Idle, Idyl

Thanksgiving break over, there is a return to routine. How much do I mind? I spent five days mostly alone doing much of nothing. It was not a restful nothing but a tortuous, gnawing nothing against which I knew I should be doing something. I should have gone somewhere, I'd say, should have seen new things. Or old. It is increasingly more difficult to do. Harder to travel. Harder to go forward, go backward. Even if I had spent time outdoors, I thought. . . but didn't, and I saw nothing.

Just before the break, though, I was sitting outside with a colleague on a bench talking about nothing, really, when suddenly I watched a bird fly straight into a palm tree trunk knocking itself silly. I couldn't believe what I saw. I've seen birds fly into glass before, but never anything opaque. I got up and walked over to see the bird just rising from the dirt, wobbly, beginning to hop uncertainly. I shook my head. It was like a cartoon, I thought. Heckyl and Jeckyll.

My catatonia these last few days was almost complete, though I did manage to work some in the studio, but even there I only managed to bungle some pieces. The bungling, I tried to tell myself, is positive. It is learning. I know now what to avoid. I tried telling myself this, but in the end, there was nothing to show.

I thought to get out, to go somewhere and talk to somebody with the idea of stealing stories, rhythms, images. It excited me for a moment. Then I thought, "How? How?" You cannot just go out to meet characters, can't simply roll up on someone, sit down and say, "Hey bud, tell me a story." It takes more time than that. And that is what was getting to me, the amount of time everything takes. There is sacrifice involved in all creative endeavors, and much, if not most of it, comes to nothing.

And so I sat and made up scenarios in my mind, sat watching them play out on the internal movie screen. Hours passed. Then days. I had barely moved.

Now the sun is rising in a grayish dawn without distinction. I have not done what I told myself I would do, and now I have deadlines and hours of chores to accomplish. It happens often this way now, especially holidays, those times alloted for relaxation and fun. I cannot celebrate by the calendar nor the clock. All that is special lies in the unexpected moments when everyone else is going about their usual routines, when time opens up, slows down, is swallowed by the experience of a moment, eternal and self-contained.

Routine won't help with that, so I've promised myself I will wander more. I will break with the routine that I have accepted, the one that squanders my life and spend more time in productive idling. If not, I'll be like that bird, I think, banging my head on the obvious.

Uncle Charlie, pt. 2

"When I got downstairs, I helped set the table and get all the food put out so we could eat, and then everyone came and sat down, but Charlie was still upstairs so Aunt Patti called for him saying we were all waiting on him. He came down the stairs all slow and sullen-like and didn't say anything and people moved over to make space for him. Nobody bothered with saying grace in our family except form my cousin Sally who'd lost a baby a few months after it was born, and she made us all hold hands while she said some words. It felt odd and artificial but we did it and she kept it real short so it wasn't anything much to object to. Then everybody started passing food. And suddenly it was like Charlie woke up, and he was passing food too and laughing and picking on the kids good naturedly so as you'd think it was his party. Everybody was eating and having a good time telling stories, but when I would look at Charlie, he'd look back like we knew something the others didn't, like we were special, and it felt like we were looking too long, though I know we weren't. So I tried not looking at him much which seemed odd, too, like I was avoiding him.

"Then Charlie reached for something over the table and caught his arm on somebody's full drink and it spilled so that people were jumping up trying not to get wet and somebody's knee must have caught under the table and all the plates jumped and made a clatter and then there were a couple shouts of surprise. Then my aunt said goddamnit Charlie, be careful, and he looked like he'd been stabbed. He kind of threw his head back a couple of inches real quick and and turned around and walked out the door. He had his mom's keys, I guess, and then we heard the car start up and he was gone.

"We got a bunch of paper towels and sopped up the mess with a lot of here let me get that sort of thing, everyone trying to be helpful and polite as we all thought about Charlie's leaving like that. And when everyone had sat back down, my aunt said Charlie had been having some rough times. Is he smokin' the crack again my mom asked and everyone looked over to my aunt who said she didn't know but she thought so. Charlie had that problem in the past which got him in trouble with the family 'cause they didn't think it was right him living at his mom's and doing drugs and not working. Where's he get the money, my mom asked and everyone started hemming and hawing but then it was told how some things had gone missing and they figured Charlie had taken them to get drugs. Don't leave anything laying about when Charlie comes over, my uncle said and there was a bunch of head shaking around the table. Eventually the conversation turned toward other things and everyone was saying the food was good and Charlie and the incident were just some ghost hanging around the house.

"After dinner, my mom and aunt brought out the pumpkin pie and everyone said just a little piece with whipped cream and then everyone said it was good and people started getting up for seconds. It wasn't long then before people began going to the living room while I helped my mom and aunt clean up which was awful 'cause I was sleepy with the turkey and the hangover from the beer and the pot and all the excitement that Charlie had caused, but I helped anyway and finally we got everything put away. By then there were people scattered all over the house sleepy or sleeping, the t.v. playing some reality show that my uncle liked. And in a while people started saying goodbye and leaving and there were hugs and kisses and people saying that I ought to come over more than once or twice a year and me saying I know, and then everybody was gone except those of us staying at my aunt's house. My uncle had turned the carport into a little apartment and that was where I was sleeping for the night. My mother was staying upstairs in the spare bedroom. And finally I said I was tired and said goodnight and got ready for bed. It was a long day and I don't even remember falling asleep.

