the palms at 6:02, 6:07, and 6:11 a.m. on may 18, 2012

it’s possible that i’m lying.

we all do. everyday we embellish and expand, omit and conveniently forget the truth.

even these photographs are lies for they tell not the actual truth of the moments in which they were captured (time being the first fact to evaporate into the ether of “it doesn’t matter”).

they’ve been manipulated and saturated, the contrast has been swung to the right while the brightness has been toned down/up, but they come close to the way i saw them for the briefest moment yesterday morning sometime after 6 and before 6:30 while taking the dogs for their morning walk (the dogs on a morning walk is true.)

mothers and sons (place and time)

this is how i like to remember my mother, the time when i was most in love with her, when i did not know that i would become a stranger to her in just a couple of years (the pupal stage on the path to adulthood, the destruction of the past in order to become the future–you did know that ‘pupa’ is latin for ‘doll’–confirmation that this time is a special one.) it is the time when boys are closest to their mothers; they’re growing up, but they’re still a child. a balance between one, being a man and the other, a child, that only occurs this one time in their lives and it is the time that i cherish the most.

i’ve always felt that this period coincided with the second flowering of my mother’s beauty, the other time being in her late teens, so long ago that i don’t think she believed it had happened, if she did she would  have never admitted it, at least not out loud. she was modest about her beauty, although i would catch her sometimes pushing her hair up off her neck in the way women do when assessing their looks, judging the length of their neck and how it delicately holds their head, just so.

when i remember my mother during these few years before our estrangement (this break did not dim our love for one another, but it did shift the balance of power ever so slightly; i would find her looking at me as if i were an alien, the look accompanied — or perhaps tempered by — a sense of wonder at the mysteries of raising a child and perhaps those teen years are exactly that: your child becomes a stranger living in your house, you, the parent, of course, still love them, but it takes more energy, perhaps even a more thoughtful approach to navigate and guide your charge), i see her tall and thin; i had definite ideas about how she should dress, or what clothes she possessed that were my favorite. she was kind enough to ask my opinion as if it mattered to her.

at this particular moment, she’s wearing what i considered the look that most resembled her character, how i felt about her and what she meant to me at that time. it was a cowgirl/ranch wife-typical-day-on-the-spread-outfit (barbara stanwyck in ‘the big valley’ on tv): white shirt with pearl buttons and french cuffs, with her beautiful navajo turquoise, coral, and silver thunderhead pin positioned just below her throat (the part that men like to kiss and little boys like to lay their heads against. women must like how that feels otherwise why would they advertise its availability so often?) with gabardine slacks, the front pockets cut square, a leather belt with a silver tip, and boots.

she walked differently when she was dressed this way, it was more confident, less feminine, not that she lost her ability to flirt when she wore these clothes, but i know that she felt more on equal footing with men when she did. as her boy-child i had no choice but to admire (perhaps emulate) this change in her character based on what she was wearing; a lesson you might be inclined to store for future use. it is what learning is all about, is it not? the ability to process and consume information for its possible future use, use that comes naturally, sometimes even as a surprise, “how did i know that?” you might even ask yourself ten, twenty years later.

sometimes it was hard for me to share her. clouds would storm my face when someone would get between us, these shadows of emotions flying low over the prairie-colored face of a spoiled child so quickly and so harshly i often lost my breath, my balance, my mind. my mercurial nature embarrassed me, but it seemed, at the time, that it was something i had no control over and perhaps i might not have wanted to have control over it–that lack of control was a knife that i could wield with surgeon-like precision, not that it was premeditated, i don’t believe i would have thought to be that manipulative, but the results usually benefited me in some way, enough to make my tongue hang out in anticipation of the bell, pavlov.

this time and place then; we are at the stratobowl, outside of rapid city. the date tells me that mary is still living with us, but i’m not sure that mary is taking this photograph. it’s not that there weren’t many happy times with mary; we’re often photographed in full-throated laughter, mouths open, teeth showing, the sheen of pleasure sparkling in our eyes during the years she and my mother lived together. as serious as mary was about preparing for life, or what life might throw at you, she also was a prankster, her honking laugh one i still hear (should i stop and listen for it.) but it’s just as likely that it was just me and my mother alone, having asked a stranger to take our picture with our little brownie box camera, a certain freedom allowed in front of someone you may never meet again.

