Is This the Right Medicine?

Exploring Porto with the Leica M-D from Leica Camera on Vimeo.

This is what I want.  Which part?  The camera, the freedom to make images.  This video is just a romantic lie, in part, but it is the truth, too.  If you don't believe in romantic truths, you needn't watch the video.  If you think that Leicas are stupid cameras that are for BoBos, you may be right, and you shouldn't watch this video.  But if you ever buy silly things, things you don't need, things that will just make you feel a certain way. . . if you ever just want some magic in your life no matter how stupid your desire seems to someone else. . . you might like the video.

I am Jonesing for this camera.  It would be stupid to buy.  It is a stupid idea.

Sometimes you just have to do the wrong thing.

I told you that my life has been under some bad ju-ju lately.  I didn't tell you that it has gotten worse.  It has.  Don't be surprised if I turn up on your couch for a few days this summer.  I need some respite. I get scared at night again and wake with the heebie-jeebies.  I am conscious of all the wrong things.

So. . . maybe a camera would change my life.  Undoubtably it would, but in which direction?  Oh, that one can never predict.

Reduced

I'm truly getting old.  I can't handle my drugs any more.  Last night, I woke up an midnight and took an Aleve P.M.  I am a mess now.  What can I say?  I can't run, and I can't handle my Aleve P.M.  I guess all that's left is exotic teas and volunteer work.  I'm not much of a volunteer, so my options are reduced.

I got some advice once long ago from a Belarus photographer: when you can't photograph, try not to take pictures.  I guess the same should go for writing.  Still, everybody shows pictures of kids.  Apparently everyone wants to see them.  But how many children are shown with a swan and a bum?  Not that many.  So here you have the mythical story of "Girl, Swan, Bum."  I think the photograph tells the story clearly.  It needs no explanation.

Jesus. . . I am reduced to this.

Bathrooms for the Aged

America.  Where are you now?  Don't you care about your sons and daughters?

I know.  Quoting Steppenwolf.  It's early.  But I didn't watch election returns last night and remembered that when I opened the news at six this morning.  And so it comes to this.  Now it is a matter of who Americans dislike more.  The hogs are greased and out of the pen.  As the great H.S. Thompson said so long ago, “In a nation run by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely.”

There are, however,  important issues to which we must turn out attentions: where are you going to shit?  I mean, who do you want in the stall next to you while you are doing that?  I've never felt so passionate about an issue before, and I have to say I've stayed out of the fray for fear of being. . . recognized. . . but I have to say it now.  We need bathrooms for the aged.  That's right, that's right.  For old people.  If we are going to be real about it. . . well, whatever.  There are issues there that need not be discussed.  We all know what they are, and they are disgusting.  It is time to free the youth of this country from the slow-assed indignities of these "others."

O.K.  I guess I was "mansplaining" here.  I need to cowboy up.  They are a quiet bunch, those cowboys.  They don't say much.  They illustrate that the term "mansplaining" a feminist faux pas.

People are just plain mean.

Which explains this year's election, though that term is no longer really useful.  This election has been going on for more than a year now.  There is no longer "an election year."  I'm already gearing up for 2020.

I was looking through old files and found this one that I took with my stolen Leica M Monochrom.  The one that was stolen from me, I mean.  I miss it.  I want another one.  I want the Leica M 246, too.  I will make a mistake sooner than later.  It is inevitable.  I haven't mentioned my latest purchase.  Whatever.

I have a meeting of the bosses at the factory today.  I'm bringing up my bathroom complaint. I'll let you know how that one flies.

Whining Nostalgic

I was looking through old files for a picture to use with this morning's post and ran across this.  It was not an intentional photo, I think, but something I did testing exposure.  It brought back instant memories.  I got a call from the True Artist in the studio behind mine on Sunday.  I still have my printer there and I thought it was going to be about that.  Rather he was reporting that the new Crook of a Landlord had sent a letter informing the tenants that if they wanted to renew their leases, they would need to do it for a year rather than the monthly we had all been on.  I thought that was not horrible.  Then he told me that the Crook wanted four times the current rent.  Whoa!  I guess I am glad I moved out in December when the Crook bought the place from the old owners, a not for profit entity that didn't need the money and who sold it for an amount that anyone would have paid without thinking.  The building was not for sale, so nobody knew.  Their was a crooked deal with the Board of Trustees.  No one who worked for the company understood it, but we all did.  The Crook had an insider on the board and on the city council.

I have to make a decision about my printer.  I don't have room for it in my house, so I probably will have to sell it.  I didn't think I'd ever lose my little dream of a studio, but all dreams come to an end.  I was there for seven years.  It was in the best part of town.  All I had to do was turn the key and there was everything I had been doing just waiting on me.  I'll never have anything like that again.  Most people never do even once.  Selavy.

And yes, all things do come to an end.  After you've lived awhile, you think that there are too many endings.  Then you might realize that you have been wrong, that there are things that do not end.  There is an endless hum and there is the nothingness and meaninglessness against which we struggle an entire lifetime.  It stands in relief to all endings, the thing that makes them poignant.

It is when you dwell on the nothingness or on the ending of things that you are in trouble.  I'm trying to avoid trouble.

The three framed images in the photo are now hanging in my bedroom.  The cheap-ass easel is gone as is the camera sitting in the bottom lefthand corner.  The books are in my home and the table is in the garage.  I think I threw away the plastic cup.

There is much to do at the factory today, and there is the gym after work.  I don't know when I'll take pictures again.  There is nothing easy about it now.  Everything about it seems so hard.

Dangerous Way

This is a morning when I probably shouldn't be writing a blog.  I'm in my hermit mode and don't enjoy the company.  Here are yesterday's highlights: I tried running slowly and gently on grass once again with dire results; I worked around the house and didn't have lunch but had a beer instead; when it was late and I was shaky with hunger and lousy blood sugar, I went for sushi; I came home and soon went to bed.

Fun times.  I didn't sleep well as my knee was not the only thing hurting.  My back was a stove up misery, too.  I thought/dreamed about the pile of wood laying in the driveway and of not being able to move, of shuffling through life on a bad knee, stiff as the lumber.

I have taken no pictures and have nothing to show except old things.  I went through my files some yesterday.  Here is a a straight Polaroid, no manipulations.  You can see how the dyes were dried and shifting.  Still, I see some charm in it.  I have ten thousand of them.  Maybe not.  I haven't counted, but there are volumes.  I would take them and do this.

There is a wedding dress shop on the Boulevard that sells wedding gowns, very expensive things by Vera Wang et. al.  I want to take pictures of them.  I want them to hang my photos in their store.  I want this so badly that I never ask them.  I'm straight up that way.

That's all I have this morning.  I warned you.  It is bad.  I am in a dangerous way.

The Arrogance of Knowing

I guess there is an arrogance of knowledge at every level.  If you know something and someone else doesn't--advantage you.  And so it is at the lumberyard.

Let me get this out of the way before I go on with my simple tale.  Home improvement projects suck. I'm sick to death of mine.  Things go right until they don't.  Trying to do something you don't do and are not quite sure how to do is stupid.  That is why I hired the handyman.  But I was trying to save money and he was only helping.  Now he is gone and I have a problem.

