hike and, upon seeing this fenced off reservoir/wash area we found an opening in the chain-link, sneakily crept through, and went exploring. An overgrown abundance of wildlife, sun-bleached branches/pine cones, sand and rocks, and a nice view of the valley made our unnoticed surreptitious wandering worth it.

protect yourself

These images happened to align into a column on my phone, and I felt compelled to share.
Coincidentally similar themes: general dishevelment, marks on arms, bad lighting, freedom.

lying in wait

Y and I needed some time together to catch up and to clear our heads we went for a short hike. Y went up a rocky incline and as I trailed behind her I gasped as I saw a small snake curled up and probably just trying to get warm. In terrified hushed tones I pointed it out and started directing her back down. It would be amusing to find out now that it was harmless, but at the time the option of taking such a chance did not even exist. The encounter with the snake left forgotten the waterfall we had hiked over to, as well as the stinkbug that we followed for a few minutes while resting. A small adventure always makes for a nice escape...

love note

This year my sister was my Valentine! We got dinner at Nickel Diner; I got the Cowboy-something which was a generous heap of brisket and beans and she got the Eat Your Veggies, and we shared that as well as a stuffed artichoke and for dessert she got a s'mores cake and I got a valentine-themed pop-tart. It was a lot of fun, and the whole time we were joking and giggling and not giving a damn. She envisioned and drew me this beautiful card, which made me wish I had followed through with my valentines project... so on the inside she wrote: "On our own, we're pretty good, but together we're even better!" I love you seester, thank you so much. Yesterday was wonderful :).

Y v H

After a hectic 6-2 yesterday I came home and, not wanting to feel anything on my body took off every dangling object, metal or otherwise and placed it in a pile on the table. I looked over at my sister's 'station' for the weekend and saw that she had done something similar, and documented the comparison for posterity. Two sisters, four pieces of jewelry, respectively.

I sleep but my heart waketh

Y and I explored a nearby cemetery the other day, out of boredom as well as out of sheer necessity for sister-time. Because despite the fact she has been home for the holidays, my work schedule remains the same (save for a day off on Christmas and the day after!) and I haven't been able to laze around and spend as much time with her as I've wanted to. We marveled over the old names and even older dates, as well as the aged, mossy stones of the grave markers, but soon I started to focus more on the light that occurs during the golden hour, and we hollered (as quietly as we could) at each other to look at this, and that, until the sun went down.