Essay on Photography Scrawled on a Bathroom Wall

(Directions to Lonely Town) Predictability is based on the past and the probability of the past repeating itself. Coincidence is based on the past repeating itself less often. While probability is based on the past being repeated more often than not, photography, on the other hand, is not a Wheel of Fortune: when we take photographs it's always now. (Crossing the Steet)

(Desolation Angel) Before matter, energy, space and time there was (and is) now. Now wasn't created by anyone; nobody "put" it here. We can't touch it, but we can experience it. We can't photograph the invisible, but we can be present to it since the only space where photographs are made is the space of now. In fact, every photograph that is, was or ever shall be is only created now as a context distinguishing photography from history or mere memory. (Washington Square)

(Dharma Bum)Photography is the experience of "what's-so" and "what-is". Its imagery is the beginning and the end, the alpha and omega, the first and last fabric of experience. Because it's empty and meaningless, it distinguishes location, language and purpose seamlessly. In other words, a photograph documents transformation of our "existensystems" by letting us experience a unified field of magick, imagination, everything and nothingness. (Woman Cleaning her Nails)

(Man on a Motorcycle) A photograph doesn't have to be something hoped for, waiting to happen in the future someday, maybe. A photograph occurs outside of meaning, outside of any difference it does or doesn't make, outside of any purpose or worth it may or may not have. A photograph (as a possibility) is a functions of resistance, and whatever we resist, persists. Existence persists as photographs of ultimate nothingness where there is neither genesis nor origin. Photography persists in the tao of all things, in which nothing is true, everything is possible, nothing is forbidden and everything is permitted. (Ignored and Forgotten)

That #1

That Saturday morning I got lost in clouds of white wet and rainy and grey. The black and white image was deeply grey. You know, that image of an old man pretending to be empty when he brought the gift of pain that he carried and personally laid it at the feet of the statue. You remember, that old silver-haired zen man who aged a hundred years after spending one night in the Hospital of Darkness and who, pretending to need and want only his share of nothingness, said that, with steady and meaningless injections under the tongue, liquid morphine (roxanol) made suffering almost painless; it made life itself a sleeping deep perfection.

And so, I had a vision that God's lungs were filled with dreaming dementia, a mystic gas, that He screamed - all night and every night - and spit mouthfulls and throatfulls of infectious spit! He sat and waved to me from His wheelchair warning me to keep away, telling me that my mind was gone, that time was short and days were long. And so, I recorded every word that He spoke to me. I wrote it down and made a list of all His insults:

1. That my lips were glossed with motor oil and my body was paralyzed by thinking.

2. That my money was stolen and my checks were cashed by people deceased who were still on welfare.

3. That my rented car smashed up on Highway 61 Revisited and was closed for repairs.

4. That I had an absessed toothache and a run away runny nose dripping with oxycotin.

5. That my soul was neither black nor white and none of my phone calls would ever be returned.

6. That my writing hardly ever made sense.

7. That my photos distorted reality and never cleared things up.

8. That my camera phone was as sharp as a flat tire and my ideas were as useful as a bounced check.

9. That my hands had an annoying, embarrassing twitch and it made things drop out of my grasp; it made my arms snap their way out of their sockets and fall to the floor.

Of course, God knew that photo I took, the one I mentioned earlier, was a picture of walls and corners, ceilings, doors, curtains, hospital beds, and guitar strings that were really drum sticks, and piano keys that were really guitar picks.

But that sick and twisted God, the same one who created hepatitus ABC and all the other hellish, deadly infections that live and breathe in the holy temples of the body, bruised and damaged the vital organs I use for speaking Words of Spirit into life for making love and seeing visions of Nico.

But that sick and twisted elderly childish and dysfunctionally unholy, that eternally useless and irritating bitch, God Damme, (that's His full name, by the way: "God Damme"), had those discolored black and blue veins that were really punctured blood vessels taped together tight like red rubber tubing, the same color as the white parts of the eyes of meth users after a five-day binge, that makes blood move faster thru the brain, pounding like drum beats that rock that rhythm, that makes the jungle beat run wild and hot thru the steamy night. I wrote down the Word He spoke to me. Like a magical curse, He laid His hands on me, dirty hands - dirty in the sense that He had just finished strangling someone in an alley. And so, God spoke the Words written here:

1. His Word made my skin crawl. My skin got dry and pealed away like dead skin blisters with a vancomyican cocktail with too much salt and saline mixed in my IV. My eyes started to fall heavy and then they got dreamy shut tightly closed and then I was nodding out.

2. His Word made my body drag along and drop off from itself, separating from my spine, tearing apart from the vertebrae, from swollen bruised nerve endings and collapsed blood vessels. Like a broken, dried up wooden telephone pole, it snapped in two.

3. His Word slowly rolled up the medical hill, with the telephone pole; and round and round and round it went and where it stopped we dont really know, nor do we care too much about it.

4. His Word said there's no escape from pain or hospital; there's no relief. The hospital is not going away; it is the spinal cord; it has no body. It provides only illusion of efficiency. There is no peace with pain meds: "I'll take a little of this, let's try a little of that!"

5. His Word said that Ms. Oxycodone knocked on my door at 10pm to take me to the dance and dropped me back home at 10am and in between I had sex with dilaudid.

6. His Word said that Mother Sedation hit her head on the grill of a Greyhound bus, a country gospel tour bus, and had her lips flattened with a gift she couldn't refuse: a greasy unemployed kiss. Her lips tasted like shoe polish painted over a pair of wax lips made out of leftover feces cooking in a BMW with the windows rolled up for too long in the heat and it smelled like gasoline.

7. His Word was assigned to me, assigned to me as if for spite, as if karma had something to do with anything. It made me nod out at the Table of the Bored.

8. His Word said that my handwritting was worsening because I was taking larger doses of oxycotin, ms contin, dilaudid, roxanol, oxycodon, vycodin and zanex.

9. His Word of prophesy was posted in the public Day Room for all to get a good laugh.

That #2

So that bitter and hateful, spiteful and revengeful God-head; that self-preoccupied, unqualified therapist; that unGod-like creature; that fradulent "God Damme" -- it is He who proudly carried the burden, like the Beast that He is, of the spirit of "the end of life", staging an obscene musical comedy called "An Honor for Death and the Dying": wherever and whenever He goes, He speaks fluent Lies and Deception: that's His language, the language of God!!

It's only to worship that ancient idol and religious terrorist -- humanities self-serving abusive father-figure - "God", for whom the entire history of the human race was invented - that humanity shall, and has, indeed, become His personal servants, His personal destroyers and manipulative denyers (after working the graveyard shift) as His personal, eternal death-wish-forced-laborers, His personal sex slaves and mental hospital patients just for Him to beat up on, to ridicule, to discriminate and kill their hope and optimism with that Word He spoke to me that I wrote down and copied:

"Context is God. Whatever is not God must be content. Whatever is content must not be God and must, therefore, be evil. The end." (An absurdity from the cryptic, unhinged mind of a schizophrenic.)

But that "God" of which He spits, that is, the context He reserves only for Himself, must be all evil since all that IS must be content, and therefore, evil. Context and content, like God and evil, are mixed-up words, interchangeable ideas, words and concepts we substitute for each other at our risk, our expense and convenience. Psychotic traitorous antibodies attach themselves like tentacles and electrons split themselves like independent multiple warheads to form bloody blisters of blood, water and puss resembling cancerous skin abrasions from radiation exposure.

To prove my point which doesn't need any proof: in another room, an old witch is ripping out her IV needles screaming obsenities at care workers who are trying to keep her radiation bandages from breaking apart. In the mist and vapor that filled my room with a soft blanket of smoke and gas from incense rising up to heaven, which is really a locked medicine cabinet in the hallway outside the door to her hospital room, I wrote the words down whether it was a dream, or an hallucination, or a dream:

I was walking alone on a street. It was dark, gloomy, wet and slippery; it was dirty, too. Sort of like sex. I dreamt I was walking on the street. Then it turned into a place where a friend of mine lived. He was someone I used to know. I was sort of like him. The street was where we scored junk and crystal. Could've been any street in Oakland, just a big city street that he and I lived on, I mean, if we could call that living. There were taxi's, bus stops, book stores and underground subways. I dreamt that all streets became one-way, dead-end, over-crowded, no-parking strees, torn-up streets good for taking detours and avoiding cops: law enforcement using extra pot-holes for a eulogy to abandoned memorials.

So, I was at a oxycodon cocktail party. I can't call it sleep. I can't call it dreaming. I was hooked on vancomycin drips and my nurse was flushing ports. Suddenly there was an emergency and the ports weren't flushing; they were blocked. The head nurse stopped the procedure because there was a dangerous air bubble blocking the antibiotic getting thru the plastic tubing. I could hear concern and urgency in their voices. I could see it on their faces. They stopped the procedure because of the threat of this giant air bubble on its way to my heart and my brain. They took me off the vancomycin and unplugged the med packs. I waited there, laying in bed, and waited for them to come back and continue. I waited but I nodded out and fell asleep. I woke up three hours later. I wanted the procedure to start over again, where we left off. I was talking to my nurses about the experience I had, I was a little upset, naturally................but then I found out that none of it had happened. I imagined the whole thing. The procedure went exactly perfectly without any problems at all. My "experience" was all in my head. None of it had been "real". None of it was real. None of it happened.

I used to go to the streets just so I could listen to black mass bible prophecies spitting out hot accusations from starving, angry underground baptist spin-off hipcats. I'd sleep walk in the thick mysticism of a deep somnambulism to relieve my bowels by stalking the forbidden streets of boredom.