“shall we go for a drive?” my mother would ask after sunday dinner (the one day of the week we had our ‘big’ meal at midday, a habit that her mother and step-father always observed every day of the week, a light supper served later in the evening). and we’d pile into the car and head out into the hills with no destination in mind. oh someone might say, “let’s go out old highway 16 up to the lake and back,” or “we haven’t been down to hermosa lately, let’s go see what’s doing down there.” these excursions a time for talking about school, friends, family, or nothing at all, just a time to be together without having a responsibility to anyone but ourselves. it is the blessing of being an only child of a single parent.

i did not know that i had already used up one third of my time with my mother in 1962. what child at that age considers the future? it is too large to comprehend and the past is too small to bear its weight. it is enough to manage your now; it may be the one time in your life when you are living in the moment. (there is, of course, that nasty thing called “learning the lesson that your actions have consequences” which becomes a more frequent refrain at this point in your life, only because you are beginning to have just the slightest interest in the future as it applies to your comfort. ) and so this moment is now, when a mother and her son shared their love for each other and stopped it forever with a photograph.

clouds over the ocean (a challenge)

 

how often can you write about the clouds, the sunrise, the canyon, the bluffs, the palms, the pacific ocean?  when do you think  you’ve said, you’ve written, you’ve photographed these same things enough?

you’re not expecting me to answer those questions, are you?

aren’t these photographs enough proof for you that there is no limit to the variations, the subtleties, the grand gestures nature provides us each and every day?  do you not see beauty everyday?

i challenge you to prove me wrong.  tell me of the day you did not encounter one beautiful thing, moment, animal, word, thought, deed, action, heartbeat, kiss, look.

the subject was a rose (a conversation among friends of this blog’s author)

“oh, there he goes again,” declares one, “another fricking photograph of some rose he can’t even identify properly–stuck right into our noses, like he wants to rub our faces in it.”

“he’s just so confrontational.”  sighs another.

“what’s to be done?” laments a third.

“well, it’s obvious we must do something.  perhaps an intervention?” suggests his _________, without crossing the _______/patient confidentiality line.

“is there a cure?  i didn’t realize that there was any help for this, this disease,” whispers his _________ eerily from the great beyond.  (yes, they’re psychic too.)

“you know, we could blame you, after all you were the one that set him on this path of self-___________,” retorted the _________.

“you have a lot of room to talk, mister, why i’ve half a mind to give you a good spanking.  except why should i give you the pleasure?” the ghost of his _______ rejoins.

“people, people, please.  let’s not turn this into a blame game,” says his most ardent admirer, “we’re here to solve the problem of his constant posting of photos of flowers–it’s really just too too much to bear; to watch him suffer so, the constant photo-taking at the slightest sight of a bloom, the time spent adjusting and manipulating the photograph afterwards, his posting of the images hither and yon; it’s all quite out of hand.”

“short of taking his camera and his phone from him what are we to do?  aren’t you afraid that he might crack if he were to quit cold turkey?  that we might not ever have our dear, dear friend robert, as we know and love him now, back again?” cried an online acquaintance who had, up ’til now, remained quiet, standing at the back of the crowd.  [author's note: the use of the word 'crowd', of course, is wish-fulfillment at its most pathetic.  mea culpa.]

“there may be nothing we can do, really,” said a more reasoned voice, “shouldn’t we just let him do as he pleases?  what harm is there in his sharing the beauty he sees around him, after all?  i think you’re all quite silly. let’s take a watch-and-wait attitude and enjoy what he gives us without questioning his motives or his sanity.”

everyone concurred, sipped their coffees, picked up their bags, and went on about their lives.

i cling to these (a child’s memories)

“Just one way, you do get back home. You have a boy or a girl of your own and now and then you remember, and you know how they feel, and it’s almost the same as if you were your own self again, as young as you could remember.” –James Agee, “A Death in the Family”

part one

when i was told by the youngest sissie that he had died i thought that nothing had changed; he had passed from my life so long ago that any memories i think i have of our time together cannot be retrieved without the assistance of photographs.   she and i rarely speak on the phone, our adulthood separating us from the day-to-day minutiae of our ordinary lives; she said, “they found him about a week after he had actually died, sitting in his recliner,” (left unsaid:  with the tv on, an empty can of budweiser on a rickety metal tv tray next to a brown & orange plaid la-z boy; bloated with death & gas & probably putrid, no make that definitely putrid.)

