All's Hallow Again

Halloween. We are a couple days short of the full moon, but it should be scary enough for the kids. Jack'o'lanterns cut, costumes sewn. OK. Bought at Party City or one of its iterations. Maybe the Jack-o-lantern is plastic. And maybe the kids won't be allowed to trick or treat in the streets. Still, that's a real moon.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

from Macbeth

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

Enter the three Witches.

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

(I've copied this from PotW.org)

Rumble in the Jungle

I watched "The Rumble in the Jungle" last night on ESPN, the Ali/Foreman fight in Zaire. 1974. Different world. Ali meant so much then. Always excited us. His antics look silly now, his pathological egoism, his naive puns. But there was a sweetness to him, too. He was offered a teaching position at Oxford. Never could understand that one. Didn't know what Islam was then except for the big, angry-looking men who guarded Elijah Muhammed. Ali changed us. Most famous man to ever walk the planet until Michael Jackson. Old at thirty-two, we couldn't believe he would beat Foreman's size and strength until he stepped into the ring. Ali was big, almost as big as Foreman. Ali cheated, fought dirty, pulled on Foreman's neck, put him in headlocks. He never quit talking, fighting only the last thirty seconds of every round. Foreman exhausted, Ali caught him, knocked him to the ground. It should have been the end of Ali's fighting career. But history teaches us. Over and over again, we hang around too long, too enamored of the money, the spotlight, even us who never had it. We all keep waiting for the miracle.

Howl

I've been invited to a Halloween party for adults. It is a costume party. Last year people were mad at me for not dressing up. I can barely get dressed for work. I don't want to dress up for Halloween. I think it is silly. I also find it ironic since I like costumes so much. I love the idea of the Medievals doing it in connection/rebellion with The Church, but of course they look dressed up in costumes to me on any given day. I like Halloween for kids. I remember what it felt like to go door to door on those nights, the sense of mystery and freedom. I don't know what I will do. I know that I am expected to do better. I will be compromising myself, though, if I go through with it. I keep asking myself, "What is wrong with people," but they are surely asking the same thing about me.

Somehow, I've let time best me. It is inevitable, I know, but I was determined not to let it happen voluntarily. I'm broken up pretty badly all over from trying not to allow it to happen, trying to keep a body that is twenty-something all my life. I hurt. And without my realizing it, I've let myself become less and less active. Part of that is the loss of athletic friends, not to death, but to the other thing. No one calls me up for basketball now. They don't play. The other part is that my lifetime gym closed down, the steroid gym full of criminals and miscreants, most of whom had committed horrible crimes against society or nature. It has been gone for several years, and I have been working out at the Y. Everyone is nice there. It is awful.

This month, I joined a kickboxing gym. I don't know how I am doing it, but I go twice a week and train with people almost half my age. There are some rough boys and girls there, and some of them don't like me much. I've gotten hurt a couple times, physically and emotionally. It is good for me. "The problem in this country," I am fond of saying, "is that most people don't worry about taking a beating. You act differently if you know that someone might knock you out." It is a horrible thing to say in most circles, I know. But it is true, I think. For my father's generation, it was different, and they acted with more caution in public than people do now. So did kids. In my neighborhood, anyone's father would assault you for bad behavior, and then you'd get a beating when you got home, too, so we didn't act up in front of adults.

The other night, a fellow who is boxing for the championship belt of some kickboxing association in an arena famous for its fights (oh, I'm not naming it, you'd look it up) in January made a remark about me at the gym. It was not right nor fair, and I wanted to complain since I am almost twice his age and don't think I'm doing badly in picking up the sport. But I didn't complain. I thought, "I'll take that one." Wisely. Again, I think it is good for me. It puts things in perspective.

But it also makes me realize what happens to us in time. And so sitting at home over dinner, I told the story to my friend who happily reminded me that when we first started going out, we would be sitting at dinner when suddenly I would say, "That fucker is giving me the stink-eye," and then I would say something that would escalate the situation. I laughed to remember it. Yes, it was true, but I don't think about those things any more. I got the feeling, though, that my friend would like to see me take a beating just for fun. Maybe not, but there was a little too much glee in my friend's voice.

It made me realize that I don't feel the same drive, the same strength and energy, the same something that I felt not so long ago. What to do?

But I've always loved Hemingway's dictum in "The Garden of Eden" when the protagonist's girlfriend is depressed because she realizes that one day she will die. He tells her the trick is not to let it happen until it happens. Best advice I've ever heard.

Some people lose their beauty. Some their virility. It is worse for those who had it in abundance, I think, less so for those long-lived octogenarians whose lives were never about any of that. I'm thinking of that horrible genius George Bernard Shaw. But he taught me something about The Life Force, and that is the thing, isn't it? To stay connected to that? There is a glory and a victory there, in connecting to that great fountain of life that runs through the cosmos.