The problem is that I bought wood from the lumberyard that isn't decking material.  There is bark all over the edges of the boards.  I just can't use it for finishing the deck.  So I called the lumberyard to tell them.  O.K. they said, come on down and pick out your wood.

Funny.

I went yesterday morning.  The man at the sales desk said he would have to charge me for the wood I picked out for delivery today but that they would refund me the money when the other wood came back.  That sounded fair, so I paid the bill and he said to go talk to one of the guys sitting on the bench outside and he would take me back.

He did.  He took me back to a fellow in another building who started yelling that he didn't have a ticket on this.  "Who helped you?" he barked in a rough tone.  "One of the salesmen," I said.  "You need to go back in and tell him to get me a ticket.  I can't get this wood to you today. . . blah blah blah. . . ." He relished being King of his little realm.

I went back inside and the fellow who helped me had already spoken to the fellow who was yelling.  "C'mon," he said, ticket in hand, "I'll take you back."

When we got to the other building, the fellow said a fellow with a name would help me.  But the fellow with the name didn't come.  I stood around for awhile until the yeller asked me if the fellow with the name had come yet.  Nope.  "C'mon," he said, and we walked back to the big shed where they kept the wood.  "There he is," he said motioning to the fellow with the name.  The fellow with the name came over and the yeller left.  The fellow with the name just looked at me without saying anything.

"I was told to come back and pick out the wood I need."  He didn't say anything.  "I'm building a deck and the wood they brought me is all hacked up.  It's no good for laying a deck.  They told me to come back and pick out the pieces I needed."  His scorn was obvious.  He took me over to a big pile of wood that was bundled up.

"It's all going to look the same," he said.  I looked at him and he reluctantly cut the plastic strips holding the wood in place.  He wasn't going to help me beyond that.  I tried turning over some of the sixteen foot 2x6s.  They did all look the same--like Fido's ass.  "That's what number two wood looks like."

"How much more does it cost for number one wood?"

"I don't know," he said disparagingly.  "It isn't going to look any better.  It's all graded by structure, not look.  It just ain't going to have as many knotholes."

"Well. . ." I needed help at this point, "what should I use?"

"Most people use the one and five eighths inch decking boards."  We looked at them.  They were all beveled on the edges, but this is what my handyman had advised against.  He said we would have to build the crossbeams closer together, that the way we had built it would be too spongy.  I was tired of struggling to turn over the boards, sick of looking at wood, and I was way done having the fellow with the name look at me like I was an idiot.  I wanted to say, "Do you know the Pythagorean Theorem?  I can do equations.  You know about wood.  I just want some help, fucker, not your idiotic looks."

But of course I didn't.  For a number of reasons.  I am not that sort, I like to think.  I don't go out of my way to make other people feel bad.  Another reason, though, is that I would have gotten a pretty good beat down, and I didn't want to try that, so I turned away toward the showroom.

"Thanks," I said.  I could feel him looking at me as I walked away.

I didn't go to the showroom, though.  Rather I stood by my car and called my buddy.  I guess I was looking for advice.  I tried explaining my dilemma, but he was trying to tell me about his trip to the cardiologist.  He had gotten some reassurance he was fine.  My board problems paled.  His advice was that I should go to Home Depot and look at the wood there.  Fuck everything, I thought as I got into my car and drove off.  I wasn't sure what to do at all.

When I got home, I called the lumberyard.  A woman came on the line.  I explained my situation to her.  She said she would call me back with the price of two kinds of wood, number one and something she called master grade.  That, she said, would be the best looking.  In a bit she did call back and gave me the price.  Master grade was over twice as much.  Shit, piss, fuck.  I told her I'd call her back.

But I had to go to work.  I had already missed two days this week and it was getting late.  I decided that I would leave work early and stop at a Home Depot on my way back.  I was buying time.

Skip ahead.  The wood at Home Depot was much better.  Much.  But the price was in the middle of the number two wood I had bought already and the price of the master grade that I might buy.  And there was a pretty hefty delivery price from Home Depot, too.

I walked back to my car, miserable.  It was four o'clock and the lumberyard closed at five.  I had to make some decision.  I called the handyman and told him all I knew.

"Why don't you just get the one and five eighths.  It's a lot cheaper than the two by six."

"That's what you told me not to buy!  You said it would be too spongy!"

"No, it's fine.  I've built lots of decks with it before."

"What about the crossbeams?"

"Well. . . it might be alright.  If not, we can shore it up."

He wasn't really invested in the conversation.  He was getting ready to drive four hours south to see his girl.  Finally I realized that I was on my own.

I sat in my car and stewed.  It was my fault, I thought.  It was all my fault.  I wanted to do the job but let someone else take the responsibility.  "You can't do that, "I thought.  "That is your mistake."  And it is true.

I called the lumberyard.  I decided to just go ahead and buy the master grade.  I was going to buy my way out of this problem.  I was.  I was ready.  But. . . the jerky boy on the phone couldn't figure out how to change my order.

"I can't do this," he said.  "You're going to have to come in and do it in person.  I can't take payment over the phone."

There was no way I could get there before they closed.  They wouldn't be open again until Monday.  So I said, "I'll come in next week.  Just don't have them deliver any wood on Monday."

The wood sits in my driveway now.  Last night, it rained.

I don't know how this story will turn out.  I just know why rich people live longer than poor people.  They don't have to worry about this shit.  It may sound silly, but I am stressed out to the max.  It is not only the decking that I have to worry about.  If that was all. . . but it isn't.  It never is.  I am living in a shit storm.  This is only one part of a very difficult equation.

Did I say I know how to solve equations?  That may have been hyperbole.  With my luck, the fellow with a name would have been some sort of savant.  And that, of course, would have been point--game--match.  The one with the knowledge has the advantage.

So today I can't finish anything.  I am alone for the weekend and beat and sick and worn down.  Everything will stay in a state of disrepair.  If I could, I would finish it off.  But the sky is cloudy still.  The shit storm isn't over yet.  Did I tell you that there is something seriously wrong with my car?  Oh, yea, oh, yea.

I guess I won't be buying that Leica any time soon.

And I guess I'm not much of a cowboy.

Cowboy Up

How long can a full moon last?  It seems a week so far.  Crazy bad.  The Farmer's Almanac calls this the Full Pink Moon.  It is also called the Fish Moon.  The earth and the moon are at their furthest distance apart, so you might think the influence would be minimized.  Is it the moon?  I don't know.  I'd like to say so for there are physical rather than metaphysical reasons for its influence.  I'd prefer the demonstrably measurable ones.

Whatever it is, though, I'm ready for a reprieve.

Yesterday I stayed home from the factory to help my handyman build my deck.  He got here early, and we worked all day.  You don't build a deck in a day, though.  We were lucky to finish the frame.  I did a lot of the heavy work, of course, even though I am older, for I have no technical skills.  I dug and trenched and the ground where it was needed and chopped a tree stump and cut and hauled the second half of the remaining wood from the old deck.  I was lucky enough to get the garbagemen to take away the wood.  They took about a quarter of it on Monday.  I gave them an envelope.  Yesterday as I was hurrying to ready the new pile, when they drove by the first time, they gave a happy wave and said they would be back.  I gave them another envelope.  All the wood is gone.  They hung around a bit after we had disposed of all the wood to talk about deck building.  I told them all that I knew.  Ha!  I'm quite good at talking.

