Heart of Darkness

No time to write and whine today. I am to the battlefield. Times are dangerous. As old Buk said, though, what matters most is how well you walk through the fire.

McGuffin

Break out the sauerkraut and beer--It's Polka Time!

He doesn't actually play polkas. But there is always time. He is learning beautiful melodies that are haunting. The accordion is a lovely instrument. I think it has a far away sound. It sounds like old photographs. Yes, that's it. The instrument calls back things that came before us, things recognizable but just out of reach. I'll admit that in this photo the boy looks as if he is a child performer in the lobby of a turn of the 20th century New Orleans brothel. But there is an Olan-Mills quality to this photograph, too. Gone wrong.

I'm out of whack today. I didn't think I would get this up. A bad place with spooky footing. Life is like a Hitchcock movie right now, horrible things on a beautiful day in very public places. Something that just shouldn't happen. A McGuffin.

But I'll leave you in peace. Misery should not be shared unless it has made its way to art. Nobody likes a whiner.

Morning Culture

My computer is slow working this morning. I have to delete some files. And today's photo was scanned BIG so that I could print it 20x16. So it took me forever to get this cooked up and by the time I began working with the type, I was too frustrated to do it right. I'll go back and make the "Accordion Noir" snappier later on. I'm thinking of making a set of playing cards from some of these images. Or maybe an spoofy set of Tarot. But one must always think twice when beginning to mess about with the eternal mysteries.

And what have you done this morning, gentle reader? Coffee and cigarettes, the Morning Show or reruns of I Love Lucy? No matter. We fritter our lives away even if we are Jackson Pollock. Let alone what's his name pumpkin headed conservative radio talk show host. Does anyone really enjoy a good Pollock? So many more people enjoy--Rush, that's his name! Who's greater?

Nope. I'm going to quit worrying for awhile. And don't be snotty. I'll just laugh.

I read something online this morning about Raunch Culture. More Cult Studs telling people that what they are experiencing is not authentic. Funny argument. Princess Culture, too. It gives me ideas for some series. Jock Culture, Stud Culture.

Yup. It's all just funny today.

Vanity Scare

One of my Polaroid Ju-Ju process things. The film is all old now and has crazy color casts, so it is getting harder to work with, harder to do the things I have been doing. I will not order any more of it from the remaining out of date stock. I have only been putting off the inevitable anyway. I will begin working with Fuji film and giving that my all. And anyway, I've been doing some interesting transfer work and encaustic things that are too big to scan, so I can't show them here. I am going to begin to work at selling images so that I can pay for my studio. $450 for a 20x16 print? Cheap, I think, but who the hell am I. Maybe I will do portraits in my way. What to charge for that? The Thousand Dollar Portrait? I've never taken money for anything before. I give it all away. But times being what they are, as they say. . . . And like Miss Emily, I too "know the old thrill of a penny more or less" (Faulkner, "A Rose for Emily").

Last night, I bought a copy of Vanity Fair at Whole Foods. That's weird enough. I haven't bought one for a long time. It was a thick issue, though, and the magazine used to have some good articles. I paged through it after dinner. The first quarter of the magazine was all ads. I'm OK with that. I looked at the photography closely and concluded that it was all pretty unimaginative. How much are those companies paying for that? I know that everyone is using high end equipment, big digital Hasselblads, etc, but none of it does much. I'm offering my low end specialties to any company that wants beautiful grunge.

Then I read the Editor's Letter, and I realized why the magazine has taken a nosedive. You can probably read it online. Far too much self there. Let him start a blog and write under a pseudonym and see how long he lasts.

I'm hoping there is something good inside.

But so much for that. The photo here isn't really top notch, but it is current, and after looking at V.F., I'm not going to worry.

Mo Dylans

I'm going to make photos for album covers. Maybe my stuff will end up in that hideous rock and roll photography gallery in SoHo. You've seen it. What's it called? Here's a kid just starting out. He's from up north very near where Robert Allen Zimmerman was born. Looks a bit like a young Dylan, but I got to tell you he sounds more like John Denver at this point. Needs some roughing up still. I'm just the guy to do it. He's got a handle on the accordion. Now he wants to play guitar. Too many guitarists, I tell him, but what are you going to do? They watch the Jonas Brothers on t.v. and the girls going crazy. . . .

I'm going to record him soon. Make a little CD. With portrait. The Mo Dylans. You'll see.

Too Many Voices

Just plagued with indecision and with doubt enough for partial paralyses, not catatonia this time. Fear enough not to do, though. "What if. . . ?" I think, and then the imagined derision. You know what I'm talking about. You've been there, too. The question then is how to proceed. I think that I will do, just push on through all the stuff bad and good, though I needn't do it so publicly. Yesterday's transfers didn't go so well. They worked, but when I looked at them, I got a shiver. "I'll put these on velvet and sell them at the corner gas station," I thought. As if it made any difference.

But let me turn to one of the greatest self-doubters of all time and let him weigh in on the subject.

To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—

(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—

(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute win reverse.

(from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," T. S. Eliot)

I've probably listened to too much talking of Michelangelo. Maybe I'll just try getting skinny.

Thirteen Ways of Looking

I haven't made a photograph for months, but this week, I began working with a new (for me) process (with old images, of course). I am excited to go to my studio and make some today. Here is one of the images that I will work with. It will be a larger piece, twenty inches high. I am hoping for magnificence. If I fall short--oh, please, don't let me fall short. I need some sort of victory now.

And I will take some boy pictures, too.

Wish me luck! If only I can sustain the mood. . . .

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Wallace Stevens

---

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

An Education

Listen to this song! Oh, my. One fairly swoons!

