Last Shoot

I finished the final shoot for my Bellocq series yesterday.  It was the most difficult shoot I've tried.  I had two models I'd shot with before, one 5'11", the other 6' tall, one a black islander (can't remember which) and one a Native American/Mexican.  Black and Tan.  Neither of them had ever shot with another woman so there was the initial awkwardness to overcome plus my own weirdness.  Trying to get two people to make shapes that compliment one another was terribly difficult, and I was fruitlessly trying to create some kind of narrative structure in pictures that just wasn't happening.  I sweat through my shirt from anxiety then fear.  I wanted to make something good, but I was fearful that I was making nothing worthwhile.  In the end, daunted to near collapse, resigned to failure, I gave up and told them to do whatever they wanted.  And it got better.

I'd over-thought the shoot, over-anticipated what I would do.  In truth, I think I was more curious to see what they would do.  Whatever.  When it was over, they had become friends and headed downtown to party together.  Of course, they did not ask me to come.

When they were gone, I was very tired and very relieved.  It was over.  It had been a long project, one I had no preparation for going in, only a new process with Polaroid film that nobody else knew how to do.  And now the film is gone.  There never were and never will be any pictures made like this again.  There is something.  There is that.

This morning I woke up happy thinking that I did not have to arrange any more shoots.  As much fun as it was, it was twice as stressful.  I am not a social person really, so doing all of this with strangers wore me out.

Still, there are a million hours of work to do to post-process all the images I have collected.  Models want their pictures, of course.  But I no longer have a moving finish line.  Every image I process now brings me closer to it.  I feel like I'm on vacation.

The image I am posting today is done with a digital camera.  Boy oh boy is that easy.  Comparatively.  But I have a feeling that I will shift gears toward the big old Ektar lens I bought but have not used yet, and it will be back to the more laborious processes.  In time.  For now, I just want to walk around and think about something else.  The robins are here visiting my neighborhood in the thousands.  Each morning they are crazy singers.  The oak trees are shedding their leaves in preparation for Spring buddings.  The sound of them falling is like rain.  And the azaleas are in riotous bloom.  The weather is warm.  Everything is inviting.

Boner

My buddy Q left a comment yesterday asking for pictures of men in my next project.  He wants it to be called "Boner" or something like that.  I was surprised by his request, really, because he pretends to be married and all the rest, but I have no problem with any of it.  So here you go, buddy.  If I do a series, though, and if you want them in Polaroid, you are going to need to find me a source.  I know, though, that I will surely get a reputation as the town pornographer.  Somehow images of men are harsher and seem more aggressive, even though I shoot them in the same manner as women.  This fellow was easy as he was long and thin and not full of heavy muscle.  He contacted me and asked if I would shoot with him, and afterwards, I got many requests from male models.  I think this series could be easy.  I would look much at the paintings of Caravaggio.  Again, though, truly I am broke, so if any of you want this "Boner" series as Q requests it be named, please send me the film or enough money to satisfy the street pushers who have all the illegal supplies in their greasy hands like drug peddlers in a schoolyard.

From Start to Finish

I'm going to finish up the "Lonesomeville" project this week.  I mean I will do the last shoot.  I still have a million hours or so of post-processing and after that printing.  And then I will begin to work some of the images into encaustic and other mediums.  I have enough to keep me busy for the rest of the year.  I will still post some images here from that series, but many of my critics will be happy to see me move onto something else.

To what?  I have proposed several things, but all projects must be started when you are hot for them.  Ideas put aside can't simply be picked up and have the same heat.  I must find something that is hot right now, something burning.  The other things will be there and one day the sun will shine on them and I will begin.

"Lonesomeville" was very expensive.  It cost me much in money that I doubt I will ever recover, and much more otherwise, too.  Just to look at the end result, you can't know.  It was a good project, though.  I was swept away by it.  I wanted to stop many times, but the allure was great, and I continued on and on and on.

I have no regrets, and I am proud that I had the fortitude to stay with it through the end.  It was massive.  You can't imagine.  And to do something from start to finish. . . that's the test, isn't it?  How many people actually do?

Perhaps I'll move on to something simple now, something that I shoot, process, and post.

Or maybe I'll try a project even more emotionally trying.  I have one in mind that I have wanted to do forever, but it is the most difficult thing I can imagine.  It could do me in.  It is more dangerous than war.  And many would hate me for doing it.  But is that reason enough?

I feel a great weight lifted from me now, though, having decided that the last project has run its course.  Maybe I'll begin to sleep better.  Now my only worry is the other thing, the factory job that pays the bills.    No, that is not true.  That is not the only other thing.

But, hey. . .  easy Tiger.  You need to take 'em one at a time.

Dream

The last stroke of midnight dies.

All day in the one chair

From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have ranged

In rambling talk with an image of air:

Vague memories, nothing but memories.

(from Yeats' "Broken Dreams")

Predicting the Past

I am always fascinated by the route some people take to my site.  Here is part of one day's "Search Term" list on how people came to my site.  Sarah Moon tops the list that day, but people often follow her back to my site.  Balthus brought them in as did Barraud, Han, and Vincent.  I get a lot of traffic from people searching painters.  I should post more.  Irving Penn and Diane Arbus and Shelby Lee Adams, get a lot of traffic, too.  Although there is only one search for Liliroze at the bottom of the page, week in and week out, I have visitors looking for her.  Some even came looking for me.

My favorites, though, are the ones I can't account for.  "Wicked Naked Wives" is a good one as is "Fourtyfour Girls Tits."  I wonder what I said to get me on that Google search list.  I wonder, too, if the person searching for "Old Nudes" was looking for old pictures or old women.  I think I know what "Endless Meds" was looking for.  Me, too.

You wouldn't believe how many people come from the search for "Existential Jokes."  And it is funny because I have used that search term before myself.  I like "Irony and Pity, Inc."  We can all guess how I end up in the "Sleeping for Weary" search, and the "Funny Olan Mills Pictures," too.

Most of all, though, I like "First Generation Feminist Art Photos."  I have had some surprising emails from people on this topic.

I wish I'd copied this every day.  Trying to make sense of it all is like reading tarot cards or tea leaves, only in this you are predicting the past.  I like that.  Predicting the past.  There's today's gem.  I'm ending on that.

The Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion

Every success is a combination of talent, vision, and courage.  Two out of three won't cut it.  Talent and courage will get you to some technically rewarded level.  You could end up writing for the New York Times even, but not for The New Yorker.  You might end up a fashion photographer whose work shows up in the glossies, but only your friends and industry insiders are aware of you.  You will never be a Sarah Moon or a Paolo Roversi.

Courage and vision will get you recognition, too, but an almost embarrassing one.  Coffee house fame and self-publishing.  You know, the legends that might have been if they had not been quite so lazy.

The most heartbreaking combination are those with vision and talent.  The works are breathtaking but thin, in small volumes and skinny portfolios.  Quiet people who are afraid that their work does not add up.

Retreats and workshops will not help any of this, I fear.  As Hemingway said in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, writing groups may help palliate the loneliness of the writer, but they do not improve the writing.

It is lonely trying to do something creative.  Unless you are writing a group poem or novel or are working on a group painting.  But those will not turn out.  You must chizle yourself from stone, mold yourself from clay, talk to the dead for years and years and try to understand what they say.

Who wants to be around that?  And there is no in between.  Unless you plan on doing the art festivals.

But I guess it is better just to keep quiet about it.

*      *     *     *     *

Whoops!  I left out the most important part.  

Luck

Some Light for the Night

I can't sleep. It is killing me.  Literally, I think.  I wake up at appalling hours.  What to do?  I got up this morning thinking to go back to bed after awhile.  Never happened.  I have things on my mind and I can't get them off.  Who the hell cares.  But that is the point.  That is why we wake at night, I think.  Who the hell cares.

The girl in this photo is like most of her generation.  She never goes to bed before two a.m.  Often later.  I should stay up, perhaps, but I have never been a late night person, not even when I was in college.  But then we didn't have the internet.  I should give it up for awhile and see if I sleep better.  Maybe there are all sorts of subliminal things going on.  Or maybe it is the residual effects of the Xenon lights.

Whatever it is, though, I wander around in a half trance like a zombie, throat a little raw, body tingling, limbs heavy.  Yesterday waiting in a mostly empty hallway for a group to finish a meeting, I fell into the wakeful sleep sitting up on the bench, dreaming and thinking all at the same time.  I cannot be functioning well.

But I think this is how an entire generation feels.  They stay up late and are sleepy all day.  They don't function at 100%.  And I think this is what primitive man must have felt like, sleeping in buggy conditions waking to every noise in the night, rising with the sun.  They didn't live that long.

Maybe I am worried.  Maybe I feel guilty.  Maybe it is apnea.  I don't know what I need, a pill doctor, a psychiatrist, a priest. . . .

Maybe a light for the night.  Maybe that is all that is needed.  Or at least, that is all that I'll get.

Death by Blog

Today's New York Times: "Blogs were once the outlet of choice for people who wanted to express themselves online. But with the rise of sites like Facebook and Twitter, they are losing their allure for many people — particularly the younger generation."  


What the hell am I doing?  I'm a dinosaur.  How did this happen?  


"Former bloggers said they were too busy to write lengthy posts and were uninspired by a lack of readers," the report continues.  Yet here I am, slogging on.  Uninspired?  No, only paranoid.  


Twitter's 140 character limit has reshaped the way people connect.  Internet users no longer need blogs to "connect to the world," they report.  Instead, they can "post quick updates to complain about the weather, link to articles that [infuriate] them, comment on news events, share photos. . . . "  


" Still, blogs remain a home of more meaty discussions," I read with hope.  “If you’re looking for substantive conversation, you turn to blogs.”


There we go. That's me.  More substantial, I am.  


But here's the part of the story I like.


"Kim Hou, a high school senior in San Francisco, said she quit blogging months ago, but acknowledged that she continued to post fashion photos on Tumblr. 'It’s different from blogging because it’s easier to use,' she said. 'With blogging you have to write, and this is just images. Some people write some phrases or some quotes, but that’s it.'”


The article ends with a portrait of a seventy year old ex-military man who maintains a current events blog (or something?) in Nevada.  He spends three hours a day, he says, researching, writing. He just got a Facebook page, but says he doesn't see it as a substitute.  


The girl in the picture doesn't blog.  She has a couple different Facebook pages.  She tweets.  She is the future.


Me and the AARP will continue on. . . for a while, in the face of a future of dwindling interest.  


Maybe.  I mean I have a flat screen HD t.v. and a car with airbags.  Who knows what this year might bring.  

The Decision of an Hour on a Full Cold Moon

I've tried to make it dramatic.  I've spent the last half hour writing about going car shopping yesterday, and it looked to be another half hour of anti-drama.  I tried to make it interesting.  Which was stupid.  I lay in bed this morning thinking "make it metaphorical for. . . ."  For what?  Why?  If there was a dramatic event somewhere to hang some meaning onto. . . .

Drama.

So I'll just tell it without the. . . metaphoricity, without the . . . drama.

R.I.P.  Volvo GL.  1985-2011.  Almost 300,000 miles.  It is what remained of a busted marriage.  For me, that is.  It was the best looking car in town after I added the Thule surf racks on top.  Everyone knew the car.  Sometimes that was not so good.  Driving like a maniac over the same shitty stretch of road to work day after day had won me no awards.  When I'd leave work, I'd sometimes announce, "If you see a white Volvo with racks on top, get out of the way."

"Yea, I know.  I was behind you the other day."

"Just imagine if I had something that really ran," I'd retort.

"When are you going to get a decent car?"

"You kidding me?  That car is great."

My neighbors have told me that they know when I'm coming home.  I guess my car made a distinct sound, a combination of bad exhaust, loose hubcaps, and bad brakes.

"It is like me," I'd say, "beautiful to look at but shot all to hell on the inside."

"Neither of you are that beautiful.  You need a new car."

I don't think my neighbors appreciate me the way I'd like.

Much to my mother's great relief, I got her to drive me around to car lots yesterday.  There is no greater waste of time, I think, than looking at cars with greedy salesman trying to get into your pants.  But there I was on the nicest day of the year, blue skies, air like "a hand upon your cheek," sitting next to my mother in her Camry listening to her go on about warrantees.

"Mom, I don't know shit about cars, but this probably isn't the way to buy one.  I probably need to do some research, find out what is good, what I should pay. . . ."

"You are getting a car today."

