The Noumenon Revelation

Never Learnt To Share

2012-02-15T11:02:00.000-06:00

screenshot from a video

The Last Two Sentences

2012-02-14T21:03:00.000-06:00

I wrote on this blog this morning, internet-translated out of and then back into English:

Another person, and I hope that nothing, and yet, from my literally woke up with the "advance" constraints. Now, to clear the scheme has attracted around a box he built!

* * *

And, finally, since it is Valentine's Day, the greatest love story, Ours, also translated out of and back into English:

You sang, sung, will continually sing to me, "When we leave, the tree moon."

Manifold

2012-02-14T11:24:00.001-06:00

I have been equally as likely to believe that what I consider My Self is stable & singular / is chaotic & multifarious.

Who I am to others, however, seems like it can only be Manifold.

When I was younger, this idea scared me, made me feel permanently vulnerable to new perceptions of me.

Now the idea of never fully knowing my self (as if I am not my person) holds my head under waves of envy.
I froth at the mouth when I think of this becoming reality.

From someone else, I expect anything; and yet, from my own self I literally awake with 'pre-set' limitations.

Y.E. Torres

Now to erase the outline I drew around the box I built!

Two Accidental Sets of Toes (four months apart)

2012-02-12T21:55:00.000-06:00

* * *

Says & Cannot Say

2012-02-12T08:56:00.002-06:00

I am neither one of those who accuse her nor one of those who see her as blameless.
I think she is a woman who had the audacity and the courage to get burnt by what she says and what she cannot say, and that she makes communicable the truth of desire.
- Kirsteva on Simone de Beauvoir in her 2007 lecture, "The Reinvention of the Couple"

self-portrait with self

In Lieu of a Voyeur

2012-02-11T17:26:00.003-06:00

This is what I look like after crying for two days, two weeks ago exactly:

And here's a small piece of me; pieces are all I have given:

People who share a lot find safety in their sharing; I find safety in the language used, not the story.

The story is always nonsense, even if it's true, especially mine. (Yours can be whatever you want it to be.)

Then again, tendencies (like beliefs) are no more than "a broken vase, glass; a broken body, parts," he said last night, a tiramisu between us. When you tear the world into a thousand minor pieces, it's impossible to distinguish where you begin and the world ends.

But tear is all we can do! For instance, my hand in the furnace of these leaves:

Last Wednesday I went to the park. I was sitting on the ground holding a baby when a young girl came to me with her head bent and whispered, "Will you watch me roll down the hill?" She pointed at the hill. Of course I would, I would love to watch you roll down the hill. "Will the baby watch me?" She did not look at the baby, only further bent her head. Yes of course the baby would watch her.

And as she stepped away, she paused, touched the baby on top of the head and said, "Watch me, baby."

The girl, the hill, the rolling:

The baby, the not watching:

I know people who save my photos/files for the sole purpose of Proof. The proof varies, no doubt, but I have been told (by more than one person) that the way I title my photos tells a tale. Now, because I know this, I title photos falsely: misnomers, misleaders, doodles, accusations and false proclamations.

It's a disgusting, shameful sort of fun I have at my own expense now.
The ferocious shadow puppets I continue to build are invisible to everyone but me:

Don't they say something about water and teaspoons?
What if there is no water and there are no teaspoons?

As if you thought I couldn't get creepier.

2012-02-10T15:17:00.003-06:00

Before I went out of town last weekend, I uploaded the photos/videos from a camera I've been using about twice a year for the last three or four years. It's a small digital camera that I bought for random reasons, and there are photos on it that I truly cannot place, some videos that are endearing and made me momentarily sentimental.

And then, there is this video.

It is situated between a video of a minor fireworks display and a video of my first time to be in a snowstorm. Shouldn't everyone have a video of sleeping girls on an airplane? I took a photo from this moment too (it looks exactly the same), but if I remember correctly, the second-closest woman to the camera was moments away from busting me while I shot this clip! Fun times.

And I mentioned this in my post with the photo, but I was reading Kawabata's The House of Sleeping Beauties around the time this was taken. Therefore I did not try to put my finger in any of their mouths.

No More Talk About the Old Days.

2012-02-10T14:22:00.000-06:00

I | want | to eat your | artichoke | heart.

Where Sound Is Not, Silence Is.

2012-02-08T08:26:00.000-06:00

Rhythmically we are very into a primal feel, stomps, pulses etc, which are the rhythms that are naturally wired in all of us. The use of negative space within bounce is also a mantra. The emphasis is on feeling that point where sound is not happening within a beat, making silence the groove.

- Flatlander (member of the band Death Grips), here

"It Sounds Like a Broadcast Because It Is a Broadcast."

Bashfulleigh, Laundromat at Noon, Burlington

2012-02-07T08:30:00.000-06:00

Dear,

I like the way your fingertips curl under your fingers. And more.

Sincerely.

Concession of the Spectator

2012-02-03T09:08:00.002-06:00

Asked why he acted, L. answered:
'Because people don't know what they are like, and I think I can show them.'

- Bertolt Brecht (and, through him, Laughton) on theatre's often flat and stereotyped portraits

Modi's Watery Eyes

Addie introduced me to Rose,

2012-02-01T18:42:00.002-06:00

and Rose took this amazing photo of us(*) on the Bolivar Ferry:

The seagulls chased us. There was no horizon ahead, and there was less horizon behind.
It won't surprise you to read that I was in love with This Kind of Day.

The last time I saw Rose before this trip, she took this photo of me at the Arboretum:

These two photos have a lot in common.
They are oddly akin to how I see myself: little blocks of clarity amongst the well-lit fog.

(* Addie and Me, if you like that better)

The nature of Nature & the nature of Time.

2012-01-29T16:28:00.002-06:00

I want it all to stand still. Not to enjoy it more, not to take it less for granted, not necessarily.
I want it to stand still so I can pretend I don't exist in it. Just for it to be. I like the idea of it Being.

It Being without the messes I make.

* * *

(I screengrabbed the above poem from: here)

Addie & The Cherries (Pt. 1)

2012-01-29T08:21:00.000-06:00

* * *

There might be beauty. / To me, it feels like 10,000 miles of Daisies.
- Donald Revell

* * *

(and, two photos of me, taken by Addie, moments later, on my camera)

Brittany's Ruthie's Interior

2012-01-27T19:33:00.001-06:00

Mine was the Photo-of-the-Day, um, yesterday:

Yesterday was My Day. And yet. I fall behind. It's a Sometimes Trait.

2 Photos, One Place, 2 Days Apart; Then, 2 Un-Same Eyes

2012-01-25T17:14:00.000-06:00

To be consciously aware of your entire body in one moment would, ironically, have to be consciously repressed.

The same goes for external factors including the idea of space, light receptivity, our own pasts, etc.

There's so much air touching the bottom of my feet, my right foot, my right pinky toe!

This reminds me of the story where a king is told his own grandson is destined to kill him. To change his destiny, he locks his only child -- a childless daughter -- in a tall building with no doors but open to the sky. Of course, she's impregnated by gold (something to do with Zeus, I've forgotten) and eventually has a child who eventually escapes and eventually grows up without knowing his destiny but eventually faces his grandfather whom he eventually murders.

Perhaps I'm only putting off my eventualities. So be it. I'm locking my fears in a ceiling-less tower.

I'm more comfortable telling you what Scares me and less with what Scared.

Birthday Flowers, Koschka & Ma-Bou

2012-01-22T15:33:00.001-06:00

I archive private photos on my flickr page.

The images upload in an order that is half-funcitonal/ half-random.

It makes little gems like this:

I don't often share these things with you; thought perhaps I might today.

Reaping, Sowing & Other Moral Tales

2012-01-22T09:02:00.000-06:00

"You made me forget myself. I thought I was someone else, someone good."

