Aesthetics

Time zones do horrible things to my body, even a few.  Whiskey and fatigue and the drone of the flat screen t.v. put me to sleep around nine.  Twelve my time.  I hadn't bothered to wash, brush my teeth.  Woke to a gray San Francisco morning.  Looked out the window at the waking streets.  Saturday.  I remembered the broken fender.

I put on my clothes and went to the lobby's Starbucks for the largest coffee and a butter croissant.  How can they charge this, I wondered, knowing it was cheaper than the twelve dollar three-cup coffee that room service would provide.  All around stood sleepy people, some ready to head out for the day.  Back in my room I read the news, responded to some email, wrote about the trip so far.

"I am in no hurry," I told myself.  "I will take my time.  This is a vacation."  And slowly I dressed and found the hotel gym.  It was full of the dutiful and three pretty young girls running on treadmills with the waistbands of their shorts rolled up high enough to barely show the bottom of their round cheeks as they ran.  Oh, my.  I will not quit looking, I feared, and someone will call the police.  Filled with nervous energy, I worked out harder than I'd planned, and within moments had done something awful to the middle of my back.  Shit, fuck, goddamn.  O.K. O.K.  Maybe it wasn't so bad.  Take it easy, I told myself feeling the muscles around my tenth vertebra begin to contract.  I looked over at the girl's behinds.  As always, there was one we could call the Queen.  She was perfect in every way.  I hobbled over to another machine trying to stand straight, gut in, chest out.  A fellow my own age suddenly spoke to me:

"It's a great way to start the day, eh?"  

I didn't know if he was talking about working out or the other thing.

"Beats working," I said.

Quit it, I told myself, quit it.  But the room was small and there were mirrors everywhere.  I would have to close my eyes not to see her at least in reflection and my eyes were no longer connected to my brain, they now having taken on a life of their own.  Meanwhile, a girl speaking French to her boyfriend kept looking at me.  She was pretty and normally I would have been looking back, but. . . .  It went on like that for another twenty minutes.  Finally, exhausted not from the physical exertion but from the emotional torment, I was done.  I liked this gym, I told myself.  I will work out every day.

I decided that I would walk across the island to Fisherman's Wharf.  I needed to begin to get my legs ready for Yosemite.  Up Powell to Columbus, then cutting across to the water.  At Bay Street I turned uphill to find the Patagonia store.  I had not packed right.  I needed some things.  But Patagonia was not on Bay.  I make that mistake every time, walking up that big hill only then to go down one street that is not so steep.  It is O.K.  It is good for me.

Then down to the water to bump around with tourists, out to the boat museum on the docks, then back to the little bay the swimming club uses lined with small buoys and floats.  I once dreamed water, dreamed of seas.  In high school, I saved my money and bought scuba equipment.  I made deep water decompression dives into strange limestone caves, dove in the blue-green waters of island reefs, saw sharks and barracuda and eels and grouper.  Later, after college, I bought a sailboat and was a sailor, lying in the cockpit at night reading by lantern light, dreaming of single-handed voyages around the globe.  Later still, I raced sailboats in competition on the same boat with an Olympic champion winning the Lipton Cup Series for our class.  I was a champion.  Traveling in New England, I would make diversions to famous wooden boat yards just to see the beauty of the thing.

But now, standing on the docks and looking at the water and the ships, I had only a passing interest.  No, I would not like to crawl into one of those again, not alone or as a crew.  The damp and the cold held no attraction for me now.  Looking at the images of old sailors in their wool caps carrying their belongings slung over their back in a gunny sack--well, they were tougher than I am now.  It would take more rum than I need.  I would not like to be Shanghaied.

Moving away from the water, I spied a restaurant that promised "Award Winning Crab and Corn Chowder." Award winning.  How could I go wrong.

It was a cafe and I sat outside.  It felt good to sit after walking so long, and now I wanted some wine.  Wine and sour dough bread from San Francisco and a bowl of Award Winning chowder.  I looked around at the other tables.  Families.  Couples.  Groups.  Again, I felt the difference.  I'd traveled alone all my life.  I'd hitchhiked across the country for months after college.  I'd traveled on my own in the Amazon jungles with only native guides.  I've been in the mountains alone for weeks at a time.  But now I was becoming melancholy with it.  I thought of Sir Richard Burton after Africa, marrying and taking a post as a minor official in South America, becoming quiet, his career directed by his wife.

Now it was afternoon, and I was across town from the S.F. MoMA, so I decided to take a bus back in order to see the Steins exhibit in time.  As I boarded, I read the sign: Exact Change Only.  I looked at the woman driving the bus, big bills in my hand.

"I don't have correct change," I said meekly.

"O.K.  Get on," she said.

I almost said "Gracias," but she was not hispanic and it made no sense.  "Thank you," I said.

In a few stops, the bus was filled with Chinese.  The smell of garlic and other to me exotic spices filled the small space.  Many were sick, crippled, suffering from some malady, taking herbs and drinking special soups as bromide against their ills.  I wonder why some Americans are so taken with Chinese medicine.  It doesn't seem to work.  Maybe it is all the ancient symbols, the muted colors of the packaging, the mystery of it all.  But what I know is in both China and Chinatown, people limp and cough and spit up sputum by the bucketful.  I can't see any evidence of health.

But maybe they live to be a hundred.

The MoMa is packed and tickets are sold in hour blocks.  When I get to the window, though, the woman says, "Maybe I can get you in now.  Wait.  Let me see."  I am wondering at this when she says, "Yes, here, you can go in now."  I smile and hand her the money.  I am either lucky or cursed, I tell myself.  There never seems to be any in between.

The Steins--the entire family--collected art from the early 20th century on.  For a family of limited means, it has to be the most impressive collection every assembled.  The show was remarkable for that, just to see the amazing numbers of Renoirs and Cezannes and Mattises and Picassos not to mention a prescient collection of others, too.  The rooms of the museum were filled with paintings and drawings and lithographs and furniture.  Even the furniture that filled their rooms in Paris was grand.  That is what we envy, that--an aesthetic existence, a decorated life.

After viewing the show, my body worn from walking and standing all day, having moved through the other four floors of the museum to look at the collected art from the 20th and 21st centuries, I could only think of the museum cafe.  I love museum cafes.  I love the museum crowds.  I bought a beer and took a table near the back so I could view the room.  Beside me sat a table full of men, articulate, handsome, sophisticated.  They spoke warmly to one another of art and culture.  In front of me were two couples.  I could not stand them and wondered why they were here.  The men were obviously men of business talking too loudly and moving about too aggressively like fraternity boys posturing for one another, big watches and freshly cropped hair.  The women mimicked them in a "feminine" way, speaking assuredly, they too well coifed and well dressed.

Then I saw her across the way.  She wore a beautiful contemporary hat styled from the twenties and a soft jersey top with horizontal stripes and had dark hair cut just above her shoulders.  When she smiled it was as if Eve had never been punished for eating the apple, as if she only found reward.  She owned a profound and intellectual countenance, her face devoid of sin or guilt, without awareness of any of the deadly sins.  The  man she was with was taking her photograph.  It was what I wanted to do.  Just one, I thought I would plead, but they would never understand.  If I had a giant lens. . . .  I sat and watched her through the movements of the two couples in front of me blocking my view as they talked their bullish nonsense.  In flashes I could see her smile when she spoke, her mouth, her eyes, even her shoulders and hands.  She was the sum total of the Steins collection, a perfect vision of a profound aesthetic beauty.

I walked by her table on my way out.  She didn't look up.