It was like being in the seventh grade all over again when she would take me clothes shopping or worse, taking me to a barber shop.  Overcome with lethargy, my head fell back against the seat as we drove from place to place.  At each stop, she'd take on the salesperson talking gibberish and nonsense about trade-ins and warrantees.

"What kind of trade-in you giving?"

The salesman's head would begin to spin.

"Depends on what kind of car it is.  It varies.  What kind of car are you trading?"

This was the fun part for me.  My mother would boldly say, "A Volvo."

"What make and year?"

My mother paused before she'd say, "Don't you have a deal no matter what kind of car as long as you it runs you give some money?"  I would stand to the side and grin sheepishly.

"1985," I'd say.  "It has almost 300,000 miles."

My mother would look daunted then, but not defeated.  "What kind of warrantee you giving?  You got Carfax?"

The day was waxing, waning.  I'd never get it back.  We'd get climb into the Camry once again.

"Maybe I'll just get some brakes put on it and see about getting the tie rods replaced."

"Honey, you are not driving that car any more.  It's not safe."

Shit--here I've gone and done it more, written too long about buying a goddamned car.  This could go on forever.  I can't delete it again, though.  I have things to do.  Many.  Too many.  I mean, yesterday. . . I bought a car.  I wonder what it means on a Full Snow Moon.  I bought it because it felt good when I sat in it.  I bought it because I had to.  I bought it 'cause it was fairly cool.  My mother drove the deal, got the warrantee, drove the poor boy from Finland mad.  I think he gave us the price so he could get on with his life.

I never even looked under the hood.  What the hell would I have seen?  Nothing I know about.  But driving home was. . . .  It has a.c. and heat.  The stereo works.  For the first time in my life (I kid not), I have air bags.  And bunches of them.  For the first time, I can open my door without putting the key in the lock.  The paint is all there, intact and shiny.  The wheels do not wobble.  And now I can actually drive you when we go to lunch.  I don't have to rent a car to go out of town.  I can let the valet park the car.  The list is endless.

And I still don't have car payments.

Oh, yea.  I got a 2005 Nissan Xterra.  Man. . . it is cool.

Looking to a Full Snow Moon

Tonight is the Full Snow Moon.  It should be visible here.  I'll be in the studio when it comes up.  I will go to see it, though, later, after it is higher in the sky.

This morning I read on Colin Pantall's blog some photographers' responses to a query he sent:  What is your definition of success.  He meant as a photographer, of course.  Here are links to Part I and Part II if you are interested.  I was in a skeptical way, but I felt better after reading them.  I never feel like a success, but I am in love with the images I have gotten for my project.  I am astounded at times and don't feel as if they are something I've done.  I have some framed 32"x26" prints that, with the matting and the frames, seem pretty gigantic.  When I look at them, I am struck with envy and think I'll never do such lovely work again.  Is it positive or negative to love one's work?  I know it is dangerous.

I never think about the people who see my work online unless they contact me.  The "Lonesomeville" show over at 591 has been very popular.  More people have viewed it than any other exhibition, I think.  But it doesn't feel like it.  I mean, I have no experience of that.  When the viewers do not contact me, it is simply as if the work has been ignored.  Still, I love the work.  I'm glad to read that other photographers feel much the same about their own.

I know artists who sell a lot of work.  They make a living at it.  And to do that, they begin to pander to the market.  They make what sells.  And eventually, when it doesn't, they are at a loss.  Some have simply quit.  I don't imagine selling my work, though I wish I had a matron or a patron to keep me going.  I have been given a few contacts to galleries, but I have been too shy to send them any work.  I don't mind feeling ignored, exactly, but I absolutely can't stand rejection.

Which is why I've never asked anyone out on a date.  But that is another story.  And one that I will tell soon, I'm sure, as I spend weekend after weekend alone now.

But tonight is the Full Moon and anything might happen.

Or not.

*     *     *     *     *

YIKES!  Just after I posted this, I went to check on my visitor statistics, and my visitations had QUADRUPLED.  And guess what I felt?  Success!  Funny, huh?  It must be the full moon.  

Workers Unite

Power to the People.  We should all be as brave as the workers of Wisconsin.  They are like the Green Bay Packers.  Tough.  But how did they ever elect their governor?  Maybe I should think about this.  They elected a fellow who thought one way to fix the economy was to take away people's money--except for the police.  Oh, that fellow doesn't want to mess with the police.  He's like some Middle East potentate.  Keep the guns on YOUR side.  I've always had an ugly distrust of the police, but they could change my mind RIGHT NOW if they would side with the workers.  Why don't they?  Why wouldn't they?  Because they are corrupt devils who like power and boot licking privilege?  Nobody ever thought that state employees were overpaid until now.  Suddenly working for the driver's license bureau is butter.  Oh how they've had it made.  You see the way they dress?  The cars they drive?  The double-wides they live in?  Time to tax those mothers back to a standard ten foot trailer home.  And teachers?  I guess they will have to go back to selling drugs to kids to make a decent living.  And when the economy turns around (if it does--those greed-hearted bastards have taken just about everything), you think people will be stampeding to get in front of a classroom?

But the country is pretty f'ed up right now.  If you are living in a trailer and collecting welfare, you vote for Tea Party candidates because they are for old fashioned values like hating people who work hard in fields and factories doing work you won't do at sub-minimum wages.

It's good to see workers uniting.  I'm wearing a shirt today that says "Wisconsin."  The Greedheads ought to read the news.  It is better to let sleeping dogs lie.

Doltishness

I lost my mind and wrote what follows the Justin Bieber Mad Magazine cover.  It was a mistake, the sort I warn my friends against making, but I will leave it here for you as a negative example.  A blog is a daily opportunity to show people what a dolt you are.  I've swallowed the hook on this one.  

WARNING:  DO NOT READ.  PROCEED NO FURTHER.  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.  

There is a youth movement in the Middle East, I keep reading.  It is toppling the old guard and overturning dictatorships that have stood in power for decades.  I think, though, that this is an easy metaphor to latch onto for journalists.  Hell, we have a Youth Movement right here in the U.S.A.  They drive the economy.  Just watch "Skins" on MTV and you'll see that adults are just a bunch of corrupt dolts who are easy to out-think and out-maneuver.  But it began on The Disney Chanel.  Adults just have not made good role models.  At least not the ones kids are presented with.  And at school. . . ?  At home, mom and dad are busy watching "news" shows with adults yelling at one another like bad third graders and political figures like Palin and Bachman. . . well, it is more interesting to go to your room and play "Grand Theft Auto" and smoke salvia.  "Give me more of that shit!" they say while dreaming up a design for their next tattoo.  And nothing like the one mom has on her back just above the crack of her butt.  You know, something more substantial.

