My aunt and uncle,
The aunt who passed away recently
Would always drink a ton of soda.
They would drink enough Big Gulps from 7/11
That they would gauge distances
In relation to where the 7/11’s were in our neighborhood.
They would always say,
“We can go to the movies with you, but let’s drive this way,
because that 7/11 is the closest
between the theater and your house.”
I thought you were going to say
They gauged distances they walked
By the mean or median distances
Between all 7/11’s
It was strange,
I always knew when they were coming over
Because we had to clear out the top shelf of the fridge
To fit their Big Gulps.
My mom’s family, they only had Vizslas
I love Vizslas cuz they get that jowel thing
That was their dog
They look kind of like Weimaraners but they’re auburn
They’re really red, they’re really brick red
Rusty
And they have really short fur
Really tight, really sleek
My aunt and uncle have a lot of animals
They have horses and dogs
That's actually how they met
They both had Rottweilers I think
They both went to this dog park
And hit it off because they both had Rottweilers
Was your aunt raising Rottweilers for shows at that time?
I think she was
But the time when she had Odie, her main show dog
Was while they were together
They met because of her dogs and her love of showing dogs
They had this big property out in Pendleton
The kind of property where you have to drive to get to your neighbors house
“Everyone has 20 acres” kind of thing
driving out there,
it’s like a giant flat plane with houses dotted
you drive down this long road
and take a left by a crop circle
it's a very surreal empty space
It was so vast
That I remember my cousins had this trampoline
It was one of those big ones with the net around it
One of those standing ones, big and bright blue
They had one out by the house
They get those big windstorms out there
Because it’s so flat
The dust just blows in
I remember one time we came they said
Oh we don't have a working trampoline anymore
The wind picked it up blew it across our property
A tumbleweed, big blue plastic
They had tried to put it back together
But they had lost so many springs
And little metal bits
Across the field.
My cousins would go out and look for them
Maybe your aunt found the springs?
There’s something about how flat the landscape is
How that is so unfound in the space we now enter
Maybe that's why it feels so supernatural
Like the surface of Mars
You describe the dust flying, and the wind carrying it across
That sort of data collection
It is manageable data
A la twister
There’s something to be said for the manifest destiny concept of the west
The mythos of the space
The thing I used to think about was how
They used to live near a giant crop circle
This big circular flat disk
Do you actually know the use of crop circles?
I actually don't know
Oh yeah, crop circles are made in that way
Because they are significantly more efficient
In terms of water distribution.
From the center point of a square acre
to the edge, is the radius of the circle.
a watering system on wheels
is fixed at the center point
and radiates around it.
That way you only have to move one point, instead of two
I remember when I learned to draw,
My friend told me if you shade in circles
You get a dramatically more even tone
I’m not sure if it true
The geometry inherently suggests
A closed loop
I remember in elementary school,
We had a competition to see who remembered
The most digits of pi
There was a kid who kept us after school
Because he remembered so many.
There’s a means of transportation
From one realm to another
That in combination with
The mystery surrounding the means of my aunt’s death
I kept thinking that the landscape had something to do with it
And if you don't know a conclusive answer what’s the difference
Run me through the whole
Timeline yes run me through the timeline
My aunt lives in Pendleton, Oregon
My aunt Julie and my uncle Mel
They both live on a property in Pendleton, Oregon
Or at least they did when they were both alive
It was last summer
Maybe late summer, early fall
Basically she just went out
Onto the property with her horse
She came back inside and was complaining of muscle aches
And she hadn’t fallen off the horse or anything?
She didn't say that that had happened
And it would be strange of her to not express that?
She just lay down
It kept getting worse over the course of a couple of days
Then my uncle decided that he needed to take her into urgent care
So they drove all the way out to the nearest urgent care
They said they didn't know what was going on
We need to take her to a hospital
It spiraled, and after three days’ time
He was on the way to the hospital when they called him
Said, “she’s on life support, but we can’t bring her back”
You need to call your kids
Have them say goodbye
There’s something about this feeling
Of something happened
That she didn't tell us
Something she could not speak on
And when her ashes were spread
They were spread in the field,
With the combines running
Kicking up the dust
Along with the ashes of her show dog, Odie
The landscape knows, there’s forensic evidence out there
The more I learn, the more it seems our arbitrary action
Becomes dynamic
Before we started this project you told me about this event
But it was a secondary descriptor
For the sensation of ghost hunting
As a form of obsessive faith
and now rather than ghost hunting
It’s conspiracy theory tied into personal narrative
I think conspiracy theory now,
has an odd political weight.
The fact that we now have a political regime,
whose entire game is based on transparency and opacity
“What does transparency look like?”
“What does absolute opacity look like?”
“How do we negate the parts that we can’t control?”
Belief becomes the strongest tool you have.
Ultimately her death and the strange events that transpired
are in your control as much as anyone else’s in terms of dictating
what that means and what happened.
You can tell yourself
“The Dogs do know”
the land still knows,
there might be something still there on that property
and the confirmation bias
creates magic.
When we first went down to the dog pound
the running joke
and basis for our conspiracy
was that, this is an abandoned dog pound
it’s been abandoned as long as I can remember
growing up in New Jersey
it’s this old fashioned dog pound
it has the pendant fences
mud everywhere
it wouldn't be considered ethical nowadays
it’s more where you keep dogs for a dog fighting ring
there’s all this eighties equipment
it looks like something bad transpired there
that history has tried to erase
and it's a strange monument to that.
The joke was, this was like a holding cell
for some sort of government operation
with the dogs.
I had also just seen the OA
About a man forcing people
Who have had near death experiences
To participate in experiments.
We brought the radio there
and we were obsessed with the idea of
this space being a place of spiritual
and political importance.
Some sort of conspiracy had gone down there
and then when we turned the radio on, the signals
got jammed. If you pointed it towards the holding cells
the radio signals died off.
The Christian radio died off.
Then when we were outside and we pointed it
towards the building,
the signals died off again.
In that way our confirmation bias
allowed us to find
a relationship.
You will see what you wish
in the signs you are given in the world.