As regular citizens we disconnect from the actuality of this service. Joseph gives us insight and equally questions our perspective through the eyes of his models. It is only within the eyes of these portraits that we can find the human condition. The rest of it is swallowed up by ghostly whiteness.

-Liz McDonald, Visual Arts Editor

http://josephmougel.com/

In the pitch blackness that is my room, I’ll wake up and feel the emptiness that is my king size bed, and it doesn’t help that the guy who lives upstairs and his girlfriend like to have sex in the morning, and quite often at that. She’s a loud one, too. One morning, I heard him leave his apartment, heard his footsteps on the stairs, and then there was a knock on my door. It was 6:00. When I opened it, he got right to the point, “Hey man, you got any condoms?” I didn’t. Another time, it sounded like there were two women up there. Lucky him.

I lay sometimes in the dark on my half of the bed as they go at it before work and coffee. There’s always a bang or two on the wall, and I try to block out the sounds by thinking about what I wrote the previous evening or what I want to write. There is all kinds of room and space and time to fill the pages, and so I do. There is also room to sleep, a whole half a bed, and all the time and space of every single night if I could, but I can’t. Sleep does not come easily anymore without the arms of another so I don’t even go to bed until 2:00, fall asleep, maybe, around 3:00 or 4:00, and with the rare exception, I get up no later than 7:00.

My Christmas Eve turned into Christmas in that fashion. I was up just before 7:00 with my standard three hours of sleep, and as I rubbed my eyes on my way to the kitchen, I listened, but there were no sounds upstairs. They must have been visiting family. I considered making scrambled eggs but instead ate one cold potato roll, then another. I wrote for a few hours, but the prospect of staying home alone on Christmas day began to weigh on me so I left. I drove out, and luckily, I found a small coffee shop in West Seattle that was open. As I was walking in, one of the women working recognized me, “Hi, Dave! Merry Christmas.” She was Amy, the drummer for a band I’d once written about.

“Merry Christmas. When are you guys playing next?”

“New Year’s Eve for a house party. You should come.”

“Maybe I will. Send me the details.”

“Done. What’ll you have?”

“Just a coffee in a mug for here.”

“Done. I’ll bring it out to you when it’s ready. We have to brew a fresh pot.”

I went to a table, sat down, and glanced through of The 1st Treasury of Herman which was a Christmas gift from my brother years and years ago and maybe for that reason still makes me laugh. After a few moments, Amy called out, “Hey, Dave, you want any…” I thought she was going to say cream or milk so I prepared my usual joke of saying that I preferred only caffeine, but she surprised me, “…Bailey’s or Frangelico in this? It’s Christmas after all.”

“Uh…sure. Bailey’s, please.”

“Done.” She brought it over, “Here you go, a little Christmas cheer.” Indeed it was, made me glad I left the house. I got to work on the Bailey’s and more of Herman and overheard her talking to the other woman who worked there.

“You know,” the other woman said, “We need to have a smoke break.” Amy’s eyes brightened.

“Damn straight!”

The other woman looked pretty good, black hair, straight, long, a few visible tattoos, a nose piercing, but I shook my head and thought I’d never understand smoking. It just doesn’t make sense to me, and the last woman I loved, which sadly was over a year ago, told me smoking was a deal-breaker for her. That made me smile then. “It is for me, too,” I replied, “The smoky breath and the butts and the lingering smell of ashes on lips, hair, clothes. Yuck.” And it was. “Yeah,” she agreed, “And don’t even get me started on kissing a smoker.” She put her index finger in her mouth, mimicked making herself vomit. “Might as well kiss a steaming pile of shit.” I smiled. We kissed. It was one of those early conversations in the relationship that illuminated one more connection, one more common thread. Neither of us smoked. Neither of us had any desire to date a smoker, a deal-breaker for sure. We clinked bottles, “Cheers to that,” and we drank. We dated for a while, thus, and then that ended as most relationships do. Things just don’t last, but I am still the same. Some things are more important than the empty space in my bed.

I had three coffees, each infused with a large shot of Bailey’s, the last one finishing the bottle. “Merry Christmas to me,” I said to Amy as she handed me that third one. The other woman and I made eye contact a number of times as I browsed the Herman laughing, read the Christmas edition of the newspaper and a Rolling Stone magazine left on a table, but we didn’t trade names, didn’t speak at all. I just kept looking and in my mind dubbed her the Other Woman. I left the coffee shop at 2:00 when they were closing up. “Bye,” Amy said, “I’ll send you the info for New Year’s.” The Other Woman smiled and waved, “Merry Christmas!” She was pretty when she moved her hand like that.

