Stormy Weather

Where I live.  It has been storming since Monday.  I am believing in the sympathetic fallacy.  Stormy times, stormy weather here.  I watch the garbage truck drive by, but I am not about to run out to put my can on the curb.  I will have to live with garbage for some days.

The distribution of wealth gets a lot of press now that the gulf is so clear, so wide.  But no one is talking about the distribution of knowledge.  The press covers the crisis in education, but nobody is pointing out that Obama is is supporting the sort of trade skills and online MBA education for--the disadvantaged.  This is O.K. in that people need to work.  They need to have skills and we all need jobs.  But my father got a more stimulating education in high school than we are offering students in many college diploma mills just now.  High schools avoid the humanities like a plague.  In my own state, the Governor has said that art has no place in education. Who will counter that?  People who have been educated under such a system?  Critical thinking skills have been left out of the program.  The sort of relaxed education that encourages students to think and wonder, ponder and solve, is only for the children of the elite.  I guess it is about the distribution of wealth after all.

The press has finally caught up with Cafe Selavy, though.  From today's CNN online:

Officials have downplayed the potential perils posed by this isotope, since it loses half of its radiation every eight days.

Yet amounts of the cesium-137 isotope -- which, by comparison, has a 30-year "half life" -- have also soared, with a Wednesday afternoon sample showing levels 527 times the standard.

"That's the one I am worried about," said Michael Friedlander, a U.S.-based nuclear engineer, explaining cesium might linger much longer in the ecosystem. "Plankton absorbs the cesium, the fish eat the plankton, the bigger fish eat smaller fish -- so every step you go up the food chain, the concentration of cesium gets higher."

And what the hell does this tell anyone?  It is blather.  It is obfuscation.  Might as well tell parents that four hours of watching television each day is no more harmful for children than playing with sticks ten hours a week.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is increasing its nationwide monitoring of radiation as two states reported very low levels of radiation in milk.

"According to them [EPA and FDA], a pint of milk at these levels would expose an individual to less radiation than would a five-hour airplane flight."

It rains and rains.  The thunder and lightning are ceaseless.  No light penetrates the clouds.  I am called to action.  I possess only lethargy.

Thar Be Monsters

(photo by Jane Morris Parsons)

I am uncertain today.  Sick of posting my work and words.  But here is a beautiful photograph that I should wish to emulate.  There are thousands of them.  When I find a direction (in writing, in art, in life), I'll let you know.  Just now, reality calls.  It has the most insistent voice.  It may cause me some deafness.  And therein, as we all know, lies the danger.  That way lies madness.  Thar be monsters.  I guess.  Though it is always interesting to watch someone else do it.  Edifying and entertaining.  Someone (Matthew Arnold, but he was working from a Greek critic I can't bring to mind) said that is what art should be.  Closer my heart to thee.

Fortune

Privilege and Power.  To Have and to Have Not.  The world is full of trouble.  Sometimes it knocks on the door.  Sometimes it doesn't knock.  It just comes in uninvited.  Sometimes it walks by you and you think you've escaped.  Then it takes you from behind.  When you get it, you want to give it to somebody else.  You want to give it back.  Times are tough.  What can I say?  My fortunes are shifting.  If you can call them that.  It is too generous a word, perhaps.  The worst part, I guess, is waiting for the train to run you over.  But maybe it is when the train finally runs you down.

In the picture is a very pretty full-time professional model.  She worked with me gratis.  This is what I gave her back for her trouble.  My idea of a pretty picture.  I don't think I'll make a living at portraiture.

Labor

This is the apprentice camera repairman. He is learning the trade under the tutelage of my friend. He is quiet at work, observational.  He is choosing a career.  I wonder about such things lately.  A bicycle shop that has been in town for twenty years just closed.  It moved from one crummy location where they had always been to a new, higher profile place.  They lasted less than a year.  There was a fellow who has worked there since it opened.  He was young then, in his mid-twenties, and a bit of a hipster.  The bicycle job let him enjoy that lifestyle.  He needn't conform much.  Eventually, he became the store's manager and had settled into his routine.  Year after year.  I wonder about him now.  What happens to him?  I'm sure he never counted on this.  Now in his mid-forties, he will have to look for something else.  What does he do?

In the days of the old west when the country was young, there was barely any regulation of corporations and no idea of social welfare or security.  Cowboys let go by Omaha Cattle Company or whomever had to fend for themselves as they could.  With little money, they still had to feed themselves and their horses, buy boots and saddles and reins.  What happened when you got too down on your luck?  The old west was as dangerous a place as you'd ever want to be, I'd guess.  Given what I know, if I were in that situation, I'm certain to have been an outlaw.  There was nothing romantic about it, I'm certain, nothing like the movies and t.v. shows I grew up with portrayed.  And somewhere around that time, there was a labor movement.  Don't hold me to dates and details.  I'm just thinking.  What do poor people do when they become desperate?  How do corporations and despots try to control them?

