graduation, the moment of truth

somehow i was never there, not for grade school, high school, or college. and i have to admit, part of it was pride. i didn't want to be one of the herd. however, like about everything else in my life i'm now suspicious of my motives. fears played a large part. i used to have a knot in my stomach at parties, felt inadequate at social gatherings, hankered for a good book when i felt i had to make small talk.

"we spend too much time worrying about what other people think." all too true. must be part of our survival instinct, the need of the pack, the fear of banishment, starving in the desert. and only the other day it occured to me i could simply turn it off. nobody's really thinking about me anyway, much as i might like to wish they were.

so, back to graduation. i've more than made up for it in the last few years: grade school, high school, and many times college. true, i still feel ambivalent about education. is it really a training in timidity, rats adapting to the maze? can you really be an artist (certainly you can a dentist, social worker, engineer) as a result of courses in composition, color, timing?

robert henri in 'the art spirit' insists all education is self-taught, the school merely an opportunity and obstacle. hmm, certainly the case in my town. the one thing in life that will get you by is the work ethic, whether you apply it to flight-school or the dice. and that's what i mean (mostly) about the moment of truth. it's when you suddenly have to pay your own bills, can't call your folks for a check or a loan. cold water, o boy, cold water it is.

by not having children or buying a house, driving old cars, i've managed to avoid mortgages and debts. it's still pure luck and good luck is all i've ever asked for. my own moods, inclinations, desires have taken up so much of my energy i wonder how other people take upon themselves the cares of others. reading '511 things only women understand' i'm not surprised at my impatience. do we all start out as wild animals having to be domesticated?

last sunday i took more graduation pictures. bored by the repetition of old themes, i transformed them into something else. have a look: www.pbase.com/wwp/woodcuts

and then take a peek at pics from the county fair, another favorite event, taken two days before. www.pbase.com/wwp/g3fair someday i hope to figure out what i really have to say. then maybe i'll graduate to the next level!

Dancing while i can

the crisis is past, at least some kind of crisis. the echocardiogram showed a normal heart with a blip in one of the valves (wonder to see it beating, the four chambers). on the stress-test runway i lasted nine minutes as it ran faster and steeper. my pulse remained low, as did the pressure of blood. thus, my body's stable, even at this age, my many prior terrors all for naught.

true, i did visit the hospital three times where my friend karma lay with an opened chest and five bypasses created with veins from his leg (his birthday within three weeks of mine). up and down the halls were blatant signs of mortality and for awhile in the world everyone look like a corpse waiting to happen!

gradually that passed. karma's home, stronger every day. in three months they say he will be able to do everything he once could, including trekking in the himalayas. still, i can't forget what la rochfoucauld wrote,"few people know how to be old." and to pull myself up i photographed dancers. amazing how young they've become, even in the three years since i took the class myself.

i tried out a couple of older digital cameras to test their merits. of course, they're slower than the latest product, however they seem to have a better image quality, the pictures full of intimacy and emotion. why have today's models lost the capacity to capture these?

even before driving up the mountain yesterday and fighting the wind to carry boxes of books into the tower, my spirits had risen. the night before i'd attended the final lecture of a favorite teacher, jim mcmanus, an expert in the life and works of marcel duchamp. at the end the students gave him a standing ovation. in the final tally that's what matters, what others have learned from us.

dancers: www.pbase.com/wwp/choreo2

older cameras: www.pbase.com/wwp/revisit

www.pbase.com/wwp/d2

no more memories needed?

i put this as a question. to myself, of course. since i have to move again this fall, the options open up. and that's what i love, and fear. (we moved thirty times by my graduation from high school.)

this, perhaps, is why i never really wanted children of my own. ie. i mean to raise, since we never own them and they ultimately abandon us, as we've taught them to do. a life-partner, even, ruled out of the equation, though i tried. how could i have acted on impulse? lived without much money? (our family in debt the whole time i was growing up. the result of idealism, serving others.) to me a family meant doing lots of things you didn't want to do, life slipping away.

now, i have the memories i desired. bits and shreds from forty countries, and that doesn't include dreams. for example, china a big hole in my travels, along with south america and africa. (tangiers and costa rica, close but no banana. japan twice, yet not quite the continent.) that said, a moment ago i looked at a picture book on the great wall. one village perched high above a river appeared to be the one i visited in a dream forty years ago. hmm, maybe that trip more real than many so achingly experienced.

yes, it's anxiety that makes us remember things. and someone said, 'memory is incomplete experience.' in a book called 'is there life after high school?' the author posited we remember high school so vividly cause it was more painful than anything else in our lives! that's true, except, perhaps for travel, if you go the way i've gone, buses and backpacks and cheap lodgings. is our life most our own when we're lonely? that seems completely possible. the guru osho says we belong to ourselves only when we're between thoughts, and that's meditation, nirvana. certainly, time collapses and telescopes when we're on the road, a week in a dusty asian city equals five years of comfort in a suburb.