"It was real dark when I woke up. Charlie had turned on a little lamp that didn't give off much light and he was saying hello. I sat up and looked at him and he said can I stay here tonight and I said what and he said it again. What the fuck, Charlie, I said but he was already coming toward the bed saying shhh, shhh, and I could tell he was crashing. He'd gone out and got fucked up, that was for sure, and now it was all wearing off and all that was left was the tired, glassy eyes. I didn't know what to do. He sure as hell couldn't stay here or I couldn't one but he slipped off his shoes and crawled right under the covers and fell asleep. I said Charlie and shoved him once or twice but it didn't do any good, so I laid back against the headboard sitting up and looked through the dim yellow light in the room and started thinking and thinking and I must have fallen asleep 'cause when I woke up, Charlie was wrapped all around me. I didn't know what was going on and was kind of snuggling up wiggling into the crevices of Charlie's arms and legs for warmth and comfort and he was doing the same when I realized where I was. Charlie still had his clothes on and the little lamp was still shining feebly so nothing had happened except we had fallen asleep but Charlie was sort of waking up I could tell, not awake but waking, and his nose and mouth were on my neck not doing anything but snuggling and his left hand was resting on my breast. Charlie, I thought. Poor fucking Charlie. I was thinking that and laying there and not really moving but planning to in a minute, but I was still laying there thinking how weird it was, too tired to move, and it felt good laying there for the minute anyway sort of in a trance like a dream where you can't tell if your dreaming or thinking, knowing I was going to get up in a minute, that I had to before somebody else did but still not moving, not yet. Then Charlie shifted his hips a bit, sort of pushing into me, and I could feel he had a big ol' boner, and then the adrenaline or something kind of shot through my body as I felt Charlie kind of moving back and forth minutely, not really but sort of, and I was pretty sure he was still asleep and just moving like a dog does when its dreaming, and that's when I knew it was time to get up so I rolled slowly out from under Charlie's arm and he didn't move, and I rolled on over and out of bed and stood over him. He was asleep alright, dead out, and I just stood looking down at him and thinking about all the trouble a man could have and thought that's just what Charlie had and thought that maybe it was his fault and maybe it wasn't, but he sure wasn't doing anything to help out. He'd just been spoiled too long, I thought, and it made him into a hideously attractive monster like Jeckyll and Hyde. But there was nothing I could do to help him, I knew.

"So I opened the door that connected the little apartment to the house and went to the living room and lay down with the throw pillows and the comforter and tried to go to sleep. It wasn't long, though, before my uncle got up to put on a pot of coffee and have a cigarette and when he saw me on the couch he said what are you doing, and I said Charlie came over last night and I let him sleep in the bed. I hope you didn't leave any of your stuff laying around in there, he said and he went on into the kitchen where I could hear him gently banging around. I would get up in a few minutes and have a cup of coffee with him, I thought, and we would talk about things in low voices not to wake anybody up and we'd say things about Charlie. Then my mother would get up and walk in in her nightgown and in a little while the sun would come up and we'd start thinking about heading home. Charlie would go out the way he'd come in not saying goodbye to anyone and I wouldn't see him again for a year maybe or more if I saw him again at all. And laying there in the dark, I couldn't wait for all that to happen. I couldn't wait to get home. "

Uncle Charlie

"So I went to my aunt's house for Thanksgiving dinner with all the relatives. There were about twenty people there, and we're all sitting around and eating shit before dinner, just snacks, big bowls of M&Ms and Cheetos and stuff, and my uncle comes in drinking a beer. Not my aunt's husband, the one who's house we were at, but her brother who's like my age, a little older. He's not married or anything. He doesn't even have a job. He lives with his mother who is like a hundred and uses her car and stays out all night. He tells everybody he takes care of her, but that's all horse shit. It's like the other way around. She's old, but she's still got all her marbles. But she's got a soft spot for Charlie, my uncle, 'cause he came late in life just before she would have gone through menopause which she should have probably gone through already when he was born. But she was happy as she could be, and she always spoiled him not like the way she treated the other kids yanking them around and yelling. That's what I heard, anyway, 'cause I wasn't there yet, of course.

"So Charlie comes over and starts talking with me and asks me if I want a beer, and I say sure, why not, so it's the two of us drinking and talking and he starts asking me what I've been doing since I don't see him but at Thanksgiving or Christmas or some relative's wedding or something, and I tell him nothing, and he gives me a sly sort of look like he knows that can't be right, and I laugh and put the beer can up in the air and take a big swig like I know I'm not telling the truth, too. Charlie ain't that bad looking, and he gets all kinds of girls, not just rednecks either, though he gets lots of them, too, but some with money you just wouldn't expect. So he starts telling me about what he's been doing, and I can tell he's kind of bragging which I don't find attractive at all, but there is something charming about the way he tells it sort of because he just sounds so goddamned naive, and suddenly I'm laughing and he's handing me another beer. My mother looks over when I take it and gives me that look like I'm not supposed to be doing that, so Charlie says let's go outside and get some air.

"We go into the back yard and sit on some lawn chairs and Charlie pulls out a joint and asks me if I want some, and I think no but I take a hit anyway 'cause the day is so fucking boring, and Charlie starts laughing and I say what and he says he never thought he'd be doing this with me 'cause he always thought I was such a prude, and that makes me laugh out loud. Why you think that, I say, and he just laughs and shakes his head and says I sure have grown up a lot 'cause he always thinks of me as a little girl, and I say you ain't so old yourself. Then the kids come out and Charlie puts away what's left of the joint and of course they want to know what we're doing and I tell them talking and they say what about and Charlie just starts laughing out loud and picks one of them up and starts swinging 'em around and around over his head until everybody's laughing and screaming and the kids are like a bunch of puppies running around and jumping up and down. Then my aunt comes out and says what's going on and I ask her how long until we eat and she says about an hour and I ask her if she wants me to do anything hoping she'll say no because I'm feeling a little fucked up, and she says no, so Charlie says lets watch t.v. or something and I say I'd rather look at the old photo albums my aunt keeps upstairs and he says OK and grabs another beer as we pass through the kitchen. My mom yells where're you going, and I tell her upstairs to look at the photo albums and she says you better not be drinking more beer we're gonna eat soon and I just give her a look.