Things seemed pretty good in this country when there was a strong middle class and a dependable social welfare/security system to take care of the poorest of us.  When my friends complain about taxes, I tell them they ought to move to a country without them.  Bolivia, for instance.  Oh, they would love it there, I'm telling you.  You don't have to put up with infrastructures nor conveniences.

I hope the camera repair thing works out for our friend.  Seems like people ought to be able to make a living.

Stealing Souls

Fun with the new lens.  If I can get a portrait a day. . . .  This was the woman who tries to sell me expensive details at the carwash.  She calls me "sweetheart," and when she saw the camera, she said, "I knew you were an artist."  Of course, it should be obvious.  So I said, "Yes, here, let me take your photo," and put the viewfinder to my eye.  "I don't photograph so well," she said.  "But I do," I told her, "you won't believe it."  "It is hard to photograph the beauty of the soul," she told me as I focused.  "Oh, don't worry about that," I countered, "that is my specialty.  This is going to be just that."

Sitting with my camera waiting for my car to be detailed (yes, she talked me into way too much), I sat with my camera and saw a hundred portraits I should have tried to take.  But people scowl so much at the man with the camera.  The things that slip by unrecorded are the things that haunt me.  But I will look for faces I can steal. . . souls, I mean.

I went to the bookstore afterwards.  It is sad.  Bookstores are closing left and right, and the way they are run, they probably should.  First the big chains ran all the small stores out of business because they provided what people wanted--a place to sit and drink coffee and browse over books.  It was the closest anyone in Omaha or Decatur got to the images they saw in movies set in San Francisco or New York.  They were imitations, but they were closer than what they had before.  In my own town, there was a little bookstore run by a demon of a woman who made you uncomfortable every time you came in with her perpetual pissed-off ideological scowl.  There was no relaxed lounging there.  So when she had to close, I figured she got what she deserved.  But I knew the chains were lousy capitalist pig-fuckers who would ruin what they touched. Soon, there were three bookstores in town.  One was that Sam's Club of bookstores (it is a blasphemy to call them that), Books a Million.  The other two were Borders and Barnes and Noble.  Both stores here were like the Bloomingdales that is in town, a faux-version, cheap and meretricious.  Over time, they carried more calendars and cookbooks than literature.  They are going under now.  I went to one yesterday and left without anything.  Books are in trouble, but we'll see what the market brings.  In my own idiot town, I'm not sure there are enough serious readers to warrant a bookstore of merit.  I guess I'll buy an iPad or a Kindle.

Afterwards, I went to the grocery store and bought supplies.  As I was checking out, the chatty cashier asked me where the beer was from.  I had Ichiban.  "Japan," I said.  I hadn't even thought about it.  Jesus Christ, I guess I won't be buying that anymore.

Life is being reduced to some ravaging minimums.  Things are being lost and stolen at a steady pace.  But there are always new things to take their places.  Twitter.  Facebook.  Live television on your iPhone.  It is simply a matter of adjustment, I guess.

Trouble, Trouble, Boil and Bubble

I went out last night.  No surprises.  It is all the same.  You sit, look, leer, desire, aspire, talk, drink, drink. . . and then too late, you go home.  Sleep, wake, hope. . . and then, you say your nevers, you sleep your dream (apologies to cummings).  Oy.  Oi.  That is not what I wish to do at all.  The early dinner was good. I should have stopped there.

Here is the first photo with my new (old) beater Mamiya 645 f1.9 lens mounted on my Nikon D700.  It is not supposed to shoot in aperture priority mode--but it does!  I don't know what magic is happening there, but I'll take it.  The photo is of the genius who fixes my cameras and who is turning my Graflex RB into the camera that will shoot the Aero Ektar f2.5 lens.  This might qualify for the start of a new series.

The gas is back on.  Things return to normal.  That is not quite what I want.

A dark Cave. In the middle, a Caldron boiling. Thunder.

                Enter the three Witches.

       1 WITCH.  Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd.
       2 WITCH.  Thrice and once, the hedge-pig whin'd.
       3 WITCH.  Harpier cries:—'tis time! 'tis time!
       1 WITCH.  Round about the caldron go;
    In the poison'd entrails throw.—
    Toad, that under cold stone,
    Days and nights has thirty-one;
    Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
    Boil thou first i' the charmed pot!
       ALL.  Double, double toil and trouble;
    Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
       2 WITCH.  Fillet of a fenny snake,
    In the caldron boil and bake;
    Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
    Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
    Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
    Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,—
    For a charm of powerful trouble,
    Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
       ALL.  Double, double toil and trouble;
    Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
       3 WITCH.  Scale of dragon; tooth of wolf;
    Witches' mummy; maw and gulf
    Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark;
    Root of hemlock digg'd i the dark;
    Liver of blaspheming Jew;
    Gall of goat, and slips of yew
    Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse;
    Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips;
    Finger of birth-strangled babe
    Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,—
    Make the gruel thick and slab:
    Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,
    For the ingrediants of our caldron.
       ALL.  Double, double toil and trouble;
    Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
       2 WITCH.  Cool it with a baboon's blood,
    Then the charm is firm and good.

