The Details of Tedium

In a life where nothing happens. . . what can you write?  The details, I think, but sometimes even they are too dull to mention, or they are the same details you've mentioned a thousand times before.  I love Wallace Stevens' poems about dullness and boredom.  "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock," of course, but also the boredom that comes from living any sort of life.  In "The Emperor of Ice Cream," he writes of the rote tedium of a whorehouse, the small comings and goings, the death of a Madame.  It has informed much of what I shoot for my project.  It is the song that always plays upon the radio.

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.


Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Something Unrembered

I did walk as I said I would.  I walked to the gym and worked out, and walked back home, a seven mile roundtrip.  I wanted to be home before I was.  But I had walked there in the dead of winter and was walking back in glorious spring.  It was one of those most beautiful southern days with the deepest and bluest of skies that overwhelm you with the inequity of its beauty.  When I reached home, the Camellia tree had broken into bloom.  It took me by complete surprise.

I have been getting emails again from women I know.  These are wonderful things, of course, for they are fodder for thought and imagination, and when I have responded with some profundity or lyrical miracle, I feel as if I have accomplished something for that day.  It is much different than writing a blog, of course, for you have particular rather than universal things to share.  And the details can be much more inflammatory, provocative, or even raunchy.  I have much missed this writing.  Funny, eh?  Remember when email was considered an intellectual death?  Now it seems a sign of genius.

*     *     *     *     *

That was the morning.  The afternoon lunch and walking down the Avenue was like looking into the store mirrors when trying on clothes.  The lights are bright.  You see the flaws.  Is it your hair?  And the skin looks bad.  You try not to look at your belly, your thighs.  Shit, you think on that fine Saturday in the store, I have to begin living differently.  When did I become this?  I must be outside more. I will ski/surf/bike/rollerblade/run/kayak/climb/play ball of any sort.  I will get fit again.  Everything will be better.  Everything will change.  

That is what walking down the Avenue alone on the brightest and clearest and sunniest of days did for me.  Sidewalk tables were full of happy people eating and drinking and laughing.  I felt my gait that of someone kicking puppies out of the way.  I vaguely remembered better times.

And so I called an old friend to see if he'd like to have an early dinner.  I have known him a long time but have not seen him often in the past few years.  We have climbed mountains in exotic lands, skied in the chiciest of places, played cards at the gambling tables, kayaked wild rivers, fly fished isolated streams.  Etc.  

We met at the restaurant.  I haven't been out like this for years.  I sat waiting for him at the bar and, of course, instantly fell in love with the bartender.  I wanted to marry her.  I remembered that I always fell for waitresses and bartenders the way doctors fall for nurses.  There was a second bartender, shorter, more shapely, prettier in some ways, too, but she was not for me.  No, no, the one I liked--my bartender--she was something else.  

My buddy arrived and immediately decided we should eat at the bar.  "What the fuck," he posited, "I want to sit and look at you?"  And so we ate and drank and began to catch up.  And as the evening wore on, I became more and more depressed.  It was all there, the same customers, the same barmaids, the same witty repartee.  It didn't interest me.  The restaurant was a good one, but the food was not persuasive.  I pour better drinks at home.  

As the dinner disappeared, the conversation wore down.  "You want to go someplace else for a drink?" my buddy asked.  I didn't and I could tell that neither did he.  And so we settled up and stood on the sidewalk talking for half an hour more, people we knew saying hello and joining for a minute or two.  But it all meant nothing.  And then shaking hands, we parted with the obligatory "call me, we'll get together" mantras.  

Standing alone in the night, I knew I wanted to do something, but for the life of me I could not tell you what.  I only knew the contrary.  At least there was that, I thought.  At least I know what I do not want to do.  I was certain.  

At home, everything was the same.  The cat was stretching on the chair at my arrival, too lazy to get up but letting me know she was available for petting.  The cable station was still playing jazz.  There was all that, but I could not think of the other thing.  What was it?  It's been a long time.  Maybe I'll remember soon.  Or maybe that is all over now, whatever it was.  Maybe all that is gone.    

Muddled Grace

It goes back to the concept of "Amazing Grace."  That's what the preacher told me yesterday.  He's not a preacher any more.  He left that behind, all the moaning and wailing and healing.  He had done all that with conviction and belief, but he finds it foolish now.  "It goes back to St. Augustine," he told me.

"He's the one who needs the beating, then," I said.

"Yes he does."

What sort of polar shift occurs in people to make them go from one thing to another in such profound ways?  How does one go from living with the Power of the Holy Ghost to atheism in a single protracted moment?

There are locks in the brain, I'm sure.  "Doors of Perception," I guess.  Kaboom!  Everything is new.

I'll take a door right now.  Perhaps I should go to the desert and fill my head with hallucinogens looking for "The Way."  Perhaps it is merely the month of January that has me off.  Then February should be worse.  Or maybe I am oppressed by the new conditions of my employment, me now being more a wage slave than ever before.  Perhaps it is the ending of a relationship and trying to fill that void.  Maybe it's the damn emails.  The woman I quoted yesterday. . . I want to tell you about her, but I'll say something and she will decide to come read the damn blog and then once again there will be all hell to pay.  She is trouble, though, a temptress.  I don't know if I need tempting now.  I responded to her invitation and to her analysis of my drinking while alone with this.

"You may be right, but I turn down all invitations.  I live like a drunken monk or a voluntary shut-in.  Maybe I've gotten The Fear.  I don't want to become a hermit, though.  I need to force myself into some relationships.  Too soon I will develop autism.  It is the Greta Garbo Syndrome, though.  Yes, that's it!  That is absolutely it."

But that may not be it at all.  Or not all of it.

I thought today, while reading about the riots in Egypt, that I would like to go there and make photos and stories.  I want to experience what that is like.  I want to be engaged.  And I realized that such a thing would be contrary to the project I am doing now, the one I've spent so much time with.  In that I deal only with surfaces.  The acts are staged.  I do not know the models.  They show up.  I ask them to represent something.  They leave and I am left with days and weeks of work shaping those images into something I want.  It has taken all my spare time and I have told myself that I will end it.  Soon, I say, but there is always another and another and another.

And this morning I began to think that it has become a way of not dealing with something else.  I am being "productive" I tell myself and others.  It is hard work.  And it is true, too.  But how much of it is the desire to tell one thing without going through another?  How much of it is simply substituting "art" for life?

It is a bad can of worms I've opened for myself this morning.  The question has consumed me.  How much of anything we do, I ask, is just substituting one thing for another?  We do this so that we don't have to do that.

I don't want to go to the desert and fill my head with hallucinogens in order to find The Way.  It is too similar to what I am doing now.  And it is easier than becoming engaged.  I hit on something in that email to my friend.  I think I've been overtaken by The Fear.  I do turn down all invitations.  I do live like a drunken, profane monk.  I think I have already developed autism.  And yes, like Greta Garbo, I want to be alone, to be remembered one way rather than another.

