condo®s
[2021 rg]

Gracias por permitirme leer "condo®s" y escucharte. Me parece una propuesta que llega emotivamente en capas. Sé que sentiré cosas al respecto durante los días venideros porque las ideas plasmadas estarán enlazadas a mi mirada de los espacios, vacíos y habitados, a mi paso mientras conozco más de tu "aquí" y este 'suelo que no es nuestro'.

Un gran abrazo,

Marlyn

pd. ¡Qué vengan más compartires de tus letras! ¡Enhorabuena!

cohere or co-here!!!

an honor to receive this in my inbox

and from another desert-born(e) part-time human, such a quietloud visual howl, the bowl teeth mountains resound

love love love as always

Dear Ryan,

this is a new kind of writing about place

about visualizing listening to hearing feeling place

from "unrecorded beginnings" to futures imagined or wrecklessly ignored

i hear bedrock rumbling i hear topsoil screaming i hear weary water weeping i hear stones casting oracle only sky can read and the stars keep secret

this place is grieving not growing feels everything transmitted from the soles of the feet that beat down its essence to the machines that tear at it flesh

this place has always puzzled me spoken to me in ways i didn't know how to interpret or translate

how the houses seem to be sinking into the ground itself

how even in the same "neighborhood" one block will be affluent another impoverished

now that almost all the vacant lots are gone the sameness is oppressive

thank you for listening to and giving voice to the urban desert

-mH 💔

"Cohere or co-here"

Polyvalent “heres” as a shifting register

I misread “an expansive false claim” as “expensive”...

Complicating the border of they/we as a subjectivity of simultaneous part of/apart from, complicity and ambivalence— I haven’t seen this before and I like it a lot! (Likewise, “if we ≠ we”)

“I’d like to read their love letters” <3

“on the underwear of the night” & “the skyline’s part of the anatomy” hot!!

“up and a( )way”

‘CALLING ALL PEOPLE WHOSE NAMES ARE ON YARD SIGNS”

thank you for sharing! really great reflections and poetry and inspiring ecopoetic work in/on development. love the format and feel of it as a book!

Querido Ryan: leí con mucho entusiasmo Condo®s. Me parece que este trabajo poético tuyo es de gran capacidad expresiva. Me gustó mucho el ritmo que van tomando los poemas, que puede recordar lo mismo el fraseo de una canción que un coro religioso. Así, cuando las imágenes describen las particularidades de la ciudad, los pequeños eventos, las cosas que pasan inadvertidas, sumado al ritmo (o en contrapunto al ritmo) crean una experiencia estética muy peculiar, que se lee/escucha maravillosas. Me encantó sky. Tiene imágenes magníficas, derivadas de reflexiones muy agudas sobre nosotros, los "seres sublunares". Me fascinó. Ésa fue otra cosa que me gustó mucho del libro: que todo el asunto de la gentrificación deriva también en una reflexión sobre la identidad y la soledad o, más bien, como la gentrificación de alguna manera pone a la individualidad tan en riesgo que la persona termina absorbida por una soledad que es una falta de identidad. Me encantó lo que hiciste. Hay versos deslumbrantes y todo el conjunto tiene un ritmo espectacular. Y por supuesto que me sentí muy honrada por aparecer mencionada. :D

Muchísimos abrazos y felicitaciones

Mano me encanta, sobre todo los audios ❤️😎

Ryan!

I love and appreciate how you experience this city. Your words build a generous bridge between my attention and intuition; they let me feel the layers of my own memory, criticism, silence, anger, shame. It feels like a gift today.

Moments that ignited a small wide-eyed applause from my heart (although there are truly *so* many)

sunlight shoots sharp

mom points out

all the neighbors’ pavers

all utilities included

and so they

cut the bus-stop benches in two

lightposts (I *also* think about those who make light posts!)

CALLING ALL PEOPLE WHOSE

NAMES ARE ON YARD SIGNS

I would like to order a physical copy when they become available and am looking forward to flipping the pages in my hands, and sharing with others.

Deep gratitude for you: the tools you use to weave and see and reflect!

Hola Ryan!

