"Roadwork Ahead"

Full-fledged tired.  Worn out.  I've hung out the "Respite Wanted" sign.  No applications yet.

I am wrapping up this series soon.  I will have a number of good images to display.  But I woke last night in horror.  The film is almost all gone, but worse, last night during a shoot, the Polaroid 600 SE camera crapped out.  Now there are exposure lines at the bottom of every photograph.  What will I do, I wondered in the dark?  I still have the circus series to shoot with the remaining Polaroid film.  I will take the camera in today to see if it can be quickly repaired.  Even then, though, this "look" is almost over, almost done.

I must reinvent.  It was necessary all along, of course.  This just forces my hand.  There are options, surely.  I will have to find them.  It is easy if you just put your mind to it.  Sure it is.  But there is the challenge.  This is the test.  Even if the camera did not break, even if the film did not run out, what fool would continue to do the same thing over and over?  That is how I've succored myself with the coming of daylight.  There are options.  I am clever.  You will see.

Colleges are finishing the academic year.  The season of roadwork is about to begin.  And, of course, there is "summer reading."  I picture sunny homes in Hyannis Port and those old Life Magazine images of living like the Kennedys.  I will have to satisfy myself with a new grill and an ice cream maker.

Maybe I'll start a new website and take contributions.  Just snapshots of "How I Spent My Summer."  Yes, that would be the thing.  It could be surprising.

I'll Think of Something

A perfect Americano and a full moon hazy through thin clouds and new leaves.  Days so busy they don't register.  What happened in April?  The world is serious.  I don't show it.  Alone, I try to think of something, though too many thoughts contend.  Swirl, rattle, bang.  It has always worked before, my mind.  Served me well.  I'll think of something, I tell the cat.  I'd better think of something.  Weight perched on forelegs, she reaches down to groom.  I try to compose an email, a long overdue response to an old friend.  The words fall flat like tailings.  They won't do.  I think of people I don't see, friends I've not contacted.  Distraction.  Carelessness.  Though it is cool, the days suggest the coming summer.  I will eschew brown liquors I tell myself.  Perhaps I will only drink champagne and tea.  It would be the aristocratic thing to do. A beer now and then.  And, of course, Americanos.  But the Kentucky Derby is Saturday.  What shall we do for that?  I wonder what happened to that old Panama hat I bought in Ecuador so long ago?  Saturday is a day for hats.  I realize I've been staring, hands on the keyboard. . . for how long?  I reach for the empty glass and ponder making another.  No use, I say.  I can't write a thing tonight.  That is clear.

And Yet Another Full Moon

  Sleeping less and less each night and wondering if it is the approach of today's full moon.  It is the Pink Moon or the Fish Moon according to the Farmer's Almanac.  These moons seem to be coming at a terrible pace.

What do you do when you wake earlier each night?  Do you get up or stay in bed to fight with the pillows and the covers, maybe drifting off into that light sleep that is more like thinking than dreaming?

I try to push the horrors far from my mind, concentrating on the things that are making or, I hope, will make me happy.  And that works for a while. Then the sudden jolt, and I realize I had drifted off into semi-consciousness where the anxieties again have had free reign.

Hemingway couldn't sleep, and he was up early, at his desk writing until noon or so when he would knock off for the day.  If only.  I mean working until noon on what you wished to work at, finished then for the rest of the day.

This project that I am presenting here unedited is beginning to overwhelm me.  The more I shoot, the better the selection, but I am overwhelmed with work.  I have shoots coming up with people who have agreed to work with me, people I have not met but who want to be part of the project.  For a minute I was confident, but I vacillate wildly now wondering what I might have been thinking so long ago when I began.  I am preparing a portfolio to send out next month to several. . . oh, I should not say where.  It is a vanity that shall be smashed to pieces by summer's end.  And for those of you who come here and read, it should be mildly entertaining.  A schlemiel cannot fall but from an imaginary perch.  That is called comedy.

But it surely must be the moon.  Everybody knows that.  I have been awake for too many hours already this morning.  I will post this and go back to bed now that it is light.  Perhaps I will have a little peace.

But tonight. . . well that's another story.

Signifyin' Nothin'

Wrote a forlorn and desperate piece this morning.  Now it is gone.  What profit, that?  Dawn has come. Birds are chirping, cats are heading home.  Everything changes in an instant.

But the journey from there to here--now there's the fuel.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Dichotomies

The old joke about something desirable.  It can be told a thousand different ways, but it always ends with the wise older sage telling the youthful enthusiasts, "Just think, somewhere somebody is sick to death of that."

One day as Manjusri stood outside the gate, the Buddha called to him, "Manjusri, Manjusri, why do you not enter?" Manjusri replied, "I do not see myself as outside. Why enter?"

