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Love To Josh From Us |
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by Anonymous 5/21/07
SIDER1
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by Anonymous 5/18/07
Some Words in Memory
Coupla things in memory of Josh (whom I never met, nor have
I met any of your family, although I've read your websites a
lot):
Sweetness
for my mother
Just when it has seemed I couldn't bear
one more friend
waking with a tumor, one more maniac
with a perfect reason, often a sweetness
has come
and changed nothing in the world
except the way I stumbled through it,
for a while lost
in the ignorance of loving
someone or something, the world shrunk
to mouth-size,
hand-size, and never seeming small.
I acknowledge there is no sweetness
that doesn't leave a stain,
no sweetness that's ever sufficiently sweet. ...
Tonight a friend called to say his lover
was killed in a car
he was driving. His voice was low
and guttural, he repeated what he needed
to repeat, and I repeated
the one or two words we have for such grief
until we were speaking only in tones.
Often a sweetness comes
as if on loan, stays just long enough
to make sense of what it means to be alive,
then returns to its dark
source. As for me, I don't care
where it's been, or what bitter road
it's traveled
to come so far, to taste so good.
Stephen Dunn, from New and Selected Poems 1974-1994
-=-=-=-=-=-
and something I always quote when death comes around:
THAT is not born, neither does it die.
It sprang from nothing, nothing sprang from it.
Unborn, eternal, everlasting, ancient,
THAT is not killed though the body is killed.
If the slayer thinks he slays,
If the slain thinks he is slain,
Both are deluded.
THAT slays not nor is slain.
Greater than great, smaller than small,
In the heart of all creatures THAT resides,
seen only by one who is free from desire
and from grief.
Sitting still he walks far, lying down he goes everywhere,
bodyless within bodies, unchanging among changes...
How can one who is not tranquil or subdued, whose mind
is not at rest, understand THAT through mere knowledge?
How shall an ordinary person conceive THAT being, for
whom both a buddha and a warrior are as food, and death
a condiment?
The Katha Upanishad
-=-=-=-=
Comment:
And yet we love the form, the particular form...
the quirky smile, the tilt of the head...
We can't help it, despite the tearing grief that attaches...
Wisdom says we are nothing.
Love says we are everything.
Between the two, our life flows.
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By Maria Carreón
5/15/07
Looking For You
Take a seat here
Ice and vodka slide in glass across
A single, undivided
Slab of wood
One slice down the middle of a massive tree
Rested upon by unbridled troubles
Vexation and
Calamity
We could collect tears in buckets like rainwater
pouring down from a leak in the roof
A napkin from a stack and
A pen from a stranger's pocket
Help to work out the problem
There is a door, but
It can’t lock out the things I have seen
A sidewalk stretches
Down to rocky edges
Of eastern waters
Where my urgent call is
Swept to the other side
On a filthy wind
Boats glide
This island to
That island
Bridges suspend above the choppy waves
Turnpikes and
Expressways
Freeways and
Highways run between
Tollbooths with
Sweet or surly operators
Factories exhaust diabolical jet-streams
Of black smoke and flame
Industrial wastelands fester
A stone’s throw from
Glittering rivers
Hickory, hemlock and ash
Blanket Pennsylvania
Spindled charcoal trees
Like coarse black hair on the
Wintry back of Chicago
Are you out there with the
Motionless cows
Big sky?
Rolling hills and
Apathetic windmills
Hundreds of hotels and motels
Spilling over with
Seedy propositions and
Unconquerable self loathing
Faces of anguish
Faces of bliss
Dreams of mercury and steel
Wishes hinged on dandelion fluff
Various realities that morph with
Each gust of salt out of Utah
Every aggressive wind
From Brooklyn to Santa Monica
Exalts my declarations of grief
Where are you?
In the Colestine Valley
Dipping far below the California Interstate
Tucked beneath the dirt of our childhood
Among the wildflowers and star thistle
Whizzing over
Row after row of corn and wheat
Drifting past a thousand and one clouds
Crossing patches of ice
Tumbling in tunnels of dust
Living among the stars
[Copyright 2007]
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by Dream Pretty 5/15/07
1000 Oceans
by Tori Amos
These tears Ive cried
Ive cried 1000 oceans
And if it seems
Im floating
In the darkness
Well I cant believe that I would keep
Keep you from flying
And I would cry 1000 more if thats
What it takes to sail you home
Sail you home sail you home
Im aware what the rules are
But you know that I will run
You know that I will follow you
Over silbury hill through the solar field
You know that I wil follow you
And if I find you will you still remember
Playing at trains
Or does this little blue ball
Just fade away
Over silbury hill through the solar field
You know that I will follow you
Im aware what the rules are
But you know that I will run
You know that I will follow you
These tears Ive cried
Ive cried 1000 oceans
And if Im floating
In the darkness
Well I cant believe that I would keep
Keep you from flying
And I will cry 1000 more if thats
What it takes to sail you home
Sail you home sail you home
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by Maria Carreon 5/15/07
Beauty
For Joshua and Beauty
She said
As she fired a shot into the sky
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by Tara Carreon 5/15/07
One of the most beautiful things I've ever
seen
This is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. I love
Fellini. When I need real comfort, I go to Fellini. He's a true
brother. A real heart.