I want to see "An Education," but it played in my own home town for a week, two showings in the middle of the day. And then it was gone. The closest theater showing it now is a hundred miles away--in my old college town. What sort of life is this?

Here is the official website and the movie's trailer (1) (2).

"Of course you do," I can already hear some of you saying. Don't worry, it doesn't turn out happy for him. I haven't seen it, of course. I've only heard. But you might want to read this article about the book's author, Lynn Barber.

If you've seen it, let me know how it is. I have a feeling I won't get to see it until it wins an Oscar. Maybe then it will show in this Philistine town.

For now, I will have to glean something of it from the tag ends of clips floating around the internet. Qu'elle damage.

All of It

Sunday came too quickly, and now it was time to go back, but I stayed longer than usual, staying until the sun went down and after, staying until it was dark. Sherri and I watched the giant winter sunset in a treeless sky, cobalt and pink over a hilly field of yellow grasses, the temperature dropping with the sun until we were forced inside to get warm. We held onto one another without speaking, and then it was time to go. I said goodbye to her mother and her brothers. Then she walked me to the car.

"I'll call you on Wednesday," I said.

"Yes, Wednesday."

In the rearview mirror, I watched her watch me as I drove off down her street. She was still standing and waving when I turned the corner and was gone.

Driving back in the darkness, I did not see the changing land, did not see the developments growing thin, did not see the buildings growing older as though I was traveling back in time, back to some recent past. I could only feel the highway rise and fall, the hills becoming longer and steeper, headlights bobbing up and down. Sunday night. The hum of the tires, the whistling wind. North.

"Why're you so late?"

Mike was lying on the couch watching the NBC Sunday Night Mystery Movie. Tonight's show was Hec Ramsey.

"I left late."

"Man, I've been sick all weekend. I had the flu bad. I haven't left the trailer. I can't believe you're missing this."

Mike and I watched the Mystery Movie every Wednesday and Sunday nights. Our favorites were Columbo, Banacek, Hec Ramsey, and Tenafly. Lying on the couch, he looked at me like I had done something wrong.

"Really? I'm glad I wasn't here."

"I guess so," he said, then he started catching me up on what I'd missed so far. Richard Boone was pretty good in his role as a once tough sheriff who had turned to new scientific techniques to help him solve crimes at the end of the 19th century and the old cowboy west. I poured some milk and Mike moved his feet to make some room.

"You going to school tomorrow?" I asked.

"Yea, I feel a lot better."

And so we sat together in the pale light of the little color t.v. Mike's parents had given him, watching as Ramsey tried to convince another lawman that fingerprints would actually catch a thief. Old Hec knew that times were changing.

Mystery solved, we said goodnight and moved to our bedrooms at opposite ends of the trailer. It was a cold outside, and I could hear the heater in the hallway humming its electric reassurance. I pulled the blankets up over my shoulders and tight around my neck. The sheets began to warm, and soon I began to drift. I was here, I was there. It felt good. All of it.

Jealous Redemption

(1975)

"I'm going home this weekend," I told Mike.

The guilty hero. I hadn't done anything, I told myself. I had been a good guy. But I hadn't quit thinking about it, either. I needed to get the photos developed. I wanted to see the pictures.

There was a gas shortage and prices were high, but it didn't matter. I wanted to go home. I wanted to see Sherri.

And it was sweet. She had a new job now working at the Pizza Hut. Her girlfriend's boyfriend was the manager, a fellow with a business degree from "the other" state university. Bob. He was short and stocky and wasn't at all like my friends. He was a businessman at heart. He had goals. And so he managed the Pizza Hut a hundred hours a week to make sure his was the best Pizza Hut in the state. He was a nice guy but bland, I thought. He smiled and talked and worked and doted on his girlfriend who was gaga over him. As I have said before, she always seemed a little simple to me, her dopey brown eyes always a little too liquid for real intelligence. But she was sweet and pleasant and pretty. They made what in some circles passed for a perfect couple.

So I spent part of Saturday night sitting in the Pizza Hut waiting for Sherri to get off work. It was odd watching her go about her duties, though, being responsible to somebody else, taking orders and carrying trays and following the Pizza Hut directives. But fascinating, too, watching her go from table to table bringing drinks and carrying the giant pizzas. She had given me my own pizza on the house and came over from time to time to see if I was doing OK. Bob was there and he came over as well, chatting for awhile before being called away by some pizza crisis. And it was fine sitting at the Pizza Hut on a busy night, warm on a cold, dark evening sniffing the aromas of the oven.

I watched Sherri as she went from table to table noticing that her Pizza Hut uniform fit nicely. They were not made to be sexy, of course, but the way she wore it, there was a sort of homey sensuality about it. I watched her as she waited on a table of four men. She said something and they said something and everybody laughed, and it seemed to me that Sherri enjoyed the attention she was getting, smiling back and taking their flirtations along with their order. When she walked away, I watched the men watch her, turning to one another to comment out of the sides of their crooked mouths. Oh, hell, I thought, this goes on night after night. This is how she makes her tips. But I could feel a jealousy growing in some dark corner of my imagination, vague shapes of shadowy men stripping her of her innocence with their ugly, leering eyes.

That night after work, I was like a mad animal filled with lust and jealousy and guilt, the images of the night and the images of the my classmate pulling her dress above her head mixing with the odors of stale beer and cooked cheese and oregano that clung to Sherri's clothing. Air, air, where is all the air I wondered before I went into convulsions. Guilt! Bam! Fear! Bam! Longing!

When I came to, Sherri was drawing her fingers across my back gently. "Boy," she said, "what was that?"

I didn't say anything. I couldn't tell her. I didn't know.

A Smile and a Shoeshine

(Venus and Cupid by Lotto)

"He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back, thats an earthquake, and then you get a couple of spots on your hat, and you're finished."