I am making pictures with people right now and not of them.  I am not selling anything physical, not an age nor a body type, so everyone looks good to me.  They are just what I need.  The human figure.  But in the past couple weeks, by chance, I've shot with some very young and pretty women.  You might think that such a thing would make me happy, may even imagine that is what I really am trying to do.  It is not, and in truth it has set me in this direction.  They are young and beautiful and I am something else and it reminds me of things we best forget.  And I'm not speaking of a longing for the flesh.  Nope.  It is much worse than that.  The butterfly must never dream of being a chrysalis.  Make that a moth.  Or worse.

And maybe all of this is due to a long series of illness and injury that have kept me from being active.  I haven't been able to run for months.  I've barely been to the gym.  I've grown fat and weak with drink.  My mind is muddled.

I will walk far this morning in the cold dark air.  I will watch the rosy dawn evolve.  Walking is a cure.  It has worked before.  It may take many miles to figure this out to any extent.  But who knows where it walking may lead.  Hell, by next week, I may be grateful.

Grateful

I'm going to give up trying to be grateful for what I have.  It doesn't work in the long run.  It is not that I want more, but I want something that I don't have much of the time.  It is easy to tell yourself not to think that way.  I tell myself that all the time.  At least you can still walk.  At least you can still see some things.  At least you are not going mad all the time.  Be grateful.

It is easier, I'm finding, to be glad for what you don't have.  At least you don't have. . . .

Sometimes I am grateful for what I had, but that is dangerous territory and to be avoided.

Perhaps I should give up being grateful at all.  I will become an ingrate.

Maybe I am and don't realize it.

Gratefulness.  I'd like to find the person who perpetrated that on us.

Whiskey and Computers

unknown

I sent an email to someone who occasionally writes back a couple nights ago.

"Why do I drink so much at night alone?"

In part, she wrote back:

"Possibly because you do not enjoy your solitude as much as you think."

Don't ask the question if you don't want the answer, right?

I don't remember asking the question, though.  There were other more provocative parts to her email that I enjoyed much more.

Are any of you in a relationship you are sick of?  Which is worse?

"I consider having an affair, but I am already so tamed that it seems out of the question," she noted.

"It feels I am a fire in a glass and that I'm floating on the water and slowly sinking."

Maybe I'll let her write my blog for me for awhile.  But she won't do it every day.  It would be so hit and miss that nobody would bother to turn up.

To feel yourself a fire, though. . . a blessing or a curse?  We're all trapped, I guess, by something.  Desire or solitude, the urge to stay, the urge to go.  Safety or danger.  Randomness or routine.

I must stay away from the computer at night now.  I've been through this before.  There are too many opportunities to make mistakes.

Still, it is fun to open up the email in the morning.  It can be a mistake to miss out on opportunities, too.

Endless Paris Nights (and the Search for Meds)

The next night, she accompanied me to a Bal Musette. Dramatic on stage, she was sweet and simple anywhere else.  But I felt as if I were hiding her somehow in all the out of the way working class bars.  And so late, after everything else, we went to the Closerie des Lilas and had an expensive bottle of wine.  The weather was pleasant.  There seemed no end to it all. 


I will confess to a great illness of late.  It has not wanted to let me go.  Either that, or I have gotten a second disease.  For the past few days, I've been certain these were my last.  I could not stand to swallow and the glands and muscles on the right side of my neck were swollen and tender.  Psychologically, I prepared for the end.  Throat cancer.  I said nothing to anybody about this and have carried on as if all were fine, staunch at my job, collapsed alone.  


I am happy to report that I am getting better.  The fever has gone and I can swallow again.  I did not quit drinking whiskey nor repent of my new sins, and of that I brag.  It is good to know that I am living in a manner of which I do not wish to repent.  


But the gas is still off and the house cool and unpleasantly damp.  A storm moved through tonight with heavy rains.  A shoot cancelled because of it.  But I was O.K.  I am tired and near dead with fatigue.  I do not sleep enough, though I have time.  Something mechanical is broken.  If I can find some pills laying around in a bathroom drawer, I will take something to help me sleep tonight.  I've had to cancel an early morning doctor's appointment so that I can wait for the motherfuckers from the gas company.  I was given a six hour window of when they might arrive.  No use arguing with the girl on the phone, of course.  She is getting fucked by the gas company worse than I am, I'm sure.  


Tomorrow there will be hot water and heat and a working stove.  I'll be luxuriating once again.  Without throat cancer, I suppose.  


I'll be cheerier.  You'll see.  


Now to search for meds.  

J. Peterman

O.K.  Jeez.  I'm having enough of a rough time as it is.  Here.  No couch.  I took this in 1923 at the Bal de Montparnasse.  Afterward, we went out and drank "The Green Fairy" and she performed for a smaller crowd.  Hemingway was like a boy.  He kept talking in what he thought passed for "Indian" language.  If I had been bigger, I would have hit him.  We had to get away.  She lived near Rue Pigalle, but I wanted to go in the other direction.  Left Bank.  We sat in a neighborhood bar that never made it into a famous novel.  The drinks were cheap and she was magnificent.  It was all simpler then.  You could do what you wanted, it seemed, though now we don't believe in any of that. No free will.  We are all slaves to dogma and narrative.  But really it occured to me then that she just liked dancing.  Naked, because she could.  If I looked like that, I told her late that night after too many drinks, I would never put my clothes on.  She didn't need to for a very long time.  And she never will.  Here she is in the 21st Century just as she appeared then and will always be.

I came home last night and tried to cook dinner.  My gas had been shut off.  I didn't pay the bill.  It is not that I couldn't.  I just hadn't.  That meant no heat, either.  I am bundled up without hot food.  I need a caretaker.

The Beast

Here's my first photo with the Aero Ektar.  This is what I'll be posting from now on instead of my usual stuff.  And I'll be updating you on non-controversial things, mostly technical updates about the camera, lens, film, chemistry, etc.  It should be fascinating.

I got my camera out of the studio Sunday morning.  I found some old type 59 film in a box that had long been open.  What the hell.  I grabbed my meter and went out the back.  One of the artist's behind me was packing his truck with his work to drive across state for a show.  I shouted to him and asked him to stand for a portrait.  I hefted the bruiser up to my eye and tried to focus through the tiny rangefinder that is attached to the camera's side.  Nothing was easy.  After I had what should have been focus, I looked through the viewfinder and shot.  We waited sixty seconds and peeled.  The film chemistry was all whacked and the image very soft.  I had, however, made my first real exposure with the camera.  Success, of sorts.

The camera scares the hell out of me, of course.  I just paid to have the rangefinder calibrated only to find that it is way off the mark.  I did what I do to the 669 film and brought it home to scan and that is when the lack of focus was evident.  I was able to fudge the colors as I have learned to do in Photoshop, but the rest . . . .