I played cowboy all day, and we got the framing finished.  When we started to put the decking on, though, most of the 2x6x16 foot boards were not good enough to use.  Almost none.  The handyman was finished, and the rest was left for me to deal with.

"You need to get them to bring you some decent wood and take this back. I've never seen such a bad bunch of wood."

Sure.  I'd do that.  I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, but I'd do that.  We cleaned up the area, then he was gone.

I received a text from my beautician that I had a four o'clock appointment with her.  I'd missed that, but I told her it was her fault for not texting me the day before.  When could I come?  Love me.  Don't be a hater, I texted.  She told me to come in at five, but that I would be there all night as she had other clients coming in.

I showered up and poured a big drink and headed out the door.

And I did have to wait.  She was foiling a woman when I got there.  About 45 minutes later. . . well, these things are best left as mysteries.  But I didn't get out of there until close to nine o'clock.  My hair. . . it looks like shit.  She decided to try something new, she said.  Yea.  She did.

This morning at seven, I called the lumber yard and told them my situation.  I have to go back there today to pick out the lumber.  I asked to do this the first time, but they gave me the big redneck stare like I was insane.  I don't know what I am doing, don't know what is normal in their world, so I ended up with shitty boards.  They won't be able to deliver my new boards 'til next week, he said.  I'm sweating out the city inspectors who will be driving around my neighborhood looking at all the new construction that is going on only a block away.  Shhh. . . I haven't pulled any permits.

There are troubles that I won't even tell.  I have more to do than I want and no time to do what I want.  I can't imagine living like a real adult all of the time.  It seems a hideous waste of life's resources.

But I'll say one thing.  I did enjoy the feeling of being a cowboy.

Rougher Night

Telling personal stories is by definition a demonstration of self-absorption. The challenge the essayist faces is to convince readers that all this inward attention is justified and worthwhile — that he can see through his own vanities and speak credibly about himself in a way that will be illuminating to others (link).

That's cool, but when it is once said, I can only reply, "Fuck that!"  There is only one way to go, and that is the other way.

Hillary beat Bernie.  And so it is.  We are doomed.

Here is another picture where I have missed focus.  See how sharp the street is behind them?  But I think I am beginning to prefer the wrongly focussed pictures.  They have a quality to them that I cannot yet describe.  Maybe--yes, maybe--I am doing that on purpose.  Do you think?  Do you?

I am groggy this morning, brain fog, body cloud. . . too much of what some people call life, too many coping aids, too much ahead, too much behind. . . .  Chet Baker plays on the "radio." I am waiting in gloom for the repairman to show up.  It is the day for building the deck.  Or part of it.  I don't think it can be done in a day.  I have many other projects, too.  There is no end to these things.

Alone last night with the cat.  I stare at a sprig of mint in a water filled Ball jar.  It would make a wonderful picture.  I remember when I used to take those.

I am too scattered and fragmented for cohesion just now.  I will put on my work clothes and begin cutting boards.  The worker must have had a rougher night than I.

Pretty as a Picture

I'm beginning to believe in either astrology or ju-ju 'cause things keep going to shit.  It is spooky.  In truth, I get scared.

It is as much a mood as it is anything truly awful.  I've had some mood ju-ju put on me.  My planets are in retrograde or whatever.  I slog along, slog along. . . slog. . . . .  Others seem happy.

I watched an HBO documentary on Robert Mapplethorpe last night.  It was alright.  HBO showed a lot of the pictures that others haven't.  I've never been a big Mapplethorpe fan except for a few of his photographs of Patti Smith and Lisa Lyons which seemed among the softest, most humane pictures he did.  His death from AIDS looked particularly gruesome.  He was part of an era when things blew up.  The 70's were urban, a reaction to the hippy agrarian dream.  I think.  I shouldn't make such statements.  I don't have the ass to back it up.  I've not really thought it through.  There is just something about the 70's that seems particularly gruesome to me, the music, the fashions.  What remains?

The picture of the hippy girl above was taken with the new portrait lens, probably the second or third I made.  The lens seems to be fine here, no blurry weirdness, so I guess the mistake in yesterday's posted pic was user error.  I took this in the garden of a vegan/vegetarian restaurant.  It was just a matter of, "Hey, can I take your picture?"  I wish I had some way of sending her the photo.  It is a pretty, smiley portrait that she might like.  After posting it here, it will have no further function for me probably.  You never know, though.  Things change in time.

I've had my confidence rocked several times in the recent weeks.  Sucker punches that keep hurting after the initial pain recedes.  None of us are who we think we are, of course, but I'm not sure it helps to point that out.  Especially in non-therapeutic ways.  All we have in the end is ourselves.  We don't really need to be reminded that we are not in very good company.

Working Man

This is one of the very first images I shot with my new 150mm Hasselblad (Zeiss) portrait lens.  Either there is something wrong with the lens or I missed focus.  Everything is in focus except his eyes.  I don't think there are any diopters for the camera, so I may need to wear my glasses.  I suspect, though, that there is something wrong with the lens.

I stayed home from work yesterday.  I began the day with quail eggs on toast.  They tasted like eggs, but with a strongly flavored yolk.  Breakfast done, Ili went with me to the lumber yard to pick out the boards for the deck.  That was funny.  When I asked the fellow if I should go pick out the boards I wanted, he looked at me like I was speaking Polish.  It didn't seem to be an option.  It was a big lumber yard with lots of rough looking fellows, so I didn't feel like repeating myself.  But the price. . . oh. . . it was very, very good, so if a couple of the boards are not to my liking, there is little complaint.

I reserve the right to change my mind, of course.

After that, I went to working in the yard.  I have plants that are not doing as well as I would like, so I gave them all a bunch of water with my new hose.  It is a dandy, one of those scrunchy ones that pack into a pouch.  I had my doubts about it, but now I am a believer.  They are much better for home use than the old thick plastic and rubber ones.  I gave every bush a very good soaking, and by day's end, everything looked to be thriving.

Then I began sawing boards in two.  The buddy who helped me rip up the deck didn't cut the wood into small enough pieces.  Some of them were more than four feet long.  I went down the street to where they are building a new house to ask the contractors who were leaning on the pickup bed studying the construction plans if I could pay them to send a couple guys down at the end of the day to pick up the wood and put it in their dumpster.  Again, I might as well have been speaking Polish.  Why do these guys not like me?  They dismissed me with a wave and said no, they were too busy, etc.  I felt the blood rush into my neck and head and knew that I was getting mad, more at myself, really, for I had put myself in the position of having them say no.  I hate to ask anyone for anything (I've never asked a girl out on a date in my life) because I can't stand rejection.  I was about to say that they were not very neighborly and tell them they were in violation of several city statutes before I threw in the word "assholes," but I turned away instead and walked back to the house.

It was me, not them.