I can't pretend to understand the political and religious factors of the Middle East.  What I've heard from diplomats that have worked there, though, it is a curse on all their houses.  And friends from the middle east just shake their heads.

What I would like to see, though, is a study of population growth and resource availability.  When you read that sixty percent of the middle east is under thirty, you have to wonder if there aren't environmental pressures.  The N.Y. Times reports that what most of those polled said they wanted most was "freedom," but they want the sort of freedom that brings prosperity.  You know. . . stuff.  And I'm with 'em.  At least to this degree: If some people have stuff and I don't, I want some stuff.  If I see people having fun, and I'm having none. . . .

Revolution is exhilarating.  What comes next isn't so much.  When I was in Cuba in the nineties before the onslaught, the most notable difference that I noticed between the young and the old was "The Revolution."  The old were worn out by it.  It had brought them little to nothing but a long dependence upon Soviet money that had dried up long ago.  And for the young, it wasn't a revolution.  They wanted what everyone else wants, Freedom and Opportunity.  There was a problem in Cuba, though, that was documented but not well publicized.  There were not enough resources on the island to robustly support the island's human population.

No matter how much food we produce, human reproductive capabilities always outreach it.  And I keep wondering why we don't talk about it.  Here in America, of course, we have an economic system that depends upon growth, and so we rely on immigrants, illegal or otherwise, to fuel the economy.

O.K.  This is the sort of thing I should never write.  It is full of vagaries and generalities and idiot opinions.  It started out funny enough, but holy shit. . . . .  I'll just post a warning and let it go at that.

This Is How The Internet Works

Here's how the internet works.  You surf around looking at photos while you drink coffee in the pre-dawn darkness and think about what a wonderful life it would be if you didn't have to go to work. There are many people who do not go to work, and some of them do fantastic things.  You have to concede, however, that the vast majority do nothing of note, but you know what you would do as long as you did not start drinking until the sun was (almost) down.

Then you come across a site that makes you jump up and down with excitement.  Like this one.  The photographs are so good that the heading, "Photos from Justice and Police Museum Collection" seems unlikely.  These had to be done by a very serious photographer, you think, and if you are anything like me, you want to throw away all of your cameras for not being this good.  But after going through the lot of them, you know that it must be true and the anxiety/depression sets in.  "Where can I get people who look like this?" you wonder, but you know you can't.  It is gone, all gone.

So then you click on the link to the site where this appeared, and BAM! there you go all over again.  Life is Drugs has put up a site to send you spinning, Everyday I Show.  And looking through it, you are rendered useless.  Where do these photos come from?  You see the name on one set:  Lasse Persson.  You go to his site.  Hayzeus Marimba!  Who is this guy?  And so you search for a biography. You sink further.  He is a fellow who just gave himself over to this sort of photography at an early age.  You think you should have, too.

"I have such a sensibility," you think.  "What is it I lack?"  You don't think about it too much, though, for you must hurry.  You have to get to work. And you know the very thing that makes you rich keeps you poor.  A nice variation on an old phrase.

I will write to Lasse Persson and tell him how much he has depressed me and ruined my life.  No, no, I won't say that.  I will tell him nice things, laudatory things.  And we will become friends and he will give me his photo collection.  I will go to visit him and we shall sit on a veranda and drink cocktails while he spins out the tale of his life.

But I must stop here for my heart is racing.  I have to get in the shower and get to work or face the consequences.  And I can't.  I can't face the consequences.  I have an especially long day, and I will come back tired to eat something I picked up on the way home.  I will open the wine or the beer and set up the dinner tray and turn on the television.  Exhausted.  I will watch something I've recorded and when the food is gone I will pour a scotch.  I will think about the things I wish I had the energy to do and I will wake up when the glass turns over in my lap.

I should have been a criminal instead.

Pobrecito

I had no Valentine on Valentine's Day, but I sent my mother a dozen red roses.  I thought that was nice.  I made dinner for her the night before and gave her a card, but getting flowers delivered is better than having someone hand them to you in many ways.  However, I got sticker shock.  They doubled the prices.  Of course.  One clam (is a "clam" $100?). I guess that seems cheap if you live in New York.

But Valentine's Day is reserved for lovers, and so I had no card, no flowers, no warm and heartfelt love.  That is how I wish to present it.  Pobrecito.

But just before visiting hours ended, the phone rang.  Hmm.

"Happy Valentine's Day."

"Who is this?"

"It's your work wife."

It was a woman from the factory with a husband and three beautiful little girls and a Ph.D. in mathematics.  It was nice.  It was sweet.

And that is what I get.

What was I hoping for, though?

Emails at least.  Jpegs of women naked in mirrors with their shoe phones provocatively wooing me to be their lovers.  Where has all that gone?  I used to get scented undergarments left in my Jeep with sweet notes telling me all the ways that I was beautiful and thrilling.

I know.  I am being stupid and immodest if not maudlin.

I have succor, though.  I got this photograph in the mail yesterday.  It was intended for my birthday and is from someone far away.  It is a sweet present from a person who owes me nothing.  A vintage photo from an estate sale.  As good as Vivian Maier's work, no?  Someone somewhere thought of me.  What more can one ask?

Carrie Rodriguez

Watch the full episode. See more Austin City Limits.

I can't get just the Carrie Rodriguez portion of this, but skip ahead to that.  Skip ahead to 28:00.  That is where her performance begins.  Head over heels as soon as I saw her.  The funny thing is that I don't like a single one of her studio recordings.  You might.  Who knows.  Maybe I just like watching her.

Auto Lesson

I was going to work with a model last night who told me she was in an accident and couldn't drive her car. It turned out she lived only a couple miles from the studio.  I could easily pick her up.  But wait.  Was I going to drive her in my car?  Both seats are so torn up I have put towels over them as covers.  The brakes are metal to metal in the front so that when I stop it sounds like a freight train.  The left front wheel is loose and begins a violent wobbling at thirty-five.  Etc.  No choice really, though, if I wanted to work that night.  So. . . I went to get her.  Fortunately, the house I went to to pick her up looked like my car.  I walked up the short drive past a broken down Jeep Cherokee, over a brief, cracked sidewalk to the front of the house where two canvas chair dominated the small overhang.  Two ashtrays held about two hundred cigarette butts and a couple pounds of ashes.  Sentimental people, I thought.