Gracias por compartir

este proyecto germinal

es una bella experiencia del descubrimiento

un avance del pensar-sentir que nos llama a permanecer

en diálogo con la tierra,

nuestro vecindario llamado ciudad

como la de los condominios y los cóndores

hablando a la nueva humanidad del corazón que nace con el mundo

Gracias por la conversación

de nuevo mirando el diseño de las estrellas

Thank you for sharing!

This is an amazing piece, Ryan! The writing - text and images - and your reading are fierce and trippy, urgent and pondering. Your survey of this writhing, rising and plunging Phoenix, in 2021, seems also flame-like, fast dancing licks, charred illusions, burning questions, furrowed seeds for and of the future; but's whose future?

And what was the past, that seemed to change so fast? You stir a lot up, and we must thank you for that!

Thank you, and Congratulations!!! for this tight and thought-provoking!!! work!!!

Hugs, thanks and congratulations!!!

Claudia

Ryan,

Your email has been sitting in my inbox for what—maybe, three, four weeks? I thought it was / felt more. Not a bad turn-around time for me on the personal account, personally. Other friends and family members have waited longer. Not my worst. In any case: just wanted to pay your words the honor and respect of a lyrical engagement via missive. And of course: your patience in friendship; your messages beamed into the ether; a kind of light or radiation; shining for itself; waiting to receive. Namely: that Phoenix is lucky to have you; that I appreciate what you do; your consistent spirit of collaboration and communication. It’s nice to see your own work, too. Specifically: the guesthouses I too have inhabited—landlord specials, painted over windows; my own early twenties; walking my bike home with popped tire from Grand Ave; probably from a Trunk Space prior incarnation, never being a big fan of The Bikini. The hot, dusty wind blowing up, chuffing up. Am I strange or foolish for thinking it’s no longer here? The choice of blue: an atmospheric perspective? Cyanotype-like. Perhaps an attempt to recreate the river? Overflowing itself. I live by the Grand Canal now, behind the light rail. Our neighbors have a vigilant HOA. They send newsletters every month or two, mostly crime statistics. K and I will occasionally hear them complain about people walking through. Just yesterday: one of them at the end of the street, with a white cowboy hat—an article of clothing with many meanings, but in this context I think, not insignificant—shouting at a lady who had wandered onto his corner, telling her to leave. Remembering K’s social work training. Hanging out for a moment to see if I could help. Good cop / bad cop. Making sure this guy didn’t call the police. Not an attempt to excuse myself, or at least not all of it. Recognizing one’s structural position. The least we can do. Some questions for this work, then, or additional thoughts: if the development is an obelisk, a monument, then what of the historic neighborhoods banding together to oppose them? Not in my backyard, etc. Not that I am well researched or versed. The flight paths from Sky Harbor. The charm of the light rail’s horn versus the siren of freight. In our city: to the West. Where the sun rises. Every time they put those temporary fences up—are they really that temporary?—with the netting, I always think of an operating theater, a screen behind which they are performing some kind of ritual. Perhaps an act of seduction. Disrobing. Then showing in its true form. The canals are sad, really. Unhappy. Like I know they put a sidewalk path next to them and some new plants or whatever but it’s just so entrenched. The guy who lives at the end of the street? He’s got a few fenced off properties next to our complex. (Our complex.) Not sure if it’s the same lot where the kids are skateboarding these days, shirtless, listening to Mos Def. Across from the other building. To think, then: if they are raising these things out of the ground, is this in someways a burial? A rehearsal of ruins? One city built on top of another. To return to the blue: the sky? I look around at the city and I feel no love. I don’t know. I could be wrong though. These are underdeveloped thoughts. What would it mean for them to be developed? Unedited. I get pessimistic sometimes. Please correct me. Let’s talk. K sends her love. I do too. As we are always sending and receiving. One of the questions for this work, then: how to make this performative or physical. How to bring love back to the city. In electrical terms: how to resist. More unsaid. More soon.

...

Also: yes on Jeri Williams and proof in the pudding, my goodness. Also: good for you on using the word smegma.

Yo thank u for the invite! I kinda do have a piece I've been working on about similar things in Mesa and in my neighborhood. I'm hoping to make the piece a kinda centerpiece to the book I'm working on, so I still think it's in early stages.