(You know--Shakespeare)

Definitely Not Whining

I'm not whining, really, just saying.  My gas has been shut off yet again.  How do I not pay this?  I think they are scamming me some way, not sending me the bill and then sending me a notice a couple days before which doesn't get opened as I only open mail about once a week.  But since I don't pay attention to life's tedious details, I can't prove it.  Nothing else gets shut off.  I don't lose my phone or cable or electricity.  I have the money to pay.  But the gas. . . it's another matter.  Getting up this morning and having no hot water and no way to cook really bummed me out to a disproportionate degree.  What is wrong with me?  I need a handler.

Again, I am not whining (right?).  I guess I've opined a bit, then wondered.  I'm inching closer, I guess.  But this was on top of everything else.  I'm just tired, kids, and worn out with worrying and chores and deadlines.  And coming home to the cat.  And something else, too.  It is as if all lines of communications have been chopped.  I know the phone works and the email accounts, too.  I get the random advertisements.  But I can't get a callback or a response to my emails.  And I wonder--what did I do?

I'm sure it was nothing more than being myself.  It can get me into hot water.  More and more as times change and people become more stridently. . . just strident, I guess.

I showed an image I liked a lot to one of the successful artist's in my compound last night, one that I was thinking of making into a series.  I asked him if he liked it and he was strangely silent.

"Too gimicky?" I offered to get him off the hook.

"Yea, a bit."  He went on.

I really liked the image.  Maybe I shouldn't listen to him.  I wanted to offer up some criticism of his own work, but he hadn't asked me just then.  That's when I knew I was really conflicted what with wanting to strike back.

There are about a thousand other things, too, but they are just a big, inarticulate mass at present, things I am sublimating because I have enough to deal with just now.  But I can feel them in my nerves which are jumpy and twitchy.

So the gas is just the icing.  I'm not whining, though.  I 'm just saying.

An Evening's Celebration

Unusual night.  Broke with routine.  Barely, but it's a start.  No gym.  Rather dinner and then a cigar and whiskey on the deck.  Sounds unremarkable unless you know what I have been doing for. . . the longest time.  I quit living actively somewhere down the line.  That is, I quit thinking, feeling.  But that is what I did tonight, and some old things came back to me.  I've been reading, too.  All unremarkable, as I say, but that I have been in some sort of suspended animation.  You've been there.  No need to explain.  The numbness and waiting. . . .  But I am ready now, I think, to break with all of that.  I am ready to go out into the world again.  That is what I think tonight, at least.  Not as a sterile, isolated observer, but as an active participant.  Perhaps it is only the nicotine talking.  I found a Romeo y Juliet that someone gave me long ago still in it's metal case.  It had not dried out so much.  And so I thought to smoke some of it.  Only a bit.  But I sat out in the dark of night outside with a big whiskey to clear my palette--yes, a palette cleanser.  And then the big cigar was smoked down to the end and I felt woozy as if I'd been smoking pot for the first time, head swaying, body pulsing.  Funny, eh?  But I made plans and schemes.  Now it is only a matter of following up.

I have lived too long in this semi-trance.  Things must change.

Those of you still here have been around for the worst of times when living was only in the head, and a dead head at that.  I am a smart fellow and have been able to continue to draw on a rich reservoir, but it has been just that.  Time for the next act.

Holy shit, a big cigar is a wicked thing.  The boat is rocking as I write.  I may puke before this is over.  How terrible.

But you shall see.  I will get out of the house.  I will take some chances.  I will find some new material.

*     *     *     *     *

Written last night in exuberance.  This morning feels too much, though, like the same old thing.  The thing is, I got some good news yesterday, or at least I didn't get the bad news, which sometimes produces the same feelings.  I am O.K. for now at the factory job.  My economic life will continue for awhile uncompromised.  I wanted to celebrate, but I had nobody with whom to celebrate.  So I called my mother, came home to the cat, made my evening meal, read a bit, then decided on the cigar.  The thoughts and feelings of the past evening are still legitimate.  It is the resolve that is in question.  One can get comfortable with even the dullest of routines.  

