In Kyoto Station, September 2023

 

Dreams and visions, Kyoto Station, September 2023 (from photos I took, on a recent voyage) -JF 

Season's Greetings and Yuletide Visions

 

I'm posting this photo I took in Paris, 17 December, 2013 (at a Christmas market on the Champs-Élysées), as we creak past another solstice. Holiday greetings! 

Visiting Newave Artists in Nebraska, March, 1985

 Visiting Newave Artists in Nebraska (March, 1985)

I had the fortune recently to meet two artistic spawn of the horizontal corn-hell known as Nebraska. These two young self-publishers, Marc Myers and Clark Dissmeyer, may provide their state's first chance to redeem itself since the time it spewed S. Clay Wilson into the world. 
As a life-long denizen of the great & mountainous west, the trip itself was a weird experience for me. Departing from Denver at 9:00 PM (on a Trailways bus), and traveling wide-awake through alien towns such as Brush, Otis, and McCook (where Clark once worked briefly as a rabbit-shit shoveler), I felt I was entering a land of no-return. The farmers and grain elevators and endless fields of wheat convey a sense of the sinister as well as of the earthy and mundane, perhaps the very awful sterility of the landscape & people turns the vision inward, to the point where parades of hallucinatory images march by as in a collage of Marc's. At any rate, time has fossilized in its tracks here since the 1950s or before...
Arriving in Grand Island not long after 7:00 AM the next morning, I ate at the nearest fast food slophouse, after which I phoned Clark; awakened from his slumbers, he promised to be out shortly. As he and a relative (his stepfather) traversed the 40 miles from Fullerton to G.I., I sat in the bus depot and meditated on the game shows the attendant, the only other person, watched.
An hour or two later, a tall figure clad in denim entered; of course, I knew instantly the identity of the person. Dragging on a generic cigarette, with curly longish hair, a day or two of stubble, Clark took me out to the car and we departed for Fullerton. 
His cohort Marc still in Omaha (where he now resides), Clark and I talked about everything from the mystical composer Scriabin, to Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. The ride from G.I. to the farming hub of Fullerton covers extremely boring territory, the only objects I noticed being the rotting husks of barns & concrete grain elevators. We compared our respective territories, I expounding on the colour & variety of the "far west," Clark trying to picture this while looking at the center of Nebraska. 
Fullerton is an isolated town of 1,500. As we first drove through it I had a strange, peaceful impression which didn't cease as we arrived at Clark's house around noon. After spending time with his folks, the artist and I descended to his basement hermitage, there to talk, listen to tapes and look at books and comix. After the noon meal, we went on a walk, to the "old dam" long since disused, and by the gigantic grain elevator, where we were unexpectedly blasted by hot air coming from a tube, something to do with preparing grain, I imagined. I'd also noticed a few long swivel-headed stares from the locals, no doubt stemming from my status as a stranger and reprobate. 
That night Marc Myers, creator of Stick and countless other publications, arrived from Omaha, and we met him at his turn-of-the-century house. He took us up to his small upstairs room, where for a couple of hours the three of us scanned his remarkable paintings and surreal notebooks, observed abstract and multi-layered slides, exchanged a few gifts, and spoke. 
We finished the night by visiting the town's graveyard, the celestial vault reeking with unimaginable beauty. After heading to Myers' Appliance, we ended up at Clark's place, played an incoherent game of ping-pong. Having been in a state of waking consciousness for around 40 hours, I finally fell into bed, falling asleep within a few seconds. That night I dreamt of Marc nonchalantly carrying a blood-spattered corpse in his arms. 
An odd incident occurred the night before I landed in Fullerton -- a person named Schreck (same as the mysterious actor who portrayed Count Orlok in the silent masterpiece Nosferatu), was crushed to death by a pin-setter in the town's bowling alley. I couldn't help thinking that this might have been intended as a signal to me, from who knows who or what? At any rate, an assortment of photos were taken of Clark, Marc, and me in front of the alley where the death took place.
The morning after my arrival I awoke fairly early. Clark still slumbered, but after deliberation on the subject of early rising by his stepfather the artist was awakened, and appeared sleepily in the kitchen. Some trouble had arisen the day before, as Marc had come from Omaha to Central City, about twenty miles away, in honour of my visit. He was unable to contact his parents & was contemplating hitch-hiking, but C. finally managed to locate M.'s mother & the problem was over. 
On the second day, we ate some bread, miso, & seaweed (after I ate a traditional breakfast of eggs) -- on the first day, as Clark and I walked down railroad tracks, someone in a passing school bus shouted at us "smoke a doobie for me!" 'Twas on day two or three, I'm not certain which, that we went on a fairly long walk, M., C., and I. Walking through the town, we came out on the highway, hiking along the pavement for some distance, evidently came to some prearranged spot, and crossed a barbed-wire fence & walked through a farmer's field. Cow manure dotted the ground but no cows could be seen.  
The ground was hard and irregular, covered with dead, brown grass. Barren trees always in the distance. After walking for about twenty minutes, we spotted a white-tail deer crashing away from us, about two hundred feet in distance. 
After we took several different pictures, Clark made the remark: "Maybe someday there'll be an Arkham House book with these pictures of us out here." He also made reference to the future book of "Dissmeyer/Falk correspondence." I did my famous impression of the redneck old-boy whilst out on these solemn wastes. We eventually came to a gradually rising stretch of land; Clark at one point ascended before us and tossed cow pies, hard & white, for great distances. At the top lay our objective -- "The Leap!" Actually, we weren't immediately at this much discussed spot; "The Leap" does not come until the end of the great arm of land we stood upon. 
(And there the piece suddenly ended. One memory I didn't include, from my time in Fullerton, was of a drunken electric guitar performance by the three of us, in Marc's father's shop. I also met several of my friends' former teachers.)
-- Jonathan Falk

