i swear to heaven i didn't plan it, and i'm embarassed by it, even as i pack up to move again. yes, we did move thirty times by the time i was out of high school. and ending my 50th lookout season means i've moved a hundred times, just on that account. i'm sure i've moved at least two hundred times, if not more. so what's the beef?
my last real trip: amsterdam and paris, spring, 2001. then 911. and soon after my travel partner berta gardner died. http://www.pbase.com/wwp/berta also i stopped writing and took up the outrageously expensive task of photography. ah, all that precious and useless equipment rotting in my storage space! as they say, after the show's over all you've got is the pictures.
and now i picture myself fat and old, sipping a cold beer and watching old movies on television. no, it's not that bad, yet. i have been watching films of people who accomplished something in the world. for example, just finished one on edward curtis, the famed photographer of american indians. of course, he's criticized for staging scenes, yet outside his twenty volumes of portraits he took a lot of street-type, informal, and delightfully natural photos i'd never seen before tonight.
and i watched THE DESERT OF FORBIDDEN ART, about the russian collector who set up a museum of state-repressed art during the soviet period. wheeling and dealing with personal contacts to collect 44,000 pieces of art, which he put in a building out the sands of Uzbekistan. hopefully this film will allow them to be preserved somewhere, when locusts come. a very heartening story.
okay, let's see, i've kept travelling on my couch. THE STORY OF WALLY, a painting by egon schiele stolen by a nazi and how the family finally received it's due, fifty years later. lots of scenes in old vienna. alas, it tarnished my view of the town where i'd had good experiences in the past. and i shuddered through HAND HELD, the story of a photographer who discovers children in thousands of steel cribs, after the fall of the Romanian dictator, deprived of every bit of loving care. the photographer's drawn into setting up a foundation to help and twenty years later we see healthy kids in a local olympic games.
now, have i justified myself? these stories took me all over the world. and all summer i kept debating: should i go on the road again? have i really become a creepy stay-at-home? i have to answer yes. when it came right down to it, i realized one night i wanted to sit at a desk, write, read, fool around with photos on the computer, and generally preserve my concentration. immediately, i began searching for a new place and thankfully found a cottage right in the middle of a student ghetto. i've changed my life without leaving town. yes, very embarrassing, but let me quote franz kafka:
You do not need to leave your room.Remain sitting at your table
and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quite still and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no
choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
posted single shots from the summer: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/singles
Hand Held: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008H345VC/ref=wtls_list_pr_15/ref=avod_wl_watch_now
Portrait of Wally: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0032DGB5K/ref=wtls_list_pr_4/ref=avod_wl_watch_now
The Desert of Forbidden Art: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0032DGB5K/ref=wtls_list_pr_4/ref=avod_wl_watch_now
Coming to Light: the Edward S. Curtis Story: http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Light-Edward-Curtis-Story/dp/B00A6KTO8S/ref=sr_1_1?s=instant-video&ie=UTF8&qid=1382163002&sr=1-1&keywords=edward+curtis
well, here i am again, wondering how i can save the world before i shuffle off it. my friend jim feels it's a hopeless cause. digging our own graves, imitating the dinosaurs, ultimately unable to deal with the very climate changes we've caused.
in the immense what am i to do? i think, if i can make someone's life better, that's enough. i send money to my sister, expose people to museums, ancient artifacts, faces in the clouds. ultimately, i feel it all depends on imagination. is that what i'm best at?
of course, i'd like to be woody allen. last night i watched his latest 'jasmine' and i came home disappointed. i wanted the heroine to be saved, changed, uplifted. alas, she ends up on a park bench in san francisco, talking to herself, mulling over everything that's gone wrong: her husband's affairs and suicide.
the best scene in the movie probably where she's telling her two young boys what cracked her up. they sit wild-eyed with amazement. here the older generation certainly passing along a lesson, even as she says, 'remember, wealth brings responsibility', insisting they devoted a lot of the money they stole to charity.
and this morning i have to admit, there's a moral to the story. she insists all the way through she didn't know about her husband's double-dealings. actually, she looked the other way, for in the end in fit of jealousy, she turns him into the FBI. when she finds her estranged son, he says 'i know all about that phone call.' ultimately, that call caused his father's death by hanging.
earlier she tells her sister and friends, 'hanging doesn't choke you, it snaps your neck.' kate blanchett reiterates this statement two or three times, making it grim to contemplate. here, without question, is a haunted women who basically deserves what she gets.
what has this to do with me? i keep thinking, 'i should help orphans.' yes, my sister was an orphan so i'm helping one, but is that enough? i keep thinking of the wonderful photographer Tina Modotti who gave up her art to abscond to russia from mexico in order to promote a cause. it led to her sad ending, and her photographs have done more than all the speeches and washing dishes.
here i am in the middle of change, about to come down off the mountain like zarathustra. what am i to do now? he eventually ran back up that slope as quick as he could. nietzsche or woody allen or changing diapers. it's a tough choice.
