My Lilacs

I'm so happy with the look of the Polaroid right now.  I've learned two things and remembered one of late that enables me to make them richer in color and tonality.  Oy.

I still have nothing in my head and won't until I go somewhere and see something.  My own hometown has become such a lowbrow conservative bore that I despair.  It was caused by two things.  First the surrounding area became a vortex for conservative megachurches and ministries.  Second was an influx of one hundred thousand people invited to come work in the hospitality industry for minimum wage to do jobs they couldn't get Americans to do.  There were not one hundred thousand jobs, of course, but that was how many people came from places where one couldn't make anything like a minimum wage according to the local newspaper.  They came in a single year.  You might think this would bring a much sought after cultural diversity, but it didn't.  It brought a lot of minimum wage poverty and a lot of wealth to a slim few.  I'm not saying these people belong to the megachurches because I don't know that.  But it is linked in my head.  Then the economy went bust and nobody was thriving.  And what are you going to do, starve?  So now there are many dangerous parts of the county.  Several counties.  The police don't go there.  It is better to stay on the main roads with radar guns.  And maybe that is why I haven't gotten tickets.  Maybe I'm not what they are looking for.  Perhaps they are trying to keep the criminals in certain areas, letting them know not to drive on the main roads lest they be punished.

People of a certain sensibility have left or are planning their exits.  In droves.  There used to be a thriving creative population here.  There was art and music and literature.  It was an enviable place.

But I'm not getting around much.  Maybe this has happened where you are, too.  It seems epidemic.  And perhaps it is our own fault.  We were drowsy on poems and opium, drinking wine in small groups, smelling cut flowers and talking about art.  All I can do now is think of a '30s Berlin and make my own decadent images.  It is my defense in a dry, flat world, "breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire" (you should know the reference).