"So on We Worked"--Reprise

They say that Richard Cory owns one half of this whole town

with political connections to spread his wealth around

born into society a banker's only child

He had everything a man could want power, grace and style

But I work in his factory and I curse the life I'm living

and I curse my poverty and I wish that I could be

Oh I wish that I could be Oh I wish that I could be Richard Cory

The papers print his picture almost everywhere he goes

Richard Cory at the opera Richard Cory at a show

and the rumor of his parties and the orgies on his yacht

oh he surely must be happy with everything he's got

But I work in his factory and I curse the life I'm living

and I curse my poverty and I wish that I could be

Oh I wish that I could be Oh I wish that I could be Richard Cory

He freely gave to charity he had the common touch

and they were greatfull for his patronage and they thanked him very much

so my mind was filled with wonder when the evening headlines read

Richard Cory went home last night and put a bullet through his head

But I work in his factory and I curse the life I'm living

and I curse my poverty and I wish that I could be

Oh I wish that I could be Oh I wish that I could be Richard Cory

"Richard Cory" by Paul Simon

"So on We Worked"

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean-favoured and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

"Good Morning!" and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich, yes, richer than a king,

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine -- we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked and waited for the light,

And went without the meat and cursed the bread,

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet in his head.

"Richard Cory" by E. A. Robinson

Time to Bunt

Sometimes in life, you just have to bunt instead of swinging away.  

I went surfing this weekend for the first time in years.  Yes, I took surf portraits last year, but never got on a board.  This weekend was perfect for me.  The ocean was flat, the waves small, about waist high.  I am not in paddling shape and would have floundered if the seas had been big.  As it was, I was tired but caught every wave I tried which was not too many.  I will go once a week, I tell myself, only to surf.  I felt good and wholesome afterwards.

We'll see.

Another Saturday Night

This is for all of you who were at the grocery store at 8:55 on Saturday night while beautiful people got out of expensive cars on the avenue like Buzby Burkely dancers sashaying into a chorus line, all legs and white teeth and high sensation, pretty couples who drank cocktails and stylishly laughed seated at perfect tables next to other pretty couples.  For all of you who couldn't find the honey on aisle 13 and wandered around until you forgot what it was you came for, who wondered what might be on television knowing there was nothing and thinking you might read awhile instead.  But after putting away the things you bought and cursing yourself for the things you forgot, after the shower with the last remnants of soap you forgot to buy and after not putting moisturizer on your face having forgot that too, the minute hand was on the upswing toward ten o'clock, and you thought about a whiskey which made you think about bed.  For those of you who rather than go to bed sat on the couch switching channels between nothing and nothing wishing for even Anthony Bourdain or the crazy Puerto Rican family who repos cars thinking maybe you would stay up long enough to see the beginning of Saturday Night Live which you have not watched for ten years but which you might if the whiskey keeps you up.  For all of you who thought "why am I with this person" or "why the fuck am I alone."  This is just for us who did not have a swell time last night and thought, hell--I'm pissing away my life.

Full Moon Lament

Mike Worrall, "Seekers of Truth" 2009

Sometimes drinking just too much is only that.  It is not magic, only, sometimes, an ingredient.  Last night the moon was full alright, but the evening too hot and muggy.  It was not a night for cafes.  And here, for me, nothing happened of any magnitude.  No Vespa could have fixed that.  And so, with the understanding of a child, I pouted wondering why we cannot have magic on demand.  And in truth, much of life is so damned dull. . . it is better never to look for it.  Of course.

Details.  The bar was sticky, the bartender surly.  She said she was hot and sweaty and grumpy.  The light was not right, too flat, too metallic.  Only a single couple across the bar seemed to be having any fun at all, she very pretty, he because she was.  Later, on another veranda, the food was average, the venue boring.  Even later, the moon was there but too far away, just too much heat and moisture between us.  Sticky, frustrated, having drunk just a little too much, I went home.  Of course, the overstuffed couch and the cat who adores me, as always.  Shelves full of books, drawers full of pictures, the trappings of a quiet life.

What do you do on such a night?  I had obviously taken the wrong course.  There was nothing to do but wait it out.

And then, there was something.  I turned on the television to the only channel I might stand.  "Flipper" was playing on Turner Classic Movies.  I had not seen it since I was a child.  It was enough.

And so, I will try to change directions right away.  Right now.  Tout suite.  Immediatement.  

On a Strawberry Moon

Summer is here.  Officially.  I missed the first day, the longest day, though I now know it was catastrophic for me.  It is noted.  But now the long days hold on well into the evening, deep blues and purples refusing to yield.  I went out last night alone for dinner, wishing to avoid the usual places, sitting outside at a sidewalk table eating barbecue and drinking beer and watching the parade of beauties and hipsters stroll by, me sitting inside my aura of aloneness.

After dinner I, too, strolled, though I imagine it more a stuttering limp than the smooth, confident gliding I'd been observing from my table.  And on an oak-lined street of bistros, I came to what had been a coffee house but which has been transformed into a cute garden cafe.  I stopped on the sidewalk for a moment to listen to a duet, a youngish fellow playing folksy jazz chords on a classical guitar and an (ahem) older gent playing violin.  After a long bridge, the younger fellow began to sing unobtrusively, the other man giving very subtle and musically clever harmonies.  Oh, they were good and I decided to stay and have a Bellini.  I wouldn't have thought of it myself, but the chalkboard out front suggested it and it seemed the perfect drink for the time of evening.

I stayed longish.  Lingered.  Solitary in that most beautifully dark light.  There is such a youthful charm to a Bellini, so full of eager enthusiasm on a pretty summer night whose air is filled with soft music and light.

I won't miss the full moon.  It is tonight, the first of the summer.  The Strawberry Moon.  I think I know where I shall go tonight to toast the summer and the moon and me.  We shall make a handsome trio for a brief while.  Perhaps I will drink just a bit too much.  Just enough too much.  And I will wish for the Vespa I have not bought, a pale, rich yellow with a tan leather seat.

Now that I have suggested it, you try, too.  The Bellini, I mean.  And even the Vespa, if you can.  It will mark you, and me, too, such a wonderful fiction, an infinite moment, a lovely escape on a summer full moon.

Nil

Don't tell me Americans aren't something.  I'm not just talking about how they came back yesterday to win their World Cup match against Algeria.  I mean that it is fascinating how the word "nil" has entered the vocabulary.  That's what all the soccer commentators say--nil.  It has always been a word in good standing in the English language, but it was not one heard much in American English.  I can't remember "nil" ever coming up in casual conversation.  But now everyone is saying it.  There is no more "nothing" or "zero" in reporting World Cup scores.  Matches are now tied nil-nil.  Americans are an accepting and adaptive people.