A Good Artist Should Be Isolated

I spent the darkness of morning writing the next part of "Divorce Blues," then decided to table it for today. Then I wrote about writing it and not being sure if I should show it and then an explanation/apology for what I wasn't posting.  And that was worse than just publishing what I had written earlier.  There is no way to defend yourself against yourself while blaming it on what you think others might say without sounding. . . what?  Paranoid and guilty.

So after writing for an hour, I have nothing to show.  And I don't want to go on about End Times.  I've already raised global awareness there.  My prodding has caused the New York Times to take notice.  They have begun to report more responsibly.

Best this morning just to keep quiet, I think.  But it is not due to lazy idleness.  No, no, I've worked, just not productively. I'm at a loss for ideas on many fronts.

I need to leave my zip code and see if that helps.

I have a generous friend who leaves books on my doorstep.  Last night I came home to one that had been dropped through the mail slot.  There was a Post It note attached to one of the pages and a drawn arrow pointing to an Orson Welles quote.

"A good artist should be isolated.  If he isn't isolated, something is wrong."

Things limped along.  Or I did.  The toe was healing.  Slowly.   My wife came and went in the house when I was gone working, getting things.  The dog and the cat were upset by the disruption.  I was O.K. at work and morose at night.  But something miraculous came my way--a brand new jet black clamshell Apple laptop computer with gold keys.  And it was there that I began my new journal called "Divorce Blues."  I had written journals off and on for years, but I had never typed one, and the speed with which I could lay down "the word" on the computer was something.  I loved the feel of the keys, the ease with which I could make my mark.  And so the morning routine began.  Coffee and the laptop.  The writing, of course, focussed on the consequences of my wife's leaving, so there was always something to say.  What surprised me, though, was the wholeness of each day's writing.  I didn't try to make narratives, but most often there were beginnings, middles and ends to the entry.  They varied in length, but each day they seemed to grow longer until they were a thousand, two thousand words in length.  Most days.

And the more I wrote, the more things happened.  As a narrative, my life was going fast.

Officials and Leaders and Brain Drivel

I've been working for way too long trying to format what follows.  Blogger doesn't make that easy.  They make a lot of things easy, but not that.  And now I find, after all, I don't really care to make this my entry.  But what?  Perhaps some phrase I heard come out of a beautiful mouth as I walked yesterday (or was it the day before?), the mouth of a beautiful girl driving a beautiful car on the brick streets of a beautiful neighborhood?

"I absolutely love that house."

Windows down, music blasting, she sort of had to yell this so that I could not help but turn to the disruption.  "Absolutely love."  The italics signify the inflection that you all know so well because it is the only way that phrase is delivered.  It makes little sense but it is as common as Kleenex.  Absolutely beautiful.

What is the antonym for "absolute"?  I can't think of it just now.  Limited?  I love that house within limits?

My mind is drivel.  Here.  Take this.

New York Times

Radation Over U.S. Is Harmless, Officials Say

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

Published: March 21, 2011

Harmless traces of radiation from the stricken nuclear complex inJapan have been detected wafting over the East Coast of the United States, European officials said Monday. . . .

Health experts said that the plume’s radiation had been diluted enormously in its journey of thousands of miles and that — at least for now, with concentrations so low — its presence will have no health consequences in the United States. . . . 

The organization’s (U.N. Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization) mandate is to monitor the global ban on the testing of nuclear arms, and it has more than 60 stations that sniff the air for radiation spikes.

The group has declined to make the recent findings public. . . .

*     *     *     *     *

And then, there's this.  

O.K.  I’ve lost my mind.  But there is nothing I dislike more than “Officials” except “Leaders.”  If you trust officials and follow leaders, you are likely not reading this blog anyway unless you are a monitor. 

They’ve also told us that radiation has been found in the seas surrounding Japan, but this is of no concern, either.  

But I need to quit this.  I am not a conspiracy theorist and don’t believe the government is hiding alien corpses from us at Wright’s Air Force Base.  I don’t believe in anything.  Certainly not Officials.  And never Leaders.  

Officials and Leaders

New York Times

Radation Over U.S. Is Harmless, Officials Say

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

Published: March 21, 2011

Harmless traces of radiation from the stricken nuclear complex inJapan have been detected wafting over the East Coast of the United States, European officials said Monday. . . .

Health experts said that the plume’s radiation had been diluted enormously in its journey of thousands of miles and that — at least for now, with concentrations so low — its presence will have no health consequences in the United States. . . . 

The organization’s (U.N. Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization) mandate is to monitor the global ban on the testing of nuclear arms, and it has more than 60 stations that sniff the air for radiation spikes.

The group has declined to make the recent findings public. . . .

*     *     *     *     *

And then, there's this.  

O.K.  I’ve lost my mind.  But there is nothing I dislike more than “Officials” except “Leaders.”  If you trust officials and follow leaders, you are likely not reading this blog anyway unless you are a monitor. 

