the way it is (for most of us)

i've been wanting to pass this on for the longest time. but i didn't want to scare the young or depress the old. alas, this is the best description of our lives that i've ever read. it's by bill jay, a photographer who writes for lenswork magazine. read at your own risk!

In recent weeks an unsual number of casual conversations with wannabe artist have harped on the same theme: "I'm still searching for what it is I want to do"; "I want to be poet/painter/writer/photographer or...but, no, I haven't I haven't actually written or created anything yet"; "I feel creative but i cannot decide what to create."

Give me a break. These are energy-vampires. I'm so tired of trying to appear interested in such self-indulgent whining (whingeing for those of you in Europe). So, one last time here's my answer to them, and to you, young photographer, ever-hopeful that the world is waiting for your art while you are waiting for your inspiration.

Certitudes do not exist. There is not one field, one specialization, that is destined for you. Chances are that you are not great at anything; most of us are just average, ordinary. Life's early peregrinations willy-nilly land us onto an unexpected habitable patch in the mud of everydayness. That's where you get to work; you sow, build, and procreate right there. You might occasionally notice that life seems easier, more glamorous, more rewarding somewhere else, but you ignore the fantasy. You dig deeper, plant more, right where you are. That's it.

You don't think that I have my own fantasies of what might have been? Perhaps with earlier luck, money, contacts I could have changed the world, done something important? Of course I believe I was destined for greatness in some other field, where I could enrich the lives of millions. You think I would have chosen, in the best of all possible worlds, that I would have spent so much of life's time and energy in thinking, writing, talking and practicing photography? You crazy? Who gives a shit? I could have given up every aspect of my photographic life at any point in the past and no one would have noticed.

Yet, yet...I have no regrets. This is where I landed and every day I am content to turn my attention to the small, even trivial, tasks at hand. I am content, and I pity those who are still wondering and wandering. I just don't want to hear about it.

you can read bill's essays at http://www.billjayonphotography.com/writings.html

at the moment i'm taking pics of the preparation for chico dance theatre's performance this next week.

www.pbase.com/wwp/finale

www.pbase.com/wwp/cdt08

the strange case of the vanishing lookout

how often are we willing to throw our identity up in the air, to scatter the cards, let them fall where they may? it's not really easy to do. one has to be mad, or careless, desperate, or in high spirits. if i can't play with who i am, i am not doing very well.

in a place and time long, long ago, i realized people give up being artists for basically two reasons: 1. they don't want to spend so much time alone. 2. they don't want to reveal themselves.

since we're primates, we tend to hang out with others. freud, in his later years, decided the strongest human urge was to be part of a small group. and way, way back, as soon as a tribe got too large, they split in two. we see this happen yet today, everyday.

yet, can a creative thought emerge without lots of dreamy time in isolation? if we're trying too hard to solve our problems, we wake up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep. without letting go into the land of illogic we can't even rest. many have said we die alone. perhaps eternal peace requires it.

as for revealing ourselves, it's part of the same plight. to be too odd is to be cast out into exile. luckily, these days, we can fit in somewhere. anything seems registered on the web. for example, you have a fetish for steam-pipe fittings. google it and you're no longer alone. around the world, out of six-billion plus people at least a dozen have a passion for crawling through passages underground, despite the claustrophobia and the heat.

in fact, it's almost impossible to be completely alone these days. even the mad have their many friends. and hermits tune into the internet without even knowing it. once you've been acclimatized, it's damned difficult to drop out of the human weather.

still, from time to time we try. two nights ago i ran around attempting to take pictures of my own ghost, www.pbase.com/wwp/vanish dividing into multiple characters. they look like me, but... was i simply bored with thinking i'm always the same, that i know myself better than i should?

buddha said we live in a world of illusion. well, our world couldn't be more buddhist, more 'virtual.' trying to escape ourselves, we find ourselves. seeking ourselves, we run out of gas in a dali desert.

these pictures are a typical case: www.pbase.com/wwp/bacon. during a few moments last summer, after reading six books on francis bacon, i decided to find out what the bacon persona existed of. is that me i see? good gravy, it's a shame, but i can really allow myself only to distort myself. i'm too conscious of hurting other people (most of the time) to do the same to them. even bacon painted from photographs of friends, knowing how disturbing they'd find his images of them to be.

a final note: c.g. jung felt much of our energy a prisoner of our 'shadow' side. that darkness might hide goodness or evil, whatever we personally dare not express. perhaps you get energy from being swept along with the crowd. on the other hand, maybe there's merely a limpness and distance in you which allows this to happen.

certainly, if you show the sides nobody knows, you risk ending up alone, cast out of the tribe. these days you may not die, but it still doesn't necessarily feel great. even the unibomber sent out destructive messages in order to connect with the weird world he envisioned.