The Last Time I Visited the Sea

2012-01-21T11:50:00.000-06:00

admittedly sounds like Ages Ago but was really about two weeks, when I drove there by myself and did nothing except:

* ride the ferry twice as the only non-automotive passenger, although right before I got there, a group of 40 or so pedestrians rode the ferry for a good couple of hours (so I heard)

* photograph two strangers feeding the seagulls on the back of the boat and take a photo of a ferry-worker (at their request)

* walk to a part of the ocean where I've never seen anyone else, not one human form ever, and I've been going there for years

* step barefoot into the sea for only moment while the sun crossed below the horizon and into someone else's morning

Not what, not when, not where.

2012-01-20T19:46:00.002-06:00

Wanna know what my favorite experience is when first seeing my own photographs in positive?

Not having a clue what I photographed for a matter of moments.Not what, not when, not where.

This morning I found a fully-shot roll of film in my car. (This happens a lot.)

I developed it today, and it literally took me about ten seconds to realize what this image was.

7 Photographs in 1 Night

2012-01-19T22:01:00.002-06:00

I've been thinking about Non-Correlational photographs.

I don't think that's a term, but I want to make photographs about it nonetheless.

'About' isn't the right word either.

I want to make photograph that nod to a word that doesn't exist but that gives each hearer/sayer a new idea.

Is there a better way to learn to swim?

By tossing yourself in a river with an inflated lifevest and a magical bag of heavy rocks tied to one ankle?

"You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness."

2012-01-17T10:08:00.002-06:00

I shared this on Facebook yesterday, about 22 million listeners behind. How much I admire/covet musical talent! And like other talents, what I really mean is: I admire people who take their creative work seriously, alongside a giant handful of Lightness. Not to mention that, like my soapboxes on sharing & photography, song covers highlight my strong belief that great work is often (mostly!) made from re-making what your creative peer did first. I don't undervalue the person who creates first; I only suggest that the ego of being/feeling-like the sole originator gets in the way of moving forward - or moving laterally. (Addendum: I also admire people who create in the wake of someone else's initial wave and don't over-apologize for it or lessen the worth of what they've made anew. Haven't I heard something about imitation and flattery?)

In other words, the audacity of this performance tickles my fancy-love buttons.

Beating, Red, Giant, Big

2012-01-16T15:43:00.000-06:00

The newest issue of Photography & Culture includes an interview of me rambling on the nature of unattractiveness, lushness of car culture, other people's Facebook photos, circumstantial pornography, temporal & quick-footed & everlasting change, etc.

I posted it previously a number of different places, but only moments ago realized I hadn't linked to it here. The theme of the current issue (in which I am featured) is celebrity, and honestly, the entire journal is really very interesting. There are hard copies, pdfs and free trials. The interview, titled A Big Giant Red Beating Heart for Chaos, was conducted by Jack Lechner, a creative thinker/maker who, though a stranger to me then, is a friend to me now.

Read it, Hold it, See it: Here

And no mean laughing at my superfluous use of the words "something" and "that." Or my divergence off-topic. Or, or, or.
Laughing with me, however, oh mostly definitely Yes.

Yesterday.

2012-01-16T08:16:00.000-06:00

the perfect prologue from a Tomaž Šalamun poem:

"Children, go to sleep on the train from Trieste to Vienna.
There's nothing to see along the way."

- my grandmother Mila Gulic, 1891-1978

It's Mine & It's Yours

2012-01-13T23:47:00.000-06:00

This is Jada.

She is my sister's daughter's daughter.

She is my Grandniece.

Tomorrow we celebrate her 8th birthday.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven thus far.

Can you imagine your age in the single digits?

I don't at all mean that existentially. I try to imagine it now, try to count my age on my two hands.

She took this photo of me on Christmas Day:

And I took this photo of her:

Like any seven-almost-eight-year-old, she's picky. I'm her favorite one time, I'm ignored the next.

But there's no front about the love or lack of; she doesn't apologize for giving me more or less of her company, and I like that.

And it's useless to ask her why, to try and figure it out for yourself.

Turns out, she had the flu on Christmas. So I got the flu too.

She gave more magical things too, more metaphysical and less biotic.

This is the moment I should write KIDS! and make sure the exclamation point is attached, punch you lightly in the shoulder while I write it. Then we laugh together and share stories about how tiny people make us feel young and wish we were that age again and perhaps how impressed with are with their maturity/imagination or how we deal with our resentment toward their potential.

I don't feel any of those ways. I don't know, I'm missing the Romanticize-Kids gene.

Like adults, sometimes you tumble for one or two of them.

Is it silly to write that I respect Jada? In a non-wistful way.

We were born almost three decades apart, around the same time of day.

Tomorrow, we celebrate together.

"I cantered out here. Now I'm galloping back."

2012-01-11T23:00:00.001-06:00

Less than a minute ago I mis-heard a song lyric say:

There is no love where there is no gamble.

Well, by god, I'll say it right. Because it cannot, CANNOT, be oversaid:

There Is No Love Where There Is No Gamble.

Couple A, The Past, Short Ago

Couple A, The Past, Long Ago

* * *

'Phoenix' is a verb. As it should be.

I took one photo on someone else's camera in my backyard. This is it.

2012-01-09T13:10:00.002-06:00

And this is the photo he took of me the next day, the next image, in the Arboretum's backyard:

Loving (Your / My) Repeating

2012-01-05T08:36:00.000-06:00

As I was saying every one always is repeating the whole of them. As I was saying sometimes it takes many years of listening, seeing, living, feeling, loving the repeating there is in some before one comes to a completed understanding. This is now a description, of such a way of hearing, seeing, feeling, living, loving, repetition.

Mostly every one loves some one's repeating. Mostly every one then, comes to know then the being of some one by loving the repeating in them, the repeating coming out of them. There are some who love everybody's repeating, this is now a description of such loving in one...

Mostly every one loves some one's repeating. Every one always is repeating the whole of them. This is now a history of getting completed understanding by loving repeating in every one the repeating that always is coming out of them as a complete history of them. This is now a description of learning to listen to all repeating that every one always is making of the whole of them.

Now I will tell of the meaning to me in repeating, of the loving there is in me for repeating.

Always from the beginning there was to me all living as repeating. This is now a description of loving repeating as being. This is now a history of learning to listen to repeating to come to a completed understanding.

Gertrude Stein, from The Making of Americans

* * *

Piano vs. Preparation

2012-01-01T13:13:00.000-06:00

This morning I learned that a "Prepared Piano" is when you change the timbre of a piano by placing a foreign object inside the instrument, usually on its strings. This is important for me to know; I can't say why yet.

Or that's drama of the holiday writing.

* * *

Believe it or not, I only today, literally New Years Day, realized that my blog here (Yes, that's me; hello, fourth wall.) has become more about my experience and impressions of photography than the explicit details of my experience and impressions as me.

Will it change? Will I change? Do I want to? I don't know yet, and it doesn't matter to me.

The realization of what I'm doing is more important to me than the decision of what to do, if that makes any sense.

I have left out many grotesque and superfluous details, it's true. For instance, that my bathwater smelled like shea butter, bleach and mesquite this morning, that the light over my couch right now is far more blue than yellow which is uncommon, that I have a voluptuous red papercut on the back of my left hand from who knows what last night and it's painful and right atop a vein and makes me think of how the inside of my neck must look without the skin.

That the thing about which I feel the most shame in life has to do with email and not just one email but many and specifically a great lack of email on my part, that making photo-collage seems to be a staving-off of another project maybe a sort of Pasttime Until but I don't know what comes after the Until, that often I am happier than I let anyone know which is saying a lot because I might be the happiest person most people know.

That the same goes for my sadness which doesn't seem to have a bottom and doesn't render me passive but active and I have to regulate that part of myself with a steel chain mostly because it doesn't scare me mostly because it's the only power that matters and it's the only power we have.

That the sunlight bothers my eyes every single morning if I work on the computer but I've gotten comfortable bending my head to the right or left instead of moving my chair a few inches and this is what's happening as I type this, that I don't think anyone has more coincides in their life but that some find more enjoyment in pointing out and bragging about their set of coincidences to others and I'm specifically talking about myself.