They’ve also told us that radiation has been found in the seas surrounding Japan, but this is of no concern, either.  

But I need to quit this.  I am not a conspiracy theorist and don’t believe the government is hiding alien corpses from us at Wright’s Air Force Base.  I don’t believe in anything.  Certainly not Officials.  And never Leaders.  

Pain and Opportunity

Part of my trouble in life is that I am very empathetic.  I don't think successful people are.  Depends on your definition of success, of course, but I am not talking about the NPR definition.  I am talking about the aggressive capitalistic kind of success.  Even in art.  There is a ruthlessness about success that doesn't let you sit and weep over the misfortunes of others.  You might express it, capitalize upon it, but you don't spend time feeling their pain.  Not Picasso.  Not Warhol.  Not even Bobby Dylan.  That is what I think.

I, on the other hand, tend to feel other people's pain accutely.  Both the fortunate and unfortunate alike.  I have felt terrible for the wealthiest people I have known, have felt their struggles and their losses and made those (not their successes) my own.  And losers?  Forget about it.  I am all about losers.  Every fucking character flaw I can make my own.  Success, I am realizing, has been anathema to me.

I must stop looking at stories and videos from Japan.  Officials lie.  Who doesn't believe that?  The food, the water, the air are becoming radioactive.  Scientist will wait a few years before they begin to tell us what happens to all the radioactive elements that are blown and washed to sea.  Right now it isn't as important.  We are now willing to accept larger levels of radioactive material in our food and water and air than we were before.  What else can we do?  Science changes.  Those previous levels--those were just overcautious.  We've accepted all the deaths that burning fossil fuels cause as "natural."  Radioactive deformities, sicknesses, and deaths will become naturalized, too.  The news will be delivered in calmer tones without shame or outrage.  It will be a matter of fact.

I am burning with radioactivity.  I am sick with it.  I am full of blisters and boils and degenerating organs.  How can you not be?  Who allowed this?  Would you have?  If so, I suggest, you are capable of success.

I have violently conflated two things, I know.  Illogically.  But this is a blog, not an academic press.  It is an ego, an id, a blasphemy, an underbelly of a dream.

Sick all weekend, through, St. Patrick's Day and its celebrations and festivities, through the brilliant weekend of jazz and parties and art festivals, through the enormous full moon and the coming of spring.  I felt lousy.  I slept.  Alone.

Now with the sun, I will return to the factory, to Maggie's Farm, to toil and labor away what I try to call my life.  I have been without celebration, without festival, fair, or jamboree.  I will wonder if people are going to bars and cafes and amusement parks in Japan.  I will wonder if anyone dares to laugh.  I'll wonder if someone whispers a joke.

Somewhere, though, someone will be thinking, seeing advantages, changing definitions, making new standards, inventing new games.  Certainly they will see pain, for there lies opportunity.  

The birds have died in Japan.  I read that.  A cardinal lights upon a post outside my window as I write.  We look at one another for a moment.  Then he is gone.

Seekers

Art festivals, Jazz in the Park, March Madness, full moon. . . and a stomach virus.  I tried.  I went out early yesterday to look at the art. . . the crowd.  The sky was a perfect robin's egg blue.  Flawless.  Everything was right. . . but me.  After my walk, I went home and to bed for the rest of the day.  Got up in the late afternoon/early evening and went to the lake to watch the moon rise in a perfectly clear sky.  It was rather unremarkable, I think.  No, that is not true.  Everything was right.  Perfect, really.

It is me.  Even the cat's love is irritating right now.

Ah, me, let's think of other things.

One night checking out at Whole Foods, the young cashier rang up my sorghum beer and asked me if I had ever been to a certain Irish pub in town.

"Sure," I said.

He had just turned twenty-one and had gone and began telling me about how great it was anyway.  We communed, us adults.  I was envious.  Flattered that he would ask me, though, and that he wanted to share his tale.  Nice kid.  Made me remember all those first nights going out when I barely drank, when all the world was new and made you mad to live, to see it all before it disappeared knowing that things disappear and have disappeared having heard it over and over that you should have seen this ten years ago wishing you had, trying, trying.  There is a world like that still, the one on the horizon and just beyond, both forward and backward, yearning to go both ways, to bring one to the next knowing that you are one of the few, the lucky few when you are there that day, that night, just then when everything comes together just once for you to see.  Seekers.  For them there is plenty and never enough.  Go. . . go. . . go. . . before it is gone.