(Arthur Miller, "Death of a Salesman")

Coward/Hero

(First Nude, 1974)

When she left the room, I put the wine glass down. Wine was a mystery to me. I'd read you drank it in small sips letting it play upon your tongue, and that different wines were best drunk with certain foods. It was too complicated, I thought. Besides, it was mid-afternoon. I went to my car and got my camera.

I heard the shower go off and could smell the sweetness of the soaps and shampoos that drifted with the steam. What am I doing, I thought yet again? But my throat and gut was tight with excitement. The intimacy of smelling the scents of her bath, of listening to the tinkle and the thuds of her. . . doing something. . . I tried to imagine.

"You alright?" she called out from her bedroom. "You need more wine?"

"No, I'm doing OK."

I sat playing with the lens on my camera. I loved looking through the viewfinder. Everything was transformed. The world was fragments, objects surrounded by unfocussed parts. That is not the way the world looked, of course, and it was just the oddness of it, the ability to select that excited me, the unreality of it.

She walked out in a short dress, her hair just damp.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I got my camera out of my car. I was just messing with it."

"You a photographer?"

"I just got this at Christmas," I said.

I put the viewfinder to my eye and framed her face. She smiled.

"You mind?" I asked her.

She didn't say anything but put her hands to her waist, cocked her hip, tilting her head to one side. I immediately got an erection.

"You're not drinking," she said draining her glass and pouring another. I reached for mine and took a sip. She refilled my glass though I'd barely touched it. She sat on the couch and I sat on the floor looking at her through the lens. As I took pictures, we talked about the class.

"Which of the films has been your favorite so far," I asked her.

"Oh, I don't know. That's hard. They're all so good. City Lights, maybe. I don't know. When Horwitz talks about the films, I just melt. I'm in love with him, I think. I've never heard anybody talk about anything the way he talks about Chaplin. You know?"

"Yea. I think I pissed him off, though, one day before class."

"How?"

"I asked him if the film he made was a real movie. He yelled, 'Right, you know, popcorn, box offices. . . .' He was irritated."

She laughed and poured more wine. From where I sat, I was looking up her dress, but she didn't seem to mind.

"Hey. You want me to take this off?" she asked pulling at the hem of her dress. Adrenaline shot through me like hot lead. I couldn't breathe at first, and then I gasped. But the question was rhetorical. She was already pulling it over her head.

Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ. That was all I could think. My heart, which had stopped for god knows how long, was now pounding so that I was afraid she might hear it. I was paralyzed. I was afraid I might embarrass myself.

I put the viewfinder to my eye and tried to keep the camera from hopping up and down with the shaking of my hands, but I was blind. I wasn't even sure if I had focused the lens. Snap. Snap.

I reached for my glass and took a big slug. So much for sipping. It was better that way, I thought.

"God, I don't know what to say. You're beautiful. I don't know, I just. . . I don't know."

"Are you shy?" she giggled. "You looked scared."

"No, I just, I don't know, I just. . . ."

She started making sexy poses and so I shut up and just took photographs. We didn't talk for a long time except for her asking me how this looked or if she should move this way or that. Sure, sure, I said. Maybe, I thought, she had done this before.

I finished the roll of film and reached for another. While I fiddled with the back of the camera, she came over to where I sat on the floor. She was pale and naked and smelled like fruit. And she was a little drunk. When I turned to look at her, she kissed me. There was no air, I knew that, no oxygen left in my body. I could feel the world begin to spin. I was dead certain I would pass out. The only girl I'd kissed since high school was Sherri. She was the only girl I'd seen without her clothes on, too. Now, in the middle of the afternoon I was drinking wine and photographing a naked girl who was obviously way more advanced in her social skills than I. Her lips were softer than Sherri's and tasted like strawberries. And I was filled with urges I'd never known. I could feel the transformation, I thought, feel myself fill with new hormones. It was like the sudden onrush of an instant development. In a microsecond, I'd chemically changed from one thing to another. I could feel a pimple forming on my chin.

"Come on," she said, getting to her feet. "Let's go into the bedroom."

I followed her. It wasn't a decision. It just happened.

She lay down upon the top blanket and looked at me. I sat on the edge of the bed and began to photograph her again. There wasn't enough light, I knew, just the dim bulb of single lamp beside the bed. As I looked at her, she began to rub me with her foot. And in a minute she said, "Put the camera down and come here."

I sat looking at her for a moment just breathing in and out, in and out. "I can't," I said. "I have a girlfriend."

It was that, of course, but it was something else, too, I knew. I was scared.

She just looked at me for a minute then said, "You're kidding, right?" I could feel the change in her. It was as if the projectionist had put on the wrong last reel, something that belonged in another movie.

"No, I'd better go."

She didn't say anything, didn't get up. I tried to feel myself a hero. I'd done this for Sherri, I told myself. Yes, I would go to heaven.

My mind went a million ways as I drove back to the little trailer on the edge of town. I couldn't call it thinking. It was something else, just a swirl of images and remembered words. I didn't feel much like a hero.

"You missed the game," Mike said. "It went into three overtimes."

"Really? Damn." I should have been here with Mike, I thought. I should have watched the game.

"What'd you do?"

"What? Oh, nothing. I had a glass of wine, that's all. We talked for awhile. Who won?"

Mike began to tell me about what I'd missed. It felt good to hear it. It was solid ground. Mike and I would make dinner in a little while. Maybe we'd play guitars for a bit. And then we'd go out. We might stand outside a bar and talk to people without ever going in. If the band was good, we might pay the cover and even buy a beer. Then we'd go out into the crisp, cold air and hunch our shoulders against the night as we walked through the streets under the clear sky and moonlight. And we'd know we were cool for being here. Yes sir, just for being here. It was nothing like home.