For those of you around the world who are reading this, I know it drives you crazy that the Americans made it to the final sixteen.  My friend from Africa who is an American citizen and a soccer player of some standing hates the U.S. soccer team.  He roots for anyone who plays them.  I tell him that he is not a true American and that his citizenship could be revoked.  True Americans are rooting for their boys (see, I'm speaking like an Englishman) to go all the way.  Two weeks ago, nobody ever talked about soccer.  Now, the United States is a Soccer Nation.  Only a few even knew how the game was played, and now everyone is an expert on offsides.  It's like hockey, sort of.  And a game that was once considered boring for its lack of scoring is now tremendously exciting.

The day the United States played Slovenia, I was in New York.  I stopped at Delerium Tremens for breakfast to watch, but by half time the U.S. was down two goals and I figured they weren't coming back.  Later, down on Broadway near Houston, I was just entering the lobby of the building where the Leica Gallery is housed when suddenly I heard a roaring cheer.  It was loud but had no source.  It seemed to be coming from a long distance, but it was close, too.  It was eerie, scary and surreal.  As I entered the lobby, the young guard stationed at the desk said, "The U.S. must have scored a goal."  And that is what it was.  The sound of cheering came from everywhere in the city, from apartments and bars and cars--everywhere.  It was the sound of angels cheering in heaven.  Unforgettable.

So I will be a soccer fan, too.  I will even quit resisting the word "nil."  It is a fine word.  And most of all, I love to hear the British commentators at work.  They put me at ease.  I think they are absolutely the best commentators in the world.

Above is one of the plates I made while in New York, an eight by ten ambrotype of Jody Ake.  Technically, it is lousy.  I have made a bad collodion pour and so the plate is full of dark and light spots that streak across the image.  Still, it is mine.  I made this one without Jody's helping hand in the darkroom which is why it is so bad, but I figured it was the only way to learn.  His big old 19th century brass Voigtlander lens was something to see and makes the image fine.  I want one.  I want everything.

What I have, though, at least right now--is "nil."  I will tell you more about that at the appropriate time.

"I am a Camera"

"Christian Schad (1894-1982) was another leading figure of the Neue Sachlichkeit group. His sharp-focused, mysteriously erotic portraits epitomize the decadent glamour of the Weimar era. Considered as a group, Schad's portraits form an extraordinary record of life in Vienna and Berlin in the years following World War I. Yet even when his paintings are apparently at their most objective, there is nevertheless a complex theater of illusion at play."

(from the Neue Galerie description of the Shad exhibit)

I must quote my friend from an email discussion of the period?

"Fucking everyone in Weimar must have been fun."

Am I allowed to quote from the novel I'm reading?  Am I?  The heroine of the novel is pretty and lucky as Fritz the Cat, and she gets a job in the theater after losing her clerical job because she is no good at it and has flirted with the boss to keep it but finally, when he presses the matter, she won't. . . so she's out.  She steals a fur coat because she loves it and feels she deserves it and goes to Berlin where she is staying with a blind man and his wife.  The blind man likes to massage her feet in the ugly kitchen that he cannot see while his wife is at work.  That is the set up (only half-way through the novel).  One night, while rubbing her feet (and no more), he asks:

"Dear voice of a folk song, where did you go today?"


"I was on the Kurfurstendamm."  


"What did you see?"


And I must have seen lots of colors there:  "I saw--men standing at the corners selling perfume, without a coat and a pert face and a gray cap on--and posters with naked ad rosy girls on them and nobody looking at them--a restaurant with more chrome than an operating room--they even have oysters there--and famous photographers photos in showcases displaying enormous people without any beauty.  And sometimes with."  


A cockroach is crawling around--it is always the same one?--and there's no air in the apartment--let's smoke a cigarette--


"What did you see?"  


"I saw--a man with a sign around his neck, "I will accept any work" with "any" underlined three time in red--a spiteful mouth, the corners of which were drawn increasingly down--and when a woman gave him ten pfennings, they were yellow and he rolled them on the pavement in which they were reflected because of the cinemas and nightclubs."  


"What else did you see, what else?"  


"I see--swirling lights with lightbulbs right next to each other--women without veils with hari blown into their faces.  That's the new hairstyle--its called 'windblown'--and the corners of heir mouths are like actresses before they take on a big role and black furs and fancy gowns underneath--and shiny eyes--and they are either a black drama or a blonde cinema.  Cinemas are primarily blonde--I'm moving right along with them with my fur that is so gray and soft--and my feet are racing, my skin is turning pink, the air is chilly and the lights are hot--I'm looking, I'm looking--my eyes are expecting the impossible--I'm dying to eat something wonderful like a rumpsteak, brown and with white horse-radish and pommes frites.  Those are the elongated --and sometimes i love food so much that I just want to grab it with my hands and bite into it, and not have to eat with forks and knives--"


"What else did you see, what else did you see?"


"I see myself--mirrored in windows and when I do, I like the way I look and then I look at men that look back at me--and black coats and dark blue and a lot of disdain in their faces--that's so important--and I see--there's the Memorial Church and with turrets that look like oyster shells--I know how to eat oysters, very elegant--the sky is pink gold when it's foggy out--it's pushing me toward it--but you can't get near it because of the cars--and in the middle of all this, there's a red carpet because there was one of those dumb weddings this afternoon--the Gloria Palast is shimmering--it's a castle, a castle--but really it's a movie theater and a cafe and Berlin W--the church is surrounded by black iron chains--and across the street from it is the Romanisches Cafe with long-haired men!  And one night, I passed an evening there with the intellectual elite, which means 'selection,' as every educated individuality know from doing crossword puzzles.  And we all form a circle.  But really that Romanisches Cafe is unacceptable.  And they all say: 'My God, that dive with those degenerate literary types.  We should stop going there.'  And then they all go there after all.  It was very educational for me, and like learning a foreign language.  


"And nobody has much money there, but they're alive and part of the elite and instead of having money they play chess, which is a checkered board with black and blonde squares.  They have kings too.  And ladies.  And it takes a long time, which is the whole point of it.  Of course, the waiters don't like it, because a cup of coffee only has a five-pfenning tip in it, which is very little for a chess guest of seven hours.  But it's the cheapest occupation for the elite, because they're not working and that's why they're keeping busy.  And they are very literary, and the literary elite is incredibly busy with their coffee and chess and talking and all that intellect, so they won't let onto themselves that they are lazy.  Some are from the theater too, and very colorful girls that are very self-assured, and a couple of older men with trembling bodies that have something to do with math.  And most of them are desperate to get published.  And they criticize everything.  

