Category: The milieu

The Illinois prairie, low risings and wet swales, formed following the long gone glaciers. That swampy wonder is now mostly drained for industrial agriculture and commercial projects.  But when night comes (and when it goes) the descendants of a billion generations of bloodsuckers fly out to sip and sup, sucking undefended animal nourishment for their progeny, virulent microbes rendered as payment for the repast.

Insect bloodsuckers don’t like hunting in yellow light (or so it is said). And so moderns hang yellow bug lights to make it confusing for mosquitos and their insect friends. Somewhere apart are hung blue lights to attract them into some killing zone, chemical or electric zaps.

This is all common-sensical, generally doable, and mostly effective, to be finally solved by the first frost.

 

 

But hot-blooded and blathering exhalers, (artists, emotives, artistic types, and the like), are targeted by a different (exploitive)  bloodsucking variety, and are in need of just such a simple defense.

Some artists try to make the mellow light ( warm and wonderfully renaissance Italianate) hoping the bad guys might spend or go bumbling away – if only in gentle emotional confusion.  As to where they might go, it should be noted that dystopian movies are flush with blue light accented by a spray of arcing reds.

Perhaps those annoying “skeeters” might happily depart to some artless blue electrified swamp.  And stop freely sucking artists blood while paying with tiny platitudes.

And so we let our little lights shine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where is it, how is it , that we do our dance … it is the beginning of that time of year.

Awaiting along the side of the road, showing our need for your consideration; we do like the notice … but few pass slow enough. We are here, the grounded midwest, willing to make a show for you as you pass overhead.

A bit out of date maybe, a bit to sentimental, at least about some things.  Out of dispersion here are occasional settled facts, moving to a cold unity.

We have largely moved to the cities but still preserve the American Myth, agrarianism,  somewhat closer than reality allows. We don’t stoop-and-pluck anymore, lest it be for flowers.

 

Shedding of the black dirt from our feet still isn’t complete, maybe shouldn’t be. But that may not matter… for those who fly on-to and away,  to some bigger show.

 

Once, upon a class-less broom, the knightly class did ride.

“All Hail Mommy’s Broom!”   Peculiar battle cry…archaic emotions, ancient practice, a pre-rationalists insurgency.

Boys are always close to wild headhunters: its’ the dominance thing (who’s the toughest is the great question), mythical conquests and lost causes.  Adventures for the terribly cute.  Before riding in pursuit of dragons, demons, and invented enemies the boy must have a horse, a battle charger fully weaponized. As it is, an up-ended broom not a cavalry stallion carries (and teaches) the boy, and all the adventures imaginable.

Brooms are probably as old as dwelling caves (and mommies, cleaning up the mess).  Equestrian sculpture, the savagery made aesthetic, came much later.   Acclaiming in  town squares the skills of warfare, even if no army still buys fodder for horses.

The Temporary Museum of Enfant Terrible Culture hosts a lecture by the head of the ancients, in part to reopen the sores from battles where innocence was lost; placed before you (metaphorically speaking of course), in order to heal.

There is always such a mess after such a battle. Bemedaled and laurel crowned prestige comes later in the retelling and artful showing; bronze idealism substituting for truth.

But a broom is still useful…for cleaning up the mess from the terribly cruel.

“All Hail Mommy’s Broom!”

 

 

 

Apparently, with some alterations on He’s part, romantic negotiations are in process.

As it is, playful expectations are accompanied by that which begets fear; poison ivy, scratchy thicket burrs and branches edging the river’s ankle-deep poetry. The easy grace of youthful cinematic romance (certainly absurd) ineptly flows.  Airy posts, charming gifts, and romantic dress more appropriate for elegant studios may not be the best in a snaggy fact-ladened riverine encounter.  It is high-summer, bugs and sweat, smells and flying insects and snakes (thankfully no venom) and spiders and jumpy things.  The gifts of a young man, the momentary relinquishing of props, the poetry of late afternoon (and mosquitos to follow), perhaps the right words; may, (if the universe retires from interrupting) unfold some delicacy, some grace.

Although well-intended, even the elements of the simplest desires aren’t always landed in the best place.

 

 

He, male guide for this blog, wears his craziness.  It is far to vasty a space to cling only to worried craziness, you know, the interior kind. On a trestle, He is doing what daddy told him not to do; frivolously wandering where other men work. No matter that his pride is augmented a bit, considering that daddy also told him to walk the straight and narrow.