I had no idea what would happen when I rang the bell, but I could have guessed.  A tall, beautiful woman answered the door rather sullenly.  In back of her, a white boy was trying to restrain the biggest pit bull I've ever seen.

"I'll wait for you in the car," I bravely told her.  The white boy had a look in his eye.

I helped her put her small bags into the backseat because the door doesn't open on her side.

"My car's kind of a wreck," I said.

"Yea," she said rolling her eyes.

"I almost didn't pick you up.  Nobody ever rides in my car.  My stamped on date just expired in my relationship and now I will have to date.  You think I can get a girl to ride around with me in this?"

She just laughed.  A lot.  By now we were on the road and the left tire was dancing.

"Good start," I said.

We worked for a couple fun hours with my newly refurbished lens that had fallen apart in my hand two weeks before.  My friend the repairman didn't like me any more after working on it.  I guess it was no fun.  But it was working now and my contact, my film pusher, had been over with a big batch of street film for which she charged me a hideously inflated price, so I could shoot like this a little while longer.

After the shoot, we were hungry, so I took her to eat.

"You like sushi?" I asked her.

"Yea," she said, eyes widening.  "You paying?"

"No," I said.  "You trying to work me?  . . . . . Of course I am, silly."

At the restaurant, I told her to get what she wanted because she was looking at all the prices.

"This isn't a date.  You don't have to be careful to give a good impression.  I'm starving.  Let's eat."

It is fun to talk to people after you've formed your ideas about them.  She is beautiful and tall and long, a Mexican/Indian with a wide mouth and dark hair.  But she is living with five guys and working at a sub shop.  All the boys are friends of her ex-boyfriend.

"That's weird.  Do you still see him?"

"Yea.  We share a room."

"??????  Like you sleep together?"

"Yea."

"Do you kiss?"

"Not on the lips."

"But you sleep in the same bed?"

"Yea."

"And you don't cuddle?"

"Well, I do sometimes."

"Then he's not an ex.  Why do you say he's an ex?"

"He lied to me?'

"About what?"

"I told him not to look at porn on my computer, but I keep getting these porn sites popping up on my computer screen.  I told him not to use my computer for that, and he lied."

"How old is he?"

"Twenty-three."

"And you think he isn't going to look at porn?"

"I don't want him to do it on my computer.  And he keeps saying he didn't."

"I don't think that's a lie.  He's just embarrassed to get caught like if your mother walks in while you're masturbating."

"I don't like it.  I've watched some of it.  I'm trying, you know."

"Huh?  You're trying what?"

"To like porn.  So far I've only liked the ones that have married couples."

She came from a very conservative family, she said.  Her mother and father were very religious.  That is how she grew up.  She was ready to settle down, she said, but her boyfriend was immature.  And he had a kid in New Jersey.

"Listen, I'm going to write all this, O.K."

"Sure."

"I just want to make certain because I got into trouble writing some stuff about another model.  I dramatize a bit and it hurt her feelings and I was devastated.  She was the sweetest girl."

"I don't care.  You can write it all."

I rubbed my hands together like a fiend.

"You know what will happen if you keep watching internet porn, don't you?"

"What?"

"You'll start thinking about it all the time and then you will want to do it."

She looked at me trying to figure me out and then she laughed suddenly.

"I'm serious.  You'll start watching girls and then you will want to try and then you will have a girlfriend for a few years until you find out that they are as horrible as boys."

Her eyes were dancing.  "You're crazy."

"That's what they say, but I'm serious.  You don't need to be watching that."

I felt good and moral now.  I was trying to save America's youth.  Our future.  But there is no saving anybody.  She's drifting far from her parents' values.  She's even started using a different name than the one they use for her.  Late night car wrecks, working at the sub shop, living with her "ex-boyfriend"and four other boys.  And that fucking pit bull.  I told her she was aiming low.  I described another kind of life, the kind that was sitting at tables all around us.  Her mouth turned down into a serious smirk.  "I don't like that," she said.

I guess not.  And in a little while, we got back into my moving wreck and bumped and screeched back to the house where she was staying.  There is no helping anybody, I reckon.

Addled

I am addled.  A broken flower.  A muddled mass.

Thud-Clunk

Gloomy days.  I am beginning to worry about the death smell.  How long should it last?  I think it has been way too long.

Thud-clunk, thud-clunk, thud-clunk.  I am without wit.

The Thing Was Done. He Did Not Look Back.

"Nobody dast blame this man. Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back — that's an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you're finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory."  (Arthur Miller, "Death of a Salesman"). 


My mother just called to wish me happy birthday.  I told her it was yesterday.  "Oh," she said.

Not Thinking About It

"You got your shorts tonight?" grins the girl at the counter.  There are three of them looking at me.

"Yes, I've got them tonight," I smile back, looking through my wallet for my card.  I hand it to her and she scans it.

"Hey, is today your birthday?"

"No.  Tomorrow.  Do I win anything?"

"Just us wishing you a happy birthday," says one of the others.

"Well that's more than enough," I say.  "That's plenty."

Working out at the YMCA is not like working out in a real gym full of miscreants and chemicals.  Except for the number of people mucking about and lying around in the middle of the floor with their trainers, it is easy working out here.  It is easy to tell yourself not to push it, not to go heavy, or to tell yourself you are strong as you watch some fellow on a balance ball doing shaky dumbbell shoulder presses.  The trainers all wear red polo shirts with "YMCA" stitched on and a smile of the saved, not quite happy, exactly, but somehow pleased.  The nice thing is that people stay out of my way.  I work out fast and fairly hard and am sweating and blowing most of the time.

"You mind if I work in?" I'll ask, or "How many sets do you have left?"

"Oh, sure, work in," they'll say, or "I've only got one more set."  Still, I worry.

One night a kid got wise with me.  He was bigger than I am in some ways, taller and longer, and he was fit, and he thought to give me an attitude.  He was a funny boys like all of them there, one of the privileged who went to fine private schools and practiced the art of getting his way as his father and his mother and his parents' friends had taught him, with superior breeding and a staunchly holy attitude.  His girlfriend was watching, a tall, imperially slender girl whose pedigree equalled his.