I put the camera on a tripod and tried lugging it around and setting it up and focusing using the ground glass in back.  I'd really rather hand hold it.  Setting up the tripod and getting it level and adjusted to height and then focussing. . . will some stranger stand for that?  I was sweating from working with a tree.  Why did I want this lens?  I must have been nuts.

Tomorrow, I'll take you through some of the technical points in more detail.  We'll think about which tripod and head will work best given the weight of The Beast (let us call it that).  We'll look at different products from several popular companies and consider each.  It will be educational.

And no more naked girls.  No more T&A.  I don't know what I was thinking.  We'll get onto the real stuff now.  Maybe we'll even get academic about technical language as a master narrative and the sociological restrictions and imperatives that result.  Eventually, I'll be able to produce (I hope) some truly value-free images.

Up the Ante

Here is a picture of my new toy.  This isn't mine, but mine looks exactly like it. A 1940's Speed Graphic 4"x5" with a 7" Kodak Aero Ektar lens.  I got it from the shop yesterday and walked around with it.  Went to the camera shop.  Strangers came up to look at it and ask questions.  That's what I want.  An oddity.  An icon.  But now I'm terrified.  We set it up and started going through it all, then tried to make some pictures with long outdated Polaroid 55 film.  The image isn't just backwards but upside down.  Nothing is easy.  The front of the camera will tilt a bit and the plate a bit more, and there is a little swivel to it as well.  There is so much potential that it may show up my limited abilities.  I am daunted.  I will have to un-daunt myself.

Some of you will be glad.  There may be some photographs of a different type showing up here.  Maybe not soon or soon enough for you since I will be shooting film and have to send it to a lab in a town one hundred miles away which means quite a delay in the process.  Time lag.  I will need time to figure out how to work with the images even after I learn to make them.  My Kingdom for some Polaroid 4"x5" film!  As it is, the camera can't shoot with the 4"x5" Fuji packfilm adapter, so no instant results.

And the camera will not work with a flash, so there will be none of that.  Perhaps.  I may figure something out.

The Aero Ektar lens was made for aerial photography.  They were mounted in cameras in the bottom of World War II bombers.  In the 1940s, they didn't know as much about radiation, and they put some rare earth stuff into the glass to enhance its properties.  This lens has thorium and is radioactive.  I am taking it to a lab with a Geiger Counter on Monday just to see, though I've already read up on the potential hazards of being around it.

I might go to Miami next weekend to try it "On the Street."  I want to see what I can do.  I'll practice this week if I can.  Like now.  The sun is up.  Light, camera. . . .

Nobody, Not Even the Rain. . . .

Don't tempt me.  I have a lot of them.

I've been thinking about "The Glass Menagerie."  I want to live like Laura for awhile in a made up world.  Send me to typing school.  I'll go sit in the park.  Leave me at home, and I'll play with my things.  That is what I am doing this weekend.  I've hermetically sealed the house.  I stopped at Whole Foods last night on the way home from work and bought everything I could imagine I wanted.  Exhausted, I put on my pajamas and fell on the couch.  I watched episode after episode of "Tosh.O."  And later, "Austin City Limits."  I didn't eat a balance and healthy diet.  Sometime, I don't know when, I fell asleep on the couch, woke, and stumbled off to bed.

The morning breaks cloudy and gray.  I hope is stays that way.  I will read and nap and watch television.  I'll grow plump as a pasha.  I think I can get reruns of silly old t.v. shows online--"Route 66," "77 Sunset Strip," "Surfside 6," "Banacek," and "The Rockford Files." Things will be O.K.

The heater hums and bumps.  The cat is a comma on the couch.  The smell of last night's garlic lightly lingers in the kitchen.  Coffee drunk.  Now there will be thick milk and heavy slices of banana bread slathered with melted butter.  Eggs and bacon and toast.  The windows are dirty.  The car has fallen apart.  The driveways need to be mulched.  The girl in picture is just a dream, a fragile illusion, a suggestion of desire, an ironic reference to the outer world, a repudiation of reality, a ritual, a nightmare memory. . . .

"Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands."

Go ahead.  You may.  Blow out my candle.

For Lisa

One reader wrote that she was tired of the nude with mask on couch images.  One of my friends seized the comment and posted that.  But I can't begin a series of hubcap images because you think it might be a good idea.  Tired of Balthus's little girls.  Tired of Monet's haystacks.  Tired of Mattisse's odelisques.  Tired of Bonnard's wife in the tub.  Tired of Sargeant's portraits of matrons.  Tired of Adams' black and white Sierras.  Tired of Mann's children. Tired of Faulkner's Yoknapawtaphna County.

I work all day, I photograph at nights and on weekends, and in between I process the images.  I write this blog.  I eat and drink.  I sleep a little.  I can't get this project done any faster.  I have no social life to give up.  Meanwhile, this is all I have to show.  Sorry.  I guess that's why they made channel changers.  Believe me, I am full of doubts.  You can't spend this much energy on something and not worry that you've just wasted a lot of time and resources.  I've gotten nothing from this so far but debt.

That and more readers, I guess.  Maybe all the criticism and controversy is good.  The number of visitors has increased lately.  There are 6.8 billion people in the world.  I get a thousand of them.  But you can't count China, so the ratio improves.

I'm tired, I guess.  I need a break.

Karma, Dharma, and a Full Wolf Moon

Eating sushi last night under the Full Wolf Moon on the newly reopened veranda, I began writing today's entry.  Worn out with worrying about the can of worms I had spilled, and having not heard back from that model whom I had not intended to offend (sensitive boy that I am), I had decided to carry on.  Two nights running, models had simply not shown up for shoots.  That is what I got, I thought.  Karmic repudiation.  But I hadn't really done anything wrong, had I?  Karma is a tricky thing.

Karma, dharma, I thought of Kerouac and the curse he gave us all, or many of us, anyway, wanting to Beatific, slouching on avenues, skulking down alleyways, a bottle of tokay in a back pocket, hands pushed deep down in front, t-shirted howlers and blue-jeaned lovers, dirty boys and golden girls.  It's a Lone Wolf Moon, I thought, big and sad, isolated and alone, serenaded by Billie Holliday and Tommy Waits and Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue."  Broken angels now.

But an old hipster is an ugly thing.  Fucking moon.

When I got home, I thought to cook up the first image of Ophelia (let us call her that, for that is how she seemed to me, fragile as bone china, translucent as moonlight).  And later that night, the first image finally done, I emailed it to her.

I won't detail what transpired, but here is the image.  There will be more.  Karma, dharma, and a clear night full of moonlight.

Consequences

This one seemed easy enough to write in my head, but putting it down is proving to be a challenge.  It is complicated by an admixture of emotions and rational thought, always a direct path to obfuscation.  I must simply begin.  

I am going to have to reveal "the man behind the curtain" here a bit, not wanting to, preferring to remain obscure, knowing like an outlaw in disguise that sooner or later I will be found out.  