The Frustration of Immediacy

As communications become more instant, people become less reliable.  Says me.  I'm sure this is not true in areas like stock trading or medicine where it has been a great boon, where people's fortunes or lives are dependent.  But in the general public, among the hoi-poloi, it is something else.  After college, I didn't have a phone or a television for ten years.  "Jesus Christ," kids will say to me, "how'd you get in touch with anyone?"  I don't remember having any problem, but that may have been colored by my expectations.  I would see someone, we'd agree to meet at a time and place, and that was that.  Now, it seems, people are free to text you fifteen minutes before a meeting to tell you they can't make it.  Electronic communications endlessly frustrate me.

My problem (and it is my problem) is that I wasn't raised on reality television shows.  There, frustration is a major tactic.  Undermining expectations.  If you want to win, it seems to me from the little bits of shows I have seen, you must keep the others on edge.  Trust is a weapon.  And we know the values on T.V. become world values.  Trust and expectation are truly dangerous things.

But I've not meant to opine here today this much with trivial bitches and petty disappointments.  Rather, I wanted to comment on the loneliness that such immediacy creates.  Rather, the frustration of such.  Message, message, message. . . nothing.  What does that do to the psyche?  What happens when your twitters aren't commented on or your Facebook postings are ignored?  Those questions are bound to be answered by graduate student studies going on around the world today.  Rich territory there.

Isolation, loneliness, and the frailty of human existence are major themes for me.  Figures in great, lonely landscapes, people isolated in metropolis, a frail body alone in the bathroom, a mirror and a tub.  Now, I think, I must include the iPhone in the pantheon of iconic symbols of nothingness and the void.  I dream paintings by Hopper, a melancholy figure staring into a 26" computer screen, one hand on the mouse, shoulders fallen, head down.  Darkness and the universal light.

Neglected Things

Exhausted.  I've not had a day to myself in a month.  I want a month of days to myself.  Wake up in the dark, panicked by nightmares that are thoughts of all the things I've left undone.  They begin to multiply like the Mickey's mops in "Fantasia" (something that has affected and influenced my dreams in terrible ways since I saw it as a child) and to grow in stature.  I wake heart racing, gulping for air.  Without thinking I will rise, my body jerks upright, feet on the floor, my head just beginning to understand what I am doing, that I am awake again long before sunrise.  I look forward to the quiet time, the coffee, but it is no way to awaken.  I must take care of neglected things.

I just Googled "neglected things" to see if I would find a poem.  What I found was a phrase--"the beauty of neglected things."  They are wonderful to find.  Treasures.  Someone else's things.  But not your own.

I will find no treasures today, I am fairly certain.  I will be lucky if I can scan a good number of images and cook them up for viewing.  My dining room table is littered with them, piles and piles of sleeved Polaroids.  The disappearing, extinct kind.

But last night, I stumbled upon some promising news.  There is a New 55 project.  A group of people in Massachusetts is working to make a new Polaroid 55 film.  I can't tell if they have had any success or not, but there are some people who are working with Fuji films in strange new ways, ways that have a certain dark appeal to me.  I will experiment this weekend with what I learned last night and see if there might not be a dark new photo future for me.

I will say this, though.  Polaroid was stupid in handling its instant film division and malicious in not letting anyone know the secrets of their Land formulas so that someone else could produce the film.  It is like owning the secret formula for an antibiotic, then halting production without allowing anyone else do it. No, it is not.  But it is like something.  

Mother Load

Early work.  No time to contemplate.  No time to write.  But I tell you, I may have been given the jackpot.  A friend read yesterday's post and sent me the most incredible thing--a list of women having a fundraiser at an event where they will all wear their old prom dresses!  Nope.  I'm not kidding.  Now I will have to get each of them to my studio somehow.  But this could be the mother load.  I will be buying my friend dinner for sure.

Clever

"Prom Dress"

I want to begin a new series. "Prom Dress." If I can find enough women who still have theirs. Sarah showed up with hers and I made this simple portrait last week. When I processed the image, I thought that the idea might work. But how many people still have them? What happens to them all? And who can still get them on? I'd love to shoot some women looooong past prom night wearing them like Miss Haversham. But that was a wedding dress, and maybe I can expand to those, too. I'm thinking that I will collect stories with pictures. Write them at the bottom.

And so I forge on, happy with the images I am making, not obsessing about the errors, at least not to the point of quitting. I am staying positive. About the photos, I mean. Where's the harm? As for the rest of life--it's just not so easy. I can't turn off comments there.

Last night, I ate at a perfect fish restaurant, Fish Co. It is tiny, and so it is always crowded. They make fish as you dream it should be. My friend and I sat outside and chatted, and at some clever point in the conversation I turned and said, "That will be tomorrow's blog entry." Now, I haven't a clue what it was. Did I say "clever"? I meant "brilliant"? Surely it was. Think of all the brilliance lost over time, unrecorded conversations that are forgotten, that simply drift away into the void. They are like lost rolls of film that you are certain contain the most important photographs you have ever taken. Why are they always on the lost roll? Why do the ones we get developed rarely have such wonderful images on them?

