Paul’s Rides

Fly Bag Obscura

A clear plastic bag of water has been hanging in the window since summer. Tied with a shoe string it hangs on the remaining hardware of a forgotten curtain rod. The bag of water is a fly bag. It’s supposed to keep the flies away. Kind of looks like a Christmas ornament.

Fly bags may or may not work. One hypothesis of why a fly bag works is about what the fly perceives. Is it a body of water? What is that body of water? Stay away from the body of water. Another hypothesis is that light refracts through the bag of water disorienting the fly. The fly bag is a something that is un-process able for the thousands of tiny eyes. The flies` eyes don`t know why.

The polyethylene is stretched tight and sags with the weight of the water. This creates an imposable lens to the world. The fly bag in the window offers an obscured view of the neighbors. Carbon and hydrogen linked to make polyethylene molecule. Glaciers melting fill reservoirs with water piped to city taps.

How does the fly bag look like a Christmas ornament?

Who has flies this time of year?

Happy Holidays

Flies

An empty shoe.

Flies buzzing in a holding pattern over SFO.

To see a thing for what it is requires a lack of purpose.

Sated in all banal pursuits the glutton`s eye opens.

A fly bounces off the window pane until an opening just happens to be there.

We are a fruit fly experiment in an insane sophomores biology class.

Fly’s eyes require no inflection.

Friendless it doesn’t need to realize it is alone.

The glutton`s eye shuts.

Attach an identity to a boat and all together we are lonely looking for the next thrill.

Hub Cap Moon

Inside a chrome shell hides a heart of spinning metal.
Glowing coils ignite and reduce a fossil to carbon farting out the soot of unprocessed youth.
Roll an injector in blackened fingers, clear the mind in an observation pure as a fowled plug.
Still passions impede.
Haunted and chased, temporary as a clutch look up at a hub cap moon and try.

Blunt and charmless

P da P

The Sisters

The sisters keep bottles of scorpions in the galley

Lubricate walking planks

Untie knots

And forget everything

The sisters wait

They cling to rocks deep in the muck to avoid the sun

They keep lost anchors

And laugh at the trouble they cause

The sisters smell musty like abandon buildings

Rot and splinter revered like some dusty treasure

An animal corps

Neither rare or valuable

The sisters live in reckless folly and empty ceremonies

Feel the putrefied guts

Breathe the foul air

An endless adolescence

The sisters eluded me, “Slippery eels”

Wormy livered with rotten esophagus

They shine their lights on some and they are sure that they can fly

So they do

David and Laura were watching two parrots for some folks in Telegraph hill. the house is on the east slope below Coit Tower. The house was a long shore-mans bunk house. Marks on the floor show where the bunks once were. The long shore-man would look out from the windows. When a ship would come in they would hustle down the 100 stairs to the water to unload. Later the house, “or rather cobbled together compound” became a party pad for the owners and their friends in the fifties.

the place is right in the middle of the slope. it is 100 stairs up or down. Every brick and stick of wood had to be carried in to build this place. Evan a sofa is kind of a big deal. Stairs meander through gardens and abolishes the idea of back yards.

A flock of green and red birds swarm around the house with a loud screeching and chatter. They land on a big cypress over the deck. Keep your mouth shut as you look up. There’s maybe 60 or 70 birds up there. The noise is incredible like some crazy theater coming from all directions. Inside the two parrots that are too sick to fly are all a-buzz. The sound of their mates in the tree has them screaming and rattling the cage.

The parrots in the tree are fugitives. Escapees from bird cages around San Francisco. They are a motley crew. Two of the biggest  perch in the highest branches scratching with their talons and beaks. One of the smaller birds has plucked all the fir from its chest leaving its gray-pink skin exposed. The longer you watch them the more the flock looks like a group of  individuals. One is louder than the rest. Another can’t sit still and hops from branch to branch antagonizing the rest.

Below at the party the conversation turns to underground water. Parts of the Sunset are an enormous sand dune covered with concrete and asphalt. Between the grassy rolling hills of sand were ephemeral pools. Some spring fed watering holes included more permanent ponds. The Sunset is a crackling crust where street-cars’ shifting sleepers sink.

The Cuckoo Clock video

The Clock will chime hourly on the hour at the Fest, from July 9th -12th 8 pm to Midnight in Oakland

Click for fire arts festival info and tickets

As artist in residence for San Francisco Recycling & Disposal Inc. I will be presenting my new mechanical sculptures and game creations at a reception on May 23rd 2008 6-9 pm and Sat June 24th 2008 noon-5. Will be a lot of fun.

From Febuary through May of 2008 I spent cannibalizing and carnivalizing bits of San Francisco`s waste stream. Night and day I had been sorting the souls of the cities forgotten garbage. Norcal`s San Francisco transfer station has facilitated the creation of a “Frankenstein’s Carnival” You are invited to bring the creature to life. Pedal the dynamo and energize the sleeping giant. Delight in the re-animation of San Francisco`s detritus.

Here is a link to some of the all new never been seen before creations. http://flickr.com/photos/artatthedump/sets/72157604061333269/

Here is the postcard.