So let me give you the anatomy (or, perhaps, the physiology) of how I write.  It is not morning yet.  The sun will not be up for some time.  I've read the news on CNN and The New York Times and perhaps gone through the online version of Vanity Fair and/or The New Yorker.  Reports, reviews, and stories are swirling around my drowsy head.  Some days, nothing comes to me and I'll have to cut and paste a poem or a passage from a novel with minimal comment.  Other days, I mention something directly (as today I planned to talk about the cloning of the Wooly Mastodon by Russian and American Scientists along with another story on human genetics).  But sometimes things just begin to fall into place like the tumblers on a lock.  Those are good days.  I don't revise anything and barely edit, so it is just the straight telling from me to you as if we were sitting together having a conversation.  

Yesterday's post was one of those amalgams, and I feel the need to explain how it came into being.  On Saturday, the fellows who have two big spaces behind my studio had an anime festival.  They do this most Saturdays and the parking lot fills with cars and the kind of people who hang out together to watch several hours of anime straight from Japan, the boys/men dressed in black, the few girls/women costumey.  That day, someone had taken a champagne bottle that I had left sitting on the loading dock behind my studio and had broken it in the parking lot.  The fellow who runs the anime festival and I had words about it.  

On Sunday, one of the artists with a studio in the back was talking about the crowd that comes to the festivals.  They are in the main a quiet and furtive bunch lacking in some of the basic social skills, he noted, and suggested that many of them suffered from Asperger's or some other autistic disorder.  "Bullshit," I said, "they make Asperger's look like a party."  Bad, I know.  

Sunday night, my friend refused to post a silly comment I had written in response to one of his blog entries about other people's racism, especially visible with the coming of the M.L.K. holiday.  Monday, I decided to post that here myself.  I thought the post a wonderful piece of writing.  It was irreverent, satirical, and just funny.  It set my buddy off, though, so that he posted some vitriol in the comments section which, among other things, denigrated my talents.  We were officially in a pissing contest.  

Monday night, I shot with a model who had driven two hours with her boyfriend to shoot with me.  They were wonderful people and we had a good time, and after looking at the photos, we thought we would shoot together again.  I noticed that the boyfriend, though, looked eerily like one of my cousins. Funny when that happens. 

Tuesday morning, I read an article online at CNN about the deleterious effects of too much gaming.  It engenders depression and anti-social behavior in some, it said.  It made me think of one of my cousins who games excessively.  He has become difficult to talk to.  He doesn't like to leave the house and gets irritated easily.  He doesn't look at anybody for very long, his eyes darting about as if he had only peripheral vision.  I have said to my mother that it is a sort of game-withdrawl.  He doesn't like to be too far from his source.  He is obsessive.  He reminds me much of the crowd that gathers behind the studio on Saturdays to watch anime.  

When I began to write on Tuesday morning, I wanted to write in response to my friend who was still going on about other people's prejudices like he had just found Jesus, so I carried on with the hooker/barbecue line a bit more.  I had told my mother on Sunday night that I was going to get hookers and have a barbecue and in the morning had written her a joking email saying that the rain had kept the hookers away.  And that is where I started--with the email to my mother.  I added the stereotypical bit about the Colt .45, a nice touch, I thought.  But sitting in the dark, after turning my email to my mother into a single paragraph, I was stuck.  And the tumblers began to click. . . click. . . click. . . all the elements came together--the argument with the fellow behind the studio, the conversation with the artist about Asperger's, the shoot with the model who's boyfriend looked like my cousin, the report on excessive gaming--and boom!  I had another paragraph.  

The entry was becoming a narrative, of sorts, and they are easy to carry out if you stick to a timeline.  After the shoot on Sunday, it was too late to make dinner, so I did something very atypical for me--I went to Chick Fillet and got a full meal.  But I didn't want to say Chick Fillet and remembered that my father had always referred to a place called Chicken Lickin.  I googled it and came up with the other place, Chicken Liken.  Crazy enough, the menu was advertised as "soul food." What a stroke of good luck.  What a bonanza.   I was back on track with the poke at my buddy.  M.L.K, hookers, Colt .45, the rain--it was all part of the story again.  

A final tag and I was finished.  The sun was coming up.  It was time to get ready for the day.  

I felt glorious.  Two days of Gonzo writing that had gone pretty well.  I was on a roll.  

That afternoon, I got an email from the model I had shot with on Sunday night.  Adrenaline shot through me like fire, like ice.  What the hell!  She had found the blog, she said.  Oh, my. . . I hadn't imagined her reading this, and not the day after we shot.  No, no, no.  I couldn't read her email.  I looked at it with one eye quickly the way you might look over to see if anyone was mangled as you slowly passed a bad wreck on the highway.  I got a word here, a word there. . . enough. . . too much.  How in the hell could I explain this to her?  I couldn't.  I could try, but you know. . . .  It is a bit of creative writing, I said.  It is what I do, or try to.  It was not a report or an article.  Those people were not you.  

I thought of Hemingway and the problems "The Sun Also Rises" caused him.  He lost a lot of friends.  Everyone speculated about who from their crowd was whom in the novel.  Harold Loeb, who felt he was the genesis of Robert Cohn, angrily confronted Hemingway about it.  He had been a wrestler in college, not at Princeton where Cohn had been a boxer, but at another Ivey League school, was a jew, and had an infatuation with Lady Duff Twysden whom everyone took to be the basis of Lady Brett Ashley.  Hemingway responded to Loeb by saying that he hadn't written a biography.  If Loeb was Cohn and Hemingway was Jake, Hemingway wouldn't have a penis and Loeb would be able to beat him up, and they both knew that neither was the case.  

And so, here I am this morning, trying to explain.  This is not my Facebook account.  This is a creative space where I can make up things.  I hope no one is taking this as a guidebook to reality.  I hope no one thinks that the persona who narrates this is equal to the person behind it.  I hope my mother never reads this.  Etc.  

Faulkner said that everybody hurts someone from time to time.  It is inevitable and we must be sorry for it.   To do so deliberately, though, is a sin.  

I didn't mean to hurt anyone's feelings, just to poke some fun at my buddy with a little of the irreverent gonzo style writing he is so capable of which he is for reasons known to him eschewing.  

If I were not involved, I would think this painfully funny.  With distance, maybe we all will.  

Not so much this morning, though.  

The model and her boyfriend were sweet people.  I hope they can . . . can what?  Separate me from the narrative voice on this blog?  I don't know.  

I just keep thinking, "sorry, sorry, sorry."  

I hope I can keep working without a net.  

Cancelled Due to Rain

It rained all day yesterday steady, without hope.  I couldn't barbecue, so the hookers wouldn't come.  No ribs. . . no fun.  So I sat around drinking the Colt .45 Malt Liquor by myself and got drunk and morose.  That's just the way it has been going, though.  I'm living under a curse.  It was probably from that Haitian girl, or maybe one of the girls from Brazil.  But I know a couple of women from the states who are into all that, too.  I don't believe in ju-ju, so I think I'm safe, but lately I've been wondering.  And that may be all a curse needs to take hold--just a little doubt.  All that chicken blood and sacrifice. . . I don't know.  I'm sure there are dolls out there with my name all over them.  