Sex is only interesting when it gets you in trouble.
Religion is something humans added to leaven suffering.
Whenever I feel evil, I smile without doing anything.
The days passed through my hands like lemmings headed for the sea.
The most dangerous thing you can do is get out of bed.
We live by measuring. If we can't measure it, it doesn't exist.
I waited for her to seduce me.
Nothing's more uncomfortable than being tested for sleep.
He made her think of all the things she knew she'd never have.
If I started counting my losses, I'd feel like a rich man.
What am I to do with myself, now that you've changed me?
Traveling in memory has the advantage of no flies.
I can't leave until I find myself.
He stumbled across himself in a conversation and didn't know what to say.
He wanted to give away everything, but he had nothing.
The higher he rose, the harder he found it to fly.
The distance he put between them seemed to draw them closer.
He forgot why he was suffering, but the suffering itself remained.
The nightmare of knowing it all.
He felt his silence full of notes he couldn't hear.
I'm not sure we should try to go beyond survival.
Truth won't get you into heaven.
She tried to make a mistake. At least that would be a start.
Nature seems continuous to us, yet she leaps.
The only way to slow down time is to travel or commit a crime.
"Only enthusiasm can defeat death." (Cioran)
Don't be afraid to bend your knees.
How many more things have become criminal since I was a child?
ah, art is my way out: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/crocker
Storks have a habit of delivering to the wrong address.
Storks are great gamblers, often staking their packages.
Beware of bored storks.
Never trust a stork.
The stork refused to take the package back.
A stork can make or break your day.
Storks have a lousy sense of direction (but a great sense of humor). Every stork born a practical joker.
After the duel, the surviving stork didn't know what to do with the extra package.
Never cross swords with a stork.
Stork Delivery System: "We always make mistakes."
Don't take a stork in training.
The new stork recruits had barrels of fun with the robot babies.
There is a stork in your future.
A stork flying backwards is a bad sign.
If storks didn't pretend to be preachers. I'd trust them more.
Fear the stab of a card-playing stork.
The absorbing story of the stork caught reading porn.
When a stork gets stuck, what can a chimney-sweeper do?
Has there ever been a singing stork?
When in the mood, storks are great entertainers.
Why did they call it The Stork Club?
Storks can certainly look like stuffed shirts.
Stork: the only bird you can imagine wearing a tuxedo.
Storks have the ability to take a terrible revenge.
If the Ancient Mariner had shot a stork and not an albatross, he'd have come undone much quicker.
To quiet our fears we pretend storks bring good-luck.
Storks like to keep their feet warm.
Do wise people build fake chimneys for storks?
in opposition to the air, i've gone under the sea:
http://www.pbase.com/wwp/sea2
http://www.pbase.com/wwp/sea3
bizarre to contemplate: one of my art history profs obsessed by monsters. i've been to the first class of his course. to quote: "Monsters do not exist outside the human context." hmm, that means everything monstrous our creation, part of us. now, i have run across this before. here's a passage from c.g. jung:
It is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting
not just of little weaknesses- and foibles, but of a positively demonic
dynamism. The individual seldom knows anything of this; to him, as an
individual, it is incredible that he should ever in any circumstances go
beyond himself. But let these harmless creatures form a mass, and there
emerges a raging monster; and each individual is only one tiny cell in the
monster's body, so that for better or worse he must accompany it on its bloody
rampages and even assist it to the utmost. Having a dark suspicion of these
grim possibilities, man turns a blind eye to the shadow-side of human nature.
