there is a period of my life that i’m trying to reconstruct that isn’t as clear to me as other parts of my life have been. there is a general feeling that i can remember, but the details are shrouded in a fog of forgetfulness. it isn’t a long period of time, just four weeks and one day, and bracketed as it is by deep despair and complete elation, you’d think that it would reveal itself, but no. i may resort to embellishment of the general feelings, knowing as i do my modus operandi during that period of my life, and perhaps that will provide the truth of the emotions from that time if not the actual day-to-day facts.
Posts Tagged ‘life
31
Dec
11
thorns (remembering the past)
16
Nov
11
untitled 3 (time stands still)
it may not bother you, but every now and then i worry about the lives i might be stopping, for just the briefest moment, when i click the button that activates the shutter on my camera and makes it open and close. that somehow during that briefest of moments, time stands still. it stops the mother at the kitchen window watching her children play in the backyard; it stops the young couple walking along the beach holding hands, discussing their dreams; it stops a plumber on a saturday emergency call or the policeman in his cruiser as he turns into a vacant parking lot.
it may be that because i mostly photograph plants and landscapes, i don’t think of the consequences of stopping time, but when i look out at the world below i know that life is moving forward and it worries me that i’ve stopped all these lives that i can’t see by pressing the shutter button and that by doing that i’ve captured their moment, just like i’ve captured my own, but without their knowledge. that seems a heavy obligation. (it’s true, time has only stopped for the itsy-bitsiest of seconds–an atomic second, let’s say–and no one felt it, their lives did not end, obviously, although i imagine with 7 billion people on the planet, someone did die at the exact moment i pressed the shutter button and stopped time here in ______ ______ and their time did stop then too. this image then is a memory of their last breath, even though they may have never seen this landscape in their lives. do you understand my concern now?)
it’s a little frisson of anxiety at the activities of man (and other living beings on the planet) that i have no control over even though i have captured this moment — and now i’m sharing it with you, the viewer, making you culpable for the moment of stopped time and responsible for those lives as well. sharing does not alleviate, nor ease my guilt. i hope you’ll (you the viewer as well) understand and forgive me for taking a moment of your time and saving it (and sharing it) with the world (regardless of how many people might actually view it–i still stopped time on sunday, november 13th at around 3:21 p.m. pacific standard time and that is a memory of the world at that moment.)
you leave the world behind you (lot’s wife’s view, should you turn your back to where you’re headed and look instead at what you’re leaving behind–without the drama of fleeing from the burning hell of sodom and gomorrah and that pillar of salt threat, obvsly.) what you are setting aside, turning away from, is not, visually at least, as awful as one might think, it has its charms, its beauty, it’s home after all, but when you do turn your back on it (as we will) you feel a lift, there is a flutter of anticipation — not just brought on by standing up too fast –in your heart, that heady combination of fleeing and arriving.
once the day has begun the sound of the ocean dissipates, even though it looks as if you could throw a rock into it from this height, but that roar and boom (shot from a circus cannon) is replaced by the constant thrum of motors, tires on pavement, the engines of commerce heard from as far away as the freeway miles behind you (city dwellers don’t know true silence, do they? neither do those who live closer to the land–only if you listen deeply and you do have to want to listen deeply or you’ll miss the constant hum of the earth.)
but now, as you walk toward the ocean, even when you briefly turn your back on it to see where you’ve been, the crunch of your footfall on the path keeps beat with the rhythm of your heart–should you be accompanied by a four-footed companion–you’ll also have their snuffling as a counterpoint to your tempo, but it all comes together, sweetly and simply. (i do think that parts of you start to fall off of your body at about this point in your walk to the ocean; the failures, the missed opportunities, the little procrastinations and white lies — even those that keep society civil, all these plus your petty battles for ascendancy, those small triumphs that bolster your insupportable ego, all of that begins to molt so quietly that you’ll not even notice the shadow of their feathered flight on the wind coming up from the ocean below.)