Back to my room for the whiskey I told myself I deserved.  A lone whiskey in a lone room.  It was quite enough.

I decided to go across town to the Castro district for dinner.  The friend I am staying with in Yosemite loved the area around Delores Park.  I met him there at a cafe one trip sitting outside in the sunlight waiting.  He was staying with a friend in the neighborhood, sleeping in his V.W. camper.  I met him there a number of times, he taking me to wonderful working class restaurants where the food was cheap and good.  And I had a yearning to drink tea at Samovar once again where I had once had a thousand year old green tea.  And so a quick Muni ride put me in the heart of it.  The Castro district was once known for its gay culture, and that is still there, but so is everything else.  Times have changed.  I walked the blocks past Delores Park, down the hill to Sanchez, down further to Valencia.  I saw a small Mexican restaurant.  Just right for tonight.  Pork shoulder with black beans and sangria.  I watched a woman making tortillas with a press like the one my girlfriend and I had in college, mixing the masa harina and water and placing little balls on wax paper in the round metal jaws, pushing the handle down flattening it, then tossing it onto the hot grill.  Over and over and over.  She looked at me and smiled.  The food came and was perfect, big chunks of meat, the beans without grease, the tortillas tasting like fresh corn.  And more sangria with little pieces of fruit in the bottom.  Happy, I wandered back.  I was thinking about an ice cream shop I had passed on the way to the restaurant.  The line went 'round the block.  I would stop.  I wanted to see why.

The line was still there.  It was a permanent line, moving and filling forever.  I stood.  Ten minutes.  Twenty.  I listened to the conversations around me, again happy couples, groups of friends.  Silly talk.  Happy talk.  Finally the counter girl was grinning at me.  It was my turn to order.

Outside, I ate the ice cream among the crowd.  It was good.  Really good.  Was it worth standing in line for?  Absolutely.  I'm sure that standing in line made it better.  I, now, ate with the privileged.  Nothing could be as good and profound right now.  It was a victory of sorts.  I had won.

I walked by Samovar on my way back, but by now I wanted no tea.  I looked in and thought of the times I had been there before, and that was enough.  I was full and tired now and wanted to get back to my room.

And just before the Muni stop, there was a small crowd standing before the alcove entrance to a small shop.  There, a cello quartet was about to play.  They were students at the conservatory, they said.  And they played.  And oh, what wonders they put forth there as the last rays of light went off behind the Twin Peaks, the music making starlight in the purple night.  Again and again.  I wanted this, wanted it with me always.  They were young and talented and happy and content, and after every song they giggled and smiled and talked with the gathered crowd who filled their cello case with piles of paper money.  And finally, with much regret, I turned my back and walked away heading back to my room at the Hilton and the night's last whiskey that waited for me there.  It had been good, the day.  I surely must be content.

What Would Bukowski Do?

Who can sleep the night before a journey? Woke at three-thirty, four-thirty.  Surprisingly, I had packed everything the night before.  I left everything I would usually take behind.  I brought only my digital camera. Everything fit into one bag. Travel light.

Cat didn't like my leaving.  She knows what packing means.  Cab came before six and I was ready.

Checked in at the airport and got better seats than the ones I had booked only the night before. Everything was easy. Everything was fine.

Got to San Francisco, picked up my rental car, a Ford Taurus, that looked like a rocket ship inside.  Sixty-two degrees, driving past the old Candlestick Park, sky a robin's egg blue.  101 North.  I forgot which exit I should take into town and got off 285 somewhere.  Found Third Street and drove past the S.F.MoMA.  "Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde." It is the Stein collection.  Things looked groovy.

With a bit of difficulty, I found the S.F. Hilton where a room awaited me.  I took a sudden turn into their parking garage and was befuddled.  It was the narrowest, most ominous place I'd ever seen.  Cars were parked between the big pillars, but I couldn't imagine how they got there.  I tried to pull in between two cars and couldn't.  Backing out, I came inches from swiping one of the big posts.  Blessed, I thought.  That would have been terrible.  Just then, the car came to a crashing halt.  I had backed into another pillar behind me.  Jesus Christ, I thought, maybe it is just a scratch.

I drove on, up and up, until I found a place I could squeeze the behemoth into.  Quickly I jumped out to look at the damage.  I couldn't believe it.  The entire bumper had exploded.  It was split in two.  It didn't just look bad. Sick to my stomach, I kept hearing the car rental clerk asking me if I wanted the additional coverage, my voice giving the snarky "no."  I harbored the false belief that my American Express account covered accidents as long as I used the card.  Once in my room, I called them.  I was mistaken.

Suddenly, the trip was wrong.  Everything was expensive.  I thought of the medical bills and dental bills that I was facing.  Now this.  What will this cost me, I wonder?

I tried to shake the gloom, put on my shoes and went out into the streets.  But my head was clouded.  The day was gorgeous, the crowd beautiful.  I was not.  I looked at myself, or rather the reflection of the self that other people see, and thought terrible, unflattering things.  Was I the man I used to be?

On Monday I will be in Yosemite National Park.  I will make the hikes I've made for years, but I am afraid.  I was strong and fit and looked the part.  This thing reflecting back to me was not that man.  He was the sort who clumsily backs into pillars in parking garages, a sad sack of misfortune.  I didn't have that paunch last time I came.  I looked at the beautiful people surrounding me.  They were happy, gorgeous, carefree.  I was the sort of man who pays $44/day for parking at a Hilton for God's sake.  When did this happen to me.  Afraid, yes, that I will not feel strong in the mountains, will not run up the rock like a young god but limp along on bad knees, hips aching, belching and farting and crying Uncle.

"Let it go," I told myself.  "You are dying before you are dead."  Easy words I've learned along the way.  But try it sometime.

I went into the five floors of art galleries on Geary, wandering half-heartedly.  Preliminary, I told myself. I would come back on Saturday.  And really--here there was a Bellocq photo printed by Lee Friedlander.  There were two Diane Arbus images I'd never seen.  Another four rooms filled with Irving Penn prints, many of them from the "Small Trades" series.  I walked into galleries exhibiting contemporary artists.  Here there were giant photographs of a woman with white wings framed in rusty cages sitting on top of old books, all resined into one.  Interesting rather than great, but nice to view.  A man and a woman I'd seen in another gallery are there.  The young woman smiles at me demurely.  She turns her head so that I may look at her, turns back and smiles again.  I look for her boyfriend/husband/father.  The woman at the desk who I take to be the gallery director engages me.  Do I know the artist's work?  No, I say, and so she goes on to tell me about her.  She wants to sell the pieces, of course.  This is not a museum.  But I begin to think, perhaps spurred on by the smile of the pretty woman, of asking how I might show her my work.  I am crazy, of course.  Still, what I see does not intimidate me.  I am bolder now, but not bold enough to say it.  I thank her and tell her I will come back.

I must shake the gloom, I say.  I had not brought my camera.  I think of the packing mistakes I have made. I've left too many things out.  I wish I had a small film camera, one of the Leicas.  It would not have been too much trouble, I think.  I had thought to buy some clothes while I was here, but after crashing the car, all I can think about is money.

