Halloween Time

This is an old image, one of the first that led to the "Lonesomeville" series.  I  had not worked this one up after scanning it.  Yesterday I processed it with all the new knowledge I've acquired since those early days of working with the Polaroid.  It is crisper and cleaner.  Lulu.  What a lovely person.

Today I bought my own laser printer so that I can transfer images at will rather than planning it all out and then going out to print.  Nope.  $350 and I have independence.  Independence.  It is quite a thing.

I have made plans with the fellow who works in the studio behind mine--the real working artist--to go to Miami for a visit to the new gallery district.  I will watch how he works.  And maybe. . . .  So much silliness.

So tonight I made my first homegrown laser print and transferred it into a notebook.  I wrote around the margins.  I hope to make a page a day of transfers, images cut and pasted, pieces of paper and color and doodlings.  Just one a night.  That's too much.  It is plenty.  I will try not to be careful, try to learn from the awful mistakes.  Time is flying.  Time is flying.  Time is flying.

And this morning is Halloween.  So this image has no mask.  Such a thing.

I've not paid attention.  I've been fooled or fooled myself.  I thought the clocks went back the last Sunday in October.  I've been living on Eastern Standard Time all morning only to find I am not.  They should leave time alone.  Fucking with it just can't be good for people.

Holiday Arrival

Walking into the grocery store, I saw a big steak prominently displayed at the entrance, not at all near the meat counter.  The marketing worked.  I bought it.  I would cook it that night, I thought, as the weather cooled and cleared.  I would have a big steak on the grill and a good salad with avocado, and I would cook rice and broccoli.

But the afternoon grew late and I had some errands to run.  There had been a beauty and a sadness to the day and I felt a growing fatalism that had taken root earlier as I walked around the neighborhood near my studio.  New businesses had opened up since I'd last been there.  How long?  It seemed everything had transformed.  A new Italian restaurant with a big bar and veranda painted all in a creamy white had opened next to the tapas bar that had somehow expanded, too, adding a large canopy and sidewalk tables.  Next to that was a music store selling violins, violas, and cellos.  I could see a teenaged girl dressed black through the big plate window as she stood in front of a small group playing from a sheet of music on the stand before her.  Next came a new fashion store for women into which I wanted to wander, but without a companion I would not be allowed to sit and watch the show as women tried on the expensive clothing and accoutrements.

Across the street and down a short alley, I saw a cleverly designed sign, clean and bold and confusing in name.  I wandered down and looked in.  There was not much to see but for some women's undergarments and yoga clothing.  Then I noticed the big open studio in back empty but full of natural light.  Next door to that, a big window let on to a tall, tobacco colored space with bolts of leather and work tables holding big sewing machines and hole punches and twine.  Leather bags were displayed upon the wall above which were shelves holding huge boxes like something from a 1920's movie set.  On the corner of the alleyway, another store was being readied, a new sign in gold on the window announcing men and women's fine clothing, the store empty yet but for dark wood closets and shelves.  Back on the main street, a frame shop had moved in next to which a new bicycle store had opened selling costly bikes from around the globe.

And on, and on.

And my excitement grew dull.  This all required someone to share it with, someone with whom you had the same aesthetics and enthusiasms in common.

Kaboom! 

Now, running my errands in the beautifully fading afternoon light, I no longer wanted to grill a steak for myself alone.  It was too much.  And so. . . I opted for sushi.

And there nothing was very right.  They had decided I was not correct about the music, I guess, for cheesy melodies for teenagers in their thirties dripped from ubiquitous speakers in the ceiling.  The waitress asked me if I was having "the usual" to which I nodded.

"You need change," she said.  "We have many other kind of food."

"I eat different things when I am not here," I told her.

"You need try something else."

When the food arrived, it seemed not to sit on the plate properly.  I began to worry.  It would grow dark early.  There would be a long, inevitable night ahead.

Wash.  Spin.  Repeat.

Dinner finished, I sat with the last of the sake and an open notebook, a large, leather portfolio that I bought many, many years ago, jotting down notes, scenes, phrases. . . .  A fellow I know from town who remembers me from when I still went about town stopped to say hello.  He is a stolid family man with an enviable wife and two beautiful daughters and a well appointed house that announces who they are.  He asked me about work and I him, and after a few moments he went in to pick up his order to go.

Things seem to have gone wrong somewhere, I thought, and I don't know what it was though I could more than guess at when.  The terror, of course, was that I hadn't any hope of going back and fixing any of it.

When I pulled onto my street, I saw cars surrounding my neighbors house.  He and his girlfriend were having another of their lovely parties on a beautifully numinous night.  I pulled into my driveway and stood a moment by the car listening to something in the distance.  The big oaks were just becoming silhouettes.  I could see my cat staring out from the bottom pane of glass at the kitchen door.  I thought of everyone for a moment, of everything.  Then it was gone.

The holidays were here.

It rains and I slept late.  I wake today, though, feeling some shift in "things."  It is psychological, but I am not alone in feeling it.  It was like a contagion yesterday at the factory.  Something has ended, something begun.  The cold and flu season, sure.  Here in my own hometown the latest version begins with a severely sore throat that works its way into the chest.  Five days.  But there was a general joy yesterday, and I feel it, too.

To wake to rain.  And a new World Series Champion in a series that was historic (so they tell me).  And seven billion people (and more coming to your town soon, too).  Trick or Treaters are putting together costumes with anticipation of booty.  I have no costume, but maybe I have anticipations, too.

This morning, I discovered a cup in the guest bathroom that has probably been there for years.  It is a plastic Disney mug with a cartoon picture of Mickey and Goofy surfing into a beach where Minnie lay upon a blanket.  I tried to remember what Mickey Mouse cartoons were about.  I couldn't.  So I went to YouTube to watch one.  I chose one from 1936.  Lo and behold, it was about the 99%.  Sanitized to the point of no meaning.  Here it is if you wish to watch it.  You probably don't.  I don't blame you.



It is late and the day slips past me.  I must get out and see if there truly has been a change.

Can You Eat It?