It goes on, but I am weary of typing and I really wanted more than anything to get to the last paragraph I copied here.  She is a camera, of sorts, the kind C.C. reminded me that Christopher Isherwood wrote about in a short story that was the genesis for "Cabaret."  Which I have never seen but will soon enough now.

I hope you are intrigued, but you need to read about the Weimar Kultur first and see who all came out of this brief period (of course, I am stupid to think you might not have).  Many Jews, of course, which drove Hitler mad.  No, you must go and read it now for yourself.  What good fun it is.  What incredible fun.

To See, Perchance, To Speak. . .

What is it about home that turns us into--someone not so highly regarded?  Rather, one thinks, why am I so cool when I'm gone and such a turd when I get back?  Maybe not everyone.  There are some who feel better in their own environs, who have carved a niche in the familiar.  I've heard people say it: "I can't wait to get home."  I only think about it when the money's running out.  To be a remittance man, the black sheep of a rather good family who is willing and able to send you 'round the world rather than have you fucking up the family name in their own home town.  "Hello, may I cadge a drink.  I'm a little short right now, but as soon as we get to Tangiers, there should be some money awaiting me."  Whatever.  As Thomas Hardy sort of said, home life is a dreary dream.

I should not speak at work, at home, or anywhere else there are people I must see again.  It does me harm.  My mind, you see, does not run on the parallel, and I have read too much.  No, it is not that, it is only that I took it seriously.  You must know what I mean.  Have you ever been acquainted with an art history professor whose house looks like something out of the Rent-to-Own catalog?  After studying the great luxuries and beauty of Rome and Byzantium, s/he opts for the cheap carpet and the balsa wood couch.  And the walls?  As my friend who worked for "the family" would say, "Forget about it."  Giant Olan-Mills portraits of children long grown.  They read only for vocation, I guess.  They were not looking for life's guidebook.

It is dangerous, I'm sure, to be too much influenced by art and literature.  I should have read the works and the accompanying biographies of those artists who produced them simply as cautionary tales, crossing myself and saying, "But for the grace of God, there go I."  But I made the mistake and absorbed it all, the deep colors and strange textures and smart, long narratives.  It is not that what I do that causes the problem, but the way I frame it when I tell it.  It is the crazy cock to my eye, maybe, or the intensity with which I speak.  Or maybe it is none of that but simply the details I wish to remember.

I don't know.  But I must become monkish again if I am going to survive.  I must observe and listen, smile and nod, and only speak anonymously here.  It is true, my friends.  Es verdad.

The Artificial Silk Girl

I spent all day Saturday at the Met.  It was a lovely day outside with beautiful skies and sunshine, with people in the streets and people in the park, and I thought about what I was missing, but choices need to be made and there are nice days at home, too.  But there is no Met.  And so I stayed indoors taking my meals at the cafe then pushing onward, getting lost, room after room after room.

I woke Sunday wondering what to do.  Departure day, but not until the early evening.  I checked my bags at the hotel desk and decided on a course.  First the Guggenheim, then the Neue.

The Guggenheim had a photography exhibit that started off mediocre and got progressively worse.  "Haunted" it was called, and I was, not by images but by theory.  The Picture Generation, as they were dubbed, mirrored the cultural theories of the time questioning authorial ownership and the ability to "author" anything at all.  It might have been necessary.  I don't know.  But I might as well have been at the Whitney.  I'm sure the show was critically well-received.

Thinking I had time still, I then stopped at the Neue Gallerie to see the Otto Dix exhibit.  I went to the bookstore first and realized I was tremendously hungry, so I wandered over to the Cafe Sabarsky before heading upstairs to the art.  I was seated in a corner booth looking out across the room, next to a fifteen foot oak-framed window giving out to 5th Avenue and the Park.  A glass of wine and the chatter of the crowd, then an open-faced sandwich on hard, dark bread, an egg-spread covered with slices of ham, topped with slices of pickle and shredded horseradish.  "I'm German," I thought in a low, harsh voice.  "I need pickles and radishes and hard, dark bread.  I need beer."  It was a treat.

After lunch, I went upstairs and wandered the show.  The Neue is small, so it was not so much wandering, really, as walking from room to room, standing before each harsh painting wondering at the zeitgeist of the Weimar culture, wishing to see the paintings of Christian Schad right away.

But time was moving me now.  The bookstore was full of things I wanted, but I settled on a novel by Irmgard Keun written in 1932 called "The Artificial Silk Girl."  The cover is what got me, I think, though it may have been the title as well.  And besides, the book was small.

It was simply a quick walk up 86th Street to the Metro stop for the 6 line which would put me one block from my hotel.  I would get my bag and go back to the train and get to the airport on time.  But that is how it was supposed to work--in theory.  Practice was another thing.

I waited on the 6 for a very long time while three trains stopped going the opposite way.  I was getting nervous.

"Hey," a woman yelled at me.  I turned to her.  She just stared.

"Are you a photographer?"  I guess she saw me sneaking pictures.  Her tone was more a command than a question, and I thought she was going to give me a hard time.  But that question always makes me smile.  Why do people ask me that?  There are hundreds of people with cameras.  Everyone everywhere is always taking photos all the time.

"I keep trying to think so," I told her sheepishly.  She looked like Jessica Lange in "Far North."

"Do you have a card?"

I had to laugh.  "No, why?"  Now I was intrigued.  Maybe this was it.  Maybe she was going to make me famous.

"You live here?"

No, I told her.  I'm on my way home.

"You look like you're from New York.  Well, that's too bad.  You coming back?"

"Sure," I said, "all the time."

"Give me your number."

"Why don't you give me your email address?" I said.  "I'll send you some photos."

"Man, I never do this," she said looking through her purse for a pen.  "I just thought. . . well, I never do this."

I guessed she wasn't going to make me famous.

"How often does the six run here?" I asked her.

"All the time, just not today, I guess."

There was a stairwell down to another track for the 4 and 5.  "Will the 4 stop at 51st?" I asked.

"Yea, let's go."

We dashed down the stairs just in time to catch a train.  It was the 6.

"What the hell, why were we standing upstairs?"  I asked her when we were on the train.

"I don't know.  I'm drunk.  Been drinking with friends all day."  She definitely looked like Jessica Lange.