I stayed home from work in order to get things done, so I pulled out the reciprocal saw my buddy had left for me to chop the remaining pieces of deck that I had left as a walkway into the house.  I really needed a circular saw for cutting the boards in half, but I didn't have one.  I'm not that sort of guy, I guess.  I used the reciprocal saw to cut the boards.  It was slow work, but it did the job.  Board after board, I made a growing pile of two to three foot boards.  I had put some in the garbage can as people had advised, but it made a very little dent in the pile.  It was trash day, and in a while, I saw the garbage truck coming down the street.  They passed my house on this stop, so I kept cutting wood, but by the time I had cut as much as my slender artist's hand could stand, they still had not come back by.  Across the street was a lawn company's truck and trailer.  I decided to walk over and see if they were willing to haul my wood away.

"I still have seven yards to do," the head fellow said, "but if I have room at the end of the day, I'll come back and get it."

He was an alright guy.  I asked him if he thought the garbagemen would take it if I gave them something, and he said they might.  I'd asked several people about this, and opinions were split.  I told the fellow that I would give it a try, but if the wood was still there later, I would pay him to take it.

In a bit, the garbage guys were back.  I had put some money in an envelope and asked them if they could take the pile of wood.  We are now good friends.  They will be back on Thursday for the second pile.  I like making friends.  It is better than the other.

It was mid-afternoon then, and I decided to go to the gym.  It was a beautiful day, and I wanted to come home and do the weeding that was part of why I stayed at home.  By five, all of that was done, and I felt good but for the terrible pain in my back.  A shower would help, and then a big cowboy drink.  Campari and vermouth and soda with a slice of lime.  That's what all the cowboys drink, I've heard.  It is good for their tummies.

At nine o'clock, I took two Aleve P.M.s and headed for the bedroom.  Ili had put an Icy Hot patch on my back earlier.  I put on some music and read for a few minutes, but soon I was out for the night.

This morning, minutes after I got up, the big lumber truck pulled up to deliver my wood.  Jesus, I was still woozy from the Aleve and was wobbling all over the place.  I moved my car so the driver could back in, but first I had to help him move some things--some iron chairs, a grill--and he checked to see if he would be able to clear the power lines when he raised the flat bed up to dump the wood.  After about half an hour of manipulations, we had it.  He was some sort of Spanish speaker with a heavy accent.  He liked my bromeliads, so I gave him a bagful as his tip.  That seemed to make him very happy.

Now I must return to factory life.  It is not what I want to do.  Trouble waits for me there.  But tomorrow, I will take the morning off to help lay out the deck.  I am no help, really, but I need to be here in case some city official comes by.  I have not pulled a permit since this is a "repair," and I do no want to leave a paid worker alone.  But I have an important presentation at work tomorrow, so I will need to be gone in the afternoon.  All of this makes me nervous, and I will be until it is all done.  Maybe this weekend I will be able to relax.  One day I would like to go out and think about photography again.  Until then. . . .

Hooky

Stressed, depressed, anxious. . . and no reason why, I guess.  I've decided to throw in the towel and stay away from the factory today.  I have more to do than I can stand to think about, but I do, and thinking about it wears me out.  Not much of a cowboy.  It's just work.  But it is the work I can't stand.

Today I will try to do some things that will help me catch up.

Glad that I could keep you informed about this.  It is fascinating.  I am kidding.  I don't want to be "that guy."  It has nothing to do with that.

"Whatever happened to. . . ?"

Fill in the blank.  Jack Nicholson.  Julia Roberts.  The guy from "My Cousin Vinnie."  Dustin Hoffman.  Warren Beaty.  Etc.

I don't want to ask those questions.

But I wonder sometimes.

I have to pick out lumber today.  I have an underground leak in my irrigation system that I am told is easy to fix, but it scares me to try.  I have weeds to pick and still a big pile of wood that used to be a deck to get rid of.

Mimosas got the best of me.  At least that is what started it.  You know how it ended.

I think that one of the things I have disliked about my recent pictures is the clarity.  I don't want that.  The images should be softer.  I haven't had time to work on that, but I will.  The images should be detailed by contrast, not resolution.  This will take a whole lot of thinking.  But the today's picture is more what I am thinking of.

O.K.  I have to go away now.  Sitting here is stressing me out.  There are too many things to do.

Making Things Pretty

"When is Passover?"

"It's the second week of Coachella."

"Coachella is so lame."

"What's Coachella?"

"I love you more."

O.K.  So I didn't know what Coachella was until this morning.  Now I am very disappointed in Q.  Doesn't he go to these things?  Why isn't he writing about it?  Why isn't he letting me know?

"Want to go to Starbucks?"

"No, I'm getting my coffee at McDonald's this week.  I'm saving my money for all the drugs I'll have to buy for Coachella."

"Where are you staying at Coachella?  Are you camping?"

"Ew, no.  I'm staying at the Marriott but I won't wash my hair so it looks like I'm camping."

"Coachella is coming up and I need to save money for my outfits.  Do you know how much it cost me  to look that free-spirited last year?"

People are funny in all their variations.  All of us.  Yesterday, I decided that I needed a cheap, greasy breakfast badly, so Ili and I went to the little greasy spoon up the road.  It is in what is now a hipster part of town.  Next door is a record, book, and cd store.  This particular Saturday, they were having some event.  There were tents in the small parking lot, food trucks, and a line of people that went around the block for about a quarter mile.  I was incredibly lucky and found a parking spot on the street.  We sat at a window overlooking the sidewalk so that we could watch the show.  I asked the waitress what was going on, but she didn't know.  She looked out at the crowd of dirty hipsters with a sneer.  She was just glad they weren't crowding her restaurant, I guess.

They did look like an army of sorts.  There is something standard in the look, fellows all wearing shorts and old t-shirts, many with concert information printed on them.  The gals (what is the gender opposite term for "fellows"?) were a bit more creative, but the fashion was quite odd.

"Where do you get an outfit like that?"

"The Forever 21 outlet, I think."

"They have Forever 21 outlets?  How much cheaper can that clothing get?"

It inspired me.  But we'll get to that.

After breakfast, we went home to do some work.  There is lots of work to do, but things didn't go as planned.  I was going to rent a truck and move all the boards from the torn up deck to the landfill.  But I didn't.  I had a better idea.  There is a new house being built down the street and there are two big haul away dumpsters there.  I thought to pay one of the workers to bring a pickup truck and dump my stuff down there.  Well, I went twice and nobody was there.  So I decided to go pick out the lumber for the new deck at the lumberyard my repairman uses because he gets a big discount over what I would pay somewhere else.  They weren't open on Saturdays, though.  So we decided to go to a nursery and get some jasmine to plant.  Finally something worked out.  Oh what a nursery it was.  I've driven past it for years and years and years and never stopped.  It looks like a wreck.  But inside. . . it is the best nursery I've ever seen.  And so as I picked out the yard stuff, Ili got things for her potted garden--herbs and annuals and perennials and little bits of gardening stuff.

Thrill, fill, and spill.  That is what we had learned.  It sounds so very sexual, but it is the way you plant a pot.  "Thrill" are the tall plants.  "Fill" are plants that do just that, fill the pot.  "Spill" are the ones that fall over the sides of the pot.  You already knew that, I'm sure, but it is the new rule for me in all things.

As we gardened, people would stop and chat.  Oh, there is nothing like seeing a neighbor improve the look of the land.  Everyone is friendly when you are elbow deep in Milorganite, probably because they don't know what its made from.