"Upstairs I pull out one of the big albums and start flipping through the pages and Charlie's looking over my shoulder and I'm pointing at some of the old relatives when they were young, some of them dead now, and I say it sure looks like fun then, but Charlie doesn't want to live then. He likes living now, he says, it's good times. I keep turning the pages and then I see a photo of my mother when she was my age and she has a good figure and looks all sexy in a pretty dress that shows off her small waist and good tits and I say look at mom and Charlie says she doesn't look like that any more sounding like that's too bad and the way he's leaning I can feel a little bit of his breath on my neck, nothing really, just a tickle, and I move a little. You look like that now, Charlie says, you better watch it and not get fat the way all the women in our family do and I turn around a little and say I'm not getting fat and he pinches my middle a little feeling for a roll so I straighten up to make sure he doesn't get hold of much and he says well, you ain't fat yet and I pull my shirt up to show my belly. You'd just better watch out yourself, I say, but Charlie's skinny and so he laughs and says he won't get fat, running keeps him thin. Of course, he wasn't talking about jogging. And then its quiet and I listen downstairs and hear the t.v. and the talking and its just quiet in the room and Charlie's looking at me like he's kind of bored with the pictures and I hear myself say whatever and he's just looking at me and I'm trying to stare back but I can feel the blood rising up in me and my head's spinning maybe from the beer and the pot but maybe something else, too. I don't know. Then all of a sudden, I hear my mother yell out from the bottom of the stairs to come help her set the table, that dinner's almost ready. Then she yells my name again, so I say, OK, I'm coming, but Charlie just keeps on staring. So I shake my head and roll my eyes and start to get up but I'm unbalanced somehow and I fall over on my butt and I start to laugh, but Charlie isn't laughing and he comes over to help me up. Then I'm up and we're just standing there like something not right, so I look at him and say thanks Uncle Charlie letting him know. And then Charlie laughs like everything's a joke and he's just standing there smiling, too."

Sentinel

(Photographer unknown. I have no pictures of my own today.)

I'm stuck in god damned place, going nowhere, growing catatonic. It is mental, it is physical. It is like a walking coma. I can't sleep, am tired, want to do things then can't. Clinical? When it happens, things go wrong. Somehow I managed to update the operating system on the old computer I use to scan, and now the scanner won't work. Not compatible. I must go back to the old system but don't know how. It took me hours to realize what had happened, sitting, pulling cables, restarting, shutting down, etc. I need to travel. I need a trip.

* * * * *

Last night after leaving my mother's, I drove to my studio thinking to do a little something. The roads were almost empty, the lights of Christmas shining on the little boulevard, white lights on an empty road. As I crossed a street, I saw a car that looked like mine passing through the intersection. It was white, it was a Volvo, it had surf racks. The fellow driving honked his horn. I would have honked back, but my horn no longer functions. I pulled into the back lot of my studio and got out of the car. I saw lights swinging off the street, then heard the tires coming up the drive. It was the fellow in the white Volvo. He pulled up grinning from ear to ear.

"Hey," he said, "Cool car. What year is that?"

"'85."

"Wow! Mine's an '89."

I stood on the driver's side running board and talked to him over the roof there in the darkness of the big parking lot outside the building under the fluorescent glow of the security lights. On the passenger side beside him was a shadowed figure, a woman. I wondered what she thought of this, but I couldn't see her face. He asked me some more questions. I told him I bought the car in 1996 for $4,600, but that it was falling apart now piece by piece. He sat there for a while with a big grin on his face saying nothing, not even looking at me or my car beside him but staring ahead with the strained grin. I listened to the echoed quiet of the night.

"She says you took a picture of her once."

"Really?" I found this odd, so I got down from the running board and went over to his car to look inside. It was a woman I had met with a friend on Christmas Eve at a cafe on the boutique boulevard. It was the day I bought the Nikon D-700 and I was taking photos of everything.

"Yea, yea, sure," I said, "I remember."

Then she mentioned my friend's name who she was with that night and the grin on the fellow driving the '89 Volvo began to harden with a growing artificialness. He asked me about my work in order to tell me he had a buddy who was a photographer.

"Oh, I don't do anything like that, no fashion or glamor or anything commercial. I'm just fooling around with some processes. . . ." I made a quick explanation. They wanted to come in and see. I had big boards scattered about the room and big prints. I've been waxing them and coloring them, making encaustics. We stood there and stared. I liked them, the prints, big, serious.

"Do you have a card?" he asked.

"No."

"Do you have a website?"

I thought a minute. I don't tell people about this one. I never know. They might be normal.

"No," I said, shaking my head as if I was trying to sell the idea. The girl looked very pretty in the light and I wanted to photograph her, but I could still feel the strain in the fellow over the last thing. She looked around at the accumulation of stuff and her gaze landed on the stuffed hawk that sits in the corner of the room.

"Do you know the bird rescue lady?" she asked me. "She just died, but she was famous for taking care of injured birds."

"No, but did she work with the Audubon Society. They have a facility. . . ."

"No, they rehabilitate big birds, birds of prey. She took care of little birds. I took her a chimney sweep one time. There is another lady who does it, too, but she is not as famous. I took her a baby squirrel once."

"Hmm. There seem to be a lot of squirrels."

"I knew a guy who kept a freezer full of squirrels," the fellow said cheerily. "He said he kept them in case of hard times."

I laughed and looked at the girl. "The lady probably put the baby squirrel in the freezer."

The fellow laughed and nodded his head in wild agreement. I looked at the girl and waited for her to show resistance, watched for her face to harden and turn.

"Probably," she said.

Suddenly the fellow introduced himself. We shook hands. And then they turned for the door. There is a rhythm to things that can't be explained. I walked them back out into the parking lot. They got into the Volvo and sat for a minute. Nobody said anything. The fellow's grin had come back just as it was when he pulled in. He sat staring and grinning. Then the car started and they were gone.

How odd, I thought, and weirdly enjoyable on a Thanksgiving night when no one is about, when people are in their homes with family and friends, or so one thinks when one is not. I stood outside awhile looking up at the sky. I am alone, I thought, as I so often am, a sentinel of nothing. Such things as this never happen when you are with someone. You never get to glimpse so much into the weirdness of life. Alone, though, you see traces of the spare strangeness of the thing we try to smooth over with narrative and meaning. But one never knows, really, what goes on, even on a day like Thanksgiving when everyone is with someone eating and drinking and watching football. Or so the story goes.