I walked to my car and sat for a few minutes fiddling with the radio and then fumbled in the clutter of the back seat to find the CD I was looking for, Radiohead’s I Might Be Wrong. I put it in, skipped forward to “Morning Bell”, one of my favorite tunes, cranked it. The drums began. I imagined Amy playing this beat and so looked back at the coffee shop before I pulled away. Amy the Drummer and the Other Woman were out front smoking. Yeah, they were indeed pretty, but I wasn’t attracted.

I drove across Lake Washington to the AMC Theater near Factoria Mall intending to catch a movie of some sort in an effort not to go home, but there was time to kill so I went to the a  grocery store first. I bought some toilet paper and some beer, the essentials, and put them in the trunk of the car before going back into the store where there was a Starbucks kiosk in one corner with a few tables around it. I sat at one and read more of Herman. I laughed out loud a few times while thinking I should call my brother more often.

A sadness hit me then. It was Christmas day, and I was sitting alone at a table next to a Starbucks kiosk and reading. I was planning to see a movie later, alone. I woke up alone. I would go to bed alone. Alone. I looked around and said it out loud, “I’m in a fucking grocery store on Christmas.” A young couple came in then. They were holding hands and made haste to disappear in the aisles to seek whatever they wanted. After ten minutes or so, I saw them leave. The woman was carrying a bottle of red wine, the guy a plastic bag. I wondered if there were condoms in it, and then for no reason at all, I bought some condoms myself, a three pack of Fire and Ice because it was the first box I saw on the shelf. I supposed I’d be ready the next time there was a knock on my door at 6:00 in the morning.

When it came time for the movie, I walked through the parking lot thinking, again, that it was Christmas, that I was alone with a pack of condoms in my coat pocket. Perhaps the movie would cheer me up. I crossed the street to the theater. There were two women on the sidewalk about thirty feet in front of the box office, and as I approached them, I heard my name.

“Dave!” It was the Other Woman from the coffee shop, with a friend.

“Hi.”

“You know Amy! She’s a rad drummer, isn’t she? You going to write about her band again?”

“Yeah, I think I will. I’m sorry, but I didn’t catch your name this morning.”

“Clara. This is Lisa.” I shook hands with them both. Clara still looked pretty good, a few extra pounds maybe, but I liked that. I’d rather have a little more than too little. I’d noticed at the coffee shop earlier that the tattoo on her forearm was not a design but some writing. I usually ask of such but hadn’t this morning. I thought maybe I would there in front of the theater, but things took a turn. Clara pulled a pack of cigarettes from her purse. She gave one to Lisa. She offered one to me, and I remembered seeing her smoke outside the coffee shop.

“No, thanks. I don’t smoke.” I thought to make an excuse to get away from them but was too slow.

“What movie are you going to see?” Clara asked.

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

“It’s sold out.”

“Yeah,” her friend chimed in.

I put my hands in my coat pockets. “Oh,” I said. “I’m not sure then.” I was suddenly at a loss. Even with the cigarette, she still looked good, and that surprised me. I never think such of a woman holding a smoke. I squeezed the condom package with my right hand and got a little excited.

“I like your coat,” Clara said. It was a black, wool topcoat that went down just above my knees. “Makes you look like an artist.”

I squeezed the condom package again and looked down at my coat not sure exactly what she meant, but it felt good to hear her say it, “Thanks. Coat makes the man.”

“Hardly.” Eye contact. Squeeze . “Amy told me you wrote a book. I’ve never known a writer.”

“I did.”

“You wrote a book?” Lisa asked.

“Yeah.”

“Quote me a line.”

I thought for a moment and said the first line that popped into my head, “We write books and songs and poems. It is the only way to make love seem eternal.”

“I like that,” Clara said, “and I agree. Nothing ever really lasts.” Her head was tilted slightly, and she was looking at me in a way that made me think she was considering something. “Amy and I looked the book up online, and I ordered a copy after reading the first few pages. It seemed interesting.”

“Thanks.” Those words, of course, made her look even better. I ordered a copy… It seemed interesting … Squeeze.

“Since the movie is sold out we’re going to go to a bar nearby. It’s the only place open on Christmas night that we know of. Want to come?” She took a drag, exhaled. She was polite to turn her head, but the smoke still drifted back to the non-smoker. Lisa was checking something on her cell phone.