"Just go on and get your workout and I'll come get you when I'm finished," he said with a dismissive fling of the head.

"No," I said, "I'll just wait here and watch you.  How long do you think you'll be?"

"You've got about ten minutes," he said.

"How many sets you doing?"

He didn't like the way this was going.

"Two."

"Two?  Jesus Christ man, you're going to do two sets in ten minutes?  I'll work in.  I'll be finished before you are."

Then he made a mistake.

"Hey, back off. . . you're not my dad."

"That's right," I almost said, "I'm not fucking your girlfriend," but I remembered where I was and edited real quick.  "You're gonna find out how much I'm not your dad in about a second," I said closing the gap fast.  His eyes popped and his face started the involuntary dance of the scared.  "Do your fucking set."

He finished up and walked off without looking.  Funny, I thought.  He didn't know he could have hurt me pretty badly.  But he also didn't know I've had a lifetime of challenging people who could hurt me if they I hadn't made them doubt it.  Growing up among morons with retard strength and no moral fiber whatsoever taught me one thing or two.  Nobody wanted to fight them.

Home again, I went through the routine.  The cat needed love before food.  The dishes needed to be put away so I could get the dirty things off the counter.  I showered thinking I wasn't really hungry and could eat little tonight but also thinking about the two bottles of wine I had sitting in the rack.  Out of the shower, I stood before the steamy mirror.  Normally, I avoid looking now, but I cleared the moisture with the hair dryer and stared.  Jesus, looked what's happened to you, I thought.  The muscles were still somewhat slabbed, but I'd let layers of fat form around them.  Ten pounds, I said.  That's all.  Maybe.  I flexed and things took shape for a minute.  I could fake it, but I saw through the skin and down to the bone remembering every x-ray and scan.  Underneath, I didn't look so good.  I didn't want to think about my liver.  Quit drinking I thought again for the millionth time.  Then I smiled the crooked smile.  Who the hell cares? I laughed, remembering the last time I stood before anybody naked.  It doesn't matter.

I didn't want to think about it, but tomorrow, I knew I wouldn't be able to help it.  I've always hated my birthday.  They are never any fun.

Turn Down Day

Nothing goes well, and then you get a break.  Driving home from work, I was happy simply that I had escaped without irreparable damage.  The gloomy day was slowly dying as I turned into the parking lot of the gym.  Certain I didn't want to be there, creature of habit that I am, I felt duty bound.  Changing in the locker room, however, I found that I had forgotten to pack my shorts that morning.  A reprieve, of sorts, I slipped back into my trousers.

"Going so soon?" cooed the receptionist as I walk past the desk.

"You need to sell shorts," I told her.

"You sure you need them?  Hey, wait, you want to go through the lost and found?"

I shook my head.

"Are you coming back?"

"Not until tomorrow," I told her, thinking now I was making an escape.  I had things to do anyway.  I needed unbleached coffee filters and some underarm deodorant, a bottle of scotch, yogurt, milk, and maybe some ice cream.  How many stores is that, I wondered before deciding what to do.  I got into my car and backed out of the parking space feeling free.  I'd be home early.  I could read AND watch a movie.  I might like this.

I stopped at the pharmacy first, the kind that sells everything from Cheetos to lawn chairs and as a bonus has a liquor store next door.  The first victory was finding that my deodorant was two-for-one.  Old Spice.  I use it because my father did, and I like to think that few others do.  It is old fashioned.  Old school, I mean.  There were few other shoppers and I felt something familiar and far away.  It was Monday just before dark, the brightness of the fluorescent lights just beginning to stand out in a strange way against the dusk.  When I was younger, in high school and college, I loved these times, between times separating this and that when people were either  here or there and everyone else was in limbo.  I wandered through the store looking at random items and noticed the song playing over the speakers. "Turn Down Day." I couldn't remember the name of the band, but I remembered the song.  I  was humming along.

The second victory came next door.  The liquor store had a discount on Glen Fiddich.  It was a sterling night.  One of the Walgreen employees was buying wine from the specials bin.

"How much is this Cold Duck?" she asked.

"Three-ninety-nine," the clerk told her.

"You know what it means if you are buying cold duck?" I asked her.

"Oh, I'm not buying this for me," she said quickly.  The clerk looked at me and laughed.  It was grand being out, sad and alive.  Why am I so busy, I wondered to myself?  Why am I missing all of this.

Whole Foods was as crowded as usual.  It seemed no in-between time there.  I got the yogurt and some whole milk and decided on Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie Ice Cream.  I wouldn't eat much, I told myself, just a bite or two.  Some Manchego cheese and the unbleached coffee filters.  I noticed that the he music wasn't as good as it was at the pharmacy.

At the checkout register I watched a young girl I can never stop staring at working as a bagger on another aisle.  I am fascinated by her nose that looks different from opposite sides and by her a mouth that turns down in a frown naturally, and by her great curly hair that looks Brooklyn Jewish if there is such a thing.  I can't tell how old she is, but she is young, and I try to imagine her in thirty years.  Forty.  Now she breaks my heart.  She is not sad, I imagine, but looking at her you can not believe that is true.  She is so serious looking that you know she must be pondering the great philosophical questions of the past, something her eleventh grade humanities teacher might have offered up in class.  Maybe she is a freshman in college.  I can't tell.  I try not to stare, but I am unconvincing.

"Hrrtgerfeltungfelt," the cash register woman says.  I smile having no idea what she's muttered.  She is from Russia and has put on thirty pounds in the year she's worked at Whole Foods.  She says more.  I assume she is furthering her point, but I still haven't a clue what she is talking about.  I think she is saying something about the coffee filters, but she could be telling me that in Russia I could marry the bag girl and have many babies.  I give her a tense shake of the head hoping that I am right in agreeing.

Outside, there is little light.  The rain has begun to fall.  I feel the rain and the light and the dark and all the people in their cars in my muscles and my nerves.  I remember this.  When I was young, I felt everything.

At home, I put away the groceries and listen to my crying cat.  She sounds as if she has been beaten all day while I was gone.  Oh, the agony, she says in long, lonesome wails.  Quickly I put some food into her dish, but she it is not that she wants.  I leave the door open and she runs in and out, in and out.  "Daddy, daddy," she yells.  I think of Elliot Gould's Marlowe in Robert Altman's "The Long Goodbye." I feel a bit like that, too.