Like this:
the most aggravating thing, should i be so bold as to rank life’s aggravations, which i will be, bold that is, and come out (not that i’m not already out, you know) and say, perhaps exclaim would be a better choice, if you’re going to put an order to the vagaries of living that drive you crazy (metaphorically, obvsly, what i’m saying is that i’m not crazy, but aggravated, although i imagine if one were so inclined — not to be crazy about it — aggravation could be closely associated with crazy, if one were to take the meaning of crazy as a state of aggravation, but not being that one, it’s hard to say how it will be met and what meaning will be ascribed to the word–we all have our own experiences with definitions and english, god help us (if you believe in that sort of thing, god that is, not english, although for the sake of this argument–were we?–you should probably believe in english, as well as god and country–a rick perry moment if ever there one), filled to the brim as it is with subtle shades (not redundant) of meaning and innuendo, the most aggravating thing is, i’m not sure there is a most aggravating thing. surely there are times when i’m aggravated (as i was moments ago when i sat down to write this post about the most aggravating, annoying ____________), but the fact is i’m fairly certain that someone who can’t sit still (that foot tapping, jiggling leg of anxiety) is aggravating — you do notice that one’s self is never aggravating, only other people, objects, roadblocks to your serenity are truly aggravating, so the roar of the neighbor’s vacuum cleaner just as you’ve laid down to take a nap is aggravating, but could you, with a clear conscience, say it was the most aggravating thing, or only the most aggravating thing at that moment? and now that time has entered into it, it’s whole new ball game (trite phrases are also aggravating, truth be told–see you just can’t get away from it, well, i suppose if you were a henry james or a jane austen, you might not even come near a trite phrase, avoiding it like the plague [see what i mean?], but for the rest of us, it is just one of life’s many aggravations.
you know what else is aggravating? post titles that are tangentially and diametrically inconsistent with the contents of the post itself. i may be accused of that as i often have a title in mind, and it may have something to do with the photograph, it may have something to do with what i want to say, it may have something to do with the inspiration for the post or it may have nothing to do with anything, but it is something that has just come to me and i feel it’s important to get those thoughts down before they flee my peaked little brain, possibly i find it important to make those notes (and what is a blog after all, if it is not a gathering place for ideas, notes on this topic or that one, something you may reference later in a larger work or never again because you’ve forgotten you’ve written it.) if i’ve aggravated you today or in the past, please note that i will more than likely aggravate you in the future, it is in my nature to be aggravating.
04
Oct
11
the sky report (and obituaries)
this time now, if i hadn’t lived through the 80s/90s/aughts as a gay man in the time of the plague, is when my contemporaries will begin to drop like flies. the paper is suddenly filled with the death notices for ____ _____ who died at 5_ of __________ and leaves behind his loving wife of 35 years and 5 kids, numerous grandchildren and the odd spinster aunt or the occasional widowed uncle. it gives you pause.
when your heart skips a beat (and whose doesn’t, i ask you?), you think to yourself, “is this it?” and of course, it isn’t, but you think it regardless, because now is the time for all good men (especially the men at this age) to come to the end of their lives.
when that escalade swerves in front of you on the freeway going god-knows-how-fast and you think to yourself, “is this it?” and of course, it isn’t, but you think it regardless, because now is the time when you find yourself contemplating the end of your days. (and here, particularly, in southern california, my one fear is dying on the freeway, anywhere lord, but on the 5, i pray–and i’m not one who talks that often to god, but should there be one — or a goddess — please deliver me from death on a freeway at 75 mph. is that too much to ask?)
when you stand up too fast these days and all the blood drains from your head and you think you’re going to drop to the ground in a heap of limbs — and will you wet yourself, you always have to pee these days anyway, it would only be fitting that as death claims you, you would piss all over it. who’s laughing now, you black-hooded, scrawny, scythe-carrying bag of bones? well it won’t be you because you’ve died. that fucking last laugh.