We act as different people at different times.  These personalities are all parts of the whole, but they are disparate and we love, sometimes, to show only one or a few parts to an audience.  That is why we get into trouble with love.  My friend at the factory who fell for a girl much his junior. . . well, things went bad too soon.  He feels foolish, he says.  Why, I ask?  It is only normal.  She just showed you a part of the whole to which you'd not had access to before while you were acting out a part of you that had almost been forgotten.  But it is an old story.  Read Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale."

That is not right or fair.  That is a different thing.

But I will show you a part of me that I've been hiding.  And after this, it will go back into hiding, too.  These are things about which I could not stop laughing yesterday.  I will tell you a joke.

A hillbilly moves into a holler, and soon his neighbor comes to pay him a visit.

"Hello neighbor," says the first hillbilly.  "I'd like to throw you a party to welcome you to the holler."

"Say now," says the second hillbilly, "that'd be fine."

"You don't mind drinking, do you?" asks the first hillbilly.

"No, no, not at all.  I like to drink myself."

"How 'bout dancing?"

"No, I like dancing, too."

"Well, I should warn you. . . there's liable to be some wild sex."

The second hillbilly looks a little startled but says, "Hey--that's alright."

"Well," says the first hillbilly, "there's probably going to be some fighting, too."

The second hillbilly says, "I don't mind that, neither."

The first hillbilly grins and says, "Okey dokey, then, come on over Saturday night."

"What should I wear?" asks the second hillbilly.

"Oh. . . it don't matter.  It's just going to be you and me."

If you are new to the blog and haven't read much. . . it's my "heritage."  I tell C.C. that we need to put on a Heritage Jubilee at the factory.

And this has just become my favorite joke.  If you don't like this. . . .

(link)

Solipsistically Yours

Eugene Francois Marie Joseph Deveria, Portrait of Charles Theodule Deveria, 1864

I am woefully self-centered, I think.  I don't keep an address book as I don't send letters.  Every time I want to mail anything to anyone, I have to call or send them an email and ask for a mailing address.  And I don't keep a book of birthdays.  I have friends, and they have birthdays, but I never know.  I can't remember the birthday of a single old girlfriend.  I know my father's and mother's by heart, but only those.   No other relatives.

I think that it might be because I've always hated my own.  Birthday are awkward horrible days that bring unwanted attention, yet if it doesn't come. . . pills and alcohol barely succor the misery and loneliness.  I am told that a woman's birthday is more important to her than is Christmas.  I am told this by a friend in his seventies, so you will have to take that into account.

But I know my friend Q is like that.  He is a social devil if there ever was one.  He is part of Generation X, that woefully happy social party group who could not live up to their hype (see today's article), a group to whom "Generation" means everything, a generation of conformist.  That's my friend Q.

O.K.  I'm kidding him.  Needling him, anyway, to take away my guilt and shame for having missed his recent birthday.  I think it was Tuesday.  I had to go on my faux-Facebook account to correspond with the fellow (not) making my Frankencamera, and you know how it works.  There was a posting by Q that told everyone it was his birthday.  Subsequently, he got about a thousand "Happy Birthday" wishes in various clever forms.  I was going to link his Facebook page here so you could see for yourselves, but I don't know if he would be glad or mad.  Seems to me the idea is to collect as many "friends" as possible, but I will have to leave this to the experts.  Anyway, maybe you can go over to his blog and leave him a belated birthday wish.

Happy Belated Birthday, old man.  Your self-absorbed friend,

Discipline and Punish

Originally, I used the mask in my "Lonesomeville" project because many of Bellocq's sitters wore them, always a cheap, simple black mask of the type used in carnival celebrations like Mardi Gras.  I assumed that it was to hide the identity of the sitter.  As the project continued, however, I found that the donning of the mask was a somewhat transformational act.  The mask did not really convey much anonymity, but something in the sitter's attitude and bearing was changed.

Masks have been used historically for many purposes.  Often the donning of the mask was meant to create a bond with spirits or a spiritual longing or to imbue the wearer with some supernatural power.  In other situations, the mask was thought to protect the wearer from spirits and magic.  It was often used as an aid to entering a sacred time, time without past, present, or future, both ritualistic and replicable.

For my purposes, the contribution of the wearer in losing her identity and assuming a new was crucial to "the drama of the mask."  The psychic changes and psychological release was a critical subtext of this project.

Ho!  I'm just thinking out loud.  That is the kind of bullshit I hear some photographers spout to make their works seem more profound.  It is bunk.  Sort of.  I mean it is there, but I hate the pretentiousness of such talk.  It evinces weakness and uncertainty.

However, it is early morning and I could think of nothing creative to say, and looking at this image I began to think about "the meaning of the mask" and I began to construct a sort of defense against which my detractors might have a difficult or worrisome time prevailing.

In truth, though, that mask is something.

"What About Friday Night?"

Fasting can teach you things.  Good things?  Who knows.  Good is subjective.  It is up to you.  And, like sex, I suppose it depends on how often you do it--and when.  Yesterday's experience was terrible, really.  I cam to realize how many addictions I have developed in the past years.  Distractions, I suppose.  What I kept thinking over and over was that existence is like an empty room you sit in alone.  Try it.  Sit in an empty room for twenty-four hours with only a gallon of water and see what comes from it.  Most people will never do such a thing unless forced or coerced. They'd rather do just about anything else.  But it occurred to me in the agonizing throes (these began as soon as I got up and knew I was going to fast that day) of a psychologically driven hunger that our lives in that room needed distraction from existence.  If that room were your life, I asked myself, what would you put in it?  That is what I kept asking myself as I sipped cup after cup of chamomile tea.  How would you decorate your life?  And I would look around the rooms of my life and say, "This isn't it.  This is not how I want to decorate my room."

It is the old "desert island" question, I know.  What books would you take?  If you could take only five songs or three paintings, etc.  But it was more than that about which I was thinking.

Having eaten now, sitting with a cup of coffee, no skinnier than I was when I got up yesterday morning, no problems solved, I feel no real resolve, no steel will, nothing.  I'm just overwhelmed by the mess I've collected in that imaginary room.

