A text from a father to his adult daughter morphs into creative chaos
Dylan, my oldest child, moved to New York from Seattle just in time for the Covid Pandemic. Somehow Dylan managed to graduate Summa cum laude (tho too shy to openly admit it) from the New School in Manhattan in 2021 with a Masters in Creative Writing (Nonfiction). They gifted me with a copy of this book from one of their favorite authors. Ms. Zambreno’s writing moved and inspired me as well during those uncertain times. Damn, we still live in uncertain times.
Good Morning over there in New York, dear Elder Daughter, it’s Midnight here in Seattle…
Hey, I still wanna hear more about Moosie Moose Dog^^^ and it dawned on me as I read a little more of Kate Zambreno’s weird, yummiliciously quirky Screen Tests from 2019 and went back to gaze upon its pinkishly pale crimson book color the image there was a horse on the cover. A frickin’ horse! Was so cool to have Kate Z’s black ’n’ white foto of her jamming on a piano peeking thru a jagged, torn fake hole in the book. Cool in a discordian kinda way. Tonight close to midnight an idea dawned on me, damn, that ragged rip in the spacetime of a 2-dimensional image is really a cutout of a flat horse.
How many times have I peered at this cover? And not realized this? LOL! Perhaps looking hard past her cleavage as if it was merely what it was, a black gown, strapped, dressed for zany Zambreno performances. At least there weren’t any pictures of her baby rolling off the piano bench and falling to the floor to burst out with startled wails. Because her kids were human babies and not baby whales. Baby whales with tails to tell tales in cetacean code? So all these things flashed thru my pretzel brain supercharged with neurodivergence and strong black coffee before wondering if the cowboy on the horse was some weird ode to the Lone Ranger, to those iconic cowboys of old black ’n’ white cinema, or just a Mormon man who smoked cigarettes and drank Pepsi when not inside a church for Latter-Day Saints. But I always got LDS mixed up with LSD. So, was cute little Moose Dog really kidnapped in Seattle?
Gosh, Moose Dog, who such an adorable pug with cute, stumpy legs, reminds me of a giant, curly-haired Deadhead named Moose with big, fee-fi-fo-fum legs your Mom & I met thruhiking the Appalachian Trail back when we backpacked the whole AT as the Pregnant Rhinos waaay back in 1991. Moose was from Georgia. And our little band of thruhikers saw two real Maine moose rutting halfway up Mt. Katahdin on the last day, too! Right in the middle of the Appalachian Trail! While their calf moose stood aside off trail. After hiker Moose got caught a ruttin’ with another human in an AT shelter as a black bear ran from two battling bull moose. The bull moose did not appreciate our interruption and faked a charge as we and a coupla other hikers scampered gibbering thru the woods in a ragged bypass around the moose family.
Moosie Moose Doggie Dog in Carkeek Park, Seattle with my 2 older daughters Kate & Dylan, March 2019. Baby orca whales are often seen offshore from Carkeek, too, altho not as often as the orca population dwindles as the salmon decline.
Kathryn (L) & Dylan (R) walking Moose Dog at Carkeek Park, Seattle, Monday 11 March 2019.
Now imagine Kate Z back in New York dressed as a Celto-Germanic barbarian, still showing cleavage, and rhythmically banging on a drum while ululating a Pagan love song with the image of some poor fella sitting astride an auroch rearing up in the air behind her and still bouncing a baby girl human swaddled in furs and diapered with moss. Hmn. Cultural gumbo with centaurs. Perhaps best to reimagine Kate Z more as a scintillating Etruscan warrior poet from back in the days before Momma Wolf suckled forth Rome. Or a ferocious Moorish-Basque bard from Iberia. Ahhh, whatever, I use too many adjectives in fluid tests, so, hello, what would all of these look like from the fifth and sixth dimensions in our holographic, simulated, algorithmic universe especially if we could factor in the penetration of time?
Centaur piano.
Developed from a text to Dylan Bass in Brooklyn sent from my iPhone on the 22nd of March 2021. Found out Moosie Moose Dog was not kidnapped. He was relocated from Seattle south to the L.A. area.
William Dudley Bass
Monday 22 March 2021
Cleaned up & posted on
Sunday 28 January 2024
Shoreline/Seattle, WA
United States of America
NOTE on Photos:
The above images of the book cover are of my copy of Kate Zambreno’s 2019 book, Screen Tests, gifted to me by Dylan in NYC. I shot them with an aging Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max. The two fotos of the dog in the park were shot with an old Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge smartfone.
Copyright © 2024 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.