I didn't want to know what was going on in the country but I still dreamt for America. I still dreamt hopeless premonitions. Instead of sleep, I dreamt that heavy black shadows covered my eyes and weighed them down like gold plated money. Wild hungry dogs wouldn't even try to dig bones out of the ground. It got so bad the earth was declared officially cursed. (LOL)

Visitation Rights

It had slipped my mind like a slapstick comedian falling on a loose banana peel. It slipped through the crack of my attention span the way a plumber shows himself off by bending over, letting his baggy "old-man" trousers fall below his attention span; the hairy white crack had no appeal to me. It dropped through the holes in my pockets, ripping out the threads of self-interest with the sounds of gagging, chocking, snoring, heavy breathing, uncontrolled and painful coughing, spitting. belching, screaming and moaning....(there were also some really disgusting and bad noises! And some gut-wrenching smells from the pits in the worst neighborhoods in hell!)... so much so that after two weeks of repetitive, non-stop, pain-gasping, life-ceasing self-resignation even I began to get used to it; it sounded normal, all-too-normal, peaceful and boring. It made me ask, "if it's like this in here, what's it like out there?"

The answer, of course, stared back at me through bland lifeless eyes: a right and a left eye on the same face, like a normal face, but clearly two separate eyes belonging to two separate people looking back at me not the least bit interested in my question; made me forget the question. I'd grown so accustomed to this nut house, I experienced less and less difference between the madness in here and the madness out there. Eventually, I experienced a type of zen tooth-extraction by mixing my yogurt with fresh cold watermelon, starring out the window, listening to cool west coast jazz (like the Art Pepper Trio with Elvin Jones), looking out upon the sunny side of Pine St. near Polk, drinking decaf coffee almost convinced that one's just the same as the other. And in the distance, the uncanny peaceful sound, the calming, peaceful mantra like temple bells being played by the institution's "COW" (Crazy Old Woman) screaming her head off, yelling at the top of her lungs, spitting at the walls, begging anyone stupid enough to listen as she perfects her performance of "Dependently Dysfunctional". And then, finally, just when I think I can't take anymore, my nurse comes around with my meds and narcotics (100mls of morphine: once, twice a day), and suddenly all is well. Hmmmmmmm. The sad part is that even that started to drop off little by little; the one thing I looked forward to each day, besides talking to Nico, taking walks and taking photos, was beginning to taper off so that I wouldn't leave the rehab facility needing to be admitted to a detox facility!

I told my nurse that my pain level, 1-to-10, 10 being the worse, was at a high five -- just to get morphine. I lied; so what. The lieing doesn't make it right; it just makes it lieing. I did it here everyday and so do the nurses when they write up their reports, and so do the doctors when they lie to the administrators, and the admin lies to the insurance carriers, and they lie to the auditors, who lies to Congress on television, and then they lie to The People (who are really gullible.) The People, if they're lucky enough to get a room in this healthcare circus, lie to everyone, everyday, all day just to get their share of tax relief (LOL!). The fact is, the people who will change the healthcare system, and fix the economy and stop the wars: they haven't even been born yet! The pain meds are much better and more reliable than tax breaks! They're faster acting and they make me feel a hell of a lot better for longer time! It's a vicious circle, or maybe it's not as vicious as we've been led to believe. I dont care one way or the other because now -- at least for the next ten hours or more -- I'll be on a morphine high spiked with oxycodon; that'll hit me in the afternoon. As for right now, right this minute, if I close my eyes I'll probably nod out for a bit, which is why it's so hard to write.

My problem is that it's almost impossible to write when I haven't got a clue what to write about or what to say. It reminds me of those irritating obnoxious sounds low-income men make when they eat their food deliberately and ignorantly clinking and clanking their forks, spoons and knives on their plate, loudly scopping up their pathetic imitation food, cutting it up, chopping it up, mixing it as noisely as they can bang their forks on the plate, shoving it all together, the eggs mixed with the butter mixed with apple sauce mixed with jelly mixed with bread, potatoes, soup and the salad get scooped up onto a big spoon gripped by a fist wrapped around the eating utensil like a hammer, clinking, clanking, blink-blank-blinkity-blankity-clankity-clanking its food into their gas-swollen, gas-protruding stomachs!

It reminds me of b&w movies I've seen of farmers, miners, truck drivers, school teachers, car salesmen and rural sheriff's as they lean over their food as if they had hunted, killed and dragged it away for safe keeping; as if they were protecting their meal by keeping it for themselves until later when it would taste better; as if they had won a lottery ticket and were dressed for the Last Supper; clinking, clanking and scooping up their wet mix, slopping it as fast as they could shove it into their mouth, making noises half-animal/half-human so furiously their jaws fell off.

(After my initial morphine rush, a few hours later.......) OK, back to photography: what is it, exactly, I want to say? Maybe I dont have anything to say, or, if I do, maybe it doesnt need to be said. I can't let myself believe that for Christ sake! So, why is it taking me so long to write it? It must have something to do with pretense; a lot of what I write sounds pretentious and contrived. I dont think there's anything pretentious about an empty white porclean coffee cup placed on a brown wooden table that's lopsided and rocks back and forth. The cup sits on top of a white table napkin and the table's next to an open window facing street traffic and feet traffic and you can almost see the outline of the shadows of people walking. There's nothing pretentious about that is there? Or, finally, how about a toilet bowl full of feces after I take an intestinal vacation for three to five days with no bowel movements; there's nothing pretentious about that is there?

On the other hand, we've got an old grey-haired witch staying in one of the insured beds, in one of the insured rooms, down one of the halls in this insured rehab facility. She spends most of her waking hours imagining she's tripping and falling, or at least threatening to imagine she's going to trip and fall and brake her other arm. One thing is real: in the middle of the night she screams in her witchy spell-binding voice that either she needs to pee or that she's already peed all over the floor - even though it's completely dry. She wants the nurses to drop what they're doing and discharge her so she can pee in her own home. Is she pretentious? Is every mental case who's locked up in this physical rehab facility pretentious?

I don't know. but it still sounds pretentious when I write the following: "As a photographer, what am I willing to promise, if anything, about the work that I do? And what really is the "work" that I do? Are they just pictures or are they something else? What right does anyone have to expect something more out of the work I do other than just what I feel like doing, what I like to do?"

I'll answer the second part first. People have the right to expect my photos to be authentic and to have integrity. That's it; period. This means, people have the right to expect me to raise the bar on myself when it comes to self-exploration, examination, re-evaluation and self-confrontation. They have the right to see my photos as a visual, pictoral conversation that they're having with me as we interact and converse together inside a new domain, a new realm of possibility that we explore together, not simply to look at pictures with the background or the foreground as an easy prop.

Now I'll answer the first part of the question: What am I willing to promise? Let's be clear about what I'm not willing to promise: I don't care how great the camera is or even if I understand how to work all the bells and whistles on the cameras I have. I don't promise to study photography and try to master the interesting principles of composition, structure, lighting, shutter speed, computer processing or whatever else there is.....and when it comes to actually knowing anything about photography, I promise to live by the code, "If you know the difference between a bus stop and an f/stop, you already know too much."

I promise to ask questions -- mostly not questions about photography, but about life itself -- and not questions to get answers, but questions to get more questions. I promise to re-evaluate the opinions and viewpoints that have acquired me like tics on a dog, and to acknowledge my fixations with aberrations and let go of them, give them up, re-invent and transform an opinionated bias into an open space of acceptance and clarity. I promise to remake and rebuild points of view, such that processing is experienced by others who look at my photos as an on-going conversation they're invited to be involved with, conversations and inquiries we share about distinctions of life, not necessarily about photography at all. Finally, I promise that my photos will be a function of this collective conversation; that integrity will come at a high premium of personal transparency of states of mind and ways of being, relationships, vulnerabilities, insecurities, strengths and mental, emotional and spiritual internal confrontations.

That's my promise and that's what you can expect. How this will all turn out, only time will tell. Now, what could be more pretentious than that??!

Coffee House Confessions

"This is not the most poetic and venting vile extremity, or even an interesting piece I've written, but it's important to me to write it, as if to close this period of my social development. Hopefully, you'll find something worthwhile in it."

(Coffee House Confessions 1) When I was in San Francisco earlier this month at the rehab institution, as soon as I was able to go out on my own and walk around the city I started hanging out at this local coffee house on Polk Street called the Royal Ground Coffee. I really liked the atmosphere, mostly a gay and lesbian crowd, especially attracted older lesbian woman who sort of had an informal offical (or a formal unoffical) dress code: heavy black or blue long woolen coats with oversized collars, or fur/fake fur preferred with a portion of unkept burly stringy hair like a scouring pad jutting out from their head and down around their face pushed down even further by varities of large hats worn like a crown of royalty, usually wearing a pair of jeans, dark discolored slippers or ratty sandles, no socks. I photographed several women there who looked eactly the same. (CHC 2)

(CHC 3) The women like to sit outside usually on the round wooden sidewalk tables and hard-back chairs that never sat level, drink their coffee -- the cheaper "regular" brand that came in a bigger cup, lasted longer, stayed hot longer and let them talk more. They smoked as many cigarettes as they could in the period of time I was there with them, sometimes passing around almost barely burning butts to share the light so the other's could get their smoke burning; I guess they were out of matches. It was always windy and so they did that thing where they shield the wind from the cigarette, distort their face and body to block the wind and puff and blow to get a little lightning happening, and then you see the puff of white smoke rising from their cupped hands.. (CHC 4)

(CHC 5) These women always seemed to know everybody and everything that was going on within a small but enlarging network of locals. They knew who was in town, who left, who got divorced, married, hooked up, busted, sick, pregnant; who was doing a tour, a show, or who was selling a car. Their information and the flurries of their little anecdotes were the center of attention and daily attraction for the Russian owner of the store for whom it was almost like free entertainment to pull in the older balding, salt and pepper haired, crisp, clipped mustached, semi-fit-with-a-slight-protruding-gut on the gay men. (CHC 6)