Without Relief

Seems I'm still too sick to write about anything other than how I feel.  I've tried several times sitting here in the black darkness while other people experience REM.  I can't make it artful, and I don't want to whine.  What I want is a big opium ball to eat or to smoke so that I can go to sleep and not feel the painful spasms in my gut.  I want to drift away in narcotic dreams.  Paregoric would do, I think, though even that is not offered any more.  The most common medicine in the world, the one used most often by more people than anything else, is opium.  It is a cure-all.  I have never had it, never seen it.  But I've had codeine and know that it is the best medicine for something like this.  One dose, a long, comfortable sleep, and--BOOM!--you are better.  Of course you are addicted for life and will seek out dope peddlers and will use dirty needles and kill grandmothers for their loose change and contract AIDS then prostitute yourself and spread the wicked disease to others.  So it is perhaps best that I spend days and nights suffering through this minor ailment without relief.  Doctors know best.  That is why they are rich.  

The Gripe

Demons plague me.  I have so much to do, so much to tell, but I am in the clenches of the grip.  Or is it the gripe?  I think it was the Whole Foods food bar where I bought my dinner last night.  I know better than to eat from those open sewers of food, but I have not had time to cook lately and the moniker seems to promise "health."  I am anything but healthy.  It hit me like a train in my sleep.  It may be a virus, though.  Something like this is going around, I think.  If not, it is now.

I must somehow prepare for the day.  It seems impossible, but I know I will.  It is all just misery and humor.

There is much going on in my little town this weekend.  The weather will be perfect.  And tomorrow night is the largest full moon ever.  I'm hoping this is only twenty-four hours of awfulness.  I want to be elegant and beautiful, too, like Cary Grant.

Just my luck.

Happy Places

Some Simple Pleasure

“U.S. nuclear facilities remain safe,” Mr. Jaczko told two House Energy and Commerce subcommittees, which had originally planned to consider his agency’s budget for the coming fiscal year at the hearing. “We will continue to work to maintain that level of protection.”

"Reactors are designed to meet the challenges of “the most severe natural phenomena historically reported,” he said. For earthquakes, that means any that occur within 200 miles of the reactor, and a margin of error, he said. . . .

"Some members of the committee seemed satisfied with Mr. Jaczko’s replies and turned to a variety of other energy questions. “I personally believe that nuclear energy must be part of any portfolio of renewable energy sources that will fuel this country moving forward,” said Representative Bobby L. Rush of Illinois, the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Energy and Power of the House Energy and Commerce Committee."  (source)

The good thing in Japan right now, I read this morning, is that the wind is blowing the radiation out to sea.  O.K.  Just for the moment, let's listen to the experts.

"But health and nuclear safety experts agree that even if radiation levels around the plant reach Chernobyl-like levels, Japan's disaster will not pose a health hazard to the United States.

The United States is thousands of miles from the leaks and once the radiation gets into the air, it disperses and dilutes as the wind blows it, said Nolan Hertel, nuclear engineering researcher at Georgia Institute of Technology. Radioactive particles travel with the wind and fall out onto the ground. The amount that will reach the United States will be too little to cause health problems.

"It’s not like there’s a big blob of it and it’s all going to stay together. All this stuff is either gaseous or highly diluted," Hertel said."  (source)

You think?  They are the experts, but I'll take wagers right now, with odds, that the food chain is going to have its way.  I'm thinking plankton to small fish to big fish to market.  I'm no expert and I'm probably not right and will have heavy debts to pay.  O.K.  I'm not really a gambling type, so the offer has expired.  No bets.  And I do not want to trivialize any of this at all.  The psychological damage from this event for those who are not physically devastated is catastrophic.  Where are people's "happy places" now?  The past?  Another galaxy?

It is difficult to think about this.  It is difficult not to think about it.

"We All Got It Coming"

Link

At a White House press briefing, NRC chairman Greg Jaczko did not directly answer a question on whether the nation's 104 existing nuclear reactors could withstand the magnitude of the quake that struck Japan.

"We have a strong safety program in place to deal with seismic events that are likely to happen at any nuclear facility in this country," Jaczko said. (source)

Colorado Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn, who unsuccessfully tried to strip federal funding for NPR last year, introduced the new stand alone bill Tuesday. It would bar any of NPR's affiliate radio stations across the country from using any federal funds to purchase any programming from NPR. (source)

Dripping with tiger blood and coursing with warlock power, fired "Two and a Half Men" star Charlie Sheen has announced five more stops on his tour, "My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat is Not An Option Show." 

The first two shows -- Chicago and Detroit -- sold out in minutes. (source)

I worked in the studio until one last night.  Didn't eat.  Drank whiskey.  I was already dead before it started.  Slept a few hours and now must go to the factory job.  First, a cup of coffee and the news.  And this is what I get.  

Everything is due.  This is what you get.  This is what we all get.  C.C. likes to reference "Unforgiven" when The Schofield Kid kills his first man.  

"He had it coming, didn't he?  He had it coming?" the Kid asks Bill Munny.  

"We all got it coming, kid," rejoinders Bill.    