I will continue going to the kickboxing gym through the end of the month at least. But they want members to sign a year's contract, and I am not willing to do that. As soon as I do, I will get hurt and not be able to continue, so Friday, I will have to try to negotiate a deal. I won't tell him any of this, of course. I will simply say I have some money in my pocket and it could be his if he is willing to deal. Maybe he wants my money enough to keep me around for more abuse.

Mysteries

The film is a bit different than the other Polaroid I have been working with, but I am taking what I can get right now. Hence, the look is a bit different, too. If I can only figure out the Fuji film and invent a process for mucking it up the right way, I will be in business. Who knows, though. I will not count on it until it happens.

While the film lasts, I want to work on a circus series--jugglers, trapeze artists, animal trainers, clowns--and I need vintage costumes. If you have any leads on that, let me know. I'll give you a print if it works out.

Young Sherlock here was preparing for his birthday party. It is to have a Holmes theme. I will need to provide the mystery that his young guests will be challenged to solve. It is to be a dinner party with clues, surprises, rewards. A tall order.

All the video rental stores in my town have closed. If you want a video immediately now, you haven't many choices. You can go to the big red box at the grocery store and rent one for a dollar, but I've tried twice and it worked neither time. There used to be great little video stores here that held all sorts of old and obscure movies, and it was always fine to walk in drunk and pick up something. But these have gone the way of the card catalogue at the library. Even the libraries are shrinking their book collections as they go more and more online. I like the digital world fine, don't get me wrong. It is a great tool, a great enhancement. But I am going to miss the muzzy loveliness of a video shop and the immediate gratification of getting something I didn't know I wanted on the spot. Such things can change your life.

Ed Ross Redux

Ed Ross Redux

Ed Ross

I'm envious of Ed Ross. He makes ambrotypes and tintypes and I don't. It is a difficult processes and the only way to get good at it is to do it again and again. And that is what Ed is doing.

I wanted to meet Ed this summer while I was in San Francisco to pick his brain about the process. I learned to make wet plate images the summer before, but in the process of putting together all the chemicals and cameras and lenses and paraphernalia. . . well, I just didn't.

But every time I see one of Ed's images, I am driven wild with Envy (and, perhaps, some other of the Deadly Sins as well). He has a penchant for costuming and minimal sets that reminds me of the photos I want to take.

I asked Ed if I could link him here, and he graciously obliged. You can get to his blog by clicking here. I hope you enjoy his images as much as I do.

Hero

Yesterday was the Carnival Hangover. It wasn't just the carnival, of course. The day was full from start to finish. It was Saturday, and it was beautiful. We bought new gloves and baseballs and bats and then had lunch at an outdoor cafe in my own hometown, then bought toys at the new toy store that a friend has opened up. It is a hit, and the fellow in the photos here has the owner's cell phone number, so he is hardwired. At school, he can tell them that he knows The Man. He can hook a buddy up. And of course the kid is working on a discount.

The Kid wanted to know if I could make a piece of paper catch on fire with a magnifying glass, so I showed him, staring at the concentrated rays on the paper trying to keep it in focus. The sun was bright and the paper started to smoke to the joy of the Kid, and then it burst into flame. Hero, I thought to myself. Very memorable, but when we walked away, I saw pink dots painted all over the sidewalk. Odd. Then I noticed they all looked the same. When we went inside, I saw them, too, dotting everything. I realized it was my retina and tried not to panic. It took a long, worried ten minutes for my eyes to get normal, after which I thought it time to celebrate. Tell the kids not to look at the focused rays of light.

We played together in a shadeless field with the new balls and bats and gloves. It has been a long time for me, and I hobbled after grounders bending my bad back and painful knees, throwing with a shoulder that isn't held together by anything after a mountain accident, three tears in the rotator cuff, a ruptured bursa, fenestrated ligaments, and a labrum that looks like a torn flag. Hero, I thought. Broken Hero.

At the carnival, the mother and I took turns going on the rides with the boy, finally both too sick to continue, so he decided to ride himself. Head twirling, eating food on dirty tables surrounded by the horde.

And that night, a Halloween movie, the beer and the spirits conspiring.

Sunday's plans were a wash. I think it was a bug. Even my skin felt sore. It could have been anything, the sun and the beer and the baseball and the rides. But the dirty tables and the food prepared in carnival tents surely had a hand in it.

It was a day full of sunshine and adventure, though, the sort that burns its way into memory when you are nine, shaping your idea of days in later years, everything big and bright and beautiful, mornings full of intimate toy stores, afternoons in endless green fields, twilight filled with the swirl of lights and the rapturous cacophony, spinning through space 'round and 'round, then the falling darkness, walking to the car with the two new fish you've already named. At home, everyone on the couch to watch a movie.