But Q emailed me an article from Slate last night.  This morning I roamed around the site which will surely replace The Huffington Post in my morning ritual.  In roaming, I found a guide to Woody Allen.  This will not interest the majority of you and may be an actual anathema.  For me, however, it was what I needed--a bromide to yesterday's bleakness.

I have a friend who had formed a living, if joking, philosophy of life according to "The Andy Griffith Show."  Just about any question you could come up with, any dilemma, he could answer with a quote from the show.  Believe me, it was a brilliant piece of work and most often as profound as anything I've ever heard come from the pulpit.

My choice would be darker, of course.  I would work out a World According to Woody.  I'm not saying I'm proud of that.  I'm just saying. . . .

It is officially one year now since I've had "a date."  Don't say anything.  I'm saving myself.  I could have dated, but I've not been smitten.  Whatever.  A discussion for another time.  But when I have dated, it has been like something out of a Woody Allen movie.  On a budget.  In the south.  We live through imagination and memory, or so I think.  So when I read this, I forgot about yesterday and began thinking of the future:

When an Allen character is in a particularly morose state of mind, he may feel moved to announce that life is meaningless. I call these "void moments," because the declarations often contain the word void. Despite the bleak moniker, the void moment doesn't always have the same function. Play It Again, Sam (1972), for instance, has a particularly lighthearted one. 

In this little-seen comedy, the recently divorced Allan Felix (Woody Allen) tries to get the hang of dating. Trouble is, he's romantically self-destructive: Felix (I'll use his surname to avoid confusion) says he's attracted to "emotionally disturbed women," and that's not an exaggeration. The depth of his perverse inclination becomes clear when he approaches a woman looking at a Jackson Pollock drip-painting, and asks what it means to her. She answers: "It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous, lonely, emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of man forced to live in a barren, godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror, and degradation forming a useless bleak straightjacket in a black absurd cosmos." She's just the kind of woman Felix has been looking for, and he asks her what's she's doing Saturday night. "Committing suicide," she responds. Unfazed, he counters: "What about Friday night?" (source)

Oy.  However,we all need role models.

I'll be thinking about what I would put in my room today, or rather, what I want to take out which is just about everything.  I see a large room with white walls and wooden floors and plenty of sunlight.  I don't want to put much in there.  I want it to remain open and airy.  I must empty my rooms first though.  And that could take some time.

Meanwhile. . . I'll keep an eye out for my own true love.

Fast

The cat has taken to lying on my shoulder bag next to me and moaning while I am at the computer.  It is low and irritating.

Today I will try to muster up the psychological wherewithal to maintain a fast.  I prepared last night by having only two scotches.  I was not going to drink at all, but I ate a salad that I thought might be bad and was in need of alcohol to kill any potential germs.  Today will be miserable.  No--tonight will be.  I must make my body begin to cannibalize itself.  It is a strange thought.  Let it feed upon itself today as my mind will on its own psyche.  Once many years ago in college, I fasted for three days.  When the toxins began to release from old fat cells, I experienced quite a time and space distortion. This will be nothing like that, only a whining misery.

That is what the cat is doing, not moaning but whining.  She needs to quit that.

Absolved

I've been watching two bad television shows the past month because they are beautiful to see.  One is "Pan Am," that horrible show about the travails of a group of stewardesses flying around the globe in the 1960's.  It is truly awful, but I record it on Sunday nights and watch it on Monday late, in the dark, with nobody around.  But wait.  It gets worse.  Someone told me about another show, "The Playboy Club," which was better.  So I watched it, and marginally, they were right.  It was the difference between Nestles milk chocolate and Nestles dark chocolate.  Both were visually stimulating and both were written by thirteen year olds for less sophisticated viewers.  But that is the standard for network programming at its highest level.

So I was shocked when I read that "The Playboy Club" had been cancelled after only three shows.  "It was doomed from the start," reads every report on the internet.  The PTA was against it, I think.  Sexist.  Racy.  Just plain bad for people.

So, of course, I couldn't be more for it.  In truth, it was a lousy revisionist text, as is "Pan Am," that pretended to disapprove of the thing it was exploiting.  It would have been a better show on cable, of course.  But it had higher production standards than most network shows.

O.K.  I'm just pissed because I won't be able to sit alone in the dark and watch something I wished were better.  But Jesus Christ--"Dancing with the Stars"?  Really?

It is Sunday.  Now I have confessed to many sins.  Some of you believe in absolution.  That is a formal release from guilt and punishment.  I'm counting on it.

Overtime

Holy smokes.  A long, hard day at the factory, unusually so, ended with a shoot in the studio last night.  I hadn't anything but candy to eat all day.  We opened a bottle of wine and she began showing me that suitcases full of clothing she had brought.  Not just clothing: shoes, vintage jewelry, hair accessories, makeup. . . . I was overwhelmed.  A real professional she was.

"We won't need all that," I said.  But first the showing and then the readying took a long time.  Long enough for me to almost finish the first bottle of wine before we even started making images.  Fortunately I had bought some mixed nuts.

A long shoot and then a long clean up.  It was almost too late to get anything for dinner.  I stopped at Chick-Fil-A.  Came home and heated up a can of Amy's organic beans and cracked a beer.  Answered emails, watched Bob or John or what's-his-name Mahr's HBO show buzzing and tired at once.  Some after dinner drinks, and bed.

I slept until eight.  I never sleep that late.  And I have to be back to the factory today at ten for overtime.  The day is gorgeous and I will miss it all.  I am not rested.  It was not a restful sleep but a misery sleep, for I have many things weighing on me now.  You've had that sleep that is not sleep, the sleep without rest, the sleep you keep waking from screaming.

Now I must go quickly.  I have not gotten to do much of my morning ritual but for coffee and some news.  But check out the New York Times online section on the art season.  There are some good things there.

But I must dash without wit or wisdom.  And so it goes.

Logic

I spent all morning going through old files trying to find something to put up that was not from this series. I found lots of good things.  It was depressing.  It is not possible to go back.  I am not ready for a retrospective.  All forward, I say.  Full steam ahead.