this is the kind of story (the discovery of his death) that is usually found on the second page of the second section of your local newspaper, the part that covers goings-on around the towns in your area, a headline such as this: local man found dead in apartment and it would go on to describe how the discovery was made (the building super investigating a ‘suspicious’ smell), a quick quote from a neighbor, “he kept to himself, i don’t recall seeing anyone visit him,” a brief bio provided by a vietnam vet at the local vfw (a snapshot of your local vfw:  wood paneling, folding tables, the smell of bad coffee, beer & cigarettes, men unshaven, war stories–the same ones–told again and again, and the loose ends of their lives).  his family (a second wife, three children –maybe it was two, regardless, i have step-brothers & -sisters that i met only once — i can’t even remember their names it was so long ago and so briefly),  from what i was told, didn’t really care that much.   an end to a life passes by with little fanfare (except for the prurient) and there were no tears (perhaps of relief, but now i am being unnecessarily cruel.)

no rest for the wicked, würzberg, germany

my only adult memory of him is exactly what you might expect from someone not involved in your life:  he, stiff & uncomfortable, dominant (“you’ve got five minutes to shit, shower & save,” this the day of his father’s funeral & he was marshaling the troops–his 2nd family, me, and grandma.  wisely, the sissies–two sisters, my cousins, his nieces–stayed in a hotel.)  i was there for two days and left the evening after the funeral (he carried grandpa’s ashes in the trunk to the veteran’s cemetery against the wishes of the rest of us –  grandpa should have rode in the car with us, his last car trip instead of in the trunk, alone–should i say “like an afterthought?”  But he was insistent, our pleas falling tears in the parking lot of the church, a chill February wind underlining our despair.)

i was 21, he 48; in my mind i believed there would be a spark of recognition, an innate bond that time could not have diminished, some little thing that would say, “father,” “son.”   today i do not believe i yearned for that, but i do believe that i held out some hope; who doesn’t want their father to acknowledge them as their child (and to take them in their fatherly arms and comfort them, even after such a long time, this particular eternity?)  there may have been flashes of an imagined childhood with a father even.  (that particular construct is difficult for me to imagine actually happened in my head at 21.  i was, after all, an out gay man, making my way through school and with a job and living on my own.  i had not thought of him on a conscious level for, well, forever.  an introspective look at my past would have taken a back seat to the current events of my life.)

on the ride to the train station that evening, he, at the wheel, turned to me and said, “do you have any questions for me?”  (which was more of a statement than a questioin.  i, sitting uncomfortably next to him, thinking only of the escape that was just down the road for me, asked, “why did you and mom get divorced?”  his reply: “there are some things, son, that are between a man and a woman and not to be discussed with others.”

and that was it.  i think now i should have held onto that “son” as an admission of his failure as a father and perhaps his reaching for some commonality between us, but i was put out that he asked for a question then muffed it, not even any prevarication or stutter, just the implication, a brick wall enclosing him from the possibility of love, the subtext “off limits–i won’t open up my life like that.”  me sitting there staring out the window and at the reflection of my angry face in the window, a rebuke to his absence and his refusal (or inability) to be what i wanted.

tickle me, würzberg, germany

our life together.   recently when i was having my yearly eye exam, the doctor said to me, “were you hit in the eye when you were a very young child?  that might account for the mark on your retina.”  from the photographic evidence i was a happy child (except for my first hair cut at a barbershop, but really, that’s to be expected); there was never any discussion of abuse, but the terms of the divorce were severe–no contact, no mail, no telephone calls, never to be seen again.  and i spent several summers at his parent’s house and there were never any ‘unexpected’ visits; he vanished as if a magician had pulled the fringed drapery off of the empty cabinet where only moments before he had been hiding.

my mother collected mothers-in-law & this one was no different.  even my father’s sister and her daughters (and their father) all played a part in my young life.  but it was not until he had taken his mother into his house as she reached her dotage, that he was discussed among us (this after my mother had died).  there were tales of elder abuse from my aunt — his sister — (and even from my grandmother, somewhere there are the sad letters i would receive from her, detailing her decline and unhappiness and his cruel behavior.)  but, and this is true, everyone was afraid of  him and nothing ever happened to ease her suffering until she died.   it is hard to conceive that all of her love was wasted on a son like that; this loving, generous, hard-working woman and her delicate, sad husband — how could my father have been who he was coming as he did from such a home?

even when queried by me, my mother would talk about our life in germany & then the boat across the atlantic (me, just three,  in a harness with a leash so i would not dive overboard on a childish whim) and our time at fort carson outside of colorado springs and back to fort sheridan north of chicago, but she would do all of that reminiscing without once mentioning my father.  the only shared memory where he figures prominently was the day they were picking cherries from a tree in the backyard of our home in highland park and he on a ladder showing off and she, “lee get down from there before you fall and break your fool neck,”  i on the lawn watching them bicker/banter back and forth.  seems true enough today to reach out and touch them both.  that life together.  but that is one of only two shining memories of him that i have of my own, the rest are just prompted from these photographs.