After planting around fifty Asiatic jasmine plants, we were filthy.  There is nothing like showering after gardening, I think.  And there is nothing like an afternoon cocktail to go with it.

But here is the thing.  As I said earlier, I had been inspired by the hipsters standing in line for so very long to get. . . oh, here is the kicker.  They were in line for Record Day!  They stood in line for an hour to buy vinyl.  Some of the albums, I hear, were special editions.  I don't get it, really, but they seemed to be happy to be all together.  And I was thrilled to see them.  I just don't want to look like them.  I have my whole life, but now, it seems, everyone looks that way.  And so. . . .

I bought new clothing.  Mostly pants.

"I want to look like I'm one of the guys in "Darjeeling Express," I said.

"You'll need to lose weight."

Of course.  I have new dimensions, it seems, in my clothing.  They are not going in the right direction, but what can I do?  I eat pretty well.  I don't snack.

"It's the alcohol."

What I have decided, however, is to be happy.  I'm not going to beat myself up over it.  I have done that my entire life.  Now. . . I'm just doing the Marlon Brando.  My belly is too big, but I'm going to feel good about myself anyway.  And now, I have expensive new pants to make it even better.  Oh, I will mix them with clothing items that will keep me looking like a Brooks Brothers clone.  I will do something.  It was just that crowd.  You know what I mean?

Next year, I'm heading for Coachella.

Intuition and Instinct

But he didn't, at least his writing would make you think not.  But I know what he means.  He liked people fine; he just didn't like being around them.  And I know what he means about that, too.  Loving people without liking them very much.  I've had enough of two things in the recent few weeks--work and people.  It seems, however, that I can avoid neither.

I've been complaining about the work for quite a while, so let me complain about the people for a bit.

Intuition.  You have it, and when it comes to people, you are best to follow it.  Instinct is what Bill Maher is speaking of when he says, "I don't know it for a fact, I just know its true."  Well. . . maybe not, but it could be said of intuition.

I have learned to follow mine, but sometimes the feeling is vague enough that I will go with my desire to be on the wrong side of the feeling.  I'll blame it on the human instinct of wanting to belong to the group.  There are rewards, of course, but they are hierarchical rather than democratic.  That is instinctual, too.  I've been involved with the Bernie Sanders crowd most of my life, and I will say that without reservation.  People always crowd around a leader no matter their politics.

Except for some of us.  We must be genetic mutants, I think.  People don't understand those of us who don't want to be around others, who are more comfortable being alone.

You know.  Like the Unabomber.  No, wait. . . I was thinking more about Buddhist monks.

There is no explaining it, though.  Or rather, I don't wish to spend my time today doing that.  I want to read and listen to music and let my mind wander.  But I won't.  I am going to get dressed now and begin a long day of physical work.  It may be awful, but I do think it will be better than being around people.

The Desires of a Very Busy Man

I want this.  It is not the only thing I want, and it is not the best camera in the world.  It is a good camera that does certain things, and it is a still photography camera minus all the crap that companies have begun putting into them.  It doesn't make videos.  It doesn't have an EVF finder.  It is just like the old film Leicas, only digital.  And because of this, it is lighter in weight and costs much less.

What a great idea.

I don't need it.  I just have to have it.  It is eating at me.

See for yourself (link), (link), and (link).  You will either think me crazy or you will want one, too.

O.K.  You will think me crazy.  Especially considering that I rarely get out to shoot with the cameras I have.  As you know, last weekend I missed the Show or Meat Goat Judging at a distant county fair.  But there is some hope.  I want to take photographs of old circuses and carnivals, but they barely exist.  All you get now are the ones that are made to perform in arenas.  They are laser light shows.  So I decided to Google circuses around the world.  There is an Italian circus that may be o.k.  Years ago, I saw a circus setting up in the distance while riding a bus through Austria.  It was a tent circus of the old sort.  That was the one, the Ur Circus of dreams, the one I despair of ever finding again.  But. . . online, I did find a Mexican circus that was going to be performing in Dallas.  So I wrote to them.  I told them that I wanted to come and photograph behind the scenes, to do a sort of day-in-the-life photo documentary about them.  I forgot about writing them, though, as my life is a mess of things right now.  Yesterday, however, I got a return email from the man in charge, Senior Del Rio.  He didn't say yes, but he didn't say no.  He said he would let me know.

I am thrilled and scared at one and the same time.  Oh. . . how I would need that little Leica M 262.

No I wouldn't.  I would just want to have it.

I don't have much hope, really, that the circus will invite me to come with open access.  They will be thinking, "What is in it for us?"  Let's hope they will realize that I will make loving portraits that will last more than a lifetime.

Oh, there are no animals, though.  Believe it or not, Mexico has recently banned them from circuses.  I know. . . right?  So I am thinking outside the box.  Indonesia?  Borneo?  Maylasia?  The Philippines?  Sumatra or Jakarta?  Surely.

I will research this today.

Meanwhile the house and the factory are eating me alive.  I have a huge meeting today all afternoon.  Tomorrow I must get up, rent a truck, remove all the wood from the old deck and take it to the dump, stop at the lumber yard and pick out the new wood, stop at the nursery and pick up Asiatic jasmine, drop it off at the house, return the truck, then come home and plant the jasmine.  Next week, I must take off from the factory to help rebuild the deck.  Then I must begin scraping the house and the apartment (two houses) and begin to paint.

As you can see, a brand new Leica would be very, very useful.

Spectacular Ending (Regular Season)

They were dancing in the streets last night!  Kobe scored sixty points in his last Mamba dance in the NBA.  Meanwhile, the Golden State Warriors set a new NBA record for most wins in a season.  Give me a drink and let's get to partying.

People want to be distracted from the horrors of the everyday world.  There are many.

I got two rolls of film back from processing yesterday.  I was anxious to see the images, of course.  Out of the twenty-four, one of them is almost O.K.  I can't seem to make an interesting picture any more.  I am not sure what is wrong.  I have improved technically.  I mean I can make decent exposures and I am able to approach strangers pretty well now.  Beyond that, though. . . there is little.  I have some ideas, but it all takes a lot of work, and I already have a lot of work.  I miss the studio terribly, but I have to get over it.  This is the new reality.  Achieve or be forgotten.

I have been mostly forgotten now.  As it should be.

If I were to guess, I'd say that this picture was taken the day the Chicago Bulls set the old NBA record for most wins in a season in the late '90s.  It must be in our genetic composition.  People do much the same thing when they see a camera.  The kid didn't even need a beer.  Probably.  Maybe.

I don't know.

The Weirdness

I found an old roll of film in one of my drawers.  I had no idea what it was.  It was an old Kodak Max color film, the cheapest they made, with 24 exposures.  I wondered if I had bought this at a drugstore years ago, shot it in one of my cheap cameras, and then just forgot about it.  I wondered about all the things that might be on the film when I took it in to be developed.  I wanted to cover myself.

"I found this roll of film.  No idea what might be on it.  He-he.  Let's just give it a go, eh?"

Jesus.  I just didn't want to get arrested.