Field (another name for labor), it’s high-summer, nature does the work in grainfields; it’s to late to intervene, to early to benefit.  Time for a boy to wander.

Meadow (another name for ball-field), it’s ripe for pondering the good and lovely, retirement to a simple nap, or onto adventures and the dangerous remains inside the still tottering boy. However, to go from field to meadow graciously, he must walk the straight and narrow, just like daddy told him.

Predicaments, the trestle, no shortcuts (plan an escape?). There usually is a slight impediment at the border of any meadow.

Access will hopefully go un-noted, in the legal sense, now that the cows are gone to industrial pasturage and no bulls guard the harem.

 

 

 

 

There is the hope that He will continue towards goodness, proceeding through the meadow; ambling to a rendezvous at the river.

She, the feminine guide, and his pursuit, is presumed at the river.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gazing, gazing, gazing into replicated delicacy;

one would like …

… a pensive mode, little concern, just the decoration (please), the sunlight, the quiet repetition, the ongoing distance, all those bits of actions good for happiness; some resolution eventually, some hope of a steadfast grip on protective surroundings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But sometimes there is a fight to be fought, a battle – maybe not desired – but, nonetheless there.

No time for the sissy-shit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There must be some moment  when the door can be slammed, confirming entering the confrontation or the withdrawal.  But then again, which is sensible, it is never quite clear.

 

 

 

 

 

The artistic resume, the scribbled history of location-dropping; value credited to an unattainable past held in unalterably storied, and very significant – places.

 

A “wise one” type, common among emotives, has told a story about “previous” enfant terrible reunions being superior to this one ongoing in a circus tent on the Illinois prairie.

Back then, and specifically there, superior artists were more admired, philosophies deeper, emotions purer, significant cultural bombshells much more exuberant; and patrons “acquired” art,  they didn’t “buy” art.

 

These statements are influencing a coterie who have adopted that story and enhanced it with more, very mentionable, locations; Paris in the 20’s, a charming rural Adirondacks village, a melange ala’ Bali, and a private Aegean Island (owned by an uber-rich hip virtual-reality youngster), plus numerous, conspicuously exotic, others.

An expressive street smart type, seeing an opening to drop an emotive bombshell vivid in self-righteous anger, exploded about being “cut-out” of the “previous” reunion by the “aloof lap-dogs” of the monied-class types.  That also attracted a following.

 

 

A robust series of bombs began blowing off amid the effects of the hot, humid, buggy, dusty and pollen embedded summer atmosphere … more memorializable angst.

 

Please note the following …

Instead invective reigned.

To this hyperbolic confusion yet a third leader formed a group opposed to the “tirelessly effete” first group and the “boringly vulgar” second. To this, the third added that their movement had “distilled the paradyms of the past into a new language of art”.

One would hope for an ancient, deep, wet, wishing-well to dampen the fuses, but alas, this is not the case. This gathering of smug, crude, and benighted neo-something artistic types continues; as fuses sputter towards dry powder.

At least the common simili about art/life imitations makes sense.  Let’s not discuss other comparable truths.

Imagine a hormonal bloom, a late-puberty flowering…

Young man (more to the point … old boy), your powers are rather extraordinary in a world of awesome super magnificent and other superlative banter; or, possibly only marginal.  But such as it is, here in the middle of the Illinois prairie, rascals show-off.  ‘Twas (once upon a time) considered suitable to gain the affections of a damsel.

Surely, demonstrating powers in the increase would always be best. Some evidence of growing power, some undaunted mastery, some fantastic!, some midsummer tassel of potency, some fizzing and sputtering hormonal bombs, and the like.

But, some things maybe aren’t so easy, considering modern times.

Maybe she carries her acceptance complex interwoven under cute emotion bomb appliqués.  A bit more openly now than ever before, but, still discretely hidden; luminous, wet, curled in silky wonder.

It just is not all that clear.  Hormonal blooms (exerted emotions) for the rascals, the boys, the young men – expect a solid response.  What is the boy’s hormonal bombs use if not to spout it’s power?

But is there an assertion that won’t just energize another defensive … as so described … hidden indescribable ephemeral bomblet?  A bit more ethereal, a bit more feminine.