Valentine's Day

"There is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income" (Edmund Wilson).

Need clothes, shoes, things. Decide to go to fashionable mall. Drive in traffic and sit on interstate. Get frustrated. Then angry. Get to mall and turn around. Go back to your little village. Decide never to go out of your village again. Pity others. Shop on Avenue. Be happy. Have drink at beautiful sidewalk cafe. Go home. Read. Make dinner. Watch Olympics. Have whiskey. Fall asleep on couch. Dream you are young enough, strong enough, quick enough, fast enough.

Life will beat you when you expect it to be better. It could be, and it is the promise of that which provides the friction. Like those who've come before us, we believe that "tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further. . . and one fine morning. . . ." There is always that promise. There is The Dream.

It is falling just this side of it that makes it all maddening, knowing it is there.

Feeling Lucky

I woke this morning to a million billion trillion Robin Redbreasts. A good omen, I think, though I don't believe in omens (not officially) and though the morning is cold and grey. Perhaps that is how it should be. I am excited. I don't feel the need to rise to the expectations of the weather. And the robins made me feel as lucky as I used to feel after college living in my mother's house (I know, I know) when I would wake to hear them rustling for bugs beneath the dead brown maple leaves. Maple? I think so. I want to say mulberry, but I don't think they have them here. The robins would camp in the backyard of my mother's house for a week or so. Then one day, they would just be gone.

I am trying to think of the device to use to warn the readers of this blog that there is going to be some rough stuff coming in the narrative. I struggle with putting that here. I am trying to be truthful in my writing, but there are many ways of being truthful, if there is a truth at all. Perhaps there is only memory and telling. Still, there are choices to be made. And telling the truth does not always make sense. But the dullish, sensitive, naive character central to the narration is going to do some dumb and sometimes awful things that run against both the laws of man and nature. Even if I am not graphic in the telling, the ideas might be shocking. But that boy had an awfully curious imagination that he was just beginning to explore and being exposed to some pretty awful things in his early life had made him unafraid to explore the pretty awful things. So I don't know. I'm still thinking.

Perhaps a disclaimer of sorts:

Dearest, gentle reader,

What lies beyond this note may be shocking to some of you, even those of you who think. . . etc.

I'll tell you this, though. I've thought about shutting down the blog as I am going through what my friend calls "a rough patch" right now, though it is more than rough. But I think that such quitting is all too common, and that if there is no other pride to be had in writing this, there is the consistency of posting every day, rain or shine, wind, snow, sleet, hail, or dark of night. People need something to count on in life even if they don't like it. I remember feeling a sense of loss when long running t.v. shows I hated were cancelled after a twenty year stint. I never watched the damned things, but I realized that I felt better just having them around.

I'm only in my third season, but the number of visitors continues to grow. My question now is how to tell them the hard thing. The answer is just to tell them. But with what art?

The Drink

(First Nude, 1974--Not Quite Up To Gowland's Standards)

I'd bought a camera for myself at Christmas, a Canon, and I had several lenses. I had seen the film "Blow Up" and knew that was what I wanted to do. I had the Kodak Guide to Better Photography and learned about holding the camera still and when to frame things horizontally and when to frame them vertically. I knew to put the sun at my back. What I learned from other books was not so clear, and Peter Gowland's "Guide to Glamour Photography" had really only confused me. Still, as best I could, I was aping the photos I saw in his book, for I was certain he must be the expert in such things.

I took my camera with me everywhere, shyly making pictures of my family and friends. It was exciting and the photos pleased me, sort of. I mean, they were beginning to look like the ones I saw in the book by Kodak. I still, however, had not reached the mysterious mastery revealed by Mr. Gowland.

The rest of the week following the invitation for a drink by the girl in my Chaplin class was an anxious misery. I had little experience in such things. Rather, I had none. This is what I'd hoped for, I was sure, all those days sitting in darkened theaters watching handsome men pursue the affections of beautiful women with assured sophistication. But unlike the photography, I hadn't gotten a handbook on this. It was exciting enough that she had noticed me, had spoken to me. I relived those few minutes before class again and again, slowing down and exaggerating certain bits of time, enlarging the look in her very brown eyes. But Saturday would bring act two. I needed a script.

"Where're you going?" Mike asked.

"I'm going to meet that girl in the Chaplin class for a drink."

"Now? The Knicks are playing Boston this afternoon. It's a huge game."

"Oh, I'll be back. I'm just going to stop by her work and say hello. It isn't going to take long."

Mike looked dubious about this, and in truth, it felt a little like a betrayal. We had fallen into a routine and did just about everything together. Wednesday's we went to Sonny's Barbecue for the student's discount. On Friday nights from eight to ten, we watched the CBS lineup of shows before going out. Saturdays were basketball. The look in his eye as I left the trailer seemed an evil omen.

Driving to the Coral Reef, I was fairly shaking. What was I doing? I had a girlfriend. I wasn't doing anything, though, I told myself. Hell, I was just saying hi to a girl in my class. It was cool. Everything was cool.

Everything but me. When I pulled into the parking lot, I was already lost. I had never eaten in such a restaurant before. My parents would never have spent this much money on a dinner, and until I met Sherri, the only places I ate out were the Burger King and Frisch"s Big Boy and a small local chain called Taco Tico. I felt scruffy walking in.

But the place was fairly empty this late on a Saturday. When I walked in, I waited at the hostess stand looking around for my new friend.

"Hey," she said. "You're just in time. We can have a drink here if you want, but I just got off, so if you want to come over to my house, I have a bottle of wine. I'd really like to get out of these clothes. I smell like a seafood restaurant."

