WestVirginiaVille

Five photos from a life in the WestVirginiaVille hills — gold rims, where I don’t sit often enough, where I go to church, a Macintosh-face portrait of a native citizen of Digitalistan and a rusted angel overlooking the forgotten dead.

This is all I got. A big ole magnolia tree in a full-throated shout of Spring blossoming, a mile from my house in the village of Barboursville, W.Va. Four viewing variations, from real to less-real.

Just returned from a family trip to New York, a city with which I have a little history. We created some more. Here’s the first part of a mixed-media accounting of some past and present New York states of mind.

When I cannot figure out my life, or don’t wish to try, I turn to pictures. This is soothing, as if capturing a single resonant moment in the frozen amber of a photograph will somehow explain life to itself.

It is hazardous to write poetry when you are tired, horny, disgruntled, lonely, in need of a lover’s ministrations or even just a session of kisses. This may be, of course, the only time, even the best, to write poetry.

I get tired of words. When my head gets weary of trying to make sense with them, I turn to pictures. Photographs activate a different neighborhood in the cerebral cortex.

Fragments stop me in my tracks — Charles Wright, Taiga’s Zen, T.S Elliot. Wait, one more check, there is the number (2) atop my Facebook page. One more fragment of attention before bed.

I think if I did not have the woods to get off to I might be a madman. I know that sounds an exaggeration. But there comes a time when nothing else will do and if nothing else would do, could I do without?

Alleys are curious places. It is where you witness a city or town in a state of deshabile. They are where a town’s careful pose to visitors droops. Trash spills out. Graffiti grows. I kind of love alleys.

When you’re awake at 3:44 a.m., not willingly, and even all three cats are sleeping, and you’re having one of those insomniacal moments in the pre-wee hours of the morning, you decide instead to share some pictures.

It serves no fruitful purpose to wax melancholic in your late middle years as rust-colored leaves drop, one by one by one by one, from the sycamores, the oaks and maples, and whatnot trees on this cold October morning.

A picture of the day — or of the night — from downtown Huntington, several hours after an evening on stage of dueling funny singer-songwriters.

Dammit Dammit Dammit. I say to myself, rounding the corner of a building on the Marshall University campus this morning espying my Honda. The sign of a hassle, flying its flag upon my windshield, a ticket.

I have spent my adult life rounding curves in the road here in West by god or so they say Virginia. There are curves around most every curve here.

The point is to get to the point where you no longer feel the need to ask: ‘What’s the point?’ Yet the older I get, the more I think this misses the point.

Crossing west to east across the swooping West Virginia hills, a watery pilgrimage I always make is to stroll to the midst of the arching bridge at Seneca Rocks.

So, there I was, walking across the Krogers parking lot toward the opening when Zeus in his heaven shafted me with a lightning bolt.

Some nights, I drag home from the office with all good intentions. I’ll finally write that piece about my thoughts on Occupy Whatever. But then, I got nothin’. But I got pictures.

A few photos from around the world and some words from a connoisseur of Blue Rooms. The first I noticed were rooms turned blue where people went to hide in the sure glow of the TV talking.