Month: October 2015

“Rapture, Blister, Burn” outfit

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I’m going to see this play at Alley Repertory Theater in the Visual Arts Collective in less than an hour, so I don’t yet know what that title means, but damn, I know how it feels. Like brands seared beneath the skin, those scattered scarlett letters. Banana Republic gray see-through silk top – $5 Idaho Youth Ranch thrift store | milano, italia Alcantara fake suede orange skirt – $19.99 Idaho Youth Ranch thrift store, vintage 1970s? | Nine West gray snakeskin heels – $3.95 all leather upper, made in Brazil | Geode gold necklace – $54, Bricolage | Chia orange leather Victorian bomber jacket – $7.99 Serendipity Boutique vintage 1980s? Made in Korea Vinyl of the Day: “Music of Another Present Era” by Oregon Cheep!

“There’s Fire” outfit

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The weekend before this controversial Columbus Day one, I drove to McDermitt, Nevada to see my friends Ned Evett & Music Box play a show at the Say When Casino, which even the owners admit resembles a David Lynch movie set in the old west of the uncanny 1970s. On the drive back through fire-blighted rural desert Oregon, I followed a sign down a dirt road to this gravesite for Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, the youngest member of the Lewis & Clark expedition, born to Sacagawea and a Metis French Canadian. He traveled the world and mountain manned the West; spoke several languages; suddenly caught ill and died here in 1866. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, his gravesite is now littered with modern-day sun-burnt offerings—mementos of hard desert living. A pink leopard print bra, folded in half and secured under a rock. A full mason jar of either sickly piss or potent moonshine. A sunbaked acid-eyed toy giraffe gnawing on the straw-capped head of a plastic boy doll who’s either playing a horn or smoking a very large pipe. Who can …

“Where There’s Smoke…” outfit

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Red alert. A fire in Grimes Creek is filling the Treasure Valley with smoke. When you wake, it smells of a campfire built at midnight right outside your window. Downtown turns into a hazy wilderness. As does your mind. It reminds me of the end of “Smoke,” a short story by the Boise-based writer Alan Heathcock, from his brilliant collection Volt. I went to see the film adaptation this weekend at the Death Rattle Writers Festival in Nampa, Idaho. The ending line of this story, as the film ended too, never fails to bring hot, stinging tears to my eyes, unbidden: “All that smoke was now just the air we breathe.” And then that Billy Joel song rolls through my ignited tumbleweed mind: “We didn’t start the fire / It was always burning / Since the world’s been turning / No we didn’t light it / But we tried to fight it.” Diane Freis bohemian beaded silk flower print dress (vintage 1980s) – $30, Acquired Again Antiques | Handmade Custom Leatherworks plaid wool & leather vest – $5, Idaho Youth Ranch thrift store | Frye boots – $200 | Geode gold necklace …