Jesus Christ, I thought.

"Sure, sure, that's good."

"OK. Did you drive?"

"Yup."

"Well you can follow me home. I'm in the silver car over there. It's not far."

"OK."

I watched her walk across the gravel parking lot and slide into a car I had no name for. I knew American cars made by GM, Ford, and Chrysler. I even knew Volkswagons. But I had no name for this.

I followed her across town to her house in a little wooded neighborhood. The house was small and covered in dark wooden shingles. It made me think of Hobits.

"You've got a nice car," I said. "Is that a Mercedes Benz?"

She looked at me with her head canted to the right. "No, I wish. It's an Audi. Come on."

An Audi? Is that what she said? I'd never heard of that before. I could feel myself beginning to shake and hoped I wouldn't have to ask her if I could use her bathroom.

Inside, she held up a bottle of wine. "You like this?"

I didn't know. I didn't drink wine. I'd never bought a bottle before.

"Oh, sure, that's great."

She brought out a full glass and tinked her glass against mine.

"Cheers. Listen, if you don't mind, I want to take a quick shower. I won't take long. I just feel like a smell. Do you mind?"

"Uh-uh," I mumbled. My mind was racing.

Gentlemen Prefer Polaroids

I've lamented Polaroid's demise for a long time now, but it wasn't until today that I learned that the final destruction of the company that brought millions so much instant fun was brought about by a Ponzi scheme. Sure, the digital age had a hand in it, but I always felt that there was enough interest in the film to keep it around. But read this from the New York Times:

The company that Mr. Land started in 1937 became a victim of the digital age, going bust first in 2001 and again in 2008. The second time, after it was bought by Petters Group Worldwide, Polaroid was caught up in a $3.65 billion Ponzi scheme run by the company’s founder, a Minnesota businessman named Tom Petters, who was convicted in December of fraud and money laundering, among other charges.

Today, however, there is another tragedy brought about by Petters. Bankruptcy court in Minnesota has ordered Polaroid to sell off part of its Permanent Collection in order to pay back some of its creditors. The auction by Sotheby's is expected to earn between seven and eleven million dollars. Nobody but the court, it seems, thinks the sell-off worth it.

One of the artists whose work is to be sold is Ansel Adams. Adams is best known for his careful photographs of the Yosemite Valley and other western landscapes. He is also known for his technical skills in making "perfect" prints. He is the co-inventor of the Zone System of exposure and author of a series of books on the process of film photography. So it may surprise some that Adams was fervent in his admiration of the Polaroid films, excitedly calling them the future of photography.

The future is behind us now. The Impossible project is widely touted for trying to bring back the Polaroid experience, but they are having trouble developing their own films. Make no mistake, what they are doing is something new. They will not be making Polaroid. Fuji makes instant films that work, so the idea of The Impossible Project sometimes gets by me. But I will wait and see.

But we have digital cameras now that can make images that we never had dreamed of before. And they are instant. Sort of. It sometimes takes me weeks to process all the images I capture in a single day, tweaking them in Photoshop to make them sing. And there is always something new to learn. Still, I miss the film. Oh, there are many more images made now that people would not have been able to take to the drug store for processing, but instant film did that too, and I am still goofy about the old line: "Gentlemen Prefer Polaroids."

Birthday

One day that winter, I had a birthday. I got cards from my mother and from my father, and I got one from Sherri, a cute, handmade thing that stood out in stark contrast to the schmaltzy store-bought cards my parents sent. But the ones from my parents each had money inside, and that made them valuable.

"Today's my birthday," I told Mike.

"Happy birthday, man."

I was twenty-one.

I went to class that day, as usual. Nobody I saw knew it was my birthday. Birthdays, I thought. Why do we celebrate them? What are they, anyway? It is just another day.

We had never made much of birthdays in my house when I was growing up. There was usually a cake and a present given at the dinner table if it was a weekday, at breakfast if it was the weekend. My father's birthday and my mother's birthday were celebrated tiredly after work. My mother would give my father a new shirt that looked like all the other shirts he had. My father would get my mother some kitchen utensil that she considered useless. There was not much romance involved in any of it beyond the forced smiles and the mandatory singing of the "Happy Birthday" song.

My parents decided to throw a party for me once when I started school. I was given invitations to pass out in class, but somehow the date got screwed up so that we were gone when the kids and their parents showed up on Saturday. We waited unknowingly the next day, but nobody came. I didn't know what happened until I went back to school on Monday. But the mistake was a devastating and irrevocable blow. My parents never had the energy to try it again. After that, I went to the birthday parties of my classmates and friends, and though they seemed like fun, I never really enjoyed them. No matter how elaborate they were, everything about them always felt artificial.

As I grew up, I began to realize that I was uncomfortable either getting or giving attention on command. It felt synthetic, I thought, mechanized and routine. I suspected, however, without ever saying it, that these feelings were residue from that first birthday party that never was.

That is what I kept in mind all day as I went about my routine. But it didn't help. Deep down, I wanted the world to stop and say. . . what? I didn't know. I didn't deserve the stopping of things, I knew, but there was some primitive longing for a sudden voice from the heavens, some recognition that I was alive.

The gift arrived in the best possible way, unknowable and unexpected. It came from a girl in my Films of Charlie Chaplin class. I had seen her but had never spoken to her before. In truth, I was so shy, I never spoke to anybody. This day, however, she sat in the seat right next to me where I sat next to Mike in the old folding chairs of the giant auditorium.

"How do you like the class?" she asked me.

"I like it a lot. It's really great."

"Yea, everybody loves it."