(CHC 7) I would sit indoors near the open window by the front door and drink a cup or two of espresso and take photos. I must've look like I belonged there; I felt like it did, as far as nuance is concerned. It was comfortable, had that dissenting student intellectual artist feel to it; quiet, with lots of wood floors, tables and chairs, the smell of rich coffee, classical music or jazz in the background, people against the walls lined up with their laptops, WiFi's and classroom curriculum literature. And the best thing - it was never crowded. A double cup of espresso was only $2.00 served in a white porcelain cup. There was never any pressue to buy more, or to leave after you finished. I sat there for a long time, almost every day and listened to the conversations, the gossiping, the political specualtion, philosophy, and store-front-pull-up-a-table-and-chair free psychoanalysis sessions. When I had to go eat dinner, I went back to the madhouse institution for another night of sweaty hell, bed chills, and lonliness. (CHC 8)

Special Acknowledgment: Niki Conolly

SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: NIKI CONOLLY

I've had a four-month long experience with a near-death killer-infection eating away at the bones in the center of my back. In mid-January I was suddenly without warning Learjet-air-lifted hastily arranged and flown out of Nashville racing towards Kaiser Permanente South San Francisco Hospital under extreme narcotic sedation. For two months I had physical and mental therapy, antibiotics that would kill a horse, 24-hour rehab programs and narco pain meds that could put Dracula to sleep. Except for a small handful of professional medical experts and miracle workers, who, luckily for me, specialized in excellence, integrity and compassion, my experience at this facility located on the border of San Francisco's Tenderloin district could only be described as an urban nightmare exceeding its incompetence and cowardice only by its corruption.

However, there was a silver-lining. What was good about this was that it compelled me to grasp hold of, to cherish, to dream and to treasure my relationship, my infinite life-times of a continuing love affair with my girlfriend, Nico - Niki Conolly. "Girlfriend" is too weak of a word. Maybe "Angel" or "Saint" would be stronger. The fact is, she's been my eternal source of physical and spiritual strength every time I quit, and believe me, I quit many times. But now, after it's over, I'm happy to admit that I can't think about her, or talk about her, or write a sentence about her without crying rivers of sobbing tears of thankfulness and tenderness!

Since this ordeal started 60 days ago, after hundreds of photos I've taken in San Francisco, eventually realizing that essentially I've been taking the same photographs of the same people, in the same conditions, talking the same conversations, going about their usual business which is really the same boring business, running off as fast as they can in any direction, ignoring each other as significantly and as meaningfully as they possibly can: Niki Conolly is the one thing, the one person, the one woman, the one human, the one essence, the one existence that stands out for me as a brightly lit star, truly and clearly unique, radically individualistic, intensely generous and unlike anyone I've ever known, who has a deeper purpose of character than I'll ever have.

In sharp contrast to the same-old humanism I saw in the images of my photos, Niki is totally different from everyone and everything. Her conversations are like no other. Her interests are wide and varied. Her ability to love unconditionally and especially her willingness to love me seems to be boundless. She's the one element in my experience since November 2008, when this killer infection began trying to kill me, that she was then and she is now, the one single element that has never been like everyone else, never been the same as anything or anyone else. When I see a photo of Niki, and I see a photo I took of another woman reading a book in Union Square, San Francisco, they are clearly two separate and distinct women. There's a woman like every other woman, reading a book; and then there's Niki Conolly.

I can't even thank her! That's supposed to be a joke: "Thanks" is something I say to someone who reaches across a table and passes the salt and pepper; it's not what I say to someone who took a stand for my life, who took an unwavering stand that I would live no matter what, and she stood and withstood all the obstacles and she saw it thru to a happy ending. As I complete this modest tribute to her, and as I dedicate to her all the photos published here, I hope I've made it abundantly clear to anyone reading exactly who it is I consider to be responsible for my renewed recovery, health, fitness and well-being. If it hadn't been for Niki Conolly, I wouldn't be here today. I love her and I am devoted to her happiness.

"The Chinese Woman Who Was Half-Goat/Half-Human"

[WARNING Don't read this is you're sensitive to "Political Correctness" issues, or if you don't have much of a sense of humor. You won't like it. Believe me. I'm serious.]

Once upon a time, which happened to be in present time, there was an old woman, one of many; at least I thought she was human. She was in the same rehab as me, on another side of the other section not too close, but close enough for me to hear the animal sounds she made. Maybe Old Testament Jews would say Satan possessed her; who knows? I guess it takes one to know one.

I felt like I was in a Viet Cong urban prison, if I knew what one was like. This old troll, this old goat, this old bat, this old piece of shoe leather had been there long before that - and from the smell of things she'd be there long after I left. As deaf as he was, even Beethoven could have heard the noise she made! Every single night, this old Chinese thong, which I obviously had no compassion or consideration for, sat in bed, or in a wheelchair and made sounds like dying sheep, dying lambs caught in a trap, or goats being strangled or branded every five, six or seven seconds, repeatedly without stopping, without ever taking a break, not even for a sip of muddy water from the banks of the Chang Jiang. "Ba-a-a, aaaaaaaaaaa! Baa,a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a! G'o-o-o-o-o-odaaayyy,-a-a-a-a-a-a-a! G'odaayy-a-a-a-a-a-a! Gnaaaaaa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a! Goo'baa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a! Baa-a-a-a-a-a,a-a-a-gnoa-a-a-a-a-ayy!" She went on and on like this without stopping, hour after hour, one grimy night after another dirty night after more gloomy monotonous nights even more boring, sickening, sucking, horrifyingly mind-numbing, mentally insane, sadly sickening days and nights of non-therapeutic psychological torture without end! Water boarding would have been a vacation.

Now, this old crow -- who knew anything about her? She looked like she was once a person, maybe even a woman. She might have known a man, maybe they got married, had kids, maybe even grand kids. Maybe the old man died on his own for his escape, and maybe the kids dumped her in a well or in a dryer in a basement in a Chinatown laundry near the corner of Stockton and Clay under the tunnel bridge. If the kids were smart, they kissed the antique ways of the oldest country good riddence, moved out and shot up with hot new young sexy western-style Euro-pop-Asian-spiky-haired-party-crashers. Whatever happened, I'll never know; and the less I know the better.

In the meantime, in my rehab center on the third floor next to the window looking onto Pine Street, I shared a 3-bed dorm room with two tiresome and obsolete Asian men who spoke no English. Quickly, I got the rabbit-ears TV removed from the room, a TV which only transmitted loud Chinese sit-coms and stupid game shows. These guys were deaf anyway. After the TV was gone, one of men continued to sit in front of the table where the TV used to be and he'd just sit there and stare at it, stare at where it used to sit, staring at empty space on a shelf as if the TV was still there; there was nothing there but a shelf and a mirror. He'd sit there anyway and shovel his rice and seaweed into his mouth with his chopsticks and watch the no-TV that wasn't there just like some zen-master of the Vimalakirt Sutra, looking into the nature of his missing television and preparing a treatise on suffering without cable.

In case you haven't kept track, these remarks are connected to the Half-Goat/Half-Woman curse of evil story I started out with: both of these men belligerently and viciously hung onto their useless and fruitless excuses for lives as if under a curse. I'm not being cruel; I'm making an economically responsible observation in the new language of the "bailout". These dying men were waiting for their bailout like most people in this rehab center over 70yrs old struggling to stay alive like two divorced couples besieged with a summons to give up everything, like executives on the verge of bankruptcy wanting another bonus.

Like Wall Street crooks, the old Asians looked forward to one more death-defying day of bed-wetting, vomiting, coughing and shitting so often they could keep as many qualified doctors and nurses preoccupied with their cureless self-made tribulations just to be selfish, nasty and spread their prejudice to every corner of the building. And we wonder why health care is so expensive! It's not healthcare that's expensive; it's the care and feeding for a bloated ancient Chinese honor system that worships past generations of the Jade Emperor 玉皇, Yudi 玉帝 who had enough sense to die a long time ago. If you stick your head out the window you can smell the intenstinal garbage can of our financial district downtown San Francisco slowly sinking into its colorectal cancer landfill!

Did I mention that both men shit in their beds at least two or three times a week? Well, they did: one whimpered like a baby when he slept and moaned all night barely breathing; the other one gurgled and snored never clearing or swallowing his mucus-bound, throat-filled, sloppy phlegm-filled black lung (I'm assuming he had at least one) every five minutes or so before trying to climb out of his bed every so often. With his hands, like Larry Craig of Idaho infamy, he reached under the curtains separating our little bedroom cubicles and tried to get out of his bed and put his feet on the floor. He stretched out his ugly, deformed little bony death-like white skeleton finger-bones across the vast space from his unprotected infected bed to my antibiotic-protected bed just to get my attention; only Shennong 神農 the "Divine Farmer" of the dirt farmer, knew for what possible reason. Something creepy, for sure.

I had a theory that I thought because my hair was longer back then than it is now since I cut it short he must've thought I was a woman (it wouldn't be the first time I was mistaken for a woman and it wasn't always unpleasant, but that's another story for another time.) Back in the rehab institution, in his burned out feeble-headed empty-mindedness maybe he thought I was his faithful peasant village wife, maybe he thought he'd get lucky like in the past before he buried her in the back yard with the pigs and his WWI Chinese Armed Police officer camouflage uniform, maybe he had Chinese Necrophilia, the sexual attraction to non-English speaking corpses. Whatever it was, I called the nurses every night just in the nick of time. I'd turn over in my bed and look at his face, look into his bulging eyes and unshaven face and huge nose with the oxygen tubes sticking in his huge nostrils, laying there on his side fondling the tubes running down out of his bed onto the floor, into a half-filled bucket of discolored yellowish liquid that must've been toxic. The nurses came rushing in the dorm room, turn on the lights like they were working a rice paddy at sunrise, they'd say an honorable mention in ancient Chinese because nurses were gung-ho on honoring old Chinese men and women, calling them "pa-pa" and "ma-ma" whether they were related or not. I guess after Hiroshima and Nagasaki they were all related.