Graflex RB

I just bought this on eBay.  I didn't really mean to.  I did, but I didn't expect to win the auction.  It will be shipped in the next few days.

I've gone a bit nuts on eBay.  I also just bought a Mamiya 645 80mm f1.9 lens and an adaptor to fit it to my Nikon.  I couldn't find a description for the condition of the lens and put in a lowball bid.  To my surprise, I won that, too.  Only then did I find the description at the bottom of the page under some advertising.  Said the lens was in below average condition.  Still, I got it for one quarter of the going price.  I've lost a number of auctions for this lens in the past months, so I know.

I also purchased some very expensive Polaroid 665 film--the stuff that gives a negative.  I got excited, but it is like buying heroin.

I also bought a new strobe flash to replace the one that just crapped out.  That was not on eBay but from KEH.  I recommend them, by the way, for used equipment.

Surely I've bought something else, too.

But back to the camera.  Now that I have my Aero Ektar lens mounted on the Speed Graphic, I know how hard it is to focus.  This camera, the Graflex RB, will allow me to see what I am focusing on when I put in the film.  I won't have to shoot blind.  If I can get the modifications made. $$$$

Now, though, I fear I'll never make a good photograph with either setup.  I need to stay off the internet.  Especially eBay.

There.  I've probably killed the blog by now.

More Experiments, the Weather, and D.B. Pt 7

Another Experiment

This is an attempt to use the Speed Graphic's focal plane shutter to shoot the strobes.  It works--kind of.  I have to set it to the "T" setting which opens the shutter for however long you leave it, then push the shutter button twice.  I imagine that the shutter is open for about 1/30 of a second, so even in the studio, there is a ghost image.  I can work that to my advantage on some images, but I don't think I'm going to be able to have the sharp flash image at my disposal.  Combine that with the short depth of field and focussing becomes a nightmare.

Bored yet?

Yesterday's weather here was perfect.  Everywhere you looked, people looked happy.  Most had their first sun of the year.  They had changed their wardrobes to new Spring fashion.  And I mean, man, EVERYBODY was sexy.  It was the light and the colors and the hint of things to come, sure, but the weather changes everything--how you walk and talk.  But it was more than that.  Hormones were in the air.  My receptors are specialized.  I could smell estrogen.  Pheromones were flying.  I'm certain one day there will be a study about what happens when the weather changes.  Our bodies are screaming for mates.  And as some studies already show, women's voices get higher and men perceive them to be more sexually attractive.  And that was going on yesterday.  People just don't get better looking over night.  Even I felt attractive.  I was full of hope.

I think I should just follow the weather.

*     *     *     *     *

Mavis stopped by one night.  The dog started going nuts as soon as her truck pulled into the driveway.  Wiley was a stray that followed me home one night when I was running at dusk.  She appeared like a ghost and stayed with me for the last quarter mile of my loop through the neighborhood.  I hadn't asked her to come.  But she was all  starving bones and popping eyeballs, so I mixed up some eggs and milk to feed her when we got back to the house.  And, of course, she never left.  She was a German Shepherd/ Husky mix, and we'd been together now for fifteen years. she was a very loyal companion, but she had never lost her street sense.  If anyone was a little "off," she would sense it and would go crazy, too.  She was a good predictor and I trusted her sense on this.  But Mavis was a veterinarian, and I was certain it was the animal smells she was responding to.  

Mavis, of course, didn't mind the dog.  She was used to them.  "Come here, sugar, what's the matter," she crooned, but the dog curled up like a spring.  "She just smells the other animals," Mavis said.  "She'll be alright."  

I felt a bit like the dog, myself, though.  It had been many, many years since I had entertained a woman, and in truth, I'd not done it much before that.  And Mavis was a bit odd.  She was built like a teenage boy and talked in a half scream.  She had smoked her whole life, she told me, but she had quit this year.  She had gone to Guatemala and stayed in the mountains for a month where she couldn't get cigarettes.  Her voice, however, would always have that smoker's rasp.  

Was I smelling the animals on her, too, I wondered?  There she stood in black leotards and cowboy boots and a big old sweater.   

"You want a beer?" she asked me.  "I have some in the truck."  

"No," I said, "I think it's time for a whiskey.  You want one?"  

Something Good This Way Will Come. . .

Field Test Only: Not for Publication

"It’s been said . . . that Montaigne was the first blogger. His favorite subject, as he often remarked, was himself (“I would rather be an expert on me than on Cicero”), and he meant to leave nothing out (“I am loath even to have thoughts which I cannot publish”). Some of his critics accused him of, in effect, oversharing, in the manner of a narcissistic Facebook status update. One was appalled that he should think it worthwhile to tell his readers which sort of wine he preferred. Montaigne also happened to mention that his penis was small. Two 17th-century theologians who were instrumental in getting his “Essais” placed on the Vatican’s index of prohibited books, where it stayed from 1676 to 1854, accused him of “a ridiculous vanity” and of showing too little shame for his vices" (New York Times Sunday Book Review).

