SELF PORTRAITS

2010-04-28T08:52:00.000-07:00

2010-03-25T21:08:00.000-07:00

2010-03-25T20:06:00.000-07:00

2010-01-14T03:51:00.000-08:00

1.To the degree that we become frustrated with our inability to make a difference and effect change concerning big issues like health care, the economy, employment, education, war, peace, prosperity and individual happiness, as a nation we sink to the lowest common denominator of mundane pettiness. As terrorists plan their next big hit, we’re concerned about a baseball player using steroids. As stupid wars rage without end in Iraq and Afghanistan, we self-righteously condemn a golfer for having too much sex with women who aren’t his wife. Unemployment is at an all-time high, but we’re offended by silly words someone used, quoted in a book. Home foreclosures, unemployment, crime, mediocre education, a bankrupt judicial system: yeah, sure, so what? Let’s talk about late night TV’s comedy lineup. We didn’t have the guts to impeach and imprison Bush/Cheney when we had a chance, so now we’ll damn sure stop gay marriage and write segregation into law. Did someone make racist remarks during the presidential campaign? We can bet on it that when fat cat homophobic white Christian Republicans go behind closed doors, they turn on FOX propaganda TV, light their cigars, drink their Jack Daniels, read their porn magazines and use more offensive racist language than anything Harry Reid ever said. Make no mistake, GOP bigots know exactly what side their white bread is buttered.

2. The Tea Party Movement is the revived cult of the Swift Boat, packaged with a new flag, new slogans and a marketing plan to take Sarah Palin to the White House. The Tea Party Nation is the home of abortion clinic bombers and assassins of doctors who perform abortions. It is the nation of a new breed of anti-intellectual, anti-choice Christian Reconstructionists and Dominion Now believers who, rising like steam from dog shit, smell like the old John Birch Society, they even meet in small cells just like the Birchers did. Members of the Tea Party Movement want to write intelligent design, creationism, marriage law segregation and prayer in school into law. Their nation of conservatism is racist, intolerant, homophobic and white. Like forensic evidence of a crime, the philosophical DNA of the Tea Party Movement matches the ideological DNA of the anti-fluoridation crowd of the 1950’s and is the precursor to a permanent Republican majority. Islamic fascism is to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda what Christian fundamentalism is to the Tea Party Nation. The only difference between the two home-grown terrorist insurgencies is the amount and sophistication of available weapons and the willingness and training to use them. Make no mistake: the Tea Partiers are stocking up on weapons and ammunition. It’s 2010; do you know where YOUR guns are?

3. Before the earthquake, Haiti was a poor, impoverished, bankrupt, backwards 3rd or 4th world country with no economy, no education, no housing, no industry, no life expectancy worth anything, no health care and no money. After the earthquake, Haiti is still an impoverished, bankrupt, backward 3rd or 4th world barely-a-country country with still no economy, no housing, no industry, no life expectancy and no money. Literally overnight, since the earthquake, people want to help Haiti. Where was all this humanitarian concern for Haiti over the last 10 or 20 years when it could have done some good? Give me a break. This earthquake is like everything else: the news covers the story for a few days like a TV drama on prime time, and our attention drifts away. Before we can reach for the remote, the networks find the next big thing to entertain us. Just look at the last few weeks: first there was Tiger Woods, then terrorism on Xmas day and a week about airport security, then New Years Eve, Jay Leno, Fox and Palin came and went, Obama, the economy and the war, then it was Mark McGwire and Harry Reid, this week it was Wall St. bankers, Lane Kiffin and then, finally, Haiti. The worst thing to happen to any people anywhere in the world with a desperate humanitarian need is for the public to find out about it. After a few days of steady news coverage, we get bored and look for the next big thing. If “the next big thing” doesn’t magically appear on its own in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for the networks to invent something to take its place. Humanitarian compassion for Haiti is this week’s “big thing”. A few days from now we’ll be squawking about the Tea Party convention in Nashville TN. Haiti, huh?

2009-11-05T04:04:00.000-08:00

I had an illuminating experience wading in the whirlpool and sweating in the sauna this morning: I had a thought rise like incense from the hidden depths of my mind. The I Ching says to expect the unexpected and as I breathed and absorbed the mist from the rejuvenating hot water and steam heat, the thought I had was simply “life”. Life. Suddenly very gently I moved away from my body. I was aware of being a few feet away from this vehicle, my body, the current life form through which I experience and agree or disagree on realities. At that exact moment, I experienced life itself as No Mind of the Tao and the Tao of No Mind which cannot be expressed, nor is it ever expressed; it is both inexpressible and unexpressible.

In the state I was in I knew that, as photographers, we don’t do photos “in-order-to” something else, not even to express our idea of ourselves as in who or what we are. Contrary to what we might believe about creativity, painters don’t paint and writers don’t write, sculptors don’t sculpt and photographers don’t snap shutters and scientists don’t discover and uncover the universe “in-order-to” make something out of ideas. We may think we do, but the Tao that can be expressed is not the Tao because the Tao is not an idea that can be thought. It just Is, and what there Is are fractals of indivuated distinct manifestations of consciousness becoming conscious. The presence No Mind manifests Itself as differentiated, individuated and, apparently, separate forms of awareness particles: energy subdivisable into spontaneous motion.

In fact, we are those particles living, breathing and having our being in, and of, No Mind of the Tao. We are energies of No Mind, the interdependent core and collective aggregate of all life forms as particles of an inward breath, as it were. Consider this the manifestation of No Mind without individuality or identity. Consider the outward breath as a metaphor for the vast spaciousness of differentiated individualized energies, the substance of creative intelligence; this is not God or gods. There is no father-figure or trinity sharing power. The appearance of individuality and secular identity is experienced as natural living processes of breathing in and breathing out, life and death, youth and old age, the recurrence of ocean tides, the revolutions of the planets and the seasons of the year and many more cycles far too complex and numerous to know about.

As photographers, we're not expressing No Mind of the Tao or anything else particularly through our work. On the contrary, No Mind of the Tao itself is the product of our work, not the expression No Mind. If photography is not the expression No Mind it's because it is No Mind, such that a photo by Simon Kossoff or John Linton or Claudia Luthi or Niki Conolly, for example, and anyone else for that matter, is a photo within No Mind. Like smoke rising, photography is an experience of becomingness through direct manifestation of the deepest inspiration.

Finally, before I moved closer to my body and yet still exterior to it, I could see that communication between particles of energy is through images. These images may be photos, or paintings, sculptures, mathematical formulas or some other form of imagery and symbolism; but not language, not words and not speaking. This may be important because how we communicate with life forms from other planets, galaxies, universes, worlds and times is clearly suggested by what Confucius meant when he said "a picture is worth a thousand words." Perhaps he was giving us a clue how to communicate with intelligent extraterrestrial life energy: through images, pictures, representations, facsimiles and visual energies within photographs like magick.

As members of JPG's on-line community, we communicate with each other through images we post. Moreover, we communicate with each other whether we post photos or not. This may be similar to the butterfly effect whereby a butterfly's wings create atmospheric changes in one location that may ultimately alter or delay, accelerate or even prevent the occurrence of changes somewhere else. Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, communication might be vastly different. The flap of its wings is an essential part of communication. Without it, communication may not have existed at all.

The photograph I've posted here represents No Mind communicating in a language of imagery and space. In this space there is no me, no you, no them. There is only No Mind of the Tao and the Tao of No Mind. Our photographs are of the same No Mind, the same undivided Tao and the same uninhabited/uninhibited space. Our individuality is a necessary appearance just as breathing out is a necessary function of breathing in. So it is with profound respect that I dedicate this photo to all the photographers I have come to know (and there are more than I had room for on this photo) as the energy of No Mind of the Tao and the Tao of No Mind.

2009-09-17T19:46:00.000-07:00

The New Order of the World Wide Web

Democracy as we've known it is obsolete. Forget about it. It's over. Dead.

Voting... elections .... candidates...... policies: they're relics. Antiques. They're jokes for standup comics.

If you're still thinking Red States and Blue States, you're thinking sucks! You're not using your head. The state of the global economy is the only "state" that matters!

The new order of government for the world is the Internet.

Call it the New Order of the World Wide Web.
Call it the World Order of the New Wide Web.
Call it the Wide Order of the Web New World.
Call it the Web Order of the Wide World New, or the New Wide World Order of the Web.

Call it whatever..........!

Congress as we've known it will be replaced by a "virtual" congress of avatars each with their own "profiles". There will be no more congressional districts. The Virtual Congress represents all internet activity, especially purchasing activity. It represents real-time purchasing activity, or activity-based purchasing/credit predictability and potential earnings futures. Individual people will think of themselves in terms of stocks and bonds. We will behave in society like stocks and bonds behave on Wall Street. "Representation" (as such) is determined by "votes" and voting is purchasing power (+), or lack of it (-).

Currently, paying online is voluntary. In the future it will be the only way to pay for anything. Instead of each nation having its own monetary currency and value, there will only be Internet Dollars. Every purchase for every item is made online: calculated, graphed and plotted in an instant. Total Account Information is available online throughout the world on every transaction. Every transaction is calculated to show trends in global behavior and psychology. There will be no privacy. As it stands now, criminal activity is the only activity protected by privacy laws. In the future, everything will be transparent. Activity that is criminal will be immediately apparent. There will be no money, no cash, to steal. Nothing can be exchanged without an Internet Footprint. Nobody will have cash on hand. Nobody can exchange a stolen item for anything of value because the only value will be in terms of Internet Dollars and to acquire Internet Dollars there will need to be an internet account, an IP address and other personal tracking devices.

