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.

one foot in reality

the other in fantasy. that's the way it's always been, fascinated first by picture books, then by the movies.

when i was very little, four or five, a member of my father's church owned a movie theater. he said i could watch whatever i wanted, whenever, free. and i'd wander in, sit down and absorb the mysteries of hopalong cassidy, the prince and the pauper, and inside the theater and outside all become one.

using the fancier term, i still love films. as a student in berkeley i visited studio a and b, the pics chosen by a local, pauline kael, who later became a famous critic ('i lost it at the movies', etc). she played every classic: 'children of paradise', 'the naked night', 'streetcar named desire'. european and american, they flooded my imagination. and even now as i talk about them, i'd rather be in a movie than sitting here on a mountain.

actually, i almost was, in a movie, here where i'm writing, as the fall weather rolls over me and the sky clouds up. a columbia crew came from hollywood, rented my clothes, painted the inside of the lookout, and for four days on two weekends in october i lived the life of a fellini character, hot lunches for all on the edge of the cliff. kevin bacon starred. we'd be talking and he'd be called. i'd never seen anyone focus so quickly.

they had a terrible time with the film. the producer a lawyer who knew nothing about the business. he'd sit in his chair like a lord mayor, making everybody nervous. and they complained about his cheapness, his willingness to spend only forty thousand dollars a day.

and in the end, they filmed the rest of it in new zealand and never released it into theaters, the lookout scene cut, after all that. maybe you can find it. 'whitewater summer' that's what it was called.

so at four and five i slipped into the darkness whenever i wanted, and at six i wanted to be an actor. alas, as soon as my mother wanted me to memorize the poems of winnie the pooh, i knew it to be too much work. besides, i wanted to repeat my own words, not the words of others, and i did monologue performances for the neighborhood instead.

of course, i wanted to rival my father's sermons, a habit i've never lost. and i keep learning lessons from the silver screen myself. after a viewing i absorb the energy of the principal actor and walk like him/her, talk like him/her, all the next day, one foot in reality, one foot in fantasy.

here are a few examples of dreaming a life away:

www.pbase.com/wwp/met

http://forum.getdpi.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10192

i can't recommend it too highly.

some things you can't do by yourself

i'm not sure what they are. i mean, you can dance alone, cook by yourself, walk along the beach, even sex... no, i won't say it!

however, they say you never really do anything alone. after all, someone had to write and play the music, grow the food, crawl out of the ocean (years and years ago), and... well, enough said.

alas, that doesn't really solve the problem. supposedly orangutans the only primate that thrives in solitude. (why they look so sad in the zoo.) baboons scratch each other's back, chimps play with jane goodall, even gorillas have the good taste to fight each other over who gets the goods.

no, no, i'm not sure about any of this. yes, people (lovers specifically) perk each other up. somehow all those glances, laughter, touches, fights, they make the circulation go faster and the immune system resist depression. of course, the ending isn't always happy. some people do ruin each other's lives (if they try to prolong the endorphin attack), yet we always have a choice. and if our challenge is misery, that's fate.

no, no, that's not it. i mean, what about those who actually help another realize him or herself, their ambition, their dream? for example, i just saw the film julie & julia, two cooks who made it to fame and fortune because of their husbands. and isn't the power behind the throne...? my better half, haven't we all heard that?

so what is it exactly you can't do on your own? you can't get out of yourself, perhaps that's it. and why would you want to? cause you're a smuck? no, i mean seriously. probably it has to do with lightning. they say it created life. maybe the spark has to jump, even if it creates a forest fire and mayhem. and we grab the happiness, the energy, as it flies.

so here are a couple of examples, theater and dance:

www.pbase.com/wwp/hot

www.pbase.com/wwp/warmup

match.comedy

do people really have their pictures posted, them standing next to jaguars they don't own and swimming pools they actually clean, in order to impress? i guess it is that easy. how do you separate the fakes and forgers from the true? maybe you can't. love's a desperate game of need vs. fantasy.

lately, i've been watching a lot of romantic comedies: notting hill, kiss the bride, love actually, about a boy, runaway bride, and so on. a happy ending makes me feel good, yet i'm suspicious. do people only really change in the movies?

for that's what it takes. the busy, the self-obsessed, the high-roller, they need to be hypnotized by a man or woman who takes both their breath away and their self-assurance. resistance, that's what it's all about, resistance overcome. and maybe memory, a memory of childhood when love actually existed.

i do like movies about france and ending up on a vineyard in the south. no, i have no desire to get my hands dirty. alas, french kiss and a very good year make me wish i could be a wine baron with the beauty of my life! (for friends who've actually done a great winery, california style, check out http://www.roshambowinery.com/ ) i suppose it's the weather and romance that give flavor to it all.

trouble is, you do have to make room for another person. live alone too long and you fill up all the spaces, no room at the table or in the bed. and those who use dating services often those with no time, who'd simply like to add a little spice to their life. i learned that when a roommate years ago started such a service in chico. helping to review the forms and match people up, i soon discovered the unavoidable fact: people who can actually (financially) afford ecstasy, prefer to keep their lives comfortable and normal, and not rock the boat with anything more than sex!

yes, movies like something new give me the hope i may one day open up, make a space for the other, if not in this lifetime, then the next.

obviously, i'm too obsessed with making photographs. perhaps we can only have one real passion at a time. in the past the spark always ignited when i wasn't writing. maybe my imagination must go blank before reality can stir it up. here are the latest pictures:

www.pbase.com/wwp/sage

www.pbase.com/wwp/meadow

www.pbase.com/wwp/lake