They'd tie him down to his bed like some kind of oriental S&M game, just before he took a shit in his bed; the smell was enough to kill me, but it never did. While this was going on, I had a pair of studio-quality, ear-gripping, volume-decapitating headphones wrapped around my eardrums as tightly as morphine would allow listening to Monk and Coltrane playing as loud as possible to drown out the ugliness that was in the space of my little cubicle. In case there's any question, let me be the first to declare that, zen-enlightenment or not - new-age self-awareness or not, I have zero tolerance for sick, old Asians who are among the world's most prejudiced, arrogant, belligerent, nasty, selfish and pushy people I've ever ran across, as in "run across" on a freeway, which by the way they should never be allowed to drive a car. However, I do think we need to give people the benefit of the doubt and accept them unconditionally, but there are exceptions when doubt becomes a malignant tumor invading and destroying healthy tissue spreading to other parts of the organism.

Let's get back to the story of the Half-Goat/Half-Woman. Beyond what I've just told you, as bad as that was – and it was worse than that - further down the hall, in the other section, was this Goat-Woman. In mythology, the devil often appeared as a goat to superstitious peasants carrying their supply of sorghum. I thought this old witch was brought here to float thru the halls of this refrigerated and decomposing mortuary to capture the futile fleeing souls of the dead, those who had sold themselves when they were young formations of animal alchemy symbols, extensions of the goat-tradition. Goats were viewed with as much reverence and high regard in alchemy as they were in other spiritual traditions such as Native Americans. They've held mystique for every culture. Great symbolism was placed upon beheaded goats. And, although true alchemical practices are highly guarded and facts are hard to come by, there are many dark areas still hiding in the anals of alchemy, some of which I photographed here on these pages and you can see it on their faces.

Near the end before I was discharged from the institution, the Half-Goat/Half-Woman waved good-bye to me in a threatening way, like she had a bomb under her blanket, like when she sat in her wheelchair and "saw" me - (I don't know if she could see anything except shadowy images) – it was clear I didn't belong there; her red puffy eyes and sagging skin would seem to shriek as she sat in her bed or in the wheelchair with her head bent over touching her knee caps, wearing her woolen blanket wrapped around her legs and shoulders like a tight cocoon, her eyes half closed, rolled up into the top of her forehead, scanning the room from the opening in her skull, like a submarine periscope. Her long twisted fingers slightly twitched from her fingernails to her knuckles as if she was counting the dead on her fingers. She sat there every night and day and made ghastly sounds of tortured dying sheep, fat deathly-scarred lamb chops and branded goats cornered by wild hungry dogs, wild starving blood-thirsty boars! Hour after hour, day after day and night, she would call them out of their dorm rooms one by one, or in groups of two, like Noah's ark of the handicapped, one mentally vacant skeleton after another, each of them carrying a "NO VACANCY" sign around their neck. I closed my door, closed my eyes, turned up my headphones but I still could hear her crying her half-goat/half-human sounds: "Ba-a-a,aaaaaaaaaaa! Baa,a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a! G'o-o-o-o-o-odaaa,-a-a-a-a-a-a-a! G'odaa-a-a-a-a-a-a! Gnaaaaaa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a! Goo'baa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a! Baa-a-a-a-a-a,a-a-a-gnoa-a-a-a-a-a! Ba-a-a,aaaaaaaaaaa!" It never stopped. She never quit. She went on and on every night, all night, all the time. Sleeping pills didn't make a difference. Her nervous system was possessed with evil. She was past the point of sleep. If she slept at all it was in the form of a trance; her sleep cycles were really cycles of trances.

As you can imagine, the noise almost made me go mad, but luckily I was spared: 200mls of morphine everyday kept my imagination from running away from me. I had a grip on reality. The old men snored with their nose-belching mucus-filled, wet breathing phlegm in their throat and lungs that should've killed them by now (and I wish it would have) went on and on as she continued her animal sounds "Ba-a-a,aaaaaaaaaaa! Baa,a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a! G'o-o-o-o-o-odaaa,-a-a-a-a-a-a-a! G'odaa-a-a-a-a-a-a! Gnaaaaaa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a! Goo'baa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a! Baa-a-a-a-a-a,a-a-a-gnoa-a-a-a-a-a! Ba-a-a,aaaaaaaaaaa!" But I for sure knew what was real and what was even more real!

The moral of the story: When the rest of us, the "normal" ones among us, talk about reality; when we talk about consciousness; when we talk about existence and life and beauty and intelligence; when we talk about matter, energy, space and time... where does this Half-Goat/Half-Woman fit in to the conversation? Where's her niche in life? What reality does she have that we're going to relate to? From magick wax, she carved out a two-headed Goat Candle and lit it up at both ends using her fingers as the fire starter, snapped them together to light the flame from the index finger. She lit the two-headed Goat-Candle, played with Chinese dolls and talked to them recalling the reckless, sleepless, death memories "Ba-a-a,aaaaaaaaaaa! Baa,a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a! G'o-o-o-o-o-odaaa,-a-a-a-a-a-a-a! G'odaa-a-a-a-a-a-a! Gnaaaaaa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a! Goo'baa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a! Baa-a-a-a-a-a,a-a-a-gnoa-a-a-a-a-a!" that kept us awake throughout the foggy creepy city night listening to her mystic dream in wet San Francisco nights blinded by a trance that cursed the winter.

The End of Absurdity

"The End of Absurdity"was written in the hospital, where I do some the my best and worst writing. This is probably one of the worst but I'm putting it up anyway.

Life has no lessons to teach. Life is basically a twisted disappointment and a waste of time. It has no good options. It has no good choices. It has nothing to offer anybody. It sucks. It is a piece of shit filled existence without any importance. There are no lessons to learn. There is no consciousness. No awareness. No energy. No point. No value whatsoever. So, the End of Absurdity is the end of life. When life ends, absurdity ends. (Lines that tell a Story)

(Launching a Magick Spell) I have determined religious conversations about salvation and Jesus and the Bible and all the rest of them, to be aberrant social/cultural pathological psychobabble that have roots in some dark pit of sensory nightmares, sociopathologies that appeal to the very worst senses of human depravity. Religion and all its horror and terror and horrific nightmarish stigmata of revolting vomit is the scourge and the black destruction of the nuclear night, the nuclear bomb that destroys the city and the fields the fire that burns the skin off the dead horses laying in the black and blue gutter of an evil world divided betwen psychopathic insanities of an absurd ending to an absurd triad of a snake who eats its own tail. (Karmic Road Map)

(The Eyes of March)That's the image of the great babylon of the desert, that holy filthy see where the most unholy, where the most filthy, where the most undead phenomena walk and crawl and slip around biting and sucking the blood from the universe. (Reflections of a Tea Addict)

And this Jesus, this GodHead, this ego-maniacal shit-for-brains religious cult leader who stands at the crossroads and knocks on the door to wake up sleeping people, this naked, ugly, rebellious Jesus Christ who had to build his own casket who had to dig his own grave who had to stand in the cold because of his lies his faking his fradulence his radical hatered for all things human and for all things that breathe of life and love and power, this trinity god so pathological vindictive and dysfunctional and dangerous to the human race that just the mention of his false name just the recitation of his phony history genealogy that causes all the universe, this Jesus needs to be destroyed and burned and every last root of David killed. (Reflections of Two Feet)

(Reflections of a Foot) No matter how much older I get, it appears to me that my lifetime has one bright and shining purpose for illumination and for the re-education of the world and for all reasons to love and exist - and that reason is to do all i can to scrape religious belief whereever I find it and deny it, to burn it, to destroy it,,to stand as a voice screaming and cussing in the wilderness and to suck all of the terror out of the religious host until all my body and my mind has been leveled and flattened and the earth has been freed forever from this insidious destructive horrific nightmare called "God" or "Jesus" because there is no word in the languages of all the earth that can properly express and ignite the fires of anger and hatered and retribution against religion as much as God Jesus ritual Islam Jew Tora Talmud you name it, salvation, salvation - that ritual imperfect of all most imperfect ideas that has robbed mankind of life by making him a slave to sickening death prayers to a cosmic ghost who fakes orgasms hiding in a garbage bag by the side of the road on the way from Los Angeles to Needles California giving the sign of the cross to the night of stars.

(Reflections on a Bathroom Floor) If I could have but only one wish right ow, right here, right now and forever be gone with their fake phony arrogant vomiting uglinesss disaster wars far into the dead of the night sky and never return. Never to open their dead eyes ever again. That goes for the Christian. The Jews. The Islam. The Talmud. The Tora, every religious man, woman and child and burn the earth until a black death of evil infection, MRSA, blood cancer, whatever --- get these people off the planet and never let their memory ever be remembered or spoken again. (Reflections on a Bathroom Wall)

The end of absurdity is the end of identifying with moments that stay fixed and rooted in the past. There is no completion in the past where the mind is locked in a memory. Only now today the presence around me in all its movement is moving and flowing all around me right now in all its movement where I am in his very room there it can be celebrated. (Untitled)

I'm at the center of this great universe the center of it as resting completely balanced and in harmony doesnt mean there is no discomfort or pain and yet I am somehow standing and yet not standing, falling from above and yet reaching upward to take hold of a space from which there is no satisfaction, a new dimension. The nature of the universe is not to give or take pleasure - there is no personality of the universe who desires to give pleasure at what is and what is not. The absurdity is finally put to sleep but it is too transparent to be confused with itself.