of course, this was all part of a plan. to use my time up, to have so many memories i'd be comfortable departing for the final journey. unfortunately, as e.m. cioran says, 'thoughts of dying comfort us on the way to grave, but they don't help us when death is on the doorstep.' we'd like to be free of the burden of tension, however it's that very pull of gravity which makes us feel alive.

mostly i think i will miss my memories, or at least, i think it's a shame they will disappear when i do. if i add to the pile, am i merely creating more loss for myself? and do i need to go anywhere? the appearances around us are more mysterious than we think. gary winograd said, 'i take pictures to see what things look like photographed.' somehow i like to discover the true nature of an event afterwards, rather like a japanese tourist, looking at the parthenon when i get home. no, it's not quite like that, cause i tend to dissolve the present in a bath of memory and agony to arrive at a spectral interpretation. some might call it a vision. look at www.pbase.com/wwp/eco to see what i mean.

"all you need

is a new idea" said the dancer/choreographer twyla tharp.

ah, if only it were that easy. we can be enlightened by a cup of coffee and it won't survive the day. waking from a fantastic dream, we feel we've the world by the tail. by the time we get out of bed, the sky look gray and bare.

a new idea! yes, of course. yet it must grab us, motivate us, obsess our thoughts and drive our feet. unfortunately, our heads are already full of categories, circles, childhood, money, houses, cars, cares, children, work, history, the news. there is simply no room for anything else.

we tend to live in the closed system of ourselves. stumbling and groping, we grasp at whatever works and hold onto it for dear life. how can we escape the safe but inhibiting patterns we've built up to support the edifice we've created?

i've mentioned a cup of coffee. of course, there are other drugs: pot, prozac, or more desperately, heroin and sleeping pills. whatever breaks the circle of our judgements, for in not accepting others we do not accept ourselves.

how often do we come out of a movie, a play, or rise from reading a novel, to feel we've broken free, entered another's way of being, of looking, of acting and reacting? for an hour, even two, we see the world with love's eyes, everything possible, everything new. (the charm of youth.) and gradually the bright sun sets.

as many of the wise have said, we have to get out of our own way. and this may be as simple as saying yes where we've said no, walking down a new street, confronting a bully. the desire to do things differently has to grow huge, or be thrust upon us.

in solitary confinement, the black panther george jackson invented and practiced his own form of yoga. then there was the fellow imprisoned in a box during the american civil war. to pass the time he invented the repeating rifle. war and famine, earthquakes and fire, marriage and divorce, children and death, how do we submit to a boot-camp by choice?

in a recent book on work the therapist thomas moore uses the example of following your own daimon, the little voice inside which gives us a sense of direction. in 'how to get control of your time and your life' by alan lakein the author submits that fifteen minutes of planning early in the day may be worth more than all the good intentions in the world. (he also says, '80% of the results come from the first 20% of effort.' and other good things.)

every answer is personal. usually i avoid going back to places where i've had a pleasant experience. living in the same town for years on end, this isn't always possible. a week ago i returned to table mountain, a local pilgrimage site for spring flowers. i'd last gone five years ago. here is the first record: www.pbase.com/wwp/table_mountain the first view seems easy and fresh. especially in conversation with a friend. the second time i was alone and it was easter. something darker and more brooding entered into the pictures. www.pbase.com/wwp/easter

same place. new idea. for a moment there was room for it.

how to have confidence

always believe you are right. that's right. as a friend said, 'people who always believe they are right have a lot of energy.' and they can steamroller over people like myself who've been disillusioned by their own powers of observation.

yes, i've been wrong too many times. for example, whenever i've thought an item stolen from me, i've found it in a pants pocket, or hiding behind a door. i've learned not to accuse anyone till it's somehow proven true (or false).

that doesn't mean i don't have certain convictions. i believe with freud life is a struggle between eros and thanatos, between the creative force and the destructive forces in the world. the seed grows, blossoms, dies, while scattering new seeds. in many ways, events seem more cyclical than linear. the economy gets good. than the need for technical reconstruction drives it into the ground for awhile. (the moment we're living out now.) after these shifts take place, our financial lives revive. put your money in precious metals or bonds and you survive a depression.

knowing when to bet and when to fold, that's perhaps part of the confidence equation. every monarchy that has gradually given up power has survived (sweden, england, holland) and stayed wealthy. those who resist change too long topple from rigidity (russia, iran). being always right does mean being rather cynical, ie. the painter francis bacon said he tended to vote for the right so he 'wouldn't be burdened by idealism.' i'd never thought of it that way, but i know what he means. for those who believe they can't be wrong, idealism is just another name for the obviously real!