But now the morning is gone and there is no time to write.  C.C. and I have been riffing on two things to entertain ourselves at the factory:  Hunter S. Thompson and Groucho Marx.  They are both addictive because they are stylish or rather their appeal is based upon style.  Once you've cracked the code, they are as easy to parody as Hemingway or Faulkner or any other recognizable artist.  And so yesterday I posted a response on Q's blog in the comments section.  It includes a clip (two, actually) from "Cocoanuts."  It seems to me to be the mindset of the "job creators."  You know, I was an early supporter of Occupy Wall Street.  I am on the record about that.

"What made this country great?  I'll tell you what made this country great!  Education.  And what's wrong with education today?  Failing students, that's what!  And tell me, why are students failing?  That's right.  They are failing because of poor grades.  Now. . . who is responsible for giving students bad grades?  Teachers, of course!  Without teachers, there would be no failing students.  Abraham Lincoln didn't have a teacher and look what he accomplished.  And what about the genius who invented peanut butter, George Washington Carver?  He never went to school.  I tell you, we have to get this country back. . . ."  Etc.

Credit to C.C.

Flotsam

Small miracles.  My mother's insistence on getting the two year extended full max warrantee on my "new" car paid off today.  I took it in for its normal service.  The garage fellow said he heard a funny noise on acceleration.  He called and said a motor mount was broken and that they would replace it.  Since the car was under warrantee, it wouldn't cost me anything.  When I picked the car up at the end of the day, I saw that the job was almost $800.  Are they running a scam?  I would imagine that the factory has set prices.  And a small but somewhat irritating squeak under the hood is now gone.  I don't know, but I called my mother straight away.

I also had the ultimate detailing performed.  My car looks as it did coming off the showroom floor.  Look at me.

But all else prevails, and I am of a sullen mood.  There are many wrongs to right just now and I am becoming less and less vital.

I wait for my camera without word.  I am certain he has put me on the back burner.  I think he does not see me as an important player.  That is. . . not vital.  So I wait and loose interest.

My hair has gotten no better and I was self-conscious at work all day.  It is worse than "not better."  If I didn't look so hideous in hats, I would wear one.

Tonight, though, the weather turned cooler and drier.  The sunset was flamingo pink and purple.  I was enthused and took my first drink on the patio in my "pajamas" hoping for some infusion.

Then I made a mistake and ate noodles and a pizza.  I was too lazy to cook and these needed only heating up.  What was I thinking?

So I sit tonight with the doors open, the cool air and mosquitoes rushing into my house, drinking scotch on a very poofy belly.

Tomorrow morning I have a dental appointment.  And on Saturday I work overtime.

You know how it is.  I wait to be saved.

"'How Far Off?' I Sat and Wondered"

(Eric Fischl)

I hear thunder in the distance, but I sit beneath a roof with no rain.  I read.  I cook.  There is some satisfaction in that.  My hair has been cut.  I've been beautified.  I go to the liquor cabinet I and find there is little whiskey in the bottle.  I should leave it alone.  Later, I make a dash to the liquor store before it closes.  This does not bode well.

"Don't you have a doctor?"

"No.  I hate going to doctors."

"But you need a family practitioner.  You need someone who can prescribe you things."

"I need a doctor, probably, and I certainly need prescriptions, but I hate dealing with them."

I do hate them.  I should have all the codeine I want.  Xanax, too.  I hate someone being allowed to tell me what to do.  I am. . . what shall I say. . . rebellious?

The thunder gives way to rain.  It is a wet October.  People abandon me in droves now.  What have I done?  I believe in curses.

The haircut is not so good.  I hate sitting at the beauticians looking into the mirror at myself.  It is awful.  There is no reason for it.

I tell a story to the woman cutting my hair about a friend of mine, older than I, who recently fell for a women much his junior.  "There is no fool like an old fool," I told him before it all went wrong.  "I know," he said, ears full of clay.

"'April is the cruelest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/ Memory and desire, stirring/ Dull roots with spring rain.'  Remember that?" I ask him.  "Maybe it is better to be dead," I say.

"No, it is better to be alive," he tells me with a grin.

He hasn't much experience with this, I thought.  But it is fun to watch.

Sturm und Drang

I woke in the dark this morning to warm rain.  The day holds no promise.  I will walk in the gloomy dawn hoping. . . .  It is better, this sympathetic fallacy, than the other.

"The Sorrows of Young Werther."  Sturm und Drang.  I must quit this moaning like a child wanting attention. I am not young.  "The Sorrows of Old Werther."  The emotional difference is profound.  Old Werther should give them life only as abstractions.  Extreme beauty and overwhelming despair regarded from a protected distance.

I read yesterday that two Pulitzer Prize winning journalists are proposing that Vincent Van Gogh did not commit suicide but was murdered by a group of young rascals instead.  Changes everything.

a man on the verge

Jeffrey Gold

I've been thinking of putting this painting up with one of my photographs for a few days.  Then I change my mind.  I just noticed the similarity one day, though perhaps there is really no similarity at all.

My creative brain does not want to work.  I don't know if it is "any more" or if it is just "now."  Another, more animal part of my brain has taken over, or maybe something worse.  And brains are connected to every cell in the body, directly, not indirectly.  Every cell has memory and more.  So whatever it is that is controlling my thoughtless processes now is controlling my body, too.  I'm attacking the problem from both ends, from the mind down and from the cell up.  But mostly it seems what both want is rest.  I slept more this weekend than I usually do in a week.  But for a few very brief moments, I did not leave the house.  This is a sure sign of depression, I know, but it is too easy a term, too broad and encompassing.  To know whether the root cause is mental or somatic is the thing, though it is difficult to separate the two.  The third component is enviro/social.  I shouldn't say "the third" for that sounds as if it is the last.  I will figure out more.  Fixing all of it just now seems beyond my ken.  The smallest things bring me big anxiety.  Just daily life things like mailing my tax return and getting my car serviced and scheduling my "beauty" appointment and paying bills. . . .   How do I get that all done?

There are times when solitude has great advantages.  There are times when it doesn't.  Now is when being in a monastery would be just the thing.  Collectivized solitude.