you can find more new summer photos at www.pbase.com/wwp/smoke

the forecast is for snow on friday, six days away. i'm pretty much packed up, though today is warm and cloudless. see some winter lookouts from the air at

http://www.pbase.com/nolock/firelookouts

life's a gamble

that's the way i felt wandering around reno last week. here are a few pictures

www.pbase.com/wwp/reno

the center of town around the casinos has always been seedy. the new indian casinos in california have drawn away the crowds. gradually these old casinos have begun to close.

i've always liked reno. when i worked the lookouts at lake tahoe, i'd drive down for the day, wander the university campus, lose a few coins. compared to the gambling at the lake, it felt more real.

my first season over the water i worked at zephyr cove. very fancy homes were being built across the street. not what you'd expect at a lookout. as i circumnavigated the lake last week, i passed under zephyr and could barely see it for the houses!

stateline lookout no longer exists. my brother and sister-in-law visited the site and say it's a very nice park. fair enough. it's a great place for weddings, and i had a lot of them, one with a string quartet. being right above casinos, i could practically hear the slot-machines. i'd go inside and look in amazement at the people pulling the uprights of the one-armed bandits. for better or worse, i limited my personal participation.

but i did think a lot about the nature of luck. and since my whole life's been a gamble, i guess dropping coins in the slot not necessary. here's one meditation on the subject, written at the northshore:

www.pbase.com/wwp/gambler

and thoughts of turning lead into gold seemed to go with the place:

www.pbase.com/wwp/alchemist

even this last week, i had fantasies of walking into a joint, plopping down a nickel, and walking out with five thousand dollars. that's the way they make suckers of people like me.

let's see, what would make a good aphorism? gamble with your life, but not with your money? oscar wilde would like that.

learning to live in spaceships

i've been accused of having way too many theories! theories about men and women, theater and politics, even about the nature of reality (does it really exist?). these accusations made me finally give up writing. what's the point if nobody's listening? i call this 'the cassandra complex'.

however, despite my desire to take pictures and not talk, i can't help myself. partly this is due to mortality. now, i'm sure nobody wants to hear what the sum of their efforts, anxieties, and pleasures will be! this isn't the middle ages, after all, though one writer on photography feels we're heading for a pre-renaissance period where we begin to think and act in terms of symbols and magic.

perhaps this is part of the 'seals on the beach' syndrome, everybody constantly talking on cell-phones and rubbing up against each other in subways, a primitive way of tribalism where individuality doesn't exist. suddenly we've lost our hard-won external self. and as always, the survival of the species is at the heart of it.

so, spaceships? yes, learning to live in little cubicles on artificial food, with electric light and recycled water. in this way those who leave an unlivable and desecrated planet will be able to adjust to encapsulated conditions until they, hopefully, reach another sphere in which they , hopefully, will do a better job.

since nothing can be proven or dis-proven about the existence or non-existence after our personal death, i feel we can believe whatever we want, as long as we don't force that belief on others. for myself, repeated lifetimes makes a nice paradigm. thus, next time, i'll be a doctor on a spaceship, for which i am presently preparing myself. medicine is evolving rapidly and it will be much more of a pleasure to practice it a hundred years from now.

i'm continuing my http://www.thegreatcourses.com/ with a new series:

http://www.thegreatcourses.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=1564&pc=sale

yes, the body, how we fail, how we heal.

this is not all for the future life. i'd like to figure out the aging process for myself, now, what can i do to preserve myself in a healthy state for awhile longer. each time i went to my storage space last week, i thought of my friend roger dying in the keeper's house, surrounded by his family. and of course, he'd ask for the oxygen to be turned off so he could have a cigarette. and two weeks ago, my friend dave, who took care of this lookout, retired and the next day found out his cancer had re-occured after eighteen years. all people are mortal. wayne is a person. therefore...

these two courses have been extremely helpful (not finished with them yet):

http://www.thegreatcourses.com/ttcx/CourseDescLong2.aspx?cid=1597&pc=Science%20and%20Mathematics

http://www.thegreatcourses.com/ttcx/CourseDescLong2.aspx?cid=1546&pc=Science%20and%20Mathematics

maybe it's time to pay a little more attention to science!

but back to poetry. here are two pieces, one long and one short, where i broach the subject of life after life on earth.

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

http://www.pbase.com/wwp/image/82215267

and i've posted new summer photos at: www.pbase.com/wwp/smoke

building the pyramids

this is the other side of the lookout's life. for four days i labored, emptying the place i'd rented for the past two years and the house i'd been care-taking for the past four months.

the big question was: could i get everything in this tiny space? obviously not. a crate of clothes, a large computer desk ensemble, a backpack, and a bookcase reside at the cancer society shop. marilyn of vagabond rose took the small fridge, lamp, boombox, and picture-frames, most of it going to her country cabin. susan recovered her floor-lamp and marilyn of the american and language and culture institute received her birthday present: a banjo-ukelele bought on the internet. (she said she played all night. it really sounds like a banjo. amazing.)

the rest? yes, by gum. and there's still a bit of room for the stuff here at the lookout. i've a new room nov. 1st. until then, i'm a free man.