But that is what keeps the universe humming, along with the lost sock that never turns up in the dryer. I will have to content myself with telling you that the conversation was both clever and brilliant. A night to remember. I wish I could remember it.

Ibid

There used to be flowers and candles. Where have they gone? We've been reduced to the grind, you and I. All that is left is the grim struggle, the day to day. Onward we march seeking some respite only to find more of the same. Ibid. Ibid. Then like lightening, something horrible and frightening, and we are stricken. Panic followed by depression. And when it passes and the crisis has gone, we are content with the grind where there are few surprises and little pleasure. At least, we tell ourselves, there is no terror.

But it lurks out there. We can feel it.

It is time to focus. . . on a color, on a shape. A flower will do. Cut flowers and a glass of expensive wine. Something you can't afford to drink quickly. Something to arrest the attention. A new tablecloth, deep red with tiny subtle blue flowers. Small bits of yellow. The house clean, a little light coming through the window. I am happy again. This is what I remember. It is the happy life. I will take a walk.

The horribleness is so big. Pleasures so small.

The Offing

Foggy tropical daybreak after a rain, water drops clinging to the tips of palm fronds I look out to through the window as I write. Everything already so different than a month ago, new exotic weeds growing, vines beginning to spread. Many of the wintering birds are gone. I will look for the scarce native hummingbird. I've only seen it a couple times. The ground begins to warm and snakes to slither. Insects awaken with vengeance. Neighbors say, "Looks like summer's here. It is going to be a hot one." Predictions for the hurricane season are ominous. Tree trimmers are fully employed. I promise myself I will get busy. I have to get a jump on things like weeding and house repairs. I need a new grill. With summer growth, things begin to close in, feel tight. I still have closets to clean, much to give away. If I don't reduce my holdings now, they will weigh on me later and bring me great discomfort. Now is the time. Everything must go.

I've never made New Year's pledges. That has never meant a thing to me. Spring. That is the season for resolutions. In spring one prepares for the coming year. I will become spare. I will make room and carry few things. If I don't, there will certainly be no end to the "woe is me."

Opening the door to let in the cat, I am surprised how cool the air is. No, it is not summer yet. There is time. I must be vigilant for therein lies the danger.

Francois Emile Barraud

Everywhere, it seems, people are talking about the here-to-fore little known painter Francois Emile Barraud. I won't be the last. Swiss. Born 1899, same year as Hemingway. Died of T.B. at the age of thirty-five. Contemporary of Balthus. So much talent. So little time.


This is his most famous work, maybe. I say that only because I am familiar with it. I've seen it many times. Where is it housed? New York, but which museum?


I will only look at the works of painters for awhile. It is how I want to photograph just now. Not forever, but I find I can only do one thing at a time now. I can't even switch cameras successfully. It is one thing and then the other.


I am happy with my recent work. Happier all the time, really. There are no competing voices in my head just now. Not about that, anyway. I'm listening to no one. When I'm finished, I'll listen.


Change of topic. I've noticed that a lot of blogs that I go to have been dormant or have been removed since Easter. I think that maybe their authors don't feel their efforts are worth the lack of rewards. I'm not talking about blogs like mine, but blogs by players, names, movers. I've noticed the change, too. So many egos counting on something, some loyalty, some reward. I can't figure it out.


I used to have a friend who told me, "You want people to think about you all the time. Hell, you're lucky if they think about you when they are with you!" I've changed it a little, for he was talking about a particular girl of whom I was fond, not people in general, but it didn't make as much sense that way.


It made sense to me who has never thought that he existed for people if he wasn't in the same room with them. I never had much faith in that direction.


And maybe, as Frost says, that has made all the difference, for here I still am scratching on the cave wall as if to let someone know that I was here. For a moment.

This was me. Qu'elle damage.

Too Cool

Let me pick up from yesterday's post and move forward. Chronology.

There is a film festival going on in our town just now. It is not Tribeca, but people are thrilled.

The audience is varied. There are the kids from the local colleges and university and, of course, the world-famous private school that charges kids thirty-thousand dollars a year to get a degree in music or film or animation. They are excited, of course, and both approving and critical of the films they see, but always cool the way kids are in funky clothing and fuck you hair and ink and metal, some nerdy, others otherwise, but all recognizable as chrysalises ready to erupt.

Then there is the museum crowd who live where there is not museum. O.K. There are. There are many. There are museums of folk art and railroad art and art of the state and a museum by my house that is pretty good but small at Country Club College. And if you want to count it, we even have First Friday or Third Thursday or Wicked Wednesday (no, wait, I'm mixing in some bar's happy hour here) where the downtown galleries stay open at night so people can drink and see art and schmooze. But these are the people who also have a little money and get to go to the Museums of the World. They always have the best seats at the art festival.

And there is also the older hipster crowd who used to hold a central place in the creative soullessness of the city but who have been displaced by money and by time.

I like them all. This is what I got.

