The Narrative Image

4. And the Lord said unto Moses, “This is the land I promised you, but you shall not enter. Psych.” 5. And Moses died. DEUTERONOMY  (as paraphrased by Shalom Auslander in The Foreskin’s Lament) I wanted to talk to God the other day. I thought it should be possible because on any given Sunday, if I go to my church, the respectable people of my community are gathered there addressing God as ‘father’ and there’s a kind of script they hand out that even gives you appropriate words to pray. Sometimes there is even a collective petition – they all kind of do this choral speaking thing - usually to ask for health related things. So it isn’t just some isolated crazies carrying on one-sided conversations on the sidewalks of downtown Portland who talk to God…it’s all those adults who watched you grow up and who made you go to Sunday school and who otherwise seem completely rational. What I wanted to talk about was the way people you love eventually get old, and t...

My apartment sits at the base of an extinct volcano…at least I hope so. With luck, the tectonic plate that Oregon rides upon has migrated far enough to carry Portland past the molten magma furnace that fueled Mt. Tabor in the distant past. If you weren’t looking for it, you might not recognize that a small amphitheatre and basketball court are built in the throat of a cinder cone. The following images are arranged in geographical order. The images begin at the public stairwell at the north entrance to Mt. Tabor Park. The route will follow the stairs up to the top of Mt. Tabor, then over the top towards the south. From there, the path will meander down and to the west, stopping to visit each of Mt. Tabor’s reservoirs in order of altitude. While the route through space will be orderly and sequential, the path through time will be random and perhaps jarring. Sunrise – View from public stairs – Oct. 1, 2006 Sunset – view from public stairs – June 5, 2007 Night Rain - Public Stairs, Nor...

I walked into a valley of time. pages of time written by volcanoes a table of contents set down so long ago I would have thought it was forever ice, rain, sun and air – like a plague of mice nibble at the pages precious stories preserved in earth washed away forever heirs to life we who still exist winding through an intricate unbroken plot always at the right place at the right time with the right skills a churning molten core birth pains a hundred miles westward earth breathes, breathes - ash into the sky time and again Technicolor vomit or the afterbirth of a mother’s creation Earth opens herself we glimpse long hidden words there is revelation here the ancient sun peers over a hill illuminates the past “I remember you”, it says “when you were younger” “you look different now” As for man, his days are like grass: He flourishes like a flower of the field; For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, And its place knows it no more.* *Psalms 103: 15-16 standing on a cusp of time forwa...