I walk up Grant Avenue, through the gates of China Town, through the schlock and slow tourists and slower Chinese, up the hill then down to North Beach cutting through Jack Kerouac Lane past the Vesuvio saloon.  I go into City Lights Books for a moment remembering the first time I stood here in wonderment after college.  My mind is foggy, though, and I cannot concentrate.  Back into the street to stand and gaze.  The Condor Cub: Topless A-Go-Go.  I walk up the street past the Bohemia Hotel where years ago I stayed in the room Ginsburg often wrote in.  I am tired, hungry.  Eating alone like this is such a bore.  I pass The Stinking Rose: We Serve Food with Our Garlic reads the garish sign.  It is early, but inside couples eat at romantic street side tables.  I've eaten here before.  It is plain and good fare for a restaurant that mainly serves tourists.  I go in and am seated at a table for one--literally.  It has only one chair.  But it sits looking out at the street and is lovely.  I watch people parade by.  Only bums, madmen and madwomen, walk by alone.  All the happy people are in couples or with families.  A family is seated across from me, a father, mother, and daughter.  I am fascinated.  The father is a bit younger than I, the mother looking older than he, but perhaps that is ideological.  They are "earthy," she avoiding fashionable clothing and makeup and hair products.  The daughter is twelve or thirteen.  She has a prominent Italian nose, sandy hair.  I watch her.  Everything she does is authentic and wonderful.  I watch her with her mom and dad.  It makes me smile.  If I turn my head, I must look up the skirt of a heavyset woman seated two steps above me.  She is fifty, wears a low cut blouse to show her ample breasts, wears makeup and high heels.  She is with a younger man who seems fascinated.  I don't want to look up at those pale thighs again, so I stare straight ahead at the family.  Chicken, garlic potatoes, a salad, the house wine.  I begin to feel better.  More wine, then, having eaten everything, I order Sambuca.  It is not late.  I will walk 'til dark perhaps, ramble through streets and shops.  I'll look at the old hipsters in North Beach and grow sad, wander back toward Union Square and watch the pretty people.  I'll buy a bottle of whiskey and sit looking out at the city from the 32nd floor window to which I've been upgraded having told the woman at the check-in counter my tale of woe.  I'll grow tired, my eyes heavy with travel and trouble and drink as the city twinkles outside.

See You

(Robert Crumb)

Tonight I decided to go.  I'm just gone.  I'll let you know what happens.  Perhaps it will be interesting.

How It Goes

Some emails, a phone call, maybe.  "Come work with me," you say, and you agree on a time and date.  You never know.  The appointed day, then the appointed time.  You get nervous always.  Fifteen minutes, twenty, nobody shows.

You text: "Hey?"

You text because that is what people do now.  No one will answer a telephone.

A few minutes later you get a text back:  "I just got into an accident.  Now the woman is trying to blame me!"

You should pack up and call it a night, you think, but you text back:  "That is awful.  Are you O.K.?"

A long while, then another text: "We are waiting for the police."

You decide to walk to a nearby cafe and have some dinner.  It used to be a good place with good food.  You quit going there because you couldn't stand it any more, but it is only three blocks from your studio, and recently you have eaten there again.  The food was good.  Tonight is dollar burger night, an anomaly in such a place. You are alone and you sit at the bar.  The bartender is pretty enough to make you uncomfortable.  A big beer, a Corsican salad, a burger with cheese.  You are happy.  It is still early and you decide you are glad not to shoot.  You have many things to do.

Half way through the meal, you text the model but hear nothing.  Maybe when the police arrived they found drugs in her car.  Maybe she was drunk.  Surely they've taken her to jail.  Expired license.  Outstanding warrant.

The bartender knows the other people at the bar.  She slips a bit on the floor, says the soda dispenser leaked syrup on it.  She fakes a slip for demonstration.  When she talks familiarly with the patrons, you are disappointed.  She is still pretty, but she also unsophisticated.  You imagine an apartment, a stupid boyfriend who is also a bartender or maybe works in the kitchen.  They have similar friends, do cool things like drinking too much on a Sunday afternoon in a hipster way.  She hasn't any dreams, you think, and with the years will grow more and more disappointed.  The current boyfriend will be gone and she will become friendlier with the men who look like money at the bar.  She'll dream of a better car, a house, not working for tips.

There is a couple sitting to your left who seem bothered by you or maybe fascinated, you can't tell.  The man turns to his right from time to time and looks at you with a grin.  It could be real.  It could be a grimace.  You listen to the conversation.  They are talking about church.  You quit listening.

A woman from behind taps you on the shoulder.  You turn and try to collect some thoughts on who it might be.  She is saying your name.  Computers whirring, you come up with who she is.

"Oh, hello Masha."

She was the girlfriend of a fellow in a band as successful as yours from years ago.

"I just saw you sitting here and wanted to say hi."

You are not good at this sort of thing.  Awkward, really.  The words that come from your mouth are wooden, wrong.  She has a hopeful look in her eye as she asks what you are doing, tells you what she is doing.  Oh my, you think.  Oh my.

When she goes back to her table, you call for the check.  The bartender smiles.  They always smile when they bring the check.  Suddenly you are friends.

You walk back to the studio.  The night is hot and humid and you want to get home and put on what passes for pajamas, to sit with a drink and watch a program you have recorded.

This is accomplished forthwith.

Your cell phone rings.

"Hello.  Well, the cops just left."

Shit.

"Oh.  Are you still wanting to shoot?"

"Sure."

You are sucked in by the voice.

"O.K.  I'll meet you at the studio."

You wait and wait.  An hour later, she arrives.  You wish you had told her to reschedule, but here you go.  She has brought a friend.  She is shy about it all.  She seems never to have modeled before.  Be quick, you think.  An hour.  Her friend, you say, can sit and drink on the couch in the reception room.  You take her into the studio.

The work you do is slow.  Usually there is a lot of talking, but she does not speak.  It is spooky, unreal.  You talk too much to fill the air.  She has brought no useful wardrobe.  She stands wearing nothing but the mask.  She will not take it off.

"I like the mask," she says.  And little else.

She is tired.  She was up until six in the morning.  Bought a motorcycle and road it home from 100 miles away.  She had the accident and hasn't eaten.  She is finishing her degree in Biology.  She will go to medical school, she says.  People are so unsuspected you almost say out loud.  And then you do.

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing.  Nothing.  It is just me."

And in a little while, you are done.  You make it short, but she wants to come back.  You will shoot again.

You are home--once more--in what passes for your pajamas--once more--sitting with a drink.  It is late and you are ready to fall into bed.  "What the hell am I doing?" you ask yourself.  In the morning. . . the factory.  It is summer, hot and humid, the vegetation growing rapidly, closing the world off from the sky.  You are fatigued. . . frustrated.  You need to get away, but you seem to lack the courage to go.  The cat is bumping your leg.  No, it is not courage.  It is the money.  And the fucking cat.

You are tired and tired of thinking.  Drink some water.  Take your vitamins.  Go to bed.

Manichean

Summer blues?  I don't know.  I am not failing, but I don't feel as if I'm succeeding, either.  I sense danger all about.  Two routes available.  I can just lock down and not leave the house, or I can make a trip and await disaster.  That is the state of my Manichean mind just now.  They tell me that there are nuances that lie between.  I can't grasp the concept.

How does one go about diverting disaster?

The cat lies on my feet in the rising dawn having made me her only comfort.  Perhaps I need a separation.

The photo brings on dreams of exotic islands and different times.  It is not true.  I am a seller of lies.  Worse.  I think I am a buyer, too.

No Misery Satisfies

Impossible instant color film.  The film has horrible flaws.  For some of us, that is the "charm."  The image will not last.  It is not nearly archival.  The model said, "I look just like my mother in this photograph."  I've not met her mother.

