In February, I finally had surgery to remove the large mass over my clavicle. It had been growing for years. Not knowing if it was cancerous or not was the cause of a lot of anxiety. I nicknamed it Kuato after the character in Total Recall. The surgery went quickly. The doctor said the mass was a benign tumor caused by some kind of cystic tissue. He said it was kidney-shaped and measured three by six inches and was about two-thirds an inch deep. He showed me a photo of the mass, and it looked like a rotten piece of meat. Sometimes I feel a sharp pain where it used to be.
In March, my sister contacted me and told me about something called the Freels Farm Mounds. We had never heard of this before, but apparently, there is a farm in Oak Ridge, Tennessee that had several Indian burial mounds on it. The mounds even have their own Wikipedia page. Unfortunately, the mounds are currently underwater. Also on the property is an old cabin, the Freels Bend Cabin, that dates to the early 1800s. This is the farm where my grandfather grew up. I know very little about my grandfather’s past or why he left Tennessee. Oregon is a long way from Tennessee. He had a large family in Tennessee but didn’t seem to keep in touch with them. In some of the older photos I’ve seen, he looks like a red-headed greaser.
Speaking of archeological finds, I needed to get out of the house, so I went to the Museum of Natural History to see the Willamette Meteorite, also known as Tomanowos. The meteorite was originally discovered in West Linn, Oregon, which is not too far from where I grew up. Tomanowos is known for its unique appearance, as it’s covered with deep crevasses. According to the plaque at the museum, the Clackamas Indians would dip their arrows in the water that had collected in the crevasses, as if it would give their arrows some kind of special power. After it was displayed at the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in 1905, Tomanowos was moved to New York City and has remained at the Museum of Natural History ever since.
One new piece of art I saw during the pandemic was Luciano Garbati’s Medusa with the Head of Perseus at Collect Pond Park in Lower Manhattan. The statue is a response to Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus with the Head of Medusa, but the roles have been reversed, and instead of Perseus holding Medusa’s decapitated head, she is holding his. I’ve been fascinated with Medusa since I was a child. My first introduction to her was in Ray Harryhausen’s Clash of the Titans, where she's a slithering snake-haired snake woman with a bow-and-arrow. In the film, the poet Ammon (played by Burgess Meredith), repeats Ovid’s tale of Medusa from the Metamorphoses. She is a tragic figure, he says, transformed into a monster by Athena for being raped by Poseidon in Athena’s temple. This is the most popular origin story of Medusa and a typical case of victim-blaming. Freud saw Medusa’s head as a representation of the female genitalia. No wonder she turns men into stone, or hard.
I spent much of June watching the short films of Curtis Harrington on the Criterion Channel. Previously, I was only familiar with one of Harrington’s films, the atmospheric and highly recommended Night Tide, where a woman believes she might be a mermaid or a siren. Although Night Tide is Harrington’s best work, his short films, which he started making as a teenager, are neck-deep in the uncanny and the esoteric. Harrington went on to work with Kenneth Anger and Maya Deren but disappointingly settled into a career of TV movie-making. I was also able to watch Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Psychomagic, A Healing Art, which was briefly showing on Mubi. The documentary was made of a series of poetic rituals and acts not unlike the kind Jodorowsky’s characters go through in his movies. Yet, in this documentary people are using these poetic techniques for cathartic means, not dramatic ones. It’s about real people with real problems. One person is buried alive, while another paints a portrait with her menstrual blood. One man dresses like a little boy and goes to an amusement park, while another uses a sledgehammer to smash pumpkins with his family’s pictures on them. The list of creative acts goes on. It’s therapy through action. I’m not sure if Jodorowsky’s methods can help these people, but it couldn’t hurt to try.
After getting vaccinated last month, I went on a trip to Georgia, visiting Atlanta and Savannah. When I arrived in Atlanta it was raining heavily. Through the downpours, I walked to Sol LeWitt’s 54 Columns and then to the Krog Street Graffiti Tunnel. That evening I met with surrealists Steven and Hazel Cline who showed me around the Little Five Points. I had a few shots of whiskey for the first time since the pandemic hit and found myself very talkative. The following day, I went to Atlanta’s High Museum of Art. The museum has a fantastic Howard Finster collection. I think this is the largest amount of Finster’s work that I’ve seen in one place. Not far from the Finster collection was a statue by Nandipha Mntambo called Minotaurus. I thought this statue made a good pendant to the Medusa statue mentioned earlier. Two mythical Greek creatures reimagined in the light of feminism. The only surrealist work I saw at the museum was Max Ernst’s Tree of Life. The piece was made in 1928 and seems to mix the bestiaries of the sky with the sea. It has a very “primordial waters” feel to it. I also went to the Center for Puppetry but was underwhelmed. One thing I did discover there was this excellent short film by Jim Henson called Time Piece.