 Later, my stomach was all hollow from the Colt .45, so I stopped at a Chicken Licken for some  CHiCK'N SLYDERS and chips and an X-tra Large Coke to pick me up.  If I'd thought about it earlier, I could have gotten a big takeout order for everyone and we could have partied inside.  I must be getting old.  I should have thought of that.  

So that was it.  No MLK celebrations.  You know white folks would pick the worst weather month of the year to celebrate diversity.  

MLK

It is Martin Luther King Day, I know, because I am off.  From work, that is.  Also because a friend of mine has been writing about it on his blog.  He reports that he has arguments with his friends about the merit of it all, and he is adamant in his defense of Dr. K.  Laudable, I presume.  But he wouldn't publish my response to one of his posts, so I thought I might post it here.  This is a reaction to his rationalizing King the Plagiarizer after refuting his affinity for the women (he actually refutes King buying white hookers with funds from the movement).  I have been in a mood, lately, that is not very socially acceptable and is at times dangerous, so if you feel you do not wish to be offended by my crassest sensibilities, you should quit reading now.

I thought we were celebrating the prostitution thing. And that part is a fact, not fiction. I'd been planning on getting a bunch to come over for a barbecue myself, but my mom said she didn't want to hang around "that shit" as she calls it. That's just the way hillbilly women are, I guess, plus the fact that there were going to be negroes in the mix. But no shit, I've never had more fun than sitting around a barbecue eating ribs and corn with a bunch of negro prostitutes. What the fuck is wrong with you all? 

I know he doesn't mind that sort of rant, but I guess he figured it wouldn't set too well with his crowd of readers.   I don't blame him, but I'm surprised.

I grew up in the prejudiced south.  I've written about this before, but I'll revisit it again here today.  Negro was a funny sounding version of nigger.  That's the way people talked.  The unauthorized changing of the word "nigger" to "slave" in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is an outrage and an affront to anyone with a decent bone in her body.  White people wishing to whitewash the prejudices that Twain so accurately and artistically documented is typical, though of a segment of our society.  Liberals, I mean.  It is not the Tea Party who objects to the text the way it is written.  Nope.  It is the NPR crowd doing the damage.  Liberals.  You know, the ones who say we should be "tolerant."  Liberals are tolerant of other people's ideas, they say.

I say, though, that we should not be tolerant (oooh-this sounds like it will be a Thoureauvian twist--don't get too excited), for tolerance connotes a sufferance born of "otherness."  Rather, we must break through the barriers that separate us.  I like M.L. King for one reason.  He was one of us.  He had BBC (I think you can look it up) for taking on authority.  It surely was exhilarating.  It surely was fun.  Doing the right thing often is.  Maybe more than doing the "wrong thing," which he did plenty of, too.  Like Washington. Like Jefferson.  Like Franklin.

Give me King over Reagan.  Hell, give me Reverend Sharpton.  I've learned to love the son of a bitch--something I'll never do with Reagan.  "One of us," as they chant in "Freaks."  "Gooble gooble gooble gobble. . . . one of us."

I don't have many friends, not like those of you on Facebook, but I've been fortunate that the ones I have come from many different cultures.  Often they don't understand one other, and they especially don't understand me.  But they love me and watch out for me to a certain degree, and that is all I can count on.  Perhaps, though they have many different skin colors and physical features, they are not that diverse.  For instance, I think we all like Nat King Cole.  And most often, we dislike the same public figures.  Oh, I think some of my black friends do not like Cole Porter and Paris Hilton as much as I do (and I find this a very big flaw in their characters), but in the main, we tend to agree.

Art, I often say, helps us see the strange in the familiar and the familiar in the strange.  Today, we celebrate the "figure" of Matin Luther King, but I can barely stand that.  I'll go to three celebrations today and be tortured every time someone steps up to the microphone to talk about King's accomplishments like he was a member of the Rotary Club.  He was a man with outrage and desire and a big capacity for daring.  He did things most of us can't even guess at.

And he was a plagiarizer and a misogynist.

What the hell.  They ought to name a street after him.

Travellers

She came with her boyfriend.  They arrived in a beat up Aerovan of indistinguishable color--light blue/gray/silver?  The paint was flaking and it looked as though it had never been washed.  I greeted them like a used car salesman, big toothy smile and a wave.  Inside the van was a mess.  They must have  been living in it for awhile.

"Hello," I said.

"Hello hello."

She got out of the passenger side, perhaps 5'2", ninety pounds.  It looked like she had cut her hair herself some time ago.  It was still short, three inches long in some places.  He came around the van, shaggy hair, short and skinny.  They were both tatted up.  They looked to me like pictures I'd seen of the Manson family.  Both of them seemed nervous, eyes darting here and there.

"Come in, come in.  I'll show you what I do."

She had come to shoot with me.  She had been very pleasant about it online, had confirmed a couple times and had texted me when they were on their way.

"Your hair is short," I said.

"Yeah, I had to cut it.  Lice," she said a little shyly.

They were only in town for awhile.  They were Travelers, he said.  They had just gotten the van out in California.  They knew someone with a medical marijuana farm in Northern California and had made some money harvesting the crop.  Jesus, I thought, how much must there be to hire people to harvest it?  They made enough to buy the van.

"You drove that all the way from California?" I said surprised that the thing would make it.

"Yea, it ran great."

I opened a bottle of wine.  He couldn't drink, he said.  Bad stomach.  Later he told me he had to quit drinking.  Used to stay drunk all the time.  Got the DTs.

"No shit," I said having never known anyone who drank enough for that.

She didn't mind drinking in front of him, though.

We shot.  We talked.  She looked like a dustbowl queen from the 30's, skinny, scrawny almost.

"You're good to work with," he said.  "She shot with a guy yesterday who was all nervous, couldn't make conversation."

"He made me nervous," she said.

"Being here is like we've known you all along."

I like people, or at least their stories.  They had them.

"They took photos of us for 'The Village Voice'," she said.  "There's a photographer out there shooting homeless people in his old neighborhood.  He's pretty famous.  He takes your picture and talks to you, then writes it up for the paper."

"Her's was good.  I didn't know what to say and said just stupid shit and he wrote it that way."

She wrote down the website for the photographer, Steven Hirsch.

"I like those photos you did of the tattooed girl," she said.  "I want to cover my whole body with them.  I just want to connect all of these together."

"Tattoos are expensive, aren't they?"

"About a hundred bucks an hour."

"Go to prison.  You can get it all done for free."

They both just looked at me.

"We do some ourselves," he said pointing around his eyes to the little squiggles and signs.  They looked like he'd done them himself.

We were finished shooting, all of us standing over the raw Polaroids on the table.

"These are awesome," she said.  "You're great."