Hero, I'm still thinking. Hero.

Catholic Carnival

Many years ago, I went to the Fall Festival at the Catholic Church with some friends of mine, brothers from a deviously wholesome family of Northern Italians. I went because I liked the boys and because I had nothing else to do. I expected a small affair with a few game booths and a table where the fried chicken and whipped potatoes were dispensed. That had been my experience with church related activities all my life, so I could not understand their enthusiasm for going. But heck, friends are friends, even if they are corny and like to spend their evenings playing Pictionary.

But I was wrong. What I remember now is just the swirl of sensation. A purple sky. Carnival rides, games of chance, a jazz band playing on a large stage in the distance, the lights of a giant Ferris Wheel hovering over the huge crowd, churchgoers carrying plastic cups of beer. I'd never imagined a church could be like this, my own being a dull, desultory duty of monthly fasts and boring testimonials of loving Jesus Our Lord. I have to admit, I was a little worried, this mixing in of foolishness with religion, but I was swallowed up in the raucous, medieval folly of it all.

By chance, I was driving by this particular Catholic Church on Friday and saw the lights and the streaming crowd, and I thought to go again. It was no disappointment. We rode rides until we were ready to puke, then drank beer and ate lobster (yes, lobster!) and shrimp and won stuffed animals and two goldfish (Bob and Dash) until we were too tired to go on.

Catholics. I can't understand why my parents didn't opt for that.

Maier Update

(Self-portrait--Maier's, not mine)

I knew that this Maier thing was going to be huge. But I feel a bit of a dupe for posting what I did about her. I gave you the information that was out there, but it has changed. Just to set the record straight, I must report what is on John Maloof's blog today. He talked to two of the three children for whom Vivian Maier was nanny. It turns out that Maier came to the United States in the '30s, not the 50's, and was a Catholic, not a Jew. She was a Socialist, a Feminist, and she was enamored of films which is where she learned English. Maloof reports that, "She wore a men's jacket, men's shoes and a large hat most of the time. She was constantly taking pictures, which she didn't so anyone."

He also says he has a book deal in the works.

I need to start going to antique auctions.

The Crack Up

Each day, I think not to post, but something leads me on. Vanity? I doubt it. That vanished a while ago. It is a hope, I think, that one day it will get better. Man's Fate. Man's Hope.

"Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work -- the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside -- the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don’t show their effect all at once. There is another sort of blow that comes from within -- that you don’t feel until it’s too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again. The first sort of breakage seems to happen quick -- the second kind happens almost without your knowing it but is realized suddenly indeed."

(F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Crack-Up")

Vivian Maier

When I opened my email VERY early yesterday morning (it may have qualified as the night before), I had a query from Rhonda Prince about a photographic matter. Her email led me to a website that I perused for a while. Then I came to this and I was had (does anyone still say such a thing?). Nothing in recent memory has had the impact on me that the story and photos of Vivian Maier. John Maloof who discovered her work tells us this:

"I acquired Vivian's negatives while at a furniture and antique auction. From what I know, the auction house acquired her belongings from her storage locker that was sold off due to delinquent payments. I didn't know what 'street photography' was when I purchased them."

He says that approximately 30-40,000 developed negatives and about 10-15,000 negatives still waiting to be processed were in the boxes he purchased. He is now making the images public on the website he has made to display her work.

From what he could find out, she was a Jew from France who suffered through World War II then made her way to the United States in the 1950's. From that time through the 1970's, she took to the street with her camera and made the heartbreakingly beautiful photographs that Maloof purchased.

Go to the website and read the rest of the story. That Ms. Maier made such a considerable visual document of American society without recognition or obvious artistic support for so many years is astonishing. Surely her work will find its way into museum collections where it will take its place in the pantheon beside the photographs of Robert Frank and Diane Arbus. Go. Look. Be amazed. Tell a friend.

I wrote to Mr. Maloof right away and asked if I could use a few of the images from his site to make my post. He graciously wrote back immediately and gave his permission. His is an active site to which I will return each day in order to watch this mystery unfold. Thanks, Rhonda, for pointing me toward this incredible story, and thank you Mr. Maloof for presenting us all with this revelation.

Air Dream

This used to be the dream. A car and a home to live in anywhere you wanted. See America First. That Dream is like this old Airstream now. It's kind of taken a beating. You need a lot of open highway, a lot of land, and a lot of gas. I'm not sure that hybrids can bring it all back. I like the visual metaphor, though. This was nothing more than a test shot with a new camera that didn't seem to be working. I walked around the streets surrounding the camera shop and stumbled upon this in the parking lot behind the office of a dentist with an Indian name. East, not west.