I originally wrote this (recently-slightly edited) account around April or May, in 1985. This was shortly after my first visit to Nebraska (at that time, the furthest east I'd been), in March, 1985. 

Marc and Clark, photo by me; visiting Fullerton, Nebraska, in August, 1986, a year and five month after my first trip there. 

2016 Trip Journal

In September 2016, I took a car trip through parts of Oregon, Washington state, Idaho, and Montana. I followed this excursion with time spent in Washington, D.C., and Providence, Rhode Island. I took the journey in part to mark the 30th anniversary of a cross-US railway voyage I made (Todd Mecklem published the resulting journal in 1990, through his imprint, Terata Publications). Following are the published version of the trip journal cover, by Roman Scott, a variant, unpublished cover he drew; and a lightly edited transcript of the 2016 notes. 

Original cover, by Roman Scott

Variant cover, by Roman Scott

A Trip Journal: 2016

by Jonathan Falk

September 11, 2016, Sunday

This day I drove out to Dry Falls State Park, Washington State. The Missoula Floods have enthralled me for some time. The wind shrieked constantly in my ears as I hiked around Umatilla Rock -- like a paranoia-critical monument rising from talus. The ghost of J. Harlan Bretz played antique tunes. Soft reeds. Lonely hawks sailed in the draft. Austere -- bleak -- forbidding bluffs, the beds of the former ice age falls. 

From now & then, Trump-Pence signs rise on the sagebrush range. 

I am in Ephrata, WA for two nights, one day.

Long drive here. Stopped briefly in Toppenish, WA, which my mother visited as a child. Drove by an otherworldly viewpoint, faerie lava peaks and a paleaogean valley. 

15 September 2016. 

Dream last night in Hamilton, Montana, of a man/subway/interdimensional penny farthing. 

I am in Coeur d'Alene now. 

Today in Wallace, Idaho, gunning down mountain slopes at 80 MPH. Apparently I was there as a child.

Mining museum, scale models of mining shafts, mine bicycles, mine wars, the big burn of 1910.

Other part of my dream: A pit bull locked jaws on my throat.

I visited my aunt & uncle in MT. We went to the Daly Mansion, game room glittering glass eyes of gazelles and black bears, yellow screeching wallpaper & the bed where Mrs. Daly breathed her last

And Fort Missoula yesterday vegetable cellar cool as a ship burial. Hello at a chapel like the nave at a stave church. Ripple marks of glacial Lake Missoula a celestial shore seen from an observatory tower, over high grounds

18 September 2016 in Washington DC for the first time today. Humid air and crickets and birds shrill over Andrew Jackson in horse stride. Panhandlers near the White House. Sniper atop the Corinthian-columned facade. And a henna-bearded guy holding an Arabic scroll and calling prayers. Bomb scare, bulky secret service agent yelling whose camera bag is it. (Someone caused alarm, by abandoning a camera bag.) We were ordered to the other side of the street. The agent found the bag was empty. Shone his flashlight through it. Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Truman, a bucket of warm spit, marchers from 1960s stride by.

