purity is not an option

germany invaded norway the week i was born. my first memories: newsreels from battlefields, burials at sea, a hospital-trained dog searching for wounded soldiers.

later, from our home in a converted barracks (my father joined the army as a chaplain just before korea, where he served - he died of a heart-attack a few weeks after returning from a year in vietnam), i could hear machine-guns chattering on the practice field.

ironically, as berta and i took a side-trip to sri lanka on the way to india, i had no awareness of their civil war. going thru checkpoints and abandoned villages in the middle of the night, i wondered what the hell we were doing. at 26 i lived in a half-basement room, learning to be a poet, in berlin, not far from the gun-towers and and the wall.

on the presidio of san francisco at 16, i wandered thru the halls of letterman army hospital, selling the chronicle to waking patients with hollow eyes and burned backs.

in college i attended courses in the russian and american revolutions, and realized violent upheavals create a violent society. that made me a temporary pacifist. eventually, i understood the reality, you had to nip aggression in the bud. instead of stopping the serbian tanks roll into croatia, the europeans let that war drag on til bill clinton got them to bomb serbia. once the serbians couldn't act without being hurt, it all stopped.

alas, not everyone learns the lesson. if the battle comes home, the attacked may very well lash out (pearl harbor and 911). i loved being an army brat and living on bases. i hated coast guard boot camp with a passion. it's taken me a long time to appreciate a restrained military, responsive to civilian control. yet now i do.

that said, i've just come from a performance of johnny got his gun by dalton trumbo. the monologue of a soldier, a basket-case in a hospital, no arms, legs, eyes, ears, or jaw. he's completely isolated in his mind and memories. the cost of war borne by many warriors, in the past and currently.

oddly, the play a hymn to life. i came out simply happy to be able to walk and see and breathe the night air. unless a country gets hurt, it sees today's war as a video game. that remnant of a reptile tail remains in all of us. as elie wiesel said about the holocaust:

"Those engaged in its practice (murder) did not belong to a gutter society of misfits...Many held degrees in philosophy, sociology, biology, general medicine, psychiatry, and the fine arts."

if you can attend johnny got his gun at http://www.blueroomtheatre.com/ ben allen's performance riveting. pics: www.pbase.com/wwp/johnny

and for an example of what you may have to fight to protect, in more ways than one, look at the final critique session of chico dance theater in preparation for the fall concert, dec. 4-6.

www.pbase.com/wwp/fincrit

love slobs, or 'floundering profoundly'

that title came from a wonderful dream last nite. my best inhabit a mythical new york city, one with hills, open doorways so you can wander into different scenes: a crowd where i shouted out 'congo lines', meaning hair in the armpit, and everyone picked it up as a chant. in another i worked with a bunch of theater people on 'love slobs.' i liked the title so much i made myself wake up and write it down.

i collected rare books, almost walked into a plate-glass window, invaded the lobby of a elegant cruise ship travel agency. all in all, i loved it, and felt sleeping not wasted on oblivion.

yet self-forgetfulness what i seek these days, the days of transition, unemployment, the freedom to choose how i spend the day. it's overwhelming. i realize i traveled so much not to fill a void, but to see myself as a poet, someone learning about the world, absorbing events and people unconsciously, sights and sounds. it gave me a sense of purpose, what a writer must do.

since switching to photography, it's been a different ballgame. to merely be a tourist isn't interesting. i have to photograph what i love. a small town, theater, the lookout life. and i can trick myself into believing i'm finished, done it all, why bother.

yet i do find things new. berkeley, for instance: www.pbase.com/wwp/berk2

and when i think i've done everything, i put a flash on the camera and come up with shots i really like: www.pbase.com/wwp/lair i love actors and they surprise me every time.

the seasonal life, the task of eternal renewal, teachers face it, gardeners, field hands, farmers. not always easy in the transitions. we get used to one way of life and it changes. that's the challenge. after work or freedom, it's hard to switch places. i suppose the fairy tales of the past carried the idle through the winter when they'd rather be out rustling in the corn. www.pbase.com/wwp/fairytales

i could have titled this blog love and alcohol. the two get all mixed up for me and confuse me about what's going on. the psychologist jung said in romantic love we seek the divine, something to take care of us and which we can worship. alas, in the everyday human world this task fails and we take to alcohol to dream and feel good in our bodies (the one continuum in happiness).

or we fall in love with actors, characters on the stage, larger than life, and simpler than real people.

i have to remember what i really want: a state of meditation. i can get it by spending a few minutes in the huge local university library (why i moved to this town), even though these days i smile as i pass the rows of books, thinking, 'it's all guesswork!!' or, 'human beings have to occupy their minds, otherwise they go crazy.'

yes, a visit to the tomes has always relaxed me. and i have to remember to knock on my head three times to short-circuit negative thoughts. (for me, it works). as the sculptor henry moore said, "The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you can't possible do."

i haven't found any better answer.

the facebook experience

my family got me involved. i suppose it's like the old family letter my parents and grandparents participated in. did we get lazy? or merely drift apart in search of independence?

