neilwaukee: March 2011

Tanyth Berkeley

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1039409543/finishing-funds-for-two-women hey !!! everyone our dear friend and wonderful artist Tanyth Berkeley only has a few more days left on her Kickstarter~ so don't be shy klik out the above link and check it out

i am a whale

photo credit goes to Chris Olsen~

Something big and squishy presses itself to my back

and even underwater i scream

all the way up to the bubbly surface my board gone~ the leash snapped

i look around to see which way the shore could be found and began the long dark swim to the beach while scanning the backs of waves for my surfboard

what seems like hours later i catch a wave in on my belly and crash into the shore with gravelly hair and sand stuffed ears

look around and see some kid down the beach pulling my log up the sand~

"You see any whales ?" the kid asks me, my board dropped, i reach to pick it up and say

"I am a whale."

NE!L~

message

the ocean was so flat and the tide so low that Chris and i had decided to ditch our families and see if we could swim across the river and hike along the coast to find a land route to Gorilla's / before the tide swept in again trapping us

this stretch of raw coast catches all the trash from all of the worlds shipping routes and trash heaps and a little bit of everything dumped, about every twenty foot there was another television, Arabic water bottles and Japanese soda pop, millions of shorn off pieces of ship, boat and vessel, hunks of plywood painted in nautical colors and laminated in resin and fiberglass, some broken /some burned thousands and thousands of plastic bottle and plastic jugs and cigarette lighters.

it's the end of the world after all

as we started hiking, and fording rivers and climbing over massed rootballs~ i started thinking about messages in bottles and how great it would be to find one and i swear ~
within seconds of thinking this ~ i saw this bottle~ ran to it and picked it up held it and, said

hey, Chris take my picture there's a message in this bottle

you can see it inside ~like a crystal clear bomb

NE!L~

marshmallow

life tempts you to be selfish~

i had just pulled into the sand bowl, buried the van in blackberry brambles and twig dried mud jumped into the back pulled out my wetsuit ripped open the sliding door and sent the dogs bolting for the waves, as i pulled my cloths off and turned my suit inside out~ so very dry from landlocked drudgery

when i hear another Volkswagen pull up and completely block my exit~ while the whole north end of the jetty is empty~Volkswagen's like to be close i guess and pull on my booties / throw shit around looking for wax and fins and leashes, i had just hucked all my shit in the van and taken off now i couldn't find anything

and then there's two girls standing in my door way, with sunlight in their hair, one with curling brown long the other with short blonde, in rainbow cloths and bikini tops~

smiling hi
hellos and love your van /are those your dogs yeahs and can we camp on the beach ? wine bottles and sleeping bags~

they take my camp site /i throw stick for dogs and carry my board south and surf for hours and hours of warm summer mush until my face is sunburned down clear to the bone

i sit in the van and eat and read /the dogs lay at my feet and these damn girls keep walking by and talking to the dogs and awkward smiles and chatty to me and fuck~ i know Mary or Laurel or someone is going to show up and see me camping with two young girls and call MeeMee and all i wanted to do was surf innocent

so i read and eat and drink tea /paddle out all day and clear into an explosive sunset blinded until my arms can barely get me back to shore and my legs can't walk me back to the vanagon

that night, i'm laying asleep in my van alone with dogs exhausted and i keep waking up to hear these two girls calling me, hey, come down to our fire, wake up van guy, and i swear they stand at my windows and knock on the door and i roll over and mumble sleeping

i usually can't sleep at La Push so i always have to wake for a predawn patrol and suit up without looking /because if you look you would never suit up and i step out of the van to a no joke apocalypse

there's chewed up marshmallows and camping gear and bikini bottoms and fucking hundreds of thousands of exploded tampons completely covering the ground all around my van and back to the girls and their zipped up tent

fucking dogs i almost scream and i have no idea what to do, shit, and i'm in my wet suit and drop my board and i lock the dogs in the van and scramble around picking up all this carnage mumbling and pissed how do i explain this, now that i've picked it all up, they'll think i just raided their campsite for underwear~

i throw all their chewed up crap in a dumpster way down the beach and i run to the waves and paddle and never look back when i get back to the van hours and hours later~ these young girls in a red V dub bug are gone

the place is clean and quiet i can breath and run the dogs to the waters edge where i send them out for sticks, timing it just right so they get caught inside and dumped in the shore pound.