Just as stocks rise and fall hour-by-hour and effect unlimited financial futures, the policy of the future is determined based on purchasing trends, energy expenditures, health, well being and life expectancy projections. People who live "green" will have more Internet Dollars in their account, similar to Frequent Flyer Miles an airlines give its customers. Cut back in energy use and get Internet Dollars to spend. The more you spend, the more influence you have as each Dollar spent is a vote for, or against other issues that concern you or your community. Each purchase (+) or non-purchase (-) is a vote. The consumer prints out a copy of all transactions made during the day and shows a "paper trail" to verify choices made that day at any particular time.

Cultural, social and military policy is determined hour by hour as stocks rise and fall according to internet activity reflecting purchases (+) or the absence of purchases (-) as in the case of the homeless and poor. No matter what you buy or don't buy, your social/fiscal/political philosophy is calculated in each purchase and your vote is selected and recorded worldwide in an instant. All the nations of the world will be linked up together in one gigantic voting block. Individual nations will use its Internet Dollars most directly to effect their nation's issues and concerns, but global issues of land rights, wars, civil rights and terrorism will be decided by the spending/purchasing activity of the entire world. Gone will be the days of government diplomats making policies of war based on capitalism, democracy, greed, or any other political ideology. Communism, socialism, capitalism and dictatorships will be a thing of the past. They will be replaced with avatars from a Virtual Government By Internet. With this system, having a "lack" of Internet Dollars is, in itself, a voting block leverage to effect change according to will. The ratio of Haves-to-Have-Nots is malleable. It can change overnight because it's not based on property values. Rather it is based on the (+)/(-) factors of distribution.

For example, if more liberals buy cars or anything else of value and desire, more than conservatives buy, same-sex marriage is approved, or any other social issue for that matter. On the other hand, if conservative Christians, for instance, buy more cars than liberal LGBT atheists do, same-sex marriage is denied, or some other thing. Lifestyle choices will be accepted or not based on the purchasing activity reflected in the distribution of Internet Dollars, sustainable energy resources and environmental provisions. "Policy" will be set hour by hour, day by day. It changes constantly, just like stocks. Jobs are created to support social agendas whereby the purchasing power of employees is calculated to be in support of, or to be opposed to, any specific idea at any time, on any day; just like stocks. Gay marriage, for example, may be approved on any given day during the hours of 3pm and 7pm based on various parameters established for social/economic monitoring. After that period of time, on a given day, the activity of distribution of Internet Dollars may be such that gay marriage is voted down during the night time hours and is back up again in the morning, or at some other time based on exchange activities.

There's no "policy". There's no need for a constitution; no need for a Supreme Court. The economic activity of the consumer is the constitution. The cash flow of ideas set judicial precedent. There will be no elected officials, no government diplomats, no lobbyists, no money changing hands. It will be impossible to "buy" votes, since all "voting" is thru the collective activity of purchasing and other variables to be determined by internet activity consensus building.

This system eliminates lobbyists. It eliminates corruption. It eliminates special interests. It is the ultimate form of "representational self-government". The citizens of the world govern themselves and each other by the monitoring activity of internet cyber masters. This new world web system puts the entire activity of government in the hands of consumers who are legally required to have an internet account, to give up all their passwords and security information, to purchase only online or not at all.

This is the Brave New World ahead of us. If you don't believe it, you'll probably be the first in line to make your purchase of organic apple juice to vote against it.

Sex

2009-08-30T17:34:00.000-07:00

Last time I had sex she was dressed like a man with a white face, a mannequin smooth and hard. Her hair slick as black shoe polish. Eyes dead, tear stains of blood on the bed. The bedroom was dark. Nothing was true. Everything was permitted. The sky was gray. She was pale and smelled like sex. But she lied about not liking sodomy: she liked it and she knew I knew she liked it. She loved it and came back to it like a dog who couldn't escape the vacuum cleaner, the knife, the deranged psychotic. The more I got to know her the more I didn't know if I liked her better as a man or a woman or a dog.nothing is as tempting as pleasure twisting helplessly from a rope. We didn't merely have sex: we stopped being coherent. We made a mockery out of it. A mockery out of paradise. She rubbed my chest trying to make me be somebody. Gave herself orgasms in front of a mirror. Gave me oral sex which was more important than a conscience. I was dominate and she was submissive. I had a tongue like fat flesh. She loved my mouth. Loved my mouth inside her. Loved my tongue inside her brain. Loved the blood in my hypodermic. I was so proud for never having an original idea that I made her beg for every bad thing I did to her.She made me forget monotony. I gave her my undivided attention. We did speed in the kingdom of heaven and I'd watch her stagger down the street and come to my dirty little space. I touched the skin under her nose. Played with eyelashes. Made her sleep on the floor afterwards, chained to the bed. She was the one thing needed: forbidden fruit of a girl who waits on tables. She remembered being in a dirty laundromat, a dirty basement of a dirty hotel in downtown Dirty Town. A place where everybody lives sooner or later. It wasn't wrong to irrigate the field. I tried to find some balance but still couldn't get a taxi. I put gypsies in my arms and sometimes I missed the vein but it was still worth it.one night a few months ago I got a phone call. It woke me up. I answered it. Said hello. She wanted me to drive over to her place. Wanted to be tied up with a bag over her head. Wanted me to do it on all fours from the back end. Wanted me to bite her neck and leave deep teeth marks. Wanted to pretend she didn't know who I was. So she left the door unlocked. I let myself in and out.... in and out....... in and out in a reenactment of the Tribulation in the Garden. Sex was loud and painful. She passed out. I was the prince, she was the dead princess. After that night, I slept on subways. Bought tickets for the long and fast. I got sick from a cold wind that blew under the door and fell asleep. Something woke me up. It was the woman next door masturbating in that virtuous holy place of eternal consciousness. She was dressed like a man with a white face, a mannequin smooth and hard. Her hair slick as black shoe polish. Eyes dead, tear stains of blood on the.

this is what death must be like

2009-08-19T05:37:00.000-07:00

is this what death must be like..... standing in front of endless doors painted black in a back alley, waiting to come back in another body just because you can.

teeth reflected in a window somewhere between the heaven and hell of one's imagination.a dark tunnel under an empty highway, only much longer and without the light.

distorted construction site that never gets finished, a mansion that never gets built, windows that look out to emptiness, elevators that dont work and lots of white space.

rolling down the road attached to a wooden board with no legs, going nowhere fast and nobody paying attention.

waiting at a bus stop for a bus that never comes, and if it comes it never stops, and if it stops we never have the exact change.

tables and chairs set for nobody to dine, walking down the street going nowhere in particular and lots of empty parking spaces.

an open mouth laughing at nothing, a kitchen with no food, some dull lights, windows that are locked and nobody there to see it.

looking back and trying to change things you dont like, unhappy with the way things turned out, pointing the finger looking for someone to blame.

a washed out memory, blurry and pointless like a cold wind hitting the back of the neck, and lots of white noise. an easily forgettable past life.

the sad blue light

2009-08-18T14:00:00.000-07:00

it was 6am. i'd been working all night. it started to rain. grey skies. black clouds. black skies. cold rain and lots of it. i could use a drink. i walk to the corner. the bar is open every day. "night and day, you are the one." it's wednesday or tuesday. i'm sitting in the corner in the back. in the dark. minding my own business. staying out of the way, trying to get out of the way of the sad blue light.

the sad blue light shocked me like a cop on a raid and there i was -- sleeping with goats. i painted my fingernails with blood. i wrote words across my face. sweat came out of every pore of my body. i had my yes and my no. in the spring it rained. it the winter it snowed.

all i wanted to do was sit in the corner upstairs in the booth with only one chair near the window and be left alone. i wanted to stay away from the sad blue light. so i pawned my mind for a bowl of rice. i disguised my voice over the phone. it was a shadow of things to come. it was the curse, the beginning of the worse. i carried the rugged old rusty cross like a crucifixation around my neck. it rang like a cow bell. it kept me up a few days. i walked around in a trance on a night highway. i stood in doorways waiting to be slaughtered.

i tried to shut off the sad blue light before i went insane. i drank a few more, enough so i could see paint on the water. i saw the grave in the garden. i saw the bathroom door and the alley behind the bar, out back behind the dark corner. i saw the coward in the mirror. i tasted the mud of the ordinary. i fell in the mud. i walked through a maze of hallways and doors painted black. i saw an angel inside a cloud. i saw a demon inside my skull. i heard my voice begging for the end of the world. i ripped up old photographs of an angel with blood on its lips laughing at me. a slow song dripped like saliva from the corners of its mouth. it was bleeding on virgin snow in winter. i saw an angel with emerald eyes. it was crying inside the mountain. it was buried alive inside the colon of the mountain. i wanted to hang myself in the sad blue light.

i fell asleep and forgot to close the window. my foot fell off the chair. i woke up with an appetite for the strange. my glass was empty. my breath smelled bad. apparently, every word i ever spoke had turned rotten like rotten meat and smelled bad in my mouth. so i looked for my coat, my baggy pants, boots and a sharp pencil. then i hid in a closet to get away from the sad blue light. i slept on old faded yellow newspapers.

Going thru life with a square head

2009-08-13T08:51:00.000-07:00

(Or being a square peg in a world of round holes.)

