Vejigante

Island carnivals with people wearing colorful affectations adorned with horns and dancing around on stilts, the scene recurs annually in Ponce and a few other island towns. Some spectators know of the origins...re-enactments of a medieval battle during the age of the Reconquista. The masks are uncomfortable reminders of an artful demonization of the Other.  Today, these veils are a more common presence in markets and stalls, disembodied and displayed in kiosks...awaiting the eager tourist to claim them as a trophy.

Such guises and their folkloric baggage are mostly distant memories or so I thought, until I looked up one morning and saw it dancing along the leaves of our Black Walnut tree.

Ominous Skyline

During a recent morning commute into the city, I spotted the military bird hovering beneath the clouds, floating over the Tidal Basin near the Jefferson Memorial...like a mosquito, daring passersby to shoo it away.

101° Farenheit

details in the morrow...

A sense of place can erupt from aromas, and flavors. Orange groves, mangoes and mangroves. Recollections of distant times and expired geographies. Sometimes the poetic fanfare, favors sight over smell and taste. Sometimes the sense of place implodes rather than erupts. The presumptive monotony of a morning walk along familiar and neighborly terrain, quickly dispelled with the glistening collapse of a spider web, a whitewashed bouquet lurking in the shadows, and a giant butterfly sunbathing.

Parenting...1-2-3

[Fe] and other Ironies...

My very good friend Roberto visited this past weekend.  He suggested we find an urban setting and take some photos, so we settled on a strip of Columbia Pike in South Arlington.

I heard echoes of familiar places from my childhood as we walked past the Botánica Boricua (a one-stop shopping paradise for the local Espiritistas) and the Orisha ornamentations in their window.

A few steps away from the herbalist, I was reminded of a different Plant and his heavy metal melodies about a lady buying a...

("There's a sign on the wall but she wants to be sure...")

("With a word she can get what she came for...")

("And the voices of those who stand looking..."):
("ooh, it makes me wonder...")
("ooh, it makes me wonder...")

(" 'Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings....")

It's the little things...

Sunrise.  Dog. Walk. Camera.  By now the routine is a pleasant recurrence...scanning for interesting forms. As I walked over these cellophane parasols, they reminded me of jellyfish deep underwater. Then I decided to greet them at eye level. These fungi are barely two centimeters tall.

I took a few more pictures along the way, but it was those tiny transparencies that made my morning.

syncretisms...

palimpsests...

I set out in search of more deviant art along the walls and found a solitary figure with an appealing sketchy swagger.

Sadly, last week's graphic acquaintance was now shrouded in grey.

At the sight of the erasure, I knew it would only be a matter of time.  They'd be back again to peel away those layers of iconoclasm.

muralities...

Sometimes you walk by and can't resist engaging the artful abstractions in your path.  On this occasion, I coaxed my brother in-law and his companion.  

The photograph in the middle is the pièce de résistance.  (I wonder how long these images will remain in place...such a crime to erase this graffiti.)  

Capitol Views

street signs