But the train didn't stop at 51st.  It chugged along squealing its breaks never picking up much speed, and when it finally stopped, I was at Grand Central Station.

"What the hell?" I said again, nervous now.  I was going to be late for the airport.

"It's New York, sugar.  You never know.  You're just nine blocks back.  You want me to come with you?"

"No, I know where I am, I'm just late.  I've got to go," I said, jumping off the train in a trot.

"Send me something," she said with a smile.  "I never do this, you know."

When I got to the hotel, I asked the concierge about the trains to make certain.  She began writing down each train and each stop.  "It is going to be a little difficult today.  They are working on the lines, so everything is slow."

"How long will it take me if I get a cab?"

It was my only hope.  The doorman said, "I have one right here.  Half an hour.  Fifty bucks."

The driver took my bag and put it into the trunk of a giant white stretch limo.  I sat in the far back next to the bar.  "Hey," I said, "I'm in a hurry.  I'm late for a flight."

"Don't worry my man," he said.  "Here, take our picture."  He grabbed the doorman into a buddy hug.  Obviously they were friends.

Traffic was horrible, and my new friend took us up an avenue, then cross town, then back.  He must know what he is doing, I thought, but why'd I have to take a limo.  Jesus, he is slow.

Finally we crossed the Queens Bridge out of Manhattan, and I thought I might just make it.  But the highway was jammed as well.  What was I thinking?  Everyone would be leaving Manhattan on a Sunday afternoon.  Shit shit shit.  But the driver had tricks maybe.  He was cutting off the highway, and then we were in a rundown industrial district making lefts and rights on abandoned streets.  What the fuck?  And then we were on another road passing stores, turning left, right.  I could see the highway.  What was he doing? I wondered, avoiding the tolls?  Yes, of course.  I was ready to kill.  We would never make it.

Relax, I thought.  What happens happens.  Getting into a wad will not help.  If you miss it, you can fly out on a later flight.  Relax.

But I didn't relax.  Rather, I looked out the window of Moby Dick while we stopped at light after light in some crowded part of Queens I'd never imagined.  Now the people were poorly dressed and overweight.  The stores wore loud signs that announced the appeal of their wares in giant reds and yellows and blues.  It was all awful, truly awful.  "My Manhattan" began to play itself inaudibly.  I thought of the thin women from the night before in fashionable clothing.  Here, everyone wore the same t-shirt.  There seemed little difference between genders.  The great leveling, I thought.  Paradise.

Then suddenly we were on the highway again.  "How long?" I asked the driver, my fingers crossed.  We were down to the second.

I'll give it to him.  He drove Moby like a champ.  Suddenly he was on the horn and we were passing cars on the left and on the right.  Maybe the whiteness and the size scared them, but cars were pulling over now as if we had our own lane.

Jet Blue.  Fingers crossed, I gave him the money and a big tip.  "I think we made it," I cried, remembering my murderous thoughts from twenty minutes before.  But everything must go like clockwork.  First the curbside check-in, then through security, down a long corridor, the last gate, running.

"This is the last call for flight number. . . ."

And there I was, the last man on.

As I settled into my seat, I put my hand into my pocket and found a piece of paper.  I took it out to see what it was.  It was the paper the woman had given me on the subway.  I laughed.  Of course it was.  Of course.  What other name could she have.

To Be Everywhere, To Be Here

Picasso--Chalk on Paper Study (detail)

At night, you wish to be a god, to be everywhere at once.  It is overwhelming.  You have a drink in a dark and quiet bar on an avenue of dark, quiet bars and listen to thrilling music, clever conversation.  At home, one such place might be more than enough, but you can feel it all around you, the smart, alluring, unending energy like tom-toms in the blood.  You finish your drink and move to the street.  A beautiful woman with exotic features looks at you for a moment.  Where does one buy such a dress you wonder?  She laughs, turning away to place a hand on the shoulder of a companion.  What does it take to be part of that?  You stroll slowly with no place to go past restaurants and bars that look deep, delicious.  Here and there, laughter rolls onto the sidewalk from an open door.  A shop of beautiful pastries next to a shop of rich chocolates, everything presented as for a magazine spread, rich, intoxicating.  It goes on, on, and on.  That is here.  What about there, you wonder, thinking to hail a cab. But you can't be everywhere, so you walk into another bar for yet another drink.  You feel rich, happy, full, and lonely.

And then it is late, later than you imagined, and you make your way back to the hotel alone, deciding to go up to the roof, unwilling to turn in yet, unable.  And there you see the city spread out before you on all sides.  Across the street there is a rooftop party.  Who are these people, you wonder, thinking of a story, making conversations, scenarios.  You spot an enticing woman in a strapless dress who throws her head back to laugh, exposing a long curve of throat like the paintings you've been looking at all day by Modigliani, Matisse, Picasso. . . . You will get thin, you think, spend your money on better clothing, and suddenly you feel yourself lifting up over building tops to gaze down at all the parties and all the bars and all the beautiful people, floating with the breezes, rising and descending at will.

You would be young again, start over.  But you know that it is useless.  You see the faces of the people where you work, hear the conversations about. . . .  Your tongue begins to explore the sharp edge of a tooth where you lost part of a filling.  You will need to get that fixed when you get home.

You know you cannot stay, and looking at the people huddled together in twos and fours around you, you find your way down the stairwell, then back to your room to lie in your bed, to think until dreaming, the city not noticing, continuing on without you.

Another Time

In New York City, everyone is texting.  Everyone is on the phone.  Everybody's wired.

I wandered streets yesterday.  Nothing happened to me that is worth telling.  I went to SoHo which is no longer anything, then to Chelsea to the gallery district where I saw art I wish I could forget.  I met Q for a beer in the West Village at the end of the day.  My legs were tired.  I'd been on them for about ten hours.  I took a new train for me, the V-line, that got me from West to East.  I bought some food at the local deli, came to the room and fell onto the bed.  Exhausted.  "Shower," I said.  "Go have a drink."  But I could feel myself falling into a deeper inertia.  I ate and watched "The Thomas Crown Affair" on television (I almost wrote "The Thomas Mann Affair"--wouldn't that be something) telling myself that this was a luxury, that I was in New York and felt no urgency.  Finally, dinner and the movie finished, I managed to shower and go downstairs for a drink.  There is a wonderful bar connected to the hotel, a dark wood, low light affair.  I had a twelve dollar scotch sitting alone, the bartender remembering me from the night before, the scotch working its way deep into my muscles, nerves, and bones.  And when it was done, I moved into the street.