"We made some nice pictures, I think.  But they won't look anything like this when I'm finished."

"I know.  I can't wait."

They were leaving town in a couple days.  She'd get to computers from time to time, she said, so just send the jpegs to her account.

"What about the prints?  Where do you want me to send them?"

"Maybe to my mother's house.  She'll be so proud.  She didn't think I could be a model.  She'll love these."

I pursed my lips and nodded.  Hugs all around, then, as I walked them out to the van.  They were really nice kids.  I wondered how they decided to live the way they did, but I wonder about how a lot of people decided to live the way they live, too.  Still. . . .

She was waving from the van as he hunched over the steering wheel backing out.  She looked happy.

Goodbye.  Goodbye.

Other People's Stories

Robert Merrick "The Elephant Man"

A friend of mine sent an email that opened: "I am not a deep thinker.  That I had never had the thought expressed in this metaphor proves that."  He was referring to an accompanying passage from a book entitled "Identity Theory."  I do not know the author.  My friend is full of shit, though, when he says this.  He is well-educated.  He thinks, he reads, he writes.  Once after a divorce, he spent his considerable savings on art and travel.  Went "broke," if we are talking about money.  Started over again.

"The thought made him uneasy.  Perhaps it was better to be without the memories.  What did it matter?  What did holes, gaps, matter?  Life didn't make any sense, it wasn't a story, it wasn't a journey.  It was just short films by different directors. The only link was you.  You were in all of them. You missed a plane and your life changed.  You misheard a place name, went to the wrong bar and then you spent two years with a woman you met there.  You were leaving for Europe and the agency rang and instead you went to Columbia."


I like the first part, that life doesn't make sense.  But that is what we try to do, make a story out of it so that it does.  It just isn't a true story any more than the history we read and write is true.  It is not life that torments me so much as other people's stories.  I keep believing in them and comparing them to my own pitiful account.  This morning, at least, I believe the root of unhappiness lies in other people's stories.  Especially the ones that want to tell you about yourself.  Oh boy, that's can be the hardest one to bear.

Immortal

I must try to tell you about the people I make photographs with.  The stories are interesting.  You make arrangements to meet.  If you are lucky, they come.  The phone rings or there is a knock on the door.  You get up and let them in.  Sometimes they look nothing like the photos you've seen taken years ago before the two pregnancies or the car accident, or just two years.  Other times, you can't believe it.  They've had expectations, too, and you wonder what they see.  You are not what they expected, hoped for, perhaps.  Awkward talking.  They've come because they've like your work.  O.K., you say, let's get started.  You put on some music, yours, theirs.  They do whatever they need to do--bathroom, makeup, hair--while you open film and load cameras, set lights and meter.  The first awkward photo.  It is not what you want, of course, and you are already feeling failure.  You will let them down, you worry, where you intended to please them.  Then something works. Then something else.  None of this is what you planned, nothing is what you intended.  You work so slowly with the large camera and Polaroid film.  They must wait.  They stand, you look.  You ask them to turn. . . no, again, slooooowly.  Usually, there comes a rhythm.  You peel some film.  They are disappointed or excited.  You are, too.  You talk as you stand over the images.  You never know what you will hear, how it will be told.  You are authentically amazed.  It shows. They know.  Somehow the talk is always about them, never you.  They don't ask about you.  They know they are fascinating.  They are fifty-one, thirty-six, twenty-two. . . .  When they leave, you disappear.  Whatever they were, they remain.  They will always be that way.  Immortal.

Irony and Pity

"Irony and Pity.  When you're feeling shitty, Give them Irony and Give them Pity.  Oh, give them Irony.  When they're feeling shitty.  Just a little Irony.  Just a little Pity."  So sings Bill Gorton in "The Sun Also Rises."  Hemingway was censored, of course.  Ellipses sat for the rime as Maxwell Perkins was a prudish editor about such things.  Scribners was not going to publish the word "shitty."  But wait. . . shitty should be capitalized, shouldn't it?  "When you're feeling Shitty, Give them Irony and Give them Pity."  Yes, that would make more sense given Hemingway's use of capitalization.

Try it sometime.  Sung to the tune of "Bells Are Ringing for Me and My Gal."  So they say.  

Don't Beat Me, I'll Be Good

I'm at a loss and out of time today.  I've been going to work early in the morning like other people this week, and then working on my projects at night.  I've been exhausted, like other people.  I know now why not everyone is writing stories, making pictures, doing arts and crafts of some sort.  It is not because people have no talent or curiosity.  It is because they are exhausted.  Exhaustion is the tool of the overseer.  It damps down creativity which will raise it's tousled head as a questioning discontent.  It is fed as a steady diet by a certain political party in this country wrapped up in an American flag.  God Bless the Exhausted.  They are the Lambs of God.  Etc.  Give 'em NASCAAR and handguns and tell them they are free.  Let the people whose malevolent greed creates catastrophic environmental disasters blame others and raise their prices.  Borrow money from pension plans to assuage corporate debt, then tell taxpayers that the people who paid into the system are lazy villains.

So last night, I fell into bed before ten and finally slept--more than eight hours.  And now I must rush off to do it again.  My life.  Dribble, dribble, dribble.  And so this, a few minutes stolen.  Don't beat me masta', don't beat me.

The Group

For the past week, Cafe Selavy has experienced an incredible surge in the number of visitors who come to the site.  My exhibition at 591 was very popular, the most popular ever, I was told, and though I did not link this site to that show, some people may have found their way here.  Perhaps.  I was linked by a couple new blogs, I found, and that may have helped.  Then 591 re-blogged one of my entries with a nice note.  And I'm certain that helped, too.  But when I put up the photo of a girl in clothing, then an old travel link, and then a crummy picture of a dress, people quit coming.  Maybe it was coincidence.  I can prove no direct cause and effect connection there.  But I have picked up people who return to the site and that has remained higher, and that may be the real test.  More sustained visitors.  That is really something.  

So I'll put up a photo I like today and not worry so much.  I love the big, heart-shaped roundness of it, a Valentine of sorts.  Perhaps I should have saved it for that.

I posted something with references to oxytocin a while back.  Seems it is not the cuddle hormone it was once thought to be though.  Apparently, it only makes you love certain people, those who are in your inner circle.  The rest--well, they can go to hell.  Or so a study reported by the New York Times today shows.  In time, I'm sure we'll find that all our likes and dislikes are influenced in major ways by human chemistry.  Or just chemistry in general.  We have less soul than perhaps we like to think.  Carbon based machines.  I like this from the article:

"What does it mean that a chemical basis for ethnocentrism is embedded in the human brain? “In the ancestral environment it was very important for people to detect in others whether they had a long-term commitment to the group,” Dr. De Dreu said. “Ethnocentrism is a very basic part of humans, and it’s not something we can change by education. That doesn’t mean that the negative aspects of it should be taken for granted.'”