I am having a reaction.  I like such metaphorical statements.  It is the symbolic language of doctors.  I, like they, cannot be sure of the cause.  I am just sick (of it).  Perhaps it is a reaction to having just spent so much money on Polaroid film and a camera.  That was stupid.  I am sick of all of it now, of the images, the process.  Think of all the writers and artists who in one impulsive moment destroyed their entire body of work.

Perhaps it is to working too much.  I just realized that illness may have cost me my vacation.  And I need to get away badly or I will become a voluntary shut-in.  I am not supposed to be away from the factory in August, but now if I vacation, it cannot be avoided.  I have not paid attention and now I panic.

Or maybe it is due to "other things."  There are a host of them.  Twenty-seven may not be the perfect age for checking out, but by forty-two it might be advisable.  I shouldn't say that.  I'm not making suggestions for any friends who are that age.  This is merely personal.

I came across a quotation on another website today.  I am in a thieving mood, so I took it.

"Melancholy: an appetite no misery satisfies."

-Emil Cioran

from Syllogismes De L’amertume [ All gall is divided: gnomes and apothegms] 

Ur-Image

I hadn't thought of it until today, but Amy Winehouse was surely the ur-myth for most of the women with whom I make pictures.  Everything about her.  And I have to say that I was enthralled with her a bit, too.  I didn't pay much attention to her, but when I heard her and even more when I saw her, I couldn't turn away.  She was what had gone wrong, a terrifyingly beautiful image of disintegration.  Disintegrated.  She will be missed without missing much herself, I think.  We will slog on to the brutal end.

Maybe it was the Norwegian Shooter that sent her over the edge.  Or maybe it was the European Financial Crisis.  Or, as it leads many of us to the brink, perhaps it was Global Warming.  But more likely it was all of the things piled together that a normal mortal being, no matter how talented, can do nothing about.  We all wither eventually in the face of hatred and stupidity.  There is only so much a simple, fragile psyche can take.

Today, I divide the world into two types:  The Rupert Murdochs and the Amy Winehouses.  You get what I mean.

Schlemiel

Let me make you laugh some more.  Yesterday I took my broken Polaroid camera with the seized up lens to the repair guy.  He fixed it in about ten minutes.  This after buying a new camera the night before.  I am a schlemiel.

Yesterday morning I took a run.  Walking back through Country Club College, I passed through a group of summer camp kids.  "Hey, look," one of the little tykes sitting with a group of boys said, "it's Fabio!"  I laughed and kicked over his project.

Only part of that is true.

The Filipino model I shot with the night my lens seized up told me that she decided to loosen up her life after watching the "Spartacus" series on Starz t.v.  Last night I watched the first three episodes.  Oh my.  I can see how this might affect a young woman.  Sex and violence and special effects.  Nothing else.  All the things we've been warned against.

I told her to watch "Rome."

My night ended with a Paul Newman's white Pizza Pie cooked in the oven for twelve minutes and a couple Heineken.  I was very content and the whiskey put me to sleep half way through the third episode.  I have become way too lazy and comfortable living alone.

Oh. . . I shouldn't forget.  I got the bill for my hospital visit and overnight stay.  $10,000.  Got the bill for my crown.  $1,100.  Both the hospital and the dentist did unnecessary procedures.  The dentist did a full set of X-rays I did not want.  The hospital put me in their CAT scan machine.  Health care in the U.S. is the most expensive in the world, yet it has slipped to #37 in quality of care as rated by the World Health Organization (source).

WTF

Let me make you laugh.

I found some Polaroid 669 film on eBay today.  Some.  Like 100 boxes.  So I bid on it not knowing if it is any good or not.  I spent about $1,000.

I got sick immediately.

Tonight, I was shooting with a lovely model with what film I had left.  On the last pack, the lens of my camera seized up and would not turn.  Remember. . . I had it fixed six months ago.

I got sick immediately.

We went to dinner.  Lovely girl.  All I could think about was the camera.  I wasn't good company.

When I got home, I went on eBay.  An auction was ending in ten minutes on the same camera and lens that I have.  The one that broke.

I bid on it.  And won.  $600.

I got sick immediately.

WTF am I doing?

I may have to sell some things.

I'm betting now that the film is no good.

I think I may be impulsive about some things.

Maybe

Maybe you've been writing emails and suddenly only one out of three. . . one out of four are getting answered.  Maybe the silences are beginning to get to you.  Maybe you've worked too long and then have gone to the gym.  Maybe you didn't want to be there, but you worked out, stretched, and tried to tell yourself you were feeling better. Maybe you got home too late to want to cook and decided to go out to eat though you were not really interested in that either.  Maybe you were looking at the pile of Vanity Fair magazines piled up on the floor that you haven't touched since you decided to re-subscribe and it bothered you.  Maybe you sat down to check your email and you could not get a connection.  Maybe you were not in the mood to do a diagnostic check of everything, but thinking about trying to find the phone numbers to call from different companies to get help, you decided to spend the time trying to fix it yourself first.  Maybe you'd gotten down on your hands and knees and crawled around the wires and cables unplugging and replugging modems and airports, and maybe after all that you finally got it to work only to find that you hadn't any responses to your emails.  Maybe you showered and maybe you remembered that you told a fellow who has a studio near you that you would bring him "The Life Aquatic" because he had never seen it, and maybe when you got there even though his car was there you could not rouse him to the door.  And so maybe you decided to eat sushi though you did not really want to but it was easy, and when you got there, the staff came out like you were a hero returning home, and maybe with the first beer you began to feel better.  And better yet, maybe one of the waiters brought a book to your table and told you somebody had left it for you.  Who, you might have asked, but the waiter couldn't  remember.  Maybe it was a big hardback and you held it in your hands--"To the Ends of the Earth"--and suddenly you knew who hadleft it for you.  And maybe after dinner, you stopped at the liquor store to get a bottle of scotch and the man who sold it to you too seemed happy to see you, too.  And maybe when you got home, you poured a big glass of expensive scotch and maybe when you turned around your hand hit the cabinet door and spilled the drink all across the kitchen floor.  And maybe on your hands and knees for the second time that night, you began to laugh at the absurdity of what you call a life.

But I hope not.

My Lilacs

I'm so happy with the look of the Polaroid right now.  I've learned two things and remembered one of late that enables me to make them richer in color and tonality.  Oy.

I still have nothing in my head and won't until I go somewhere and see something.  My own hometown has become such a lowbrow conservative bore that I despair.  It was caused by two things.  First the surrounding area became a vortex for conservative megachurches and ministries.  Second was an influx of one hundred thousand people invited to come work in the hospitality industry for minimum wage to do jobs they couldn't get Americans to do.  There were not one hundred thousand jobs, of course, but that was how many people came from places where one couldn't make anything like a minimum wage according to the local newspaper.  They came in a single year.  You might think this would bring a much sought after cultural diversity, but it didn't.  It brought a lot of minimum wage poverty and a lot of wealth to a slim few.  I'm not saying these people belong to the megachurches because I don't know that.  But it is linked in my head.  Then the economy went bust and nobody was thriving.  And what are you going to do, starve?  So now there are many dangerous parts of the county.  Several counties.  The police don't go there.  It is better to stay on the main roads with radar guns.  And maybe that is why I haven't gotten tickets.  Maybe I'm not what they are looking for.  Perhaps they are trying to keep the criminals in certain areas, letting them know not to drive on the main roads lest they be punished.

People of a certain sensibility have left or are planning their exits.  In droves.  There used to be a thriving creative population here.  There was art and music and literature.  It was an enviable place.