An authentic human being.
Quote:
Satyricon, by Federico Fellini
http://www.american-buddha.com/SATYRICON.TOC.htm
[Eumolpus] Poets
may die, Encolpius. But it doesn't matter, if poetry
remains. My friend, companion of my final moments here ... you'll
be
able to say, "I knew Eumolpus, the poet." What can I
say? If I were as
rich as Trimalchio, I'd leave you some land or a ship. But I can
only
leave you what I had myself.
I leave you poetry. I leave you the seasons,
especially spring and
summer, I leave you the wind, the sun,
I leave you the sea, the good
sea. The earth is good, too.
The mountains, streams, and rivers. And
the big clouds that move by,
solemn and light. You'll look at them and maybe remember our brief
friendship.
And I leave you the trees and their agile inhabitants.
Love, tears,
joy, stars, Encolpius. I leave you sounds, songs, noises. The voice
of
man, which is the most harmonious of music. I leave you.
_________________
There couldn't be something tautological about it, could there?
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By Charles Carreon 4/9/07
Eulogy
Joshua was our first-born child. Though Tara
and I are both from Arizona, Josh was a local boy from the start
-- conceived in a peach orchard on Wagner Creek. He was born in
County Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. After a week of watching Josh
struggle for every breath, the doctors declared he was going to
die. We signed Josh out against medical advisement, and after being
duly threatened with prosecution in the event of Josh's death, took Josh to Dr. Ray Brown, a legendary homeopathic genius. Thanks to Dr. Brown, Josh lived, and also on his advice to seek a cooler climate, we moved to Ashland. From 1980 to 1983, we lived in Colestine Valley, where Josh spent the days playing with his sister Maria on the floor of a yurt lit with kerosene lamps and warmed with wood. Eventually, by the light of a kerosene lamp, I filled out an application for law school, which led us to move to Los Angeles. The first night we glided down the L.A. freeways in our old Econoline church van, seeing the endless streams of white and red electric fire crawling over the hills, Josh leaned forward from the back seat and asked me, "Are we really going to live here?" We
did, for ten years.
In L.A., Josh suffered an enormous health setback when he was
poisoned by Dursban, a pesticide applied to our student housing
apartment. Paralyzed up to the neck for a week, over the course
of a year, he reacquired the use of his limbs. As soon as his
strength allowed, he became a fearless skateboarder, earnestly
punishing his body against the West L.A. concrete. When we moved
to Santa Monica, near Venice Beach, Josh discovered street art.
We didn't watch TV, but he figured that being in L.A., we were TV, and played his role with elan. While still in middle school, he had customized a set of spray-paint tips to control his line, feather and shade pigments. He rode the buses and became streetwise. He was fiercely loyal to his two sisters, Maria and Ana, and loved our summer trips to Ashland and Colestine. When we moved back in 1993, Josh connected with his Oregon roots, snowboarding, roaming the woods and railyards as he'd roamed L.A.'s
streets. Formal schooling never really took with him, but a look
at his work shows a lifetime of learning. Old barns and abandoned
walls were his canvases in a studio open to the sky. His poems,
both worldly-wise and innocent, are those of an adventurous mind.
Josh created photo-resist silkscreens with photography and computer graphics, printing on everything from sheet steel to t-shirts and paper bags, often highlighting with brilliant paint. As the Ashland Free Press illustrator, he developed a mature voice, serving the community he loved with enlightening images. His legacy has begun.
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by Dream Pretty 4/3/07
"Sarsparilla" Magic
One of the most recent dreams I've had about
Josh actually occurred several years ago, when I was still living
in the Colestine in my own little yurt next to my parent's big
Yurt. At that time Josh and Maria had moved out of the Colestine
and the yurt that I occupied, but I dreamt that Josh was there,
outside the house. The first thing that struck me was that he looked
like Jesus. There was a glow about him, and his hair was long and
flowing. His face had a tragic yet blissful look to it. I also
felt very blissful, like I was on the moon or something, buoyant
and vividly aware of my surroundings. He told me that he had drunk
some "sarsparilla" and I thought to myself, "oh that is why I feel this way," as if I had drunk some too and it had intoxicated me. That was pretty much all there was to the dream, but I woke up with a wow at the feelings the dream gave me. I thought about why I had chosen this word "sarsparilla" and
thought that I had heard Josh rolling the word off his tongue
when we were
younger, living in Santa Monica. I wasn't sure what it was but I was curious. Later I told the dream to my boyfriend, and he told me that sarsparilla (or sarsaparilla according
to Wikipedia) was used in root beer, which he used to bottle and
sell. Since Josh died, I have thought about the dream frequently,
and how he reminds me of Jesus now. His hair was almost as long as
mine when he died...in fact, he had gone through a transformation
that was at times disturbing, and at other times filled me with wonderment.
Now, reading his words, I know what it was that had frightened me.