That I wrote a sentence here then deleted it then wrote an explanation about the deletion and then deleted it too, that I have a long and growing list of common photo pet peeves and am too embarrassed and proud to list them in part because the moment I say I dislike one thing in art I end up wanting to disprove myself and am successful, that I consciously do not get to know my neighbors because I don't want to be social in my private space, that my heart races when someone knocks on my door, that when I began to write the reasons why my heart races I realized how extensive and brutally honest I'm feeling and decided against it.

That I prefer watching movies alone on the first viewing, that two weeks ago I had to hire a trash service to remove piles and piles of bags of my past, that I threw away items I should have returned or given to a new home or loved again, that I would never say I want to start anew because I've done it and it's fun until you realize starting anew is always in your head no matter how far you move or what you trash or who you think you've forgotten, that I've been forgotten and they were right to forget.

Foregrounding the Grotesque & the Pure

2011-12-30T23:22:00.000-06:00

Nabokov (Dear Goodness! Just writing his name!) says this about chess in his autobiography, Speak, Memory:

Deceit, to the point of diabolism, and originality verging upon the grotesque, were my notions of strategy; and although in matters of construction I tried to conform, whenever possible, to classical rules, such as economy of force, unity, weeding out of loose ends, I was always ready to sacrifice purity of form to the exigencies of fantastic content, causing form to bulge and burst like a sponge-bag containing a small, furious devil.

I don't consciously think of this when I make photos, but I certainly do when I edit (meaning: decide to share).

Oh, Nabokov knew that, concerning creation, being Divine was not enough, being Antithetical was not enough.

To satisfy the tactility of the imaginative self, both must be present, in lesser and minor degrees depending.

Forget how to do it once it is done.

CHW & CHS

2011-12-28T13:35:00.000-06:00

Two years in a row now I have been given wonderful, old cameras for Christmas.

If only my deep love and gratitude could stand behind the photos I make with these cameras! Could itself release the shutter!

These are from the first roll made with my newest gift, out of order but taken within the same one hour. All but two taken from the passenger's seat of a quickly moving car. My, how I wanted to shoot more, but the clouds have been like a pot-cover lately, and, after being around so many kids at Christmas, I have the flu.

There's no material object I love more than a fully manual camera. No automatic focus, no light meter, no pre-selected settings.

Just you and how you add light to the film. I don't know if I'll get over that. Never the full suspension of disbelief.

Jamie & I

2011-12-26T11:25:00.001-06:00

Because I shoot film, the physical output of time falsely (in my opinion, falsely) aligns itself in a linear progression. There is a beginning, middle and end; however, the line of time works like an arrow with the arrowheads removed. There's a forward movement, but which way is forward? You place a negative strip (24 images, say) on a table, and there's an undeniable story, you can make one up, whether you move from left to right or right to left. It doesn't matter if the negative strip is upside down; it doesn't matter if you stand on a different side of the table.

One moment directly influences the next. The future influences the present as much as the past influences it.

I've written here in a [previous post] that the order of photos often intrigues me more than the actual photos themselves.

These photos were taken back-to-back on a roll that contained no other photos of faces. Which one drove the next?

Jamie

& I

Motion Minus Curbs & Cautions

2011-12-19T22:14:00.000-06:00

Immensity is within ourselves. It is attached to a sort of expansion of being that life curbs and caution arrests, but which starts again when we are alone. As soon as we become motionless, we are elsewhere; we are dreaming in a world that is immense. Indeed, immensity is the movement of motionless man.

- Gaston Bachelard (from Poetics of Space)

Purpose Vs. Accident

2011-12-19T15:29:00.000-06:00

I have a photography/blogger friend who thinks that you should always admit when a photograph:

is exactly what you visualize / is nothing like what you visualize.

Said photographer believes that this would begin to separate the people who essentially paint light onto a negative with mechanical means, knowing their instrument's potential and its nuances, from the people who randomly shoot what they intuit as interesting and are 99% surprised at what shows up in a print.

I spent (spend) a lot of time learning about the mechanisms of photography, from inside the metal body of the camera to paperweight and lens filters for printing. And because of that I have to spend even more time forgetting things the moment I pick up a camera. You can't let what you know be what you make. Of course, it's more fun to not make work in total darkness (for long), but the reason people love 'Found Photos' is because the anonymous photographers are not shooting with their learned tools - they're shooting with their hands, their eyes, their whatever else it is that says Release the Shutter Now.

Knew / Could Not Have Known / Was Mistaken / Mystified

Plus, I say that every photo falls between Purpose & Accident. Never one side or the other.

Sodade, said Ms. Évora.

2011-12-17T21:46:00.000-06:00

There's the loss that accompanies knowing.

And then there's the loss that accompanies knowing only that you did not, could not or would not know.

The trick is not to value one type of knowledge over the other.

Gosh, I don't know; perhaps it's the opposite.

Maybe the value's in decidedly valuing one -- whole-heartedly, doubtlessly.

Don't trust me because I trust everything.

Especially my own self.

To my detriment and to my blessing.

* * *

Saudade / Sodade

The '7th Most Difficult Word to Translate.'

Or, as A.F. Bell puts it, the "vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist...

a turning towards the past or towards the future."

Then, Nature.

2011-12-14T07:30:00.000-06:00

What could have been

can never be fulfilled.

Nothing in photography represents the 'what could have been' more than the multiple exposure made on film.

I'm so gratified by these inabilities to be gratified.
They are closer than second-nature. Nature, then.

You are worth hundreds of sparrows.

2011-12-13T22:06:00.001-06:00

"I'm so sorry. My spirit's rarely in my body."

3 Photographs & 2 Screengrabs

2011-12-13T09:24:00.000-06:00

Today I gave away three things, to people who don't know me from here.

2011-12-10T17:36:00.001-06:00

The truth is that I rarely scan anything, especially collages.
I know I should. I know, I know.

When I'm about to give them away or put them in a box that I won't label, sometimes I scan them.
But not always.

One Storm (plus) Two Paths (equals)

2011-12-07T21:37:00.001-06:00

My Unaffections Are Changed.

2011-12-05T21:40:00.001-06:00

In a recent interview, Carrie Oeding writes,

People like to look back and find meaning after the fact about how they got here, some of this is true and some is storytelling. Storytelling is meaning-making, I understand, but I don’t always trust it. This distrust works well in essays as it creates a constant need for questioning and rethinking.

Someone I know only from the internet sent this interview to me as a link, mostly because Oeding lived and worked as a writer and artist in Houston. I'd never heard of Oeding before today, but I read through the interview with delight, mostly because 1) I like her tone, and I'm very picky when it comes to tone and, 2) I'm a hound for reading about other people's inspirations. I don't receive a lot of book/art/movie/etc suggestions, so these snippets are suggestions I always take. I don't know them; they don't know me; therefore, there's an equivalency between the relationship of sharing that tickles my fancy.

There is another part of the interview I like. Paragraphs after she distinguishes between the past and the stories we concoct to Tell/Make Sense about the past, she states that she admires Henry Darger (yes, that was the sound of my heart beating more quickly, simply from typing his name) for there being

no line between [his] artistic and personal biograph[y].

It's hard to end an interview well. There's a string that you're supposed to tie around the end as if the entire conversation were a bundle to be shipped. It's hard to refute that bundle, hard to not fiddle with the string, hard not to tie it into a bow. But if you have to end with an Advice Round-Up, her's is pretty good:

Be humble. Don’t romanticize being humble. Don’t be so easily impressed.

Now that I've told you (via Oeding) not to be impressed, how about a bunch of photos of leaves and trees?

Two Days Ago, afternoon

Two Days Ago, morning

Bitter, Plus or Minus Sweet

2011-12-03T19:42:00.001-06:00

* * *

Last Tuesday I finished this semester's course on Rage & Time.

The above photo was taken during the fifteen minute break (it's a very long class); I was the only one in the room.