All of this is. . . just an excuse. . .  an apology for my lack of. . . something. . . .  Perhaps I need to let someone else take over the blog for a while.  I can't put up the bright shiny 21st century I'm successful social network smile right now.  I just want to sleep.

Sleeping Images

I've always loved this painting by Eric Fischl.  I've not found anything more provocative by him, nor anything that I enjoy remotely as much.  It makes you look over your shoulder to make certain no one is watching you watching the boy watching the woman.  It is so Balthus-ian in that.

People walk about with heads filled full of such things, crepuscular, erogenous images.  They come and go in a millisecond.  For Fischl, Balthus, and others, they were not gone quite so quickly.  Most of the rest are in denial, and probably should be.

I slept away almost all of yesterday. I may sleep most of today away as well.  It eases the pain in my body if not my head.  There is little to do but sleep and wait.

Another Dark Morning

When I think of what I will do with my weekend on Friday, it does not include waking at four on Saturday morning.  But that is how it goes.  Then there adjustments to make and the fear to face that things may not be what you wanted them to be.  And that's what I get when I put too many eggs in one basket as they used to say.  I am pretty certain that with sunrise I will go back to bed.

The cat missed me too much, by the way, while I was gone on my brief trip.  All I can do is sneeze and blow my way through her copious love.  I haven't the heart to do otherwise.

This morning I put up another of my pictures.  I won't explain but to say. . . no, I won't.  I've heard nothing for two weeks about Frankencamera.  Maybe I should move on.  I did pick up my tax return from the accountant last night and must remember to mail it today.  I am owed money and think about both my needs and my desires.  This time, I think, I must let needs triumph.  Things fall apart.

No good, this, but it is all I can manage.  I will let this go and return to my bed.  The sun will rise in a while.

Neither Here nor There

Back home sitting in the same old dark at the same old table with all the same old problems.  Neither Here nor There.  I will take out a personal ad on Craig's List.  "Broke Down.  Seeking Redemption."  I wonder what that might bring?

I missed the Hunter's Moon.  I knew it was there for the astrologer got ahead of it by a couple days this month to leave no doubt.  I had looked forward to it coming up over the bay, but the night was full of clouds and there was never even a little peek.

I woke to a wet morning.  This was my vacation day.  I went downstairs and through the lobby to the Starbucks attached to the hotel and ran into everyone from the conference standing in line in business suits, coifed as for a board meeting.  Ran into my boss in my t-shirt and underwear (how she got into them I'll never know).  Of sorts.  Lounged the morning away until it was time to check out.  The rain was beginning to wane.

I went to the Museum, and it is a good one.  The permanent collection was a miracle in such a backwater town.  It is a half step or so behind the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, sure.

Oh. . . I can't go on.  I can't write at all today.  Something inside has just fallen apart.  Everything is too much.  It happens even to the good ones.  Here's what happens to heros.  Even heros, I should say.  The Old Man and the Cat.  And the Longing.  Damage done.

Guy Pêne du Bois

It is a little disingenuous for me to title my entry with the artist's name since I know I'll get lots of hits from people searching Google, so I will say that up front in the first sentence in case you were looking for information on this amazing painter.  I haven't much authoritative to say since I will not have seen his work until after this is posted.  Hence. . . .

Today was an awful, dreadful day of factory talk.  New statutes, new goals, new regulations . . . yada, yada, yada.  There are people who are awfully good at this because they have decided to be and in truth I have to admire them for the achievement.  I don't think myself better for not being interested in what I consider to be inconsequential dross, for they have succeeded at this where I have not succeeded at anything.  They were more determined than I, and they found their niche.  I give them all of that.

So tomorrow, I am taking a vacation day to go about town and see the sights.  And there are many, really.  Today I managed to exit a bit early and get some exercise.  I went to the hotel gym and then for a long walk and run.  I ran to the place where I used to keep my boat.  I looked for my old slip, but I wasn't sure which dock I had been on absolutely.  It looked to me as if all the same boats were there.  Funny that.  But I had little pull to do that again.

Tomorrow, though, I will rise slowly, drink coffee, read the news, and then go for a long walk.  I will clean up, check out, and go to the museum.  They have a Guy Pêne du Bois exhibit.  And many others.  I will let you know.

He was especially good in the '20s and 30's, I think.  For me.  There seems to be the same sense of desperation and isolation and stoicism I see in paintings by Hopper.  They often use the same color pallet from what I can tell from the small sampling of internet images I have seen.  But there is something, too, of Max Beckman.

I'm not an art historian, so I'm willing to be contradicted on this.  But I respond to what I see in these paintings as an existential posturing of his figures whether they be vulnerable or harsh.

Besides that, I just think they are pretty.  His paintings speak to me in a way that I want to speak to you.  I'll let you know what I see.

Until then, listen to this Ellington song from the 20s and dream.

Old St. Petersburg

When I was a kid, my family came to St. Petersburg on occasion.  It was quite something then as all things in the past were.  But it was something that is disappearing in the world--exotic.  It was an eclectic mix of the strange.  There were sunken gardens full of exotic plants and weird animal parks meant to titillate your imagination.  But it was something else, too.  The light was strange as was the air.  And it smelled differently than anyplace you'd ever been.  The sugar sand beaches that were dead quiet.  Sound did not seem to carry far in the damp air.  You saw people, but you were within yourself.  There were plastic pink flamingos and real ones, too.  It was an end of the earth where people came to die, a kind of elephant graveyard like in the old Tarzan movie.  I mean man, it was really something.

When my father died, I was still in my twenties.  I was an only child, and he left me some money, a roomful of tools--he was a tool and dye maker by trade--and a VW bus.  I took some of the money as mad money and bought a sailboat.  He and I had loved sailboats though we had never been in them, so I thought that perhaps I was doing it for both of us.  O.K.  I did it for me.  And after a while, I found that I could keep it in St. Petersburg fairly cheaply at a public dock just off the old Million Dollar Pier.  By then, St. Pete was a wreck of a place and the downtown area had been abandoned.  It was a Blighted Area that was solemn and sad and scary.  On the old famous waterfront, the Vinoy Hotel was an abandoned shell.  Even a hippie like me could afford to keep a boat on the water.