But what I don't understand is why anyone wants to go to a film festival. I was asked to be a judge twice by the organizers, and I turned them down. There was money involved, and, of course, a season's pass to the funky little art film theater that runs this show, but, I thought, who wants to spend their time watching hours of bad movies? Even at the festival, if the film is any good, it will show there in the next year. Why do I need to go through all the agony of putting up with a crowd of people who are test rats for production companies?

I did go to the awards ceremony one year. There was a red carpet and a crowd held back by velvet ropes and everybody dressed up like they thought they were going to the Oscars. I sat behind Henry Winkler who kept turning around and grinning at my girlfriend. She was embarrassed, I think. I could only laugh.

I was funded once to go to the Tribeca Film Festival. I went to NYC, of course, but didn't bother with the festival. Been to Sundance, too. Ibid.

So, what is the lesson to be learned from this? Just that I'm a jerky boy who thinks he's cool because he doesn't participate in things like film festivals. Above It All. At least that is what I get from it. Self-revelation is a bitch.

I had something else to say here today, but it will wait until tomorrow. It will have to. The Sands of Time and all that.

Curing Art

They've almost cured art. I mean the maladies that go into its creation. Manic depression, obsession, and others. There are therapies and pills now. It is not like the period following WWI when people were left to deal with themselves on their own. Then, art was the therapy. It was the sociably acceptable way of dealing with the margins of existence. The trauma and neurosis caused by the war gets the most attention because it was a large, shared experience that recognized then legitimized the breaking of the mind. But there was plenty of that elsewhere.

WWII was WWI redux in many ways, with the A-bomb added so that even those without direct war experience could practice the old "duck and cover" in offices and classrooms to add something visceral to their own imaginings.

But how much breaking can the human mind take? We get closer to knowing all the time.

So if you are an artist in the old sense, you can be cured. And it is better, truly, because we are curing the need for art at the same time. Those bromides that help the artist deal with his or her internal struggle are not intended for them exclusively. It is helping the gallery, too.

Who wants to be an artist? You'd have to be crazy.

I thought I'd put up an image not from the "Storyland" series today. It is Saturday and beautiful. There are film festivals and art openings and picnics in the park.

I'll have more about film festivals tomorrow.

Visual Homilies and the End of Time

O.K. You with me now? A giant fireball across the skies of midwestern states, recorded by videos and Doppler radar? And all they can come up with is that it might have been a giant meteorite? Volcanic ash fills the air. End Times. If I don't start that series soon, there will be nobody left to see it.

I'm not saying repent or anything. I'm just sayin'.

People wonder why I am trying so hard with the images and not writing more. There is a reason. I've read the surveys and the studies. People don't read. Especially college students. They are not enamored with the written word unless it is a text message. Rather.

ppl 1Dr Y I M trying so hard w d images & not writiN mo. ther iz a rEsN. Ive rED d survAz & d studEz. ppl dun rED. especalE college students. dey R not enamored w d RitN wrd unLS it iz a txt msg

Sorry about that. I sent that through a decoder.

So how are we to communicate? Images, moving and otherwise. Visual apothegms, axioms, and aphorisms. Homilies, if you will.

I am kidding. I will write again. I am just underwater with work. And, as usual, when I have to be somewhere early, I sleep too late. And so I must dash. In one hundred characters or less, translate today's visual homily.

Oh, I forgot. You'll have to send it elsewhere for grading.

Habitual

I have not been doing this on the "Storyland" series. Shooting close, I mean. I have been keeping a loose framing, placing more space around the subject, trying to accentuate the idea of frailty and isolation. But Meagan is a photographer and directed me to do this one. I really like it and wonder why I have not bee doing it more. Perhaps the answer is just that I am simple or a fool. What happens to brains? They seem to lock in on an idea, and then they lock up. After that, it is very difficult to remove the parameters you have just established. We make them so that they are difficult to break. It is murder to the creative stuff we do (I almost said "process" but I rebel against such awfully bleak sounding words). I think it was Frost who captured that so easily in a line that went, "He liked having thought of it so much that he said it again." Maybe I shouldn't put quotation marks around it since it might not be Frost and it is probably mis-quoted. But that is the gist of it. We like our ideas too so much. . . .

I've tried doing it the other way, though--hating my own ideas--and it doesn't work well. It is a disorder, really, and is debilitating. Once there, it is difficult to work your way back. Very quickly you can become despondent and then catatonic. It is just not a good way to go.

I've tried the Buddhist path of non-attachment, of just letting my ideas form and then releasing them to drift off downstream, grabbing another for a moment before letting go of that as well. It is hard work, all that letting go. It is the pathway to enlightenment of some kind, I am sure. "But until that day, until that day, until that day," as Donna the Buffalo says, "Sights and sounds they'll get to me."

And so I'll limp along, boxed in by my own design, counting on something to shake me to wakefulness, trusting to my own meager talent.

"But until that day, until that day, until that day, sights and sounds will still get to me."