At night, it is a tossup.  Do you want a companion, or do you wish to be alone?  Bars full of people drinking together, laughing.  You're a stranger then, perhaps a ghost.  The night is lovely, perfect, neither warm nor cool, velvety and dry.  You might wish for a companion to lean to and whisper or point.  With no options, I ambled alone, strolling, I told myself, wandering.  So much beauty, so much luxury.  Thin women and tall men, well-dressed, lovely on a Friday night.  What beauty.  I am no match for it tonight, poorly dressed for this part of town, able to walk but unable to stop though wanting another whiskey.  Around the blocks making a large rectangle.  It would be better tonight with company, I think, as I make the turn toward home.  It is late enough and I am tired.  I will go to my room and lie in my bed.  NYC on a Friday night.  Maybe another time.

Lavender Scented Ether Dreams

Spent the day in Brooklyn at Jody Ake's studio making big 8"x10" ambrotypes.  Wait 'till you see.  I am ready to begin when I get home--I think.  It is easier to do with Ake standing there, using his camera, props, lights, chemistry, glass, etc.  But I did the last ones on my own without help, so maybe. . . .

We breathed toxic fumes all day--ether, alcohol, lavender--and handled very dangerous chemicals.  Last night I did not sleep well.  Worst nightmares I've had in I can't tell you.  Terrible things.  Was it coincidental?  Monsters were released.  I can't seem to rid myself of the lavender.

Got home late, showered, and headed downstairs for dinner and drinks alone.  Afterwards, I walked over to midtown.  Jesus Christ, if you ever get to feeling ugly in Manhattan, if you feel your clothes aren't what they should be or if you feel as if you have let yourself go while mingling with the hometown yahoos, just mosey over towards Times Square.  You will be with "your kind."  It is "The People's New York."  Standing on the corner of 47th and Broadway, I watched the crowd go by for half an hour or so.  I don't know what masochistic impulse drove me.  Maybe I was looking for a relative.  I don't know.  I can't say for sure.  Perhaps it was the ether and lavender, or perhaps it was nothing more profound than a heavy fatigue.  I imagined that this was some visitor's New York.  That this was the image she took home.  Perhaps a teenager who has come to visit from Arkansas with her parents.  They've just come from the theater.

Which reminds me.  My friend was at my house and wanted to watch the Tony Awards.  I started to pitch a fit, but I gave in realizing that I needed to be a good host.  Something about it makes me crazy.  It is awful.  Before I came this trip, a woman I work with asked me what show I would see while I was here.  I told her none.  This stymied her.  How could I come to New York and not see a show?

Standing in Time's Square, I got my answer.  I realized in ten thousand blinks of an eye who the audience for those shows were.  Not me.  Broadway is the theater version of network prime time television.  Bingo!

So you can tell me I'm wrong.  I don't care.  You can love "Cats" and "Best Little House on the Prairie" or whatever it was called.  You can love the technicolored coat show.  Admit it if you will.

I will go back one night with my camera.

Apropos of my visit to NYC just now, the friendly people over at 591 have just put up eleven of my street photos from my last trip here.  Mine are just a small part of a very big series featuring about fifty photographers, so you may actually see some photos that are interesting and good if you take the time to look at the lot.

But now I must go.  Time is money in old Manhattan and the day will not wait for me.

Mysteries and Memories

New York.  You never know what will happen.  Every street is at once a mystery and a memory.  You must hold the two equally without comparing.  Everything changes, everything is the same. The challenge and the thrill is keeping the senses alive.  They will dull, they will dull, but we have it in us. . . every thing changes, every thing's the same.

Q met me at the hotel.  It has been a year.  He is married now.  Everything. . . .  Croque Madames and beers at Delirium Tremens, a decent enough place.  Then MoMA for the much maligned Cartier-Bresson exhibit which is impossible to go through easily even on a Wednesday afternoon, every picture a crowd.  A man tells a woman in all seriousness, "This picture would not have existed a moment before or a moment after the click of this shutter. . . . "  She nods in profound agreement.  Why is he making such an obvious statement?  He read it in a book, perhaps, or an article on photography.  The couple is handsome and sophisticated.  I look at the photo again thinking they give Bresson credit for all the wrong things.  He started something else.  Some photos look like early Arbus, like Robert Frank.

Two floors below we see the Pictures by Women: The History of Modern Photography exhibit.  It seems an arbitrary collection better called The History of Photographic Printing and Technology.  It is not as crowded as the Bresson.  Both are good to see.

I love museum crowds.  They are the best for me, so visual.  Funny, huh?

Late, we head south to Cynthia Altoriso's studio.  She is gracious, pours Pernod all around.  We chat until we must leave for dinner.  It is the dressing hour, but Q and I are still in shorts and t-shirts, greasy from the day, meeting his wife and her friends at a chi-chi hotel near Union Square.  They are upstairs at a reception for Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed.  We cannot go up, so they come down. . . way down.  We go to a local bar, the Black and White, further south.  I am tired then.  I am only a subway ride from "home."

The City So Big They Had To Name It Twice

I'm nervously getting myself ready for another solo trip to NYC tomorrow.  I'll be working with Jody Ake in Brooklyn to hone my wet plate photo skills for a day.  Otherwise--I'm footloose.  Five days in New York.  Well situated above mid-town on the East Side.  Dinner with Q at Holy Basil tomorrow night.  The rest to wander and explore.  I'll keep you informed.

I write in solitude, of course, which makes me feel rather solipsistic.  Whenever I get a hint that this blog exists in the world outside, I am shocked.  Yesterday, the blog got a big bump.  I discovered that something I had written a while back was reprinted on another blog.  I don't mind at all, but as I say, it is surprising to me to find that what I do really exists elsewhere.  It was fun to read what I had written though I wanted to edit it there and then.

But I am hoping to exist elsewhere, or at least that my work will.  I am beginning to send some things out for consideration.  I've never asked a woman out because I can't stand rejection, so we'll see what happens here.

If you have any suggestions for my trip, let me know quickly.  I leave early in the morning.

If It Ain't Loud. . . .

(have I shown this before?)

I watched World Cup matches this weekend, two of them.  I don't watch soccer.  I don't watch much sports at all any more.  But I liked this.  I lay on the couch in the coolness and listened to the calm voices of the British commentators.  It reminded me of the way things used to sound in America, of what has been lost.  There was no hype, just a deliberate and understated excitement at the importance of the event.  The closest thing we have to it any more is the voice of a golf commentator.  As I say, I lay there and relaxed.  The only irritant was the noisemakers that sounded like the hum of bees used by the fans.