I had several chance events while traveling between the two cities. The first involved something Steven and Hazel had said. They reminded me they'd written a piece about Savannah where they switched maps and used the map of Ottawa to navigate Savannah. When I arrived in Savannah, my friend Sofie, who just moved there, picked me up from the airport. By chance, one of the first thing she told me when driving was how Google maps is always using the wrong street names, almost as if it was using the map of some other city. The second chance event involved the hotel I was staying at. On the building was a plaque proclaiming the building’s historical signification. On that plaque was my recurring number: 1888.
One of the first things I did in Savannah was visit the Jepson Art Center, where I saw David Gumbs’ Blossoms. The installation, located at the top of the building, was just a square frame, a cube, covered with white, transparent sheets. A video image was then projected onto the sheets, and the image seemed to spin or rotate vertically. It was hard to tell what the image was actually of, but when I entered the cube it looked smoke-like, pale and white. My first thought was that it was ectoplasm, after all, Savannah is said to be the most haunted city in the United States.
Walking around downtown Savannah, you can really see why it’s considered a spooky city. It has a series of squares that systematically dot the landscape. They’re only blocks apart and most have large oak trees on them covered with Spanish moss. The antique buildings are big and imposing, engulfing the squares and back alleys with shadows. It’s the perfect city for wandering. I can’t say if I believe in ghosts or not, but when walking around that first night, I had a curious encounter. I was planning on logging my walk for any odd occurrences, when, as I walked towards Orleans Square, I saw a grey cat hiding under a car. I started to take note of the cat, but when I walked into the square, looking down at my phone, I heard a human sound, like a cough, followed by someone humming a tune. It sounded like they were very near me, perhaps standing a few feet away. I looked around and saw no one. Then I thought I saw the silhouette of someone sitting on a bench, but as I got closer I realized it was only a bush.
The following day Sofie and her two children took me to the famed Bonaventure Cemetery, a beautiful place with many notable gravestones and statues. Sofie’s daughter Vera wanted me to see one grave in particular, that of a little girl named Gracie Watson. Gracie died young and her grave marker was sculpted using a photograph of her. It’s surrounded by an iron fence, and many people leave offerings to Gracie on the fence. Another grave marker I saw that had a lot of offerings was an odd one of a woman jogging. I also found it peculiar that one grave plot for the Cope family was very overgrown, with nature reclaiming the space. On the plot was a sign that read: DO NOT SERVICE. Apparently, naturalist John Muir camped at the cemetery for nearly a week in 1867, sleeping on the gravestones. I’m not sure why, but I find that factoid rather humorous.
On my last day in Savannah I went to the SCAD Museum of Art. I was expecting my walk through this museum to be quick, but it surprised me, containing a lot of interesting contemporary work. The one artist that stood out the most for me was Polish painter Agata Slowak. Slowak’s imagery is brutal and dark but poetic. In her piece at the museum, Painters Mean Blood, a snake-haired woman (Medusa again), appears to be attacking a red-bodied woman who has a strange, amorphous hand. The two are tied together by their hearts. I was able to find Slowak’s Instagram account and was shaken and excited by the visuals: a skeleton washing its hands with breast milk, women in lingerie captured by a fishnet, a deer-man with a hand grenade attached to his large erection. I find her work stunning and look forward to seeing more from her.
After the museum, I met up with Sofie and her children, and we went to the Wormsloe Historic Site where we drove down the magnificent avenue of live oaks. A very beautiful way to end a refreshing trip to Georgia.
Books I’ve been reading:
Jack Sargeant - Deathtripping: The Extreme Underground
Linda S. Godfrey - I Know What I Saw: Modern-Day Encounters with Monsters of New Urban Legend and Ancient Lore
Brendan Mullen - Whores: An Oral Biography of Jane's Addiction
Elizabeth Victoria Aldrich - Ruthless Little Things
Steven Cline - Amok! A Collection of Surrealist Essays
What I’ve been listening to on the subway:
Blind Willie McTell - The Definitive Blind Willie McTell
Big Boys - Wreck Collection
Screamers - Demo Hollywood 1977
The Cardboards - Greatest Hits Volume Two
Hot Snakes - Suicide Invoice
Movies I’ve been watching:
Asparagus (Susan Pitt, 1979)
Debt Begins at 20 (Stephanie Beroes, 1980)
Gift (Perry Ferrell and Casey Niccoli, 1993)
A Snake of June (Shinya Tsukamoto, 2002)
Blood Bath (Jack Hill and Stephanie Rothman, 1966)