s n a p p e r h e a d

Story:

In 2009 I wrote the short story Life Mission: Possible about signposts and totems, which have been and continue to be prevalent in my life—and those of many others. I suspect it's my most read story not because it humorously tracks my televisions, pets, relationships, and microwaves but because people are keyword searching Mission Impossible and get snagged by the pictures. Or maybe by the writing. Nah.

Novel:

I read this shitty book, Earth Abides, in 2005. My review, Counterfeit Paper: A Valuable Teaching Tool, was posted here as well as on Goodreads (where it's been read and 'liked' by more than my others). Upon re-reading it today I still agree with seven year ago self. Good job me.

Art:

I created the digital rendering pareidolia-apophenia in 2009. It's also on deviantart where it's received ten times more views than the average of all my other art. I don't know why. Maybe the title is catchy. I like the title. Aesthetically, however, I don't like it. But that's just me. 500 others have a different opinion (or one dingleberry views it every day).

Personal Perspective:

My article Kirby Archer: an infamous friend is potent bait. It draws in those who are curious about true crime and I can't fault anyone drawn to the morbid. It's not only my most viewed, but also my most commented post. Everyone who thought they knew him, once heard about him, worked with him, crossed his path, or watched a sketchy splash-bio on TV about his crime spree (and wants to know more) eventually lands on this article.

Comic Strip:

The attraction of the cartoon Anatomical Doll - strip, which I made from a photo scramped from Davecat, can only be attributed to the misleadingly factual titular words.

While compiling these most-viewed posts, I realized that every one of them contains a punctuation mark. A correlation, obviously, but could it also be causation? Hmmm.

snapshaught
sphoto number 7

My retirement present to myself in 2001 was a month in Australia. I found this 1¾" (47mm) sphere in a store called The Crystal Caves in Atherton, Queensland, while staying nearby (in an amazing treehouse). Prior to that I visited/stayed at the lava caves in the outback. The following week I was scuba diving from a live-aboard in the Coral Sea and Great Barrier Reef. The vacation also included stays in Sydney and Cairns; deep sea fishing from Port Douglas; a day-trip to Lizard Island for snorkeling...too many to recount once-in-a-lifetime events.

I like spheres which are composed of a visually interesting mix of minerals or types of rock. This one is a combination of Australian jade and either quartz or calcite. When turned just-so the light refracts through the crystal, bounces off and magnifies the interior side of the jade (rust-brown to green) and looks just like a tiny bit of ocean bottom through a SCUBA mask.

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sphoto number 6

This glass marble reminds me of my stepfather.

My first memory of him: He was dating my mother. I was seven. We were all "going out" as a family to an event (I vaguely remember The Ice Capades but that may have been a different night) I think it was a celebration because I recall all the adults...her, him, Nana, and Papa...were happy and full of loud smiles. He asked if I'd help him get a tool box from his backseat.

I accompanied him out to his sky blue 1964 Lincoln Continental in the driveway, he opened the backdoor, and I commented that it was backward. He laughed and said it was a suicide door...no further explanation. I'm seven. Why's it called that? Because it's backwards. I didn't think to myself at this point: Oh boy, living the rest of my childhood with this motherfucker is going to be a real treat if he thinks that's an explanation. But I did the third-grader's equivalent (shoulder shrug or eye-roll or head shake) and thought "adults sure are stupid".

Seeing the size of the metal box, painted the same color as the car, I thought he was testing me to either see how strong I was or to see how willing I was to try to pick up something I knew I couldn't lift. I couldn't tell which test it was by his smile, so I went along with it...grabbed the handle, gave it a tug (it didn't budge) and then watched as he oompfed and grunted it into the house. It was filled with his coin collection...and probably weighed as much me.