whatever happened, we resisted ties that seemed accidental, merely a matter of chance, meeting through the womb simply a throw of the dice. yet strong emotions remained for me. visiting my brother last fall i realized we had a lot in common. not just personal history, but a view of the world and similiar interests. the visit a great pleasure - and a great surprise.

i still feel we need to form our own families. not everybody's lucky. and the great virtue, i feel, of being an american, is choice. the chance to meet and bond with kindred souls from all walks of life. (and to reject the bastards we encounter along the way, as well.)

personal choice is pretty amazing, something very rare in the history of the world and now available to so many (but not all). true, it's a burden. i'm sure many would prefer to follow orders, and we've seen plenty of that. however, i enjoy the loneliness of this freedom. and a huge number of my decisions based on keeping this avenue open.

what does this have to do with facebook? well, for one thing we've multiple lives. lots of our friends don't know each other cause they live in different worlds. our family never meets our work-mates, and the latter have no idea you once met a girl in indonesia who's now married with six kids and with whom you still correspond. the first psychic i visited (and i've found psychics to be the quickest therapists) told me we're living fast these days, six lifetimes in one, as though evolution demands it. no wonder we're part of far-flung planets which never meet.

and so for me facebook amazingly brings these universes together. and whether or not actual contact ever happens, the possibility remains for those who desire to reach out and meet before your funeral.

the great hope, of course, is unifying your life into some meaning. that would be a relief! on the other hand, just to see how the people i've known progressing through their lives a real satisfaction. losing contact not fun. the sense of living in an ever-returning void.

true, there's exposure, a certain transparency. schools of thought differ. the psychologist jung believed we needed secrets to maintain our individuality. yet, i've often thought, 'if you've nothing to hide, you're free.'

whatever the outcome, we live in the digital age, and it's fascinating. what's required is a kind of courage us older folks have to summon in order to participate. the reward: a sense of human time and continuity, a feeling we might matter, despite being discarded by evolution.

new photos of dance and travel at

www.pbase.com/wwp/jarrah

www.pbase.com/berk

if you haven't seen the pics from reservoir dolls, a show i really, really enjoyed,

www.pbase.com/wwp/dolls

is solitude the beginning of wisdom?

maybe a quiz is in order. do you wake up in the morning, totally alone, thanking god you don't have to talk with anyone? when you break wind, are you relieved no one can hear or smell? stumbling over your syntax, does a wave of relief wash over you, knowing the constant critic of the other not present?

well, on personality tests i assume you'd be pegged as a loner. and mostly, that's bad! yes, we're meant to be convivial, so the the social code goes. if you spend too much time alone, you'll begin to send mail bombs from a cabin in montana, just to have a feeling of being connected.

on the other hand, what if you can't stand solitude? you find yourself talking with the 411 or 911 ladies, making up excuses? or you turn on the tv and yell back at it? the famous walker of baudelaire hits the streets, rubbing shoulders with all kinds of riff-raff, simply to prove he/she is human. in the shower he/she sings love songs to the ghosts of steam. don't we populate our world, no matter what we do, talking with cats and dead relatives?

imaginary friends can be a madness, but so comforting! and what is the point of being alone? the owner of an ethnic clothing store recently returned from africa. the villagers wouldn't let him go to the outhouse by himself. once he got back to the u.s.a, personal distance seemed like heaven.

i hate to repeat myself, however my mother really did say to me, 'you spent so much isolated time as a child, i never thought you'd have much to do with people.' maybe i learned it from her. the psychologist winnicot maintains we learn to be individuals by playing about our mother's feet. we go off on our own, play awhile, and come back. yes, mother's still there. happening over and over again, it gives confidence.

and look at the fact many if not most of us had our own rooms as children. this stimulates the imagination. in fact, as opposed to ghetto kids sleeping five in a bed, middle-class kids don't fear other people as much as they do their own fantasies. lacking external enemies, they find them in their dreams. no wonder facebook and cell-phones save them from anxiety. 'you are not alone.'

unfortunately, if this sometime hermit can say so, the ability to be by yourself does seem to have benefits, and i'd like to quote from an interview with the photographer tina barney, who at 28 began spending time in the darkroom. the interviewer says, "Why do you think spending time alone is so important?" and tina barney replies, "It's the most important thing of all. When you're by yourself, you have to be able to have a discussion with yourself. You have to be able to turn your own self on. Nobody else can do it. If you can continue to do that, you are going to continue to be switched on for the rest of your life."

there it is, the definitive answer. at the end of my 47th fire season, i'm grateful to have tina barney on my side.

some final lookout pics, as well as re-entry dance pics from last week:

www.pbase.com/wwp/hidef

www.pbase.com/wwp/dan

this blog is dedicated to my friend laurie who is finding an empty house (except for the cats, gracie and lewis) trying and hollow.

replicating history (in more ways than one)

"Any paradigm can be proved true, thus the world remains a mystery." said it myself, if i don't mind saying so. (quote yourself and you'll never forget who said it.)