the other day i took pictures at a rally protesting the gulf war. to me it had a dark side, but for those truly participating it was a religious experience. where does belief end and fanaticism begin? asking questions like that, i'm probably my own worst enemy.

pics last weekend: www.pbase.com/wwp/puppets2

pics a year ago in the same place: www.pbase.com/wwp/peace

searching for signs

how the devil do other people make major decisions? everytime i come up against one, i thrash about in hot water like the proverbial frog boiling to death without knowing it.

of course, first i have to decide: is this a turning point? does it demand a mere tweaking, or do i have to throw out the whole aparatus and start anew?

alas, exercising the 'change your life' tactic rarely gets me anywhere. for example, in 1995 i decided i had to make a change. i drove to seattle twice, to san luis obispo. i took a plane to new york. trouble is, i couldn't find anyplace better to live. so, how do you renew your capacity for adventure without leaving town? this time, i got involved in live theater again. and that impulse propelled me for twelve years. in the midst of it, i turned from writing to photography. my desire to live jumped up again. if only i could get that one photo.....

then the theater where i'd found so much satisfaction fell apart. thus the search began. to begin the year i decided to take care of health issues, ie. at least find out if i had any. well, i do. for better or worse, yesterday i suffered a colonoscopy. the doctor found a solitary polyp. for twenty four hours i was thinking, 'how will i spend my last six months?' i definitely decided on one last trip to europe. i also decided i'd pay for ten years storage on my papers and photos, in case they were ever 'discovered'.

what else? ah, i'd like to drive around california one last time and take landscape pictures, despite the climbing price of gas. i'd put everything on a no-interest credit card and run up the bill, laughing on my way to the grave.

unfortunately, the best-laid plans... a call this afternoon and the polyp discovered to be 'totally benign.' now i'd have to find a way to go on living. my father died of a heart-attack at 53 (same age as shakespeare) and my mother's father three months shy of a hundred. i realized if i lived as long as the latter, i've half a lifetime more to go. (yes, i am one of those who constantly reads the dates on tombtones and in biographies. camus said, 'there is no substitute for a long life,' his own cut tragically short.)

trouble is, most of a person's best work has been done before forty. after that? live on the glory? but the modern age admires productivity. one masterpiece is not enough. you have to go on producing them.

well, i've no answer for the present dilemma, not yet. i did experience a salutary lesson last saturday and i've recorded it as 'the mandala returns to the sea.' www.pbase.com/wwp/mandala2 if only i felt like jumping the the ocean, for a long swim! hope you enjoy these pictures. and i am looking for more signs. something that appears again and again on the street, in the news, pasted in books, or attached to e-mails, a consistent re-inforcement of something which grows out of my current obsessions, a clue to the way through the dark wood.

oh, i forgot the most important thing: in the fall i have to find a new place to live. that always throws me into a tizzy.

getting older can be better?

i mean, isn't it possible to come into sympathy with people you used to see as below you?

like the person down in the pit, changing your oil.

or the barista serving a hot chai with non-fat milk?

today, as i sat in barnes & noble with that very drink, i watched the district manager talking with the three store managers. true, i thought he might be a hatchet-man. at the same time, i thought about all it takes to keep a store like this going, and i felt a moment of terror. what if they shut it down? where would i go for my out-of-the-country experiences? where else could i watch the displanted people from all over the world, sipping their expressos as if they were too good for me?

a friend told me about an aunt who'd been hell on wheels all of her life. then she got altzheimer's and became the sweetest person in the world. maybe there's hope for me yet.

i've lost my first tooth, my heart has some kind of electrical short-circuit (minor, they tell me. huh!), and i'm starting to develop cataracts. great. this is actually making me more humane?

for example, for the past two weeks i've been going to lectures by teachers applying for posts in the university art history program. and i've enjoyed all the great information. at the same time i have been critical of teaching styles, etc. unfortunately, i've also been able to see how nerve-wracking applying for the jobs is. especially if you're a big-city person trying to get out of a small town in the middle of nowhere.

no, it's not easy to choose, even if you feel you know who's best.

am i going soft in my old age? where's the super-competitive spirit that's kept me going (secretly) my whole life? am i becoming unbearably maudlin and soft?

perhaps i'm going too far in the opposite direction. what about holding people up to a high standard? if i don't expect much, will i get much, and will they be motivated to deliver? caught between a rock and a hard place, wouldn't you say?

so, i've posted a few more pictures from recent rambles, a number from the park easing into spring: www.pbase.com/wwp/new_pics the past, desperate cynicism has to be evident somewhere. after all, the dali lama said, "if you have compassion, you don't need religion." i suspect i'm as needy as they get.