I really wish there had been a carnie-looking fellow sitting on those cement blocks. Or anybody, for that matter. But, then again. . . .

Dissipate

I've run out of photos again. Not run out, exactly. I have more of the Polaroid series I could scan. For that matter, I have about a hundred Polaroid images from the "Postcards from Nowhere" series I could post, but I feel repetitious. I post close to four hundred images a year, I think. At least three hundred and fifty. Coming up with those is difficult. No, it is not difficult to come up with the images, it is difficult to represent myself in photos that many times a year. Maybe tomorrow I'll have something new, either that, or I will give in and post another shot from a series I've posted before. But I keep thinking, if I only posted an image a week. . . .

* * * * *

I got back to a town with a hangover. Halloween had been everything it was hoped. Now, everything looked beat, used up. Decorations were torn and tattered. Plastic cups littered corners and curbs. The energy was gone. And maybe that was the idea. Now it was time to study, time to prepare for the hard work that lay ahead in November. Halloween had been a catharsis, of sorts. The madness had dissipated.

The next week, I got a notice that the apartment complex in which I was living had been sold to the university and that no leases would be renewed when they expired. I had signed for only the term, so after Christmas, I would have to find a new place to live. Mick and his roommates were in the same situation.

"What are you going to do?" I asked him.

"I don't know. I don't want to live with these guys any more. You want to get a place together?"

I'd never had a roommate before, and I wasn't certain how I liked the idea, but I said, "Sure, I guess. You have any ideas?"

"I don't know. I'd like to live out toward the country, maybe. The rents are cheap."

And so it was decided. We'd look for a place away from town.

This

The town was gripped by a frenetic madness. Halloween in a university town. What could be wilder? Parties were planned, costumes arranged. Everyone talked about the outdoor concert on the library lawn, the Plaza of the Americas . "Last year," they said. . . and each person had a crazier story than the one before. Lewd costumes, pornographic behavior. Tens of thousands of people would be there. People would come from all over the state. It was well known that the Marijuana Growers Association would be handing out free dope. It promised to be legendary.

And I would miss it. I was going home to be with Sherri who was helping her two young brother's prepare for their own Halloween. There would be no madness at all. She would put the finishing touches on her brothers costumes and make them up and then pass out candy on her doorstep as the young children in the neighborhood charged up the sidewalk screaming "Trick or Treat! Trick or Treat!" in anticipatory voices laced with sugar and excitement and the desire for dark enchantments. Later, we would watch an old horror movie on TV, "Dracula" or Frakenstein" or "Creature from the Black Lagoon." Even later, we would snuggle together warmly in the dark feeling the wholesome thrill of it all, from our participation in this ritual, of taking our place as adults in the culture taught to us in the schools of our youths, reinforced in movies and magazines and store displays.

Leaving town, though, I had regrets, as if leaving a carnival before dark. I could hear it in the distance as I drove away mile after mile, barely there, imperceptible, that something on the periphery of your consciousness that you cannot quite identify, something harkening, something longed for.

Driving home was always like leaving the enchanted forest anyway, the rolling hills of ranches, farms and countryside flattening and becoming congested with cars and road signs and shopping centers and housing developments, big ideas giving way to small opinions, unfettered joy to routinized conformity.

And then the weekend was over having gone as planned, Sunday morning giving way to Sunday afternoon, me staying on to the last, then driving back, the late afternoon giving way to dusk, the highway beginning to rise and fall, the air to chill, everything beginning to smell sweet again and fresh, already missing Sherri who would be coming next weekend, thinking back and then ahead, back and forth, up and down, the first stars showing in the purple sky streaked red on the horizon, the feeling of freedom engulfing me. "This," I thought without thinking, "this."

Vexed

I woke at four, got up at five. What vexes my predawn hours? I went outside to feel the air. It had cooled, but not enough. I left the door ajar, open to the dark, the cat darting in and out in celebration. The cool air turned cooler, rushing to where I worked (worked?) at my computer. The sun refused to shine until it finally revealed the grayness that hid the tardy dawn. Cool, but not blue. It will be bone-aching weather today. It is eight. I've drunk a pot of coffee, and after I write this, I will find my way back to bed. The day, I suppose, will be somewhat turned around. But I need to dream.

One hour, I think. That is all. One hour.

* * * * *

"Now, without thinking further, he would go home to his room. He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it's probably only insomnia. Many must have it." (Hemingway, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place)

Shot of the Day

I don't think that art is a competition. Still, Picasso and Matisse struggled to win the ideological battle over the direction of painting would take in the 20th century. Hemingway wanted to beat Faulkner. Such things are awful, but they are true.

So I am thrilled to win Shot of the Day at Polaoid.net. Laugh if you will, but I see great things. I'm waiting for a call from MoMA.