mr. & mrs. lee patrick with their son, robert, würzberg, germany

there are facts of course, many a matter of public record:  his birthday, his name, his service in the army (3 tours of vietnam, a bronze star), their marriage (i have the license, she ten years his senior) and their adoption of a little boy before he was born, but the facts mean nothing, they are nothing but the wire hanger on which this empty suit hangs.   they were a striking couple, i see that in the photographs i have of them before their marriage (their courtship in the service–my mother in the army as well–and a charming photo of her sitting on the grass in the yard of her future in-laws her head in a floral aunt jemima scarf her skirt arrayed around her with an 8 x 10 framed photo of lee & written below in the photograph’s margin in my grandmother’s hand, “for the birds.”)  that seemed like love to me.  love before i arrived.

what changed?  this and other questions plague me still.  those who might know all dead now.  i grab at ideas (for one, that the ‘house-maid’, my birth mother, her occupation was listed on my german birth certificate, and this father were paramours and i am his son, but that theory vehemently denied by all concerned, except, of course, my mother who would just change the subject when i brought it up.  why the evasion, mother?)  she did kid me on occasion, “your father was a hick from appalachia with a pimple on his nose and shoes two sizes too big for his bony feet.”  which would send me (depending on my mood) either into paroxysms of laughter or an embarrassment so deep my knees would blush.

the other, should you need the prompt, is abuse.  whether vocal or physical, either to my mother or to myself, my gut tells me there were some mean times chez nous.   this is only a feeling, a gut reaction based on the rest of his life and the relationships the rest of the family had to him (the fear of crossing him the most prominent and the scariest, to me.)  but yet.  when i look at these photos of me with him, how could i think anything but love existed between the two of us? and perhaps that is enough.  but it is not nor can it be, because there is more.

horsey-back ride at the sissies' home, akron, ohio

what changed?  if this life alone had been lived with us what would have changed?  what is it like to have a father?  how does that fact change your life?  would that change your character?  i have a hard time imagining this part of my fantasy life, the presence of a male authority figure the rarest of dreams & they never are finished, & sadly there is no difference.   i think there should be a difference.  not that i would have been a different person, my essence is natural to me, although when you look at how i was raised you might be inclined to raise a glass to the concept of nurture influencing the character of a person.

and of course, i was influenced by all of the women in my life, there is no doubt that i was, but, but, but what if?  what if i had had a man around, to teach me to dribble a basketball, or catch a baseball, or for that matter to even enjoy sports?  what if there had been a man around to talk to about sex & love & relationships after i had become a stranger to my mother (puberty.)  that secret talk that a father has with his son (they do, don’t they?  in this fantasia they do.) what else do fathers give their children?  do you know?  all i can imagine i needed to be an adult i learned from my mother.  it was enough.

but from what i have gleaned over the years, like children do; listening, but not, absorbing without prejudice the rumblings of adults & years later those words bubbling up to the surface (not for everyone, i am sure, but for me they are words painted in the faintest of colors on a scrim at the back of the stage, so subtly lit that you must just let them be & that is how you discern their meaning, more a sense of their meaning, an emotional association with vowels and consonants, grammar), it would not have been a loving relationship between he and i.  no, what i see (the sense, this psychic retrieval) is a life of discord; my being who i am in contradiction to his idea of what i should be.   and that he died alone, his last family unconcerned about his well-being, his whereabouts, his life (how not to be trite here) only drives home, confirms my suspicions, that looking back, that other memory, that it would not have been good for the two of us.

which, of course, depresses me.  me, so eager to have that bond, that relationship, but only now, not then, because, and this is the truth, i never gave him room in my head as a child.  i was never teased or shunned for not having a father (or for having two mothers, one the perfect substitute for a father), and any questions as to why there wasn’t a man in our lives, the answers, however they may have been formed, accepted as fact and not as an aberration by my childhood friends (god knows what their parents thought about it all, it being the time of perfect family models (the Cleavers, etc.)

the nuclear family (white gloves version)

there is the one other memory, one that is mine alone as i have never shared it.   i’ve been reading lately about how, as we grow older, our memories of our early childhood disappear very rapidly and that usually by the ages of 10 or 12 (or younger) those memories of when you were a baby, a toddler, a young child, have vanished.  and it is then that you start your memory bank for use later on as you grow older.