this time now is when i start to think about my obituary. should i prepare one, of course, is the top concern–it just seems more practical that way–this from someone who has spent the majority of his working life manipulating language to sell something. i know i could trust m. to do right by me, but what if he’s gone too, would there even be one?
what would it say–”robert patrick died yesterday after a long battle with life, his own as well as that of others. he leaves no survivors (as if it had been a ship-wreck of a life, all lost at sea.) patrick leaves a considerable legacy of prickliness, obsequiousness and the bad habit of speaking the truth. it is known that he loved several dogs during his lifetime and at one time a parakeet. his career in the arts was his passion and his last request was to be cremated with his beloved 1400 page copy of paintings in the louvre. no flowers please (he was allergic) instead he requested that donations in his name be made to father flanagan’s boys town.”
“if the unexamined life is not worth living, the unexamined past is not worth possessing; it bears fruit only by being held continuously up to the light, and is as changeable and as full of surprises, pleasant and unpleasant, as the future.” –brendan gill via this link.
don’t be surprised if one day i say, “i told you so.”
Like this:
what choice do we have when confronted with such evidence as this? there is the fact that what you are looking at is a photograph, which has had just the slightest of manipulations (i cropped it, i punched up the saturation–not unlike a boxer working the heavy bag at that little dingy gym you pass on the way to the subway everyday and in the summer the door is open to the street and the sounds of workouts and the smell of cigars and sweat cross your path–wrists and hands wrapped — that slap, slap slap), you see it captures a moment just like that only not like it in anyway. that is only my interpretation; you will make your own determination about what it should (or shouldn’t) mean to you. it is not important what it is a photograph of–and what photography means to you is consequently corrupted, that voyeuristic desire to witness other lives not your own, although it is easy, while sitting with your computer (in your lap, on a table at ___________, at your desk at home/office or on your goddamned phone, it is easy to imagine that this non-subjective image (although you must admit it is subjective to me) has nothing to do with you and perhaps you’d be right (you may also be wrong, but again that would be determined by your commitment to the photograph and your degree of interest in its interpretation, even its strength of purpose should you care to carry/worry/consider/chew on/mull over/contemplate what it means to you.)
i cannot tell you what it means. i am only a witness to its being what it is and how the light and the moment captured what it is while i held a small metal box (rectangular and cool, with its beeps and pulsing red light as it counted down to open its shutter/eye–asleep until i set the exposure time, adjusted its flash–i turned that off, this photo was taken at night with only the street light providing illumination–the dogs pulling the leashes taut as they waited for the exposure to take hold of what was happening in front of me, they had no interest in what i was doing or seeing), and captured something i thought was interesting in its own way, a heart beat (and for those of you who have spent anytime reading what i write will recognize as a moment) of time in an evening filled with other random thoughts and ideas of beauty for its own sake (something i firmly believe in, that beauty for its own sake is as valid a statement, particularly in photography, and is as potent a statement of what is happening as a photograph that does so more literally; you are free to agree or disagree with any of this at any time–to turn your attention elsewhere, as i surely know you will; by now you have already relinquished more of your time than you had intended or reserved for someone like me and what i have to say.)
but. should you have ventured this far and are wondering what in the hell i’m after, what could i possibly be leading up to and whether or not i will satisfy your human need for literalness–admit it, we all want to know what something is, so we can impose our life upon it, to objectify the experience and subject it to interpretation through the lens of our mean lives (yes, even you and you, whose lives most of the rest of us would consider gifted) lead a mean life, with the same anxieties and triumphs, but perhaps with a bit more gilding, at least in this life; who can say about the next?
and so. obscured by light, color, intent, it shimmers and dips and glides, an aura, an energy, a cloud in the night sky, with you on your back, arms behind your head (a cradle) and the longer you look at it, the more you begin to imagine what it represents to you and now it is just a feeling, a sense of something indistinct, perhaps not unpleasant, warm and comforting, hot and exciting (or everything you want it to be.) do you see it?
are you the rose you thought you’d be at this stage of your blooming life? when you were a bud did you think your petals would unfurl as they have or did you have a premonition of greater glory? is your stem straight and true or has it taken a turn here and there that were unexpected and unpleasant/pleasant? has a hand come down to admire you and you’ve pricked them with your thorns in spite of their benign intentions (clipper-less)? do you worry that you’ll be picked too early, before you’ve had the opportunity to fully mature? you’re not one of those roses who’s life is plotted and destined for a dinner table/rendezvous/mother’s loving embrace; picked, sprayed, and laid next to baby’s breath? or do you think you’ll just play it as it lays, a rose that even joan didion would love?
