This blog is to talk about my interests in travel, the outdoors, music, art, writing and literature; all of which have altered my views of this small world.
Friday, May 3, 2013
Farewell to Manzanar: Book Review
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Music in Los Angeles and the Hotbed of Talent: Birthday Weekend
My friend Tom on the bass. |
Rivet |
Honduras Kitchen flyer: Punta Cartel |
Buyepongo |
House Lounge flyer featuring all the bands. |
Good Micheladas |
Flyer for the nigh's event. |
Me |
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Growing up in Los Angeles (Part Fourteen): Los Angeles Pompeii
Part 14: Los Angeles Pompeii
By Armando Ortiz
I walked across campus today, from the student union out to the new library. Every step I took brought back reminders of when I’d walk the dry and brittle field. The Southern California summer sun shone on me and the perspiration on my body transported me to that time, when days were hot, and afternoons were spent playing baseball, practicing catch with brown leather gloves, and drinking from the water fountains.
Today, a layer of grey concrete and black asphalt covered it all, like the sweat that covered the body after running up and down the bleachers that were there, the field was not there anymore, but was with me (but my feet were walking on the grass).
Layers of memories and strata of former realities lie beneath, unexposed to the eye and deep as the Grand Canyon, like the strawberry shortcake that I’d cut for my birthday. Like a time capsule that silently waits to be uncovered, unearthed at once as we walk past once beaten paths.
It seemed like walking through library stacks and passing encyclopedias of instances that were covered within the new structures. Then I imagined giant Caterpillar engines tearing through walls, crumbling adobe foundations and old rail tracks, and within the creamy icing and layers of cake I would find pieces of strawberry. Birthday celebrations and a time of carefree childhood came to be. Rows of dusty tomes describing a Los Angeles that was, with its collective history of gestures and looks, with smiles and frowns, with unknown pine boxes covered in dirt and memories hidden in that forest of the mind like a Pompeii of the American dream, like a desert mirage that dissipates as we arrive.
For an instant, I think of those Shanghaied from foreign lands, desperados enslaved in native shores, of the families that came from distant countries, traditions casting shadow of when the elderly were cared for and plates of food that were always shared. Images instantly conjured up by the mind, but I return to the present, and remember the child that didn’t fear the sun, and the home-runs that were scored during the endless afternoons.
The real libraries of this city are edited by film crews, and bulldozed by giant yellow tractors, reconstructed by unregistered names, making sterilized versions of what was and isn’t, projecting a collective memory of the population, but my experience is here on this land and on that invisible and forgotten field. Memories are like shadow puppets to the mind, every surface has unseen layers of personal experience and every detail is hidden behind a blinding silhouette.
Potter fields talk to us with multi-colored beaded work, Jade bracelets, and Mexican silver coins, click clack against each other inside Chumash baskets, where golden Mormon books, adjacent to iron skillets, porcelain pipes with sage, and tomahawk smokers filled with opium adorned by the scattered burial incense of tobacco, veiled over by cement sidewalks that are imprinted with acronyms of local hoods.
Hieroglyphs spray painted on the walls of crumbling plastered walls testifying of the presence of earth’s gypsies, shadows of the past casting images with the present light on nameless graves where mummified miners lay forgotten. What memories did they take into the eternal time clock?
Walking across campus also brought back that tumultuous time, when glass pipes were used and broken, and jitteriness was a vexing reality, mother would come home tired and unharmed at half past eleven, after the sirens and flashing red lights disappeared from down the street. Unknown shadows would merge with darkness stabbed by the hand of death that quickens time. The glare of the television had us captive and its luminosity kept us safe from the wails of night, its images somehow magically protected the home.
These memories unwove themselves with every step that I took and loosen up the dyes and the fabric that have always been there, like the time two junkies started fighting in front of the apartment and the hollow acoustics that could be heard outside the window, when a head bounced off the concrete sidewalk and the person laid motionless. We would order pizza to be delivered to the unsuspecting neighbor next door.
Now there is more of everything everywhere, throngs of students here and there, countless pedestrians exiting the subway, like a faucet that gushes people. Maybe I’m just getting old, becoming nostalgic for the past, somehow though the memories are there within the layers of experience and within the brush strokes of life’s moment, everlasting, the child inside the adult me, but I am here now.
We walk through every valley on this earth, and in death voiceless bones cannot be silenced and sacred artifacts, like holy temples that stand on perfect space, speak volumes of truth to me and everyone else.