End Times

Every few days, I read about another major earthquake somewhere in the world, yet I'm not reading anything that says something BIG is happening at the earth's core. Maybe not the core. Maybe the mantle. Seems people would be taking an interest in geology right now, getting out the old schematics and refreshing their memories about all that. Not that it would do any good. But something is going on down there. It is like when your bowels begin to roil, I think. Everything is looking for a new place to lay. As I posted a while back, it is freaky that the length of days has changed and that the poles are shifting. This is not metaphysics, but it has the magnitude of it. Where are the dinosaurs?

But science doesn't move that fast. Nobody is going to speculate without some hard and fast evidence. But I will. I don't need any. All I need is a box to stand upon. End Times. Last Days. I think that will be the series that follows my circus shoot (more on that in a moment). End Times preachers. No, it will be larger than that. I won't limit myself to Christians. If any of you know the Islamic equivalent to the soapbox, let me know. Oh, yea, you can't. There's a disadvantage.

I've had another blow to my fragile creative ego. I saw a woman's work online and sent her a Fan's Note. She was VERY gracious and in sending back a reply. Turns out, she is a creative director in NYC and has offered me advice and more. She is a treasure, truly. I will tell you more when the time is right. But the work she shows me embarrasses my puny talents. She styled a Bellocq-style shoot that is. . . well, I'm crushed. Glad mine became something else.

There is no end to the beatings a fragile ego can take. Oh, wait. Yes there is. End Times. Lest we forget. All your puny talents and desires will go the way of the dinosaurs. Reminds me of a poem by Linda Pastan called "Ethics."

In ethics class so many years ago

our teacher asked this question every fall:

if there were a fire in a museum

which would you save, a Rembrandt painting

or an old woman who hadn't many

years left anyhow? Restless on hard chairs

caring little for pictures or old age

we'd opt one year for life, the next for art

and always half-heartedly. Sometimes

the woman borrowed my grandmother's face

leaving her usual kitchen to wander

some drafty, half imagined museum.

One year, feeling clever, I replied

why not let the woman decide herself?

Linda, the teacher would report, eschews

the burdens of responsibility.

This fall in a real museum I stand

before a real Rembrandt, old woman,

or nearly so, myself. The colors

within this frame are darker than autumn,

darker even than winter--the browns of earth,

though earth's most radiant elements burn

through the canvas. I know now that woman

and painting and season are almost one

and all beyond saving by children.

The Weirdness and the Jealousy

It is very odd to me how lonesome it is posting with comments turned off. It is like living too long alone. You become weird (living alone, I mean). I've lived alone a lot in my life, but one year I was REALLY alone. Didn't have a single date. It was zen-like at first, but my house is not a monastery and there were too many worldly distractions for me to feel at peace sometimes. The weirdness showed on Mondays when I went to work. After speaking to no one Friday, Saturday, and Sunday except to say things like, "I'll have the turkey sandwich" or "Fine, and you?" my ability to communicate had become awkward. During the weekend, I'd become spooky. And all my motions would slow down. It would take forever to complete a simple task.

Really, all I needed was the occasional human body in the other room reading a book or writing a letter. I didn't need constant companionship, just the occasional word. Not connection but the ability to connect.

I am not much of a networker. I still haven't reconciled the need to be anonymous and the desire to be known. As a result, I find out about everything just after it has happened. I found out about a bunch of places I should have submitted work this weekend at the workshop. "Next year you should. . . . " I won't remember. And photographers are good about putting up announcements on their sites about submission dates that are just about expired. So much of that is about connections.

But I can't stand it. Yesterday, I was talking to a friend, a photographer who told me he had some work going up in a good gallery downtown. When he told me, I felt the shock of adrenaline shoot through me and about five of the deadly sins become active. Goddamnit, I thought, I have to start getting my stuff about. I knew he knew that when he told me, knew the internal turmoil it would provoke. He was so high-toned about it all. His delivery slowed just perceptibly with the pause between words just milliseconds longer, the vowels drawn out, chewed up, thought about. Motherfucker. I wanted to tear something up.

"I have this photo of the little creek that runs through Jensen's Woods that I took with the WideLux in the early morning. . . ." Blah blah blah blah blah. He said it with such authority as if it meant anything. How do they do it, I wondered? How do they talk about their own photographs like that?

Really, it all embarrasses me. I can only apologize for what I do. It is a self-indulgence of no importance whatsoever. That is what I think if someone asks me about it. And yet. . . shit, I want them to be seen.

And that is how it is here alone in the cafe just now. I want to be left alone and I want to be famous, loved and celebrated. Stupid.

Yet people still come to make pictures with me. I laugh out loud in embarrassment and profess that I don't really know what I'm doing, wanting to separate myself from geeky men with cameras somehow standing there a geeky man with a camera in his hand. And then I'll peel apart a Polaroid and something will please me and I'll yell and I'll jump around and know I've got something and the tension and the stress begin to fall away and the people I am working with will like it too, so I'll swing them around and hoot and grin and say, "C'mon, c'mon, let's make some more."