Can't help but quote this here.  For too much of my life, I've had to follow Bacon's examples when all I've really wanted to do was follow Montaigne's.

Here's the photo I mentioned yesterday, the first I've done using the one-shot developer/fixer.  I just stuck the film into a round 120 film developing tank and let it flop.  I couldn't keep it from touching the sides of the tank, so there is that.  And the streaky line of weird development at the bottom could be from a number of things.  I don't think the tank was 100% light tight (I forgot to put one of the rods in that makes it so) and I'm not sure if the developing tank was full.  I will try another today with the rod in and see if that fixes it.  But I was merely doing a test to see if the chemistry really works.  It does.  This is another one of the fellows from the complex where my studio is.  They have been great about standing in front of the camera.

I'm getting closer to starting a project with this setup.  Some of you will be glad I'm leaving the girl show behind.  Some of you won't.  Since I have only test photos to show (with all the mistakes) right now, I'll alternate as much as I can and try to keep some of both audiences, though I know moderation is a bad thing and trying to make everyone happy makes no one happy.  But since it has been difficult to make even myself happy of late. . . what the hell.  Something good will come this way again (I seem to remember this phrase from somewhere--I hope it is not somewhere embarrassingly awful).

Earthquake Disaster and "D.B.: Pt 6"

Japan.  Holy Mother of Buddha.  The entire planet shifted.  Metaphorical. . . literal.  The photographs coming out of there look like something made up in a Godzilla movie.  Who am I telling?  I just had to say something about it before I begin my silliness.  Of course the irony of Japan nuking itself isn't lost on anyone, either.  Kind of upstaged the release of the new iPad 2.

Exciting news on the Aero Ektar front.  I developed a 4x5 negative in the crazy one shot developer/fixer that the people over at New55Project are promoting.  And it works.  This is big for me.  I'll be able to see the images I shoot with my whacked out setup in ten minutes.  Kudos to those fellows over there.  

Meanwhile, I've been working with my digital images trying to find a new "look."  That is my project right now.  Nothing else.  Just trying to work out a presentation style for what I do.  I'm kind of crazy about the image here.  I hope I can reproduce it.  I work on an image like this for hours and come up with something I like, then I forget half of what I did.  Fingers crossed.  

*     *     *     *     *

She came up while I was talking to a fellow I knew, and I could feel her standing and looking at me.  It was the blonde all the fellows had been drooling over since she walked in.  "Who's that," they asked elbowing one another and nodding in her direction.  Brando had come up with something else to keep the boys interested.  

I looked up at her and smiled.  

"Hello.  My name is Mavis.  Brando said I should come over and meet you.  He says your a mountain climber."  

I looked at her for a few beats thinking of what to say.  

"I'm no mountain climber, but I've been mountain climbing," I said.  

"Looks like you're going to be laid up for awhile," she said nodding to my toe.  

"Yup.  A bit.  You climb?"  

"I'm just starting.  I took the course out at Rainier.  I want to climb Aconcagua.  Have you climbed it?"

Shit. 

"No," I said looking down and shaking my head, disappointed.  "My buddies have all gone down and done it, but they always go when I can't.  I've wanted to."  

"What have you climbed?" she asked.

I went through my thin list of peaks and faces that didn't qualify me as a mountain climber in a crowd with any experience at all.  It all sounded good among novices, though, and usually I could make it sound damned heroic.  But tonight.  I knew I would embarrass myself.  Mavis was in shape.  She looked six feet tall, though she wasn't.  She was just long and lean and taught like a guide wire.  In pieces and parts, she wasn't pretty, but the overall combination was synergistically pleasing.  She stood out, anyway, in this crowd.  

"You want some more wine?" she asked.  

I did.  

When she came back, I made room for her to sit down in the window seat.  

"You O.K.?"  

"Yea, I'm fine."

"What'd you do to your toe."  

I gave her the brief version.  She said something about a hematoma and phagocytes and fibroblasts and a collagen matrix.  

"You a doctor?"  

"Yes.  I'm a veterinarian.  What do you do?"  

"I'm a school marm," I said.  

"Really?"  

"Yea, sort of.  I'm a professor almost," I laughed.  

"What does that mean?"  

"I'll tell you sometime.  Look at this.  Goddamnit, somebody drank my wine."

"Yes, somebody did.  Let me see if I can get two more."  

When she got up, one of the fellows I knew looked over at me with a grin.  I grinned back and shrugged.  

"Who knows?," I said shaking my head.  "Who the fuck knows?"