I take my gym bag to the bedroom and change out of my working clothes.  Sitting on the bed, I think it is early and I will play my guitar.  I pick it up, tune it, and strike a chord, a normal E, and I begin to sing.  I try to make a rhythm with my voice, a meter more than a melody, forcing air and holding it back, accent and cesura.  It sounds alright and I strum partial chords, a few strings at a time, not too many the way I have in the past but only a few, simple and clean.  One song, then another.  If I could hear myself as I sound, I'd be embarrassed, but I don't.  I only hear what I think I sound like.  It is wonderful.  I imagine people turning in surprise.  It is dark now.  I will start a band, I think.  I will be better than before.

In the kitchen, I cut open the Manchego cheese and find some water crackers in the fridge.  I pull the cork out of last night's wine.  I do feel good, I think pouring one glass and then another.  I have time for this tonight.  I will make a salad and drink more wine before I heat up last night's beef.  While I cut the garlic the cat bumps against my ankles.  I put a piece of cheese down for her.  She sniffs it but doesn't eat it.  If it were cheap and soft, I think, she'd snatch it right up.  Prole.

I take my salad and my wine to the computer to check my email.  It is good.  My friend who likes to live much and well and who loves art and literature and food and drink and all the sensuous things has sent me a PDF file of something, maybe an introduction to a book.  In part it reads, "I, too, am bound by a chain formed of gloomy fancies," this hand-written on a line drawing of a woman looking back over her bare shoulder.



"I am rich," I think.  The night lies ahead of me like a promise.  I shall read awhile and then I will watch "The French Connection" which I haven't seen since it was released so long ago.  I can do these things this night and do not wish to take them for granted.

The air turns cooler, the rain falls harder.  The cat is nestled upon my feet.  There are other things in life and I miss them often, but tonight this all feels good and right.

Tomorrow. . . is another story.

*     *     *     *     *

1. In searching, I found a strange version of "Turn Down Day" I'd not heard before.  

2.  The Cyrkle also recorded Paul Simon's "Red Rubber Ball."  

3.  That's right, Simon and Garfunkle's "Red Rubber Ball."  

Head in the Sand

AOL just bought the Huffington Post for $315 million.  That puts the value of my blog at $3,150 or so. We can haggle.  But like Adrianna, I would still be chief editor and draw a tidy salary if I sell.  I could begin to recoup some of my expenses from the past year.

I may have undervalued my work, though.  I have no head for this.

I am like a child who does not want to go to school today, who wants to stay home with his things rather than face the schoolyard bully.  It is the roughness of the other that makes home so nice.  Having made mistakes, I am vulnerable.  I'm hoping they are not fatal.  And so I'd rather stay on the sofa and hide my head, death smell and all.

Though the death smell was mitigated last night by cooking dinner for my mother.  By the time she got here, the stench was smothered.  I sat her up with a tray in front of the giant television that she bought me--and put on the Super Bowl.  Oh, there is nothing my mother loves more than football.  She tells me that when I have it on she watches the clock in the upper left hand corner of the screen to see how much longer it will last.  She's had to put up with it a lifetime and still has no idea what is going on.  I'll say, "Oh, what a play," and she'll say, "Really?"  So we talked through the game and watched the commercials.  Good old mom.

And here is an aside.  Suddenly everyone I know has something to say about Egypt.  I hadn't known they'd been secret Egyptologists all this time.  They tell me about the culture, the religion, the politics, but they never mention Cleopatra let alone Tut.  They inform me about Turkey (I didn't know they were so expert on Turkey, either) and pontificate on the perils in Israel.  I tell them that you can't just treat people like shit forever. The accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few always leads to revolution.  Greed is bad for everyone.  Read Faulkner.  He gives a blueprint for all that.  Tell me, is there an Egyptian Faulkner?  There will lay the keys to understanding.  Violence and Greed.  The rich are smug until they are on the wrong end of the gun.  Suddenly they enjoy the idea of negotiation.  "Wait a minute, let's talk.  I didn't realize. . . ."

At least that's how it works elsewhere or I'm no Adrianna Huffington.

Odd Gray Smelly Days

A strange, warm, February rain fell yesterday.  It continues to drizzle and to mist today.  The sun does not shine and I hide away in the gray low light, my senses and intellect dull.  Sad cat wrapped around my foot hugs and snuggles.  I could stay this way awhile.

The smell of death permeates the house more strongly now.  Something has died under the house.  I can smell it outside.  The acrid stench wafts from room to room.  No candle or spray can make it go away.  I will live with it until it is done.

Odd gray smelly days.

Last night's movie was "Last Tango in Paris."  I had not watched it since its release in 1972.  I remembered more than I knew, for there is not much to the film.  Brando, forty-eight at the time, still had that raw, sexual appeal, though I remember critics commenting that he had gone to fat.  The scenes that so titillated audiences then are not much now, and Maria Schneider, twenty at the time, is not much of an actor.  When the film was over, I just felt weary.

Today's photo is one of my favorite people to photograph, the fifteen year old model who certainly will have a career at this.  I've worked with her and her mother and her sister so much now that I am beginning to feel like an uncle. You know, the one you tell the kids to stay away from.

If you are feeling sad or low and believe you are getting close to going down the rabbit hole yourself, just remember, there will always be someone ready to give you a push.  You are better off just keeping it to yourself.

Down the Rabbit Hole

I go further down the rabbit hole.  It must get worse before it gets better.  Maybe I've passed the halfway point where it is better to continue on than to run around and try to go back.  It is a long journey, I think, not a weekend's outing. 

So I've locked the doors and pulled the shades yet again, and I've turned down all invitations.  I have HD and movies and more books than I can read.  I'm glad the lens on my camera is broken.  There will be no more shooting for a while.  

Last night, I watched a movie that has not been available until recently, "Harry and Tonto."  I saw it in college and it has been a touchstone for me, for it is a movie I had recommended it to my father who went to see it.  My father did not go to movies and so I was shocked that he went to see this one.  Perhaps he went because Art Carney was in it.  I don't know.  But his reaction was not what I expected.  