I thought about that last woman, the non-smoker, the connection I‘d thought we had in that. It had seemed so strong, the air so clean, but it wasn’t a thread of any sort. It was just a detail, a choice, and in the end, she never loved me back. She went her own way, at her own pace, other interests and habits, other men, and I realized only there in front of Clara that I would still have loved that woman regardless. Can one help such things? I wondered how many possibilities I’d passed because of a lit match, how many times I turned away from all that could have been, or at least the good moments that could have been for that’s what life is, really, our attempt to collect those good moments. The deal-breaker should be the person, not the action. I looked around at the white Christmas lights on some of the trees at the edge of the parking lot, sighed. Merry Christmas to me in the realization that I was the problem, me, something about me just wasn’t right, maybe many things.

Clara spoke, “Well?”

“Shit. Hey, I gotta run,” Lisa said looking up from her phone. “Family stuff. Got to love the holidays.”

“She’s my ride,” Clara said.

“I’ll give you a ride. I’m parked right across the street.” I pointed.

“Okay.”

“Sorry, I really do have to go. I’ll call you tomorrow,” Lisa said hugging Clara, “Merry Christmas. Nice to meet you.” We shook hands. She left.

“Where do you live?” I figured I should ask since I’d volunteered to give her a ride.

“West Seattle.”

“Good. Me too.”

We started walking toward my car. She stamped out her cigarette, bumped into me a couple times, felt the package in my pocket. “What’s that?” She reached in to get it out. “Oh…condoms, eh? You always bring condoms to the movies?”

“You never know what will happen when you get out of bed in the morning.” I was trying not to blush.

“Fire and Ice. Hmm… never cared for these.” She opened the package, and as we walked through the parking lot, she placed a condom under the driver’s side windshield-wiper of three different cars. “I don’t think we’ll need these.” She was laughing, having fun, darting between the cars. We would not need them. I wondered what I would do if I found a condom on my windshield. She pulled another cigarette out but did not light it. Instead, she bumped into me again, and we spun around. She grabbed my hand, and we continued walking to my car. “And anyway, if it comes to it, I have my own.” From the tone in her voice, I was pretty sure it would now come to it.
“You live alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too.”

We got to the car, entered. “So where’s the bar?”

She just smiled, “Got a light?”

And for the first time ever, I made use of the car’s cigarette lighter. She cracked her window a bit, exhaled a stream of smoke, and I put the car in drive, eased it onto the street. “This way,” she said pointing, and I followed the direction of her finger. I remembered the tattoo.

“What does that tattoo on your arm say?”

She looked at me, puffed again, smiled again, pointed again, “This way.” When we got to the bar, she tapped her coat on her forearm, “It says, ‘Merry Christmas’.” I knew that wasn’t true, but rather than question her on it, I thought that, finally, I would get some sleep tonight.

After a couple beers, I paid and we got back in my car and headed west over the I-90 bridge. She fumbled through the CDs in the glove box and the back seat, found one, the soundtrack for Singles. She popped it in, clicked forward to “Drown” by the Smashing Pumpkins. She tapped to the slow rhythm of the song on the door, puffed away, mouthed the words as she looked straight ahead and let it play all the way through the feedback solo after which she hit the back button, and the song started again. She took out another smoke and pushed the cigarette lighter in, “I like this.”

I didn’t know if she meant the night or the music or me or Christmas or the beers or that I’d let her smoke in the car, but I didn’t care. I spoke to all such questions.

“Me too. Where’s your apartment?”

She sang along this time, maybe needing that first pass through the song to remember the words. “Let’s go to your place,” she said between verses. I listened to her sing. I was no longer alone, but I wondered if she was like me in simply not wanting to wake up in an empty half bed on the morning after Christmas as others made noises, if this was a one-time thing, just a bit of Christmas cheer, but I decided that question could wait until we had a chance to compete somehow with the guy upstairs.

We dangle our feet from your balcony,

entranced by some cheap crystal prisms knocking

the light around. You know too many statistics:

one out of every eight, two out of every ten,

and then there are the more complicated

calculations. After a while, even the maple leaves

seem latent with intent, the wind invested with some

ulterior motive. In turn I’ve taken so many notes,

about the rain that can’t be swept, the water

that can’t be worded. It’s so easy to over-translate

an open window and mistranslate the spring.

Swimming Pool

Brand new, its old
promise in possession

by the garden of a
palpable equipoise.