But I'm not getting around much.  Maybe this has happened where you are, too.  It seems epidemic.  And perhaps it is our own fault.  We were drowsy on poems and opium, drinking wine in small groups, smelling cut flowers and talking about art.  All I can do now is think of a '30s Berlin and make my own decadent images.  It is my defense in a dry, flat world, "breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire" (you should know the reference).

Not to Speak

I have nothing on my mind of any creative or intellectual profundity.  I might try writing something this morning, but it would be torturous for both of us.

"God, am I like the rest after all?"
(F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Tender is the Night")

Prattle

This image is made from Fuji instant film.  My processing.  I am experimenting, applying some of the tricks I learned with Polaroid 669 and making up new things in an effort to get something that is my own and that I like.  This, I think, is already my own, but it is not something I love yet.  More work, but as I keep telling myself, I'm a clever boy.  I will think of something.  Already, though, I think it is not bad.

But I am working better than ever with what is left of the Polaroid.  And I found a stash of five hundred sheets of film.  The fucking Pirate wants almost $2,000 for it, though.  But I want the film.  I need a Patron or Matron just now.  I'll have a print sale.  I don't know.  I need to get the film.

I spent my entire Sunday working on images.  From five o'clock in the morning until almost midnight, take away two hours for exercise and two hours for dinner with my mother.  I processed ten images.  That is huge, but it is also like spitting in the ocean.  I take pictures much faster than I can produce images.  It is like the scene in "Fantasia" where Mickey dons the wizard's cap and replicates the mops and pails exponentially.  It is a nightmare.

I will get away soon, I've decided.  It will be a grand trip that will strip me of my slim financial means.  Surely, though, it will pay me back in. . . in something.  And I won't be at the factory.

O.K.  This sucked.  Maybe tomorrow.

Hobbyist

Inertia.  Routine.  I am becoming somewhat desperate.  And paradoxically, content.  Therein lies the danger.

I saw a magazine yesterday, but try as I might, I can't remember the name of it.  I should have purchased it.  It was beautifully designed.  I didn't pay attention to the content.  It was taken from blogs on the internet.  "iBlog," perhaps.  It won't last, I think.  It is too beautiful, too expensive.  Obviously it is funded by someone who thinks others will appreciate good taste.  That is a death knell for the naively foolish.  Look at what has happened to magazine design.  "Vanity Fair" is still fairly elegant, and "The New Yorker" hasn't changed.  But I picked up some other magazines yesterday and inside they look like a garage sale.  Everything is crammed and cluttered.  My eye never lighted on anything.  Looking at them, I felt much as I do while driving in bad traffic.

I want to design a small booklet for some of my photographs printed on rich, thick paper.  It will take much time.  I need to find a printer who is passionate about printing and who is not merely mercenary.  I will find the price of a small run.  If I do, I will let you have them for enough to cover the cost.  Well, I'll never recover the cost of all this.  I feel like a hobbyist, some fellow who spent his life carving flying ducks out of the most expensive woods he could find, someone who has filled the house and garage with the hideous things and is now thinking of building a shed in the back.  But really, with an art director and a stylist. . . well, I just can't understand why I have not been invited to contribute my talents to something.  Considerable talents, I should say.

But I should have looked at popular magazines long ago.

There is much to do.  I have to work alone scanning in images and making them what they will become. Hours and hours ahead.  I get jumpy at the thought.  There is a life out there that I think I've abandoned.  I'm afraid, though, that going into it will be like opening one of those magazines.  Here it is so beautiful and calm and peaceful.  Maybe I'll just fill the house with scents and candles instead.  The hell with carved ducks in flight.

A Full Buck Moon

I have lost the narrative impulse if not the ability for now.  I just deleted some gibberish prose poem fit for an aspiring moron.  I must read now, not write.  Sickness has put me behind.  Am I too late for summer fun?

Last night was the Full Buck Moon.  I did not sleep but slumbered in a waking dream full of hidden desire.  Naive Juliet called it "an inconstant orb," she too anxious to contemplate its longer cycle.   But it is reliable and dependable.  Here's hoping it was good for you.

Random

I'd better write this tonight because tomorrow will be mad.  I'll have this in the bank even though I am now a few sheets to the wind and nodding out.  I will bull through the thing.  It will die and then be dead.

My life is random now.  No narrative.  Nothing but this then that.  Atavistic failures.  Yesterday dropping keys into a mystery hole.  Today breaking a crown.  No health luck.  No luck at all.   I broke a crown today eating some nuts.  I have a shoot tomorrow with a model who is not who she says she is.  The software I bought will not show up in Photoshop.  Hours of phone time ahead.  After a strange big influx of visitors, today's visitors were about half.  No email.  Stranded in a sea of fools and heathens, cut off from the mother ship.

I posted a comment on Q's blog yesterday.  He said that some of his friends had worried that he was getting too weird lately.  I told him he needed new friends.  But my own weirdness gets me into trouble, too. I'm not one to give advice.  One of the models I shot with lately is a "video vixen" in rap and hip-hop videos.  She is very much into that scene.  She likes sex with strong, handsome men.  Lots.  I am a good listener sometimes, as I have said before.  She likes to be spanked until there are welts.  She likes to be choked when making love.  Yippee ti yi yo, I said.  I asked if she had ever slept with anyone for money.  Yes, she said.  She didn't feel good about it.  What was the most you got paid, I asked,  $600, she said.  You should get a thousand, said I.  A thousand dollar ass, she said.  Should be six.

O.K.  I could go on, but you get the point.  Anyway, at some turn I said something that made her ask, "What. . . you don't believe in God."  I had shocked her, it seems, with a single throw away comment.  I told her I didn't care is she had imaginary magical friends.  I wasn't thinking, of course.  But that was it.  She was done.  I was way too weird for her.  Of course, I will get new friends, too.  But she was such a good model.

C.C. is going to Ohia tomorrow morning.  He is going to make a detour to meet Donald Ray Pollock, the author of "Knockemstiff."  He called ahead to the book store to see if they could save him a copy of the book to get autographed in case he got there late.  No problem, they said.  If he gets there late, they will just call Donald up.  He lives just up the hill, they said.  He will walk down to sign a book.

I can't believe I'm envious of a trip to Ohia.

I ate sushi on the veranda tonight.  The radio is still silent!  I sat next to a long line of twelve to sixteen year old girls in black short shorts, white shirts, and occasionally, ties.  There were other people there, I imagine, but this is all I saw.  Some had drawn the Harry Potter scar on their faces.  They were lined up at seven for the midnight premiere.  Awesome.

Larry Porter, Larry Porter,
Soak your feet in soda water.

I think that's T. S. Elliot.

The photo is of the Persian.  She is really something.

Fool Me Once. . . .

It's time for the schlemiel report.  None of this is tragic.  Merely irritating.  Then funny.  I was to shoot last night with a model who stood me up on Saturday.  I had arranged the day around a four o'clock shoot, but at 1:30 she texted to cancel.  She had contacted me, not vice-versa.  She is a print model who wanted some of the images I make to be her.  Great.  I wrote her an email about my great disappointment in her professionalism, etc.  She wrote back and begged for me to shoot with her.  Offered to pay me.  I told her that I did not do this for money (Jesus Marimba), but booked with her for seven o'clock last night.  I did not want to shoot at seven after staying up shooting the night before, but. . . . So I arranged my day around it.  At 6:30 she sent an email saying she couldn't come.  She has my phone number.  Fool me once. . . .  The way G.W. II said it.