Last day driving home in Gorge, Biggs Junction, Brother Speed bikers ahead of me. Shot through a red light. Yakama nation license plates handed food to homeless man. Feathery plangent sunset. 

At rest area, crickets voices swelled, twilight wind filled shore branches, navigation lights rang green and blue. 

Way behind on journal. This is written September 22, 2016, Thursday evening. 

In Warwick, Rhode Island. First time back in R.I. since August 1986, with dad. Previous three and a half days I was in Washington DC, first time. Steam drumming against vents -- walk by business women & men -- Peruvian chicken devoured in moist shape. Studded with mosquito bites on my arm,  bunks to coed hostel like Dana or Whitejacket, Hostel Manager asked me how I liked DC, MLK statue at golden sunset hour ferrous with night, excited cicadas in unseen blends.

The Washington Pillar rakes the music of the spheres, symphonic gloaming bars of the reflecting pool in the tragic rumples of the Gettysburg address writer's jacket, crepuscular mirrors of Vietnam Vets slabs, Jefferson Memorial an island of sagacity -- A kid screamed: "There's TJ." FDR Memorial, a maze supernal at night. 

24 September 2016 Derangement of the Senses -- Providence RI  This trip is almost over, as all trips shall be -- 

I found this is more about understanding my 1986 self & honoring & bidding farewell to those who are lost -- Today (or rather the 23rd) was a comedy in part of misadventures. Two bus drivers yelled at me -- one for putting a day ticket (in the slot he pointed at) in the wrong place. The other looked like Joe Piscopo, and screamed when I boarded -- the back door was broken, and I was supposed to know this.

I visited Lovecraft's grave, arriving by bus, then trudging through the hot sun rays. A pond nests in the cemetery, shaded and gardened. A security guard drove up to me and asked me what I was doing. He directed me to the grave and hung around, telling me no photos.. Where are you from? Oregon. "That's way out there." and he informed me of HPL cons, and "an HPL website."  The slab is angular midst Whipple, Robie, Susan and Winfield, trampled grass, bare ground. I paid honor to the ones and to the author of the Shadow out of Time, and left. 

And I walked to 65 Prospect Place, formerly 66 College -- Faint light within, Fanlight crowning, ghostly crickets mourning the breezes -- lunch at a bad sushi place -- 

White house, break dancers folding shoulder blades -- lights, inside -- Dreams of relatives faces alternating, Fake beards, woods 

10-17-16 Home, arboreal lava, dead rice

California Hypnagogic

I've been revisiting Los Angeles and surroundings for a bit. Today: The La Brea Tar Pits and Museum. Below, spectral glyphs from comic actor Joe E. Brown, at Grauman's Chinese Theater (Joe E. Brown appeared often as a sort of totemic spirit in Oddities and other related zines); and a revenant jest from Humphrey Bogart.

I originally posted this on 2/20/19, but the text and photos manifested as an unintended work of glitch art (merging two posts), also below:

 

Norway

Vigeland Park, Oslo, Norway, 2 October, 2018; Herre, Norway, 1 October, 2018. Photos by JF.

Gothenburg Cathedral

Gothenburg Cathedral, Gothenburg, Sweden, September 28, 2018.

St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna, 9-25-18.

Lake Como

 Sunset at Lake Como, Italy, 9-22-18.

Amsterdam Maritime Museum

TToured the Amsterdam Maritime Museum today; a museum  I'd missed on previous visits. An engaging, lively collection, including an evocative array of navigation instruments, and an assortment of Dutch maritime paintings, with a mystic moonlight boat scene (& a sailing ship docked outside).

Petroglyphs North

 Bronze or Iron Age petroglyphs, in the vicinity of Skien, Norway (on a visit to Roman and Heidi Scott). Photo by JF, June 2003. Possible sun/ ship/ calendrical markings, appropriate now, close after the winter solstice.

Merry Christmas, Saturnalia, and holidays to all who partake!