Before I would get to class, students there much earlier would rearrange the tables and chairs into new shapes. Theoretically, on this day the instructor was to sit in the chair atop the table atop the tables in the front. This play continued throughout the discussion, and it's only one part of what I'll miss. The last day was not bittersweet; it was simply bitter. Such an inspirational class, I'm ready for another, please.

Academically, for the holidays I turn to my online shopping cart, filled with books.

Once a month, once every six months, once a year - whatever I can afford - I indulge myself. Like recently.

And then, they torture you with more suggestions. See?

I know there's a formula for knowing my triggers so well, but is it necessary for them to be so obvious?

I laugh at myself for reading these Customers Like You Also Bought compilations. Rather, I laugh while opening a lot of new tabs.

Then I spend hours reading reviews and criticisms for books that I have to then put in my shopping cart.

It's an endless process akin to the constant expansion of the universe.

Is someone making fun of the universe too? Is it laughing at itself? Is the universe reading booklists alone on a Saturday night?

* * *

My sister, the morning after Thanksgiving.

2011-12-03T10:23:00.001-06:00

making from-scratch biscuits

cleaning from-scratch biscuit bowls

S. O. M.; or, Speaking of a Love for Syntax

2011-12-02T21:36:00.001-06:00

Once, at a writer's conference, I had the great joy to stumble into a reading given by Sabrina Orah Mark.
On a whim today, I'm not quite sure why exactly, I decided to google her. And then, por supuesto, watch everything I could find.

I took this rather mischievous photo in my computer screen twelve hours ago.
Those are bookshelves and a cup of coffee in the background. Wearing my favorite t-shirt.

Sabrina & I

I Like It (vs.) I Like Its Surprise

2011-12-02T03:07:00.001-06:00

The essential thing in form is to be free in whatever form is used. A free form does not assure freedom.

- Wallace Stevens

(though I read it quoted by Louis Zukofsky

in his gregarious and lacerating Prepositions,

read it two minutes ago, sitting in a recliner;

I underlined it with a red, fine-point marker)

* * *

About making work, I remind myself:

Unpredictability & visual surprise does not make a photograph good;
it makes it unpredictable & visually-surprising.

Anti-Chunking

2011-11-30T09:39:00.001-06:00

Neurolinguistics now have at their disposal increasingly sophisticated equipment for mapping the brain as it processes language, and have discovered that the two quite distinct kinds of language development -- acquiring a lexicon and mastering syntax -- occur in different areas. [...] The syntax center is not only independent from word deposits but adjacent to where we process music.

[...] Routinely, analysis of music employs linguistic terms -- phrase, meaning, idea -- because "our brains treat musical phrases and spoken phrases similarly, suspending comprehension as a phrase arrives, then pausing to gulp the whole thing down." This "chunking" is the essential work of syntax, and it is how we make meaning [...]

* * *

I can't help but apply this text of Ellen Bryant Voigt (quoting, in part, Chomsky) to the habit of seeing a photograph, particularly a photographer's habit of seeing. And I do mean habit in the negative sense of the word. When we look at a photo, we suspend our ideas of what it's supposed to be 'of' for about two seconds, maybe shorter. Then, there's another pause, two or three more seconds (ish), before we have "chunked" it into a greater meaning, generally including a personal inclination toward or against the image. It's a habit not to go backwards -- for instance, once the image has been taken as a whole (and decisions have been made about it), it's habitual and constantly tempting not to value or return to those three or four seconds of suspension-of-knowledge about the photograph.

However, I think those seconds are the best seconds, they're akin to opening an envelope before you know exactly what's inside. For me, the most common time to capture those seconds is when I first see print images I shot on film. I knew what was in the viewfinder, and I had a pretty good idea of what my manual settings would transfer -- but in no way could I accurately Expect what I would hold in my hands.

What's better than satisfying your expectations? Your expectations constantly abandoning you!

No more gulping. Unless it's for breath.

'The limit of possibility is the only limit.'

2011-11-29T23:16:00.001-06:00

How can you recognize chance unless you're filled with secret love for it?

- from Georges Bataille's Guilty

I stood this close to you. You did not see me.

2011-11-27T10:59:00.001-06:00

Stargaze: 33 Nouns & Verbs

2011-11-25T18:14:00.001-06:00

Post-Want

2011-11-22T20:17:00.001-06:00

The moment I'm comfortable sharing an image, it's almost too late for me to benefit from the sharing.

I want to share things I don't want to share.

And it's more than the sharing, though that's easy to talk about on a blog (which is made for, specifically, sharing).

I want to make things I don't want to make. Things I don't like, things I won't enjoy, things that won't satisfy me.
I no longer want to be satisfied by a finished product of a photograph. Satisfaction? How unsatisfying!

When I said this out loud a few days ago, I scared myself:

I took a break from my camera when I realized there was nothing I wanted to make that was beyond my capacity.

What I meant (mean) is that my Desire to Make has been regulated by my Abilities.
I've let what I'm capable of making dictate what I Want to make.

I want to work not beyond my Abilities but outside of them, to imagine without referencing my own potential for (personal) success, or failure, for that matter. I want to want something I CAN'T DO. Worse: I want to want something I don't even know I can't do, something I don't even know period!

If I've done it, I don't want to do it. If I think I might do it, I don't want to do it.

I want to make things: what I don't want to make and what I don't know is there to be made.

It's impossible, of course.
My camera is hot to the touch lately. It wears fishnets, has pheromones, carries a sword.

It's dangerous. Because I know it's about to pull me under the water.
And hopefully into the undertow.

Right Now, a few days ago

2011-11-22T07:00:00.000-06:00

Time and Space : Same

And you should see what my skin printed on those circles!

2011-11-21T16:39:00.001-06:00

I love teaching a physical art, a dance, a movement. It's one of the most satisfying things I've done.

There's a drastic difference between the corporeal me that begins a class and the one that ends it:

My eyes are red, my face is gaunt and white, my neck is flushed.
About halfway through class I've sweated so much that I can't see for a few seconds.
I wipe my face approximately fifty times in a one hour period.
Not to mention the rest of my body and its changes.

*

Last Thursday I wore the only socks I could quickly find; they are blue with yellow circles.
This is twenty minutes after class, when I first removed my shoes in the driver's seat of my car.

Wasn't it a nice surprise?

I want to make use of things that don't exist. Only things that don't exist. But until then.

2011-11-20T21:05:00.001-06:00

Cursive in the Ocean

2011-11-19T07:50:00.001-06:00

Once I decide not to [____], I have an incredible amount of willpower and will never [____] again.

For example, I have photos that I've been asked not to share, I have photos that I no longer want to share.
They are not the same photos. They are not of the same people.

And there are many. I am referencing nothing or no one in particular.
(That there are many, of course, means that there is also one.)

Though it's not the same, I often remove photos once they're posted.
Sometimes I screengrab the images and the words, mostly not. Probably I should not admit that to you.
It's my dirty little secret except that it's not a secret.

* * *

Today I woke up thinking about my displeasure with narrative flashback.
I find it overused and ineffective. Literally, for me on an aesthetic basis, never effective.

Because the Flashback generally answers the Why, and I don't like my Whys answered for me.
I barely can stand an artist telling me what to ask, much less telling me how to answer.

Couple that with my disbelief in a 1:1 correlation between the weight of the psychological past and the challenges of the present.

Artists (especially artists, certainly not only) tend to believe that our pasts have shovels and knives for hands.
They continuously hunt us through a humid forest, and the forest is on a conveyor belt (often called, The Present).

I suppose I'm guilty of thinking we're in a forest too.
Except that the trees are the past, and all that's following me in the forest is my joy at being followed in the forest.

To solve or simply appreciate my own complexity, how could I point out those demons in the dark?
Moreover, how could I possibly know how to stop them?

* * *

Perhaps I've combined these pet peeves of mine, these tools turned back on themselves, these dogmas --
I've drawn two lines in the sand --

one says, if you've genuinely decided for/against an action, there's no need to remake the decision every time the impulse arrives

one says, the 'crucial backstory' is always being retold and therefore doesn't need explicit flashback or explanation

I cross my own lines in the sand sometimes. I have impulses and a fluctuating heartbeat, after all.

