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“To be or not to be in Death Valley” outfit
My longstanding quest for Cheep has been to capture the look of a disinterested bohemian model in an Anthropologie catalog. She side eyes you in her cotton patchwork gown against a distressed backdrop—fingering strange, decayed objets d’art—like an end-of-times queen of leisure. At long last, a solid decade into thick of Cheep, I finally reached my goal in a ghost town in Death Valley...
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“Electric Kool-Aid acid test site” outfit
Two camo jet planes flew in between the Panamit Dunes of Death Valley directly behind me as I stood for the shot. I didn’t notice until the first one passed my line of sight. Then the second came through sideways beside me before horizontally sweeping below me through the desert floor. I’ve encountered this once before in the dead silence of the deadest of...
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“Military fatigued” outfit
I was into dystopias before dystopias were de rigueur. Among the things I carried on a spur-of-the-moment exchange trip to Russia in 1998: worn-out copies of A Clockwork Orange and The Gulag Archipelago. Dumb American style, I unwittingly landed into political and economic turmoil. The ruble was in freefall. Yeltsin’s rule…spiraling too. Putin, then head of the ruthless FSB, would soon take his place....
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“Quitting cherry bomb” outfit
My first real quit: DirecTV call center, February 2002. Crippling social anxiety and a lifelong phone phobia had my number, so I excelled at awkward pauses, nervous laughter, and average call times. Even if custom designed by the damned to torture me singularly, no greater corporate hellscape could exist. With its fluorescent lighting. Forced cheery attitude. And “this call will be recorded for quality...
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“Soy el amor de mi vida” outfit
I wondered as I wandered solo down the boardwalk on Isla Mujeres in Mexico… in a wave-like refrain while staring into the “where is my mind” Caribbean… who will be the love of my life? On the next turn, in a splash of spray paint and Spanish, the concrete answer: “Soy el amor de mi vida.” I wasted many years steeped in a bitter...
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“Joan of Goat (Jeanne d’Chevré)” outfit
“To believe yourself brave is to be brave; it is the only essential thing.” – Mark Twain, Joan of Arc Sometimes, I feel the undying urge to stoically 1000-yard stare into the distance. I’ve learned that this is a sign to go into The Wilderness. Because if you don’t stare awestruck at nature, you end up staring at the back of your skull—into the...
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“Bloom (in the desert) where you were planted” outfit
My pale flesh and potatoey filling were genetically designed for perpetually overcast and infinitely melancholy Irish scapes. Yet here I am, planted in the unblinking desert. I had two (2) semi-disastrous / semi-humorous Sunday desert sojourns in just the past two (2) weekends. Desert misadventures…ill advised. But for me, constantly attempted. As if I am doomed to be spectacle for scavengers someday. One misadventure...
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“Ice scream” outfit
I scream. You scream. We all scream. (Dead stop.) This would be the tagline for my nihilistic ice cream store called Waiting for Fro-Yo. (With tortured irony, we would not serve frozen yogurt. But will perpetually imply it’s coming soon.) The sweet shop’s staff would posit in a monotone Werner Herzog droll: “Yes, we all scream for ice cream. Yet, do we also not...
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“Stewardess for the Galactic Federation” outfit
Put your tray tables in an upright position, and prepare for departure from 2020. On your right, a once-in-a-millennium scene of cosmic proportions and galactic significance. Though a rather shoddy photo of it (as I took it myself, handheld, shaking in the subzero temps of the Utah high desert). In a spontaneous gambit to witness the Great Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, I rented...
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“Out of Africa” outfit
“Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road,” – Karen Blixen, Out of Africa Before I left for Kenya, I read Karen Blixen’s (nom de plume: Isak Dinesen) book, Out of Africa. Taking place at about this time 100 years ago, the Baroness owned a coffee plantation just outside of Nairobi....
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