so i believe this is my earliest memory:  he has taken me with him to the army base where he is stationed (fort carson? possibly because of the sensory truths that have stayed with me), i am possibly three years old (or not much older, this event just before their divorce) and he is showing me off to his buddies.   have you ever been around a bunch of young men in the army?  that part is more of a feeling.  this part is true:  he lifts me up onto a tank with its engine running (the intent to take me in it for a spin around the barrack’s yard/parking lot, wherever tanks are on an army base) and he clambers up after me and lifts me up again onto the turret.  he slips down into the tank and reaches over the edge of the turret and lifts me up and we drop down into the tank (down there it is all man sweat, motor oil and that peculiar dirt smell that i always associate with the army.)  i wail.  i struggle for breath, i squirm and scream and slobber, tears racing down my face, hot & claustrophobic in this small space with my father–a rejection.  for both of us.

he carries me back up the inside of the turret & lifts me (still in full wail) out of the tank and sets me down outside of the hatch.  his buddies staring, their looks a mixture of disbelief, amusement and embarrassment (i imagine now), because he was furious with me, his anger stiffening his back, his voice a sharp rebuke to my behavior (i don’t believe he hit me.)

part two

to understand what this memory has meant to me we must now jump ahead in our story eleven years:  i am 14 and in the full bloom of puberty (awkward–clothes refusing to fit– and horny, passionate and aloof, too eager to please, in reality, a mess) and i am spending the summer with mary (my real father) in colorado springs not too far from fort carson.   besides going to church, a southern baptist brimstone & fire church with elmer gantry’s stunt double as a preacher (was elmer gantry enough of a description or would you prefer: a floppy mop of auburn hair brylcreemed into a pompadour, ruddy complected, heavy beard (a twice a day shaver), big barrel chest and like his wife a hugger?)   and his wife all bosom and talcum powder, forever grabbing you into a hug “bless you, child”ing you until you thought you’d faint from those great ham hocks of wobbly fat arms locked tight around your middle–well, at least my middle–your breathing erratic (and ever so slightly erotic, in spite of your inclinations, for there were definitely inclinations).

preacher man, wife and a confused 14 year old

i am volunteering at the church, helping with kid’s summer camp, but the pressure is on from mary to be contributing to my savings with a job.  she decides (as she always did, dominant as she was, a foghorn voice and a laugh that always shot out of her, pellets of sharp guttural guffaws, so distinct you could identify her location even if you couldn’t see her) that i will be cleaning apartments in her complex, filled as it with military and base personnel.   i post a card on the bulletin board in the common area and a day later i get my first call (and as it turns out, my only one.)

the mother, son and father (disguised as a woman)

it’s a lieutenant stationed at fort carson;  i meet with him that evening and he tells me that he’s never home, always out on maneuvers, but could i just clean up after him.  we set a price and a schedule, he gives me a key and that’s that.  (except, of course, the that  is that i have fallen madly in love with him.)   days later and i’ve let myself into his apartment and his smell overwhelms me.  it’s in the bathroom, it’s in the living room (he doesn’t use the kitchen), and it’s definitely in the bedroom.   it is the smell i remember from my father and the tank, motor oil, male sweat and the red dirt of the plain at the base of the rocky mountains.

the dirt rings the bathtub, caked on the sides and all i can do is sit there on the edge of the tub and fantasize about him naked, me washing him after field maneuvers.  i wander from the bathroom without cleaning it (although i did rub my fingers over the ring of dirt in the bath and held them close to my nose, a strong intake of breath) into the bedroom where the bedsheets are in a knot at the bottom of the bed, pillows on the floor, which i pick up and place back on the bed and promptly lay down on my back, hands clasped behind my head, dizzy from all the blood fleeing to my crotch.

i do not fantasize about having sex with him, that would be too much of a leap of faith in my imagination at the time, but i do imagine playing house with him–whatever that would entail–perhaps a cocktail waiting for him when he comes back from the base at night, dinner in the oven, me in an apron, cleaned up and expectant, catering to his whims (only years later would those be of a sexual nature), taking his boots off, rubbing his feet and inhaling that scent–that red dirt, motor oil and man sweat.

after cleaning his apartment i would go back to mary’s and draw a bath and soak until the pads of my fingers shriveled into those little prune faces and masturbate, maybe twice while i had the apartment to myself, but still behind the closed door of the bathroom, my eyes squeezed shut and the images of the men in my life flicking by–my lieutenant, the preacher and my father from that day in the tank, when he held me in his arms while i wailed, with the smell of the earth all around us and the noise of the engine drowning out his love.