But I like to write these ideas. Though my finger's drawing cursive in the ocean.

Now more Now.

2011-11-16T22:30:00.000-06:00

More creation of the present, please, in lieu of retelling the past.

This morning

2011-11-16T07:29:00.001-06:00

I watched the sun rise while reading Joan Didion and eating a pomegranate.

***

3 Mornings Not This Morning

(in reverse chronological order)

Humor & Horror

2011-11-15T22:05:00.001-06:00

Luckily I am a busybody, curious by birth,
and I am always seeking out the third bank of the river,
that mysterious place where humor and horror meet.

-Eduardo Galeano

line breaks: mine
via

my backyard, palm tree necklace, tears, not a self-portrait

Particular (excuses)

2011-11-14T13:26:00.001-06:00

I have a delicate relationship to sharing.
Delicate and ravenous. Fresh meat and a tenderizer.

People share, and I take. I share, and people take.
That's not the cycle of making work -- that's the Cycle of Sharing.

If you don't want Your Images taken, don't put them on the internet.
Now, the issue of Your Image is quite different.
There is nothing you can do to reign it back in once you've shared it. I've learned this from every angle.

Long ago I gave up trying to regulate My Images. And it took about a year to stop regulating My Image too.

Still, there's a little axe in the shape of a pair of lungs.
It begins to inflate when I see myself re-exposed anywhere else on the internet. For good or bad reasons.

When someone says: I'm just being honest.
it really means: My feelings are hurt and a small part of me wants yours to be hurt too.

Trust me. I'm just being honest.

A picture of no one in particular taken nowhere in particular while waiting on nothing in particular.

Like a Saint, an Angel and a God, I sit here and say that I don't get my feelings hurt over photography.
That I don't get jealous concerning photography. That I don't get territorial about photography.
Those are all lies! Of course I do! And when I've taken things from you, I hope you've gotten pissed off!
But more so, I hope it's what made you take more.

I see her photos in your photos all the time. Maybe neither of you know it.
I see your photos in hers too. That's the beauty! Practice, talent, luck -- none of it matters.
What matters is how light hit the film, how developer hit the film, etc.

Did I say I have a delicate relationship to sharing? I want to slash through it with a papercloth.
I want to take everything I've ever made and horde it in my belly.
But it's not a baby -- it's a balloon! If you try to get it inside you, it doesn't preserve; it pops!

If I had a pulpit today, I would beat on it with a mallet.
I am beating on my only pulpit with a mallet.

It's a beautiful thing to watch people make each other's images.
How satisfying to know that they're aware of what they're doing; how equally satisfying to know that they're not.
In me too! I am the guiltiest culprit!

There are too many anomalies of images not to try and recreate them.
If I could sing, I'd sing your song. I wish to goodness that you could sing mine, that I had one for you to sing!

I'm rambling about putting so much imagery on the internet. Because I love it.
You do your loves injustice if you do not question your integrity concerning them.

Half of me wants to never post images again.
That only lasts so long. I have a palpable second half with slippery, slippery fingers.
I could give away every image. Sometimes I do.

Right now I'm setting a glorious fire to the desert to compete with the mountain range.

Right now I want to show things to you that you won't know how to like.

If you ask nicely and have decent intentions,

2011-11-09T18:46:00.001-06:00

I've found that, for me, almost everyone enjoys having their photo taken.

More often than not lately, they wait for me to ask and are quite happy to, well, be themselves.
Something like themselves at least.

Then Unknown Young Ladies on Galveston Island

Denotative Play

2011-11-09T09:48:00.002-06:00

includes but is not limited to:
threat, histrionics, deceit, spectatorship, self-pity and ritual

(paraphrased from Gregory Bateson)

My interior vision moved from stereoscopic to binocular. Now it's moving back.

With the threat of the kaleidoscope in the past, my memory of it is awfully pretty.

So much Love = So much Longing

2011-11-02T13:45:00.002-05:00

"Because it was so close to me, I had to really hold back."

2011-11-02T08:51:00.001-05:00

Interviewer: Do you find it distracting to think about the metaphors you're working with as you use them and to think about the possible resonances of the story?

Louis Malle: You know, it comes to you because people who read your script might mention it. Usually it doesn't come to you up front, and I think it is dangerous if it does. [...] I'm not really trying to understand my metaphors.

All Effect.

2011-11-01T22:42:00.001-05:00

If you lived with me. If you lived with me but could be here when I was alone, nonetheless.

I go through these stages when I'm alone, like all of us.
They're fun. They're sad. They're full of depth and absolutely surface level.
And, best, they involve music.

I get in the mood for certain music. And then I let myself drown in it.
As if it were an ocean, the lyrics the heaviest stone, the bass the rope, the rhythm in general a sort of rope.

It's really delicious. It's dangerous, it's sad, it's full of endorphins.

You can only do it alone. Not only but mostly.
Can't explain it.

If you know it, you do, and if you don't, it cannot be shared.

It involves nothing but what's under the skin.
Under the skin but not yet in the blood, not yet at the bottom of the heart, the cervical vertebrae, the heels.

Not yet at the bottom of the things that dig in. Before they make decisions.

This is pre-decision motivation. Without cause. All Effect.

What I do (because I know). What you do (because I guess).

2011-10-31T21:25:00.001-05:00

You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together
to make a creature that will do what I say
or love me back.
- Richard Siken

This song makes it hard for me to breathe.

2011-10-30T19:46:00.000-05:00

"I'm a stranger in this town: you're free with me."

If change is the only constant, shouldn't the constant change too?

2011-10-30T15:22:00.002-05:00

Couldn't the world stand still?

(Prometheus is credited with – or blamed for – playing a pivotal role in the early history of mankind.)

2011-10-19T03:32:00.000-05:00

So I've taken a second job. And added a shift to my first job. Along with university. Which means I'm busy.

But that doesn't excuse my insomnia which, at this point, is truly unreasonable. Unreasonable!

I'm writing this at 3:10 a.m. after having slept almost one full hour.

This has been going on for a straight week.

My body thinks it has eight hours of rest, but my eyes know.

It makes life, which is already quite surreal, more so.

Walking around my own house at 1:30 this morning I heard my neighbor calling for 'Avery.'

The call sounded close, so I looked out my window. He was standing in my driveway.

I watched and listened to him a while before I heard a distinct meowing from outside another window.

Cristof likened it to two sides of an equation. Without an equal sign, I might add: an equivalent.

Once upon a time I tutored math. I always liked the equivalent. It is still my favorite mathematical sign.

(We helped him find his cat. It included a flashlight attached to a head, a recycling bin, poison ivy, a blanket wrapped around a naked body at the top of the stairs, an open window, a fence, a quiet but well-referenced nod to playing softball, talk of a beer and an actual hot chocolate.)

Today I listened to a man tell a story about Prometheus, a story he seemed to admire.

The story included the option of two plates.

Plate one: an ox's stomach lining covering the most delicious delicacies imaginable

Plate two: a thin layer of the same delicacies covering a bare pile of meatless bones

I didn't hear the rest.

It wasn't my conversation (I was eavesdropping, sort of; eavesdropping on someone I admire, which is worse.).

One of my favorite moments in life is when you start to lose a conversation that has begun to really interest you but of which you were never really a part. I don't mean in a purely eavesdropped way, though that's an obvious example. I think this happens in life quite often. You hear things that aren't really meant for you, and then you have to decide whether to pursue them past someone else's comfort (because you would be telling them how exposed they had been) strictly to satisfy your own Dionysian, pleasure-based, interest. And at the risk of exposing your own interest too.

Follow Me Home

2011-10-08T09:08:00.002-05:00

The collage is pieced together from photos I shot while following a stranger for much longer than I should admit.
I never once saw her face.

The song is from a recording I made of Anthony Garza spontaneously singing in my living room.
In fact, I've made quite a bit of work that nods to this song, have quoted it on my website too.
He's a violinist, guitarist, charming singer -- but he is very, very shy.