OK. Maybe not. But I'll take any attention I can get. I get a kick out of dogs with wagging tails and fawning postures approaching me in the street. A friendly waitress makes my night. I'm like that. Pathetic, really. But if you hurry over to the site, you can see my minutes of grandeur.

By tomorrow, this part of the country will have joined the rest of you for awhile in having autumnal weather. Maybe the madness will leave me then. Last night, I had the most deliciously vivid dream, more vivid than anything in years and years. But then I woke when in the dream I heard myself saying, "You know how good this feels? It is going to feel just that bad when it's gone."

I want to wake from the dream sometime without the warning.

Anyway, I sure hope I get famous soon. If I get enough money, I can pay young boys to take these photos and write the stories while I sit by the pool and relax.

Oh, yea. I forgot to mention, I won ten euros. My treat.

Another Day

The sun was so big and red last night as it hit the horizon and fired up the sky that I thought the weather surely has to change now. I was wrong, though. It is too early, still. Another day of heat and humidity has begun.

It seems as if that is all there is right now--another day.

“I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.” (Jack Kerouac)

How Do You Tell a Dream?

I just wrote a political piece and deleted it. It's not what I do here. This is a place away from all of that. Sometimes, though, it is difficult. Really difficult. But I shall remain a voice from the ether. This site is just a Fairy Tale.

** ** ** ** **

I've been trying to write about my college life, too, but it is difficult like trying to tell someone about a dream or trying to explain your emotions. It was like that. I walked around day and night swollen, excited. Everything was new, every place enchanted. The people I met had traveled, had been to Europe and beyond. I'd never known anyone who'd been to Europe before except some fathers who'd been in the war. But people like us didn't just go to Europe. I made new friends who spoke other languages. We barely spoke one. I ate foods for which I had no names. Some days, I would eat with the Hari Krishnas on the Plaza of the Americas where they came like missionaries, passing out food and literature and chanting and praying in their saffron robes and ruby markings. Jesus Christ, I thought, if my father could only see this. There were endless acres of playing fields, tennis and racquetball courts, swimming pools and gymnasiums, luxuries I had never seen or known. I sat in an old stadium style auditorium for my organic chemistry class. The front of the classroom was covered with blackboards which the professor covered with chalk marks of chemical formulas that went on and on forever, formulas that I could follow and understood. I wanted my old friends to see me there, wanted them to see me in that seat like I was in a movie, wanted to let them know that all those mystical markings made sense to me. There were movies on the lawns at night where mellow crowds gathered under twinkling skies with heavy blankets and woven baskets, the smell of pot heavy in the air. You could do anything, it seemed, anything you wanted to at all, and everyone was brilliant and beautiful. I floated just above the ground, suspended, holding my breath afraid it would all disappear, all fade away, afraid that Irving or Frankie or Russell would show up and start in with their shit and ruin everything. They didn't or they couldn't though, I wasn't sure which, but like Sarty in the Faulkner stories I had not yet read, I knew this was greater than their crippling violence, was greater than anything I had ever known before, and I wanted it.

How do you tell that, though? Nothing happened, really, though at the time it seemed like everything.

Waiting

Oh, god, it is still a thousand degrees here. I am waiting for the haunting air, that breakthrough of cooler weather from the north. Then we shall be released from the grips of this madness into the grasp of that haunting melancholy, of the long shadows and the early darkness. We need the shorter days, of course, though I know many would disagree. But we must have the closeness of it where everything seems pressed against us in the dim light, when people huddle for warmth of every kind, when vision's supremacy gives way to the other senses, when knowing is overtaken by instinct.

I am weighted this morning by things that are overdue. I am lazy as a child about responsibilities, and as eager as a child to play. Give me the taxes to do and my mind will wander. Even with enough money, I do not pay my bills. I am lost in house maintenance. Everything is repaired too late. My car needs replacing and my office is a wreck. But I have stories to read and a million dollars worth of cameras calling me. The yards need weeding and the driveways must be mulched, but I would rather sit all day in a cafe or coffee shop watching the world whirl by. Work is the devil's deal and it steals our lives. My life, anyway. The wealthy, of course, think it makes us robust and tell us they are happy to work, but their work is self-serving and at some point mostly voluntary.

But I must go now and prepare for the day. Adam's Curse. Revisited.

Sleepwalk

I've done it. I've made an image. Several, really. You'll see.

It's funny how it comes about. You dream of something so long, something vague, really, nothing you've ever seen before, just color and mood and texture and feeling, and then you find it, only it is better than what you thought and you know it will get even better. It was like that now. The days. The nights. My heart will never stop pounding, I thought. Why isn't every place like this?