The end of absurdity is the end of religion. The end of God. The end of man's superstition, the end of the beginning of a new world of hot coffee. The end of absurdity is the movement of yin and yang, man and woman, duality, the bible story, the children's fairy tales, talkative nighclub entertainers, the cadillac drivers, people who commit suicide, the piano locked in the downstairs hallway, the hands and feet of a statue of wood speaking unknown language that dissolves and twists in the wind and never find its way home, whers absurdity no longer has a home, where the end of absurdity is the end of the terrorist civilization and where the end of remaining in bondage to the fake empty choices of people in taxis watch TV from other planets trying to know as little as possible to teach as much as possible, to play jazz at all hours day and night till absurdity is wasted and found again and again.

The end of absurdity is the end of Jesus and all religions, leaders, political parties, pathological obesities and cut rate pawn shops gold plated ideas that breed between cousins. The end of absurdity is the red floating baloon balancing on the tip of my tongue, refusing to blink at the christ child, the false pompous arrogant weakling. The end of absurdity is the end of the end of time, the end of make believe and fantasy. The end of absurdity is the end of Jesus, the Jews, the Muslims and all the sacred cows crossing the empty Jordan river full of snakes and worms, the valley of the dead skeletons of the end of another great absurdity.

When you destroy the vestments and garments and rituals without appealing to selfish old shoes, then you know the end of absurdity is close at hand. There is no 2nd coming. No return. No rapture. No eternal heaven or hell. No punishment. No sins. No consideration. No condemnation. There is just the final end, the last act, the last play, the last glorious last note, the last soft breath. The end of Jesus and the bible's pathology all all world religions is the end of absurdity, the end of existence itself trying to photograph itself with a broken lens.

Absurdity is the crash landing of an ancient space ship that went thru space only to get lost and not return. This is the end of absurdity, that leaves music playing in the silence sounds of love for lovers and mystics for magick acts and for moutain climbers, and snow men who forgot where they came from.

The end of absurdity is a god who always changes, a god never stays the same. This is the end of absurdity. All there is throughout the universe is a motion, movement, changing, ever-changing constant flow of life that is compete and whole at every moment. There is no god who stands as some constant unchanging piece of shitty judgement.

The end of absurdity is the end of judgement. The end of absurdity is the end of religious bias. The end of discrimination. The end of the passage of time from some old dirt road to an intersection in the middle of fourcorners of a spaceless energyless system of life.

Absurdity is any kind of belief in god. Absurdity is any kind of religious allegiance. Absurdty is any conversation with God. The end of absurdity would be the end of fixed opinions, fixed ideas, judgements, perceptions, contradictions, arguments, decisions, guesses, pastimes, bleeding, mistakes, communication that fails-- these are the absurdities and the end of all of them will rejoice with the cries throughout heaven and earth. The end of absurdity will be the end of sickness of the religious nature of humanity to try to fix their gaze at the blame for guilt-ridden crucifixion mythology that eats its own flesh. The end of absurdity is the end of all religion. The end of absurdity is the end of god and jesus, the end of absurdity is the end of the saints. the end of absurdity is the end of the sign of the cross. the end of the crossroads. the end of absurd phantoms and the end f absurd nightmares, knowingness and awarenes. the end of absurdity is the beginning of life.

Hardening of the Hardship: The Last Days at Hotel Pain (a diary)

Nov. 16 There's a spot on my back upper middle near the center near the center a spot near the center mid-level right side left side a spot like the size of a quarter or the size of a mayonnaise jar with sharp ridges and grooves, a spot on my back a spot of pain a circle of pain the shape of a mayonnaise jar, heavy metal hot steel burning heat pads burning a hole in my back in the shape of an ashtray, in the shape of an army boot covered in mud covered with mud, pain that's hot blazing like fire breathing down my neck thru my skin scabbing up beneath the skin little points of pain in the center of my brain. In the center of my positive thinking, the middle of my sweaty back with the burning hole where optimism stinks and smells and dries up dead skin getting revenge ("the oldest motivation known to mankind" – Dirty Harry). In my optimistic delirium I hurt all day just to see the sun come up and in my pessimistic delirium I hurt all day just to see the sun go down. Either way, pain accompanied me in every glass and in every ice cube, and in every thought I had. It made the pain look and feel like ropes tied around my body yanking me from one end of the street to the other, kicking me in the side, breaking my ribs, bruising my body with boots of metal, or like a bungee cord pulling my body slamming my body banging my body in two directions at the same time, twisting my body in every direction, straining bending pulling hanging yanking screaming begging sickening pain, pleading pain, begging pain like a rubber band, like a rubber band of twisting pain, like a rubber band twisting in opposite directions twisting in the wind, hanging from the sky, dangling on an electrical cord from an electric light bulb, broken glass sharp cutting no sleeping, eyes blurry, seeing blurring painfully moaning dizzy dreaming sickening doping drugging, writing in the darkness, sleepless but not dreamless.

Nov. 20 Hallucinations are my companion in the dark in the bed in my head behind my eyes in the back of my eyelids. In front of my brain they walk around stalking every thought I have, stalking the wild thinkingness about the soft spot on the forehead of my painful body straining to breathe against the pain, the discomfort across my chest around my back a tightening, a squeezing, a twisting groaning depression, a moaning impression. Pain like a desert rock, a rock of ages, dry and hot like cactus scabs on my fingers, like cactus blisters on my toes, like cactus boils popping on my back from the middle of my back after 20 days of the color white and yellow spinning in a vicious circle spitting cactus juice in my face, blinding me throwing hot dusty gravel rocks, desert cactus spikes growing out of the center of my back right hand side, the color orange and yellow spinning around the cactus that is my spine from the bottom to the top, from the seat of the kundalini serpent to the home of the evil eye of a blind mule, and a wink is as good as a nod to a blind mule, a blind mule eating spikes on a cactus of pain, eating it away, spitting pain between its teeth.

Nov. 22 Day light with no pain: my back is a field of water flowing like a soft blue river on down to the bottom and back to the top of my shoulders and winding around like Little Bone Marrow Creek wrapped around my legs and the legs of a chair. The heat of pain is that hard spot on my back sort of in the center upper part to the left and right, killing pain with a morphine drip pretending unending defending aching reaching for nothingness. Noir shadows on my back down my body, my stomach, on my back down my body my stomach flattening empty and meaningless fasting like a zen monk. A Buddha cat slept between my feet curled up with one eye open and one ear twitching, not even a growling stomach making hungry noises. It's an empty bag, a suitcase lost, a wallet tossed in the San Francisco bay, a broken record, a plastic shopping bag, a homeless shopping cart, the trunk of a car, a bookcase, a gas tank, the back seat of a car, an empty bookshelf, a roll of film, a big bass drum, a roll of quarters, a broken fingernail, a piece of paper, an empty bottle of wine, a flat tire, dirty windows, bounced checks, broken promises, floating icebergs filled with pain, dripping melting tasteless wetness passing stones. I built a wall around my back about ten feet high painted black and blue with stripes and matching colors that match the blinds on the noir wall. The heat of my fever, the smoke from my skin, from my dried skin is an empty envelope, an empty bottle, an empty house, empty glasses, red roses black shoes black gloves white rice and a ripped shirt, shining boots, a pocket watch, an empty shoe, a torn pocket, an eye patch, a broken radio stuck on Christian talk, an empty bar stool, cut lip and a black eye, matter hair and an empty ash tray empty stomach yellow teeth brown paper bag a t-shirt, a pair of jeans, clean underwear and dirty socks.

Nov. 26 Noir shadows on my fingernails and b&w photos: fingerprints in smoke, smoky mystic pain rising like incense, smells like jazz downtown where I got a tattoo on my arm. My stomach: empty and meaningless, empty and forgotten, but peacefully calm like a box full of water full of air like a bubble floating in the air. It rises like a cloud hanging over a waitress walking home from the diner, walking down the sidewalk after closing time, the city growling hungry and thirsty in the early morning fog. A stomach growls, intimate intestines bloated extended stomachs. Dry throats scratchy knuckles and meaningless pain stretched across the Midwest from dawn to dusk, from the cradle to the grave, grasping for air, gasping for space, grasping for something that isn't there, that may never have been there in the first place but now is, and before it wasn't, and may not be again until the pain disappears.

Nov. 29 I think it's because my zen cat priest, my black cat black zen cat, my little black zen monk cat guards my bed between my feet and guards my night and my dark bed at night rolled into a ball waiting for me to return to my body without the color and smell of pain, or the smell of loss of consciousness, or the smell of passing out, or the smell of falling asleep, the smell of wet mail, the smell of dried leaves, the smell of herbal tea, the smell of dead mice, or the smell from the spot on my back smelling like drugs, smelling like the grinding gears burning from a cross-town city bus growling deep like the sound of a train wreck, the sound of a slumbering zen monk, growling mad dog, a mouth-foaming mad cow growling at the moon behind eyelids of emptiness and meaning and hunger like a Buddha cat zen monk priestly cat sleeping.

Nov. 31 Hotel Pain is on rural back-roads, the spot near the center straining under the load, under the hood, the table and floor the walls and ceiling of my back-roads hotel of pain painted yellowishly pale and white and burning dull, sleeping empty stomachs like fasting and meditating, sitting with eyes closed and hands folded touching fingertips together pressing against the empty stomach, growling lightly behind a curtain, shadows, bus shadows, noir curtains shadows, noir shadows, shadows on a wall at an angle layered across the walls behind the lights falling down like visions of a Buddha swaying in the wind from side to side, up and down. But when I wasn't sick I could still cough. I could close my eyes, I could touch my head, I could brush my teeth and my hair. I could scratch my hands and feet and finally brush my teeth and doze off sleeping with my eyes open, breathing slowly calmly peacefully, flying across the night sky. The pain moved from side to side and down my spine from top to bottom, the color of spinning red and white crashing colors screaming jazz beats jazz moaning jazz, passing stones on an empty wet street with cars parked bumper-to-bumper and back-to-back, like pain going down driving with ancient Buddha cat speeding thru my body like electricity racing thru the synapses' of my brain (start-change-stop) until I pass out or piss out stones of agony, delicate precious stones of bodily crystals crystallized with the sound of the dead underground.