It scares me, though, that at present my "group" is so reduced.  And made up of many "races and creeds" as Fitzpatrick says in his travel films.  But I contradict myself, don't I, by saying "reduced" and "many," I mean.  It is possible right now that I have no oxytocin in my body at all.  Or maybe I am loyal only to the cat.  That would explain why I keep keep her around and love and protect her though I am hideously allergic to her.

I am too busy now for social relationships of any kind, though.  The new year has not brought me much that is good.  I will have to make my own luck, I guess, if I can.  And so for now, you all are it, my cyber-inner circle.  I wonder what effect that has on my neurotransmitters?  Let me know if you find out.

A Little Whimsy

I thought that since I've been shooting people without clothing I'd shoot clothing without people.  It is more difficult than I thought.  You can't tell the garment to shift a bit to the right, to bring the hem up about two inches, etc.  And working alone can be lonely.  But I learned some things yesterday hanging this underskirt from the rafters.  I could have used a team.  I am more curious about product photography now that I've tried it.  This is the best I got in my brief try yesterday, and it is really not good.  But as I say, I learned and will get better.

A friend of mine walked in after I had finished and the underskirt was still hanging from the rafters.  He got a kick out of it.  In truth, it did look cool hanging out in space alone, kind of ghostly.

The first rule in writing is to leave out the boring stuff.  I just broke that one.  But my imagination has become as depressed and boring as my life.  Prosaic.  So this picture. . . well, it offers a little whimsy and, with lots of luck, a spark while I wait for the knock upon my door.

Ports of Call

We are made of images from our childhood, I think.  The Chinese had it right during the Cultural Revolution.  Reeducate.

My friend sent me the most wonderful link I've gotten in a very long time.  Most things that people send are of marginal interest to us who receive it, but opening this was like hitting the jackpot.  All the old images that gave me wanderlust as a kid were there.  I've linked the first one I opened at the top of the page, "Colorful Ports of Call," with that wonderfully hideous voice of James A. Fitzpatrick narrating.  Happy, childlike, colorful natives abound.  As a boy, "Adventures in Paradise" provided the soundtrack to my youthful dreams.  All I wanted to do was get out and go.

"See the world the way it was."  I love that.  I try to provide for you a version of that every day.  Or rather, "See the world the way it never was."  That is what I mean to say. That's the world for which I longed.  It is the world I have travelled to see.  And I will tell you the absolute truth--I've been there.  I've seen it.  I've seen the world just as it was presented in those travelogues and novels.  I will not lie to you.  I have seen the world the way it never was.  It lived in the hearts and minds of "colorful" people.

But all that has been corrected now in the new Information Age.  Even the Chinese will not be able to stop the internet.  And that, my friends, is a good thing.

Watch the video if you can stand it.  Be forewarned, though.  Such visions have no place in the contemporary world.

Listening to Voices

People's voices get into your head whether you want them to or not.  I got an email from someone the other day asking, "Do you ever take pictures of women with their clothes on?"  Of course.  Sure I do.  Most women aren't naked most of the time.  And so I post a picture of a clothed woman today.  This is Mingh again, a happy girl looking for a photo of her boyfriend on her phone.  I think that I remember, though, that the preceding question of that email was, "Why do you take pictures of naked women?"  Maybe not.  If not, though, it seems to be inherent in the other question.  In truth, I didn't intend to do so much of it, but once the project got started, I became intrigued.  And it takes so much time to keep the studio, shoot, process, and post-process the film that I don't have time to do much else other than go to the job that pays the bills.  And having the studio, I feel the need to go there to use it.  And so way leads to way.

I have every intention of ending this project soon, and some of you may like the next one much better because it will be about clothing.  Uniforms, to be precise.  And I will enjoy it as much as I do this one.  But I guess I had better hurry up and do it soon.

The first step toward that project is now complete.  I overpaid for a lens I wanted for the series just to make certain I got it.  I had tried to get the lens on the cheap several times on eBay and lost, so I made certain in the auction that ended two days ago.  I now own (though I do not yet have possession of) a 1940s era Kodak Aero Ektar 7" lens with the adaptor plate for my 1940s era 4x5 Speed Graphic camera.  Click here to see what the outfit will look like when everything is finished .

I think I should have waited to announce this, though, and asked for contributions to help me buy the lens that might keep me from turning into a pornographer.  Sure, I may feign an innocence about it all, but we know that for both the old (religious) and new (ideological) fundamentalists, there is something erotic in nakedness and nudity.  I won't argue.  It doesn't matter to me one way or another.  There is a sliding scale and I like it all.

I can't resist posting another photo of Mingh the other way, though.  I like the photograph and all that is says and doesn't about power, seduction, exploitation, desire, narrative, ad infinitum.

Vivian Maier Redux

This is not the post I intended to write this morning, but I was caught by the Lens feature on Vivian Maier in the New York Times online.  Today, the first American exhibit of her work opens at the Chicago Cultural Center.  I won't be there for the reception tonight, of course, but I might treat myself to a trip Chicago. I haven't been for years and never in winter.  I don't know if I could stand it, really, but it might be fun to go.  And I would love to take a look at the show.

Those of you who have been coming here for awhile will remember that I posted some of her work the moment I saw it some years ago, and since then her blog has been on my links page.  I wrote to John Maloof, the man who unfolded this wonderful story after he bought some boxes of her negatives at an antique sale for $400.  I told him then that everything would happen, that this was one of the new century's major discoveries, but by that time, I'm sure he already knew.  We've exchanged a few emails over the years.  Now I wish I would have volunteered to help him with the project.  Truly, though, I didn't realize how much there was for him to do.  By now he must have people beating down his door to "help" him.  He can't be as needy as he might have been.  Click here to view a nice ten minute video about it all.

The Times piece doesn't seem to want to recognize the full stature of Maier's work, suggesting that she might be a "minor master" of the mid-20th century.  I can't understand this "understatement" about the value of her work at all.  But as Robert Frost once said, everything must come to market, and there it will be valued.  As one who is often enough ten seconds ahead of the bubble, I'd bet on "major" rather than minor.

The story of Vivian Maier and John Maloof and how this all came to pass itself has the making of a masterpiece.  Maloof is involved in making a documentary about her and is soliciting funds.  I think he deserves the chance and will send a contribution though I fear the worst.  I'd rather see this project in the hands of someone like Ken Burns, of course, or Martin Scorcese, but that won't happen yet.  Even more, I'd like to see a major museum make Maloof an offer he can't refuse and take over the project.  Watching him handle the film and spend time scanning the negatives on an Epson kills me.

I think about Maier taking all those photographs and never showing them to anyone.  Why did she do it?  For the most perfect of reasons, I hope.  Making posthumous photographs.  My hero.