And I like the pictures, too, though I know that if you could comment, I'd become embarrassed and ashamed and like them much less. I'd feel a compulsion to show something else, something other than what I am doing now. But I miss you all. It is odd not having a body in the other room.

Alcoholic Darwinism

I come here thinking to write one thing only to write another. I read an article in the N.Y. Times this morning about the use of psylocibin to treat depression and other psychological "disorders." I put it in quotation marks because I read R.D. Laing when I was young, and then other existential and phenomenological writers along the way. "Disorder" can be used so prescriptively and punitively that it begins to circumscribe a person. I recall all those pinhead rednecks in charge of education when I was a kid calling us to "order."

But I lose my way. There are studies once again looking at the effects of psylocibin on the brain. And the results are promising. These studies were going on in the '60's, but got sidetracked when Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey started having too much fun. And then Dr. Gonzo, H.S. Thompson. John C. Lilly, who invented the sensory deprivation tank, did some important work. He was using injectable LSD before it was illegal. A close family member of mine went to the clinics in California when they were still dispensing it in laboratories to study the effects. He was there with Steve McQeen. To my never-ending astonishment, Cary Grant said that his experiences in those clinics were one of the most important influences in his life. Cary Grant, for god's sake!

But I remember a study that showed very positive results using LSD to cure alcoholics. The next year, though, they were showing us pictures of broken chromosomes and babies with terrible deformities--the result of using hallucinogens, they said.

And so the studies ended.

But you can read about the resurgence in interest in the article I mentioned, which is sure to bring much unneeded attention to it all.

Not that I am for drug use. I like it as a metaphor, but as daily therapy. . . I'm just too busy. When I retire, though, and everything is past, I may eat mushrooms to help me transcend the daily misery.

When I opened the blog this morning, I saw yesterday's heading, "Artistic Darwinism," and I thought I could write a funny piece called "Alcoholic Darwinism." It didn't happen. But I will title this entry that anyway. You will have to make up your own definition.

Artistic Darwinism

I went to the workshop yesterday and watched new photographers explore alternative methods of making images, often using a scanner as their camera. They were very excited, and so it was fun. I, too, am ready today to begin experimenting a bit more. I did not color enough as a kid. I did not play enough with paint. Sports. I was good at almost all of them and not so good at drawing and coloring. So, as I always say, you do most what you do best and vice-versa. Now I am trying only the second part of the equation. And it is true. The more time I can give over to pursuing it, the better I do. And then, like any kid, I want to put the results on the refrigerator door. Consider this my refrigerator door. "Look, look," I heard the young photographers say, though maybe not in those words, holding up a new image. "Look what I did." Now it is a matter of how much time they will give over to it in the coming weeks and months and years.

They are all so talented, and I want them all to continue on, but I know that everything will want to get in the way. For some of them, the interference began before they got there. One could not come because of work. Another was stopped at the last moment by "a family emergency." I wonder which of them will break out their tools and work on something today. So many distractions and obligations. And I begin to think that only the selfish ones have a chance. Being selfish may be more important than being talented, for I've watched a lot of talented people produce nothing. The writer Peter Matthiessen once told me, "There are a lot of people who are more talented than I am, but there is nobody who works as hard as I do." And Peter truly has had a long and wonderful career. Since Peter is a Buddhist monk, I doubt that he thinks of himself as selfish, and maybe there is a better word for telling people that you must be alone, that you have to have time to work. But I've known many artists and writers whose relationships have been busted up over what they do or want to do, and I've known others who have merely given all that up.

It seems the time to give yourself over to your own creativity is when you are young before everything else gets in the way . But how do you tell that to youth who feels the luxury of time spread out before them like some Pasha's endless wealth? You can't. And therein lies the tale, as they used to say.

But even giving yourself over to the thing you want to pursue is not enough. You must be pursue a form of autism, too, a listening to your own voice over the voices of others. You must be willing to continue when there is no cheering for what you do, when nobody notices the picture on the refrigerator door, or worse, when the nay-sayers begin. How does a kid do that?

There seems no way to tell it.

And really, there is probably no need. There is a type of natural selection at work, I presume, weeding out the ones who should not send their products into the world. Artistic Darwinism, I guess.

I will try to color today. Maybe literally. I will break out the scissors and the tape and see what I can do. And tonight, maybe I'll hold something up and say "Look, look. . . look what I did."

Mmm-hmm. Isn't that something.

Workshop

"Storyland"

I'm off to a workshop today. No time to write. The only days I sleep late are the ones when I have to be up early. Been a long time since a lazy day. Full of nothing.

Pampered

The fellow who prepares my taxes commented on how much I eat out. He says if he needs a restaurant recommendation, he will call me. I don't think that I do eat out that much. It seems as if I cook an extraordinary amount of meals. They are always good and wholesome meals, organic or non-hormone/non-antibiotic whenever possible which is almost always. But when I look at the Amex statement, it seems he is right. There are not many good places to eat where I live, very few that serve even decent food. And so we go to the same few places over and over again. We are known by the owners (never eat anywhere that doesn't have an owner in the building) and staff, and so it is doubly good.