I slyly made this recording with my old laptop facing away from him.
When I played it for him (right when he finished), he loved it.

I consider him one of the best songwriters I've ever known. I live with the other one.

We recently learned that Anthony no longer makes music.

"I've been circling round you more than I will say.

Won't you make it easier on me?"

Two strangers photographed two weeks apart.

2011-10-05T13:57:00.001-05:00

Neckline Circle and Neckline V

Less Than 24 Hours.

2011-10-03T22:47:00.001-05:00

This past August Brittany and I drove east to visit my family.

We left her house and returned to her house in almost less than 24 hours.

I originally planned to order these photos -- almost every image I made and some made by others on my camera. However, when I added them to this blog, they showed up in such a random, spectacular order that I now cannot fathom undoing what chaos done.

I've been about fragmentation meaning more than the whole lately.

In part because it slows down the story, and in part because it slows down life.

Mostly because it's my best truth.

My sister Cindy and I. Shot by Brittany as the sun set in the bathroom at the front of their house.

Brittany and I were both a little obsessed with this staircase shadow so we took way too many photos of it.

My niece Brandi was homecoming queen. She still maintains control over any situation. And she loves to drive.

I always manage to get dirtier than everyone else. Though they try very hard.

Brandi brought facial washes and facial scrubs and facial sprays and facial detergents. We went a little crazy.

My sister-in-law Rene. Her daughter watched me take this from the backseat of the truck.

The highway that leads to Cindy's house.

Cindy successfully organizing the rest of the world. At minimum the whole of Saratoga.

We stopped at a roadside knick-knack store built inside a wooden house. It was next to a Dollar Store. We bought a mirror.

My niece Brandi. And a lot of woodchips. She tried to climb this mountain right after this. Tried!

Blood grandniece and non-blood grandniece. As close as I can get to slow motion with a camera. So far.

Something caught on fire within our first fifteen minutes in Saratoga. My family runs (and is) the fire department for the County.

My sister cooked: fresh peas, mashed potatoes from scratch, fried chicken and greens. Plus she made sweet tea.

My nephew Mikey. Everyone develops a crush on him. He and his wife have the exact same birthday. All of their children are blonde.

Cindy and I were born 15 years apart. We have the same two biological parents.

In the window of a glass store in Liberty, Texas. We were not very popular in this town.

Gary let me ride in the firetruck on the way to the fire. It was far more surreal than this photo begins to suggest.

Much of the foliage in their neighborhood is bejeweled. It's a kind of light that hits a town with an open horizon.

We stayed out of the way. Not because we wanted to.

Bishop owns the roadside knick-knack store. His brother's name is also Bishop. One grandma named him; the other grandma named his brother.

Cindy and I are oddly alike for leading entirely opposite lifestyles.

The fire was not the biggest spectacle. If nothing else, we can make fools out of ourselves! And have fun doing it!

Rene from the front. Neck scars.

Mischievous. Obviously.

White bark, green leaves and sky. A lot of that in Southeast Texas. More common than churches and trailer parks and gas stations, believe it or not.

Brittany made cobbler to bring as a gift to my family. She also brought two spoons for us to 'sample' it on our drive.

Arianna is my favorite grandniece.

Cindy and Gary. They met when I was twelve. They are the happiest couple I know.

Brittany saving the dog from being tortured by four blonde children.

Driving down Bragg road where the 'Saratoga Lights' often expose themselves to highschoolers on the way to prom.

Arianna showed Brittany and I around their new home.

Look at her face! A camera-lover but not a camera-poser. Meaning she, certainly not I.

Brittany and Gary almost at the end of the first night. Cindy often falls asleep in that chair while reading recipes under a home-sewn quilt.

Brittany, Cindy and I took a walk around their town's three-block downtown. We were asked if we were tourists.

Gary's youngest son, Derek. He had the quintessential chubby cheeks as a child.

I never get tired of driving down dirt roads. I spent the first fifteen years of my life living on streets with only dirt roads.

Family fighting on the new carpet.

Brandi thinks I'm crazy when I turn the camera upside down between shutter-clicks.

Brittany getting a Mary Kay makeover. Really. Mary Kay.

Every spot in the woods looks the same, and yet Ive photographed this very spot more than once before.

A Fill-in-the-Blanks sort of memory.

Derek's wife's newest tattoo. She blushed while I took this.

Brittany in the backseat while my niece drove us to Bragg Road.

All kinds of suspicion. Even content suspicion.

I was the first person in my family to get a tattoo. I was eighteen! Now they all have more - many more - than me.

About a year ago my sister and I took a drive to Lumberton, and I suddenly said, "Stop! Look at that gorgeous plant!" She has never let me live it down.

We walked down the street while Brandi followed us with the car.

Some dirt road in some nearby town. My own feet.

I love being in the passenger's seat.

Drinking juice like a badass should, right?

It's a new occurrence, my family's obsession with digital cameras and facebook. They barely have internet!

There's quite a bit of hyper-real when I visit my family. Everything has a black outline around it, like in coloring books.

Self-portrait early in the morning. I think.

A small piece of a negative. I hope to make a large and omnipresent book of her one day.

Cindy and Gary's backyard. Shot from the laundry room. Handmade curtains.

Taken late at night in the bathroom at the back of the house. The closet behind me was given to my brother when he was a child. Now it is my sister's.

Gary & Sugarbear serenade each other. Louder the later it gets.

Magnifying Authenitc Action/Movement

2011-10-01T17:13:00.002-05:00

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote that,

"In order for the most banal event to become an adventure, it is necessary, and sufficient, to retell it."

And it can be done in dance too.

3 Moments: Overhead and Overheard

2011-09-30T14:14:00.002-05:00

Land

Water

The Space In-Between

"I'm so busy thinking about kissing you."

2011-09-30T09:35:00.002-05:00

Nat Baldwin's A Little Lost (an Arthur Russell cover, also very good: here)

I have a thing for simple love songs.

I find them, I become hypnotized by them and then I give them away.

I give everything away so it comes back like a boomerang --

heavy as a 25lb weight to the head,

light as sunshine on the blanket in the backyard.

And here is one possibility.

2011-09-28T13:12:00.001-05:00

photo of me by Addie, Flatbush at St. Marks in Brooklyn, a few days ago, 2011

One day a woman will walk out of a restaurant in Texas after finishing a nondescript breakfast and single espresso in a porcelain cup. It will be a neighborhood she rarely visits, so when the coolness of the air hits her, she will imagine she is no longer in her hometown but somewhere she visited alone in South America in her twenties. She will untie the sweater from around her waist and completely forget who gave it to her. She will imagine she gave it to herself.

At the corner she will wait for the light to change and then cross the street near but not on the crosswalk. A woman much older than she will pass in the opposite direction; they will make eye-contact by accident and smile half a moment too late. She will enter an antique store with a handmade sign of two people's first names separated by an over-large asterisk. Attached to the door, a bell will tinkle almost in the notes of a song she has forgotten. The tune will make her think of a color, a piece of cloth, the view out of a circular window.

She will touch a set of matching plates and pull an LP out of its cover to check for scratches. She will unsuccessfully picture her sister wearing an apron from the 1920's, its yellow lace curved like a shoreline around the edges. She will watch the motionless hands of a clock labeled "Works Fine!" and rub a suede hat against her cheek.

There will be a dresser. It will be painted white and pushed against a cement wall. It will have eight drawers -- she will count them -- but two of the knobs will be missing. She will want to know what is in those two drawers. Hand, finger, nail, nail file, keys -- none of these will open the drawer. She will not ask for help. She will tilt the dresser forward toward her, one knob pressed against her belly, one edge propped against her knee. At the same time the two drawers will move mere centimeters, enough for her to open them if she is careful.

The first drawer will contain a photo album. I know this album; it was stolen from me in 1999. It is bound in purple velvet, ALBUM engraved into its side. There will be no photos in it, although a drawing torn from a newspaper will possibly still be taped to the second-to-last page. She will put this down by her feet because she wants to buy it. It doesn't have a price, but she will not care what it costs. And then she will open the second drawer. Nothing is in the second drawer.