First time I knew I was different from other boys and girls was when crazy Virgo menopausal psycho bitch from hell tried to get me to sell out for a middle class income. Rather than blame failure on bad karma, pretending to be happy when it was all in my mind, I settled for no income at all.

Started cropping photos in the shape of a square after I read a story about this girl's father and how he got arrested. As the story goes, she tucked the newspaper clipping about his arrest in an envelope, tucked away safely in a drawer by her bed. It was a private place she set aside for hating him. A place of unforgiveness. A place she kept for remembering sodomy. A place for keeping lies about being at the beach with dad. Looking at photos of grandma and grandpa. Little 5x7's. Never a square. Drank Barcardi to forget her lowliness. Next morning she'd still be drunk. Father went to prison. Did his time. Got out. In the morning she'd still be drunk. Always lonely, willing to be hurt.

Started cropping photos in the shape of a square after Kessler said I needed a psychiatrist because my thinking was all wrong. He slumped behind his christian pulpit like a back-alley bully. He was a coward, a serial killer stalking a smug Mexican resort. Pointed his finger at me for never sleeping. Accused me of being a homoerotic insomniac who had no right to sleep. Kessler begged to be offended. I hated him for manipulating me. So I abused him. Smashed his phone with a hammer. Threw it in the dumpster. His face all swollen red and flushed. Black circles under his eyes. Breath smelled like piss. Religion smelled just like him.

Started cropping photos in the shape of a square after I discovered that to be queer meant to be under the influence of the piano. Nobody wanted to go where everything was nothing. Didnt matter. This was the real deal. Sex was torture. I suffered and struggled. The beast couldnt cause anything. Couldnt work. Stayed up for days without sleeping. Hitched a ride on a bus to Fresno in the middle of the night. Finally got to sleep. Slept like a baby: woke up every two hours screaming.

Started cropping photos in the shape of a square after I got a job as a hustler, panhandler, politician, truck driver and a magazine advertisement. I was never forgiven for being a square art form in a museum of round holes. No big deal. Did a few drugs. Never went back to Sleepy Town, not ever again. Had recreational sex online with other weirdos. We were high risk individuals who loved ourselves more than we loved the shepherd.

Started cropping photos in the shape of a square after I went to Gethsemane's religious festivals. Golgotha was more shocking than a thrift store. Nobody wore robes. Nobody got naked. Everybody was the same as everybody else. They did terrible things. If you lived there, you could kill yourself twice! One guy did it once outside his parents house on Xmas day and again by setting himself on fire drinking gasoline mouthwash. His first suicide note was brilliant! A masterpiece! But his second death was the envy of us all! After that I lived in a mirage. There never was a god to begin with. I cut it loose from my mind. That's when I started cropping photos in the shape of a square.

Started cropping photos in the shape of a square after I got drunk and came home after an all-niter. I'd throw things around the room., Bang into walls. Knock things over in the dark. Neighbors would be afraid. Pretended to sleep. There was simply too much grief and sorrow all in one place to get any rest. Not enough to go around. Scarcity everywhere. The solution? If someone had more unhappiness than they earned in one lifetime, a portion of it would be taken away from them and given to someone who had less. This was socialism and I liked it.

Started cropping photos in the shape of a square after my eyes went white up inside my head. Eyeballs rolled backwards. Upwards. Looking inwards. Glassy. Vacant. Dead. I slept with aries and aquarius rising. We had sex like dogs. Without a dream there was no reason for us to talk. Because of the dream, square photos were more beautiful than I ever imagined. After that, there was nothing left for me to do except pack up and go. Once I was gone, I started cropping photos in the shape of a square.

Junky

2009-08-10T06:46:00.000-07:00

junky's connection lived in a trailer park, but junky lived in long beach. so, what's the difference? junky hung out at a corner bar. drank till he passed out. junky made boring confessions of sin. walked home down an alley behind the rockabilly50. stood under a streetlight. lit a cigarette with a silver lighter with his name engarved on it. junky smoked his cigarette between his cracked lips. held it between his first two fingers betty davis style. he blew smoke out his nose like exhaust fumes from an edsel. junky was a defiant queer. a militant limpwrist new york city jew. one shoulder lower, another higher than the other, twisted by a handicap.

junky took showers with boys from the paradisio in amsterdam. he was well-hung like a chain suspended from the ceiling. junky hears a door open and shut. someone puts away the keys, hanging them on the door. they dangle and rattle his soul after five days of bad. junky gave the landlord two days notice. he pasted it on the bathroom wall. junky had a hangover. he prayed on the cement floor. junky's motel room reeked of used tampons. it had the nauseating stench of sincerity cascading down from the top of a cathedral. "just a cheap aphrodisiac", he thought. "urban fat for the new art. for the new jazz. for the sake of the dead." junky had nothing to say. pointed his middle finger in an obscene gesture: a red tattoo of a heart painted below the bottom knuckle of his middle finger, right hand.

junky had a short fuse. his world was a pothole. he slept on the floor of a rock house, jonesin' bad and sickly. his black junky netherworld bottomed out. he had a vision: estimez qu'il n'y a rien ici qui est (think that there is nothing here that is). junky thought about it. "to know is to die", he thought, "but to not-know is to live." knowing was inhumane. not-knowing was human. to know was mortality. to not-know was immortality. so junky hung upside down with his mouth open wide hanging by his neck from the center of the room. junky was exiled from the jazz city. he saw the new order. he ate on the floor with dogs. he saw creatures nobody saw but him and the dogs.

no matter how bad it got, and it got really bad, he could still get an erection. he was a mean drunk who smelled bad. addiction was a gift. a big bass drum pounding in his head gave him visions of the apocalypse: pregnant women beating their fists against their stomachs to wake up the fetus. worms in the womb.

junky slept on roses and thorns, and he gave himself an enema. he slept naked and dreamt that he planted his germ inside the woman. she was collateral damage. it was right for him to irrigate her. he had dominion of the earth. it was right for woman to be his property. he swallowed the oracle for the sake of the world and transformed hatred for the many into love for the few. he was a predator. a farmer with a tractor. in the end, junky was traumatized and drowned in mud. his semen floated in the trash can in an alley somewhere in a big city. in the end, he floated face down in the waters of decency. his breakdown was a failure. we were all pathetic. he didnt want to suffer but for junky, life itself was suffering enough.

women of las vegas.........

2009-08-08T17:57:00.000-07:00

.......worked all night with exotic dancers in jazz ghettos. picked up trumpets off the street pregnant by every horn in the city. tried to get out of vegas but the evacuation smelled like a toilet. even the retarded ones, illiterate ones, everyone who had ever been thought of in the entire history of time gathered in the desert. drank from the cactus. everyone burned to the ground. only piano and drums remained beyond the ashes. the next day the dog died. they looked for the body. it was in the casino. nobody knew where. nobody cared.

6am in the kitchen, next day. elbows on the table, her head in her palms looking out the window at nothing in particular. bored, she forgot about her sickness. her eyes drifted aimlessly. cigarette ashtray was nasty. her mouth inside her boots. her red hair smelled like irony envy. sleeping beer breath. she woke up coughing.

jasmine from new york on a visit. passed out with pale white dirty sheets barely covered her below the waist. kicked off the blankets during the night. things got sweaty. jasmine wrapped her legs around libra. pulled the sheet against her ankles tied up with a piece of electrical cord she found under the bed. cigarette smoke drifted into the hole of zero where things were everything in a circle and in a god damn'd hurry! naked wearing a collar, a braclet and a leash. a phone hung on a chair next to the bed. picked up the phone. dialed a number waiting for something to happen. eyes back and forth waiting for someone to answer. it was the end.

a las vegas lounge act: cement casket going to vegas where everybody was a whore. where psychotics were not enough anymore. where under age teenage jail bait entertained and did animal noises when they were drunk. where being awake was a deep coma, a space distorted, collapsed. it was the end again. the end of the snake pit.

jasmine stirred in bed swearing. wanted to get up go to the kitchen. she turned, pushed the sheet off the bed onto the floor. grabbed the brass bars at the head of the bed. Pulled herself up screaming: "i want you now! I'M READY NOW!" libra's head weighed 200 pounds. motioned her head towards the door. her head with a toss of her hair.

next thing happens: man opens jasmine's door. walks in. shuts the door. sounds of gagging, strangulation. chocking on something in the space of the what's so and the what is and all the rest of it. the final masterpiece was to die on las vegas blvd south using a monkey, snake, a live eel on the hottest day of circumstances. evacuating las vegas: a retreat unforgiving.

girls on the strip in a bad mocking tongued each others faces. tossed the magick on the table. turned the lights on but the lights didnt work. wooden table deteriorating. they sing a song "i can drink but i cant think...." ....behind the door blond babe was worse than meaningless. so one morning i crawled out of bed. rode hard, straddled on top until she bled the mexican woman next door. woman listening, the way opened. made the woman, "she is crying!" yeah. women cry all the time. you like it? she listens. you scream.

mexican woman with five kids in the back. her house on fire, huddled together on the kitchen floor. frightened children sang religion for the dead. an unspeakable concept. women brushed their eyes with mascara and went to the tomb to look for jesus. the white horse was at the gate but a wooden box separated them from life and death. women wanted it the way it was when they were unknown but not unknowable. they wanted to be buried in vegas. every morning they begged for the kiss of the inquistion. only saw futility. free to smoke and drink but now they smoke and drink no more.