Blindly he strives against the salutary dogma of original sin, which is yet so
prodigiously true. Yes, he even hesitates to admit the conflict of which he is
so painfully aware.
having read 34 books about and by jung one summer, how could i forget!
what really interests me: jung maintains we must acknowledge and come to terms with our shadow side. ah-hah, i have written down those dastardly fantasies! no wonder i destroyed 125 diaries last spring. alas, dig a little deeper into what i've written and the art created, my shadow springs to life everywhere.
long ago i realized friends have abandoned art for two reasons: one they don't want to spend so much time alone, and two they didn't want to reveal themselves. the opening of NIGHT TERRORS by my friend dennis palumbo springs to mind. that first chapter horrific. without the courage to expose himself to other therapists (he's one of them), he simply couldn't have told this sad and engrossing tale of a serial killer. i suppose, like me, he doesn't ever expect to get that kind of attention!
this weekend i've gone through two assigned novels: FRANKENSTEIN and DRACULA, downloading the original versions on my tablet. what a shock to discover how the invention of frankenstein follows the exact path of a serial killer, with all the reasons for it. mary shelley beat us all to the punch. and as for bram stoker, he showed the erotic nature of the vampire to a crowd of present day readers and writers. at the end i thought, "why not become a vampire, live forever, and have all those blatantly sexual adventures?" i do have a very dark theory: women like these guys cause they like the results of menstruation, unlike many ordinary men.
where is all this taking me? i have a lot of questions:
does a monster have to look like a monster?
did that refrain from a radio show "only the shadow knows" haunt my childhood, ears glued to the speaker?
why do they call the sun 'the vampire of the night'?
and is 'time the biggest monster of all', as asa maintains? yes, happiness only exists where time does not.
If you look into the abyss, the abyss will look back at you.
Friedrich Nietzsche
that jungian summer i wrote these poems: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/alchemist
no wonder i've woken up, fretting, in the wee hours, unable to sleep. welcome to the roller-coaster of life. ah, was it just a week ago they put me in a parade, cut a cake for me and gave me a little pin, later a delicious barbeque where work friends and friends from out of town mingled, as i hoped they would, thus bringing the two lives i've led together?
and i surprised myself. i smoozed and smiled so much the muscles in my face were tired when i got back to the lookout. a wonderful day. yes, i was disappointed in one thing: i'd hoped they might give me money. ah, foolish hope, it makes us keep chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. no, no check, no provision for my advanced old age, if i'm unlucky enough to get there! once i can't work, it's the poor-house for me.
that's not what i'm fretting about. i've had my fun, able to be creative my whole existence, travel the world. yes, extremely and gratefully lucky. nobody gets out of life alive. and that brings me to the downer: being accused of being a free-loader and parasite. i suppose if you live long enough in america, it has to eventually happen. unlike the eskimos, i haven't been left in the snow to die (yet). no, i'll limp along, paying almost half of my social security for 'free' medicare.
the most terrible thing about our system: getting caught up in it, treated by doctors and nurses as though i were made of glass at 73, despite my grandfather living to a hundred, despite the fact one fire lookout still working at 87. i have never, ever felt like an old relic until my night in the hospital. my usual doctor, barry furst, semi-retired, and i got thrown to the wolves. not that everyone hasn't been extremely kind and helpful, except they scare me to death!
barry always warned me about too many tests. though he did get me off for a colonoscopy, to a prostate doc, and to a nephrologist (kidneys), he never used scare tactics to do so. and he said, 'they will find something.' how true that has become. okay, i'll try your cholesterol medicine. alas, it gave me a rash on my ankles and i felt like a lead soldier on waking in the morning. yes, maybe my blood-pressure a little high. i'll try your lisinoprol. two weeks later i have what's called in the literature 'a useless cough.' not very reassuring for someone who's had asthma attacks in the past.
hmm, okay, i threw out all the meat and cheese in fridge, cut out as much dairy as i could, tossed some prepared meals (indian, thai), and so on. i began checking my blood-pressure through the day so see the pattern. barry always said, 'if your blood-pressure ever drops to normal, you don't have a problem.' i've discovered it's highest when i lay around, like when i wake up in the morning. once i'm active, it starts dropping, and by the end of the day i'm back to as normal as i'll ever be. in the hospital i lay around all the time, hardly allowed to lift a spoon. and all those beautiful, attentive nurses, they certainly made my heart go pitter-patter.
my credo: at some point i have to stop listening to other people and listen to myself. hence, fifty years on a mountain top, as odd as that makes me. this week i hope to re-gain my youth, despite a visit to a doctor (not barry) and a blood-test. oh, the confession, they did find a true problem. my sodium 'dangerously' low. damn, to shore up my kidneys, i'd been drinking lots of water. turns out that can kill you. and likely my moment of dis-orientation came from it. now i drink less water, more apple juice, and, hallelujah, i can put salt on my tomatoes once again.
here are the first photos from my celebration day: www.pbase.com/wwp/50 with more to come.
"Never treat someone like they are old," said the Buddha
