home: june 11 A very large old concrete structure. Strange mixture: of
spanish colonial, mission, central european, moorish, portuguese, flying
buttresses, adobe, bavarian, asian, prefabricated american. The air is
thick, but breathable. I sleep in a room with two beds, a telephone with a
data port, an enclosed balcony which was once a kitchen, and a tiny room,
approx one meter sqare with nothing in it but a window.
home: june 12, 13 The "rec room" of a suburban home in a city designed
with ordered streets, numbered and lettered. Sliding glass doors on three
walls. I spend the days in the desert.
home: june 14-18 A room, approx. 4 by 5 meters, concrete walls and metal
furniture all painted the same "sand" color. A telephone with voice mail, a
mini-refrigerator/microwave unit called a "MicroFridge" which emits a
drone, a single matress on springs, a set of telephone directories, lots of
maps.
home: june 19 A small unused room in a luxurious private home. The sound
of the ocean. Off-white shag carpeting with dog hair. A telephone in a
beautiful office-room with real wood paneling, lots of books and a muted
large-screen TV. The living-room has a huge stone hearth with a drum set in
front of it. A lot of nice furniture. I leave everything in the trunk of
the rental car.
home: june 20, 21 A locker on the boat dock and a room in an
"pueblo-style" sprawling adobe structure, a little dilapitated, once the
home of a famous "Western" fiction writer from the early 20c, on a hill
above a bay on an island. A beach below is covered with real rocks and
"rocks" made from fabricated materials: brick, concrete, asphalt which have
been tumbled in the ocean. A broken sliding glass door opens onto a small
balcony overlooking a canyon. Clandestinely I use the telephone in the
office as my dataport, as the proprietress is afraid I will "mess up the
phone line". There is a pool in the shape of an "arrowhead", altho no one
swims in it. My skin hurts, but still I am happy.
home: june 22 (concrete block)
home: june 23-24 The trunk of a rental car and a room approx 2 by 3
meters square with "private bath" in a wood-frame building from the
mid-19th c. in a former mining town. A proliferation of assumed comforts:
pillows, lace, silk plants and flowers, lamps, quilts, soaps, curtains. No
telephone, no data-access ammenities. The proprietor is afraid I will run
up the phone bill if I check my email on the office phone. I spend the days
in the desert which has become very hot. I look for places I've read or
heard about which I cannot find. I see time in the stones. Visit a canyon
filled with volcanics, metamorphics and sedimentaries filled with fossils.
I feel queasy with astonishment and the heat.
Tonight I am back in the concrete block, and tomorrow will leave again. I
think about access to information, gasoline, food, batteries and something
for the itching.
Eve Andree Laramee