Happy Thanksgiving

(photo by Jindrich Styrisky)

Poor Beast

It is taking me a long time to read Maugham's "The Moon and Sixpence" because of work. It has been crushing my bones and leaving me to lay. Then there are birthweeks to attend to and friends to argue with, so in the twenty or so minutes left me before I collapse into my bed, I've crept along with the novel. I didn't think I would finish it for the writing wasn't hitting me anywhere. The language was not significant and there was little image making. But then--BAM! Blanche, the wife of Dick Stroeve, the technical painter who suffers Strickland's constant lambasts in order to be around genius, tells him she is leaving him, that she has fallen in love with Strickland. It is too painfully good at this point, for Stroeve tells her that he has worshipped her and that no one will ever treat her as well again. And it is true.

I was taught as a child that kindness and good deeds and stalwartness and generosity would be rewarded. All the children's books said so. I think I believed it more than many. That was the trouble with being a good reader, I guess. The dumber kids didn't seem to learn any of the lessons in those books. Most of them are now successful, I assume, having become brutal competitors in the market place. They failed to read the ethics books. But fed the moral lessons we were taught at school and on television in shows like "Superman" and "The Lone Ranger," I felt compelled to stand up for the small and the weak and the timid. And I awaited my reward.

It came in the form of the beatings I took being a "hero." I took them from my teachers, the very ones who had me read those wondrous books, when I tried to stand as the classroom lawyer. "You shouldn't do that," I would say. "It isn't right."

And there were the beatings from bullies, too, the physical ones when I would stand up for the kid getting picked on. "You can't do that," I would say. "It isn't right."

And later on, I learned the lesson that Stroeve is learning just now in the chapter I am reading as he finds that all his good deeds have left him where he lies. Good old Stroeve, such bumbling good will and love for everyone. I want to hold his hand, buy him a drink, succor him awhile.

Then I want to get away. For I've learned one thing. Those mopey eyes won't disappear. They will follow you on and on until you can't take it any longer and you feel you will go mad.

Blanche is leaving him, and she knows it is disastrous, but what is there to do?

I will finish the novel this week. I have a few hours over the holidays. I am too tired, though, to go anywhere or do anything. I just want to walk and rest. My mother and I will have a dinner together tomorrow, but she does not want to cook just for the two of us. "I'll just pick up a roasted chicken at Costco," she reported yesterday on the phone. She must want me to take her someplace nice for dinner, otherwise, it could be terrible. It is one of those damp, warm, gray Thanksgivings we have here every few years that makes you wish to be someplace else. It is too cool for the air conditioner and too warm for the heater and too damp to do nothing about it. It is hard to feel pretty in this weather.

I have not written my narrative for a while now, and I don't know that I can pick up where I left off. It seems too artificial, too contrived. I may jump ahead and write about the big fall, the lesson, the thing that makes me laugh at Stroeve. I am going to look through my journals of that time and perhaps begin to make something of them. Poor Stroeve, the beast. I'll show you what I mean.

"You Know What You Should Do?"

(I don't know who took this image. I think the photographer is unknown.)

(OK. I'm an idiot. The photo is by Jindřich Štyrský. He died in 1942, so I can't ask permission. But oh how I wish to take photos like this. The only one I know who could do it is Jan Bernhardtz.)

I've been getting a lot of advice and criticism lately. It is what happens, I am finding, when people actually look at what you are doing.

"I don't know if you want to hear this, but I think that if you really want to help your blog, you shouldn't post every day. You should only post when you REALLY have something to say."

That was the advice of someone I know. It is good advice, really. I have said so myself. But hearing it from someone else just when the blog's visitor count has doubled is. . . well, something difficult.

I've gotten lots of help lately, from everywhere. I've gotten criticism from the people with whom I'm in an art show.

"You can take my stuff down. I don't care. I was happy just to be included in the show. Take my work and tape it to the sidewalk. I don't care. After we're done with mine, though, let's talk about yours."

Me. That is my M.O. The people in the show, though, don't want to talk about that.

"That woman who comments on your blog really doesn't like nipples."

Yea, but my blog has recently had a lot more hits.

"Sure, now that you're showing tits."

I don't think about it. Everybody loves titties. They are the stuff of life. Penises are dangerous.

"Yea, you've said that three times on your blog."

CC is to blame. He told me to post what I wanted. The work would find an audience.

"You got me to do this," I said. "You told me. . . but you didn't tell me about the other."

"What!? The critics? You wouldn't have posted if I had."

I guess you can't have one thing without the other.

But some of it is a surprise.

Crime and Punishment

A friend writes:

there are times when i hold things sacred, or at least precious. i feel like raskolnikov, on the verge of being vacant. i feel capable of noble sentiments but lack noble actions. modern life is empty. why does the past seem so rich? the present mundane and the future impossibly empty?

It is a rhetorical questioning, I am certain. Art and artifice are the answers, of course. We are all memory artists if nothing else. Everyone can remember something better than this.

We had a birthday party for a ten year old this weekend. It was a dinner party for kids. They had to solve a mystery (and they did). Then they watched Sherlock Holmes in "The Hounds of the Baskervilles" starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. I entertained the parents with wine and whiskey and other sorts of mysteries. I tried to make memories on the one hand and obliterate memories on the other. It worked out well, I think. We all stayed up too late and felt like hell the next morning. But the kids had a time. What remains? I think they will remember the scented candles and the yellow light and the tinkling of glasses, of being close and watching something black and white with fog and danger and of parent hugs that smelled lightly of merlot and scotch and drunken goat cheese. There were presents, but those will be forgotten. They'll remember, though, that their parents' voices changed when they came into the room, that there are some things that are not for kids, mysteries that are eternal. And they will be glad that they were kids and that they were cared for and that there were safe places they could count on, especially a bedroom with pillows and blankets and an old t.v.