The autumn temperatures turned cool, much cooler than it did at home. The air was fresher, the moonlight brighter. I wished my father could see it. Everything was lovely. I'd never seen so many people smile this much. I was used to dour people, people who suffered without knowing, people who grew mean and bitter and thought it normal. People with sour faces with bad hair and bad skin and deformities of the body and the spirit. People who shriveled without dying.

It was Tuesday night, and Mick and I had gotten into the habit of going to a barbecue place that had a special for students. After dinner, we called our parents from the pay phone--collect. We called once a week, and once a week we got money from home.

"Hey, Dad, it's me. Did you watch the game last night. Yea, it was a good one. Yep, everything is fine. OK. Alright. Goodbye."

I breathed in the night air. Every time I exhaled, I thought, a little more of that is gone.

Transformed

I still have no photographs. This one is from an aspiring photographer. Nine years old.

Shit, puke, shit, puke, like clockwork, every ten minutes. It had gone on for hours, it seemed. I couldn't stand the convulsions any more. There was nothing left to vomit now. I was alone in my apartment. Midnight. There was no one to take care of me.

It was the mayonnaise, I'd determined. I'd gone with Vladi in the hour between class and lab to Watta Burger which was just across the street from the campus. Everybody went there. It was cheap. It was packed.

I don't know why I did it, but when my hamburger came, I decided to try mayonnaise on it instead of catsup. I picked up the little plastic packets beside the mustard, tore them open and squeezed them onto my bun. It was different.

By the end of lab, my stomach was feeling bloated. I thought something might be wrong. By sunset, I was in bed, my stomach distended and gurgling. By nine, I was done for. For the first time, I was sick and on my own. I'd been sick before, but I'd never had to care for myself. I needed help, I thought. There was a clinic on campus. How would I get there? I wanted someone to take me to the car, someone to moan to, someone to talk to the nurses and tell them my pathetic story. I lay, thinking of the injustice of this. I'd never been this sick before. Ever. Did people die of food poisoning, I asked myself? Sure they did. I had chills. I felt feverish. I was too weak to move. I needed a doctor.

I waited. If I tried to drive now, I would surely shit myself or vomit.

I drove across campus and walked toward the old red brick building that was the clinic. The sky was black and filled with small, far, brilliant stars. There was no one about. I felt the loneliness of it, but the magic, too. I had done it. I had brought myself here alone, heroic.

Inside, the clinic was dim and quiet. A nurse was sitting at a desk.

"May I help you?" she asked in a low tone as if there were people sleeping all about. She had a cherubic face, I thought, thinking it odd that I should think this now, like a figure in a Rubens painting, pale, pure. She looked sympathetic. She would help me.

"I'm sick. I've been throwing up and have diarrhea. Every ten minutes."

My voice sounded like a weeping when it came out, all quivery and whiny. Was I doing that on purpose? I stood, knees bent, shoulders hunched, arms crossed across my belly. Was I trying to be more pathetic? Trying to act out how sick I actually felt? Sure. Sure I was. I wanted someone to take care of me. I wanted sympathy.

But even through the pain and the chills and the weakness, I couldn't help marveling, too, that there was a place such as this, a clinic open all night long to take care of things. I stood in the old brick building with its antique windows and wooden desk feeling I was an actor in a movie. This was marvelous, alright. It really was.

A doctor came in to see me, or an intern, anyway. He was young, I thought, not much older than I was. He looked like he might have been sleeping. When he asked me how I felt, I told him my story, but without as much whimpering and whining this time. I could tell it would win me nothing. He was all business. He reached over and pushed on my stomach and asked me a few questions and wrote something down on a piece of paper on his clipboard.

"Well, I think it is probably what you ate, probably the mayonnaise. I'm going to give you something that should make you feel better.

I don't think he knew I was driving because he had given me an opiate to stop the diarrhea and to reduce the pain. I was feeling better before I reached the car. I was ready for bed. If there had been anyone else on the highway, things could have gotten bad. But I drifted and floated down the road with both eyes closed navigating with only an occasional glimpse at the stars. It was OK, I thought. Things were good. I was on my own. I could take care of myself. From now on, this is how it would be. Everything was different.

Dorm Champions

I swear, one day I will take photographs again.

Days passed, strange and delicious. The fall weather came and the skies were a high blue like mountain skies, deep and translucent. I began staying in town on the weekends more, and when Sherri came up, I showed her the town. It wasn't like any other town I'd been to. No, she agreed, this was magic. And so I had that now and I had a girl on weekends and I had friends.