Later that night, after going with my young friend and his mother to see "The Karate Kid," I watched the Celtics and the Lakers in game five of the NBA Championships.  What a contrast.

America will wear you out, I'm convinced.  You must be rich to stay away from all the noise and the hype and all of the environmental pornography that the rest of us are assaulted by every day.  Everything I read tells me that Americans are unhealthy, that we have largest, most expensive, and least capable health program in the first world.

There are alternatives to the way we live, but Americans are not exposed to them much.  It is all noise, all the time.  As I have been writing, not one but TWO yardmen with giant gas powered engines attached to their backs have been blowing yard clippings from here to there.  I'm going to bet there isn't a rake or broom on the truck.  My neighbor leaves in his giant pickup truck with the five inch pipes to amplify his comings and goings.  In America, if it ain't loud, you ain't having fun.  Try telling your neighbor that he's being too loud and see how that works out for you.

"The Karate Kid" was a quiet movie.  I didn't want to have to see it, but I couldn't help it.  And it wasn't bad.  It has a nice message for kids.  Focus.  Quiet the mind.  Everything is Kung-Fu, the tutor tells the tyro.  The Chi.  Just like "the force" in "Star Wars." The Karate Kid gets that.

So. . . to sum up.  Let the kids watch the World Cup.  Take them to see "The Karate Kid."  I don't know if it will help, but it seemed to.

A Picture's Worth

I just feel like this photograph today.  Much to do.  No motivation.  I am going back to bed.

The Reality of Life

Today environmentalist plan a worldwide protest against BP.

New York's Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is reported by CNN to have stated, "The guy that runs BP didn't exactly go down there and blow the well up."  Don't go blaming BP.  They are the ones with the technology to fix it, he says.

Exactly.  The government can do nothing.  And therein lies the problem.   There is no government, no oversight, nothing but technology that the government doesn't have.

In London, Prime Minister David Cameron is reported as saying that "it is in everyone's interest that BP continues to be a financially strong and stable company."

Seriously. . . what do you think will happen?

A Late Spring Night

Late post.  I have been sick, tired. . . sick and tired.  I slept the sleep of the. . . normal people. . . last night, a full eight hours.  Sweet.

Perhaps it was the lovely evening before bed.  The bad, sick weather broke and the day and night were cooler, dryer.  It was like living again. . . .

"King Kong vs. Godzilla" played in the park.  First sushi, then the movie.  The crowd was fun, laughing and cheering in all the right places, the night as silky as a hand upon your cheek.  It put me in the mood to buy a new grill and break out the ice cream maker.

Godzilla was vanquished, of course, and Kong swam back to his island.  And as the T.V. anchor reports, "Strangely, we wish him well on his long journey home."

Goofy.  But it is the memory from which I pull ideas for so many of my strange images.

I've just changed the photo now to better match the mood.

Unmade

I've been thinking about Gary Snyder.  Serious.  Cool.  Changeable.  His love for cities parallels his love of nature.  And he was deeply sensual, too.  

These are not my favorite quotes, just stuff I found with a quick Google search.  But they are good and representative.  


Things have changed, though.  It is difficult to talk about a "sense of place" in a world where everywhere strives to be the same, where people spend more and more of their time with "cyber-tribes" on social networks than with the people who live around them, where sex and sensuality are politicized.  Every college student reading at an eighth grade level and natty executive who has never read a work of literature can tell you that this stuff is naive with all its eternal verities.  


O.K.  I'm just bitter today.  I saw an ad by BP telling me that they are going to make it right.  


Going to make it, right.  


"I have a friend who feels sometimes that the world is hostile to human life--he says it chills us and kills us. But how could we be were it not for this planet that provided our very shape? Two conditions--gravity and a livable temperature range between freezing and boiling--have given us fluids and flesh. The trees we climb and the ground we walk on have given us five fingers and toes. The "place" (from the root plat, broad, spreading, flat) gave us far-seeing eyes, the streams and breezes gave us versatile tongues and whorly ears. The land gave us a stride, and the lake a dive. The amazement gave us our kind of mind. We should be thankful for that, and take nature's stricter lessons with some grace." 


"Having a place means that you know what a place means...what it means in a storied sense of myth, character and presence but also in an ecological sense...Integrating native consciousness with mythic consciousness" 


After Work


The shack and a few trees
float in the blowing fog


I pull out your blouse,
warm my cold hands
    on your breasts.
you laugh and shudder
peeling garlic by the
    hot iron stove.
bring in the axe, the rake,
the wood


we'll lean on the wall
against each other
stew simmering on the fire
as it grows dark
    drinking wine.

When Does It Begin?

When does it begin?  It is gradual, I am sure.  I try to think back to when things began to change, and I can't find "the spot."  I remember all the years when I woke up happy for the new day.  It would be an adventure.  Somewhere after college, I began to worry a little bit, I think.  I remember coming back to a town that was not "me" friendly.  I got a job and lived for free in my mother's house.  My girlfriend was still in college and some of my friends had decided not to move after graduation and got jobs in town. At night, feeling the harshness of my life, a life now lived among Yahoos, I found some unhappiness and discontent.  Perhaps it was the first job that did it.  Perhaps it was the environment.

Still, there were many happy times.  I was still fascinated simply by going out and watching things.  And of course, there was always music.  There was always something to articulate my mood for me, happy or sad.

Maybe it was the money.  Rather, the lack of it.  I was part of the working poor, but luckily I came from hillbilly stock and had grown up with the idea of "making do."

My girlfriend decided to go to grad school after graduation.  She would not be coming home.  I would see her on the odd weekend.

Still, there were many happy times.

I got involved with a new girl.  She was like nothing I had ever deserved before and life was exciting.  But really, I found, you can't have two girls at once, and things turned tragic.

Still, I was happy sometimes.

My father died.  It was terrible.

I bought a sailboat.  And that is where I spent much of my time on weekends, mostly alone, sailing to some remote anchorage where I could cook and drink and read and sleep.

Then I was in my thirties, and I worried sometimes.  I could feel life's rush then, and I began to wonder what I was really going to do.

So I bought a house.  My girlfriend left me for a boy with a trust fund.  I had trouble making the payments on the house alone.  I began to worry a lot.

Still, sometimes. . . .

 I met a new girl who was very, very wealthy.  And I got new friends.  After some years, she was gone and there was another.  We got married.