Sight and Insight

I've added velvet curtains to the set, given to me by a friend.  I'm excited to have them and wish I'd had them long ago.  But no regrets.  What fun.  This is Mingh from Vietnam.  It was fun working with someone who understood little of what I said because of language barriers.  Usually it is not the language that keeps me from being understood.  Once again, only yesterday, I have been told that conversations with me can be difficult.  As one woman/co-worker/friend put it, it is like being in a sociological experiment. But I've been getting more comments like these than I used to, and I am wondering why?  Have I changed, grown weirder of more contentious?  It occurred to me the other day while talking to a woman at work who has a Ph.D. in biology,  that there is something I have not taken into account.  We were discussing the possibilities of bringing up an argument that exposes flaws in the thoughts and actions of some of the people we work with.  She was timid about doing that and wondered what good it would do.  My head spun, but the spinning, perhaps, brought me to an understanding (maybe Dervishes have been on to something all along).

"We want to put them on the record," I said.

"Why?"

"It will be there when we need it."

"What good does that do?"

"Oh, little by little, such stupidities will accumulate, then something will present itself, some small fact that reflects upon their decisions and performance, and then--BAM!  It all comes together!"

She stared at me, saying nothing.  I realized I was putting her in a position with which she was not comfortable.  And then it came to me.  She is not used to being on the other side of the issue.  Her life has not been like mine.

"You know," I said, "I've never walked into a room feeling that the majority was was going to agree with me.  I guess that's a difference between us."

And it's true.  I walk in a minority every time.  It doesn't matter who is in the room.

Sitting in the doctor's office yesterday, I was, of course, in a very vulnerable and tender mood.  I will tell you now that my left eye "exploded" while I was sitting at a meeting on Tuesday.  I was in the middle of a story when the fireworks began.  A perfect circle of lightning, blue, silver, and gold, flashed each time I moved my eye.  Suddenly my vision was full of blood and guts.  I'd gone through this a couple years ago with my right eye, so I was able to keep from screaming out in a panic.  Indeed, I kept my appointments and headed my meetings without giving anything away, but inside I was sinking, sinking. . . . I wanted to tell someone, but what would that do?  I couldn't help myself at one point, though, and when a co-worker asked me if I was O.K., I told her what had happened.  This is someone who shares her miseries with me on an almost daily basis.  She always asserts that she cares for me and that I push people away.  And it is true, I am sure.  But when, in this vulnerable moment, I told her about my eye, I knew immediately by looking at her that it was a mistake and the germ of yesterday's post was born.  "Your eye looks O.K.," she said.  "Do you want an aspirin?"

I collapsed, of course, with the helplessness of the situation.

As much as I hate going to doctors, I knew I would have to give in.  For the rest of the night alone at home, fireworks and shadows keeping my adrenaline levels maxed out, I thought about what it would be like to be old and blind, unable to take care of myself.  I thought about the assisted living places I have seen.

In the morning, things were no better.  That afternoon, sitting in the waiting room of the retinologist, I was, as I say, tender.  It was an unusual waiting room on a top floor, smallish and circular, half the room surrounded with slanted windows that gave way to a soft, gray light.  The wall was lined with beautiful matching wooden chairs, the middle of the room filled with comfortable, overstuffed things.  And for some reason, all I could think about was the "epiphany" of a few days before.  And then, inexplicably, I was thinking about the Judd Hirsch character in the old t.v. show, "Taxi."  Alex Rieger, the cab stand sage.  I haven't seen the show since it was on in the 1970's, but I was remembering the heavy melancholy that surrounded that character who seemed somehow beyond his post in life.  What tragedy had befallen him that put him in this place, I wondered?  Why was he driving a cab?

I'm sure it is significant that I though of this there and then, but I don't know what the significance is.  And I'll cut to the chase.  It doesn't seem that I will have to have any surgeries.  There is a lining in front of the retina that is torn, not the retina itself.  The flashing lights may subside in three to four weeks.  I'll be left with the blood and guts, though, they say, my mind will get used to them.  They are wrong about this, I know, but it is the best news I was going to get that day.  Now I just wait and "see."

I am still tender this morning, and I guess a little disoriented, too.  Let this post stand as evidence,  "Exhibit A."  I am not as whole as I was two days ago, less a leading man.  I feel vulnerable and wish to cloister myself which is probably not the best idea.  I read yet another report of a study today that touching is important to a person's health.  There have been many studies over the years that consistently show the same thing.  Human contact releases oxytocin in the brain and reduces cortisol levels, too.  All good for you.  So now what?  There are massages, but they are expensive.  Animals help, studies show, but I begin to sneeze and snot every time I love on the cat.  I don't want another dog (I don't want the cat, either).  Who touches those old monks sitting atop mountains meditating in the snow?  They have a secret they are not telling.

I don't seem to be able to find an end to this, and now I must go to work to meet my new hours.  I'm just thinking that Minh would probably get as much from this as anyone.

I can tell you now, since things turned out as well as they could.  Two years ago, my right eye "exploded." I got out of a car and suddenly saw fireworks and blood and guts.

Living with Assumptions

The time came when I gave up on being happy.  It was just too much to expect and not that rewarding.  If I could write well this morning, there would be some metaphorical image here, something to make you feel the emotion.  But I don't have it in me today.  I am too distraught.  Perhaps one day I'll come back and add that thing that is so needed.  To continue, though, I thought that giving up the desire to be happy would make life more bearable.  I didn't expect to be unhappy, of course.  I just got tired of working and hoping for the other.  What is happy anyway, I wondered?  What do we learn from happiness?

The answer to the first question is rather obvious on an experiential level.  We just know it when we feel it.  On a scientific level, we know there are certain chemical changes in certain parts of the brain.  For the most part, none of this is under our control.  But scientists have measured brain activity during the meditation of serious practitioners, and they found that they were able to simulate some of the brain changes measured in "happy brains" during meditation.

The answer to the second question, what do we learn from happiness, has always seemed to me to be "nothing."  It is a nice state, but it is without conflict, and I've held that we learn nothing without conflict.

But today I have to challenge my use of the word "learn."  To what sort of "learning" am I referring?  Didn't scientist learn that brain activity changes in happy people without having to experience conflict?  That only required a certain kind of observation and measurement.  Obviously, it is not the sort of learning of which I speak.  And I wonder today if I have not put too much emphasis on this other kind of learning, whatever it is.  Moral?  Spiritual?

Something has happened that has put me in a tailspin.  Nothing moral or spiritual.  It is purely physical.  Telling people about it does no good, of course.  They cannot help.  And for the most part, people feel something worse than pity when you impose the information on them.  They have not desired the information, and they only wish for some simple solution.  "Do you need some aspirin?"  This is not their fault, of course.  The telling has left them in a helpless situation.  It is best not to share these things.  You are in agreement just about now having had this imposed upon you.  "Is there anything I can do?"

And so I think this morning of those monks, sitting eyes half closed, ridding their minds of the devils and demons waiting to rush in.  Even in the worst of times, perhaps, happiness (or it's cousin tranquility) is achievable.  And there are moral or spiritual lessons to be learned there.

At least that is today's assumption.


*(Send no blessings nor regrets, please.  It is nothing terminal)