dodge after the oil shock, these windmills are so large and powerful that any one of their blades could cut a man in two. Curiously, they turned out to be functional as well as a good tax dodge, and the volts they silently generate power detox center air conditioners and cellulite vacuums of the region's burgeoning cos- metic surgery industry.
DECADE BLENDING:
In clothing: the indiscriminate
C l a i r e i s d r e s s e d t o d a y i n b u b b l e g u m c a p r i p a n t s , s l e e v e l e s s combination of two or more
blouse, scarf, and sunglasses: starlet manque. She likes retro looks, and items from various decades to
she also once told us that if she has kids, "I'm going to give them utterly create a personal mood: Sheila =
Mary Quant earrings (1960s) +
retro names like Madge or Verna or Ralph. Names like people have in cork wedgie platform shoes
diners."
(1970s) + black leather jacket
Dag, on the other hand, is dressed in threadbare chinos, a smooth
(1950s and 1980s).
cotton dress shirt, and sockless in loafers, essentially a reduction of his usual lapsed Mormon motif. He has no sunglasses: he is going to stare at the sun: Huxley redux or Monty Clift, prepping himself for a role and trying to shake the drugs.
"What," ask both my friends, "is this lurid amusement value dead cele b r i t i e s h o l d f o r u s ? "
Me? I'm just me. I never seem to be able to get into the swing of
using "time as a color" in my wardrobe, the way Claire does, or "time cannibalizing" as Dag calls the process. I have enough trouble just being now. I dress to be obscure, to be hidden—to be generic. Camouflaged.
* * * * *
So, after cruising around house-free streets, Claire chooses the corner of Cottonwood and Sapphire avenues for our picnic, not because there's anything there (which there isn't, merely a crumbling asphalt road being reclaimed by sage and creosote bushes) but rather because "if you try real hard you can almost feel how optimistic the developers were when they named this place."
The back flap of the car clunks down. Here we will eat chicken
breasts, drink iced tea, and greet with exaggerated happiness the pieces of stick and snakeskin the dogs bring to us. And we will tell our bedtime stories to each other under the hot buzzing sun next to vacant lots that in alternately forked universes might still bear the gracious desert homes of such motion picture stars as Mr. William Holden and Miss Grace
Kelly. In these homes my two friends Dagmar Bellinghausen and Claire Baxter would be more than welcome for swims, gossip, and frosty rum drinks the color of a Hollywood, California sunset.
But then that's another universe, not this universe. Here the three of us merely eat a box lunch on a land that is barren—the equivalent of blank space at the end of a chapter—and a land so empty that all objects placed on its breathing, hot skin become objects of irony. And here, under the big white sun, I get to watch Dag and Claire pretend they inhabit that other, more welcoming universe.
I
D a g s a y s h e ' s a l e s b i a n t r a p p e d i n s i d e a m a n ' s b o d y . F i g u r e t h a t o u t .
To watch him smoke a filter-tipped cigarette out in the desert, the sweat I on his face evaporating as quickly as it forms, while Claire teases the dogs with bits of chicken at the back of the Saab's hatch gate, you can't help but be helplessly reminded of the sort of bleached Kodak snapshots
[ taken decades ago and found in shoe boxes in attics everywhere. You
' know the type: all yellowed and filmy, always with a big faded car in the background and fash-ions that look surpris -ingly hip. When you see such photos, you can't
[ h e l p b u t w o n d e r a t j u s t
h o w s w e e t a n d s a d a n d
innocent all moments of
life are rendered by the
tripping of a camera's
shutter, for at that point
the future is still un-known and has yet to hurt
us, and also for that brief
moment, our poses are
accepted as
DECADE BLENDING:
In clothing: the indiscriminate
C l a i r e i s d r e s s e d t o d a y i n b u b b l e g u m c a p r i p a n t s , s l e e v e l e s s combination of two or more
blouse, scarf, and sunglasses: starlet manque. She likes retro looks, and items from various decades to
she also once told us that if she has kids, "I'm going to give them utterly create a personal mood: Sheila =
Mary Quant earrings (1960s) +
retro names like Madge or Verna or Ralph. Names like people have in cork wedgie platform shoes
diners."
(1970s) + black leather jacket
Dag, on the other hand, is dressed in threadbare chinos, a smooth
(1950s and 1980s).
cotton dress shirt, and sockless in loafers, essentially a reduction of his usual lapsed Mormon motif. He has no sunglasses: he is going to stare at the sun: Huxley redux or Monty Clift, prepping himself for a role and trying to shake the drugs.
"What," ask both my friends, "is this lurid amusement value dead cele b r i t i e s h o l d f o r u s ? "
Me? I'm just me. I never seem to be able to get into the swing of
using "time as a color" in my wardrobe, the way Claire does, or "time cannibalizing" as Dag calls the process. I have enough trouble just being now. I dress to be obscure, to be hidden—to be generic. Camouflaged.
* * * * *
So, after cruising around house-free streets, Claire chooses the corner of Cottonwood and Sapphire avenues for our picnic, not because there's anything there (which there isn't, merely a crumbling asphalt road being reclaimed by sage and creosote bushes) but rather because "if you try real hard you can almost feel how optimistic the developers were when they named this place."
The back flap of the car clunks down. Here we will eat chicken
breasts, drink iced tea, and greet with exaggerated happiness the pieces of stick and snakeskin the dogs bring to us. And we will tell our bedtime stories to each other under the hot buzzing sun next to vacant lots that in alternately forked universes might still bear the gracious desert homes of such motion picture stars as Mr. William Holden and Miss Grace
Kelly. In these homes my two friends Dagmar Bellinghausen and Claire Baxter would be more than welcome for swims, gossip, and frosty rum drinks the color of a Hollywood, California sunset.
But then that's another universe, not this universe. Here the three of us merely eat a box lunch on a land that is barren—the equivalent of blank space at the end of a chapter—and a land so empty that all objects placed on its breathing, hot skin become objects of irony. And here, under the big white sun, I get to watch Dag and Claire pretend they inhabit that other, more welcoming universe.
I
D a g s a y s h e ' s a l e s b i a n t r a p p e d i n s i d e a m a n ' s b o d y . F i g u r e t h a t o u t .
To watch him smoke a filter-tipped cigarette out in the desert, the sweat I on his face evaporating as quickly as it forms, while Claire teases the dogs with bits of chicken at the back of the Saab's hatch gate, you can't help but be helplessly reminded of the sort of bleached Kodak snapshots
[ taken decades ago and found in shoe boxes in attics everywhere. You
' know the type: all yellowed and filmy, always with a big faded car in the background and fash-ions that look surpris -ingly hip. When you see such photos, you can't
[ h e l p b u t w o n d e r a t j u s t
h o w s w e e t a n d s a d a n d
innocent all moments of
life are rendered by the
tripping of a camera's
shutter, for at that point
the future is still un-known and has yet to hurt
us, and also for that brief
moment, our poses are
accepted as
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