I was forty.  At night, I could feel time rushing away. . . .

Then I couldn't sleep any more.  Suddenly, I realized that I had become something, that this is what I was.  And I wondered how it had happened.  Still, I thought, there was this.  And I thought I could be content.

Then that too was gone.

I began to remember waking in the morning after the sun came up, lying in bed, feeling very wonderful.  I would get up without thinking.

I just can't put my finger on it.  When does it begin?  When does it happen that we can't sleep and don't want to get up?  Now, lying in the dark, back and hips and knees and neck aching, my eyes pop open and I reluctantly turn over to look at the clock that I can no longer easily read.  I squint with foreboding and make out the fuzzy numbers.  Shit.  I try to stay in bed a bit longer, but my mind is already buzzing.  What do I HAVE to do today?  What have I left undone?

And just before I get up, I wonder what I will write that day.  And sometimes, like this morning, I just can't think of anything at all.

Doctors

"Prom Dress"

"I don't think I can go back to the 'Y' for awhile."

"Why's that?"

"I hate doctors, you know."

Sometimes I love the way conversations seem to make no sense, all connectivity gone so that it seems a random bunch of words.  But sometimes, it just frustrates me.

"Sure," I said.

"They aren't right all the time.  Sometimes they are right, but not all the time.  Like my shoulder.  The doctor told me I'd never lift again.  Told me it was over, that I was done.  I told him to do that little metaphorical thing they do and 'clean it up,' but he said that he wouldn't know where to begin, that he'd probably only make it worse.  That part I'm sure he was right about now.  But the other part was horse shit."

"I see," I said, not seeing at all, but I wasn't in the mood for unwinding his twisting tale.

"At the 'Y,' there are a lot of doctors who work out.  You can tell them right off.  They come in like they are at the hospital and everyone is working for them, you know what I mean?  You remember the kids at school who ended up becoming doctors?  Remember what they were like in high school?"

"No.  Nobody from my school became a doctor.  Hardly anybody went to college.  One guy became a plant manager for the Hormel company.  And there was another guy who is head foreman for a big agricultural corporation.  One fellow really made out selling insurance.  No, wait, two, two fellows did that."

He just looked at me like I had two heads, like he wasn't the moron.

"I forgot.  Well, the guys who became doctors were the mousy fellows who studied since the first grade and did all the right things.  They were always background noise, in the clubs but not the cool guys.  They had mothers and fathers who were mousy, too.  And then they went to college and maybe joined the nerdy fraternity and they got drunk like twice, and they started dating a girl who thought they were nice and who stayed with them all the way through med school, all the long hours as an intern, and when they finally got finished and began to practice, they owed half a million dollars in student loans."

"Jesus, that sounds great."

"Yea, but they pay it off in five years and then they begin to get rich.  That's when they have to decide if they are going to leave their first wife for a nurse or not because suddenly they are the smartest guy in the room and people are paying attention to them and taking them seriously and they start to believe.  It's always a young, pretty nurse who wants to do things his wife doesn't want to do."

"What about the doctors who are women?"

"Different deal altogether."

"Oh."

"So when they come into the 'Y,' they think they are hot shit.  They are always looking down at their cell phones, checking messages and texting, and all the money boys who aren't doctors come up and say hello and ask them how they are doing and how's the kids, you know, and they always give that slow, neighborly smile and speak cautiously like they are talking to a child."

"Close," I said, getting into the spirit of the conversation.

"When I first started working out at the 'Y,' the doctors were always sort of hanging out on the equipment, talking politely and checking their phones and making it difficult to work out, so I'd walk up and ask if I could work in.  They always seemed miffed and looked at me like I was a worker who just walked into the house with shit on the bottom of his shoes.  Once, one said, 'I'm using this,' and I said, 'no you're not, you're standing there leaning on it.  Get out of the way and I'll show you how to use it.'  I wanted to pop the fucker right there."

"I don't think you should go to the 'Y' to work out," I said.  "They don't act like that there.  You're just a bit too aggressive."

"Well, I was walking in from the parking lot yesterday and this guy--I know he was a doctor the way he was all neat and tidy--was walking toward me looking down at his phone, not looking where he was going like he owned the world and everyone needed to watch out, so I didn't veer and put my shoulder down just before we collided and put a little extra into it turning as if to look over my opposite shoulder.  It jarred him pretty good and his phone went flying.  When it hit the ground, it just fell into pieces.  The guy went nuts and started yelling at me, again, like I am an employee, and I really got mad.  At that point, my heart was pumping pretty good.  'Shut up, you prissy little fuck,' I said to him and suddenly he comes charging at me like he's ready to fight, his hands clenched and his YMCA muscles all bunched up, and without thinking about it, I just punched him in the side of the jaw.  He didn't even try to block it.  I just saw his eyes change shape and the big doubt fall over his face before he crumpled. I think he went out for about two seconds, and then he started moving real slow.  I just walked to my car and got in and drove off.  I don't think I can go back for awhile."

"Yea, you said that.  That was yesterday?"  Now I was paying attention.  It had turned into a real story.

"About three-thirty."

"You think he called the cops?"

He looked troubled for a second, then he laughed.

"Hell no, his phone was broken."

I dated a neurosurgeon for a bit.  I could tell a different story.  But maybe another time.  I'd gotten a kick out of his.  It was pretty good.  He had enough trouble for now, and maybe a little more coming his way.  I'd let it alone.  Who knew what he was in for tomorrow.

Perhaps. . . Just One More. . . And Then. . . .

In answer to your queries, yes, there will be a Circus Project.  I just can't seem to get to it.  I don't know how others finish up a project, make selections, print, and put it down.  I'm not there yet.  I keep shooting "Storyland" though I tell myself "this is the last one."  How do you know what the last one is?  But I have begun to experiment with other films and styles now.  Here's another of the Fuji experiments.  It is difficult, much harder and more time consuming than the Polaroid ju-ju.  Truly, it's pretty damn scary stuff.

But is is summer and I can't stay in the studio.  It is too hot.  So I am looking for an outdoor project, something I can document.  I have a few ideas.  I keep thinking to take the bus to work once or twice a week and shooting what I find in 35mm.  I would want to record tales and stories, of course.  I'd do some research, too.  What percent of Americans outside major cities depend on the bus for transportation?  Who are they economically?  Ethnically?  I've ridden the bus here, or tried to.  It takes hours.  Transfers are usually on a major road with only a bench provided.  In summer here, that is brutal.