The sky, overgrown
with a western

brand of sunlight,
fritters away

excessive time
on a surface subject

to the wind’s every
passing whim.

It tides us over,
this backwater,

this lunatic blue
in lock down.

I recently visited Aubrey’s website and was drawn to her most recent series, Red Herring. This series of photographs is distinctly different than previous works which caught me off guard. It then dawned on me that I am drawn to this series because it offers almost exactly the opposite experience of her previous work. These portraits are about what you don’t see, what the color and smoke obscure. In her previous work we are given the experience, given the emotion and left to decipher it in whatever way is fitting to us. In the Red Herring series we as viewers are activated. We are missing part of the portrait and are left to question just that. In each photograph we are given a piece of a human within an environment which informs the experience. Each glimpse is a piece of the puzzle. Aubrey is asking us to fill in the blank, calling our perspective as viewers into question and holding us accountable for our narrative.

-Liz McDonald

Red Herring
2012

http://aubreyhays.net

            The two had been married for a while now, living together even longer. There was a rhythm they were used to.

“You might want to put your headphones in,” she said. “I’m going to watch a little television.”

So he put headphones in, and she watched a show about dancing.

II

            Some mornings she’d wake to find him banging drawers open and closed. She would lay for a second or two, see if he could find what he was looking for alone. When he couldn’t, she’d sit up, watching him put on cufflinks.

“Is it socks?”

He would nod, heading to the bathroom to put on cologne. And she would find socks or a clean tie, or his wallet, and hand it to him in exchange for a kiss. Then he would leave.

III

            When he came home, she was crying on the couch.

“I only stopped by for a minute,” he said. “I have a thing tonight. I’ll be back later.”

She told him she was pregnant, but not loud enough for him to hear.

“Are you crying?” he said.

“There was a movie on earlier.”

He told her he was glad she turned off the TV.

IV

            They sat down to talk about kids and decided on pets.

“Don’t you think dogs are a lot of work?” he said.

“I don’t know,” she replied, “I’ve never had one.”

“They’re a lot of work,” he said.

“They seem friendlier than cats.”

“Maybe, but still.”

She nodded in agreement with him and made him smile. They decided to wait until they both knew what they wanted. She scratched her stomach and he laughed.

“Aren’t you glad there’s nothing in there yet?” he said. She said yes, and to cancel dinner tomorrow evening. She had an appointment and would be too tired to do both.

committed suicide so many times
that Julie doesn’t even complain anymore.

Remember Julie? God, she was perfect.
Now there’s just Mom’s ashes. It gets worse.

Listen to this. I’m barefeet in a Publix
and the woman owner is telling me to leave,

so I go home, get on match.com and the first
woman I click on looks so sad that I wonder

if she just got stabbed by a Chinese grad student.
Remember Julie? God, she was beautiful.

When I think about taking pills, it’s like a light
breeze. I don’t even have to take them.

Christ, I remember what it was like
to have a job. It was like crashing.

And so I ask, What happens when we experience one object over and over? Carry it with us, touch it, love it and implant our energy within it? How does that object evolve? Does that object become monumental, powerful and dare I say, spiritual?

In the work of Jenna Kuiper we revisit the same object 17 times. In this experience I can almost feel the crystal rolling over between my fingers. Hidden within a pocket, a secret of spirituality as it becomes a deity. In her visual description, Jenna gives us ownership of this crystal. However, this gift of ownership brings with it at times, the almost uncomfortable obligation of knowing.

–Liz McDonald, Visual Arts Editor

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17 Stones
Instillation

The egg was off.  Herald didn’t want another incident with Lois.  She refused to even step foot in the coop.  Said the little chicks reminded her of that syrupy little body cracked into the pan, already hot so it sizzled.

Better make breakfast myself tomorrow.  He put the egg back in the carton, which felt flimsy with use.  Five eggs?  There should be more than that.  Herald walked to the foot of the stairs, once gliding his hand along the wall to keep balance.  There was a light on still.  Lois hadn’t gone to sleep. “Lois.”  He called up to her.

No response.

“Lois.”  He didn’t feel like going upstairs.  If he did, he wouldn’t have the energy to come back down.  “Lois, are you up there?”

“Yes, what?”  She was annoyed.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m getting ready for bed.  I was brushing my teeth.  What do you want?  Can I have some privacy, please?”

“I was wondering if you had done anything with any of the eggs.”

No response.

“Lois?”

“You know I wouldn’t have anything to do with the eggs.  I’m in the bathroom, can I have some privacy?”

