Pony Station .

This is from back in March when it was freezing outside and some friends of mine had to push Geoff's shitty Volkswagen to get it started. About an hour later, Geoff returned with a busted radiator, but it was so cold outside that he made it all the way back to Ridgewood from FDR Drive.

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I drew this while I was waiting on the runway at Laguardia for like ten hours. The guy sitting next to me was making a hissing sound with his nose.

Horse Festival Dream

The festival took place in my hometown, Nevada City, which was, in its day, one of California's most lucratie Gold Rush towns. Gold mines in Nevada County operated for about a hundred years, and everything within the downtown area has been designated a National Historical Landmark, as have many additional sites nearby. The downtown district consists of about a dozen blocks lined with vintage "Old West" buildings constructed just after the last spate of city-wide fires around the turn of the last century. These streets are closed off for various holidays and festivals throughout the year, and this was the case in my dream. However, instead of celebrating, for example, Christmas with kettle corn and kids shoved onto the streets in Victorian garb playing nostalgia-laden instruments, we were celebrating horses. Both admission and horse-riding were free, and the boundaries of the festival included Pioneer Park, which is about a third of a mile down the road. Cars were not allowed anywhere in sight, any parked vehicles that remained on the streets the night before the festival were towed. Visitors were either bussed in or encouraged to ride bikes.

Although the proceedings seemed to have been well organized, once festival-goers were matched with a horse there were no rules whatsoever, and everybody was riding around and going nuts. Horses were corralled in a large pen at the bottom of the main street behind The National Hotel, waiting for riders to take them out. The festival was well-attended, but there was always lots of room, and my friends and I stuck together in a pack. When somebody got lost, we'd call them up on their phone. By mid-morning, horses had taken over town, and the streets seemed to have responded to their new hooved traffic by turning into a grassy, weedy, rocky, dry field, becoming a huge, grid-patterned pasture. Even a bridge over the freeway, and the empty freeway beneath, had turned into grassland. At one point, an iconoclastic long-time resident and firm believer in alternative energy crashed the event in an electric golf cart, but was thwarted and dragged off by the police. Of course, the festival encouraged renewable fuel options, but was more concerned with human or animal-powered transportation, and specifically celebrated The Horse.

After three days of eating, drinking and riding, the city reopened its grassy streets to cars. Accustomed now to a more wild state of being, the streets never bothered to return to their previous paved incarnation.

This video was made using a small-sized digital camera that was stuffed into a peanut butter jar and stabilized by my underwear. Without the underwear, the camera would have spun inside of the jar, but with it, the image stayed pretty steady.

Last Thursday night, I had this dream that I had entered a fly fishing contest, even though I've never fly fished, ever. A few months ago in real life, I found an enormous Luna Moth at an antique show that was dying in some mud in front of a dilapidated snack booth. The moth had been stepped on like nine times, but it was really beautiful and dignified, so I took it out into the woods nearby, set it on a leaf, said a little faux prayer, and went on my way. In the dream, the moth had escaped from the world of the dead and came to me as a ghost hoping to be my special contest fly. It explained that we would be a great team, and that it would be my secret weapon. I agreed, and tied the moth to my line.

The contest was scheduled to take place at a park in my hometown where, when I was three, I got into a really bad swing accident that resulted in the addition of 72 stitches just below my left eye. In the dream, when I arrived at the contest, I learned that the judges had changed the rules at the last minute. Instead of fishing, contestants were to perform tricks. Soon, people were tight rope walking on their fishing lines, doing fisherman's double-dutch, and balancing tackle bags on their foreheads. I proudly carried my moth through the crowd as onlookers began to comment on my "pretty little butterfly." "He's a moth." I corrected them, "A ghost moth."

When it was our turn, the Luna Moth turned to me from his place at the end of my line and made a move to show me that we were going to fly. Just as I was about to protest, since I was really confused, he pulled me up into the air and towed me over the swing sets. We started flying over the playground. Flapping his wings back and forth to communicate, he showed me how to hold the fishing pole taut while he was flying, and then let some slack from the reel so that he could rest for a second before opening his wings like a parachute so we could float. If I cast the line up over my head, the ghost moth would beat his wings and hold his position in the air like a grappling hook while I reeled myself toward him to fly upward. Somehow my pole was outfitted with a special reel that allowed me to pull myself really quickly through the sky. By casting him ahead of me over and over, we could fly however fast we liked.

At first, we could still see the awestruck look on the crowd's face from above the park, but once I got the hang of casting, we flew all over town, checking everything out and having a really good time. Forgetting all about the contest, we flew around all day and all night. I remember dropping down into the Yuba River canyon and flying over pine trees with stars all around. I also remember that by nightfall, my arm was really sore, but we kept flying anyway. The End.