Except for a photo of a woman standing in a doorway. And that woman will be me.

Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y

2011-09-27T15:42:00.001-05:00

Johan Gimonprez compiles found documentation, cartoons, Big Bang-esque imagery, dark as well as light humor and news broadcasts in this incredible 1997 film on airplane hijackings and the media. Makes me squirm, in all senses of the word.

The Narrator: All plots tend to move death-ward. This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorists' plots, lovers' plots, narrative plots, plots that are part of children's games. We engineer death every time we plot. It's like a contract that all must sign -- the plotters as well as those who are targeted by the plot.

One of my professors introduced this film to me, and I'm sharing it: via.

Fleet

2011-09-26T11:20:00.000-05:00

transitive verb: to cause (time) to pass quickly or imperceptibly

noun: a group operated under unified control

The Putative

2011-09-18T17:13:00.000-05:00

A couple of days ago I placed my recent images of houses -- none of which I've shared yet -- on a worktable and squinted my eyes until the photographs were only shape and color. To see what else they're doing, if anything, without their specifics. In my experience, it is plausible to really enjoy a set of your own images and forget (or not know) how truly uninteresting they are to everyone else. And that's okay, but I believe that you should know at least why you like them. You should be able to say it, argue it, fight for it. Even if you change your mind tomorrow.

Move as far away from the photo as possible, I tell myself. Remove the personal, superfluous and charming details (that I love, that I think are absolutely necessary, particularly the details that I think make the image). Take away the construction of the windows and the color of the curtains, the questionable durability of the roof, the names of the trees, the blown glass in the front door and what do I have? Shadows and canopy and a structure that resembles flesh but with solid lines. If it were not aflame.

My personal tendency is to not believe (or not implicitly trust) the idea that the person I am now owes its basis to the circumstances of my past. Not a popular idea in our era which is still devoted to Freudian-based psychology. Let's say I believe in the Affects of my past more than the Effects of my past.

That written, I was not raised in a house, not a traditional house. I never lived in one with that particular 'house-shape' until I was in my late twenties. Because of that or in spite of that or having nothing to do with that (most likely), I can't get enough of edging them out as if my camera were both eraser and watercolor brush on paper.

As if I could create a house by drawing it in the sand near the ocean before the tide takes it out to sea.

I'll call it Coincidence in Fascination.

Baby Beth Ella

2011-09-16T14:58:00.000-05:00

Years ago I spied a woman eating at the table next to mine in a cafe, both of us alone. I watched her eat for about half an hour (taking her time, decidedly not in a rush), and when I saw her readying herself to leave, I approached her. Asked if I could make a few photographs of her sometime. Something I've done about five times in my life probably. And she said yes.

Looking back on it, my self-confidence as a photographer of portraits was, at best, negligible. But I watched her move her fork and take breaths and look around between bites, and I could not resist. I can't say it was infatuation or chemistry-based interest at all; in fact, we saw each other only twice and that was enough for us both.

But we did make photos together. We walked to two different parks near my home. I shot with a digital camera and a Polaroid at that time. I shot with the digital camera to make clear, flattering images that would captivate the subject, and I shot the Polaroid to make images that captivated me. I remember us being relatively happy with what we made. I even posted about our exchange in detail on a website that, not long after, deleted my account in its entirety and without warning.

Frankly, I've thought little about our interaction and exchange. Nothing mind-blowing but nothing terrible. Which is what a lot of exchange is like in life, thank goodness, or it would be overwhelming. So when, in Central Texas recently, I ran into her - and recognized her, quite unlike me and my low facial recognition - a handful of photographs and memories rose up to the surface as if my current life were a pond into which I peered.

And then, somehow, I found these, purposefully and fantastically out-of-focus, reminders/remainders.

If the site hadn't listed the date, I could in no way have guessed it, not even the year, not by a long shot.

a screengrab from a post shared by Baby Beth Ella,

Polaroids shot under the bridge near my home:

The only two times we've ever met.

2011-09-15T08:53:00.001-05:00

Taken 355 days apart.

I would not be the first to misplace my heart.

2011-09-14T21:18:00.000-05:00

Summer 2011

Cupid, too, is "reckless alike with torches and with arrows."

- quote from Seneca's Phaedra

My sweet Dola, a fellow fourteenther, introduced me to Butoh.

2011-09-14T14:11:00.000-05:00

And today, years after that introduction (!),
I learned that Yukio Mishima (my first 'favorite writer') partially inspired the direction of this incredible art.

*

When one part of your life connects to another part of your life, one that is far different and far away, exactly what feeling is it?

I think it is this feeling:

Above: Kazuo Ohno (1906-2010)
one of the two co-founders of Butoh

This clip was shot on his birthday.

How little you need to see/touch of someone you love to recognize them.

2011-09-11T21:59:00.002-05:00

Your Fabulous Fill-in-the-Blanks

Happy Everything, Mein Cristof.

I love you so much I'm tempted to write in sentimental clichés or Streisand songs because even they'd be true!

The Perpetually Turned Away

2011-09-10T22:11:00.004-05:00

The above is a screengrab taken less than a minute ago from my personal Flickr page.

I tend to overthink what I share. Today might be the opposite.

The Horror & The Letting Go

2011-09-10T10:32:00.001-05:00

* * *

Before I get out of bed each morning: the most horror and the most letting go

* * *

Derrida on the ambiguity of photography and the fear of his own face:

There are many different types of Forgetting, Love

2011-09-08T08:36:00.002-05:00

- screengrabbed from a conversation with a chatbot

Forgetting; Love; Forgetting Love

Did Not, Could Not

2011-09-07T05:00:00.000-05:00

For CHW.,

someone important to me who asked a question that I did not, could not answer.

I have been living with this question since you asked:

When you asked, "Why her, why now?"

I still objectify (the details of my) life. But now with more context.

2011-09-06T08:00:00.000-05:00

I've been writing a lot of conceptual jargon, thought-process, perception talk lately.

So how about a little graphic imagery now?

Outside Mary's house, market-bought peach, Park Slope, August 4th, 2011

Inside Bashfulleigh's car, her lipshape, Burlington near the water, August 1st, 2011

Running on New

2011-09-05T19:30:00.000-05:00

One reason I love photographing kids is that they never stay still.

With adults, the moment you pick up a camera, they slow down their movements or immediately freeze in their tracks. They look into the lens, they either smile or try to give you a look of honest confrontation, and they immediately begin trying to read what you want so that they can give it to you. If they have no real attachment to vanity, they will, at the very least, empathize with what they've learned a photographer thinks she needs: stillness, awareness and beauty.

Kids, especially when they're comfortable with you and used to your presence, can forget you. Even if they love the camera and have learned that they often have to stand still for pictures, they have a mechanism right beneath their skin that begins bouncing as if it were a red ball after short periods of quietness. There's no obsessive control over what they can or want to show you, no fatal realization of ownership over their two-dimensional representation, no focus on giving you only what you want.

I like the ways adults - including me! - want to exert and expand our dictatorship of Presented Self. I love them, as a matter-of-fact. But the perception of stillness versus the perception of movement fascinates me as someone who, perhaps because of photography, is increasingly aware of visual nuances. With every entry I make into my personal dictionary of Unknowns, Knowns & Ideas, another fifty pages, all of them blank, push their way into my binder and wait to be filled.

Bailey, running on new carpet in Honey Island, TX, August 2011

On Blushing and Falsehood

2011-09-05T10:39:00.000-05:00

One of the good things about making art is that one can state something oneself, without having been asked or the feelings that someone's expecting it. A childish, neurotic feeling steals over me as soon as someone asks or invites me to do something. Everything that is false or contrary in me rises up. As the interest in the work increases, so do the questions. The less that is asked of me, the haughtier my silence. But once given the right to speak, I begin to blush.
- Marlene Dumas

Portrait of Kevin Atkinson, ink on paper, 1974, Marlene Dumas

Portrait of Addie with the Light Entering, August 2011

I am often asked why I blog. In the past, I partially blogged to work through a feeling quite similar to the one Dumas explains above, to explore my own explanations before I was paralyzed by own 'blushes.'

