Friday, May 8, 2009

so many memories,


why do they seem so valuable? i mean, i just thought of something totally insignificant. a magazine from the thirties.  traveling around the desert, i found a copy dedicated to maud adams, a silent film star. she'd abandoned the movies to teach at a small midwestern college. that seems irrelevant. i was out in the middle of nowhere. i returned from two years in europe. back on a lookout, i couldn't work seven days a week. instead, i roamed the mountains and the desert on my days off. 

in fact, i remember the bucket of blood saloon, virginia city, nevada. two sheriffs deputies were talking about a suicide that had happened during the night, her blood on the ceiling, the shotgun  leaning against the wall.
 
it reminded me of another conversation in the senator hotel cafe in  santa cruz, a fellow talking about cleaning up the shower after a friend had blown his brains out. if you've seen the movie 'sunshine cleaning' you know what i'm talking about.

again, it's a matter of these insignificant memories. i don't want them to disappear. they seem so valuable. despite their small moment. another memory, a house in new mexico, a tiny latino town where a family from new york had built their home. they said they'd gotten tired of everything being made up. the place built of beautiful molded adobe. yet they were strangers to the mexican-american settlement. 

these memories, they don't matter much, yet they make up a life. st. petersburg, russia, a tv  program, the life of marina tsvetayeva. i knew the story. too bad a visit to russia ended my romance with russian literature, long ago fomented by a visit to fort ross on the california coast and s semester of the language. 

i don't want to let them go. the cruise ship parked in the harbor of fiji. the kids making love in the bunk above me in australia. yes, it all seems so important, even though everybody has their own story. hoping a little bit survives. 

ah, cemetery photos at

www.pbase.com/wwp/marble 

and a few of childhood's freshness. what a juxtaposition, these children next to the inevitable.   

http://forum.getdpi.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7296

ie. the farmer's market photos. life beyond any photograph:

http://forum.getdpi.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7318