18
Aug
11
it’s the orchid, you *^&%@#!
it seemed so simple. a perfect idea with the perfect image to illustrate the point. what could go wrong, you might ask yourself. and i’m not talking about myself in the third person, i’m actually talking about you. yes, you. sitting there in the comfort of your ________ or at the local __________ where the wireless is free and the ________ are beautiful/handsome or both. you may even be at your local public ______, but that seems a stretch, perhaps too last century and possibly a little creepy anymore, besides who do you know that actually takes advantage of the knowledge available at the ________. It’s been at least 20 years for me since i was inside one and then i rarely had any conversation with the _________ because i knew what i was after and how to use the dewey decimal system (god, do you remember?) although i can conjure up the smell of old _____ and waxed linoleum and the quiet scratch of the ladder as it moved along its support system–the children’s area carpeted and all of the furniture scaled down to pint-size–which you wanted to go sit in as an adult, because, well just because, but the actual reason is that for one minute it would be comforting to be a child again and not have anxieties beating on the door of your adulthood (or do they pound? mine come in a variety pack–like those individual servings of cereal that your mother used to buy–the cornflakes always the last to go because they didn’t have the sugar punch the others did. mea culpa the mixed metaphor btw.)
but instead, here you are as i said, in the comfort of your underwear (admit it) and if not that then, the comfort of somewhere else where all of the world’s knowledge (or so you’ve been told) is at your fingertips, which reminds me, when was the last time you actually got your hands dirty with dirt? and had to use that odd little rasp that swings out from your nail clipper to clean underneath the nails and got a good whiff of loam up your nose or pollen from a faded rose as the petals, at your touch, dropped away from the stamen, one, two, three. (that is still a question.) that is just one example, there are so many others: touch, listen, see, feel, smell (food, music, sex, art, skin, theater, words you have written, the touch of your lover’s hand in yours).
use it or lose it. after all, it is the scariest of all admonitions, is it not? (that question is for both you and i.) and then there is the keyboard that is the obstacle (albeit a necessary one). do i cop out here and say, “what i’m saying is get out, experience life”, which seems too easy , too trite and not truly addressing what the problem, as i see it, is. (was there a problem? oh yes, it was where were the words going to come from?) and it’s not like i haven’t addressed this subject before and yet they do, don’t they? show up eventually. sometimes unintentionally, sometimes with purpose, the brother that never quite fit into the groove of the family, the wanderer who shows up on your doorstep, “hi, i was passing through and thought i’d drop by and say hello and see the kids,” and you open your arms and take him in.
Like this:
09
Apr
11
giotto’s circle (roseroserose)
there was the circle. actually it was the perfect red circle painted by giotto in response to a request by the pope to see giotto’s work before hiring him that i read about in david markson’s brilliant “wittgenstein’s mistress” although the story of giotto and the perfect red circle (hand-painted without a compass or other assistance–just his hand, the brush, the paint and a surface; think about it,) may have been a part of my art history library (the one you keep in your mind, the one you draw on unexpectedly–that grain silo on a country highway at the edge of a town that hardly anyone, even you, visits.)
there was the circle. i knew it would be the beginning. i knew that the message would start to reveal itself once the circle was down.
there were vague notions of ideas, but none of them fully formed, just an avid interest in the perfect red circle. my fingertips turned red from the craypas as i rubbed its redness into the canvas (a cherry kool-aid red, a candy-colored & -coated red from over-indulging; the red of lips freshly kissed, slightly bruised — a hush of violet.)