a sunday morning w/saturday photographs (foreword)

if you’re not careful, one day can run into the other quite easily out here.  the weather, on saturday for instance, was not that different from the weather on sunday, he said saturday night at around 9:50 p.m.  he’s even said that there are subtle differences between one sunrise from the  next, & we all know that that is not really true.  for evidence, please note photo above.  that is the sun rising on the right.  need there be more explanation?

but if you are paying attention, there are details that change everything one day to the next.  that statement is not true.  please direct your eye (& what else would you direct?) to the seascape in the photograph directly above this paragraph (a paragraph you’ll note that has no indentation, it’s only considered a paragraph because he has said it is, but that does not make it so, the reader is advised to maintain their distance & to not impose their own righteousness upon the text,) but back to the photograph, what was to be said?  the sea, the sky, some vegetation framing it.  a political act?

you would think not, but you would be wrong.  the very existence of the image is a revolution, a fight for freedom, & even this trite saccharine scene (a tree fern frond unfurls its edwardian moustaches) embodies the power to upend the status quo.

this then is the message that you will find throughout this forthcoming group of posts, a book, serialized if you will, that begins today & ends this coming friday.

trees, the early years

Nothing about these two pictures (you can imagine how it went down, can’t you?  “you stand by the tree in your easter best & i’ll take your picture, then i will & you’ll take mine,”) seems extraordinary, a mother on the left, relaxed & happy (perhaps even content today); her son (with braces) smiling on the right, stiff & awkward in that pre-teen/early adolescence “i’m as graceful as a cantaloupe,” phase (all arms & legs & “where did those big feet come from?”, desperate for body/facial hair that sure sign of manhood, or a deeper voice, anything that would ground you, plant you firmly to the ground.)

This is what you do, when you are just two (before someone thought of holding your arm out with your phone camera turned toward you & your loved one, snapping a shot on the run,) you would take turns taking each others’ photo (a kodak brownie used in this case, circa 1965.) & if i project from this distance now you’ll forgive me; there appears to be just a touch of innocence (like a light coating of frost/frosting on the grass/cake of this life — at least for now,) tinting these two portraits & with that comes some sadness (innocence & melancholy hand-in-hand, constant companions.)

but trees.  this home came without.  the slab it was built on rested on landfill; the yard 50′ wide x 150′ long sloping down to the alley, two tire ruts delineating its path.  i liked the alley for that reason, because it was still country wild & even by the time i moved away several years later it was still just the two muddy/dusty/gravelly ruts it had always been.

during the ‘mary’ years (see the page “all about my mother–the hope chest”) we had, by ourselves, fenced the backyard (i dug all of the post holes.  have you ever used a post-hole digger?  it’s like a two handled shovel & i imagine in even the best of circumstances it is a miserable piece of torture devised by adults & foisted upon children as an excellent way to strengthen your upper body, if they even used that excuse, because truly, it is an excruciatingly difficult process, this hole digging,) but regardless, the fence went up and inside of it, following the perimeter of its alternating thick and thin boards & round rough-hewn posts, we planted 50/60 (it seemed at the time to be 100) lombardy poplars as a wind screen.

but those were planted as a form of child slavery & although as they grew to amazing heights & were a source of wonder & delight for years, they meant nothing to me.  (there were even three planted in the parkway in front of our home (just to the left & off camera in the photos above, between the newly laid sidewalk on our block & the street.)  it is the elm that we are standing by that i am writing about today.

it was an orphan, a sucker shoot that had grown on its own out of an embankment two houses to the south of us.  we (the neighborhood kids & i) used to sit on the top of this little canyon watching cars travel up & down van buren street, playing “that’s mine” — which entailed claiming the niftiest car coming down the street before someone else did, ford mustangs were the most popular among us — or just sitting there, hidden by lilac bushes & that ability most children have of disappearing into a landscape — the bane of most parents “now where did that child go?” — you could be just feet from them, but if you were good, you were camouflaged by your youth & the desire to stay outside & play longer & perhaps be just a bit disobedient, which for a child is a thrilling thing (those minor delinquencies.)