Last night, I was eating at an Italian bistro, and jokingly told my friend about my tax accountant's statement. "I think I'll write a book called 'How to Eat Well on $100 a Day,'" I said. We were sitting outside overlooking a lake. It was a beautiful evening. Just then a man with long, blonde hair came up non-aggressively to the table and asked sheepishly, "Can you spare any money for food?" He did not look like the usual panhandler or drug-dependent beggar. He looked like someone who worked for a living, clear-eyed, handsome, and ashamed. I shook my head and he turned and left. I saw him ride off on his bicycle a minute later.

"Man," I said to my companion, "that was awful."

"I would have given him money," she said.

I rarely have any, and this night I hadn't a dime in my pocket. As usual, I was traveling by credit card.

"Why didn't you?" I asked. She just looked at me without saying anything.

Times are tough. I kept thinking that this guy had a wife and kids and lived in a rental apartment somewhere close by. He was probably a carpenter or a painter who hadn't had work for a while. His money was gone. The kids needed food. They were close to being evicted. He was desperate and so had resorted to this.

I didn't know if any of that was true, but it could have been. There are millions of people like that all over the country. Suddenly, sitting in a restaurant worrying that Ed Ross was going to make circus photos didn't seem so rough. OK. It seemed luxurious.

I'll quit whining about stupid things. What the hell.

Losering

I missed the trip to India. Now my summer plans to visit Prague, Budapest, and Istanbul just got spoiled. I won the battle in the work place but am poised to lose worse. It is the anxiety of waiting that empties the batteries. And now Ed Ross has announced his plans to shoot vintage circus tintypes using real circus performers. I'll link the images when they are up. I've seen some, but I haven't asked his permission to post them yet.

First Joni Sternbach, now this.

I just got my tax information together and saw how much I spent on photography this year. Jesus Marimba! The house is in need of many repairs. I am driving an '85 Volvo that is missing parts. My wardrobe is in tremendous disrepair. The fellow who took my $5,000 for the Africa trip and then cancelled it refuses to pay me back. I have more work than I can do. I can't sleep.

I've made enemies. I've made mistakes.

And the Polaroid film is running out.

You can't undo things. And I must admit that I'm tired of trying to walk like I have pumpkins between my legs. I can no longer justify.

Today scares the hell out of me. I have set a goal, an imaginary date, and tell myself if I can make it there, things will be O.K. That, of course, is not true, but it is not not true, either. We've all made it out of the storm before. We know it can happen.

I will set a goal and a date for my image making, too. This or that.

Man, that's a lot of whining. Finding out about the trip last night and then seeing Ed's images today has just set me reeling. Tomorrow will be different. Or the next day. Or the next. All I really need to do is change my mind.

Sylvia

"I am, I am, I am," she said over and over again, in novels and poems and journals. But she conceded that it was only the heart's conceit. And of course, there is more than mere being. There was the desire to be a certain way or to change the way she was, or to be all things that confuted her. And so one day she stuck her head into the oven and was gone. Sort of. She lingers still.

Suicide. It is the back door, an exit by which we can leave behind once and for all what we think of as our failures as they begin to pile up. Too many at one time and the psyche begins to break.

Ego.

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."

Emotion.

"How frail the human heart must be - a mirrored pool of thought."

Intellect.

"Is there no way out of the mind?"

Judgement.

"I want to be important. By being different. And these girls are all the same."

Creativity.

"I must be lean & write & make worlds beside this to live in."

It will all drive you mad. But often, it comes down to one thing.

"Kiss me and you will see how important I am."

Yes, of course. In the end, we are weak, and we all want saving.

Instants

Paradox is based upon assumptions. That is my conclusion. It may have been more famously concluded by someone famous for it, but I don't know that, so for today, for me, it is mine. Zeno supplied us with a bunch of paradoxes. He puzzled people with his arguments absurdio, and frustrated them, too, I am certain. Calculus solves some of them, I read yesterday in the New York Times, and the idea of infinity helps to refute them too, thanks to Archimedes. Has something to do with the riddle of pi. Quantum mechanics may have a hand as well.

But Saint Thomas Aquinas answered Zeno with other assumptions that are fun. "Instants are not parts of time," he says, "for time is not made up of instants any more than a magnitude is made of points. . . . Hence, it does not follow that a thing is not in motion in a given time, just because it is not in motion in any instant of time."

I can't testify to the validity or non-validity of the statement, but I like the assumption that instances are not parts of time. I like that a lot. Instants are bracketed, stand alone entities, and if they are sacred, according to Eliade, they may be re-entered and re-lived. Eliade holds this to be true for religious time, but I think the case may be made for secularly transcendent time as well. Depending upon your assumptions, of course.

Zeno was taught by another provocative character, Diogenes, famous for going about the city naked while holding a lamp "looking for an honest man." What fun he must have had. It is reported that he slept in a tub and masturbated in public. More professors should do that.