it's all over but the crying.

we waited for libra's body on a slab without a face. she drove into the parking lot. got out of the car in a mini skirt. legs out the door hot christ thighs up to her hips. wet hair against the middle of her back. the collar of her shirt had a few buttons missing. a slender pearl neck, clevage and so much future. we stood in line. kneeled to lick the sores on her feet. we closed our eyes. the secret of an expectation is its unfulfilled mystery. in vegas there is no reality. just ugliness everywhere. mediocrity. cheap paint and block walls. a desert mirage. no jazz. no zennunderground. nothing but sweat.

there's only two kinds of people live in vegas: those who quit and those too desperate to quit.

walking so slow i fell over

2009-08-07T07:55:00.000-07:00

drunk at Whumper's Old Man which used to be on grant street, north beach. head on the bar near an ashtray. bartender poking me to get up. called a cab. dont remember getting in. remember vomiting in the back seat. barely remember getting out of the cab. crawled to the front door. woke up on the bathroom floor. live-in g/f put me to bed with my clothes on. it was 6am. she sat at the window looking out at the cars driving down sacramento street. she smoked a joint. played guitar. a terrible folksong. something original that mostly wasnt. heard it all before. drunk. sick. hung over then sick some more. sang like a wounded animal. i slept on a small mattress in the other room close to the floor. could see the windows. could see the fog. heard the heater come on and off. felt safe. no worries. had cocaine.

side effects include temporary insanity

2009-08-06T10:54:00.001-07:00

"how bad can it get?" i asked the doc before i swallowed the pills. fifteen pills. all different colors and sizes. took me two glasses of water and several minutes to get them down. i had a bad taste in my mouth. my eyes watered. my mouth was dry as cotton. as dry as if i had licked the top of a bottle of bleach. dry as burning rubber. dry as it can get from mainlining speed. that's pretty dry. i thought my tongue was gonna fall out. maybe i sucked my teeth down my throat. my brain was on fire. i could smell smoke from my body. the hairs on my arms were little firecrackers. my eyelashes melted off my face. i couldnt see my legs or feel my feet. my hands looked like a fat four-fingered cartoon character. oh yeah... and i never got an answer to my question.

the good dream gone

2009-08-05T09:34:00.000-07:00

ten fingers light a cigarette. big block chords up and down the piano like neon paint. slow jazz. slow blues. sad. deep and full as the night, playing one chord next to the other. first one and then another. the lights wet streets empty glasses empty tables and an ashtray. two bottles of wine, the fog and a taxi the full moon the hotel the bed twisting and turning. the jazz band at 2am went crazy and screamed all over the room. more fog from consciousness. more music at a table alone looking straight ahead at space. the good dream gone. forgetting where i came from. forgetting my name. so i walked around the corner to ellis and powell and all is gone. the good dream gone. barefoot, no shirt just a scarf thrown over me. so many people on the street walking but i dont care. jazz blowing a midnight blues. it's something to do. a black and blue midnight blues. first i found a seat and sat there listening. then i got up and walked to the corner of grant and broadway. i stood there waiting for the cars to pass. i waited for the bus. i waited for the moon. by the time i got to the cafe, i had to wait for the nurses to bring me my meds and the little white tabs. but they're always late. so i stood at the corner of sutter and hyde and waited for the bus. i listed to jazz with the brushes pushing so softly that only i can hear. i stood on the corner of geary and taylor and waited for the bus and i waited to hear big block chords that go nowhere. drum beats that beat for nobody. sleep that is only good for me. melodies only i can hear. bright lights. big city. the good dream gone. i drink up and have another for the good dream gone.

getting away with it

2009-08-05T09:32:00.000-07:00

it was tuesday the first week in august. it was the fourth day not taking my meds. kicking it the slow way. it was the fifth week of being (almost) sober and now i'm sitting on the toilet with the runs. my ears are hissing and buzzing. i didnt sleep hardly at all last night. sat in a sauna later trying to burn it out. drank water. showered, drove home slowly.

ive been in a dry spell for some time. i sit and look through old photos, admiring some of it, embarrassed by most of it. bored by all of it. some of it's intolerably dull. i dont know what i'm expecting. i dont know what to do about it, if anything. maybe theres nothing to do. maybe its time to quit the game early, see if i can get away with it.

when i stop working long enough to listen i can hear how really useless it is. a lit cigarette burning a hole in a rug is just as useless. but as long as i can stay busy.... as long as i have something to work on, the meaningless insult of it escapes me. it stops becoming dangerous, insane and vicious as soon as i step back and get away from it. the pointlessness becomes even more obvious, as obvious as people who pretend not to be afraid of homosexuals or who go out of their way not to appear to condemn them.

doing something, anything seems to mask the futility. i want to hide from it. hoping i can get away with it, i try to keep busy working on something to stay blind to how empty it really is, but that never works. the busier i am, the more empty i am. the more empty i am, the more i want to work to fill up the emptiness. it's a vicious circle filled with smoke blowing out the ass of a buddhist cow.

zen is all about the thick layer of dust and ash covering everything in life. as long as that dirt stays there i can avoid seeing that it doesnt mean anything. if i keep thinking it means something, i keep working, like walking out of the house one morning and going a little insane. well, all that dirt? those are the photos i take. if i stop taking pictures or writing about them then i'm face-to-face with nothing. a big zero. it makes me want to throw cold water on my head because ive got nothing to say but vague and unimportant things that are being said by somebody else in a more inarticulate way.

so its better for me to keep busy. although photography doesnt shape the nothingness that lies beneath the nothingness in the closet of life, this must be the state of consciousness from which all things arise. if i could get away with it, nothing from nothing would just be a bad dream.

like wet rags over a leaky faucet, dry spells are periods of rest when i can get my edge back without having to do much, without banging my head against the wall. photos are just another form of nothingness like anything else that doesnt matter or make a difference. making something happen or not: one isnt better than the other as long as i can get away with it.

Benny the Jazz says Goodbye

2009-08-03T10:37:00.000-07:00

for Benny the Jazz, life was strung together with a series of "goodbye's". the faster he said goodbye the faster he moved to the next goodbye. each goodbye was more powerful, more profound than the last. his life was a demand driven by the next goodbye. a journey towards the next goodbye life could offer. instead of goodbye being the end of something, it was the beginning driven by all of life's endless goodbyes. satisfaction was simple: it came from knowing when it was time to go. knowing when goodbye had reached its limit: the ultimate intimacy. goodbye wasn't the end. it was the beginning, without which goodbye had no power. Benny the Jazz left us with his last goodbye.

Jesus Christ!

2009-07-23T10:59:00.000-07:00

NOTE: This photo essay is admittedly one-sided, but so are photographs. Photos only show one side of a point of view the photographer had at the time. So this is nothing new.

I'm not a fan of Jesus Christ. I dont think much of Fundamentalist Christianity nor any of the world's other infamous and notorious religions (i.e., specifially Judaism and Islamic Fundamentalism) -- three major aberrant sociopathic blood-thristy world religious movements on a collision course with mass destruction.

Religion is the ultimate "weapon of mass destruction". Nobody is making an effort to stop the proliferation of religious beliefs world-wide. I say, stop religion! and we'll soon see a more peaceful, tolerant, well-adjused mentally and spiritually healthy earth. Let the proliferation of religion continue unchallenged and we'll see the end of civilization on earth as we know it.

I posted these photos to express the dark semi-secret side to this blood-thirsty, death-obsessed, dysfunctionally and mentally unbalanced aberrant pathological religious phenomena: Fundamentalist Christianity. It's as much a fascist terrorist organization as Islamic Fascism is accused of being and I'm no fan of that either. Judiasm is included in my view of Christianty since our support for Israel was, initially, a religiously motivated excuse. There's more excuses now.

For decades, anti-semitism has been a good excuse for irrational, unjustified military support for all things Jewish. To say anything bad about the Jews is to be lumped in with Hitler! It's easier to get away with hanging a hangman's noose on a tree in Mississippi than it is to disrespect a Jew! Israel/USA is always right and, given enough time, the rest of the world will be dead wrong! And for what? 8500 square miles of dirt.

To keep it simple, I used Roman Catholicism to visually represent the black heart of death. Like a Trojan Horse, it comes bringing honey and sweetness with the "baby in a manger" fairy tale. As a trilogy, the Bible, the Torah (Talmud) and the collected written/verbal teachings of Muhammad are the definitive Big Book of Curses.

Make no mistake, fundamental Charismatic Evangelicalism is no less insidious and dangerous to the future existence of humanity than catholicism and Islam. It may have less recognizable symbolisms for its contempt of human life, freedom of thought, tolerance for diverse lifestyles, behavior and individual creativity, but it's no less visible and controlling.

Most powerful symbolism of social/cultural death-wish inherent in fundamental Charismatic Evangelicalism: modern religious, political and economic systems. Democracy, Capitalism and Religion: the ultimate Triad and Axis of Evil. Systems responsible for the wars we fight, the costs we pay for living, the costs we pay for dying. Hopelessness future generations can look forward to.

Symbolism of Charismatic Evangelicalism: consumerism, coal lobby, big business, oil lobby, fast food, junk food, run-away health care expense, recession, unemployment, red state-Republican-dominated bigotry and self-righteousness, blue state-Democratic-dominated governmental activism and imperialism, homophobia, gun rights legislation lobby, white fat middle-class male-dominated environmental rape, Orange County CA residential demographics as a model and goal of conservatism, the auto industry, right-wing talk radio shock jocks, Wall Street lobby, the anti-choice lobby and the failed, fatal legacies of Dick Cheney's administration and his stupid puppet George W Bush.