Josh was a martyr. And that makes him so transcendent as an individual,
that I feel more than honored that he is my brother. I am filled
with awe and amazement. He seemed to be excited by the smallest things,
someone told me. It was Padmasambhava who wrote, "With a view as
vast as the sky, act with attention to things as small as particles
of barley flour."
Similarly, Josh wrote in a poem called "Mother to Son"
So do not speak today, nor tomorrow, or the next.
Contemplate a maze, then a painting, then a puzzle of glass convex.
All at once, you will see all of the pieces connect.
The drawbridge will be opened for you, then.
And you must then depart.
Carrying the truth in your possession.
It is your life's dependence.
It will be your art.
Who am I to say Josh left this world before his time? As much as I sit here grasping at his ghostly presence, Josh is part of a mystery so great that I can only try to begin to understand where he came from and where he has gone to. He has left us all to ponder an incontrovertible truth: there is more than this. There is more.
Another of Josh's poems, "Hog Bristle Blues" talks about the senseless
cruelty of the world we inhabit
Ya see if man an' hog cooperate, things would be just fine, that's true.
But people gotta be so great, an' take a bristle before it's time.
Which is why I come into the situation at hand, ya see?
Cuz I take a young fool, an' I shake 'im by all his limbs.
To make the young man unnastand that I'm trying to help him.
Josh identified with this young man, this young "fool" who was being shaken by all his limbs. He knew that he both was and wasn't a fool. Because you are only as foolish as you allow yourself to be. See, "You Can't Kid a Kidder" and
he learned that the maze is only a distraction from the center,
which simply is. The pain of being shaken by all his limbs was
an exhortation to transcend all pain.
God, why do you fear a fair fight?
A duel between two equals.
Are you afraid of who or rather what might defeat you?
Because I was born a soldier.
One mind and two fists.
I have always been waiting for the moment to do this.
~Josh Carreon
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by Dream Pretty 4/2/07
A Dream With A Smile
When I was a very little girl, I used to have
nightmares all the time...usually repeated visions of some vaguely
threatening entities. But there was this one dream I had that I remember
I thought was "funny." This was around the time or after I went to a Christian pre-school, and I thought about "God" a lot, consciously and subconsciously. From Josh's poetry, I see he thought about God too. But it is important to understand that we didn't see God as many others saw Him. God was just what everyone called the Creator. We were raised among Buddhists and intellectuals. But at the time of my dream, to return to the matter at hand, I was so young that I didn't
really pay attention to the words as much as the symbols and the
big ideas.
So I had this dream, where myself and my family stand before God. We are tiny and he is at the end of a very long hall, with a great axe
extending forward and resting near me where I stood next to my brother,
Josh. Being that I was a Buddhist, I said to God, "you're nothing special" or something like that, as I had told my friends in school. I guess I had a conversation about how if God was merciful there wouldn't be so much suffering in this world. This stems from my understanding of the first of Shakyamuni Buddha's Four Noble Truths, the Truth of Suffering. So there I was before God, in my dream, trying to stand up for my beliefs and ending up sounding like an impudent little girl. God was
wrathful and lifted up the giant axe and it came down on me. I stood
there for a moment and then Josh turned to me and said, "Ana, you're dead." And I looked at him and said, "Oh, okay," and
fell over dead.
This dream was so vivid that I never forgot it and thought of it frequently in the following years. It was also one of several dreams that I had of being with Josh or about Josh that impacted me greatly. It also expresses how Josh and I shared some similar questions about this world, death and God.
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by Anonymous 3/17/07
Yeah I vandalizm for Josh (R.I.P.)
I remember we were hanging out at that house you guys used to live
at in santa monica one
night...just me and him bored...all the sudden he was like "lets
run around the entire block in our underwear!"...so we did LoL!!!!!!!! Good
Times!!! Josh was fearless and a unique soul...
SIRE ONE S.A.K.(STREET ART KIDS)
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by
Anonymous 3/16/07
R.I.P. "SIDER" ONE
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by Dream Pretty 3/6/07
My brother died in a car accident recently.
I still can't believe he's really gone. He called me a few days
after my birthday and asked me to drive him to the gas station
because he had run out of gas. I still have the message on my message
machine. Less than a week later, he had died. I didn't even know
he was gone. I knew life was fragile and precious, but I had no
idea my brother would be taken from me so quickly. He was just
thirty years old. Five years older than me. He had so much life
left in him. He had seen so many things, and he had more to see.
Now all I have left of him are some words he left written on scraps
of paper, and a message on my message machine. I find myself grasping
at the ghosts that are left behind...his name, "Josh," the
words "my brother" and
the aching feeling of just wanting to hold his tall, fragile form
which so resembled my own.....
I stumbled across some old poems where I claim to be sad, or aching
and I want to crush them in anger at how little I knew about sadness.
I want to go back in time and tell him that I would do anything for
him...but he knew that. There is nothing more to say, nothing more
to do but mourn his absence. I am left with one small consolation:
maybe he was just too good for this world. Maybe he has found somewhere
else, a kinder, gentler place, where his virtues will continue to blossom...and
maybe traces of his breath will travel from some far-off universe
to kiss my cheek.
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