giotto is not a favorite artist of mine. i am not disposed to the early italian renaissance, i mean i get it, but that doesn’t mean i have to like it. i could care that the contrapuntal stance suddenly ‘enlivened’ painting toward a more natural representation. but giotto started this [project.] there was the circle. and there were roses. and there is always marcel duchamp. i cannot go further than the front door without packing up my rrose selavy & quietly tucking her into my _______ (an yet as unnamed carry-all [port-manteau, peut-être] for ideas & my past.) please see this blog post, my heart belongs to dada for further proof. )
i am not a painter. my visual expression is usually relegated to what i can make a digital camera & my computer do. i attempt to compose photographs (you may have figured that out on your own, should you be any little bit familiar with this blog) that have some beauty or some symmetry or for that matter, asymmetry or that they somehow tell a story (sometimes about me, other times about greater & smaller things, at times they say nothing at all.)
some ideas start out strong (“this is not a …”, above,) but quickly are covered over when a better idea came along (you’ve been to that bar, haven’t you? the one where you’re just getting into someone — & they you — & suddenly something better comes along — for either one of you & whatever it was that was working for you, isn’t any longer. i know you know what i mean.) ideas are like that, aren’t they? creativity is like that bar–it’s a fairly busy bar–most times anyway, but there are down times too, when your life might get in the way or there’s some other thing that needs YOUR ATTENTION NOW.
there was the circle. it needed paint. i know that acrylic paint makes a great adhesive, so i was already contemplating mixing up the media by the time i dipped my first brush into the burnt sienna (the undercoat) & then i needed to spend about a half hour (with assistance, no less) looking for a palette knife or putty knife or something to make a little impasto (or a lot) & finally ended up with a cake spatula (see above, left) which worked on this small surface perfectly (at least for me, the inexperienced painter.)
which. there was the problem of not being a painter, truly. i suffered some regret as paint went down, sometimes on its own, other times under my not-quite-as-confident-as-i-thought hand. i told myself, ‘no matter’, work with what you have, follow your instincts, for god’s sake “use some brighter colors!” think about the color, the composition, the forms; it’s not like i don’t write about it often enough & here i am struggling with concepts that i know. because, did i say this before? i am not a painter.
before i got too carried away by the surface texture of the paint, i sidled over to the computer & started selecting different roses from my ‘botanicals’ file (thinking, as i was, that only one [1] rose would anchor the painting, center, front–giotto’s angel’s wings, his perfect circle its halo); i chose several different favorites, printed them & cut them out in a close approximation of their actual shape, but leaving some ‘edge’ (an angle, a scissor cut) to them, but only because the tiny, tiny, tiny details are best left to someone with more patience than i–of course, that is only partially true, i can maneuver among the shoals of tiny details without incident, but like most people or at least most people like me (which narrows it down quite severely, doesn’t it?) i prefer the grand gesture, the details to follow as best they can, scrambling behind to keep up with the sweeping grandeur that is ‘high concept.’
as sure as i could be, i placed the yellow rose in the center of the circle (poor giotto, clumsily painted over as he is) & pushed it into the wet paint. in true amateur painter manner, i stepped back, with brush in paint-splattered hand (i may have stuck the tip end of the brush between my lips, a cigarette to think more clearly) & contemplated my work: the balance, the subject (was the visual result now before me an expression of what i felt?), & realized, with all of those other roses laying to the side of the canvas that i was not done with them, yet.
& they all found a home, although there may have been one or two that were rejected (their sad little faces, “why not me?”) & so i set those aside with another use in mind (they ended up on the reverse with my signature.) but suddenly i now found a triangle (a golden rose triangle) thrusting up into the center of the picture plane (a rose bowl float sliding into the your peripheral vision, just like on new year’s morning as the floats make their away around the corner from orangethorpe onto colorado blvd. in pasadena–an “ooh, look at that one!” escaping your lips.)