My friend also told me:

i am too lazy to read your blog, and too selfish. if you would only write more favorably about me then you would have one more reader than you currently do, etc.

He is reading Dostoievski's "Crime and Punishment." What can I tell you about a fellow like that?

Go figure.

The Approach

I wrote one thing but cut it thinking to save it for another day. Now I've not much energy for another. I write and delete another piece, then the start of another. The holidays begin. They have put up the Christmas lights in my boutique city's downtown main street and surrounding environs. There is an outdoor ice skating rink in the city park, a novelty for this southern hamlet. We went two nights ago and sat awhile with glasses of wine and olives and bread at the sidewalk tables of a small cafe. I saw old friends. That is what I wish to do this year, sit and talk and have some wine and watch the happy people skate and laugh while carols play and lovers kiss beneath the mistletoe. Or, perhaps, to go to an island where the water is the deepest blue and the sky is clear and clean, where I can eat seafood and drink rum and swim away the day. Old dilemmas, old dangers. The Holidays are here, and you know what that can mean.

Beware the Jabberwock

Just the photo today. My brain has shut down. I can not string words together in any way. Perhaps some quotations from Lewis Carroll would be apropos.

'But I don't want to go among mad people,' said Alice. 'Oh, you can't help that,' said the cat. 'We're all mad here.'

Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.

If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.

The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday - but never jam today.

Slava, Anna, and Alex

I linked Slava Pirsky to this site about a year ago. A couple days ago, he posted this photograph of his daughter Alex, part of an ongoing project that is both a family album and a creative endeavor. His site is in Russian, so I can't make heads nor tails of much, but he and Anna Hayat, the mother of Alex, are photographers. When I asked if I could post this photo, I also asked if he could write a bit about the project. He wrote back:

Hi, Bill

You can post our photos, sure. But we don't know what can we say about. This project doesn't have any super idea, it's only try to fix our daughter growing-)))

I love the project. It is beautiful and heartbreaking to watch this girl grow up. Sort of. All we know of her are the images, light falling from a window in some obscure room. She becomes archetype onto which we project our own visions of childhood. What will become of her, we wonder? What glories and devastations will befall her? Of course, some of you already know, but it is a tale played out again and again. Only so few take the time to make such a beautiful record.

Slava, Anna, and Alex.

Erotic Irony

Trying to fight off "Blogger's Brain." It is like trying not to think of the elephant. Pink, if you will. I thought to tell of dreams, but I have been recalling mine of late, and they are far too disturbing. They are not the sort you tell. Not even to Freud. Can you imagine? It must have been flattering, of course, to have someone listen to your imagination and make up a story about it, you, your life. All you had to do was feed him nonsensical fragments and he would write the story. I can't believe someone hasn't come up with a computer program that can do that now. It would have to be as good as what Gore Vidal came up with for the National Book Awards ceremony. This from the New York Times:

"The award for the Distinguished Contribution to American Letters was given to Gore Vidal, the novelist and social critic.

In wandering remarks, Mr. Vidal cited anecdotes about President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles. In his only comments about publishing, he puzzled the audience by noting, 'Nowadays it seems the progress of literature is to first print the book and then pulp it,' adding: 'It saves such a lot of time. It’s fun for everybody.'"

God loves a sinner. Gore is good. Anyone who doesn't understand that sort of thing doesn't deserve it. If I had the talent, my own blog would turn that way. Wait. . . .

Lisa left a comment yesterday that I thought I would answer here rather than on the comments page. I had a great response planned out yesterday, but life came between it and me since then, so I will provide the redacted form--sort of. Reduced might be the better term.

Oh, hell, I can remember only one line.

Eroticism is to Pornography as Irony is to Sarcasm.

I think that's it. Eroticism is a poetic way of dealing with death. I think that might have been part of the argument, too. For D.H. Lawrence, the sexual experience without a spiritual connection was enervating and disfiguring; with it, the cosmos began to reveal itself. I think that's right.

But I am butchering everything today. Did I say "the sexual experience"? Seriously?

Something is wrong with me. I think it may be going around. Many must have it.

Part B.

I thought to add this since I originally posted.

Pornography is shouting about sex. Eroticism is whispering.

Oh, hell, I should have left it alone.

Ideology and Art

Colin Pantall has a wonderful blog that I visit every day, but it often puts me out of sorts. His website contains his photographic work. I am very fond of those images. But take a look at his last three posts: (1) ( 2) (3). He is a playful blogger with that postmodern irony that winks at you to let you know that it might not be as ironical as you think. He is smart. Read his writings. But goddammit, sometimes it makes me want to pull the plug on what I am doing and go to the closet and work and write and only show high-toned, cold photographs that depict the sterility and banality of suburban life or inner city blighted areas, all devoid of human figures. Probably done with an on-camera flash, all of them countering the classical concepts of composition, all done in garish, plastic, washed out colors.

Everything is ideology, I know, hidden narratives, master narratives, counter-narratives.

I keep thinking of Carlo Mollino, the renowned architect who made photographs as a pastime. I like the bio that appears here:

Unlike his architect compatriots, and the other luminaries of European architecture, Mollino appeared never to delude himself through aspirations of lofty theoretical notions, preferring instead his own personalised vocabulary, described in 1948 by the American designer George Nelson as 'Turinese Baroque'.

Throughout his life Mollino maintained two consistent pastimes, those of photography and eroticism. Eroticism, and in particular the female form, were insistent subjects that permeated many aspects of Mollino's work as an architect, designer and photographer.

Mollino's photography did not appear until after his death. I guess those photographs were something he wanted to keep secret.

Cats and Rocking Chairs

I almost wrote "Cafe Closed" today, for I haven't any new photos to post. Searching around, though, I found this bizarre image and thought, "OK, this is . . . ." I never came up with a word for it. I had fairly discarded it, but this morning it made my head spin. So the cafe is open.

Read 'em and weep. Smoke 'em if you got 'em. My head is full of empty phrases, or "cats and rocking chairs," as the Ryan Adams song goes.

"Where Will You Spend Eternity?"