If I offended anyone, I'm not the least bit sorry. Read Nietzsche's The Anti-Christ. It makes me look like a Zionist!

fOOT fETISH sEQUENCE 1 thru 6

2009-07-22T08:40:00.000-07:00

It's 3am. I'm coughing up blood. No wait. That's not right. I don't think that's blood. I think that's the color red from her short red satin skirt pulled up past her hips to make it easier to dig my way through the rock and pitch a tent inside that cave. I'm spitting out the fibers from her see-through blouse that got stuck in my teeth when I ripped off the zipper holding it together. I'm spitting out the soap and water that turned red from when she washed her short red mini-skirt with the slit up the side, washed it the kitchen sink with her red panties, her red lace stockings, her red high heels dripping dry in the bathroom hanging over the shower curtain. No, wait a minute. That must be a dream. I had a dream that I sucked all the color red out of existence because I loved it and had to have it. I was jonesin' for it like an addict who wanted to know if she had any meat. I loved the color red. Red hair. Red sunsets. Red Rodney. Red Norvo. Red Ryder. The Red River Valley. Little Red Riding Hood. Red Mitchell. Red herrings. Better dead than red. Red blood shot eyes. Red Rock Canyon, white out and blues after hours.

I was lost deep in sleep, sloppily slurping (?) the juices of forbidden kinky pleasure. I rested my head on her thighs, my face hidden by the shadow of her legs. I was as happy as an alcoholic at an open bar with my tongue hanging out waiting for another round. I was alone and content to dream about her short red skirt and red high heels with little metal clasps like handcuffs that pinched her ankles making bruises. There were tiny hooks painted red piercing her skin, which always got my blood to boil over. Large drops of blood found their way into my spoon. Little balls of cotton floated in water.

In my dream, I grabbed her ankles, sucked her toes. Suddenly I heard a loud knock on the door like I'd expect from cops. I woke up, sat up and looked at the door waiting for a big foot to come crashing through it without a warrant based only on a suspicion or a tip from a snitch. The last time this happened I was staying in a southern California resort town, a temporary resident of a cheap motel near the San Clemente pier. Coppers stormed in unexpected-like, planted stuff in my shoe and found works in the closet in a shoe box. It was a bum rap. The stuff wasn't mine. I was holding it for Benny the Jazz.

Anyway, there were no cops this time but a big brown manila envelope was shoved under my door. It was from someone I didn't know. He thought I'd be interested in his foot fetish. I was doing undercover work for deep background. Since he had a foot fetish he sent me pictures to prove it. (See JPG photos posted as "fOOT fETISH sEQUENCE 1 tHUR 6") He numbered them from one to six. That was the sequence he used to ignite the sparks of his perspiration. According to him, he only sweated on the right side of his body. Without his meds, his right armpit would heat up with a burning sensation usually when urinating. The hair under his right arm would be as tangled and matted as a wet mongrel dog. Strange as it sounds, his left side would be as cold as ice. In fact, his left arm pit had no hair at all. He looked and smelled like a Chinese Crested hairless.

In the package he sent there was a letter in a plain white business envelope simply addressed to "Dear Film and Tape Music". I opened it carefully. It could've been a stink bomb. I read it slowly, but first I poured myself a shot of whisky. Then I made myself a sandwich. Avocado, peanut butter and organic alfalfa sprouts with honey mustard dressing and soya sauce with artichoke hearts on the side. I had another shot of whiskey and sat in the chair to read the letter.
He asked me if I wanted to make a movie about his whole life. He said he would sell me the movie rights. He wrote, "I have 40,000 points of power. The C.I.A. gave me finding power. I can find anyone in the world. Sanction power. Market power." He told me to contact Homeland Security to find out when they're going to rent him a loft in New York. He wants to sell me some power. Foot fetish power. Power of the feet. Pisces power. Neptune toes. Saturn soles. He also told me he wants to get started in the porn industry or else.... and he writes this underlined with a bold red magic marker: "I can destroy it (i.e., the porn industry). You either my friend or my enemy (sic). My enemies I will destroy. I am serious." I get it he's serious. I have another shot and cough up some more phlegm. I spit it out into the envelope he provided. The letter's hard to read. I can't keep my hands still. (They twitch a lot more now since I was held against my will at the convalescence home in San Francisco.) Getting back to the letter: he says he'll put sanctions on me and "shut me up permanently!" if I don't do what he wants. He ends his letter and signs it, "May God bless you. Contact me. I am a God. Sincerely, L.L.S."

I sat there for a minute or two in dumb silence. Maybe it was an hour. I just stared ahead, looking out the window with a bland expression on my face as usual. I saw the morning paper spread out in front of me opened to the want-ads. I looked at the first ad; it was the only ad. I pushed the paper away and threw the shot glass in the sink and broke it. But before I did that I had another drink or two. I looked around for the spoon and the works and got ready to get high. I got high. The stuff was really fresh. Little sharp crystals dissolved in water instantly and so clearly I could see my face smiling at me, waving from a great distance and drifting further away. I was hot. Sweating. Breathing hard. I tried to get up from the table but something was different. I felt strangely connected to all living things. Consciousness itself was an odorless substance that I could touch and taste. It was bitter like lemon juice and sweet like a sugar baby. I saw my body with a creature living inside reach out its arms from the centers of all my chakras. Fingers of an alien being living on another planet pulled matter, energy, space and time into my body and pushing it out again worse than it was before. Transforming Kundalini. Renewing a sick feeling of something unforgiving and yet easily forgotten five minutes after it left my body. I saw that my feet had changed and now they had long thin beautiful toes instead of short little hairy stubs with toenails that were falling off. My feet were finally part of a cosmic holism Beyond Good and Evil.

I was stoned. The room was spinning. I couldn't stand up. My ears were ringing and hissing. My eyes were blurring. Everything I saw sort of glistened and sparkled. I was shining. The pupils in my eyes were as big and black as bowling balls. I crawled over to the bed and climbed on it with a lot of effort. I was listening to Beethoven's Piano Sonata #14 In C Sharp Minor, Op. 27/2, "Moonlight" - 1. Adagio Sostenuto. It was raining. It was dark outside and yet a weird laser beam cut into my brain like a carving knife on Thanksgiving. My head was a cooked turkey. My brain, oozing the color red flowing like water out of a rock rolled down my face, rolled down my chest, rolled down to my feet. Chemicals dripped into my spoon. Floating balls of cotton were dark red with blood, almost purple from the main artery. I watched them bob up and down like red apples in water. Red nylon stockings dissolved into crystal fibers. Rain soaked her red mini-skirt hanging on the clothes line out back. Little red high heels hung over the telephone lines in the street. I was a afraid of something, but I didn't know what.

I turned off all the lights in the house. I locked all the doors. I felt like someone was in the house besides me. My head was hurting. My arms ached and were bruised. I thought about going to the Ebony Black and Blues Cafe on the corner of Columbus Ave. and Kerouac Alley. It stayed open every day of the year from 6am till 2am. I looked for my shoes. My feet begin to itch between the toes. I reached down to scratch my foot and fell off the bed. I hit the floor. Hit my head. I could barely see the photos the guy sent me. I thought that if I post them up on JPG maybe the pain in my head would go away. Maybe I'd be able to breathe again. Maybe my skin would stop crawling over my body, like rats running up and down my legs from the inside out. Maybe the light would stop blinding me. Maybe the creatures would run away. Maybe, but not this time. Not today.

CLONAZEPAM/KLONOPIN: Kicking the Underground

2009-07-20T10:49:00.000-07:00

Coming off Klonopin, an anxiety med. Doctors in San Francisco misdiagnosed my natural interest in whether or not I was going to live and thought it was "anxiety". For six months I've been taking Klonopin and because it's addictive I can't stop cold turkey. I need to taper off slowly. So that's what I did. Now I'm taking ½ tab once a day. I stopped drinking. I exercise. I go to the gym. I drink three, four liters of water every day. I sit in a steam room or do a sauna. I shower in the nude with other men. Then we walk around the lockers showing off our admiration. If I didn't have anxiety before, I do now.

Klonopin never did anything so that I could tell it was helping. It was what I didn't feel. I didn't feel like I hated the world or people. I wasn't bitter or nervous. I didn't flip out over small things, only the big ones. I didn't feel like I had somewhere to go or something to do. I don't know if Klonopin made me calm, but it made me think I was calm. It made anxiety seem weak, cowardly and vulnerable. I could have victory with meds. I'd need another victory after that. And another after that. Discomfort comes with the withdrawals. Diarrhea. Headaches. Nausea. Boredom. Irritability. Driving in traffic. Insomnia. Restlessness. I used vicodin and hydrocodone to help get past the withdrawals. Without Klonopin, "BE-HERE-NOW" became "be anywhere but here now!" With it, being here is better than being anywhere else.

There are many days when I have no photos and no words. No creativity at all. I'm not interesting and I'm not interested. I've tried to force it, but that's stupid. A waste of time. So I find something else to do and wait for images to come to me. Taking a picture, getting the shot, right now, is as good as any other. Missing it can be better still. It's not taking the picture that makes it; it's what I do with it. A picture is taken. Shutter snaps. No flash. No focus. No thought. Camera and eye, hand and mind all moving without purpose. Or at least it seems like there's no point.