In 1995 he died of heart disease complicated by diabetes and exacerbated by being an obstinate asshole. I've written about my stepdad before. Because he was divorced from my mother, after his funeral I took a month off from my military duties, slept in his house, and spent hundreds of hours sorting through and throwing away decades of junk, files, and papers (he wasn't a full-blown hoarder but he kept unnecessary things...like thirty years of credit card receipts).

This 1¾" (46mm) marble was on a shelf in his bedroom surrounded by other knick-knacks...my last memory of him.

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STRANGE WORLD

visit STRANGE WORLD blog

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sphoto number 5

I lived in Mons, Belgium 1993-95. Summer weather permitting, I occasionally drove west about ninety miles to one of the beaches near Oostend (which I thought at the time was another everything-is-backward-in-French thing, today I read on everyone's favorite chalkboard that there's a historical reason why the farthest western city is named Eastend).

After a long beach afternoon in 1994, I and my wife-at-the-time had a very nice dinner and stayed in a bed and breakfast in nearby Bruges. The next morning I rescued this from a flea market vendor who was intending to cut it in half.

He was running a geode grab-bag: select from a huge pile of over three hundred various shapes and sizes, pay for it, and then he'd halve and polish the halves. No guarantees that your geode would contain a druzy cavity. On display were precut and polished halves with beautiful crystals lining the inside pockets (priced double to 20X more than the uncut, rough geodes).

Although there is a slight score mark on this 2 inch (53mm) geode, it's as perfectly spherical as a naturally formed rock could be.

The Flemish vendor (who spoke no English) seemed quizzical (het inclusief!) and became rather flabbergasted when I didn't want to take advantage of his saw and grindstone services and couldn't explain myself other than to smile and repeat, dit is goad, as I nodded and walked away.

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sphoto number 4

Last April we stayed in a yurt (because we'd never done it before). Two mid-week nights were available the following week, so we decided the weather was nice enough and made the reservation (we aren't ~~dedicated~~ foolish enough to lock-in anything over a year in the future...so yurt camping in the Summer or on a weekend would never happen).

As we headed to Fort Stevens State Park, the weather was normal for Oregon in April: partly cloudy and cool. We stopped in Astoria, Oregon, to eat and I found this sphere in a second-hand shop. Slightly larger than 2" (52mm), this hand-blown glass float most-probably was attached to a Japanese fisherman's net a half-century or more ago.

As it got dark it began to snow. By the next morning many of the high-passes were closed even though only about two or three inches accumulated on the beach. We drove the ice and snow covered sand, explored local eateries, and kept as warm as anyone could when camping in below freezing weather.

Although the yurt had a built-in space heater it also had edge flaps which were laced and tied-down. One cancelled out the other. Depending on the strength of the wind blowing through the cracks, the interior temperature fluctuated between 45° and 55° (7-13°C).

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sphoto number 3

One of my spheres was a gift from my fiancée in 2010. In 2008 we noticed a 2" (50mm) ivory billiard ball in an antique store near McMinnville, Oregon. I was ambivalent about ivory. After some weeks of thought and discussion, I realized buying antique ivory would no more incentivize the present and future slaughter of large mammals than would watching 1984-Traci-Lords-porn jeopardize the innocence* of today and tomorrow's sixteen-year-olds. So I decided that if I ever ran across another antique snooker ball, I'd buy it.

          Two years later, my fiancée was traveling home after a week of working-on-the-road and I was sitting in our living room gazing at my collection. I thought about the routes she could travel, realized she might be driving through McMinnville, and called her.

          'Hiya'
          'Hi, I was just wondering if you were driving back through the McMinnville area.'
          'Yup, why?'
          'Do you remember that antique mall we visited a few years ago?'
'uuuuum yeaah?'
'Well I thought that if they were still open when you got there, could you do me a favor and see if they still have that ivory sphere? I know it's a long shot...'
'THAT is so weird, I've got goose bumps.'
          'Huh? What is?'
          'Do you know where I am right now?'
          'Oh wow.'
          'There goes my surprise. I'm standing at the check-out counter with it in my hand. You know it's got a couple cracks, right?'
'Yea, that's OK. What made you think to stop?'
'I was driving past and just remembered talking about it years ago.'
          'Is the din-din din-din Twilight Zone music as loud on your end as it is on mine?'
          'I can hear it much too loudly and waaay too clearly.'