I would drive over on the weekends alone and live the seafaring life.  Of sorts.  I liked to hang around the docks on Friday night and talk to the people who lived on the boats full-time.  I'd have drinks at sundown and then go back to my boat to sit in the cockpit and fire up the pot to make dinner.  It was usually a lot of things thrown in together--corned beef, carrots, peas, celery, potatoes, onions--and cooked over a small gas flame as I watched with a rum drink in hand.  After dinner, I'd read by gas lamp until I was tired, then I would fall dead asleep into my bunk.  I slept well.

In the morning, I'd go up the street to the downtown area where a few cafes were open.  You can watch a John Cassavetes film from the 1970's to get the feel of it all.  Breakfasts were cheap and the coffee weak and horrible.  I'd sit with hundreds of retirees in wonderment.  A roomful of big noses and hairy nostrils, enlarged ears, and pink scalps told my future.  It was as if I'd been dropped on an alien planet.  But it was irresistible for someone like me.

Back to the docks, I'd loosen the lines and push my boat off its dockage.  The idea was to sail out of the harbor rather than motor.  It was difficult, but that is what a real sailor did.  And so I'd try, as likely to fuck it up as not,  crashing into pilings or other boats.  Then I would start up the engine and head on out for deeper waters.

A day's sailing alone can be a special thing--wonderful or horrible.  It is not easy to predict.  But sometimes when it was wonderful, I'd sail off to some uninhabited bay and drop anchor for the night.  Alone all day, alone all night, I'd repeat the process of the evening before--dinner, drinks, books, and bed.  But out there alone, though not really far from anything, I was full.  The stars, of course, were brighter, the moon bolder, the wind spookier, and the air more chill.  If it was winter, I'd crawl into my sleeping bag and drift off with the rocking of the boat at anchor, never certain that the anchor would hold, waking all night at every shifting wind to make certain of the boat's safety. Then, with sunrise, I'd be up to wipe the dew off the deck so that I could sit more comfortably, and I'd make coffee and eat some bread. Mornings alone were always the strangest, much different than the night which was romantic and adventurous and a bit spooky.  Sunrise was a quarrel of sorts, an argument about what to do and when to do it.  Pulling anchor, where to go?  But go you must, and sailing alone on an early Sunday morning was often weird and desperate, knowing that I need be back by noon to clean up the boat and drive back in time to get ready for work on Monday morning.

I came back today for the first time since I gave up my slip.  Driving over, I remembered everything that was gone and done.  I remembered what had passed.

And then, finding the Hilton with difficulty, I settled into my room and took a walk around town.  But that will be another entry.  This one has reached its denouement but to say that I walked about and took digital photographs only to find that I left my card reader at home.  There can be no photos for a few days.  Not mine, anyways.  And so it is told.  C'est la vie.

Safety First

What we need in this country is a good Civil Defense.  I'm not saying the current organization is not doing its job, but we all need to get behind them.  Where would this country be without a good Civil Defense?  It is our first line of protection against all sorts of mayhem and violence.  I myself have ordered the CD helmet.

Men, women, weak and strong--this country needs everyone to be ON THE ALERT.

I woke yesterday morning feeling terrible with lack of sleep and too much solitary partying knowing that I still had to get my tax information together.  Bleary minded, I sat down to my task with loathing.  I could find none of the documents I had put away some months ago with nothing but the best intentions of getting my house in order.  I did find a stack of Amex statements that I use to keep track of my tax deductible things (I'm an artist, remember, so EVERYTHING is a write off), but it was not complete.  I did what I could and went to my accountant in fear of a dress down.  I am a child, he told me.  Worse.  I am without redemption.  Still, did I want to come to dinner one night?  We could talk about how to get me thinking correctly about my future.  He wants me to read a book--"The Millionaire Mind", or something like that.  Give me the ten points, I said.  He looked at me as if I had special needs.  There are about one hundred and twenty, he said.  No good, I retorted.  Ten Commandments.  Can you imagine the One Hundred and Twenty Commandments?  They tried it in "The Life of Brian," I think.  It didn't work.  Simplify.  Listen, I told him, who do you think you're talking to?  He gave up.

Then to the bank that holds my mortgage.  I need my 2010. . . uh, uh. . . thing. . . you know, for the IRS.  Hey, said the fellow dressed in the not quite Brooks Brothers suit, I know you.  You go to the Y. Oh, I thought, I wonder what atrocities he has seen me commit.  Small town.  Since I've become a recluse, I forget.  Yea, I said, uh-huh, as if I remembered seeing him there, too.  He asked for my drivers license and pulled up the info on his computer.  Hey, he said, you are paying too much interest on your mortgage.  We can fix that with a YMCA mortgage.  O.K.  He didn't say "YMCA" but the acronym meant less that that.  He could have said HUAC. I don't know.  Great, I said.  Let me make an appointment with you, but right now. . . . Sure, great, he said handing me a stack of business cards.

Next stop--the bank that holds my money.  Hello, sir, what can I do for you.  Weeelll, I said, I need my 2010 thing, you know, the IRS form that tells how much money I earned from my accounts.  Oh, yes sir.  May I see your driver's license?  Oh!  You know, we can set you up in a better account where you can make more money.  That's all I heard, of course, because the rest was acronyms.  Sure, I said, let me get back with you.  But right now. . . .

And no shit.  I got it all.  I take it to the accountant today.  Oh.  Don't picture a fancy high rise and corporation.  I go to his house.  We sit in a converted garage.  He works for the mafia.  I may have made that up.  But he is Italian, and he handles mostly people in "the entertainment business."

I went to work after that for a bit, but the world was on acid, bending and warping, and all I wanted to do. . . so I left.  Mid-afternoon, I went for an exercise run (you know--fitness--pushups, pull ups, sit ups, dips) and wasted myself.  Home.  Gatorade.  A shower.  The grocery store.  Wine and a simple dinner.

Then "Boardwalk Empire."  I recorded it from last night.  It is so good.  Trust me.  And the show ended with this song by Regina Spektor.