I could feel the tension in my body as she spoke. Her voice was soft and natural, without meditation or artifice. I felt the difference between us right away. Where she was beautiful and smooth, I was awkward and unnatural. She had many birthday parties in her life, I thought, and they had all been grand events, beautiful things that she accepted with the presumptive grace of a certain class.

"I've seen you all term," she said to me, her eyes dead on mine. The tiny muscles just below the surface of my skin begin to contract and quiver involuntarily as if I were suddenly freezing. I was both disbelieving and hopeful in equal part. Unassumingly, she proffered, "I've wanted to say hello."

I didn't know what I was supposed to do. My mind was blank. I had no experience in this other than what I had seen on television and in movies, and my mind raced through its small catalog of appropriate lines.

All I could come up with was, "It's my birthday."

What? What had I said? She hadn't asked me if today was special! She hadn't asked me if it was my birthday! I was an idiot.

"Really? Well happy birthday. . . what's your name?"

I told her so awkwardly that it sounded like a lie.

"Listen, I work at the Coral Reef. You know where that is?" The Coral Reef was a an exclusive seafood restaurant where the city's attorneys and businessmen went. It was too expensive for students. "Come by on Saturday and I will buy you a drink. I get off at three, so come around then. O.K."

"O.K."

I sat there stunned and unbelieving. It was my birthday and the sky had opened up. I had heard a voice from beyond. Everything was different. Everything had changed.

And then I thought of Sherri.

Streaking

Winter days in the little trailer on the edge of town. There were not many students living in the park. Most were working people, older than we were but not much. The couple next door were in their twenties. One day, a pretty, young girl moved in with them. She was the fellow's niece, and really, she was more than pretty. She always smiled when she saw us, and one day she said hello. It turned out that she was only seventeen, and we were afraid. She didn't look seventeen, but that is what she said, and her redneck uncle probably wouldn't approve of us chatting her up too much, we knew. But she sort of liked Mike, and she would come over once in awhile to make us nervous. We would play our guitars and sing for her, and when she wasn't around, we'd sing for her, too. It was a torment for us, but only for awhile. One day, she was just gone. And in a way, it was a relief.

But in those days, it did not take long for something else to arrest our interest. And one day, like a tornado or a tidal wave you can't predict, people began streaking. It happened quickly. One day, people simply began to take their clothes off and run through classrooms. I was in my organic chemistry class the first time I saw it, a large amphitheater with doors in the front and in the back. It was over in a flash. A boy opened the back door and galloped down the gently sloping stairs and out the front. There was a howl from the class, of course, and the professor looked startled, but then he chuckled and simply continued to lecture.

Within a few days, it was a national phenomenon.

One night, Mike and I were walking on campus after dinner and noticed a huge crowd of boys beneath the windows of one of the dormitories, so we walked over to see what was going on. On the third floor, the lights of a single dorm room were blinking on and off behind the venetian blinds that covered the window.

"What's going on," we asked a guy in the crowd.

"Two girls are up there teasing all the fellows. They are going to do a striptease."

And they did. As one girl worked the blinds with the skill of a carnie, opening them and closing them in rhythm to some barely heard music, the other girl began taking off her clothing. The boys began to whoop. With the yelling, of course, the crowd began to swell, and the boys who had been sitting cross legged in the grass while the lights went on and off were forced to their feet, the blinds obscuring then revealing, horny boys moaning out in agony and delight.

That week, during a nationally televised basketball game, a boy streaked across the court at half time. The nation saw it and we were proud. In Boulder, they had set the record for the number of people streaking at one time. Somewhere else, a group of students had parachuted naked. But WE had streaked on national T.V.

Every day for two weeks, you'd see people take off their clothes and run naked across the campus. And like any frenzy, it had to peek. And so one Saturday night, a march had been organized. People would walk naked from Fraternity Row to Sorority Row, a march of around a mile. Everyone had heard about it, even the town's folk, and that night the "Parade Route" was lined with thousands of people. Families came with picnic baskets and blankets, patiently waiting.

"Are you going to take off your clothes," one of us asked?

"Don't know. Let's just follow and see what happens."

What happened was that we found ourselves in a crowd of about a hundred naked men. We marched along behind them watching the swell of cheering townspeople, children on father's shoulders, waving and shouting like it was Mardi Gras.

"I don't want to take off my clothes to march with a bunch of swinging dicks," one of us said to the other, but just then, there at the back of the line, the first girls joined in. Suddenly, they ripped off their clothing and got in line. They were naked and they were cute, and without saying anything, both Mike and I began shedding our shirts and pants, sticking close to the girls, watching the shiny whiteness of their bouncing breasts and butts like beacons in the night. And suddenly, the number of naked marchers began to grow. Now, even townspeople were getting into the act, jumping from the curb with a hoot and a shout and getting naked, too. There were a lot of naked people now of both sexes, but truly, it was still mostly guys. Mike and I jockeyed hard to stay next to the girls as abruptly the crowd began to run. And suddenly, there were television lights and cameras everywhere. "Shit," Mike spat as we ran head on into a camera crew from our own hometown. I put my head down and held my pants in front of my face. "Great. My parents are going to be watching the news tomorrow night and see my naked ass running toward the camera. They're going to cut off my money."

Just then, as the naked crowd began to slow, the group of girls peeled away down a little hill next to an old dormitory. Mike and I went with them. They were laughing and shouting excitedly while they slipped their clothes back on, Mike and I dressing with them. I don't know what we thought might happen, but whatever it was, it didn't.

"You guys want to go over to Sarah's," one girl said to the others.

"Let's get something to eat first. I'm starving."

Mike and I stood there watching and listening like we were about to be invited, but we weren't. The girls waved and we waved and they were gone, left alone, standing in the darkness below a knoll of cold and slippery grass that separated us from the crowd.