Dec. 1 And my pain goes away with the sound of a midnight bus ride from the down town bus station. I wait in line with my bus ticket in my hand, sliding my feet on the dusty floor around the ashtrays, soda machines, candy machines, iron metal seats, newspapers and candy wrappers. My ticket in my hand passing it off to the Driver from Hell the driver of the bus driving away from Pain City, away from Hotel Pain just a block away from the Bar of Pain on the corner of Pain Alley and the Boulevard of Pain, next to the bus stop of One-Way Pain. I get on the bus to the middle of my back and curl up in a ball in the back of the bus, pull my jacket over me, close my eyes and try to sleep saying "goodbye" to the memory of pain and "goodbye" to the anguish of meaning of my empty stomach growling in the Buddha darkness, empty and meaningless with my zen meditation mantra, a mantra I use to stand to walk to sit to eat and sit and cross my legs, to sit on the toilet whenever I want and not die there.

Dec. 5 My mantra runs thru my mind and pain memories sink below the horizon and slowly drift away becoming like vapor, like a ghostly figure that has been haunting me like an entity, a creature surrounding me now, becoming like a mystic vapor smoky vapor ghostly vapor slowly disappearing, becoming invisible, the pain image becoming softer, invisible, less tangible translucent transcendental transformational. A ghostly creature who had been with me every day for three weeks, slept with me and beat me up and tortured me without end night and day now was, and is, slowly walking away already letting go of me not hanging onto me. Still its aura is here and near but vaporizing slowly disappearing. A creature letting go of me and its body slowly disappearing into nothingness. My legs are not so bad that I can't move them because I can and I will. I can bend them nicely under the covers, the blankets not too heavy, not too hot sort of comfortable and a little scared. The pain is gone and I feel almost normal, but I'm still in bed not wanting to kill muscles, listening really hard to what I don't know.

Dec. 10 And I saw a creature standing in the corner of the bedroom, standing behind the door in the corner of the wall where two walls come together. There's a door on hinges hanging there and that's where I saw the creature. It reached for me from across the room. It's a room of fog-mist like old Dracula movies, a dull figure of a creature in the shadows of the room, in the corner behind the door. I can see it thru the mirror because there's a light in the bathroom hitting the mirror, and I can see the creature's reflection in the mirror and in the reflection I can see it thru the crack where the door hangs on its hinges and swings against my back and bangs into it when I cough or talk or when I scream with my hands cupped around my mouth to make my voice louder. I can see this creature mocking me in the dark behind the door making faces, poking at me with a stick, ramming me with a truck, slapping me with the back of its grimy filthy hand, the hand with the long hairs growing around its wrist growing up its arm and weaving itself around its bony elbow in and out like a wool shawl and dangling at the end split hairs in the center of my back with its hairy hand watching me squirm, watching me cry, looking at my distorted face, my mouth tightening up my face muscles, watching me hurting myself gasping for air, looking at me, reaching for me blindly looking stupid, looking at me looking at it, watching it stretch out its arms. It can't touch me but its aura can reach me and spin around me and it touched my body. The creature's aura pulls back into itself pulling away stepping back away from me in the night, the middle of the night, behind the door running away during the day disappearing like misty vapor smoke and fog.

Dec. 17 The creature was banging his fist on my head, banging his knees on my spine, banging his arms on my head, banging his feet on my ribs, banging his elbows on my recovery, packing up my mind in a paper bag, blowing down the door to my head, flooding my legs with cement and water, crushing my bones in a bone-crusher, peeling away my skin and pasting it on the wall, biting my neck and sucking my blood, fighting me in my bed of pain like a shark eating my flesh with a fork and a spoon, pounding his shoulder blades against the bottom of my feet, scratching his fingernails across the center of a yellow sun spinning red and orange the size of an oil tanker, the smell of tar on a roof top, the taste of bitterness on my tongue, the look of stupidity on my face, a blank stare into an empty sky that sucks up all the stars in the universe turning me inside out. Garbage collectors from hotel rooms in Hotel Pain wake me at 2am to whisper words of pain in my ear, tempting me to pass out by swallowing stones, woke me at 2am from an OK sleep so he could knock me around, bang me up side my aching rib cage the right side of my back the last place and maybe the only place where I have any serious pain, to kick me when I'm sleeping, to hit me with an iron rod, with a baseball bat, with a tire iron, with a hot skillet just hard enough and often enough, deep enough, just enough to stop me from relaxing, from sleeping again, from going unconscious, just enough pain to keep me awake and hoping.

Overheard at a local bar: (FIRST DRUNK) "Clayton shot Johnny's head off with a shotgun. (SECOND DRUNK) "Why?" (FIRST DRUNK) "Johnny didn't say."

Final Thoughts
I have a new appreciation for the little things in life: brushing my teeth, bending over, getting up out of bed, dressing myself, fixing my own food, cleaning the house, driving a car. It's all about doing. Pain stopped me from doing. Stop a man from doing and you control who he can be. That's what prisons are all about. They control what a man can and cannot do. Control what a man can do and you control who and what he can be. Wittgenstein said it like this: "Its use is its meaning." I say it like this: "What it does is what its being." Its use, what we use it for, what we do with it, is what it's being. In other words, beingness is a function of, or a distinction of, what we do or don't do. Who we are for ourselves and others is given by what we do or don't do. Another philosopher said, "What you do to the least of men, you do to me; and what you do not do to the least of men, you do not do to me." Pain stopped me from doing; my quality of life was held hostage. Ability to do is the ability to be. Life is all about what we do with it.

Goodbye Is Knowing When It's Time to Go

(I had a dream that my life was strung together with a series of "goodbye's", and the faster I could say goodbye the faster I could move on to the next goodbye and each new goodbye was more powerful and more profound than the last. My life was being propelled into the future by a quest, by a demand being driven by the next intimate goodbye, a journey to acquire the newest and most sensual goodbye life could offer. Instead of goodbye's being the end of something, they were the beginning of a new adventure, new life, new possibility. I was being driven by impulses to experience life in the fullness of all its goodbyes, and to taste all the goodbye's that flowed from the river of goodbyes. In my dream, the Great Sage said the secret of happiness was knowing when it's time to go, knowing when goodbye had reached it's fulfillment and when the springtime of one's existence was coming forth in all its power to attain the ultimate goodbye of intimacy with love, with the intimacy of body, mind and conversation. "Goodbye" is not the end of relationships; it's the birth and re-birth and the destination of all goodbye's, the journey towards the invention of goodbye as the alpha and omega of pure love, tenderness, communication and everlasting togetherness, without which "goodbye" would not have it's power and the future would not give us time enough to live into the fullness of a stronger and more passionate existence.)

Goodbye cracked sidewalks and grey skies dirty feet on the cement floor rusty metal hanging from the big sleep wooden boxes cardboard boxes chinatown alleys going nowhere (Girl Digging in her Purse)

Goodbye slant eyed opium dreams pushing bags of fruit walking bookstore tired old bookstore expensive bookstore independent bookstore beat up old bookstore

Goodbye snare drum back beat pretty face beating into the drum the eyes she beats into the ground like she thought it would be she dreamed it would be like the way it would be (Man Reading)

Goodbye the old times don't change this place don't change this place stays the same it isn't the same old high not the same jazz not the same war, sex, kicks

Goodbye so sick of walking down the street I can't see straight blisters on my feet the last time to all those jazz beats the cosmic drink of goodbye little slant eyed bastard perfectly intimate camera phone (Man in Coffee Shop)

Goodbye shirt ripped open unbuttoned like real jazz always unbuttoned in front real jazz always had the shirt unbutton up front ripped above the pockets the empty pockets filled with jazz the empty pockets (Shadows Walking)

Goodbye the jazz nobody could hear the little crooked man with the brown wooden cane twisted to one side not like the others afraid of attention

Goodbye to the ones who are afraid to say slant eyed asians sickening oily goodbyes never stayed in one place long enough never stayed till the end of the day never stayed long enough to be at the end of the day

(Five People Waiting for a Bus) Goodbye the end of the day rushing it and speeding through going faster going past it so fast I lost it I kept my shirt opened so fast the speed pushed back against me too hot so I kept my shirt unbutton like jazz (Piece of Paper Against a Wall)

Goodbye free poetry free jazz free love free thinker living space free movement free images of the mind of everything yoga free beat language free listening knowing free zen buddha time of all lifetimes and all the free goodbyes

(Seen and Be Seen) Goodbye to purpose and a point I unbuttoned my shirt and said goodbye and let it go didn't stick around till the end of the day leave it behind let it go let it pass me by and go away let go the unbuttoned shirt opened up halfway down the front of my shirt the way I like to listen to jazz with my body (Hospital Visitor)

Goodbye ceilings, street corners, streets down the block on my body stretched in all directions at once people take their pictures but I take photos of myself beautiful motion beautiful movement beautiful body next to the bed

(View from a Window) Goodbye self-serving idolatry self-interest great motivation enthusiasm, a time for goodbye knowing when to say goodbye knowing when it's time to go when there's no purpose to say goodbye

Goodbye didn't talk to each other they're just together sit together at a table and they don't talk they listen are you coming back? he asks no, she says and shakes her head and walks away goodbye (Girl on Steps)

Goodbye the spontaneous waiting for someone who is wise enough someone old enough who knows enough to know when to say goodbye the final goodbye at the last goodbye I've seen it all and watched it all with my shirt unbuttoned to see the hairs on my chest (Iron Bars)

Goodbye to the hairs on my chest to the purpose of what it means all that I am now all that I'm not and I'll never be so lost in kerouac alley which is ugly has nothing to do with kerouac's jazz music that was but isn't belongs to the goodbye time

Goodbye coltrane soprano blowing hard walking hard chinatown cleaning up all that dirt swept up clean goodbye 1965 the sick feeling cleaned up from the others swept away all the others

Goodbye sweet faces and the red river blues not knowing when time is when this was gone not knowing when the bar was cleaned In 1965 did it smell like this

Am I Turning Into the Lenny Bruce of Bad Medical Humor

(Note: Except for the 2 photos of me with the umbrella taken by Niki Conolly, these are self-portraits taken with a little Canon Power Shot SD850 IS Digital Elph)

(It's Not the Pale Moon that Excites Me) Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP) is a bleeding condition in which the blood doesn't clot as it should. This is due to a low number of blood cells called platelets. Most people, to be considered healthy have between 150,000 and 300,000 in their body at any one time. When I was admitted to the emergency room I had less than 2000. Whoops! (My Funny Valentine)

(In time the Rockies may crumble...) Platelets are also called thrombocytes, and they're made in bone marrow (along with other kinds of blood cells). Platelets circulate through the blood vessels and help stop bleeding by sticking together (clotting) to seal small cuts or breaks. (The radio and the telephone.........)