When I got the film back, there were only about ten pictures exposed.  It was some sort of family outing.  I don't know whose family it is.  How did I come into possession of this roll?  I loved this picture, of course.  I wish I could find more rolls of undeveloped film.  If you have any, send them to me.  I'm up for surprises.  I love the look of this scanned film.  It is so much different than digital.  It has a "quality."  Filmic, I guess.

The house was pressure washed yesterday by my house repairman.  It looks as I thought.  It looks like I am going to have to paint.  There is no end to the work, the expense, the suffering.  There is no getting even.  This is not a zero sum game.  I am always in the hole.  The game is rigged so that the house always wins.

Trump is right, of course.  The political process is rigged, too.  And if Bernie Sanders doesn't win the nomination, a republican will be in the White House.  Hillary doesn't have a chance.  It is a fascinating circus car, but we are watching it drive all of us over the cliff.

Selavy.

But damn--I love the weirdness of this picture.

A Writer

It's not true.  I've tried it.  You can't be sober either, though.  There is a careful balance you must maintain.  Drunks are bad.  Tea-totlers, too.  And never trust someone who does too many drugs.  The life of the creative artist must be well-balanced.  It is hard.  It is really, really hard.

I guess the hating yourself part isn't necessary, either.  It makes for a very different kind of literature, though.  I think writers are people who forgive themselves.

On second or third thought, I don't agree with this cartoon at all.  But I needed a graphic today.  I have been too busy for photography.  It is going on four months since I had a studio now.  It is becoming a fading memory.  I used to think. . . it doesn't matter now what it was I thought.  Here is the reality of it all.  I don't make many pictures any more.  It is the thing I have to live with now.

Although I have another lens waiting for me at the post office.  And that is where I must file my tax extension today.  I almost forgot.  I am the least practical man I know.  Person.  I am the least practical person.

I did not sleep last night.  I had a bad belly and dark, terrible nightmares.  Not nightmares.  End of life things.  Merle Haggard dreams.  I blame it on many things.  I have reached an age where everyone is fat.  It is awful.  I am fat.  I used to have a cute butt.  It looked like two apples on a countertop.  Now it looks like two apples in a plastic bag.  I think this all started yesterday at the gym when I did squats in front of a mirror.  I usually squat on a Smith machine now to save my back, and there is no mirror in front of the Smith machine.  When I squatted in front of the mirror, the view was shocking.  I had no idea.  The image haunts me still.  It certainly did last night.  I had the end of life squat horrors.  Big belly, swizzle stick legs.  I shouldn't do them any more.  I don't look like that just walking around.  It is when I get into that low squat position.  Jesus.  What happened?

And so I will have to function on little sleep today.  Q says he has quit drinking and is losing weight.  Maybe that is my only option.  I guess my writing will suffer though.  You see?  I have become a writer after all.

Sh*t, P*ss, F*ck

Yesterday was as pretty as the last one and the one before that, but the temperature is creeping up--just enough to remind you that it will be cranky hot soon.  And I was cranky yesterday.  It was Sunday, but it was also another working day.  I got up and put on my working clothes and went out to begin again.  Shovel and hoe and rake and wheelbarrow.  And gloves.  Good leather ones, too, brand new.  My tender hands were more tender than the day before, though, and it wasn't long before the hot spot inside my right thumb had become a blister and an even briefer time before that blister broke.

These are not cowboy hands.

I shoveled dirt in an effort to make room for the deck frame.  But there were thick roots and electrical wires and irrigation pipes and gas lines to unearth.  I wanted to be a good worker, but I needed a foreman badly.  What was I doing?  I loosened the dirt and dug around things and filled the wheelbarrow and moved the dirt to the bed I had dug up for jasmine.  Over and over again.  And soon, I had exhausted my possibilities.  After an hour and a half, I stood looking at my work uncertain if I had done the right thing.  The place was a mess.  I began to feel that sinking feeling.  Anxious despair.

And so I said fuck it.  "Let's go to brunch," I said.  "We'll go downtown."  I invited my friend and hopped into the shower and got clean again.  I looked out over the mess.  I wanted someone to come and fix it.  I didn't want to be a cowboy any more.

Downtown was crowded, and the little restaurant where we were going was packed.  Suddenly, though, there were three seats at the bar.  My friend started to take them but he let another fellow say he had been waiting on them.  He sat down alone in the middle seat.  I watched him for a bit as we put our names in for seating, but that was going to be an impossibly long wait and I was hungry and anxious and getting depressed and angry.  Ili was wandering around somewhere outside and my friend was talking to someone and I felt everything in me tightening.  It had to come out.  I walked up to where the fellow was sitting in the middle seat at the bar.

"Are you alone?"

He was a young guy, and he turned to me with his cool haircut and arrogant way and said, "No, my friend is parking the car."

"What?!!  He's not here????  Fuck that!!!  I'm here," and I took the stool next to him and asked him to move down.  I thought I had three seats and I asked the fellow two seats down if he was getting ready to leave.  He looked at me timidly and said no, his buddy was sitting there.  He had just gone to the bathroom.

I had gotten myself into a silly jam where I was just an angry asshole.  Fortunately, my friend and Ili were ready to give up and try someplace else anyway.  I was glad to get out of the jam, but it left me in an even fouler mood.

We walked to the lake with the big fountain through the Farmer's Market that we often attend.  I'd never seen so many people there before.  It was like a festival, the sun shining, people playing frisbee and hula-hoop, dogs running, people eating and drinking.  And I hadn't brought a single camera.  Ili wanted some sugar cane juice which I drank as well, but it was too much and I was getting more than jittery.  I needed food.

On we walked, into the crowd, and I headed toward the first restaurant I saw.  The sign said "World of Beer."  Surely they had food.  We headed in.  And they did.  We got a table by the lake, me sullen and silent.  I watched the crowd walk by.  It looked like Disney World, not like the cool, hip crowd that we had seen before.

It was awful, truly.  The view was grand, but the place was run by hipster drug addicts with tattoos and nose hoops and sallow skin and mouths that could never smile sincerely.  The waitress hated us for sure.  Ili asked her to wipe the table which seemed to really too much to have asked.

"She sure is in a bad mood," Ili said.

"I don't think she likes you," said my friend.

The food came.  I had breakfast tacos.  The eggs were cold.  Not room temperature but cold like they'd been in a refrigerator.  Everything was as it seemed.

I was glad to get home.  I stripped off my clothes on a perfect day and lay on the bed.  Two hours later I had to get up to market for dinner.  My mother was coming for steaks.  But I never woke up.  I bought the steaks, bought the potatoes, bought the asparagus, but I was still in some bad, bad dream.  I stumbled through dinner preparations and when my mother came over, I opened the wine.  I walked her around to show her all the work I had done.  Then I put on the steaks.  Nothing.  I was out of gas.  I mean literally.  Shit, fuck, piss.  I got into the car and drove to the grocery store.  I had to buy a tank to get the gas.  $55.00.  Twenty minutes later, I had the grill ablaze.  I put on the steaks and came into the house to chat.  In a bit, Ili and I went to look at the steaks.  She told me to move them, that she didn't want hers charred by the flame.  I flipped them and we went back into the house.  Chat chat chat.  I looked out the window to see the entire grill on fire, flames flaring, smoke pouring.