It's no sweat to take a picture. I don't think about it. I don't want to think about it. I don't want to put any thought to it. I want my hand, fingers, eye, camera, thoughts, everything going on inside and outside to be a conscious unified field of experience without distinctions or classifications. That's the way it really is, anyway. I look at the photos and maybe I can make something out of them. "First you take the picture; then you make the picture." Anybody can take a picture or bang on a piano, but I have to see something to make the picture or turn the banging into a form of jazz, which is the kind of jazz I like to play best. It takes being conscious. Awareness of being aware. Klonopin keeps me a little less than fully conscious. And that pisses me off. I have to work harder at it. Go into my high metabolic zone.

The anxiety comes in not being able to make the picture how I want, when I want, because I want everything and I want it now. But it doesnt work that way. There are many days when I see nothing, when I feel like I'm on a respirator. Life support. The image comes to me only when I can see it, feel it, touch it, smell it, love it and hate it, all at the same time. Being willing to give it up. Knowing when to stop, when to wait, and when to start again. Start-Change-Stop. That's what I'm learning about photography and the metaphysical facts of life.

2009-07-11T20:47:00.000-07:00

Every night I go to bed. Every morning I get up. Either way, it's been a bad summer for Yin and Yang, the Siamese twins and whores of Chinatown. They sing the blues on weekends at the Buddha Lounge on the corner of Grant and Washington where white is still the color of Ornette Coleman's plastic alto. Sidewalk cafés stay open late just to appease their appetite and it's still a long ride on the Geary 38. I took that ride one night back and forth from the bus terminal on Mission to the Great American Hiway, sleepless till dawn. In those days the shadows of the Golden Gate formed silhouettes of a crucifix across the city, shrouded in a scratchy wool blanket. Life as I knew it was a black and white Zen clock, but beautiful.

Stuck between the bookends of my habitual existence are photographs that articulate my life, often with ghost eyes staring back at me in my nightmares. They fill up scrapbooks either showing me doing nothing or showing me leaving nothing undone. I don't shave anymore and I don't smoke cigarettes but I don't hate them either. Death is a cage of silence to fall back on like a second job where I find things to do to keep busy. My life is really very simple and simplicity is the map for my sacred tour. It's not a very complicated tour. It begins as a numbing sensation in my fingers and goes up my arm until it scrapes the flavor of blandness off my lips. Since I don't believe in God I don't go to church and I don't go out much either. I don't think one thing has anything to do with the other but it just happens that I stay at home most of the time as much as I can. When you think about it, home's the best place for me to be for the good of everybody. Anxiety comes in all forms and sizes. It never used to bother me. I used to crave it but now I don't. I kicked the hard stress. Now I go to the gym, the liquor store and the farmer's market to smell the farmer's daughter. I go down town Nashville to take photos or else I stay home and make love to Nico until I go insane from alcoholism or we die in each other's arms from some other pleasure. Life is sooooo complete.

Today I thought about the challenge. JPG says: "My Precious stories are JPG's version of product reviews, where members write about their favorite and most precious piece of equipment. Tell us about a product or accessory you use and love. It can be new or old, a hand-me-down or the hottest thing on the market. A flash, a lens, a camera... YOUR precious......." OK. I thought about this in the steam room. I think more freely when I sweat. It burns up brain cells and washes the dead ones down the shower drain. I'm going to use a broad brush to paint the JPG guidelines because when I get an idea I'm lucky if it'll be a good one. (Please note: I wanted to submit this story to the JPG theme, but apparently it doesn't fit the parameters of its intentions and I'm unable to make that contribution. Lucky you, here it is anyway.)

Just exactly what is my "precious"? My precious what? What piece of equipment is so important its absence would deprive me of gratification? What product or accessory can I not live without, such that without it I'd merely become a male prostitute with a beard who'd give anything to live a glamorous life in order to get it? Tough questions utterly unbelievable; maybe there are no answers. Efforts to know the answers often kill it. Suddenly a silent sweat drips from my armpits down my stomach, to my legs and down to my feet. An idea, maybe an answer, hit me like a shot of chilled whiskey. There I was in a neighborhood bar drinking again and listening to sadly monotonous jazz. I remembered what it was all about: survival! That's IT! My "piece of equipment" is my impulse to survive! It's the negative of the positive side of life! It's not about kicking the habit of self-deception and self-enabling. It's clearly about photography as an accessory to a daily practice of surviving without resisting, without illness, without spraying my head with glue to keep my brains inside and without having to stumble down the stairs to the men's room. Survival is an image exposed from one world, developed from the negatives of another! Photography is an accessory of survival, plain and simple.

Survival isn't a game to see who or what wins or loses the most, or the least. It's not a game played really well or really badly. It might be a game in the long run, but in the short run it's not about struggling to stay alive to avoid dying just to see the sun rise one more day or to see the full moon shine another month. Survival isn't frustration besieged by circumstances fighting to breathe. Survival as I see it isn't about putting up with, or settling to be, a bored, sterilized, quarantined contradiction without life support, living on antibiotics and narcotics. (By the way, have you ever noticed that the best things you can say about narcotics are the worst things you can say about people?)

Survival is not a choice between eating out or being hungry. It's not about sleeping late on the weekend so we can sleep longer on a weekday. That's not surviving; that's a fatality and a futility. That's airplane food, hospital food, botched blood tests in the middle of the night when you don't know if you'll live to see tomorrow, but you probably will, and of course you always do for a while. Real and powerful survival from an artistic underground sub-culture point of view, as I think of it, is an existence into a future. It's a function of prosperity. It's not conquering life by being separate from it and paranoid as if we're strangers suspicious of it; it's overcoming a tolerance for the mediocre by absorbing and including weakness and flaws, and then transforming that into something simple and easy to experience. It's not defending ourselves against the unknown; rather, it's assimilating the unknown into our imagination.

Survival as a piece of equipment shapes photography. It points to artistic levels, knowable and unknown. Life is experienced through images. Life becomes an accessory of survival itself as an image, such that photography is a child of the affluent. Through photography we index our survival as individuals. Photography shows us that we're sexual beings as resilient in community as we are elastic in the unified field of a greater humanity. The products and accessories used (and photographed) by our intuition for survival are the impressions of all living things surviving as universe, spirit and infinity. Ultimately, photography represents the survival of energy, space, time and material. Using digital cameras and film, these representations eventually become self-portraits. They become images of men and women living within intimate relationships outside all barriers of sexuality and they all have their own stories. These are visual documented histories of the migration of whole generations preserving the memories of friends and lovers, young and old. Through photographs we capture survival of unpredictabe and volatile crowds and their protests. We see the survival of panoramic landscapes and the vast, unending beauty of nature. Photography is all about survival and if you don't get that you might be missing something.

JPG described the "Precious" challenge in terms of writing a review of one's favorite equipment, accessory or product. I thought long and hard about this at the spa in the steam room. I reduced the idea down to its most minimal simplicity: photography is an accessory to survival.

I want to clear up what survival is and what it isn't. Survival isn't a choice between life and death. Death isn't surviving, so that's not a choice. If you're not already dead, then living (breathing) is the default condition. That's not a choice, either. So living or dying, either one or both, is not surviving.

What survival is as I'm considering it has to do with a fundamental impulse to exist by will, or the will to power, as Nietzsche thought of it. Survival is the will to power on different levels of self-expression of life and the will to express existence with authority. Survival is a driving force. It's the source of creativity, curiousity, power and the will.

We put this insight into several areas of life every day, every time we take photographs. As photographers there are five areas of life that we can photograph, five out of eight. They are (1) self-portraits of ourselves or portraits of other individuals. This includes the nuances and atmospherics that surround us, our histories and stories of ourselves surviving as individuals. (2) Men and women surviving as a form of relationships, survival in terms of sexual intimacy, lovers, and children who are products of intimate sexual activities of survival. (3) Groups of people surviving (self-expressing) as members of communities, networks, familes and larger centers, but smaller than "mankind", thriving and interacting as groups. (4) We photograph movements and migrations of human generations in time on a global scale. This is survival as humanity, inhabitants and occupants of a planet. This includes the survival of cities, towns and dwelling places. (5) And, finally, we photograph survival as nature, with landscapes and the panorama of living things in relationships to biological organisms, plants, animals and the effect their survival has on us.

Those are five major areas of life's interests that we photograph. I think every photo can be placed, liberally, somewhere in those five categories. Except for scientists and satellites with advanced space-age technologies, we haven't photographed (6) the universe, (7) the spirit or (8) the infinite. But five major areas of life itself are available to us to photograph. We are not separate from them. We are not strangers to them. They are not outside of us. They are where we put our survival. They are where we plant our survival. Where we live and promote our existence.

Every photo we take, every time we snap the shutter, it comes from an impulse for survival. To survive not being separate from it. We survive by being intimate with... and at One with... these five identities. Survival as life is common to all of us regardless of what we photograph or the quality of the work, or what we know or don't know. Photography is driven by impulses to survival and survival drives us together, and holds us together, as people. Every photo we take reinforces and strengthens our claim on survival as individuals. As sexual beings. As members of groups. As parts of greater unified humanity. As a co-equal with all of nature.

What started out as a joke about knowing something about photography, has become a truth for me that I cannot avoid. It stares me in the face everyday. Everytime I take a photograph I see it: "If you know the difference between a bus stop and and f/stop, you already know too much."