(Our love is here to stay) Idiopathic means that the cause of the disease or condition isn't known; sort of like how did George W Bush ever get elected? The answer to that question is Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura. Thrombocytopenic means there is a lower-than-normal number of platelets in the blood. Purpura are purple bruises caused by bleeding under the skin. More extensive bleeding can create a three-dimensional mass called a hematoma. (When you're in my arms)

(So make your mark.....) I have ITP and purple bruises appeared on the skin and the mucous membranes (for example, in the mouth). The bruises mean that bleeding has occurred in small blood vessels under the skin. I may have bleeding that results in tiny red or purple dots on the skin. These dots, often seen on the lower legs, are called petechiae; cute little name. Petechiae may look like a rash, but don't be fooled by that. (When you hear a call.........)

(Play with fire.....) I could've had nosebleeds, bleeding from the gums if I had dental work done, or other bleeding that's hard to stop. Bleeding in the brain as a result of ITP is very rare, but can be life threatening if it occurs. (Build your dreams)

In most cases, the body's immune system is thought to cause ITP. Normally your immune system helps your body fight off infections and diseases, but if you have ITP, your immune system attacks and destroys its own platelets—for an unknown reason. So, for any of you out there who believes in "intelligent design" this should put an end to that foolishness. Half of my body was killing off the other half. Now, that's really an intelligent design! (Untitled)

This could be acute generally lasts less than 6 months or chronic, lasting 6 months or longer. ITP doesnt have to be a serious or life-threatening condition, but the body doesnt necessarily know that, of course, being so stupidly designed that it would kill off half itself, I wouldnt be surprised about anything at this point, but that's too depressing and I'm not committed to a life-long depression. Some of the forms of treatment are bizarre. One of the shots I get once a week costs $1000 each! I get these steroids 4 days on, 4 days off that seem to do the trick. Now I'm on my way to San Francisco this coming Monday for more follow up.

Photo te Ching

(The Photo te Ching is my most recent contribution to beatzen literature based loosely and informally on the works of Lao Tsu and his writings, The Tao te Ching. To make matters worse, the Photo te Ching is vaguely disguised as a practice, which it isn't. The piece was written, re-written, re-edited and rewriten again between the country backroads of Nashville, TN and the big city fog of North Beach, San Francisco during April 2009 while I was staying at the St. Paul Hotel. May it be as useless to you as it is to me)

Those who take photos don't always know and sometimes the images aren't true. So let the photo blur and be wise. Open the lens, soften the light, let go possessions: you don't need them anymore. The eye can't be ignored. It doesn't hurt and it doesn't help. Because there's no disgrace in a slow shutter, it opens and closes. Let go controlling the image. Let go fixed ideas, concepts: the image takes care of itself. The more you know, the less you know. The more opnions you have, the less interesting you'll be. Let go rules and photos will be honest. Let go tecnqiue and you won't be ignored. Let go idealism and desire for the common image. Let go intolerant images: they'll be despised. Let go mysteries. Let go power. Let go the unnamed name in the darkroom, because patience is centered in limitations. Without knowing, unmoved by wind, photos have no purpose. They are empty and meangingless; they're always changing into non-doing and non-being. Nothing is impossible: everything happens eventually and then the image has nothing left. Because it's fixed with opinions and beliefs, it may not be the shape of things to come. Let go judgements and power to bebop hard driving jazz and zen literature. Jazz changes the spaces running into spaces being moved with a beat becomes a great jam session, because the camera has no shadow. And what if it did? Because it's at the center, who would fight for it? Because it has no race, who would write speeches for it? Let go values and let go names of standards songs with chords. Because it's easy and simple, it transforms things. (Dawn of a Noir Day)

The unnamed name makes no mistakes, apparently. (Nude on Meds)

But efforts are sometimes flawed without doing anything to make it happen. Like a jazz ballad with bitterness and humor on a large scale, it passes great moments because they're easy and they don't cling and it's not hard. Some men and women make an effort to hate themselves; they talk too much about things that don't matter as if they had secrets about the soul and the spirit, but the blood is the source of simplicity and patience. (Self-hatred and Ambiguity)

There are three simple actions: (1) exercise (2) think (3) be space The image is a mirage. It's not patient and has problems because the image is everywhere being and non-doing nothing. Let go doing anything or let go doing everything. Without moving, nothing is expected and nothing anticipated because it's not real. It's full but it's not filled up. Let go intellect, teaching and learning: the three parasites of imagination. Religion locks them up and plays old christian music from the old rugged rock of old ages: the hemmoroied of sexual repression. Religion is the bad breath of artificial intelligence. (Room #72, North Beach Hotel)

When I'm sleeping on morphine I let go the room past-present-future: I let go finding the Great Physician. I let go, meaning, I let go mind from the broken healing storm of unceasing movement, understanding nothing about disease. What is simple is easy to pronounce: I can say everything and nothing and speak it softly, but let go-prove-a-point because there's no control anywhere. Let go possessions of spirit because there's no forever and blues just makes it tender, bitter, brittle and dry. The Photo te Ching is self-taught and self-mastered: the perfect balance between brittle and dry, soft and yielding and other forms of imperfection. It's easy to see whats missing: simple structures like a painted desert of colorful illusions. Let go doing anything: let go doing unexpected things because there's no new meanings...... there's no new meanings, because there's no new meanings. (Tattooed Arm)

Photos don't necessarily come with humor on a large scale. They have too little or too much to see and too little to do in such a short time. Let go more giving. Let go more missing. Let go more heart because the heart hides in the quiet room. Let go time let go thinking and listening in the darkness of the darkroom, not knowing whether or not to care, or whether or not they should be caring too much either way. (At Vesuvio's)

If the hard attitude struggles in an effort to be gentle, or to overcome the gentle with jazz, let the jazz overcome the gentle, let it overcome the "somethings-better-than-nothing" because jazz overcomes the 'nothing' that is better than then 'something' it overcomes! It's the bebop of the hard beat around on a wheel of fortune saying words like "life time" ... what do you think it means? Life time? ... The sax has sleepy jazz eyelids falling against the hard time and the hard sleepy eyes of overcoming loud laughter, loud noise, hot wind in the lungs high temperature, heart whipping up too much dry parched wind emptying mind, emptying heat, emptying too much fake tranquility without blame, without an edge. Let mind go looking if it wants to. (At Vesuvio's 2)

Let truth go be truthful. Go be idealistic with no time to wait, no time to sleep, no time for rituals and beat salvation poetry. The garden was burnt around the edges and infections spread like a demand. I let go fear that cannot be named, because I had an expectation that if it could be named it would be a mystery and if it couldnt be named it would be lost like a purple scarf. So I moved away and it had no other puropse. No meaning. I let go tensions and time, because it was easier to break a habit. I let go talking too much. I let go thinking and creating the mind with gas, rituals, ceremonies, stale plastic tomatoes. Twilight time cannot be named, but I know it has a name. I let go sorrows, moved by the wind: sorrows had no real purpose, no real meaning, no real experience, no state of mind only excuses which were empty, so empty, as a matter of fact, they're an empty nothingness: they have nothing to them. (Untitled)

They aren't worth much, of course. And so the Tao of Lao Tsu is easy to let go. It doesnt matter, because its philosophically empty.

(Nude Smoking Opium) I opened the lens and there was nothing to fear: not insomina, not peace, not silence and not Nietzsche. Nothing gets better: life has no lessons. There's nothing to learn. The heart cannot be moved real or not, what it is and what isn't cannot be moved. I've had plenty of crosses, crowns and assumptions. I've had different identities and enough of the best things in life for free. I've had candles, incense, and clowns too bored to care. So I let go spirit and intutiton. I let go cosmos conceptions and infinite means, because its easy and there's nothing to lose. There are no "states of change"..... no dimensional points of view. I let go looking for the image. I let go looking for being, doing, non-being and non-doing and I listened and waited for them to become shadows.