this elm, though, was slated for demolition, the homeowner realizing that it was growing at a peculiar angle overhanging his parking spaces for the duplexes that anchored our corner (willsie avenue at van buren street.)  i don’t know why i said “i’ll take it,” it may have been that i was the rescuer of the neighborhood, the one kid on the block that all the others came running to when there was an animal emergency or other calamity that required immediate attention in the absence of adults (all of whom worked, there were no stay-at-home moms on our street, well, at least none that you could trust with your childhood dramas & triumphs.)

but take it i did, digging at it’s convoluted roots (one long root, perhaps 6′ long that jutted out from its trunk at an odd angle was particularly bedeviling) & then dragging it (as you can see it is ever so slightly taller than me) over to our front yard (don’t worry, i asked permission to plant it there,) & struggled to dig a hole deep enough for its roots (& that one long scraggly root,) all of this by myself (it’s amazing how your friends will absent themselves when there’s the slightest hint of sweat involved in anything that has a purpose not of their own devising.)

for ever after, it was ‘robert’s tree’; it grew as quickly as i did & fast became the shade tree an elm is destined to be.  important photos were always taken under its branches (graduations, visits from long lost relatives & my mother’s incredibly large circle of friends (the ones from so many of her past lives that it was difficult to understand how one person could know so many people & that they all loved her, seemingly as much as i did,) birthdays (not winter ones) & any special occasion that required a photograph to be taken, the mementos of our future.

the last time i saw it was in 1985, long after i had left home to have my own life (& plant more trees.)  it was even bigger than i imagined it could ever be, & like a parent with their grown child, i brimmed over with pride at how magnificent it had become & that i had helped it when it needed it most.

opie, eakins & baldessari (not necessarily in that order) part 3

not unlike the eakins exhibit that is its next door neighbor at lacma, the catherine opie show of large-format chromogenic photographs concerns itself with sports, in this case she has focused entirely on high school football.

opie’s jounalistic eye takes the viewer on a journey of exploration; one that i believe is echoed in the stances & facial expressions of her subjects in the portraits on view.   the documentary aspect of her eye is also apparent in the long-view landscapes included in this exhibit.

but let’s discuss impressions.  if, like us, you come to this exhibit from the darkly lit (& darkly painted walls) of the eakins show, you will be blinded by the brightness of the colors.  the galleries are skylit (clerestory windows), the walls are painted snow white & the colors, the colors are polyester brilliant; the football jerseys of the players day-glo in comparison to the somber aesthetic of  eakins’ costumes & nudes.

my companions offered me an interesting perspective on the images of the young men captured by opie.  parents of a grown male child (an only child), s., the mother, immediately started parsing the looks of the subjects.  whereas i was struck by composition, color & form and how they were communicating opie’s vision, s. was commenting on their fragility that they were desperately trying to mask through stance & facial expression, “but you can see how delicate, how fearful, they are just by their skin, their posture, their eyes,” she opined.

this conversation then made us realize that these are the faces (and bodies) of the young men who are defending our country right now.  when you read the obituaries of the war dead, they are invariably just a few years removed from the glory they may have had on this high school football field.  the poignancy of this realization, for us at least, brought home the inequities & folly of war.  (football is war.)

opie’s landscapes, peopled in the lower third of the image, dramatically defined the fragile nature of life.  the comparison of our small lives against the grandeur & power of nature was shocking & shattering.  the subject in these photos is only tangentially the football players/game in progress; it is the long view (not a pun), it is the omnipotent view, it is man’s folly that he can control the passage of time, that he can control nature itself (even human nature is impossibly weak.)

& finally we talked about how the pretty white boys’ lives were pre-ordained in spite of their warrior stance, their lives would unfold in the most predictable of ways.  the high school & college.  the bmoc attitude.  the legacy of success handed down by their fathers (senior to junior to III) & yet & yet, if you look close enough, really look at their eyes, their hands, their shoulders, the weight of the stance (in this photo “dusty” has his weight on one foot) you will see & perhaps smell, the fear.

we left this exhibit (& the eakins) feeling we had seen a history of sport in america, but that the artists had given us much, much more; that for the past couple of hours, we had been witness to the lives, that we had shared in the glories & defeats of these american lives.

out of focus (au naturel)

there are times when, in spite of your best intentions, every aspect of your life seems just a wee bit out of focus.    yesterday seemed to be one of those days.    even the belladonna amaryllis, their nakedness such a lure, refused to be seen clearly.

i pushed the button on the camera relentlessly & without even a glance at the playback option to see if what i was so intent on capturing was clearly in focus.  it’s not like i hadn’t taken hundreds of photographs utilizing the macro setting before without incident.