Dry Falls, 9-11-2016

At Dry Falls State Park, Washington State, 9-11-16.  Location depicted: Umatilla Rock.

Newport, Oregon

"Though we know her a lifetime, she must always hold an alien air, as if something too vast to have shape were lurking in the universe to which she is a door." -- from The Night Ocean, R.H. Barlow  & H.P. Lovecraft. The prose poem took place by a different ocean, but the same principle applies.

 

The revered Mo's Restaurant, in Newport. I entered their establishment today, for the first time in a long spell. No more photo of Robert F. Kennedy's visit on the wall.

 

Outside a bar

 Looks as if "Pops" Flea Market has lost some of its luster. Two raccoons, awake in the daytime on the side of the place, glared at me. I tried to get a photo, but they tore off into a trench by the building, then stopped, still standing as if they might charge me.

Photos by JF, 19 July, 2015.

Scandinavian Roaming

     

Herre, Norway.

  

With Roman Scott in Herre, Norway, 12 April, 2015.

  

 The entrance to Christiania, 9 April, 2015.

Photos taken by me.

Wandering in Berlin

Siegessäule, with Venus

Brandenburger Tor

Topography of Terror, Berlin Wall Remnant, Ministry of Finance/ Former Luftwaffe Headquarters 

 Soviet War Memorial

 

Alte Nationalgalerie

Wrocław Days

 Sculpture group by Jerzy Kalina.

Wrocław Market Square

Villa Stuck and Alte Pinakothek

 

 I visited the Villa Stuck and the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. I particularly was fond of Von Stuck's artist's altar on the upper story, featuring a kind of shrine to his painting Die Sünde. Workers are in the process of revamping the Pinakothek, so a number of galleries have blocked access.

Dachau

On a marrow-chilling, wind-blasted day, I took the S-Bahn and bus to the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site.  A tremendous way to learn about the ineffable reality of the place. In the museum, I learned about the many groups singled out for imprisonment, torture, and death, or all three -- political prisoners from Yugoslavia, for example.

Wind savaged my umbrella, which flapped like a kite. Rain and hail fell viciously on the assembly ground and before the barracks, but a sliver of sunlight appeared as I left the grounds.

Gustave Moreau Museum and Centre Pompidou

Combining the Gustave Moreau Museum and the galleries in the Centre Pompidou made for a potent, if seemingly disjointed, artistic combination. Climbing into the upper stories of the Moreau Museum, I was enraptured by viewing paintings such as Jupiter et Semele, just as Huysmans described in À rebours (with reference to a different Moreau work). Just walking around in the house, with its impressive spiral staircase linking the upper floors, and old paneling and ballroom ceilings, is worth it. Of the Pompidou's offerings, I especially found the scale and humor of Jeff Koons' pieces especially appealing.

 

 Pompidou Centre

 

Interior, Gustave Moreau Museum

Gustave Moreau Museum

Catacombs of Paris, Montparnasse Tower

I plunged down spiral depths and traversed the Catacombs of Paris. My previous mental image involved mounds of bones far off in vaults. Instead the wreaths and fractals of skulls and femurs and armbones, slammed together without heed of station in life or other individualities, lined the walls of the vaults, pressing in very close. Other oddments jumped out, basins, springs, memorial slabs, concrete-encapsuled ceiling collapses, or "bell collapses." Memento mori," vanity of vanities, always shards of hipbones and clutter in the vacuum atop the neatly and grimly-assembled bones.
I walked by Montparnasse Cemetery too late to locate any of the famous dwellers. A gatekeeper furiously rang a bell, a warning closing was nigh, as I desperately worked the outside lanes of the tombs. Then I ascended to the top of the Montparnasse Tower, and saw the cemetery, and Paris, from high above.

And encountered a talking toilet capsule. My one year of high school French availed me little as I punched buttons, causing the door to open repeatedly, with a robot voice issuing injuctions. I finally figured it out -- don't press any buttons. After use, the toilet recedes into the wall, and an automatic system washes the whole interior.We could use more of those in other countries -- and it was free,  unlike potties in many other European nations.

 

Catacombs of Paris

 

 

Montparnasse Cemetery, seen from Montparnasse Tower -- De Beauvoir, Sartre, Beckett, Baudelaire, you're in there somewhere.