Billy Holliday does the definitive version of this, I think, but--oh--this is good.  And listen, I have very eclectic tastes in music.  It just has to be clever.  This is, I think.

I go out of town for a couple of days now.  I will try to post.  And take some pictures that will interest those of you who have long ago lost interest in brothel workers shot on Polaroid.  I'll try.  Right now, I think anything would please you more.

But the song--"My Man"--could be a soundtrack for "Loneseomville."  Maybe.  I'm drinking and writing and dreaming, so I might be wrong.  But enjoy it all.

And join in with Old Joe in protecting your nation.  Wear the helmet and the armband proudly. And always remember--SAFETY FIRST.

Don't Come Around, Leave Me Alone, Don't Bother Me

I'm fucked.  I never file my taxes on time.  I have an tax man, too.  An accountant, rather.  He called me tonight.  I filed an extension back in April.  I have done nothing since.  I've gone years without filing.  I worry. So now my man--the accountant--calls me.  I was supposed to get the things together that he needs tonight.  I am to meet him at nine.  But I got nothing together.  I did nothing but drink and watch Scorsece's documentary on George Harrison.  Then I began hijacking old Beatle's songs that weren't standard.  Now it is long past midnight and I'm doomed.  Fucked.  Why am I such a child?

Whatever.  I'm an artist, goddamnit.  We are different.

What A Difference A Day Makes

What does one do about the terribleness of life?  Refute it.  Yesterday was an anomaly here, gray and rainy without cessation.  I barely left the house.  I put on an old iTunes library I don't listen to much any more and began scanning images.  I cleaned the refrigerator which was my main goal for the day because something there was smelling awful.  Then I paid the bills which is much too painful a thing to do.  Went through the stacks and stacks of old bills, unopened envelopes, bank statements, documents, and I began chucking them in the garbage. Not sure what all was thrown away, but things looked better where they had lain.  Loads of laundry, the rumble of the machines, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Etta James.  Lunched on leftover spaghetti and red wine.  Read for an hour and went to the gym.  Showered, napped, and opened that bottle of champagne which was not to be wasted, writing, scanning, thinking into the dusk.  Dinner, perhaps.  I thought about it too long.  Rain, too much trouble.  A bit of salad left, some soup, the rest of last night's spaghetti washed down with the rest of the champagne.

Later, a wine drunk called from California telling me of his perfect life, reminding me that mine was shit.  The joys of living in Paradise, he said, his blessings for being such a profound and perfect being.  I poured a whiskey and watched some recent movie not worth mentioning on Showtime.  Cat love.  Movie over.  Bedward.

Sounds dreadful, I know, but I was somehow regenerated by it.  I've decided to do less rather than more, but more often.  Everything.  Aim low.  Don't push the pain threshold.  Don't compete.  No marathons.  No sprints.  Just a quick walk around the neighborhood.  A few pushups.  One chapter of the novel.  One poem.  Etc.

I don't know what these images are, when or where I took them.  I was throwing away things in my office and came across these cut from a proof sheet, simply laying loose on the desktop.  Who are these diners?  I  only know that these were shot from the hip with my Mamiya 6 Robert Frank style.  I must do a little more of this.  Aim low.  Nothing epic.  In My Time.

Sunday.  Gray as yesterday but without the heavy rain.  The branches outside my window bounce up and down in the breeze.  Velveteen.

What a difference a day makes.

Feline, Not Canine

I braved the scale at the grocery store.  Uh-oh.  I am determined to torture myself now.  Determined may not be the right word.  I know I should.  I've never needed to lose more than a few pounds before, so this. . . is daunting.  And what is my motivation?  It is not like losing the weight will get me anything.  Nobody cares, really.  Certainly not the cat. All she does is eat and lie about.  How does she do it?  Dogs can't do that and keep their looks.  But cats. . . there is some magic there.  Inexplicable.  I, rather, grow fat and sleek like an old pasha.  Perhaps I will eat like one, grapes and nuts and dates and figs and exotic cheeses and flatbreads and goats and sheep.  I will need a grocer.  I will need a cook.

I will be sexy like A.J. Liebling.

But my fat is from stress and exhaustion and the self-medication that is inherently connected to that.  It has made me lazy, not like a cat but like a cow.  Bovine fat.  Perhaps porcine.

I will quit drinking.  That will help.  But. . . I have a nice bottle of champagne that should not go to waste.  It must go to waist.  I know I should have it tonight.  Yes, yes, one more night.  An orgy of the senses.  It is rainy and will continue thusly for days.  When the sun comes out. . . I will begin anew.

Enough babbling.  Here is a photo--feline, not canine.

Labels and Options

I read some poems this morning by the Nobel winning poet heretofore unknown to me.  Surely much is lost in translation.  He is Swedish.  He beat out Dylan.  Bob.  Nothing, I think, is lost in translation there.  Imagine Dylan with a Nobel under his belt.  But, as they say, surely that way lies madness.

The rhetoric of the Wall Street protesters is entering the public arena.  It will stay, I think.  I hope.  It will be in the ears of Americans.  Eventually, it will come out of their mouths.  People are parrots, you know.  They've been parroting the rhetoric that began when Lee Iococca was made an icon.  It has been hideous.  I am sick of it.

I will join the protests somewhere.  They are coming to a town near you soon.  I hope you will, too.

Enough of that kind of talk.  This is not a political blog.  We try not to be careful or correct here.  Don't make me use the leeches.

I'm just saying.

As I write this, I notice for the first time out of the corner of my right eye a column on the template.  Two words stick out--Labels and Options.  I wonder how much that has unconsciously influenced what I've written here.

Last night, leaving the grocery store, I realized that I never get on the giant calibrated scale that sits by the exit any more.  For most of my life, I have.  Funny that.  I will try to make a list of "Things I Used to Do."

You know what they say.  Eat the Greedy.  

Fear and Self-Loathing

"The Woman with the Flea" by Georges de la Tour

He worked late at the factory the previous night and did not get home until nine.  He ate what he had in the cabinets which was nothing much, some Kimchi instant soup and a bag of popcorn.  He sat listlessly in front of the television for an appropriate time waiting for the medicine to work and finally got up, turned off the television and the lights, and went to bed.