The science building is not there, nor is the library, only a barren grassy field where time went by slowly because the memories we made on fields of grass, will carry us through the golden meadows of time becoming holier than thou art and thou was. And even when we return to the slides of our youth that have been replaced by condominiums images, like Lazarus are revived. It is in those visions, conjured up by memory, despite places covered over by a new strip mall, where we hear the hollow clang of the aluminum bat that sent the ball flying over their heads and it will be like it always has been, with the sun shining over our withering bodies.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Los Angeles Rain: Poem
Los Angeles Rain
by Armando Ortiz
Standing under the cover of night
watching the rain clouds paint
Downtown L.A. with Dodger grey
Palm trees sway goodbye to another day
as electric ensembles purify the streets
under the shimmering incandescent lights,
Wheels swish through water and disappear from sight
the rhythm of the acoustic ensemble continues
liquid cymbals splashing throughout the night,
Someone steps outside their tiny room and with all their might
remember their first winter storm in L.A.
and begin to play their trumpet to clear skies nigh.
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Beijing Winters
Beijing Winters
by Armando Ortiz
Winter evenings in Beijing are frigid
Nights bring freezing winds
And though at noon the skies are clear and sunny
You don’t want to be outside for too long.
Red is everywhere during this time
And sticks with crab apples sealed fresh
Inside hardened caramel sugar abound
And seasonal preparation for the New Year begins
Bringing red pasted banners and signs on the sides of doors.
Though the eye is blind during these months
The flavors that season the soul are many.
Handmade noodles made to order are at hand
Which are served on steaming white bowls
Topped with thin slices of beef
And a fried egg on top for an extra 5 mao.
A stew of mutton innards quickly warms up the body
I don’t know if it still exists, but when I was there
One could feast on instant huoguo on a side street
Where I ate it on tiny chairs and miniature tables.
It’s also the time when one takes liberal servings
Of dumplings of all kinds; cabbage and pork
Pork and chives, mutton and onions and the veggie and egg kind.
It’s during the night that the dry steppe air of the north passes through the city
And which is further squeezed of its humidity by the centralized heating
With its miles of hot tubes, that connect to a network of pipes
That pumps hot oil and water from a coal furnace that keeps blocks and blocks of people warm
And with severely dry throats.
When those nights of lonesomeness get intertwined with nightmares
It’s as if one were being choked by the devil’s hand
And one awakens desperately reaching for water.
Winters in Beijing also bring into focus
The celebration of the longest night
Which I did once outside a pub, while eating
Grilled chicken wings and drinking Yanjing beer.
The celebration of the longest night and the birth of spring.
When preparations for Chunjie begin to appear.
People bundled up in layers and layers of thick cotton and synthetic wool
Prepare to go back to their hometowns,
And the long lines at the train station are common.
It’s the sign of optimism that we all have survived the terrible winter
And begin to celebrate by buying rolls and rolls of firecrackers and rockets
That for a week will light up the midnight sky, and all the ghosts
That are fast asleep will awaken and be sent back to where they belong,
And we triumphantly declare to spring to open herself and begin forth
The colors of life and the blossoms of spring.
Winters in Beijing are long,
But now they seem short and distant,
Like an old recurring dream that disappears with every waking moment.
The first snowfall that blanketed the school benches,
And topped the pine trees melt from the memory
As the changing jet stream shifts from Northwesterly to Southeasterly direction.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Sebastian Orth: Tattoo Artist and Writer
I had the good fortune of meeting Sebesatian several times. Some of the more memorable conversations I ever had with any tattooer took place inside his shop. In the midst of Tibetan images and classic works of art by other tattooers that hung on the walls is where he spoke eloquently on the many different histories that exist in every valley on earth. He recently published Many Stories: The Point of the Needle, and in this short video he briefly discusses his book and how the psyche is transformed once one gets a tattoo. Great explanation to something that is mysterious yet modern, mythical but imbued with symbolism.
Monday, October 8, 2012
Gustave Moreau: Hieroglyphic Myth and Modern Symbols
(Jupiter and Semele, 1894-95) G. Moreau |
(Fairy and Griffon) G. Moreau |
(Death on the Pale Hore, 1865) G. Dore |
(Mermaids/Whitefish, 1899) G. Klimt |
(Persus and Andromeda, 1870) G. Moreau |
(Phoebus and Boreas, 1879) G. Moreau |
(The Apparition, 1876) G. Moreau |