Jim Linderman sent me a nice email about yesterday's post. I will write back to him today and encourage him to continue to collect this menagerie of strangeness that should not be lost. It is part of the heritage, the makeup of a culture pushed further and further into the back drawers of our social memory. It is not something I embrace, you understand, having come too close to it too many times in my own life. It gives me the chills. But I can't help but stare at it, either. I just want to be on the other side of the bars most of the time.

And, perhaps, I'd like to sanitize it, too, give it the Pat Boone once over (though in one of the weirdest turn-arounds imaginable, at the age of 64, Pat made an album called "In a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy" that got him in all sorts of trouble with the Gospel League).

Look for my take on this in future photos--I hope. And when you get that strange feeling after watching reruns of "The Brady Bunch" or "Happy Days," open one of Mr. Linderman's sites and find the fuel that drove the engines.

Jim Linderman

In researching old carnivals and circuses, I ran across several bizarre and useful sites. Way led to way and I found that many of them originated with one man, Jim Linderman. I immediately wrote to my friend:

I found this guy on the internet. I've written to him to ask if I can put up some of his collection. It is wrong, so wrong, and so much of what I want to do in my work.

http://cameraclubgirls.blogspot.com/

http://dulltooldimbulb.blogspot.com/

http://jimlinderman.blogspot.com/

http://frankwendt.blogspot.com/

My friend is. . . well, I don't want to give too much away, but he is a creative fellow and a scholar and has thought as much or more about this as/than you or I. He wrote back that art is a "vile and violent business," and that much of what artists do is "horribly horribly wrong." I guess he's right. Art, I mean, has always been an accepted way to talk about the taboos of a culture. It allows us to express the intersections of our world view where our grasp of things do not fit together neatly, where the language of our culture leaves us no other way to express this chiasma. Art is one way of talking about a culture's dirty little secrets.

Whatever that means. "Art" is now that thing in the chasm, a cultural embarrassment.

But Jim Linderman's collection is worth looking at, I think. You'll want to do it alone with the doors closed, maybe. If your mother walks in while you have one of his sites up, she will know immediately by your posture and the look on your face that you are doing something you don't want her to know about. You will protest, of course.

"What? Why are you looking at me that way? I wasn't doing anything!"

I'm having a bit of trouble with Blogger right now, and I'm not in the mood to fight it. I will post more about Linderman's collection tomorrow. Or look at the sites and send me your thoughts and I will make a post out of them. Ciao.

Perfectly Terrible, Terribly Perfect

My intent is to make pictures today. We shall see. I have an idea, but I don't know how it will turn out.

Yesterday was Friday the 13th, and of course things went wrong. It started out badly and ended worse, though the weather has changed and now it is the most beautiful time anyone has ever had. It is true. My moods are tethered to light and shadow, to sun and clouds and sky, to moons and stars and humidity. The colors here are fantastic now, and the air sparkles. Everything you look at is diamond sharp. It is hyper-real, almost like a prelude to fit, except the air smells sweet and good.

I will walk today. I will walk away. I will walk until yesterday is gone. Then I will keep walking on and on. Light and shadow, tone and hue and mood. Everything is saturated. I will walk into that.

The Reception

I'm writing tonight because there will be no time to write tomorrow. It is a work day with a hideously early start time. For me. For many, it would be generously late. But it has become my luxury to write in the mornings before work. And other things. Not tomorrow, though. I must rise and shine.

I went to the gallery reception tonight. I was part of a group show that included practicing artists from the area. They were familiar with one another and with one another's work. I was new. My work was late and ill-planned, but I was happy to be a part of it all. I was asked by one artist what I thought of another artist's work, and I said it did not speak to me particularly. I am generous that way. I saw another artist standing with a group who was looking at my images. I had to excuse myself from a conversation with a friend because I did not like the conspiratorial gestures and evil stance of the fellow I knew, another photographer, as he directed the group's gaze toward the wall. When I walked up, he said, "Next time, I'm going to just pin my art to the wall like that." "I wanted the curator to pin it to a clothesline," I said, "but he wouldn't do it."

Another fellow, one from the theater, an insipid fool I have never liked and to whom I have always wanted to demonstrate the effects of a physical beating, said something snide. I could only grin.

For the rest of my time at the opening, I stood where I could see my works hanging on the wall. They had transformed, somehow. I had made mistakes. Next time. . . . There was a misery in it all.

It is good to take a beating, though. You already know I feel that way. I am lucky to have shown with this crowd. They have all done it before. I am a good critic, a better critic of myself than of others, though sometimes I need a push. I saw things tonight that I will improve upon. No sweat. Everything, Frost said, must come to market.

But I don't know how much I want to get involved with this bunch. Putting up and getting criticism is good, but there is a cost. They are practiced at making things, of making believe and pretending, and so they have seen and heard much talk, many dreams and creative aspirations. And if I listen to their jaded voices, I know that I will produce nothing. Nothing at all. I would rather be foolish and childlike, naive and silly in my aspirations, making things that don't sound so hot while talking around the punch bowl with a congregation of artists.

I don't know which I prefer, the image with color or this one, so I will put them both up. I will decide, of course. Later. If you are sick of this mask, I can not help you. This is a blog, not an art gallery.

Ohio

I made the prints I needed for the gallery show that opens this evening, but I have nothing for the people coming by the studios today who want to actually buy things. No time. I will forego this opportunity to actually sell pictures. Of course. I give things away. I am not attracted to commerce. It would be better if I had a trust fund, though.

It is a gray Ohio day here, damp and cool. It is the way I remember it there. My senior year in high school, I drove up with my friend, Tommy, to see my relatives. It was my first road trip. We drove the car as fast as we could all day and night through the flatlands of Georgia and the mountains of Tennessee, then through Kentucky blue grass country. It was December, and when we got there, it was cool and damp and gray. We sat in a park in Antioch eating sausage and cheese and hard bread and drinking cheap wine from a gallon jug passed hand to hand. Antioch. I liked the name. We sat on top of a picnic table and huddled ourselves against the weather looking down a slope toward a stand of bare trees, the small brown leaves littering the rocky ground that fell away toward nothing. There was no one else around. The wine was bitter but good with the cheese and sausage and brioche. Bread. That is all I called it. I had no other word for it then.