“Huh.”  Five eggs.  Herald had collected the eggs that morning despite the sweltering heat and his fever.  He knew he didn’t count the eggs, but it had seemed enough.  Herald walked back to the kitchen and looked out the window into the blue black: the coop a dark lump that he could almost make out.  Maybe a breath of fresh air would be good for him, cool his nerves.  He opened the back door and a hot mist lapped onto him, gushing in from outside.  It was humid.  Herald pushed out into the night like it was some viscous pudding that had been sitting on the radiator for weeks, steaming and putrid.  His tongue swelled up in the back of his mouth, preparing for vomit that he fought back.  He swallowed hard, his adam’s apple clicking with the tendons in his neck.  He was more than halfway there.  It wasn’t a big yard, but he thought that pacing himself, setting goals along the way, would help him across it.  He looked back at the house.  He could see Lois’s silhouette: she was combing her hair, clearly having taken a shower to cool herself from the humid night.  Herald thought that when he got back inside he should make sure to close all of the windows.  Fucking coop.  When he made it to the coop, he leaned up against it and set his head on the steady wall.  To get the world to stop from spinning.

Inside the coop was even darker and hotter.  The hens lightly clucked at Herald as he walked by if they were awake.  He checked for eggs.  Nothing.  Except under one chicken he felt something.  It felt like the hot mess of a broken egg and he pulled out his fingers expecting to have crushed egg all over them, but instead it was this strange dark substance that was solid.  He touched it with his other hand.  It was rubber like from a balloon.  He knew what this meant; he had seen this before.  Herald stormed out of the coop and hurried to the house, the sick and nausea gone from urgency.  He opened the door to the house and the cool invigorated him, pushed him forward and up the stairs to the bedroom where Lois was.

“Good God, Herald, you’ve sweat through your shirt.  What have you been doing?”

Herald didn’t look at his wife who was standing behind him as he threw open the closet.  He dug through the clothes to the back, where the shotgun was.  It was hard and cool from sitting back there.  The cool of the metal stung through him like adrenaline.  His fingers traced along the wood stock where there was a deep groove.

The groove was from one of his first hunting trips with the gun.  He and his brother were out hunting pheasant when he had been charged by a buck that seemed to come out of nowhere.  Herald had defended himself by hitting the buck in the antlers with the butt of the gun as it ran past, a strange reaction for a hunter to have with a firearm.  The buck took the blow and headed back into the forest.  Herald had defended his ground.  His brother was remiss that he hadn’t shot the animal, but Herald preferred the gut animalism of his reaction.  He loved that gun.

He pulled out a box of shells from his sock drawer in the dresser he shared with Lois.

“Herald, what’s wrong?  Why do you have the gun?”

Herald opened the box and loaded the three shells that he had.  “Lois, it’s important that you stay inside.”

“Why Herald?  Herald?  Please, tell me Herald.  What’s wrong?”  Lois was shaking.

Herald stood at the door about to head out.  He was sopping wet from sweat, his face almost violet from exertion.  He seemed delirious from fever.  He turned to her, and in a clear, sober voice, he said, “The hobo clowns are back,” and disappeared down the stairs and back into the night.

like teeth left fastened too long in the head.

Left untended, your mind’s gone maggoty,
rotted like the cold center of a plum. Hungry

in the head, rows of unpolished spoons.

They’ve hired a woman to haunt the hallway,
fetch the bone china. Left as a tribulation

when you die, the chard will run rampant.

Unhemmed, the bean rows will loosen
like old muscles in the mouth, come

undone in the garden’s thistled heart.

In thinking about memory, and its potential recreation, I have found myself visiting the work of Larry Bob Phillips. Larry Bob is creating a similar experience to that of the recollection of memory in his work, however, he is creating the experience itself, the overwhelming effect of the moment in his wandering line.

Pancake Supper
Ink on multiple sheets of paper
2010

Ferret
Ink on Paper
38″ x  50″
2008

Poet
Ink on Paper
20″ x 30″
2008

Poetess
Ink on Paper
20″ x 30″
2008

Cartoon
Ink and Paint on Wood, Foam and Plaster
13′ long
2010

Tree
Ink on Paper
22″ x 30″
2008

Wiggle Room
(installed at Nabobs Exhibition)
Ink and Paint on Plywood
40′ long
2012

Pissteen Chapel
(mens bathroom at Atomic Cantina)
Ink and paint on Walls

larrybobphillips.com