Now, however, I look forward to answering questions and to being invited to share. It's a new relationship to making work for me, one with which I had never previously been comfortable, certainly never enjoyed. These days I blog to make obvious the connections I see and create within or because of. The connections between thought and work specifically, the interactions between the connections too.

The feeling of the false and the contrary, though, they never subside for me. I hope they never do. Those feelings -- palpitations -- are the driving force behind what I like to make on a day-to-day basis.

I've been making a few of the same images for years now.

2011-09-03T12:01:00.000-05:00

I can't say with any certainty, and I have no interest in claiming, that they improve on any level.
They satisfy me to make, often to share.

Picasso said:
You can put a picture aside and say you won't touch it again, but you can never write THE END.

Good or bad, Amen.

Nohemi, the last days of August, 2011

Purify Emancipate Create

2011-08-31T17:32:00.004-05:00

I actively sincerely severely and acutely distrust memory.

Which came first - my distrust or my terrible memory - more than likely doesn't matter. I don't trust my memory, and I don't trust yours. If details have been written down, photographed, recorded or otherwise "laid as proof," I distrust memory of those events all the more. When faced with evidence of the plot of my life, I can often feel my memory squeeze out material that doesn't adhere or, more often, carve a space into an area otherwise whole and then refer to that hole as an unchosen lack. Paraphenalia lacks context and feeling; it is, solely, a document, and it is therefore an object upon which any subjective view can be projected.

Photographs are merely screens? I say this as a photographer?

To be honest, I think I say this because I am a photographer.

I don't consider myself cynical or overwhelmed with facts or sensory information; nonetheless, I doubt (especially) my own stories, (especially) the ones I tell and retell to myself and to you, because (as Grace Paley wrote), 'Any story told twice is fiction.'

This gives a dire impression of me, I'm afraid, and worse, it's one with which I can't argue. I'm not saying Events Did Not Take Place; I'm saying that my description of events leaves out context and mixes up specifics the way forgetting egg in a recipe changes the taste, texture and wholeness of a cake.

Does this mean I refuse to remember? Or that I refuse to retell?

That I cannot share because the fear of my own false memory grandstands me?

Sometimes.

(I expected to write another answer, but my fingers overtyped me.)

I don't consider it bad to distrust the self. I make mistakes all the time, I catch people in mistakes all the time. We lie, to ourselves in abundance if the need arises, and to one another with the best of intent. We leave out stories that fill in blanks that reverse and redirect the same stories. I do this because I'm creating a pattern, a set of multi-faceted answers to a book of questions someone reads to me in my dreams/past/childhood/meditations. I don't know why I'm inaccurate. Maybe there's not a reason aside from basic human inaccuracy. But maybe there is. It's silly, sentimental and far too problematic for me to decide if it's good or bad; I can only live with it, push through it, try to form clay out of the sky, the sun and the ashes.

Likewise, I don't trust photography. I find it manipulates me as if it were the companion of memory, as if it were connected less to my finger and more to a benevolent puppetmaster buried inside me -- and she uses my creative body and my imagination like a sieve.

Days after I've made an image - if I'm lucky - I realize why I've made it. It's not always a negative realization, but it sometimes is. Who wants to repeat their wound in a new and more colorful format? Who wants to still carry a wound in general? Don't the places we've been hurt -- all of us -- eventually cancel one another out?

I'm in love with the way we're structured to forget. It is both armor and privacy fence.
Submarine with firearms and sailboat with wine and cheee.

I want to place these structures tête-à-tête.

Want to unfold the body of my own memory like a placemat.

Want to see how it fits on this, my only and dearest worktable.

Photographs taken exactly one week apart, almost to the hour.

Under the pretense of purifying, emancipating, or merely creating identity,

memories inevitably support some secret tendency to repeat and reenact.

- Peter Sloterdijk in Rage and Time

"I am (The way Temporal Spaces are embedded in the world)"

2011-08-31T00:09:00.000-05:00

Some days you recognize your emptiness and fill it. As if you were a vessel. A vessel for, even, emptiness.

This blog title came directly from notes I took in class tonight, parentheses and all, in a small blue journal.

Have you read this Mark Strand poem?

Keeping Things Whole

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

via

From my same journal --

Before the quote: politics = organization
After the quote: What's the difference between hesitation and waiting?

One by me; one of me:

2011-08-30T14:34:00.001-05:00

shot by my sister, stolen off facebook

shot without looking through the viewfinder, as pictured above

Arianna is my favorite grand-niece.

I know I'm not supposed to pick favorites, but she picked me.
When I walk into the room, she runs into my arms and hugs me.
How could I resist such warm love as that?

Listening to sad music and not admitting to thinking about what I'm obviously thinking about.

2011-08-28T22:18:00.000-05:00

a small piece of a small negative

Brittany and I are taking a mini-roadtrip today.

2011-08-27T13:11:00.000-05:00

Brittany

Roadtrip

I've gotten really lucky this year and have taken roadtrips with a number of amazing people.
Flawless roadtrips. With and without maps, no arguments or tears (that weren't happy tears), incredible good, conversation that made me think and rethink old and new ideas and some fantastic music.

You can't travel well with everyone, but sometimes I really think you can get on a roll.

These photos are from the last roadtrip with Brittany, in May or early June, I think.
But don't trust me on dates or anything to do with memory reallly.

I ask myself if I take photos because I can't remember details or faces very well.
I answer myself too.

A stranger took this one. Isn't it lovely?

Granted, Wish

2011-08-26T23:37:00.002-05:00

Tonight was one of those nights that fit into place like a last puzzle piece.
I'm grateful and in love with everything.

Coney Island, August, 2011

I & Anthony

2011-08-25T23:58:00.000-05:00

Somehow and Not Surprisingly

taken on the same day

I think in patterns that get/make the best of me.

May 2011

Too many arrows / for identical hearts

2011-08-24T13:26:00.003-05:00

Two women I've met once and photographed once, both this summer:

slow and doubling like ideas not yet come to term -- but stubbornly
growing thick and burying themselves
in themselves

- from Jorie Graham's poem "Mirrors"

No Paces, Ten Seconds

2011-08-20T07:36:00.001-05:00

I think I may stop sharing New York photos soon.

It's not quite a threat yet but more akin to taking a vacation in the midst of a love affair -
when the best parts are waiting (opera-singer dramatic) in the wings.

If the affair was right for you, you come back to it and it comes back to you.

And if it wasn't quite what you thought it was, a little distance makes your photos even more bittersweet.

Pre-Existing Forms

2011-08-19T16:49:00.001-05:00

You know, it's probably for the best that I live in a city in which people rarely go outside in mass numbers without hyper-awareness of a photographer or a camera that doesn't belong to them. I would perhaps be insufferable. I've spoken a number of times about being accepted into certain situations with a camera because, as a woman, I'm not thought of as a predator or perpetrator. It's ridiculous in my opinion because, in regards to making portraits of strangers (and non-portraits, which are worse because they are impersonal and objectified), I should be considered as much of a threat as any man. And add to this already skewed equation that I'm fairly young in a wider sense!

It is socially acceptable (as much as it can be) for me to take photos of people sleeping on the subway, women walking alone in crowded streets, naked women and men in varying states of intimacy or desire and children who are not my own. As someone who has, in the last five years, become far more interested in photographing strangers and people I don't know know well, I recognize how lucky I am in certain ways. Not that I never face adversity in any of these regards! And certainly I don't mean to suggest that I don't get nervous about shooting all of these people/scenarios/moments. Sometimes it's important to recognize and state your awareness of your own situation. If for no other reason than when you state something, it will necessarily change.

We fill pre-existing forms and when we fill them we change them and are changed.

- Frank Bidart