That day stays with me. It is what I conjure up when I'm melancholy in a certain way, remembering the dreary promise it seemed to whisper. Today is such a day. If I were any good at all, I would chuck everything and buy a gallon of cheap jug wine and some sausage and cheese and a big hard loaf of bread, and I would find a lonely place to sit and listen. But I am not that good any more. I have lost that, it seems. I work on through the days and nights. Industrious.

How, I wonder now, did I develop this quality? I would have done better, I think, to have acquired the curse of commerce.

What Would Frost Do?

I'm scanning the Polaroids from this shoot. They are much different than the digitals. Different process, different look. I liked the digital images so much that is has colored my view of the Polas. I am going to post a few anyway over the next few days so that I can look at them and make some decisions.

I am under the gun just now. I am participating in a group show at a college art gallery that opens tomorrow, but I haven't gotten my final prints done. Terrible. Even worse, there are a group of buyers who are supposed to tour my studio (not just mine, but I am included) tomorrow as well, and I have NOTHING up for that. I must get all things done this morning, for my working day is going to be terrible. I have no time. Well, that is the good news, isn't it? I'm not complaining about the situation. It is me. Just me.

The Pola-ju-ju prints look good at 20"x16" on Epson canvas. The texture works well with the weird colors and distressed images. A bit like circus posters. I should probably put grommets in them and figure out how to attach them to a frame with cord. It might be too gimmicky, though.

There is rain this morning and now a grayish-purple sky. It is warm. I have been quarreling and wish to stay home and think and watch the day, just to let my mind go where it will as it attempts to heal.

What would Robert Frost do?

Vegas Odds

"You ever get the jitters?" he asked me.

"Sure, every morning after a pot of coffee."

"You believe in intuition?"

"Sort of. I think there are cues your unconscious picks up on that you are not consciously aware of. I don't think it is mystical, just knowledge. Why? What's wrong?"

"I don't know. I don't know. I'm not sure. I just have this weird feeling I'm in trouble."

"We all know that one. Sometimes you just have too many balls in the air. You've exposed yourself in too many places. You've said things you wish you could take back. It all begins to add up. Unconsciously, you're working out the odds. At some point you know without knowing that Vegas is betting against you. You've put it out there, you've made your bets, and it doesn't look good. You know you can't take them back and you don't have anything left with which to hedge. All there is to do is wait. You want to close your eyes 'cause you can't bear to watch. Only it isn't a card game or a roll of the dice. It's your life. You've been bold and careless, you think. It doesn't look good. All you can do is ride it out."

He nodded, but he wasn't there.

I went to Spain with a guy who had a serious girlfriend. While we were there, he was fooling around with a girl who he used to go out with. One day when he called home, his girlfriend knew all about it. He didn't see it coming.

Sometimes your dead and don't even know it.

Ruination

Things are getting grimy, dirty, and gritty. That's what happens when people think the money's gone. Maintenance goes the way of the dollar. First cuts are to the janitorial staffs and the groundskeepers. Nobody paints, nobody cleans. I don't know how, but parking lots and roads even look dirtier. How can a road look dirtier? Everything I lean against covers me in grime. Public bathrooms are a plague. Cities and neighborhoods are beginning to look the way I remember the '70s. Even the colors have changed. Crime is up. People aren't smiling. For those who grew up in the '80s and '90s, those who took the annual trips to Disney World, it must be awfully shocking. Like most things, the crime and grime will be blamed on the poor. They live in it. They enjoy it. And they spread it like the swine flu. Except none of this was created by the poor, but by the last to be cut, by executives and administrators. My own institution is still bloated with them. And they are more Executive than ever.

I am going to watch the movie "Slacker" once again. I haven't even thought of that film for a decade. Social groups. Blighted areas. Maybe I'll read "Generation X" again as well.

And there you have my definition of bad blogging. I've opined rather than illustrated. I'll let it stand as a negative example so that I won't forget. Show, don't tell.

But while I'm at it, I'll whine. My new old camera, the Mamiya 6, broke. I spent (deleted) dollars to acquire the thing and have only shot about ten rolls of film. I'm sick with it. Every time I buy an old medium format camera, something breaks. This is the third one in the past year. Well, the Holga has never broken. Maybe I need to stick with that.

Ruination. There was nothing in this at all. But I like the photograph. I took it last night. Polaroids to come.

Toy Story

A fellow I know just opened up a new toy store on The Avenue, and business is hopping. He is in a good place. Yesterday was the grand opening, and though he has been doing business for a few weeks now, the place was really packed. He has all the old toys that adults remember from their childhoods, and they love to buy these for children. The toys serve as a cultural bridge, a connection. The children seem to enjoy the toys, too, and I think it good for them to play with something tactile and visceral in between the hours of doing that to which they are addicted. My friend's son already thinks he is working for the store as a consultant. He plays with the toys and gives advice and tells the owner what new items he should be getting in. In truth, he has the owner's cell phone number, so he is hardwired. I imagine him at school telling the other kids that he knows the man, and that he can hook them up if he wants to. He denies this to me, but I have my suspicions.

And so yesterday was kid day and after the store, my friend's son brought one of his friend's over for the evening. I am good with children, I think. They like me. All they really want is a safe place full of kindness (and dare I say it--love). I make up games and adventures for them and do not get angry when they act like kids. And so I think that they will remember me and the fun and profound times they had when they were young.

Last night while watching them play, I tried to remember things about my own life when I was their age. It was difficult. I don't remember much about the things that were said or my own thoughts, even. All I recall are colors and temperatures and odors and the way it all felt. I think of my teachers with whom I spent a majority of the week, and I can not remember the sound of their voices. I looked at a class photo from the second grade a while back, and I could barely remember some of the kids. I begin to wonder if my internal architecture has been broken down somehow or if this is simply what happens.

