In the Moment

I'll give up the tech talk about photography.  That was all for me.  I doubt anyone else is interested.  It is like that part of "Moby Dick" where Melville writes about the classification of whales.  I always told students they could skip that part.  

I'll just show the pictures.  

I didn't take any yesterday, though.  I tried.  I got into the Xterra and drove a giant loop around town.  The good news is the Xterra is up and running fine again.  I really like that car.  But it is old and I can only hold my breath.  I realize that what I like is the large windows.  New cars have tiny windows.  I like to see things.  Car manufacturers like to save money.  That is all I can figure out is behind the move.   

So driving around town, I did see things.  But I never stopped the car.  I just didn't have it in me.   

And so I went back to my own house and opened the new book I've been so excited to get since Q told me about it.  He thought he might read it next.  I'd never heard of it, so I looked it up.  Oh, my!  The reviews were wildly good.  It was hailed a masterpiece in each and every one. It sounded like something right up my alley (link).  

I read for an hour and was deeply disappointed in Pessoa's "The Book of Disquiet."  The prose is purple, languid, and strained, I think.  It seems artifice rather than artifact.  Too many words for too little good.  

I doubt that I will ever finish it.  

Have you ever tried to read Thomas Wolfe?  Compare him with Faulkner.  For elegance in writing, give me Fitzgerald and Wharton and Woolf.  And, of course, for writing stripped to its bones, Hem.  

But don't trust me on this, for I have never been able to read Proust no matter how hard I have tried, and he is hailed by all as a great literary master.  

Pessoa makes me yearn for Bukowski's simple prose.  I feel Pessoa is trying to write where Bukowski merely tells.  

Call me a simpleton if you must.  It is probably true.  

I'll give it another go, though.  Perhaps I simply wasn't in the mood.  

I sent the review to my conservative buddy.  This was his reply:

"The chair I am sitting in faces the back of our property. Across the alley is the garage of a neighbor. There is a lamp above the door. I focused on it and then tried to recall and identify all the items at my side. The lamps on the mantle. What color and shape. The coffee machine in the kitchen, what is on the shelves around it. I only imagine I know what is around me.

The hummingbirds are still here. They will be headed your way in a few weeks then on to Central America."

That is far better than the book, I think. 

I received a random text yesterday from an unknown source. 

"Take thoU SAnds of photos or live in moment?"

What?  WTF is that about?  Someone who reads the blog or just coincidental?  

I felt like responding.  What does it mean to "live in the moment"?  It is a cliche, I think, used in pop psychology, probably widely by therapists.  As cliches often do, it may have come from a more impactful source once, but what does it mean other than to be present and paying attention to what is going on around you at a particular time without distraction?  And that is exactly what I am doing when I am making pictures.  The "or" part of that statement seems a non sequitur. 

The writer Peter Matthiessen did not like to take photographs on his travels, he said, because it distracted him, and I completely understand that.  Writing and photographing use different regions of the brain.  When I am making pictures, I am not collecting the information I need to write.  Observing in words is different than observing for graven images, and I can't do both at the same time.  

Jim Harrison said he had gotten to the point where he didn't know any longer if he was writing or if he was thinking.  I understand that, too.  

So, perhaps the author of that statement intended "observe for writing or make images."

Most likely, it was merely some whacky spam.  I'll never know.   

It is Labor Day, of course.  I have a busy day.  My beautician asked if I could come today instead of Thursday.  12:30.  So I will go to the gym, shower, and go get beautified before I come back to mother's to cook the hamburgers and hot dogs that I bought yesterday.   Brioche buns.  All sorts of condiments and sides.  I invited the tenant who will join us.  I bought two tall boy four packs of Punks in the Waiting Room, too.  $28.  But it has truly become my favorite beer, and it is only available at the brewery, so it is always a special treat.  

After Labor Day, we keep our weather eye out for hurricanes.  It is the most depressing time of year for me.  PTSD.  I am "triggered" by dark skies and wind.  

It is a good time to bury my nose in books rather than trying to "live in the present."

Oh, shit. . . I almost forgot about this!  No time to discuss it now.  Just watch it.  I'll quiz you on it tomorrow.