For now, though, I sit with the scanner and the computer and work on photographs hour after hour.  I spent two hours on a photo I didn't like yesterday.  I kept trying to make it work.  Way led to way.  And then the afternoon was gone and I had nothing to show for it.  What madness there?

The same madness that leads one to post to blog every day for years, perhaps.  It's like gossip.  No one wants to pass it on, but what else is there to do with it?

Who's In Charge?

This from this morning's New York Times:

“'The pace of technology has definitely outrun the regulations,” Lt. Cmdr. Michael Odom of the Coast Guard, who inspects the rigs, said last month at a hearing. As a result, deepwater rigs operate under an ad hoc system of exceptions. The deeper the water, the further the exceptions stretch, not just from federal guidelines but also often from company policy. So, for example, when BP officials first set their sights on extracting the oily riches under what is known as Mississippi Canyon Block 252 in the Gulf of Mexico, they asked for and received permission from federal regulators to exempt the drilling project from federal law that requires a rigorous type of environmental review, internal documents and federal records indicate. . . .

And when company officials wanted to test the blowout preventer, a crucial fail-safe mechanism on the pipe near the ocean floor, at a lower pressure than was federally required, regulators granted an exception, documents released last week show."

Investigating what regulatory devices the government actually employs, the paper reports,

"Its safety inspections usually consist of helicopter visits to offshore rigs to sift through company reports of self-administered tests."

The line I most remember from Micheal Moore's movie, "Roger and Me," is delivered by a General Motors executive who says that the purpose of a corporation is not to honor its home town, its to make a profit. A corporation's moral compass is guided by the single principle. Who doubts that?

"Financial concerns added pressures on the rig.

BP had fallen behind schedule and over budget, paying roughly $500,000 a day to lease the rig from Transocean. The rig was 43 days late for starting a new drilling job for BP by the day of the explosion, a delay that had already cost the company more than $21 million.

With the clock ticking, bad decisions went unchecked, warning signs went unheeded and small lapses compounded."

Sorry. Two days in a row. But the response from what we call "the citizenry" has been underwhelming. Fishermen who have lost their livelihoods and hotel owners make up the majority of what I have read. Perhaps people are in shock. Perhaps denial. Maybe we're just used to things "working out." I keep reading and hearing that a lot of "good lessons" have been learned from this. Enough to put PayPal in charge of space exploration, I guess. Quicker, Better, Faster, Cheaper.

What would China do?

SpaceX

This is from a story on the CNN website today.

"SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal, sent out the technical details of the successful launch, which he said performed its mission to deposit the Dragon mock-up into a 155-mile (250-km) orbit to near perfection."


Some, including "Nasa Administrator" Charles Bolden, recognize the transfer of the space program from the government to the private sector as landmark.  

"'Space X's accomplishment is an important milestone in the commercial transportation effort and puts the company a step closer to providing cargo services to the International Space Station,' [Bolden] said."


Former astronaut  Schweickart favors this transfer of responsibility as well.  

"'I think it's safe to say that SpaceX and the other commercial developers embody the 21st century version of the Apollo frontier spirit. It's enormously gratifying to see them succeed today,' he said."


In an interview with CNN, Musk opined,  

"It's time for NASA to hand that over to commercial industry who can then optimize the technology and make it more reliable, make it much lower cost and make it much more routine.'"


This in the wake of the BPs optimization of the technology, they who have made it more reliable.  

I try to stay away from this stuff on this blog.  It is not my purpose here.  But this, I think, is entering into a new realm.  It is like a movie, scripted, borrowing from the dialog of other movies, masking the irony with sincerity.  Things will go wrong, the president of SpaceX admits, but it is all, he says, part of the learning process.

This is not metafiction.  What is it?  Meta-reality?

SpaceX. A subsidiary of PayPal.  Power and profit.  Keeping an eye out for your future.

Good and Ill

I keep plugging along on my projects, but there never seems to be enough time.  I am far behind in everything that I owe people now and think I will have to cut back on actually taking pictures to once a week.  But taking pictures is the exciting part.  After that, I must sit at the scanner for hours and hours and hours listening to it go, "theewunk!whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrclank!weeeeeeeeeeee."  And I begin to go mad.  And then there are the endless hours spent making the photo in Photoshop.  One image can take many hours.

Yesterday, I shot with someone I've worked with before.  She gives me many good ideas.  I was using her to experiment with some new techniques that I don't know will work and she understands that nothing may come of it all.  For giggles, I picked up my digital camera and shot a few dozen pictures of her.  I like to shoot with big apertures, but my eyes are getting really bad and I keep fucking up the focus.  It is a problem.

Skip ahead.  I sent a description of one of my projects and some recent photos to a woman who was interested in working with me.  She wrote back:

"im sorry but ill have to decline, these images come off almost scarry to me."

This, of course, startled me.  It is the first time I have had this response.  I thought about her comment, though, and had to admit, well, yea, there is that certain sense of despair and desperation in them.  I looked back through the images then and saw them newly through her eyes, and I could see what she meant.  They began to scare me a bit, too.  

A friend of mine who has published two semi-important books on areas of Modern British Lit once said to me that he thought reading modern literature caused depression and other mental illnesses.  Sure, it has some elements, I said, but that's what makes me happy.  Just to know that I am not the only one subjected to the horrors palliates the sting.  But again, I know what he meant.  

The girl in the studio yesterday told me she roller skates.  Not blades, but skates.  Who in the world does that anymore?  I asked her all about it and told her I'd like to photograph her in her skating costume.  Way led to way, and she gave me another good idea.  She is young and hangs out with skater trash and surfers and the like.  She will bring them to my studio.  

When I began writing the last paragraph, I thought to say that these will be bright, happy photos, but I already have my doubts.  It all depends on what one wants to see, I think.  When I looked back at the portfolio of the girl who declined the shoot, I felt the kind of horror one gets from beauty pageants and glamor photos, all those plastic, orthodontic smiles and skin kept pure by acutane and heavy cosmetics.  No knock on her.  I'm just saying.  

The photo I am posting today is one of yesterday's digital photos.  Man, that is easy!  Just click, download, a few adjustments, and BAM!  And I like the picture.  I even hit the focus on the button.  So what am I doing fooling around with all these invented processes I can barely control, making the "almost scarry [sic]" images that so few people want to see?  I could do the other thing more easily and have more approbation.  

If I could answer that, though, everything would be different.  For now, I'll keep on with what I've started.  I don't even care if people like them, though I wish they would.  But when I look at those images, especially in a group. . . man, I know I'm doing the right thing.  

I think.