Mick and I played basketball for the dorm league with great success. We were ringers, of course. We didn't live in the dorm. Only one fellow did, and that was JR. He had signed us up and we played as these other fellows we had never met which made it hard, somehow, to keep the names straight. The more we won, though, the more suspicious the other teams became. After one game, a player from the team we had just beaten came over and asked who was who. I had been calling Mick Mick all game. "Which player is he?" the fellow wanted to know. Mick and I looked at one another trying to remember what he was supposed to be called. Mick said a name, and the player from the other team asked, "Who's Mick?" "Oh, that's just a nickname," I tried to explain, and quickly, Mick and I both headed for the side door. "Shit, we're going to get caught," I said. Mick just grinned.

We made it to the finals of the dorm league that season. We had the better team and won, but there was no time to celebrate. The boys from the dorm we were playing for had come to see the game. There were probably fifty people there in all. I met the fellow who I was playing for, a soft, doughy looking boy with greasy long hair. He looked like the sort who read science fiction novels every day, but he was a nice guy and got a real kick out of having a part in his dorm team doing so well.

The other team, however, seemed to be onto us and didn't like losing at all to a bunch of hippies, so as soon as the buzzer went off, Mick and I ran straight off the court and headed for the door. We could hear voices calling after us as we hit the cool night air, but we didn't stop or turn around. The moon was up and the night was bright. We were Dorm Champs for the entire University.

Sort of.

The next day, JR told us that it had gotten a little crazy after we left. The other team was trying to verify who was who, but everyone sort of mumbled and pointed and drifted off. He said one fellow was really hot. It seems he knew someone who lived in the dorm, and he was grabbing people and yelling, and JR said he thought the guy was going to hit someone. But everyone started drifting off and the fellow's teammates were trying to calm him down. JR thought it was all pretty funny.

It felt good being champs.

Dissertation

"Remember how good things used to be? Wait, I mean how bad. No, now is bad. Well, I mean we have better ideas because we can see the mistakes of the past. Some of us. Not like then. I mean, like what were they thinking? Exploiters. There were some liberators. We like them. Some of them. I lived with the oppressed for a long time. There was a lot of bad there. But they were victims, so that was OK, I guess, except for how they treated. . . well, you know. It was bad, but. . . I would like to help them now. That's the thing, right? Like I want to help people, but I'm so messed up and I can't even help myself, you know? Not that messed up. I mean like I don't do anything bad to anyone. Not on purpose. We all do things without thinking about it, though, and I feel awful about that. All the old heroes. We don't have heroes any more which is probably good. There's always something to hide. "

Yup.

Staying the Course

Colin Pantall is a smart and very productive fellow who I will one day soon ask to link here. But this morning, his blog really messed me up. It introduced me to the work of Osama Esid who is. . . well let me just post part of this.

"The work of Osama Esid is a visual manifest of this relationship, investigating the social preconceptions and stereotypes that have been created on either side in the past, and which in some way still persist in our collective unconscious. The inquiry into "Orientalism", with its exotic and sensual connotations, from an artistic contemporary point of view generates a huge range of creative and theoretical possibilities which reveal the existing contradictions in the creation of clichés. The exhibition "A Play on Representation; The Egyptian Experiment" reopens the debate on these fundamental issues which unite East and West and which once so concerned Edward Said. . . .

[I]n the "Orientalism and Nostalgia" series, Esid reconstructs a theatrical period scenario but displaces it in full XXI century in one of the most important capitals of the region, Cairo. The aim of each piece is to acquire the atmosphere of those old vintage pictorialist photos, where beauty becomes the main protagonist. He highlights the more sensual side of Orientalism, referring to those essentially feminine spaces which also remind us of French XIX century painting. He retrieves the sensuality and eroticism in the gaze and enticing pose, although endowing his women with a defiant intensity, no longer passive and complacent, but on the contrary women who are in control of their bodies and their destinies.

By acknowledging beauty in this context, Osama Esid brings forth another representative twist, which is to try to modify the current widespread vision of his region, one characterised by images of war, terrorism and fundamentalism."

As I wrote to Pantall's blog this morning, creativity is most profound when it is challenging the coherence of pervasive views, especially as it is formed by the second and/or third waves of an ideology.

Too often, I am weak and give up. Seeing Esid's work and the attention given to it this morning just about broke my heart. I must work harder and with more confidence. Damn the torpedos.

Trying

New MacBook Pro. New features. Updated programs. I don't know how to use it yet. I don't have my files transferred, so I can't do my usual ju-ju to the photograph. Here it is pretty straight. Too much reality. This new computer works differently. Moving fingers on the trackpad can make it go wild. I just got Adobe CS4 Creative Suite and don't know what I am doing in Photoshop all of the sudden. God, I have a lot of work to do just to get current.

I need to make some hats. Do any of you know how to make hats? Paper hats. Dunce caps, boat caps. Anything. Send me a link. I thought I knew how, but that is information lost like my college French. I need a good source for vintage costumes, too, especially clown or harlequin stuff, circus stuff. Any good sources?