The parade had ended now, and people were just hanging around wondering what to do. But suddenly out of nowhere a motorcycle bearing a naked couple came driving by. The crowd set up a cheer just as the police cruiser pulled them over. "Hey, what the hell," somebody yelled, and within seconds another cruiser had pulled up. We were on campus and these were the campus police. Surely they would make the couple put their clothes back on and let them go. But it was taking far too long. And suddenly--and I don't know what got into me--I was standing on a retaining wall and shouting out, "Look, look, they are arresting the motorcycle couple. We can't let them do this! It isn't right." And like that, the crowd began to move toward the cruisers, piling up around them. And then somebody began a chant which the crowd picked up.

"Let them go, let them go."

And then more policemen showed up. Things were getting ugly. The police had not let the couple get dressed and they had handcuffed the boy. He still had his motorcycle helmet on.

"Free the streakers. Free the streakers," the crowd chanted, now in a more furious tone.

But it was to no avail. Suddenly, two officers put the boy into the back of a squad car. They put the girl into another. And seeing that, the crowd went wild. Shoving forward, they began rocking the squad car.

"Let them go. Let them go."

But the police moved in doing their usual policemen thing, grabbing selected boys from the crowd to make an example for the rest. Then the two cars with the arrested streakers drove away and were gone.

And that was that. The crowd began to disperse.

"What a night," Mike said.

"You think we'll be on T.V.?"

"I hope not. My dad will shit. He already thinks all I do up here is hang out and fuck around."

That was Saturday night. By Monday morning, it was all over. The university had identified the boy who had streaked at half time of the nationally televised basketball game and had suspended him from the university. I don't know whatever happened to the streaking motorcyclists. But nobody ever streaked again. It had been two weeks of crazy silliness and fun.

I thought about old friends who were not living this life, those working day to day at ordinary jobs and those who had chosen not to come to the state university. They were missing much, I thought, things they could never really catch up on. How could you tell it? They had seen it on the local news, but they would never know what it felt like, and I would find that there would be no use in trying to tell them. God, I thought, I got lucky.

They Were Wrong, I Know

This photo was taken by my father, I think, an old black and white Polaroid. The man is my cousin. I think I remember the girl a little. Well, how could you not? I would have been twelve when this photo was taken. She had a high, baby doll voice. Did he marry her? I don't think so, but I don't remember. They lived in Ohio, and I did not see them much. He married somebody. My cousins were hellboys, but they all married only once. They smoked and drank and used words I never heard other people use. I knew they were wrong, but it seemed so exciting. I never saw them living day to day, so for me, they were only the stories they told, and nobody has ever told stories quite like those. This is the cousin who had the twelve cylinder Jaguar. He lost control on the hill of a highway and crashed it through a billboard. That's the story. He had some trouble with the Mayor's son and his buddies one night, so he stopped his car in traffic and grabbed a tire iron and ran up onto the car's roof and busted the windshield while screaming, "Get out of the car, motherfuckers," but of course, nobody did. That's the story. They go on and on and on. Colorfully.

I've only recently come across this photo again. I want more, but the store is closed. Like I always say, you just can't make old photographs.

Nothing Ventured

Happy

(Photo by Rita Bernstein)

I'm sorry, but I wanted to post another. They are so beautiful.

* * * * *

"I just love my therapist," she said. "Really, I don't know what I'd do without her."

"How long have you been going to her?" I asked.

"I just started a few months ago. I was seeing another woman, but eventually we were going nowhere. It was OK at first, but after a while, it seemed that we were just doing the same thing again and again and again."

"Sounds like a lot of relationships," I opined.

"Yea, but this new woman is really dynamic. She just makes me feel better walking into the room."

"That's great."

"Yes, I feel like she appreciates who I am. It feels like she really gets me."

"How'd you hear about her."

"Margaret goes to her. She was very enthusiastic about her. She's been with her for about three years now."

"Wow!"

"I think I'm going to be really happy this time."

"Well good for you. Good for you. If you are happier, everyone will be happier, too. The world definitely needs more happy people."

Rita Bernstein

(All Photos By Rita Bernstein)

I fell for these photos the moment I saw them. Romantic, dreamy, far away things, though not really. Simply everyday scenes just out of reach. I wrote to the photographer, Rita Bernstein, right away to talk about the pictures and to tell her of my appreciation. Ms. Bernstein was kind enough to write back and tell me something about her process. She prints her images on handmade Japanese Gampi paper that she coats with a photo emulsion. The paper is thin and delicate and, I think not so easy to work with. The scanned images are beautiful, but I know that they do not begin to approach the quality of the actual work itself. She makes prints in two sizes, 7x7 and 10x10, in editions of fifteen. You can query her about the prices.

Gray, humid days that pass for southern winter. In this flat light, I miss the brilliance of those sharp-lined shadows. I am gray enough without gray days, but there are plenty of opportunities for brilliance if I could only be so. It is simply that, like the days, I too have lost contrast.

You can get to know so much about a person by the photos s/he presents. For days now, I have been envying the life Ms. Bernstein shows us in pictures.

Internet Outage

(Photo by Luther Gerlach)

Oh my! Went to bed with internet working, got up and it didn't. I won't go through the narrative, but I was on the phone for three literal (not figurative) hours with my internet provider trying to right their wrongs. I've had the phone to my ear while crawling under the desk to disconnect then connect then disconnect cables, ad infinitum. I can't go into the intricacies of it, only the horror. I have spoken with scores of incompetent people who each said something that contradicted the last advisor. I know how corporations work at a general level. Layer after layer of low level competence. Repetitions of rote apology. An opportunity to fill out a customer satisfaction survey. Somebody somewhere, a smart guy or gal, sitting in an office feeling sharp because s/he has hundreds who report to him/her, wearing a business suit and feeling important but wanting to feel more, has dropped the ball badly. In a smaller organization, there would be accountability and someone's ass would be handed to them as the smarmy business ones say. Maddening impotence on my end. I hate not being self-sufficient/self-dependent. But I couldn't fix this one on my own.