But Diogenes had his assumptions, too, and neither he nor Zeno would have done well in the Age of Theory, I think. Call Stanley Fish. He can take anything apart.

I used to laugh at Warren Beatty's sister, Shirley MacCLaine, and her New Age philosophy that everyone lived in his or her own reality. I dated a beautiful girl for awhile who believed that as well. In moments of conflict she would say, "Well, you be you and I'll be me, and that's beautiful." It drove me crazy.

MacClaine was ahead of her time, I think now, or mine, at least. And the beautiful girl? Time caught up with her and me both. But man, there were instances. . . .

The Gypsy's Curse

"Storyland"

There is a fundamental difference between those who are rooted in place and those who roam. Drifters. It is visible, too. Those damned gypsies are dangerous. They are not like those of us who have homes. Romantic from a distance, but get close and you will see. It's a matter of what you count on, how you adapt to disruption, how well you take misfortune. How well you can make do.

But they have a certain knowledge, too, not rooted in science. Intuition, the ability to "read the tea leaves" so to speak. It takes time. You cannot do it from home. You must take the beatings first. You begin to sense where things are going. You know when it is time to leave.

There is a spooky hollowness in those depthless gypsy eyes. Take to the road and travel from place to place for weeks, months, years. You will see. You will get them, too. Everything will change. Then you will begin to understand the Gypsy's Curse.

"May you find a lap that fits you."

Easter and All

To The Thawing Wind

Come with rain, O loud Southwester!

Bring the singer, bring the nester;

Giver the buried flower a dream;

Make the settled snowbank steam'

Find the brown beneath the white;

But what'er you do tonight,

Bathe my window, make it flow,

Melt it as the ice will go;

Melt the glass and leave the sticks

Like a hermit's crucifix;

Burst into my narrow stall;

Run the rattling pages o'er,

Scatter poems on the floor;

Turn the poet out of door.

Robert Frost

"A Boy's Will" 1913

Not one of his best, but apropos. I shall let it turn me out of doors in hopes of an "uprising." It is time for Spring cleaning.

Solipsism

"Storyland"

Nature is a harsh critic. The development of culture helped to mediate that. The weaker members were helped along the road to survival. Tools and agriculture. Leisure. Art. But there is also an inherent competition. Hierarchies physical and mental. And otherwise, too. As resources become more scarce, the competition grows. Populations become more brutal. A little girl in New York hangs herself because she is bullied.

Nature is a harsh critic. So is culture.

I may change this blog a bit. Thinking about it. I'm taking the counter off today. I'm not famous yet. I'm turning off the comments section, too. I don't think I'll be posting as much, but I'm not sure about that. Posting 300+ photos a year is silly. Most people will tell you that if you can make five good ones in a year, you are outstanding. The thing is, if I don't post every day, I think the whole project will dwindle. I see that all the time. Once you slow down, entropy takes over. So I haven't made up my mind yet.

Jesus Christ, I've become dull. I can't think of the word for talking to yourself, that old charge laid against some of the artists and philosophers of the early 20th century. What was that? I'll be damned if I can think of it.

Nature is a harsh critic.

'Cause the Vandals Took the Handle

"Storyland Portraits"

Subterranean Homesick Blues

Bob Dylan

Johny's in the basement

Mixing up the medicine

I'm on the pavement

Thinking about the government

The man in the trench coat

Badge out, laid off

Says he's got a bad cough

Wants to get it paid off

Look out kid

It's somethin' you did

God knows when

But you're doin' it again

You better duck down the alley way

Lookin' for a new friend

The man in the coon-skip cap

In the big pen

Wants eleven dollar bills

You only got ten.

Maggie comes fleet foot

Face full of black soot

Talkin' that the heat put

Plants in the bed but

The phone's tapped anyway

Maggie says that many say

They must bust in early May

Orders from the DA

Look out kid

Don't matter what you did

Walk on your tip toes

Don't try, 'No Doz'

Better stay away from those

That carry around a fire hose

Keep a clean nose

Watch the plain clothes

You don't need a weather man

To know which way the wind blows.

Get sick, get well

Hang around an ink well

Ring bell, hard to tell

If anything is goin' to sell

Try hard, get barred

Get back, write Braille

Get jailed, jump bail Join the army, if you failed

Look out kid

You're gonna get hit

But losers, cheaters

Six-time users

Hang around the theaters

Girl by the whirlpool

Lookin' for a new fool

Don't follow leaders

Watch the parkin' meters.

Ah get born, keep warm

Short pants, romance, learn to dance

Get dressed, get blessed

Try to be a success

Please her, please him, buy gifts

Don't steal, don't lift

Twenty years of schoolin'

And they put you on the day shift

Look out kid

They keep it all hid

Better jump down a manhole

Light yourself a candle

Don't wear sandals

Try to avoid the scandals

Don't wanna be a bum

You better chew gum

The pump don't work

'Cause the vandals took the handles.