I am often disappointed by movies I watched in college and thought were great.  Most do not hold up.  I was fully prepared to turn off "Harry and Tonto" if it wasn't what I remembered.  It wasn't, perhaps, but I didn't turn it off.  If nothing else, it is a nice portrait of the era in many ways.  I could feel what it meant to be alive then.  The country was different physically and spiritually.  It was not young, the country.  It was old and worn, much like Harry.  Yet there was a nascent spirit that was about to give birth to something else.  You could feel that it was coming though you couldn't imagine how it was going to turn out.  The destruction of the past (Harry's apartment building), the forced outing, the broken families, the fractured sense of community are presented with subtlety.  

And there were simple things I've forgotten.  Hitchhiking.  Harry takes a fifteen year old runaway along with him, introduces her to his grandson who has been taking hallucinogens and helps them run away to a commune in Boulder.  Giving them his car, he takes to the road by thumb himself.  He gets picked up by a hooker in a convertible, goes to Vegas, gets drunk and thrown in jail, meets old men selling herbal remedies and an Indian shaman.  It all seemed so normal.  And it was real.  Soon after seeing the film, I had most of those experiences myself. 

There are surprising parts to the movie as well such as a used car salesman who takes strychnine in order to get an erection in the pre-viagra days and Harry having trouble getting through airport screening not much different than today's.   

I've written this so badly and I can't go back to fix it.  These are notes for real writing, I think, and not writing itself.  

I just wanted to say I watched the movie last night.  It is available to stream on Netflix, but I don't think you will be as enamored as I.  

Oh, and my father was angrier at me than he had ever been at me.  My father and mother had been divorced for five years, part of which I lived with him.  Now he lived alone in a small duplex and I was in another town.  I wanted my father to have adventures, to take to the road, to start over somehow.  But he was angry.  All he saw was an old man with a cat, I guess.  We never think we are old, maybe.  

 

Though last night, watching a movie I had last seen in college, lying on the couch in the dark at midnight alone, I saw the damned thing through different lenses.  And I was sure I was.  

Portentous

I'm not on my usual computer and have limited picture files, so I browsed some places and found digital photographs I had forgotten about.  I usually forget about the digital images I make.  They come back to me as a surprise.

Something has died under the house, I hope.  If not, the cat has done something terrible somewhere and I will have to send her to Kittyland.  Fog lays heavy on the land.  You all have problems to contend with and take your pleasures where you can.  I find few.  It is Friday which has implications for this post.  I will not worry so much about it.  Portents of gloom are about just now and dealers in anxiety.  The cat is troubled and cannot be still.  Perhaps she is spooking me.

I have duties to take care of.  I must prepare.

Falling Apart

I have been so busy that I have prayed for some let up.  I don't feel the same, don't know my neglected body. I feel ghostlike, unsubstantial.  I don't recognize the house, don't remember what I do after I come home late.  I am reeling like Anderson Cooper in an angry mob (oh, and maybe I've changed my mind about going to cover the Egyptian riots).  They are discovering new planets the size and shape and density of the earth in just the right "zone" for water to stand on the surface.  I recall all the cheap old black and white science fiction movies I watched on television as a kid about such things, and it makes me want to recover and to live in order to see what will come.

But last night I got the worst sort of reprieve from working in my studio.  One of the nicest, most accommodating women in the world got ready for our second Polaroid when the lens fell apart in my hand.  Just the mechanism, the mechanical part.  The glass was intact.  I sat for an hour trying to put it back together, but I was really just touching metal to metal and moving it this way and that hoping that it would simply fall back into place, hoping the gods would finish laughing at me and let me have the lens back again so that we could make lovely pictures that night.  But they didn't.  I was devastated.

So now I feel lost.  I will not be able to shoot until I either get the lens repaired or buy another.  I must spend money for a camera that will shoot the last ten or so boxes of Polaroid film.  I tell myself, "forget it, move on," but I begin to shake and to shiver.  Perhaps I need a support group or to check myself into rehab.  I don't know.  I don't know.

All around me life is in tatters.  I turn and twist and twirl as if looking for something, as if trying to fend off foes, hoping to get a quick glimpse of the thing that stays just out of sight.  My pulse races, my breath quickens.  How long can I twirl like this, I ask.  How long can I go?

And the Winner Is. . . .

I've created my own Oscar this year.  I haven't seen all the films yet, but that doesn't matter.  The ballots go to people with a Union Card.  They don't have to show that they've viewed any of the movies.  All the grips and geeks who work in Hollywood (and beyond) receive a ballot.  This will be The People's Oscars. Maybe it will be open to any movie you saw this year, not just the ones made this year.  Bill Murray can win for the one he was robbed of a few years ago.  Or maybe we'll give him a surprise Oscar for "The Life Aquatic."

Can you tell I'm late for work?  I shot late last night, ate dinner at eleven, and slept a full eight hours.  Congratulations to me.  I'm late. Just time for a shower and this.  I'm pooped, as my mom used to say.

Play More

On the weekend, everything became clear.  Play more.  Then Monday, at work, I make the statement.

"You weren't like this a few years ago.  You've let this place consume you."

"Just the politics of it."

I go back to my office to fill out the "Self-Appraisal" form that is due today.  It goes to a supervisor who will tell me if I am full of shit or not.  No.  That is not accurate.  Tells me if she thinks I am full of shit or not.

Later, I see the fellow from H.R. who created the self-appraisal.

"I've just had the most scintillating three hours I've spent in a very long time," I tell him.

"Really?  What were you doing?"

"Filling out the fucking self-appraisal form you created to keep yourself employed.  You know, though, I was thinking about it afterwards, and I realized that if it weren't for such appraisal systems, none of the great, creative minds of the western world would have accomplished what they did.  Nope, none of them would have known what they meant to do.  The real genius lies with all of YOU throughout the millenia who have created these appraisal systems.  Boy oh boy, you've kept us focused."

He didn't care for that very much.  H.R. types aren't big on irony.

Great conservative corporate minds.  Yessirreebob, they've got a plan.  And outcomes.  You wouldn't believe how much time they spend with outcomes.  Some of the Goals and Objectives of the great artists and inventors are starting to draw attention.

Next time (if there is a "next time") I enter a relationship, we are going to do all of this, Goals and Objectives, Measurable Outcomes, Self-Appraisals, 360 Degree Appraisals, Final Evaluations, etc.  No kidding.  It is what made America great.