I was glad to be able to go to the gym though.  I still look like a diseased person from my bout with Godfather Death and want to move a few steps up the ladder from hideous.  It was late when I got out of the gym.  I went to Whole Foods to get something I would not have to cook.  And so coming home I knew that I'd be eating late and having contemplated the Blue Plate Special the past few days, I was distraught.  Fucking model.

Coming to the door with groceries, boxes of Polaroid that needed to be sorted, shoulder bags with work material, etc, I fumbled with my keys to open the door.  I missed the lock and they fell from my hand.  The keys to the new car are big and have a computer attached to them for unlocking the car door, so there was only one unlikely possible place for them to fall where they could get through the cracks in the deck.  Of course.  I could not get them to go through this particular place if I tried all day.  Now it was dark.  I reached into the space as far as I could but was not able to even brush the bottom with my fingertips.  I tried and tried while one thousand mosquitoes feasted on my bare legs and arms.  Disease-filled with malaria and encephalitis, etc.  My skin was on fire.  It was time for a new strategy.

I walked to the door off the bedroom.  There is an wrought iron door there that lets me slip my arm in enough to reach a hanging key which would allow me to get in.  But in a moment of safety paranoia, I had moved the key.  I kept at it like a madman though, as if I believed I would become the stretchy superhero in the Fantastic Four.  More mosquitoes.  I wanted to weep.

"I guess I'll have to drive over to my mother's house to get her key," I thought.  Oh.

It was time to rouse old mom.  Now she lives a good life and had been at a Hard Rock several hours away all day gambling away my inheritance, so she was tired having eaten at four-thirty, and was in her gown watching television and thinking about how much fun it was to be spending every penny before she dies.

"What?  I guess you want me to come over?"

"That's what I was thinking."

The dark made darker by swarming clouds of vampires.

By ten I was on the couch eating my rubber organic deli chicken.  I think it was organic.

I blame it all on the model, though.  Fool me once. . . .

Keeping Up

I worked in the studio too late last night.  It was not late, just too late.  I do not stay up well any more. No, it is not the staying up--anyone can do that--it is the getting up next day. I do not feel healthy.  Pretty soon it will be the Blue Plate Special for me.  You have to eat early if you're going to get to bed.

After I go to bed, all night long emails come in.  Nobody sleeps.  Last night, I shot with a Persian girl.  Afterwards, she was going out.  Then later and all night, she texted and wrote. I am glad, for when we shot--oh, my--what stories she told.  At first I was amazed, but there are only so many stories, so it did not take long before I could tell them for her.  Then she was amazed.  But I liked to hear her tell them better, and there were contemporary twists and turns that I have not experienced.

I think the music I listen to is pretty cool, but it was not music to her at all.  She likes rap and hip-hop.  She named about ten different kinds of music she liked, but it was all rap and hip-hop.  I felt stupid at first, stupid and old, but then I began to come to myself.  Still, I was fascinated.  It was my own trip to Arabian Nights, she a Persian Princess.

Gone Wild.

But she wants to change.  Not her behavior, but her looks.  I was incredibly attracted to her strong features, precisely the ones she dislikes.  She has a very Persian nose, too strong, too prominent for her tastes.  She is scheduled for rhinoplasty in October.  And more.  Breast enlargement.  Caps on her upper front four teeth. She is twenty-one and dissatisfied.  I am dismayed by this.  All that beauty will become standardized, sanitized, the vision of some plastic surgeon.  Or several.

I will photograph her as much as I can before October.  And after too, I reckon.  And then I will let you judge for yourselves.

People are silly that way.  For myself, I only want a little minor work.  And perhaps some hormones.  Nothing, really.  I may get my nose fixed.  Something practical.  Just for breathing, though I guess I'll let them straighten it a little and maybe shave some of the bone.  A little around the eyes.  And chin.  Not like Mickey Rourke.  Something subtle so you can't even tell.

And maybe I'll listen to a little more hip-hop, a little more rap.  Not too much.  Just enough.  I mean, you know, you gotta keep up.

Health, Solitude, Modernism, and the Anti-Hipster

And suddenly, I'm just well.  And you might think there would be some sort of mad joy about that, but I am just me and have garnered no super powers, and in the end it is just as disappointing as ever before.  I don't want to be this way.  I want to be thankful for being released from the jaws of whatever horrible thing had hold of me, want to see the world fresh and new and to be thankful.  But I have merely come home to a cluttered house with many unattended things accumulating, come back to factory work and the mundane problems that are merely part and parcel of my life.  I am certainly an ingrate.  A sad sack with dark clouds circling my head.

But I blame modern literature.  Did it appeal to me because I am melancholy by nature or did I learn melancholy from reading too much of it?  And is that a danger or a necessary defense in a hard, uncaring universe?  I am trying to think of a character, any at all, who was happy in the work of the greatest modernist writers.  I run through the names--Joyce, Woolf, Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald. . . .  I'm sure I have it, that Modernist's Disease.  Antibiotics won't help that one.

One of my favorite books of the past couple years has been "Knockemstiff" by Donald Ray Pollock.  Tomorrow, his new book will be released.  It is called "The Devil All the Time."  You can read a review in today's New York Times.  I'm sure it will be a happy novel full of bluebirds and sunshine, just the thing to pick me up.  In truth, though, it will.  The power of literary works is purgative.  I will know my life is like a picnic comparatively.  One more time.

Literature and art are important to me, I think, because I am a loner.  Invitations go unanswered.  And the longer it goes on, the worse it gets.  I saw a friend of mine on Sunday who I had not seen for a very long time.  He asked how I was getting along.  It is a painful question for me to answer.  I give the short version that we usually use ("Fine, Great") and deflect the question back upon the inquisitor, but I tend to squirm when I say it, the cadence of my words just off a bit.  I can't help it.  I'm not really inviting more inquiry and fortunately most people are not interested anyway.  This particular friend, though, asks direct and pointed questions.  He drove right into the heart of my solitary existence wanting to know what sort of liberties I'm taking with my freedoms.  Hearing that I am taking no liberties at all now for a very long time (he is a friend of the Russian Jewess who cuts my hair and I recounted the story I told you a few days ago to him), he barked, "You've got to come up to the bar."  He owns a small, hip, second floor lounge downtown where, I understand, the very cool people go.

"I don't go out much."

"Come down.  You will be like a Prince.  I'll take care of you.  You can't believe the women."

"Listen, I've never met a woman in a bar in my life.  I'm really very shy about all that.  I'm nothing like you.  You can walk up to a woman and say, 'Yo, baby, what's up,' and make a proposition.  I can't do that.  You just look for a woman.  I'm always looking for the woman.  I'm always looking to fall in love."

"Dude, that's sick.  What in the hell are you talking about?  Love?  C'mon, man.  You're kidding.  Come down to the club.  I'll find you all the love you want."

"Yea, yea, maybe I'll come down."

I'm not going, though.  I would be miserable, I'm sure.  Besides, I don't want to stay up that late.

I watched "Wild Man Blues" the other night, the documentary on Woody Allen's tour through Europe with his jazz band.  It is not a good documentary in any way but if you are curious about Allen you might get a kick out of it.  Watching it, I realized why I like his movies and his persona.  He is the anti-hipster.  His life is constricted by what he doesn't like, what he doesn't want to do.  Keaton.  Chaplin.  The Little Man.

Good.  I will take this with me today, and I will be happier.  I'll remember that I don't have to go downtown, that it is O.K. to go to bed early, too.  Hell, I'm happier already.

Pirsky Again. . . .

(Photo by Slava Pirsky)

Health returns.  It was questionable for awhile.  Thank you to all of you who have been asking.  I asserted to the Prodigal Girl last night that now it is only a matter of retrieving my savage good looks.  It may take longer than I have.

