1999 Observation Cards
Stack of cards.
Documentation of moments where everyday life moved into literature, into art.
Isolated word/phrase on front. Extended thought on back.
Star Lane /
From two directions,
A man and I,
At the same time,
At the same pace,
Turned down the same street.
We walked on opposite sides,
but we were no longer alone.
We were a pair walking,
And there was nothing we could do about it.
I was in my room listening /
Sylvia was singing in her room.
Upstairs, my neighbor was singing in his room.
Then, at the same time,
they both stopped.
Free /
My friend Joanna made a hundred or so birds, clay,
the size of her palms. Then gave them all away.
It’s a leaf, it’s a flower /
There is a tree nearby with pale green, ribbon-like leaves.
Each leaf, about 3” long, bends back slightly in the middle.
The center vein runs through the leaf until it splits in two near the bend.
Half continues down to the tip of the leaf, thinning to a thread.
The other breaks from the surface and juts out as a stem, complete with miniature, flowering buds.
Tippy /
A triangular, tubed fish at the Aquarium with thin, billowy,
good-for-nothing fins, barely swims.
A thick, fast fish goes speeding by, tipping him over.
Equilibrium takes a few minutes.
Rickshaw ride /
I was going at a fast pace, scrolling through the
Pantone colors on the computer when, in the colored blur,
I saw India. It was last year’s ride through New Delhi -
The sari’s, the commotion, the dirt.
sides of the sky /
In the morning or evening
you can face the four directions
and see a different color of sky
dusk /
glint of plane
fingernail moon
pink exhaust from invisible source
a slowly shifting arrangement
shadey /
me
under layers of tree