certainly, that's the way it feels. perhaps cause our family moved thirty times by my graduation from high-school. add 90 more times for 45 fire seasons. and then there's been new york, berlin, oxford, the island of rhodes, berkeley, santa cruz, and chico. (my head's beginning to swim.) with everything put away i begin to have travel fantasies. and i keep thinking of the woody allen movie from this week: cristina barcelona where all the characters go through intense experiences, then return to their normal patterns of behaviour.

i've just gotten another great course

http://www.thegreatcourses.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=1546&pc=sale

which promises to be exactly what i've believed: we remain the same personality until there's brain damage.

when we left hamilton, montana i was nine years old, a preacher's kid. i remember as we left town how the streets and trees lost their mana. they became distant and foreign, as if the life had gone out of them. and i seem incapable of going back to a place once i've really left. perhaps this keeps me an eternal child, always living in the present moment. i asked for change and adventure and that's what i've gotten.

beware of what you ask for!

i've reorganized my photos into large groups: chico, dance, theater, lookout, etc. hopefully you'll discover something new and exciting.

www.pbase.com/wwp

the political parade

evidently human survival depends upon the interplay between belief and observation. neither alone seems able to sustain us. alas, the balance can (and often does) go awry.

i'm auditing wonderful medieval art history lectures given by a new teacher on campus, asa mittman. last time he drew a clear distinction between a world based on observation (science) and contemplation (belief). he stated categorically the two mutually exclusive.

i'm not so sure. for example, i've never understand the competition between science and religion. why couldn't a divine being simply instill consciousness in an animal (ape) that already existed? the lightning flash of the quantum leap. we experience that kind of revelation every day.

on the other hand, politics interferes with the equation. the desire for comfort, property, power. as a friend said when studying law, 'this is measurement, not art.' in a sense politics and science line up: whatever works works. unfortunately, what often works in politics is twisting people's need to believe, particularly their need to feel safe.

so the science of politics is often the big lie. i'm watching a class from http://www.thegreatcourses.com/ on the affect of biology on personality. very interesting to see how neurons learn. repetition plays a huge part and the constant repeat of a theory, belief, or lie can ultimately get many neurons (and thus individuals) to accept it as gospel.

perhaps i sound like i'm on the side of science. alas, science is in constant evolution as discoveries are made and discarded. this may not help a person under stress. yes, as my lawyer friend once stated, 'it is a matter of our technology staying ahead of our stupidity.' all kinds of inventions have allowed each of us in the developed world to live better than any king did before 1900. yet to get through the traumas of every day, a certain belief in ourselves must persist.

how do we separate out politics, art, science, and religion? i've found individuals tend to be dominated by one of these at the expense of the others. perhaps we have to depend (have faith in) a natural selection of loves. that enough people will flow into the different professions and points of view to keep humanity in balance. tough to do when times are tough.

luckily, ninety percent of americans believe in heaven and only ten percent in hell!

as the stock market rises and falls, as medieval beliefs combat scientific observation in the presidential election, the survival of the species depends upon a mystery. any paradigm can be proven true, thus we will never know the whole truth. treating each other decently is the best we can do.

some new theater pics: www.pbase.com/wwp/auto

and more new lookout photos at: www.pbase.com/wwp/smoke

a nation on speed

okay, gas has dropped below four dollars a gallon (in britain it costs twenty-seven dollars a gallon) and we may feel relieved. not me. i know it will go back up. already, sixty dollars to fill the tank of my ranger xt.

this led to a lot of research on the internet. people have invented and marketed all kinds of gadgets supposed to save gas: voltage regulators, tornados in the air line, instruments that allow you to run on half gas, half water. what should i buy, i thought? maybe those platinum bosch sparkplugs. they sound pretty cool.

of course, all the evidence indicates most of these gas-savers bogus. if the object is to save money, sixty dollars for new sparkplugs doesn't sound so good.

then there are the advocates of driving habits. coast to stop signs, catch all the green lights, don't sit and idle, start slowly, let yourself slow down going up hill (it's natural). the advice i liked the most: "drive in your socks and be gentle." then i read, it takes 30% more gas to go seventy-five than it does fifty-five. this made all the gadgets in the world moot.

so around town and on the way back to the lookout it tried this out. and i must say i enjoy driving at fifty-five. even forty-five in the canyon seemed relaxing. somehow not pushing it brought a kind of sanity.

my mother told me when i was about three my new tricycle got stuck off the sidewalk. i wailed and gnashed my teeth cause it wouldn't come loose. that tends to be the story of my life. i've hurried through everything, afraid to miss anything. for example, installing more ram in my computer i couldn't get the stick to fit. i sweated. i cursed. i got more impatient. finally...

and speaking of the computer, i've always felt mine too slow. so i installed a 64 bit vista on a new drive, upped my ram to four gigs, and have begun using safari to browse. what a difference. it's a pleasure to play around with art again (i did it all day yesterday.) speed does have a place, but not on the road or in the arm. and i've heard that farmers survive by keeping a steady, slow pace they can keep up all day long.

slowly, adding to the summer's pictures: www.pbase.com/wwp/smoke