so i'm saying, 'buyer beware.' that said, i'm astonished to suddenly discover what i've been doing with my life as writer, photographer, lover, and traveler. i've been re-creating time! like one of borge's characters, i'm re-writing don quixote, if not exactly word for word.

go to my writing page and you'll discover i've explored every form and style, in poetry, theater, the novel, letter-writing, etc.

http://www.pbase.com/wwp/the_written_words

this wasn't my conscious intention (unlike james joyce). merely the result of not wanting to be bored. alas, this always drove me crazy cause being able to support yourself by art means having a recognizable style.

as for photography, i've done it again. yes, twice i've audited the history of photography, read many books on the subject, and enjoy doing it now one way and then another, each reminiscent of an historical mode. check it out and i think you'll see what i mean.

www.pbase.com/wwp

as for other areas in life, for example as traveler and lover, i've been the blind romantic, repeating the journeys of others in my own way. it occurred to me i've been to every kind of country, if not to every country. belize and jamaica could serve as africa, japan for china, turkey for egypt. true, the corollaries not exact, but close enough to take the steam out of my travel urge. as for loves, i've visited most of it's states and colors.

when young, two ideals guided me. first, i desired to be a citizen of the world. and secondly, feeling supremely ignorant of what made people tick, i sought to understand them. whether or not i've succeeded or failed, it's quite surprising to discover with one foot in the grave what i've been up to.

here's a specific example of replicating history, a 19th century style of photo:

www.pbase.com/wwp/rep

this wasn't my conscious intentions

200 sticks of dynamite

or, 'is that what it takes to escape your comfort zone?'

my freshman year in college english class we read an essay on comfort, how it was the main enemy of the artist. and those few words determined much of my life. not that i seek pain and unrest. they just seem to come as a by-product of thought. and as richard carlsen so wisely said, 'our thoughts create emotions, and we're thinking all the time.'

of course, it's a fine-line between starvation and inspiration. the ravenous stranded in the desert dream of nothing but food, as the character in 'night' by elie weisel did at the end of his concentration camp stay. yet one must remain lean, both to live a long life and to fill it with creations.

ben shahn in 'the shape of content' said pretty much the same thing, describing how the teachers of art drift away from making it to analyzing the process. many have called divine discontent necessary. certainly, it's a pain in the ass, but it can keep you going at a remarkable pace!

the dynamite metaphor has a basis in today's reality. yesterday, on an isolated piece of private real estate in the middle of the forest, some wandering miners discovered 200 sticks in a mine-shaft, only thirty feet down. today the bomb squad from sacramento sought to burn the cache while a high wind blew at three in the afternoon, the humidity at eight percent. it took the forest fire bosses to call in a large crew, several engines, and a whole day of pleading to put it off until 6 a.m. tomorrow morning. i imagine the shaft having another exit half mile away, a huge blow-torch shooting out that end to ignite a major conflagration.

we'll have to see what this means for my dreams - and what i wake to in the morning.

meanwhile, my photo site is back up. i've posted pictures of the silver fire:

www.pbase.com/wwp/silver

and last friday's cdt dance class:

www.pbase.com/wwp/lesson

and i've added a potpourri of photos to:

www.pbase.com/wwp/song

the temperature dropped twenty degrees last nite, and winter dances on the horizon. however, i expect i've a month to go. summer i love, winter's a disaster.

be glad you didn't marry me!

that's what the central character in neil la bute's play 'some girls (s)' could have said last nite at the rogue theater (http://www.chicorogue.com/) . or he could have said with shakespeare and my mother 'timing is all' but then there would have been no play. he visited old girlfriends to secretly record the conversations so he could use them in writing. this made him a cad, of course. would a woman playwrigt have let the girlfriends get away with murder?

in 'defense of the caveman' rob becker says he got the idea for the one-man show when everybody at a party, men included, said, 'all men are assholes.' he then brilliantly explains the difference between men and women - which i can't remember. broadway long ago.

yet after the show last night, i wondered if i'd have married any of these women. perhaps the anti-hero avoided a divorce. he inspired them all with visions of a beautiful future. could he have realized it with any of them? i have to really hand it to the director and the actors for being more even-handed than a local review gave them credit for.

obviously, this led me to examine myself. after all, i enjoyed twenty years with a wonderful variety of women and part of me really regrets nothing worked out over the long-haul. hopefully all found a profound and lasting relationship, which i know some have, my being merely a footnote to their history. as my mother told me at one of our last meetings, 'you played alone so much as a child, i didn't think you'd have anything to do with people!'

i did see one film, made in montreal, about an immigrant poet who put his wife and two kids through hell, cause he couldn't do more than write, day-dream, and play chess. i understood the situation completely. and three psychics have explained, 'you've had so much responsibility in past lives, you get to have fun in this one!'

okay, it's all self-justification. that said, i figure it takes two to tango and i was an adventure not all bad. 'timing is all - and be glad you didn't marry me.'

still, a partnership would have been a blessing.

latest photos: http://www.pbase.com/ scroll to the bottom.

best to all of you. and success in love, the only real accomplishment.