Conversation over heard at a Hotel Lobby

(Rhio9 Self-portrait) What if there's no solution to this because it's just crazy talk? What if the person who's becoming crazy keeps alternating and fluctuating between getting bread and yellow butter, doing it easy and slow. Drag yourself one, two weeks, you'll be fine? I don't know. I think I can do it four days, maybe two and half days. Just think about it, OK? Anxiety, depression and creativity.....I'd drag it. I'd change my plans. I've got some stuff to get rid of that's sitting in my apartment. I didn't want to give it away, it has so many memories from my mother......you know, soap, shampoo, salad dressing. I'd do it myself but it depends on somebody else. Maybe two, three, four, five days it's fine. You can drive with some help, but don't leave the car unlocked. Insurance is too high. Understand? (Lunch in the Big City)

(Reflections in the Window and an Empty Cafe 1) Look.........if you drive with someone else, maybe that's ok. That's why he can drive your car. Drive your car, drop me and you'll pick up the others and help pay for it. RightRightRight. If something happens, it's not worth it. First thing, take care of yourself first. It's like a pantry room trying to put stuff under the sink, trying to figure out how to pack. And who cares? They are so involved all of a sudden in arranging their stuff, like it's important, like it's valuable. Today's Sunday but I think they're opened today. They're closed on Sundays, but I don't know......They've moved. Then call your friend and ask him if he'll help you. Tell him it's all about creation, inventions and development. OK? In '97 he sued me and I was supposed to give him $22,000 to pay him. So I had to go to the bank, get a new roof..............don't go! Don't have anything to do with it. (Reflections in the Window and an Empty Cafe 2)

(Photographer's Foot at Vesuvio's) Find a company and they'll do it for you. The actual products of "creativity" or "anxiety" are not even important; it's only about $162.00. Consider yourself lucky that this is the weekend. If anything comes out of this and has any value at all, she can take the keys to the car and the house and use it as an identification number for what drives you. Then you give them a check, put the money in the bank, cash the check, send the money. You should be writing this down. You need more money. Anyway, he'll get home. His wife has the sickness. She lost too much weight and she can't do all the painting anymore. What's the most passionate and strongest and vicious intense drive? There's three things: (1) get settled (2) get a better job (3) get some credit counseling and live a little after you sell the phone. (Not So Quiet Sidewalk Cafe)

(Photographer's Lunch, Vesuvio's) Don't take off for New York like he did. Right now just don't forget the people who helped you get to the top, OK? If you can help it, alright. Or if you're dying, then thank them, too. Cash your check, too. Before you pay the rent, count the money. Write down everything. Make that your first thing. Document everything you do; even when you use the toilet. Write it down. Weigh it, and weigh it against the food you ate. They'll make out a receipt for you. Every other Wednesday, Thursday...the first few days of the month will help your femininity, and you understand what I'm telling you? (Rhio9 Self-portrait)

(Ambiguity 1) OK? The kids have family, they got relatives. A doctor's not necessary right now. You don't need it right now. OK, you'll be fine. All at once get your money together and you can do without the doctor. Call me first thing if something comes up. Copy, relax, watch your anger, and go to the seminars. It's all about money, money, money. Pessimism can help. My mom retired. People who are retired, you know, you get a few more cents but it's not much. I got some extra money. What do you have to do to get that? She gets like, $209.00. Now that's not very much. Hardly worth it. All my friends, we're all hard up, we're all being punished. Nobody has any rewards. They bought her out. She got a great deal. Obstruction? What obstruction? They built a new roof and that was a great deal. A new swamp cooler was put on there, too. It was pretty solid. It was put on when it was built. It wasn't the cheapest, but hell, if the roof falls in, too bad: I don't live there. I can live on a couple thousand a month. I won't make myself crazy over this. How far does art reach down into the essence of strength? List. Prioritize. List again. Don't throw anything away. (Ambiguity 2)

Confessions of a Camera Phone

Sometime in 2003 I discovered that I was really good at hiding behind things and getting good photos.... candid, hidden shots, secretly photographing people and things without them noticing or being aware of it; might have had something to do with me having the moon in the 12th house square the sun. I could walk past someone or I could simply stand still and wait for them to come to me and walk past me. They'd be looking the other way, trying not to look me in the eye, looking away from me, trying to be private, and I could snap a photo two or three feet away from them. They never knew what happened. My entire concept of "privacy" changed, or maybe it was informed by the camera phone: that privacy is really a myth of democracy, as a failed democratic principle. As democracy and capitalism become discredited with each passing day, so too the pillars of those philosophies become transparently fraudulent. There simply is no "privacy", none we can expect. "Individual privacy" has been replaced or substituted with "national security", which can mean just about anything.

I started going up to windows.... places like cafes, restaurants and outdoor places like that where there was a window or something. A lot of places posted their menus outside for people to read and consider before they went inside to take a table. I'd pretend to be reading the menu and I'd put the camera right up against the window directly observing people eating, or sitting in a booth, or on a bar stool and I'd be looking around, looking the other way, looking distracted and confused and I'd put the camera right there flush with the window pointed at them and I'd snap the photo. I found all sorts of places like that, not just cafes but any place that had windows and people inside.

Once I was walking thru a crowded street corner and I had my camera ready to snap and I saw these girls, a group of them all together walking, doing the town shopping. I was ready to start snapping photos secretly (I thought) and one of the girls turned to me and yelled, "Hey dude! What are you doin? Talking dirty pictures of girls? You're a dirty old man! Get a life!" That was pretty funny. I think I got one or two good shots and went on my way to someplace else.

After I took the photos I'd email them to myself. The phone I had and still have, but rarely use, is over five years old and it didn't have the capability to download directly to my computer. So I had to email them to myself, open it up and save them to some file or other. Every time I did that, or opened and closed a photo or moved it around on the computer, it seemed to be affected in some way, making it more gritty and grainy than it was originally. I started to like that effect. The phone has a maximum of 20 photos it can save before having to dump them or else lose them. I'd walk from one end of the city to another and get my twenty shots, go to a bar and order one drink after another and dump the photos to my email and then take some more. I'd walk back to the car or the subway and do the same thing. I could easily take 20, 40, 60 photos a day that way.

At first I was ticked off at the pixilated problem and about the sizes. I never even thought about resizing any of them, not until the software got really good. Now it's not a problem. People told me I wouldn't be able to enlarge a photo that was originally smaller in size, let's say a photo that was between 600 and 900 pixels. But I did it anyway. I enlarged photos up to 3000 pix and they turned out perfectly fine. Many are posted on the JPG photo website (see links below for examples). Low-tech finishing to my camera phone photos just made them more earthy, gritty and seedy. That was just what I was trying to do. The photos began to express the underbelly of the city I lived in and loved to walk in. Also I was very happy that I could make the photos be expressive with minimal technical training, ability, knowledge or whatever. I wanted to get away from the expected "right" and "proper" way of doing photography. I think I succeeded at that. With the collapsing phenomena of democracy and capitalistic institutions, "minimalism" is becoming a driving underscore for new perceptions of photography. The more spontaneous the shot, the simpler the camera, the easier the software, the deeper and more real the subjects (as reality): the better for everybody, maybe. (Bathroom, 44 Ellis)

The advantage of a camera phone is secrecy, shooting from the hip. Actually, all photos I took with the camera phone were really shooting from the hip. I very seldom actually looked at the viewfinder, for what it's worth. I used to walk down busy sidewalks, you know, really crowded places and just hold the phone up in the air, or hold it behind me to get upside down shots; or else I'd ride around driving my car with a sun roof and hold my hand outside holding it up thru the open window and snap shots as I drove along. I snapped dozen of photos that way, really good, candid, haunting photos of real people in real situations that I could probably never get with a high-tech camera. I could snap photos in bars, cafes, buses, subways, bathrooms, taxis. My favorite thing to do was to go up to a city bus stopped at a bus stop letting people on and off. I'd walk up to the bus, go to one of the windows near the back where people were sitting in their seats, hold the phone right up to the window and take a picture. Sometimes people would turn and see me; most of the time they didn't. Sometimes they'd get mad, or act invaded, but I didn't care. I was after something, trying to photo something special. (Bar, 44 Ellis)

I loved to take photos of people in bars, people walking on the street, shopping, eating and drinking. I took hundreds of photos like that all over the city, sometimes in the same place over and over again. Every time was different. There were always different people. Nothing is ever the same thing, whether the place was crowded or empty. Street shots were also a big favorite of mine; empty streets, wet streets, busy night time streets, crowded streets.

The disadvantage to the camera phone I used was lighting: there was none. There was no way to adjust anything for lighting. A dark room, a night time scene, a bar, café or whatever.....if it was night time and dark I was lucky to get a shot that I could work with, but I did it anyway; somehow I made it work for me. I couldn't control the lighting effects. Sunlight was always a good shot most of the time, but night time shots, indoors, outdoors with little light...it was always going to be an interesting problem. Modern software has done a lot to make it easier to "fix" lighting issues and I'm grateful for that, especially if it complements the minimal effect.

My favorite subjects to photograph with the camera phone probably had to be indoor shots, friend's (and their houses) flats, tables, café tables, bars, alcoholic drinks, musicians playing. I took a lot of shots of jazz musicians jamming in clubs, or in their homes. I like to take photos of instruments, books, counter tops, drug paraphernalia, bottles of liquor, nudes, and sexual situations, most of which I've lost completely. Most of the time I never posed a scene to shoot; I'd just do what ever was in front of me. Occasionally I'd set something up, but hardly ever.

I like to photograph cups, saucers, tables, utensils, chairs, beds and anything that moves and creates a blur, anything that is darkly noir that comes from the shadows, that lies hidden underneath the covers, anything that is forbidden. It takes something in me to go out and look for the forbidden, to look for it, to be able to see it, to know the forbidden when I see it and sense it, to be able to recognize the forbidden and the denied, the dangerous, the risky and the taboo and to be able to confront it photographically, intuitively and spiritually....that's the challenge for me as a photographer. The camera phone simply helped me identify the forbidden when I saw it.

I don't use the camera phone that much anymore. Not sure why exactly. There was a time and place for it where I was living before. My entire mood and temperament was different, erratic, fool-hardy, drug happy. There's energy to those photos that I love but I've moved on from that. I don't experience life in those terms anymore. I have a new and revised, reinvented and self-motivated life experience now that I'm embracing unconditionally. I've learned to experience freedom and completion to the things of the past. I might love them, but I'm not living them anymore. I'm complete with the past. I'm not the sum total of the past. I am living into a new future and photography is a form of communication that is informed by the past, but it is not a reflection of the past. I have a new life now in a new environment. I hope my photos are experienced as a bridge from one to the other.