NE!L~

staring at water

we had spent the whole morning staring at waves from sandlots /log jams and waist high summer thistle grass our pants soaked~ our hair covered with hood and hat

downjackets, hands on camera, telescope /binocular /a chilly cup of coffee and a weather radio squeaking the report, that we just couldn't see from here~ at the actually beach,

the air so very vibrantly wet with foggy rain the waves sucked down to some proto cataclysmic

levels, all the sand bars that were ever going to be born exposed~ raw ~ useless

and way the fuck out at sea the waves crashed with one heaving roll

that's a long paddle out~ someone thought, looked back to the vans and sipped

waiting for the sun /waiting for some semblance of summer~

let it fill in a little someone decides and turns to walk back to the vehicles and

let's go check Realto

we could paddle across the river, someone else suggests and shivers

by the time we'd get anywhere the wind would be howling / on it

our suits would be dry and we would just have to suit up

after eating /goofing /hiking and driving

the water would turn green and pull us out to sea

against our will

and better judgment.

our chicken friends

after talking about chickens and falling in love with ducks at the country fair this year~ we have committed~ but first ~

does anyone really see UFOs anymore ? i know that way back in the 50's the whole world went wacko over flying pie pans and alien invasions

and in the 1970's UFO were everywhere and becoming big business

this is a great drawing of what a patrolman saw~ a twig faced alien~apparently there are only two kinds of people those who see spaceships and those who see the virgin mary~

i have never seen a spaceship / a UFO / an alien / or ghosts / or any gods or gods mom / how boring is that ?

when are the kids going to start seeing ghosts and spaceships on facebook and twitter

jump to . . . this is my weekend . . .

Judo's perfect floor

how i keep the kids on mute as i drive home from places

why yes, those are sour worms squished into the ice cream cone

Buddy L splitty in chartreuse micro bus

i've found myself making weapons at work again~

kind of a Dune inspired knife

made of steel and tape~ i need to see the sun

the hadj handplane i carved for my mom~ she's going to hit the shore pound with me this summer~ Bethany beach~ Rehobeth and Indian River south side

my old yard art storage

sliced this thing outta cedar for my sister's birthday~

skeleton of the new coup~ framed up and being tested

test driver~

the newest friends to come and play

fluff balls that squeak

and poop a lot

this little guy may be a rooster~ very loud /very vocal

such odd little creators~ i could watch them all day

look at the little gullet all full

personalities

and . . . the ducks. . . this is Mr. johnny x banana the runt

big flappy feet and messy little eaters, they like to sit in the water and throw their food around

the runners bring tears to my eyes when they stand up straight and talk to me

if they live / it's going to be a farm around here

quack. . . NE!L~

Probably killed by tree

or the Saudi royal family

or the Libyan army

or the Bahrain Royal family with tanks and troops refreshed from Saudi Arabia

i wonder where the United States of America actually ends

at the oceans ?

is the long range goal of our leaders ~ to have a little happy air force base and or navel base in everywhere ?

seems rather expensive if you ask me ~ a tax payer

http://blownbrown.blogspot.com/2011/03/ford-club-wagon-in-ma-bell-green.html

perhaps our expansion should begin to contract~

we should start bombing our own villages

we should invade Texas and demand Ex Pres Bush be handed over to our government for war crimes and not finishing things he started

the longest war in our nations history still drags on ~ come a new spring~ a new poppy harvest~ more corruption~

the Soviet union tried to tell us their secrets but we were too busy yelling at them about space based laser guided defense systems and trains circling in endless tracks with missiles instead of commuters

i can't afford this anymore~

we need to do some Nation building right here at home, Mr. Politician

now the water is terrifying

i heart prehistoric robots

like a god ~who can only see the roof

drunk and or bad drivers hate circles~ every Sunday morning they lay ruined and crushed

probably killed my tree~ is written upon my hand as i walk for miles and the weather changes and the wind begins to really whip up and listening to the trees i think how funny it would be to be actually killed by a stray branch or trunk and have some medic or mortician reading my palm and laughing throwing me away~