But I don't have time to write it now. Awful.

Here are two photographs by Luther Gerlach. He practices the dark arts that I am slouching toward, good ambrotypes and kallitypes. When I saw his work, I was impressed and wrote asking him if I might show a couple of his images, and he agreed. Go to his site and look around. Swell stuff, indeed.

Oh. In the end I got a month's free service. It is definitely not enough.

(Photo by Luther Gerlach)

Johnny Weismuller, "Sea Hunt," and the Lesson Learned

Fleeting fame faded, my obscure life resumes. It seems to start later and end earlier every day. The hours between become more monotonous. I begin to doubt my recall. The past is more dreamlike. Surely I'm lying. We could not have lived that way nor have been that happy doing so. There could never have been that much time.

But I wrote a lot of it back then, and it seems true.

I hope to impart some of that sense of wonder and texture to my friend's son. He loves the Cartoon Network and the Disney Channel as much as the next kid (and, unfortunately, I watch it with him to make certain I can speak to the issues I see there), but I have put other things in the mix. He has seen the entire Sherlock Holmes series starring Basil Rathbone. And he loved them. He has seen the Johnny Weismuller Tarzan series co-starring Maureen O'Sullivan and Johnny Sheffield. I took a chance and showed him the Thin Man series with William Powell and Myrna Loy. And he loves the Charlie Chan series, all thousand of them with both Warner Oland and Sidney Toler. We have begun to watch some old TV shows on Hulu. He got a kick out of the few episodes of "Sea Hunt" and "Flipper" he has seen.

Now listen, before you begin to complain, he can recite much poetry, too, and scored in the top one percent in the nation in math skills. He fishes and plays baseball and takes music lessons, sings in the choir, is in the Gifted Program at his school, etc. He is popular with his teachers and his classmates. He can name the plants and animals around us and put some into their correct Phylums and Classes.

In truth, I'm knocked out by how smart all the kids I meet seem. Brilliant, really. They have been exposed to more than I had been at their ages and already know so much. My own childhood seems to have been lived out in caves by comparison. I think we used to write with chalk on shovels.

OK. I've lost my way here and can't find a road back. Your assignment is to find a thread in this entry and write a conclusion. I'm still weak and dizzy from illness and going back to too much work too soon.

The kid got a new accordion. He outgrew the old one. You wouldn't believe how much accordions cost. Maybe that is why kids don't get accordion lessons any more. No, that is not why, I know. But this boy is getting good and soon will dazzle ears and send imaginations flying with the songs he will play. And as he gets older, every musical group will want to have the only accordion player in town join them.

He played the new one for me last night. I took a photo. Not a very good one, but I will make a good one this weekend. Trust me.

Eight Hours of Fame

591 Photography Blog published seven of my "A Few Days One Summer" photos with a brief essay yesterday. Psyched. I am always happy whenever anyone is nice to me. 591 always makes me happy. Check it (and me) out!

I just spared you a long diatribe on "happy" with one stroke of the "delete" button. Now you are happier, too. Trust me.

Ground Hog Day. Something about it has given me the creeps since I was a child. A smiling man in a top hat holding a giant rodent in front of a crowd always seemed more than a little nightmarish. I like knowing that today is the midpoint between winter and spring. There is something in that. Perhaps a celebration of sorts is called for, but they need to stop with the other thing.

And since I'm at it, ventriloquists should stop it, too.

"Is there really a leap year?"

Still sick, but getting better, weak but restless, I decided to see "Crazy Heart" last night. I was prepared for a typically romantic story about a loser whose tremendous talents make his foibles an adjutant to his accomplishments. I was terribly wrong.

I stood in line outside the box office in front of a mother and her teenage daughter, and I couldn't help but overhear their conversation as they discussed which movie to see. I was startled when the daughter asked, "Is there really such a thing as a leap year?" a question, I presumed, brought about by the movie of that name. Then her mother said something about "It's Complicated," to which the daughter replied, "I don't like old people." And of course she is typical of a generation taught by the Disney Channel that parents are buffoons in need of correction by children and by the news that old people are all dangerous criminals in search of young victims. "Jesus Christ," I thought, "I should have stayed on the couch." But just then an old man at the head of the line cried out to someone, "What's it called? That's right, that's right." Then gruffly funny, "I keep thinking The Incredibles", he said, moving in that arthritically abbreviated way old men have as they pat around their pockets in a quick panic for something they fear they've misplaced. People all around smiled and chuckled to one another, and a fellow in line ahead of me, a man in his late forties, said, "I'm not going to laugh, I'm not that far from it myself." But he was chuckling as he said it.

We all think we're far enough from it.

I won't tell you about the movie. Rather, I'll simply warn you. The movie will not make you feel better about anything. Jeff Bridges deserves every award they give for acting this year, but it won't make you feel good. He is brilliant, but you will never look at him in the same way again. If you've ever made a mistake in your life that has cost you something you didn't want to lose, you'll live with it front and center for a long while after the end of the movie. Really. It's that bad.

The trailer for the film ends with Robert Duval's character opining, "It's never too late, son. It's never too late." But the statement is enigmatic, and the implications are haunting.

See the film, by all means, but don't say I didn't warn you. I'm pretty sure you won't have to stand in line in front of a teenager who is not certain what leap year is proclaiming, "I don't like old people." But I can't guarantee it.