Survival is very simple and uncomplicated. The easier a photo can be experienced, the more profound is its emotion. The simpler the emotion, the more authentic the image, the more complete the experience of survival. At least it is for me.

Anyway, this whole thing was written in context of that challenge, "My Precious" which for one reason or another didn't work out. So if this is too philosophical for some of you, too bad.

2009-07-05T18:13:00.000-07:00

i cant think of everything. im not a miracle worker. im not a mind reader. sometimes things just go bad. it's nobody's fault. nobody can explain it. it just happens. or it doesnt. i was living in a house in hollywood between fountain and santa monica blvd. not sure exactly. the house caught fire. everything burned except my drums and piano. the dogs died in the bathroom in a corner. i was working in long beach. drove home at three in the morning. the street was filled with fire trucks. the house was gone. i lost everything except the car and my drums and piano. the money was in the bank in a safe deposit box. it wasnt much to begin with. i worked in burbank at a cable tv company. me and this other guy sold converters. i'd get $1000 a case. went to mexico for a vacation twice. i had a good time. got a tan. floated in the salt water. drank rum and coke and snorted coke everyday between three and four in the afternoon. it was late. i was tired or sick or alone. i dont remember. i dont care. i used to play piano and write songs. i'd sing them and record them. had a dream i'd be somebody sometime but sometimes never came soon enough. it was always too late too much too soon but always late. i took my camera downtown to make photos of my shadow as it passed by but i wasnt fast enough to make it happen. my shadow went past like a comet in the sky, like the right story gone wrong too much too fast. a kid washed his car at 11pm at night and he was shot in the carwash. what was he doing washing his car at a carwash at 11pm in the first place? it sounds too stupid but it's true. if i had a son and he said, hey mom, i'd like to wash my car at 11pm i'd say like hell you are, stay home, you stay home with me, with us. but it rained last night. i woke up this morning and took my meds. i was taking one tab twice a day, then one tab once a day, then a half a tab twice a day, then i'll take a half a tab once a day, then no tabs no time a day. i watched a news report about fat people getting fatter. the skinny stay skinny and the fat get fatter. pancake batter makes people fatter. save a penny, stay skinny. eat more vegis, drink more water, kick the habit kiss the cat wear a hat. the sun was bright and i could see my shadow just like peter pan i had a golden tan my body was strong and full of muscles dancing shadows on the wooden deck. my shadow doesnt spend any money. the recession doesnt bother my shadow. there's no money. there's no time to jump start the engine. face life. foot traffic. transformation for years to come. the life and death of a private life out of sight under the influence bloodshot eyes and an odor like alcohol bailed me out. discover the body. heartbreak gridiron. prayers fall on deaf ears. nightmare's not going away. it's real. it's what happened. a lot of things happen. devasting dedication. why's it so hard to believe? get over it if you can get over it. be patient. a blond in a red dress. a blond in a black dress. driving around giving hand jobs in the front seat. pulled into an alley give a blow job in the back seat of big box chains. big box stores. it's an art. cold coffee coffee black fat belly pulled tight with a body glove. black belt unbutton your pants fake it. it's not hot. i dont feel sweaty. it doesnt itch. it's perfect to hide bra bulge. back fat. be still. take a gun and shoot me and bury me just like you. the curse of death? death is not a curse. death is the other side of the plug nickle. the coin. the two sides of the story. open and shut case. slam dunk. over and out. all washed up. clean up your act. get a bite to eat. dont stop now, first come first served. the master and the servant. yesterday today and tomorrow. get a lawyer and get it done. catch a falling star. it's all over now. not a moment too soon. red high heels. call it quits.

Every Bourbon is a Whiskey, but Every Whiskey's No Bourbon

2009-07-02T08:57:00.001-07:00

I go to sleep and it's winter. I wake up and can't get back to sleep. I try hard, real hard. I take pills. I have some drinks. And then some more. I watch TV. I turn it down low. I turn on the fan and the air conditioning. I fall asleep. I have a dream. It's a bad dream, a real nighmare. I get a phone call in the middle of the night, like two or three in the morning. It's springtime. I answer the phone and a voice says: "This is the Sheriff's Department. We have deputies at the door. Open the door and do not have anything in your hands. I repeat, this is the Sheriff's Department........" blah blah blah So I open the door. The cops come in and search the house. There's nothing there. Nobody but me. They said I filed a false report, which is a felony. I get five years probation. I wake up in a sweat. I'm still watching TV. I'm eating fruit. The clock is ticking. Time is running out. It's the Summer Equinox. I'm living in Los Angeles, the Hollywood Hills. The Santa Ana winds are rough. So I move to San Francisco. Nashville. Where am I? I wake up. My bed is wet. My pillow is wet. I'm playing drums with Jerry Inman in Jackpot, Nevada with Garland Frady from Austin, Texas. It's a casino on the border of Nevada and Idaho. We get drunk every night and take black beauties to stay awake and party. I wake up and it's the fall. November. I'm drinking at the Foothill Club in Long Beach.

In my lifetime so far I've been a card carrying member of the Moral Majority, the John Birch Society, the American Civil Liberties Union, People for the American Way and Planned Parenthood. I was in the Cub Scouts and the Order of DeMolay's, which is apart of the Masons, which Christians's are afraid of. I was in the Naval Reserve in Nevada LOL. I went AWOL as a conscience objector which was denied, worked at the Monterey Pop Festival on my way hitchhiking to San Francisco and got out of the navy with an undesireable discharge because I used too much LSD. I guess they were afraid I'd be on watch one night and hallucinate a big flying boat coming out of the sky to attack the ship.

I've studied yoga, meditation, all sorts of magick occult practices, new age crap, and practiced hard-core fundamentalist christianity for several years. Apparently, none of it has done me any damage and I survived in spite of it. I've been pro-choice and anti-choice. I was on staff with Scientology for two or three years. I voted for Reagan, Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot, Al Gore and Obama. I've been an atheist for ten years going on a lifetime.

I've been a musician my entire life practically. I played drums with Charlie Daniels, Doug Kershaw, Charlie Pride, Conte Condoli, Carl Saunders, Al Bruno, J.D. Manis, Rick Davis, Garland Frady, Earl Ball, Roy Clark, Pat Boone, The Imperials and a bunch of others.

I've had my fill of every drug addiction you can think of and kicked it, enjoyed my share of alcoholism, vegitarianism, fruitarianism and meat eating. I took the Rosicrucian cleansing cure and detox, studied astrology, numerology and tarot reading.

I've been politically far right, far left, centrist, anarchist and socialist. I protested the Viet Nam war, the Iraq war and I hated Bush. Every day for eight years I woke up and went to sleep hating that mo^%#r f&%@king c&*%k su&$%ker! Now that he's gone and the country's in good hands again I don't care about politics anymore.

I've been trying to be a photographer for the past few years, and before that I worked in offices with a coat and tie and no tie and no coat. I havent held a steady job in over eleven years. I've had run-in's with the law, been all around the world once. I've been married and divorced a half a dozen times or more. Luckily for me I was paying attention to destiny and fate and I finally found my one true love of a lifetime living here in Tennessee. These pictures are pictures of her. She's the best that ever happened to me.

And in all this life time of experience and education in the cities of the nation and the world..... after all the experiences I've had and have yet to have...... there's one thing I've learned that has given me a true perspective on life and the true meaning of existence, and that is this:
EVERY BOURBON IS A WHISKEY, BUT EVERY WHISKEY'S NO BOURBON!

The Story of Onion and Herb

2009-06-30T17:43:00.000-07:00

The photo shoot was over and we went back to his place. It was late. I was tired and wanted to sleep. I slept on the floor. He got the bed. His right leg pulled the sheet up into a knot like a drunken teenager. With his arms over his head grasping the brass headboard and his eyes closed, he looked more like an autopsy photo than a guy who just did a photo session for an on-line bondage site.

Next day: it was eight in the morning. Extra hot in August. A sliver of light through a crack in the curtain ran across the table, the floor and up the side of the wall. It hit me in the eyes and woke me up. Little sparkles of grains of dust and pollen slowly rising into the room like soft clouds of cocaine woke me up coughing. I didn't have a pillow. I used my coat rolled up into a ball. No blanket. No sheet. No covers. But he had a thin sheet keeping him comfortable. I could see through it. His nipples were hard and dark like Brazil nuts with fifty percent less salt. It made me thirsty just to look at him sleeping so oblivious to me, unconcerned about me. His mouth was open, lips dry, parched, breathing through his mouth. I was glad his stuffy nose clogged his head. It was good he couldn't breathe. He sounded nasally when he talked, like country singers. I was glad he was asleep and I was awake. I didn't want to have to deal with him. No talking. No conversation. Nothing but the sound of my absence is all he'd get from me.

I pulled myself up off the floor. Looked for my boots, but gave up. Too hot. No air conditioning, but a swamp cooler made the air humid and wet, like having sex with him. Water dripped from the cooling vents to the floor. Reminded me being in school during nap time after crackers and milk. About one in the afternoon we'd put our heads down and listen to the swamp cooler dripping water into pots and pans, hypnotically sending suggestions into our mind. Music to my ears. Like steel drums. It could always put me to sleep, but not today.