I knew I was well when I told my mother I would cook Sunday dinner.  I haven't cooked much in the past few weeks.  I regaled her with tales of strength and wonderment when for awhile I could do more than hold my own.  That was a bad sign.  There is nothing more dangerous than a sense of nostalgia.  I will do something extraordinary soon to relinquish the past.  Big Balls in Cowtown.

Or so I hope.

Slava Pirsky.  I've shown his photos here several times over the past few years.  He posted some images yesterday that gave me some delight.  He and his partner, Anna Hayat, work in tandem, I think.  I have trouble because they write mostly in Russian.  They live in Israel now.  I like most the photographs of their daughter.  He began the series using Polaroid 600 film.  I've never seen anyone make images with this film like his.  The light and color and tonalities are transcendent.  And so I had wanted to see his daughter grow up as a Vermeer painting.  But the film is gone.  What will happen?  Polaroid has screwed us all.

(Photo by Slava Pirsky)

Slava and Anna have put out a book called "Crust."  You can order it here.  I have a link to his Live Journal page in my "Links" section.  

We will watch their daughter grow up.  

Matins

After coffee and putting the laundry in the washer, after feeding the cats and morning ablutions, she meditates.  In perfect symmetry.  If you meet her, you will see she is filled with this.  She speaks slowly and precisely.   Not automatically or sporadically but with much thought.  She has no television, no internet.  Her home is bare, spartan.  She has no car.  Not even a bike.  She walks to work.  There is little in her closet.  She has two cats, one blind and one pregnant.  We talked about the books she was reading.  We talked about her life.

I am afraid to say so, afraid that I'll curse it, but I think I am beginning to feel better.  It has been so long I thought it could go either way.  I'm still tentative about all that.  I am a long way from owning a healthy glow. But I will walk and think and try to find some balance.  It is Sunday.  We will see.

Not Forgotten

I am living the life of an invalid, so I have little else on which to report.  I can't seem to find the road to recovery and pain has kept me from reading much at all.  So my head is full of little of interest to the outside world.

So it is not surprising that I didn't notice the beginning of the Fiesta de Pamplona and the Running of the Bulls. I ran many years ago and have wanted to go back to do it again.  I spent most of that summer in Europe, mostly in Spain and France.  I would do it all again.

But you can never do a trip again.  It is impossible.  There are no re-dos in travel or love.  Or anything else.    There is only the next thing no matter how paltry it may seem.  But it is only paltry if compared to that mythical past when the skies were the deepest blues and the air dry and the breeze perfect and all the stars aligned.  You should have been there.

I am fortunate enough to have been taught not to compare like that by an Old Master.  Of course the past was just as you remember it, and the next thing will be, too.  As an example, I give you this photograph today.  She was a girl I knew in college and who I photographed for my first photography course.  I shot this exactly a week ago today having come in the back door with coffee and bagels.  True.  All of it, it seems.  There are magnificent things both now and then.  I just want to get back to them.

I keep trying and will try some more.  The cat still loves me and lies upon my feet.  Of course, like all things, she has expectations.  There will be yogurt soon, and she would not be forgotten.  She is like all of us in that, I think.

Human Wonder

I'm in the mood for some wonderful medical breakthroughs, so I read with interest that the first organ grown entirely from a patient's stem cells was just accomplished in Sweden.  A man with tracheal cancer had been through all other forms of treatment including brutal chemo.  Researchers built a model of his trachea from a foam material, dunked it in a solution made from his stem cells, incubated it for two weeks, and surgically replaced his diseased one with the new.  Within two days, the trachea had developed a cough reflex.

But here's the kicker.  Some people worry about this new development.  Sure, there should be worries.  We should be worried that something unforeseen might happen, that the organ will not work as it should, that it will last only a short while, etc.  But that is not the worry.  Some are worried that THIS COULD LEAD TO HUMAN CLONING.  I say what THOSE people should be worried about is that we do the right thing to THEM.  I won't say what that might be.  You all can create your own scenario.  But whatever just and humane thing you come up with, we should do it.  We'll have to vanquish the other thoughts or at least keep them to ourselves.

Despite the malady, yesterday I went to get beautified.  I have many beauty secrets I won't share with you, but I will tell you this much, all the vanishing creams and unguents and secret formulas won't prevent the other thing from winning.  But we made our feeble attempts to keep me from being stoned to death by outraged mobs of villagers yesterday.  And while the beautiful Russian Jewess with the delicious (I wish I could write that word phonetically as it comes from her mouth) heavy accent was washing my hair, I said, "Oh, keep doing this.  I haven't been touched by female hands since the last time I was here."  The fellow she works with, a gay hispanic man with a quick wit and evil tongue said immediately, "Good for you."  Yes, I thought, it is all perspective.  "When was the last time you were touched by a woman's hands," I laughed.  "When my mother breast fed me," he smiled.

I will try another seduction of health this weekend.  I will take long walks, perhaps, and see if I can't whisper in her ear.  I went to the doctor yesterday.  He echoed all my postulations.  The difference is that he has the prescription pad, and he wasn't echoing what I said about that.  I believe a good dose of opiates would go a long way in making me well.  Rest is health's most important ingredient.  Give the body a chance to heal, I say.  A week on the pipe would do most people good.  Only just enough to match the pain.  And then just a tiny bit more.

The weather is perfect for me today, overcast and gray.  I could not stand a sunny day.  In truth, I think that I shall be better today, and even better the day after.  But my summer plans have been ruined.  All that is left is recovery and repair.  If I get a chance, though, I may be coming to your own home town.

Oh, and today's heading refers to the woman in the portrait as well as to the miracle of cloning.  Nature does not dole out all things equally.

The Luck

I don't want to go on about it, but who else am I going to tell?  The malady worsens.  Yesterday brought severe pain and a sudden rash.  Terrifying medical terms keep running through my brain.

Still, there is luck.  Twice in two weeks I have been stopped by the police.  The first time, the weekend before going to the hospital, I was speeding.  I am an aggressive driver even when I am not in a hurry.  I think it is my reaction to the frustration of the lack of social consciousness and infrastructure.  Roads in my state are only built to provide economic opportunities for the wealthy.  You cannot travel on an adequate road here.  They are built solely to provide real estate developers another venue, not to serve public transportation.  Either my intellectual consciousness of this is much higher or my level of frustration much lower than everyone else's.  It results in bad road behavior on my part.

So I was pulled over by a brand new twelve year old policeman with a fresh burr haircut and in need of Acutane.  I turned my car into a parking lot with resignation.  He approached the car from close behind the way they all do now, standing just behind my left ear, and said in a voice that could muster as much authority as an adolescent can,

"Sir, do you know why I pulled you over?"

Not wishing to be disagreeable but not wanting to give away the farm, either, I said in my best Bill Murray voice,

"Oh. . . I'll bet you have your reasons."

He took my license and insurance card and registration back to his car telling me to "stay inside the vehicle" as another police car pulled up.  Not being very good at taking care of my business, I hoped that I had done everything I needed to get my car properly registered.  I sat in the heat a good long while as the child cop talked to the fellow in the other car thinking that I was glad I wasn't in high school and had to go home to tell my parents.

When he finally came back, he said, "Sir, you were doing sixty miles per hour in a forty-five mile an hour zone."

He was wrong, but I was grateful.

Then he handed me back my license, registration and insurance card.

"I'm going to ask you to slow it down," he said.

Jesus.  He was a savant, a child-saviour.  I felt ashamed.  I was wrong and he was right.