I had ruined the steaks.  And everything else, too.  We ate the salad my mother had brought and some of the vegetables.  Ili made some cheese and crackers.  They went well with the wine.  I ate some of the ruined steak.

It was the end of a rotten day.

I look around this morning at the mess outside.  The house repairman just called and asked me what I had gotten done.  Then he told me the bad news.  He had shingles.  I can see how this is going.  I'll be walking through the torn up dirt for weeks.

I want things to be beautiful again, but this is how it goes.  The humidity rises, the temperature grows, but the pruned back plants refuse to grow.  There is lumber to order and plants to buy, but it is back to the factory for me.  I read today that the rich live fifteen years longer than do the poor.  I know why.  I want to just pay to have all this done.  That is what the rich do, and they don't have to fret about their checkbooks.  It is the fretting and the dealing with seating in the hullabaloo of life that is the killer.  Shit piss fuck.  I really burned those steaks.

Old Cowhand

These are two photographs from Nathalie Roze that have been laying about unframed for years.  I will correct that mistake soon.  They are lovely and must have a place.  I am anxious to hang them.

I haven't anything of my own to post this morning because I am a working man.  I spent yesterday digging dirt and hauling it in a wheelbarrow.  I alternated that with hoeing a huge Asiatic jasmine bed that had been corrupted by another vine.  The other vine has big, potato-like structures on its roots that are deep underground.  If you don't get these, the vine grows back.  And so I raked and hoed and dug deep into the bed with an almost maniacal pleasure, like rousting terrorists in your own home town.

It was a most perfect day, and as I worked, people would pass and tell me how lovely a day it was.

"Yes," I would say, "for lying around the pool with a drink with a drink in your hand."

But in truth, it was a perfect day for working outside, too, as it was cool and dry and there wasn't a chance of heatstroke.  And so I worked through the day while Ili cleaned up the veranda, cutting vines and freeing the potted palms from their vegetable jailhouse.  After about five hours of building cowboy muscle, Ili fixed some lunch and I drank half a gallon of Gatorade.  Most people say they can't stand the stuff, but some people must like if for the grocery stores have shelves of the stuff.  I could never have drunk that much water, so it was perfect.

After lunch, a trip to the nursery to buy something that would kill off the remaining roots of any weeds that might sully my freshly turned bed.  Jesus.  The two women working the counter were no help at all.  Oh, I'm sure they were coolio outside the nursery with their shaved heads and nose rings and tats and all, but they were useless as vegetable advisors.  And so, with a wink of an eye, I dismissed their ill-guided advice and Ili chose some perennials for the flower pots.

After that, all the work was out of me.  We showered and headed to Grit City for an party in the large one acre garden of her landlords.  It was a themed party.  1920s.  All I had to approximate that was some seersucker pants.  Ili matched me with a seersucker dress.

In her treehouse apartment that is so quiet and comfortable, I sat on the couch and read to the iTunes jazz station she had made, the doors and windows open to allow the cool breeze.  As she prepared hors d'oeuvres, I read "Sleeping with Bad Boys: A Juicy Tell-All of New York in the 1950s and 1960s" by Alice Denham.  The book is real good fun.  I drank a Campari, vermouth and soda with lime to keep my head on straight, and the late afternoon drifted by as it should, gently and gorgeously.  At dusk, we opened champagne and strolled downstairs to the garden with a plate full of cantaloupe and prosciutto and cheese bites on toothpicks.

We were definitely underdressed.  Her landlords have been retired for twenty years and are fireplugs whose single goal in life, it seems, is to make it aesthetic.  Their guests were done up in vintage clothing that was so real you could imagine yourself to have fallen back in time.  The gardens and hors d'oeuvres and drinks were strategically placed around the grounds.  The landlords favored gins and tonics, but our champagne went quickly.  Speakers were discretely placed around the grounds and music from the '20s softly filled the air.  I thought of my pitiful attempts of the afternoon, of how much work I still needed to do, of how much more it would take to emulate the gardens in which I sat.

Someone offered me a cigar.  The night drifted away. . . .

This morning I look out at the half-finished digging that I know I must go out and finish today.  I am missing the far county fair, missing the Goat Meat and Show competition, missing the Miss County Fair Beauty Pageant.  But, for a would-be-cowboy, the work is never done.  I've got cows to herd and bulls to brand and fences to mend.  The day will be a carbon copy of the last, and tonight I will cook steaks for family and friends.  It will be cool enough to have a fire in the fire pit just the way real cowboys do it.  And so, while there are no new pictures being produced, I'm an old cowhand. . . .

And tomorrow. . . it is back to the factory.

Cowboy Happy

I left the factory early yesterday and came home to tear up my deck.  When I got there, Ili already had taken about half of it up.  She said she liked doing such things.  Destruction is fun, I guess.  But she had a point.  She said I live in my head too much and am not good at getting started in the physical world.  She said I would have stood around and fretted for way too long, so she started so that I wouldn't have to think and could just begin working.

She is right.

My buddy was right behind me, and when he got there, we began to take the sixteen foot 2x6s and cut them into thirds.  It made quite a pile of wood.  Ili had taken up most of the easy stuff that was beginning to rot, so I got the crow bar to start ripping up the more solid wood.  Jesus, my cowboy muscles are gone.  Stuff like that is a lot different than going to the gym.  Eventually, though, we got everything done.  Sort of.  I realized that I was going to need to dig out the dirt that had accumulated under the deck over the twenty-five or so years it had been there.  Six inches, I thought, as that would be the depth of the framing boards.  I looked at my buddy.

"That's a lot of work," I said.

He grinned.  "I'd guess it will take about ten hours."  He wasn't offering.  If it was ten hours for somebody else, it would be twenty for me.

"Maybe I should get somebody with a Bobcat to do it."

He thought that was a viable idea.  But I thought about it more and decided I needed to do it myself.  My thinking was that I had gotten too soft and that this would toughen me up a bit.  I called my house repair guy to come take a look and tell me if my thinking was right.  I hoped not.

My thinking was right.  Six inches.

I looked out the window at the carnage this morning and thought about that.  My back hurt.  My shoulders hurt.  $200/hour.  That is what my friend guessed a Bobcat would cost.  WTF?  I can dig, but I'll bet I only go down four inches.  I'll fuck something up for sure.  I mean, absolutely my back, but something outside me as well.

I think I'll go out in a bit and give it a try.

The day was a perfect one, and when the deck was busted up and the wood neatly stacked, we sat in chairs in the yard under the shade of the newly trimmed trees.  We decided on an early dinner at my favorite Italian restaurant.

There is a fair in a distant county.  Today they are having the goat competition.   There are two categories--Show and Meat.  I want to go photograph that.  All my friends are curious about "Show and Meat."  I am, too.

But I think the digging will have to take precedent.  Tomorrow they have the County Fair Beauty Contest.  I'm not kidding.  I don't think I'll get to go to that one, either.  Dinner with mother, etc.  I'm missing all the opportunities, but isn't that what life's about?  Missed opportunities?  That is what I am feeling, anyway.  The weather is the most perfect in history, but I have turned glum.  But that is how it is, sometimes.  You can't control the weather.  You can't control your moods.  Right?  I will try, but this glumness seems to be too deeply embedded to think away.  Mostly I can just change my mind, but I don't know this time.  That is why I will dig.  Maybe digging will be just the thing for it.  I will realize how much better life is when you don't have to dig and haul dirt.