Too early the next morning, he woke up listlessly, fed the cat, made the coffee, and sat down to read the morning's news.  His body felt worn though he had not done anything to wear it unless long hours and bad food could wear a body down.  That and the dull, repetitive nights alone again and again.  He'd never been this weighed down.  Weighed down, he chuckled.  Fat.

"I'm not going to work today," he told the cat in the darkness just before dawn.  "I'll call in sick and stay with you."  He was not sick, though, not in that way.  It was simply an impulse, and the little voice of reason began its work right away.  "It's dangerous to do so," it said.  Inaudibly.  He hated that voice, at least just now, for he felt as though he had made up his mind already.  He would go back to bed, he'd decided just before, but now the little voice warned him that he might not fall back to sleep.  And then what?  He would feel horrible.  The day would not go as planned.  He would not be refreshed and satisfied but more frustrated than before.  He was only mopey, he began to think and was deciding that he would go to work after all.

He had not been taking care of himself.  He had fallen off some ledge and had lost all discipline.  It was dangerous.  He could feel that.  But work was hard, his hours longer than ever before.  All around him people were suffering, unemployed.  His father and mother had worked every day and looked forward to getting overtime.  Two weeks a year they took their meager vacations during the window of vacation time allowed by the overseers.  They had not complained.  Nope.  But he had sworn his life would not be like that.  And it hadn't seemed to be.  Only lately.

He stared at the painting by de la Tour, "The Lady and the Flea."  Lamp light and fleas.  Lousy nights. What hope?  You would think we living now would be happier, he thought, but we can do no better than Falstaff (1, 2).

Daylight came and with it resolve.  He would do what he did, what he was contracted to do.

"Don't be too disappointed cat, but I've changed my mind.  You're on your own."  The cat seemed disappointed nonetheless.

Promises (I Never Keep)--Oh, Lord

Tamara de Lempicka

I promise there is a new series coming.  I promise.  It is just taking a while.  But I talked to the man making the camera yesterday.  He called me.  He never remembers our last conversation and we begin again, but we are beginning this time, for he asked me to make choices.

"What are you going to use it for," he asked me.

Embarrassing.

"Portraits mostly," I said.

"Like what?"

I felt like a kid in front of his teacher.  What kind of question was this?  Was he drunk?  Cruel?  I began to tell him about my next project.  It sounded stupid the way such things inevitably do, boring, pedestrian, mundane.  I didn't even try to muster up enthusiasm in my voice knowing it would sound like a nervous tyro, knowing that it was all doomed anyway.

"Have you ever seen Penn's book "Small Trades?  Like that. . . only better."  

He says nothing about that.  Like I say. . . idiotic.

"So let's see.  Do you want to use flash?"

We'd been through this before, but we would go through it again.  I was better prepared this time.  You see, the  7" Aero Ektar lens has one big advantage (other than its radioactive glass)--it stops up to f 2.5.  If you do not shoot it wide open, it is silly to have it in many ways.  And at f 2.5 you will probably not be using flash.  Probably if you are normal.  I am not.

"Yes, I do.  I think if I shoot ISO 25 film at half speed and use a neutral density filter, I can use a flash to nice effect."

"You know that it syncs with flash at 1/7th of a second?"

I knew that.  He told me last time.

"Good.  I'll drag the shutter, again, to nice effect."

I felt like I was on top of the game now.  I had answers.

"O.K.  What do you want me to do for a viewfinder?"

"I don't know if you can use the one I sent with the camera, but like that."

"You're going to want to make instant contact with the people you're shooting. . . this one doesn't pop, you know what I mean?"

Oh, he had me again.  I didn't.  Tumble. . . tumble.

"I think I have one I can put on here, though.  Let me see. . . yes, I think I can make a frame with some wood. . . . That will only take me a day, huh?"  He laughed, I thought, sinisterly.  The price just went up.  So did the amount of time before I'd get it.

"What do you want the body to look like?"

Shit, shit, shit.  Like Moby Dick, I started to say  The Great White Whale.  What did he mean?

"There are two models, one that had a flash sync.  Some people like the way one body looks over the other.  I could put a flash sync in the other one. . . probably. . . ."

My end of the phone was desperately silent.  I didn't know the difference between the body types.  I was sure I would want the other one no matter which I picked.

"What color material did you want for the bellows?"

"What color do you suggest?"

"Well. . . it depends on what you want.  Some people say they want the red material. . . ."

"Red!  No, black!" I blurted out in a panic.  I could see my camera becoming uglier and uglier, not at all like the other beauties he has built.  I felt he was regretting ever agreeing to working with me on this.  Oh. . . why couldn't I be more knowledgeable?   Likable?  I felt doomed.

"You haven't given me any money yet, right?"

"Yes I did, yes I did!  I sent you (deleted) dollars!"

"Oh. O.K."

So you see.  I am going to bring you a new series.  I just can't say when.  But the old one, "Lonesomeville," is definitely over.  I can't do it any more.  I have enough images for years to come, but I can't shoot that any longer.  And so I panic and despair until the next thing begins to work.

I was thinking about this when I went to the camera store the other day.

"Hey man, can you help me?  I want to buy a camera that will make me famous.  Which one should I get?"

"Any of them."

Let It Ride

A man and a guitar.  I saw him at the Beacon Theater on the Upper West Side.  Q and his girlfriend were supposed to come with me, but Q had to work.  His girl was still going but didn't make it.  He performed miraculously that night, alone onstage with a guitar, a piano, sometimes with two women who accompanied him with strings.  It was the beginning of the end. It was the night of the inevitable fall.  They should have been there that night, though I don't know if it would have changed things.

Q's version.  Q's girl.

Growing Velvet Dusk Whiskey Glow

Disaffected tonight.  Alienated and alone.  I chucked everything this afternoon after work to come home and drink whiskey and to listen to this.



I'm getting messages, but the metaphors are lost on me.  Downward falling in the growing velvet dusk warm whiskey glow.

Somewhere. . . .

*     *     *     *     *

. . . but, oh. . . how people can save you. . . .