"Oh, yes sir," I said, feeling the ridiculousness of that statement sharply.  "You can bet I will."

Yesterday driving to the factory, I was talking on the phone with my mother when out of nowhere a cop pulled up behind me and turned on his lights.

"Hey mom, I'll call you back.  I'm being pulled over by the police."

The fellow who came to my car was pretty serious.  He had a heavy Spanish accent and a mustache.  After asking for my license, etc, he asked in an aggressive voice,

"Do you know why I pulled you over?"

"Because you are a cop," I wanted to say, but rather, I said, "Nope.  I truly haven't a clue."

"You ran that stop sign back there."

I looked back as if I might see myself doing it.

"Really?" I said in true surprise.  "Really?"

"You want to tell me why you did it?"

Now I thought that one of the most absurd questions I had heard in some time, but I didn't need any time to think about it.

"Well. . . I'll tell you.  If you asked me if I ran that stop sign, I'd have to say no.  But I don't want to argue with you if you saw me do it.  But I would have to say I didn't."

And with that he went off to his car.  I thought of all the things I might say to him.  I wanted to tell him how chickenshit this was and many other things, but I thought all of it would be unproductive.  I was only half a mile from home.  I hadn't even started speeding yet.

I watched him come back.  He had his ticket book in hand, so I was resigned.

"O.K." he said.  "I'm going to write you a warning."

He went on explaining everything to me, but I wasn't listening.  I signed where he told me to and started the car hoping I wouldn't do anything illegal as I pulled away.

I called my mother back and said,

"You're going to have to come down and bail me out."

"What!" she exclaimed.

"Just kidding.  He said I ran a stop sign, but he gave me a warning."

And then my mother started in.

"Well, you don't stop at stop signs. . . . " It went on and on, a list of all my bad behaviors.  She sounded pissed that I had gotten off.

"O.K. mom.  I'm going to hang up now.  I'll need both hands on the steering wheel if I'm going to weave in and out of traffic at high speed.  I'll call you later."

I wanted her to know that my main concern was safety.

I have a doctor's appointment in a bit.  I will tell him all my woes and hope that he, like the nice policemen I have met, will give me a warning and let me go.  I hope I've not used up all the luck.

The Luck

I don't want to go on about it, but who else am I going to tell?  The malady worsens.  Yesterday brought severe pain and a sudden rash.  Terrifying medical terms keep running through my brain.

Still, there is luck.  Twice in two weeks I have been stopped by the police.  The first time, the weekend before going to the hospital, I was speeding.  I am an aggressive driver even when I am not in a hurry.  I think it is my reaction to the frustration of the lack of social consciousness and infrastructure.  Roads in my state are only built to provide economic opportunities for the wealthy.  You cannot travel on an adequate road here.  They are built solely to provide real estate developers another venue, not to serve public transportation.  Either my intellectual consciousness of this is much higher or my level of frustration much lower than everyone else's.  It results in bad road behavior on my part.

So I was pulled over by a brand new twelve year old policeman with a fresh burr haircut and in need of Acutane.  I turned my car into a parking lot with resignation.  He approached the car from close behind the way they all do now, standing just behind my left ear, and said in a voice that could muster as much authority as an adolescent can,

"Sir, do you know why I pulled you over?"

Not wishing to be disagreeable but not wanting to give away the farm, either, I said in my best Bill Murray voice,

"Oh. . . I'll bet you have your reasons."

He took my license and insurance card and registration back to his car telling me to "stay inside the vehicle" as another police car pulled up.  Not being very good at taking care of my business, I hoped that I had done everything I needed to get my car properly registered.  I sat in the heat a good long while as the child cop talked to the fellow in the other car thinking that I was glad I wasn't in high school and had to go home to tell my parents.

When he finally came back, he said, "Sir, you were doing sixty miles per hour in a forty-five mile an hour zone."

He was wrong, but I was grateful.

Then he handed me back my license, registration and insurance card.

"I'm going to ask you to slow it down," he said.

Jesus.  He was a savant, a child-saviour.  I felt ashamed.  I was wrong and he was right.

"Oh, yes sir," I said, feeling the ridiculousness of that statement sharply.  "You can bet I will."

Yesterday driving to the factory, I was talking on the phone with my mother when out of nowhere a cop pulled up behind me and turned on his lights.

"Hey mom, I'll call you back.  I'm being pulled over by the police."

The fellow who came to my car was pretty serious.  He had a heavy Spanish accent and a mustache.  After asking for my license, etc, he asked in an aggressive voice,

"Do you know why I pulled you over?"

"Because you are a cop," I wanted to say, but rather, I said, "Nope.  I truly haven't a clue."

"You ran that stop sign back there."

I looked back as if I might see myself doing it.

"Really?" I said in true surprise.  "Really?"

"You want to tell me why you did it?"

Now I thought that one of the most absurd questions I had heard in some time, but I didn't need any time to think about it.

"Well. . . I'll tell you.  If you asked me if I ran that stop sign, I'd have to say no.  But I don't want to argue with you if you saw me do it.  But I would have to say I didn't."

And with that he went off to his car.  I thought of all the things I might say to him.  I wanted to tell him how chickenshit this was and many other things, but I thought all of it would be unproductive.  I was only half a mile from home.  I hadn't even started speeding yet.

I watched him come back.  He had his ticket book in hand, so I was resigned.

"O.K." he said.  "I'm going to write you a warning."

He went on explaining everything to me, but I wasn't listening.  I signed where he told me to and started the car hoping I wouldn't do anything illegal as I pulled away.

I called my mother back and said,

"You're going to have to come down and bail me out."

"What!" she exclaimed.

"Just kidding.  He said I ran a stop sign, but he gave me a warning."

And then my mother started in.

"Well, you don't stop at stop signs. . . . " It went on and on, a list of all my bad behaviors.  She sounded pissed that I had gotten off.

"O.K. mom.  I'm going to hang up now.  I'll need both hands on the steering wheel if I'm going to weave in and out of traffic at high speed.  I'll call you later."

I wanted her to know that my main concern was safety.

I have a doctor's appointment in a bit.  I will tell him all my woes and hope that he, like the nice policemen I have met, will give me a warning and let me go.  I hope I've not used up all the luck.

Some Good News, Some Bad News

The good news for some of you is that the Polaroid 669 film is all but gone.  I have one more shoot on Saturday and that is it.  I am conflicted.  It moves me on to something else which needs to happen, but I am crazy for this process.  And I'll tell you a secret.  I thought for certain that somebody would contact me about shooting something big for them.  I just thought that when these images got out. . . .  I have no commercial sense, though.  And now that will never happen.  It will not be me and Paolo Roversi and Sarah Moon hanging out together in the French Riviera.  It is not going to be me and anyone hanging out anywhere at all.  And the other secret--now I'm only hoping for a beautiful book, these printed 4"x5" on an 8"x10" page, images on facing pages only.  Maybe after I've died (which doesn't feel too far off today).  Q and C.C. will be executors of the images.  It is written.

The bad news for some of you is that I have thousands of images that I haven't gotten around to developing yet.  I have enough to keep putting them out for years and years and years.  Some are inaccrochable and will remain hidden.

I'm still waiting for the Graflex to be fitted with the Aero Ektar lens.  The fellow has had it four months now and has promised to get it done a dozen times.  When I have it, I will consider the "next thing."  I have ideas, but I must work with the camera first and know its limitations.

But this is boring talk.  Forgive me.  I am dull with pain.  Pain will make you stupid.  Or so it is with me.