TC: Mirror Traffic

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Mirror Traffic: Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, produced by Beck Hansen, cover art by Tom Clark, Matador Records, release date 23 August 2011

TC: Ideology

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Ideology dates back to the veldt,
Blood in the dust, the lion's rage against
The antelope it's about to have for lunch.
For the luckless prey prayer's all that's left,
No ideology's yet been known to incorporate
Mercy as a feature. But of course all this is irony.
No lion's yet been known to subscribe to a noble lie.

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself upon the Antelope: Henri Rousseau, 2005 (Fondation Bieler, Basel)
Lioness hunting warthogs in the western corridor of the Serengeti: photo by Schuyler Shepherd, 2009

TC: Footsteps

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Intersection (downtown Vancouver): photo by Evan Leeson, 3 August 2009

Some crisis of a ruthless order

Must have driven us all off into our warrens

Of private dilemma and compensation

In subjective device, dressed up as

Lifestyle I don’t doubt given the rue

With which if not to seem even greater

Fools we must look back upon a protracted

Adolescence, squeezed into corner pockets

The knowledge of the subject becomes

Actual just at the moment there’s this

Hollow sound of knocking at the door

Followed by footsteps of some singular

Person withdrawing on his or her own

Into whatever constitutes the future

TC: "flat round..."

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Tropaeolum majus: photo by Michael Gaspert, 2005

flat round
nasturtium top
plate leaves with
gleaming pin
head size beads
of last night's
rain water still
balanced on
them

pushed up
on long thin
green stems to
white morning

Tropaeolum majus: photo by Viola Sonans, 2005

TC: Old Mine Road (Caribou)

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Bear Lake (Colorado): photo by Trojan, 2004

Just below timberline

life bursts in

where water was
it's mostly mossy

with willows
and dark spaces

and wild daisies
and mazes of glades

and pools

Lilly Lake (Colorado): photo by Trojan, 2004

TC: "the bits break loose..."

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Two dandelion seeds (Taraxacum sect. Ruderalia): photo by Joergmoritz, 30 May 2006

the bits break loose
to scatter in the wind

of what once was
rising falling drifting

moments in the sun
disappearing into thin air

one by one
and it's never done

but it radiates around
and it radiates around

Pinus thunbergii: photo by Joergmoritz, 30 May 2006

TC: On the Playing Fields

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Sunset: photo by andrew pmk, 2005

Cold clear days with a kind of white haze
The eternity of thought against
The momentariness of sensation shows
Separation is all there is left to
Enact as the sky of evening closes
On each strained thud of a weary puppet heart
The calm that nature breathes grows large
Colors of an insect’s wing on pale clouds
Serrated and recessive barred
A vapor trail cuts across a star’s reflex
While eastward others now begin to sparkle
And as on the playing fields night conquers
The moon floats up cloaked in misty vagary
The blood aswarm with imagined lights

Mount Carleton panorama: photo by andrew pmk, 2005