* A once very common quality (even ubiquitous in some parts of society) which, although not yet extinct, is narwhal-rare. Or is that attitude just the cranky old duffer in me coming out?

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sphoto number 2

On my first vacation to Negril, Jamaica, I commissioned this sphere to be made from local ironwood. I located an artist who understood only a little English but eagerly agreed to interrupt his current carving to make a sphere (which I described). When I returned two days later, he presented me with a golf ball...the entire surface crammed with hand carved dimples. I promptly paid for it without argument (my cats enjoy it...and it's probably under one of my chairs or couch at this very moment). Then I commissioned another (for the same price) only, this time, would he be so kind as to make it smooth? Yes, of course; respect mon. And could he make it slightly larger? Just a little larger? Irie...two more days.

It is smooth and it is ever-so-slightly larger (it's close to 1½ inches, 40mm). It also has a hand-crafted look because it is almost but not quite a perfect sphere.

Every time I look at it I think about pumpkin soup at a West End restaurant overlooking the cliffs, walking the beach drinking just-squoze orange juice from a recycled whiskey bottle with little shards of ice still floating in it; golfing at the Negril Hills (with a caddy who sprinted off as soon as I hit in order to locate the ball...what a way to earn a tip); sunburn removing beach massage with the goop squished fresh from Aloe Vera leaves; obtaining my SCUBA certification (with stingrays!); Orange Bay; catching crabs and lobsters from a pier using a net-shrift and some twine, and a private concert by Brushy One String.

All these memories are completely intertwined from my 1997 and 1999 trips; only with concentration can I pick the them apart.

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snapshaught
sphoto number 1

          I've been asked why there aren't more snapperhead pics of cats, myself, loved ones, Portland locales, or locals even (whenever I end a sentence like that, my inner ear hears the voice of Snagglepuss).   My tweet-able response (by which I mean, Mom, 140 characters or less) has always been: When I rely on my eyes and brain my memories are strengthened. Camera = crutch. Carrying a camera weakens my experience.

          Along the same vain: Van Gogh is attributed with saying that it isn't the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to. The feeling for the things themselves—for reality—is more important than the feeling for pictures. And I do soverymuchespecially love finding a quote by someone I admire which parallels my own thoughts on a subject.

However, I do have a collection of items, like snapshots, which act as memory-stimuli, even though they aren't snapshots for anyone else but me.

Here is the first one I collected:

You see a polished sphere, about two inches (47mm) in diameter, made from veined red jasper sitting in a curved malachite dish. I see Moab, Utah, 1990.

Obtained at the end of a vacation from the Moab Rock Shop, it reflects all the elements of those two weeks: Sitting up at night on the rim of a canyon watching a brilliant, close-falling, meteorite; tent camping in Canyonlands; hiking in Arches; trekking the length of Shafer Canyon Road from Dead Horse Point State Park to Devils Garden Campground (before it became easily accessible for two-wheel drive vehicles) in a front wheel drive Oldsmobile.

Here's the most unique thing about this type of memory trinket: overlaid and conjoined with that trip is my first visit, thirteen years prior, (with Brian Ottinger, a college friend) where we drove the same road, dirt and boulders at that time, but in the opposite direction in my shit-colored VW beetle (we each took turns riding on the rear bumper holding on to the curved flange of the roof-edge); bathing in the frigid Colorado River; and camping at Slick Rock Campground, as well as all my more recent visits to Moab and the Canyonlands National Park area (2002, 2005, 2006 and 2007).

I wouldn't want to live there, but my favorite place to visit in the US is Moab, Utah.

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