but yesterday  the flowers were defiant.  “enough! ” they declaimed.  “we are tired of your incessant invasion of our privacy.  stealing our beauty & sharing it willy-nilly, with this person & that.  how do we know if they respect our beauty?  how can we be sure they are worthy?”

i was dumbfounded by their resistance, “there is no way to gauge our audience’s appreciation of your perfection,” i lamented, “we can only hope that they will leave a comment eulogizing your striking symmetry & elegant sense of color & form or click on ‘like’ or touch their cursor to their <3.”

my hopeful plea seemed to assuage a small portion of their worry & ever so slowly (& thoughtfully) they slipped back into focus; their beauty all the more striking for having been momentarily denied me (& you.)

without further contemplation of their plaint, i flip-flopped my way down the gravel path, pausing just once to face squarely the beauty & magnificence of this rose that i now share with you.

strangers, intimate portraits

This past Sunday it was sunny & balmy, a typically beautiful, perfect day in southern California.  I spent about 45 minutes out and about in Long Beach approaching strangers & asking them if i might photograph them for my blog.   Everyone I spoke with allowed me to take their picture.  Because I like to use the macro setting on my camera I asked if they’d mind if I got up close to them & to a person they all agreed.

This man had beautiful shoulder length hair, but I was fascinated by the way his girlfriend so casually kept track of him (& of the time.)

She took my direction to stand facing toward the sun & in profile & calmly waited while I fiddled with the settings on my camera; I love the various textures & the little river of hair that’s escaped down the back of her neck, a telling detail that reminded me of a flirtatious, but shy young woman just discovering her beauty & sway over the opposite sex.

When I came across this young father (as tall as I, but strapping) I was afraid that he wouldn’t allow me access, but his wife (just to his right) beamed a yes & he gently lifted his brand-new baby in one hand while I stood just a foot away.   Life is fragile.

By the time I got to this gentleman, I’d thought it might be entertaining to match these photos up with paintings by known artists & right away thought of him as an aged Van Gogh (what if he had lived?) with his straw hat & the paintings he might have created.  The Van Gogh painting that I had in mind looks like this:

Yes, yes, I realize it’s a stretch, but it’s my blog & I’ll imagine it as I wish.  But I believe that behind the sunglasses were eyes as wildly intense and visionary as Van Gogh’s.  He was the only one of my subjects who asked me for my blog’s address.  I hope he visits!

This young man was with a group of five or six twenty-somethings & when I asked him if I could take a photograph of his tattoos, his friends (as one) said:  “People always ask to take pictures of your tattoos!” with much giggling & good-natured ribbing.   Actually, I was jealous of his skinny jeans, ’cause I’m past the age to wear them now, but I know I would’ve rocked a pair, what with my long legs & sassy attitude.

Not everyone can wear harvest gold.   Oh, & tattoo sleeves.

May I just say that the hat perfectly fit the man.  His nose was turned up just like the brim & it was so striking I had to stop him.

A young couple were holding hands & when I asked if I could photograph their interlocked hands, she blushed (which completely endeared me to them.)  It wasn’t until I got home & was editing the photos that I noticed the Barbie Doll Case & realized that it added just the right symbolic note (every little girl’s dream of a perfect love & a perfect life.)

These girls were so beautiful & (so young) & I was worried that they’d think I was some creepy old man, but when I spoke with them and said “I know you’re young, so if you feel the slightest bit uncomfortable with me photographing you, I’d completely understand…” and they just giggled and said “how do you want us?”  Are teenagers more mature these days or has the digital age superseded the need for discretion?

It’s hard to imagine why anyone smokes these days (full disclosure: I smoked beginning in 1973 & started quitting in 1991 & it took me until 2002 to finally break free of its awful grip.  I’d quit for a year or two & then start up again & smoke for another year, then quit, then start, yecchh.)  But I saw the diamond ring & the burning cigarette & the stubby, oddly shaped  fingers & thought that it perfectly represented the ‘glamor’ and the ‘heartbreak’ of smoking, allegories abound if you look for them.

I so had these glasses in the summer of 1978!  I wore them day or night, no matter the light (glamorous at night, necessary during the day to hide the hangover.)  Somewhere in a drawer or in a box there’s a polaroid of me at a party dancing with them on (I’d crashed the party with a friend of mine, we weren’t their ‘kind’ of people, or we may’ve been, but had angered them with some smart-ass, ice-queen remark.  Regardless, it was a fantastic party!)

I had no doubt that he would grant me permission, I was, however, surprised that he didn’t know who Brueghel the Elder was.