& i thought of the flutter of angel’s wings (a scene from kushner’s “angels in america”, maybe not as angry, but still, retributive.) so. & i thought that there might be just the faintest whiff, the odor, the scent, the suggestion of an erotic moment (do i need to spell it out for you? no? i thought as much.)
those unfurling petals that push the center of the rose up toward your ______, an invitation to smell, taste, indulge, relent, submit, a slave to their power. do you lose yourself in their beauty? it is their strength, that beauty, that scent, that sex. & don’t they make it difficult to love them–the thorns, pin-pricks of anguish, scratches of anticipation; all there to make you want them more, because it is the pain of handling them that makes them that much more desirable. even after you’ve been hurt by reaching out to their beauty, you are incapable of resisting going back in for another opportunity to bring it close to your ______.
you know the probability of hurt is great, but their beauty completely blinds you to that danger as the reward (their domination of your soul) is so utterly irresistible. what could feel better than love & yet could cause such despair?
it kidnaps you, love, that is. you may receive a ransom note, all cut out newspaper letters jumbled together, demanding X for the release of Y (the union that produces zygotes.) & i know that some of you will debate the relative value of one over the other; others may rush in (otherwise known in romantic literature as ‘fools for love’–a description that, unfortunately, applies to the majority — even the most calculating among us.) you may prevaricate, waste time, dither, sweat, say yes! then as quickly say no! all of which are the symptoms of love’s relentless hold on our lives, its foreplay were we in the mood (or in a clearer state of mind) to admit.
(did i know this is where i would end up when i started this project? & please, consider the parenthetical thoughts, phrases & digressions as asides delivered directly to the audience in a knowing & conspiratorial tone of voice–perhaps accompanied by a wink of complicity, we are, after all, actors upon a stage, blah, blah, blah… [what to do about the poor ellipsis, so overused & under-appreciated, but so perspicacious an ending to our blathering.] )
…
anytime my mother & i were driving somewhere & it could have been anywhere, even places we had been before, a roadside historical marker would be the cause of a diversion, “let’s see what it says,” “it could be something important,” (important only for that place in time) & these divertissements, these roadside markers/historical monuments were the entr’acte for the larger & more important stop on any trip; the undiscovered cemetery.
the hills & plains where i grew up were dotted with small, often abandoned resting places for the hardscrabble homesteaders that fought a valiant fight against nature to make a living from the land. when you see pictures of the plains (interrupted by the black hills) you think, “an ocean, a plain, how beautiful, how fertile, how amber waves of grain.” i don’t know why i associate “america the beautiful” with my mother, but i do & it always makes me think of the photo that you see above, taken when she was just 18 in 1934. could she not have been our lady liberty, our marianne?
of course, the truth is that the land always won. & hence the numerous unmarked cemeteries that dotted the backroads of western sodak & northeastern wyoming.
we would traipse (i use the word traipse because one had to always be conscious of the possibility of rattlesnakes) through the overgrown plots, stopping here, there, to comment on a date, a glass jar turned purple from the sun, dried carnations yellow with age weeping at the gravestone. sometimes we would recognize a surname, perhaps that of a school mate’s family or my mother would say, “they lived down the road from the miller’s (she married to bill in the 40′s — see above photo from 1949)” or “i wonder if she/he/they are related to the ______’s who homesteaded in recluse.”
on one of our last journey’s through the hills, in may of 1971 we went up through old highway 16 that meanders through the hills (that’s sundance mtn. in the background) & paused for a photo (she with the cigarette that killed her, a gravestone if ever there was one.)
but can you see the beauty here, the grand, eloquent, majesty (purple) & the love my mother had for this land? i, too, take some of that with me wherever i’ve gone. it’s hard to let go of something so magnificently raw & powerful & when i look back at my life i see these moments just like those historical roadside monuments/markers/attractions, a place to pull over & pause & think & wonder whatever happened to, what was their life like, what possessed them to try to make a life out of so much (& yet so little)?