That is what I am hoping, at least.  There should be some reward for busting your hump.  I'm hoping to be as happy as a cowboy.  I mean. . . Show and Meat.  I know which one I am.

The Theorist

It's just not as easy to produce a film image a day.  There is no way I'll ever be able to do it, I think.  Out of a roll of film, there might be one or two worth processing (and yet, I usually do more).  But I think I'm starting to get a look I like with the Hasselblad.  That was "Part One."  Now I have to work on "Part Two."  No, maybe "Part Three."  "Part One" was probably having the chutzpah to approach strangers on the street.  "Part Two" was developing the look.  "Part Three" will be working with people in a more intimate way.  People want to smile when you point a camera at them.  I must let them, then ask them to quit it.  I can't have all these pictures of smiling people.  This will be the bigger challenge.

I like the picture, though.  Enough, anyway.

I've picked a fight with a fellow writing his dissertation.  He is a theorist and smarter than I am and certainly more current in his reading of critical theory.  He is a theorist for sure.  I picked this fight because I know I am not prepared to win it with him.  I get him angry and then he embarrasses me because I am under-informed and slow to remember what I once knew.  He is younger and prouder than I, so it is a fun fight for me.  I gave him my spiel about artists and critics, the one I touched on here a couple days ago, that critics and theorists will be revised but art will last.  He tore me apart on that one.  It hurt, but I am thinking.  He says that theorists are as important and as long lasting as artists.  He pointed to Aristotle.  He said that like art, there is the anxiety of influence, that new theorists borrow from and revise their parents.  Yes, he may be correct.  My line of thinking last night was that he only thinks about the social and political realms of art, that he is uncomfortable with the personal functions of art.  I thought to bring this up, to discuss aesthetics.

That is a difficult thing to do,

Theory and praxis.

Today I will put together a portmanteau of phrases most used by theorists.  What I am hoping to find is that they are more suited to criticism of capitalist production than to art, that it is like using the language of business to talk about education.  I don't want to spend a lot of time doing this, though.  Only enough to convince myself to go in and have my ass kicked again.

It is useful to me only in the way it makes me think about the pictures I take.  I want to make certain I am doing the wrong thing.  That is the only way I will feel closer to being justified.  I want to get as far away from producing the art of the Soviet era as possible.  Ideology is terrible.  I believe the truth of that is illustrated by looking at the lives of theorists.  They all have deep, dark closets where they keep their secrets.  Their lives most often run counter to their ideologies.  I want to shout that ideology is a cover up for personal foibles.  And here is where aesthetics are important.  Maybe.  I mean Foucault liked getting pooped on by a fellow in a rubber mask, right?  Those were important aesthetics to him. Derrida was a cocksman.  And ooo that Betty Freidan.  Again, maybe.  I'm not certain, but, as Bill Maher says, "I don't know it for a fact, I just know it's true."

I'll work on these things and get back to you.  I'm sure you don't look forward to that, but I feel free to write like this on days when the picture might be pleasant enough if not redemptive.

I Like to Take photos, but I’m Not a Bad Person

I go to bed or I wake up thinking that I am going to write about one thing, then I read the morning news and it is all gone.  I should do two posts this morning, one about what I read, and one that continues the topic I have been writing about the past couple of days.  I wanted to talk about the difference between the street photographs of Gary Winogrand and Vivian Maier.  I had gone out shooting with my 35mm Leica one day and then had taken only my medium format Hasselblad the next.  It is quite a contrast in styles, and I wanted to speak about that.

But that's not going to happen today.

This image was banned from being shown in a Gucci ad in Britain because the model is too thin.

LONDON — The model in the Gucci ad is young and waiflike, her frail body draped in a geometric-pattern dress as she leans back in front of a wall painted with a tree branch that appears to mimic the angle of her silhouette.
On Wednesday, the Advertising Standards Authority of Britain ruled that the ad was “irresponsible” and that the model looked “unhealthily thin,” fanning a perennial debate in the fashion industry over when thin is too thin.
The regulator said that the way the woman in the image had posed elongated her torso and accentuated her waist, so that it appeared to be very small. It said her “somber facial expression and dark makeup, particularly around her eyes, made her face look gaunt.” It said the offending image — a still photograph of the model that appeared in an online video posted on the website of The Times of London in December — should not appear again in its current form (source).

I didn't really care much for the photograph until I read that.  Now it is my favorite photo of the day.  I like that the regulator had such an eye for art.  His description of why it couldn't be shown reveals a truly critical eye.  I think he's done more to bring back heroin chic than anyone has in a very long time.  He's like the cop who tells you if you smoke marijuana you'll turn into a pumpkin.  It is more difficult to be thin than to be fat--trust me--so thin will always carry more weight, so to speak.

A friend sent me an article from Esquire magazine last night about the death of Merle Haggard, then I read about it all over the news this morning.  He was 79.  That's crazy.  I mean, you can eat a Mediterranean diet and drink your own urine and not live that long.  I imagine that Keith Richards is grieving more than most of us today.  I wonder if they were pals?

But the top story by far was this one.

Las Vegas in the 1950s and ’60s had the Rat Pack. In Los Angeles in the ’80s there was the Brat Pack. Now, New York has become home base to a young, wealthy and itinerant group that one may think of as the Snap Pack. For them, taking photos and videos for Instagram and Snapchat is not a way to memorialize a night out. It’s the night’s main event.

And what a crew they are--Robert Kennedy Jr.'s daughter, the granddaughter of Matisse, another Hilton. . . and more!

Ms. Matisse, who said she is a method actor — “it’s my passion” — graduated in 2015 from New York University, where she studied “the self and other identities,” she said, “the Eastern psychology of ourselves and Buddhism and how the East is so much different from the West and it’s all very interconnected.”

I am too old to feel challenged by them at all.  I get a big kick out of them, just as I did Paris Hilton before them.  Theorists and critics keep trying to put an end to these sort of shenanigans, but they can't.  It is in the blood, so to speak.  But criticism is the coinage of theory, and a person has to make a living, right?  I know my younger friends, those from the hipster generation, will feel deeply challenged by the Snap Pack, and will be their greatest critics.  It is a terrible thing when you realize you and your friends didn't win anything.  I know.  It happened to me long, long ago.  Now I can simply watch the show.  And what a show it is.

Here is my favorite quote from the article:

“I like to take photos,” he said, “but I’m not a bad person.”

 Before appearing on the show, Mr. Warren takes a group photo with his friends/models, from left, Ms. Benitez, Ms. Kennedy, Ms. Matisse and Alexa Greenfield. “I party and I have fun,” Mr. Warren said, “but I’m doing something serious.” 

And finally. . . this:

Gay Talese Goes Through the Twitter Wringer

Asked which ‘women who write’ had inspired him, the 84-year-old nonfiction writer said, ‘None.’ That’s when he started trending (source). 

That, my friends, is a promising start to a day that is trending toward missing The Donald.  People are happy.  They will get Cruz instead of Trump.  I'm checking out.  I'm going to do my best to keep up with the Snap Pack.