Last night, watching kids go crazy in the house with wildness and delight, I wondered how much of this they will actually remember. I think that I am helping make them better people, but will they will remember that? Maybe all they will remember is that I used a lot of garlic when I cooked or that I always wore shirts without patterns. And, of course, that I used to take photographs all the time.

We will not remember the same things, that is certain, and after some time, my memories will be erased and theirs will prevail, emerging once in awhile in a few brief utterances about the time we spent playing ball or fishing or digging up buried treasures, about the hours spent reading and practicing math, about the cooked meals and hugely planned holidays. . . .

It's enough. What else is there to do?

Ruined

Lost yesterday to car trouble, waiting in parking lots, waiting at shops, waiting at home. But the beater runs again. You know it is bad, though, when the people who make money working on your car tell you it might be time to think about buying another. I think it is time to pay up on a bet I made with Jan Bernhardtz. He won the car fair and square. Jan, come over and collect. OK.

I have a friend who gives me great things to read. He is an attorney, but he's OK. He's a writer and a traveler and an art collector and a romantic. Etc. A good guy. He sent me this link and an excerpt from Pico Iyer's introduction to his new book on Somerset Maugham.

The perfect traveler must be a perfect contradiction. She should be open to almost everything that comes her way, but not too ready to be taken in. He should be worldly, shrewd, his feet firmly on the ground; but he must also have the capacity to give himself over to moments of real wonder. He or she must be curious, observant, spirited and kind—ready to spin a spell-binding tale of adventure and irony at the Explorers’ Club, and then throw it all over for a crazy romance in the South Seas.

In doing a Google search, I found that "The Moon and Sixpence" was available online from a number of sources, and I began reading the first chapter. Later, after sushi and sake on the veranda, I went to the bookstore and bought it and a few other books by Maugham. There are some wonderfully quotable things. Many of us will take this as our mantra:

"His faults are accepted as the necessary complement to his merits."

I've been thinking about aesthetics too much lately, about the hierarchical choosing and privileging of all things as aesthetics is not simply about the arts, so when I came across this thoroughly Modern sensibility, I stopped for a minute:

"The artist, painter, poet, or musician, by his decoration, sublime or beautiful, satisfies the aesthetic sense; but that is akin to the sexual instinct, and shares its barbarity. . . ."

I am ruined for awhile. I want to return to Cuba this fall. I want to get down to Peru again and to visit Chiapas. And of course there is Viet Nam. What am I doing, I thought last night? Why am I wasting time?

There is a lot here for you to peruse on a lazy Saturday if you choose. But be careful. It might ruin you, too.

Aquarium

You should see the little fish from the Fall Carnival, the two my friend's son won at the goldfish toss. He spent two dollars and got two fish. Had to stop and get something to put them in, of course. But one of them, Bob, didn't make it through the week. So they bought a new tank with a filter and lights and green gravel and a big Easter Island figure. And they bought a new fish. So now, in the darkness of the night with the lights out, the fish tank glows ethereally, New Bob chasing Dash around ceaselessly, trying always to kiss him. Maybe. It is unnerving to watch. I want to thump New Bob in the head and make him quit, but I watched too much Jacques Coutseau as a boy and too much Wild Kingdom and too many nature specials. As the one thing ate the other, the narrator would tell us in no uncertain terms that it would be wrong to interfere with the cycle of nature.

Except this ain't nature. It is an aquarium. Still, it seems like a good life, a life without predators, a life with crystal clear water and a steady supply of food. I had aquariums when I was a kid, and I remember watching them for long, underwater periods. Guppies, Neon Tetras, Angel Fish, and the Catfish that grew huge on the poop of the others. It was therapeutic, I told my friend last night, to sit there and watch the fish without really thinking of them or not thinking of them but watching them while my mind would have an unconscious party figuring itself out.

She just looked at me and said in a droll voice, "Really. That explains a lot."

But I'm thinking I need my own aquarium again. I could use some time staring into the fish tank, thinking without thinking, letting my mind play with the fishes darting here and there in the clean water and the steady supply of food. It doesn't matter that it is not nature. Neither is my life. My life is like an aquarium. A bad aquarium that wants cleaning. The water's gone brown and needs filtering. The gravel needs to be changed. One of the bulbs has gone dead.

I may get one this weekend. After I look at automobiles. Mine sits this morning in the parking lot of the Y where it spent the night. I've used up all my calls to AAA they tell me. I had five on the plan. Now I must pay. I will go this morning and try to start it one more time. Maybe I will have some luck. If I do, I will drive it straight to the auto repair shop that told me two weeks ago that the car was fine. But it is an antique now, an '85 Volvo with rusted metal, torn up leather seats, and a window that doesn't work much any more. I hate buying cars, but maybe it is time.

And maybe I should get the aquarium, too. I can let my mind rise and fall, float and dart, back and forth, back and forth in a hypnotic dance, lit up in the darkness only by the xenon colored rays.

Jabba the Blog

My pal Frank Petronio is bragging on his website that he has posted at least once a day for the past two months. I want to warn him not to start with that. It is OK at first, maybe, but it will kill you in the end. There are days when I think, "I can't do this any more," like yesterday, and it is just then that I get a huge surge in visitors and think, "Oh, no, I can't stop now, not today." But blogs are like Jabba the Hutt. I think that maybe Lisa is right when she says she doesn't likes blogs anymore. They are a thing of the past, perhaps, like cave paintings.

I'm still here, though, putting my hand on the wall and tracing its outline.

"I was here."

but mr can you maybe listen there's
me &
some people
and others please
don'tconfuse.Some
people

's future is toothsome like
(they got
pockets full may take a littl
e nibble now And then
bite)candy

others
fly,their;puLLing:bright
futures
against the deep sky in

May mine's tou
ching this crump
led cap mumble some
thing to oh no
body will
(can you give
a)listen to
who may

you

be
any
how?
down
to
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found
Butts

(e.e. cummings)