I'm trying kids. Trying to keep things going. I'm certain, though, that you can hear the metal in my voice.

Campus

I had managed to take too many classes again. The profs at the university were different than the ones at the university in my own home town. These were serious people. The competition had been ratcheted up a few more notches. There was no end to the lessons I would learn, it seemed.

But the campus was a miracle that went on forever. There was no possible way to walk it all, but I tried. I loved wandering and getting lost, entering unknown buildings, sticking my head into classrooms and offices, reading the bulletin boards and things posted on office doors. There were libraries everywhere. Besides the two main libraries that sat next to one another, there were specialty libraries for Forestry and Engineering and Architecture and Fine Arts. I found nooks and crannies on abandoned floors beneath framed windows like images from old movies.

The new biology building housed a State Museum which possessed a huge, simulated limestone cave through which you could walk and study the strange forms of life that had adapted to the dark. Water dripped into pools that contained realistic looking albino fish without eyes. Nobody was ever there.

On the edge of campus away from town were the ranches and farmlands of the School of Agriculture. This was hill country marked by long stretches of wire fences and horses and cows and organic farms and driving through it, you thought yourself a thousand miles away. Nearby was a wildlife preserve with a giant population of a rare species of bats. The lake was full of enormous, unbothered alligators that filled the waters and the shores. Then, past the garden plots that the university rented to students, there was the Medical Gardens where medicinal herbs were grown and labeled with small plaques explaining the history of the drug.

There were dorms spread across the campus, each with its own amenities. I found basketball courts and racquetball courts and giant swimming pools. One day I stumbled into a village for married students. There were general stores and playgrounds full of children and duplexes instead of dorms. I had not thought of such a thing before.

"Study," I told myself, but it wasn't that I wished to do. I had fallen in love and all I wanted to do was explore. As I sat alone, my heart was full. There could not be anything more splendid than this, I thought. I couldn't believe my luck.

Moon Over. . .

I don't know from where this photo comes. I can give no credit.

The Harvest Moon shines bright here. One can hardly stand it. But there it hangs beyond the wispy clouds that traipse across its visage. I tried making photographs, but it was of little use. They were the same ones I've made a peck of times over the years. My friend, the moon.

I thought of much and moved little today. I might think that I wasted the day if I were so inclined. But I am not. We do what we must.

I am writing this tonight to post in the morning. I don't know if I will feel like writing then. I am on the verge of shutting down for awhile. I did not go to Anna Tomczak's house to work this weekend, and I feel terrible about it. I did nothing. I have not taken a photograph for a long time now. I have done little. I am faking, that is all.

I remember looking at a big full moon when I was a kid. Fireflies flew all about. Can that be? A bright red sunset that made me think of the song "Ghost Riders in the Sky." No, it cannot be. It all starts to jumble together at some point to make poetry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQlYgt8YBDk&feature=player_embedded#

Irony

Last night, I went to see Michael Moore's "Capitalism." When I got to the window, my companion was already buying our tickets, and I heard her say, "One senior." !!???!???!??!!!! The girl selling the ticket didn't bat an eye. $2.50 discount. "What's wrong?" my companion queried, but she was laughing. "I've been doing that for a long time."

"I don't like it," I said. "I've never done that." I felt weak.

Inside, I wanted to buy some wine. That is a great new thing the theater does now, selling wine. I used to have to sneak drinks in.

"Can I see your I.D.?"

The irony of that was wonderful. I'm not old enough to qualify for the one thing and far too old not to qualify for the other. As wonderful as the irony was, though, I was not enjoying it. Any of it.

- - - - -

Nobody got all the answers to the quiz a few posts back. The photographer is Man Ray. The subject is Marcel Duchamp in drag as Rrose Selavy. It was a play on "Eros, C'est la vie." In the film "The Moderns," Nick Hart drinks at the Bar Selavy. The soundtrack to that movie is not available, but it is wonderful. Perhaps, though, its unavailability creates the allure.

Late Night

I stayed up last night to watch the David Letterman confession. I ended up watching the entire show. I will be sleepy today. Can you imagine how boring my life is? It is better that way.

I have been invited to a workshop with Anna Tomczak today and tomorrow. I have much to do before I go. My life is too clogged up. I read a report about a study that shows that the average lifespan of Americans increased considerably during The Great Depression. In trying to understand what factors contributed, the researchers came up with several, but it seems that having more leisure time was one of the biggest. Spending time with family and friends away from the stresses of work. Go figure.

Americans work more than any other 1st or 2nd world cultures. And our collective health is abhorrent. Of course, that could be from staying up to watch celebrities dish about their private lives. I didn't need to see that.

No one travelling on a business trip would be missed if he failed to arrive.

Thorstein Veblen