Heat and humidity was unbearable. Dust and dirt was finding its way into my lungs coughing my guts out, mucus in the palms of my hands. I looked for the bathroom. Took a piss. Ran the water in the tub. Took a shower. Washed my hair. Couldn't find a towel. Brushed my teeth with his tooth brush and tooth paste. Looked in the mirror, a full length mirror naked and still dripping wet. I was sexually aroused seeing myself. I started thinking about him. I should wake him. Climb on top, wrestle him, force him on his stomach, pin his arms behind him, force his legs forward while I pushed against him to force it. Do it and get it over with! I should wake him in a way he'll remember. That's the way he liked it when we were together, before the break up. We're not even friends. Going in different directions, hanging out for convenience sake, sleeping in the same room because of my photo exhibit, "The Onion Gallery of Female Impersonators." But now it was the bed, floor, food, window, the dreamy dreary highway of life hitting all the pot holes in every small town from here to there. Both of us wanting something else, someone, anyone else, determined to get away as fast and as far as a Greyhound bus could go.

I had a backpack. He had a suitcase. I liked whiskey. He liked beer. I only had enough money to get three hundred miles, but he had friends who'd send him to California. It didn't matter to me. I was hungry and I wasn't "aroused" anymore. That irritated me. I was frustrated. So I fixed a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of soda water. French fries with mayo, a peach and a candy bar. I ate lunch and watched him toss and turn pretending to sleep. He put his body in a fetal position, I suppose to protect himself from me, or from what he thought I had become. Or maybe he was afraid of what he might do.

The phone rang. Should I answer it? There's nobody knows I'm here. It's probably for him. He's hoping I'll hurry up and run out, get sacred, ignore the phone, close the door, lock it and run away, don't look back. That's what I should've done. The phone rings again. It's annoying. I can't stand it. I pick it up and don't say anything. I just listen. There's nothing there. Silence. Nobody says anything. I can hear breathing. At first it's slow and soft, then it gets louder, faster, deeper. Sounds like a man. I hold the phone and keep listening. Should I say something or hang up?

"Who's this?" the man says finally.

"Who's this?" I say.

"Where is he? Let me talk to him!"

"He's sleeping."

"I don't know you, do I?" he says.

"Who are you? You tell me!"

"What the hell's wrong with you! Let me talk to him, NOW or else there's gonna be trouble!" He asks lots of questions and makes rapid-fire demands.

"I told you he's sleeping. That's it! You got a problem with that!?"

"Yeah, I got a problem with YOU!" he says.

I hung up. I don't just hang up. I slammed it down so hard it broke one of the little push button numbers on the phone. It fell off and hit the floor, bounced under the bed. I got on my hands and knees. It hadn't been cleaned since he moved in. I found magazines, broken pencils, a mirror, a rusty razor blade, empty cigarette packs, empty matchbooks. Finally I got it. The number Nine. I put it back on the phone. Put the phone on the table. I stood there looking and feeling stupid, angry at my cowardice, because I didn't know who it was. I didn't like the sound of his voice.

Minutes later the phone rang again. This time I saw his eyes open. Then it rang again. I grabbed it and made a gesture with my other hand the way I stroke the fires of an erection when I've got nothing else to do. I put the phone to my ear and listened. Silence. Nobody says a word. I look at him in bed with his eyes open. He yawns, plays with his curly hair hanging down around his face. He rubs the sleep out of his eyes, licks his lips like a snake. I listen to the phone. I'm getting nervous. I start breathing heavier. My heart beats faster. I hear it in my throat. I feel it in my chest. I'm getting mad. I want to do something but I don't know what.

"Hey!" His voice hits me in the stomach like an electric bass through a Marshal amp turned up to ten! "I know he's there. I know where he lives. Put him on the phone or I'll be over in fifteen minutes to kick both your asses!"

I threw the phone down. The receiver hangs over the edge of the bed banging on the floor. I hear the guy's voice on the other end yelling, screaming, threatening.

"Answer it! Pick it up!" I say.

He yawns, sits up, rests his weight on one elbow and scratches his toes. He takes the phone close and personal like he was kissing it. If he could slide his tongue inside the phone all the way into the other guy's mouth, I get the feeling he's done it before.

"It's me. What do you want?" he says.

I can't tell what the other guy's saying. I can't hear him. I look around the room for my boots. I pull my shirt over my head, finish getting dressed. He's busy on the phone. He gets my attention, points to an ash tray with a cigarette in it. Snaps his fingers for me to pass it to him with a lighter. I do it. He lights up and blows smoke in my face. This morning his face is plain looking, his eyes unresponsive, white, pale, no emotion. Then his eyes widen larger filled with anger. Deep stress lines appear on his forehead.

"Like hell you will!" he says.

He squints. Puffs on a cigarette and blows smoke so hard he spits on me. I walk away. Look through my wallet, count my money, check the room for things I might've missed. He snaps his fingers again for me to sit down. I do what he says. I sat down and waited. It seems like forever. I'm impatient. Can't sit around all day.

"You can go to hell!" he screams at the phone and slams it down.
Poor little number nine push button falls off the phone again, hits the floor bounces under a table. He kicks the phone off the bed, it hits me in the ankle. He's mad about something. He gets out of bed stark naked except for his black underwear briefs and the black forest of chest hair. He goes to the bathroom, stands up, takes a piss. He turns to me and says, "What are you looking at!?"

"Nothing. I'm leaving."

"The hell you are!"

He shuts the toilet seat without shaking off and puts on jeans. Takes a t-shirt out of a pile of dirty clothes on the bathroom floor and puts it on. It's too short. Too tight. Doesn't even come to his waist. The sleeves are short too. I can see nipples pressing through thin fabric, trying to push through flimsy material, wanting to escape a tight fit like two convicts in solitary too long. His arms are long and lean. My meds are making me imagine things. I hear voices in my head. They tell me to do it right now. They say to overpower him, knock him down, slap him around, force him to submit. The voices tell me to get it done and over with and leave him in a pool of sweat. So I get behind him, positioning myself to make my move. I see myself in the full length mirror. I'm all wound up again. I was prepared to grab my left arm around his neck to chock him, pull his hair with my other hand, yank it back as hard as I can, knock him off balance, throw him on the floor. I was one step away from taking him down. The way he dressed in front of me he deserved it. He was asking for it. I was less than a foot away from the back of his head, reaching my arm around towards his neck, ready to get it done when at that exact moment I heard footsteps on the stairs outside the door. I heard the stairs creek and crack. I had heard that same sound earlier in the day when I walked up the stairs to the front door. I made a mental note of it. I knew that sound and I knew someone was there at the top of the stairs, standing outside the door listening, waiting.

Suddenly the door kicked in. It wasn't much of a door but now it was just splinters. My friend ran out the backdoor down the back stairway toward the alley to get away and I was on my own. A man was moving towards me fast. He hit me in the face. Hit me in the head with a telephone book lying on the table. I think it was the yellow pages which was bigger than the white pages. I fell back, my shoulders slammed into the kitchen table. He kicked me in my right side and I doubled up on the floor, my nose bleeding. He kicked me in the ribs. Ripped the phone cord out of the wall and threw the phone across the room. It shattered. He took off running out the back door down the back stairway toward the alley chasing after my friend. I heard a fight, a scream. I heard garbage cans and bottles smash and break, rolling around outside the alley. Another scream. More fighting. Another scream. I heard someone getting slapped around, slugged, punched, kicked. I heard thumping sounds, like steady thumping, beating, bumping noises and then footsteps coming up the stairway, up towards the back door of the apartment. I looked up from where I was lying on the floor pretending to be knocked out cold. I saw a man dragging him by his hair, each time hitting his head on the steps as he dragged him to the kitchen. He wasn't screaming now. He dragged him to the kitchen, slammed the door shut and dropped him on the linoleum floor. His head made a thud. The guy walked over to me, picked me up by my shirt and slugged me in the stomach. I couldn't breathe. Gasping for air. I fell to my knees. He pushed me backwards with his boot on my chest. I fell back and hit my head on the floor. That's all I remember.

It was dark when I woke up. Night time. It was quiet. Not a sound. There was light coming from the street next to the alley, a light coming into the room. I could see him on the kitchen floor the same place where he was before. He hadn't moved. I looked around and saw the phone busted up. My nose had been bleeding but it stopped. I had a few cuts and bruises, a bump on the back of my head. I got up slowly and called his name. The front door was busted and the porch light went thru a crack in the frame. I could see him on the floor. He wasn't moving. I called his name and crawled to him. Touched him. I took his hair in my hands and pulled it a little to see if he'd move. I pulled it a little harder. I pulled it hard enough to lift his head up off the floor and turn it to one side to get a good look. He was pretty bloody and beat up. His teeth had been knocked out. I don't know if he was breathing or not.

A jealous boyfriend. A pimp. An evangelical Christian conservative having a homosexual affair and his wife finds out and he lost his church so he's mad enough to kill: If-I-can't-have-you-nobody-will! A frantic politician gets caught having sex with a man in an airport bathroom and a drug deal goes bad. Ex-husband decides to settle an old score. Homophobe beats up neighborhood fags.

I got some money from a local church, enough to buy a bus ticket. I didn't care about the photo exhibit anymore. I wanted to get as far away as possible. It was too late for me and I was out of time. I took a seat in the back of the bus. Pulled my coat over my shoulders, wrapped my arms around me to keep warm. Put my legs and feet over the seat next to me to make more room, stretched out the best I could. Closed my eyes and listened to the engine of the big bus roaring down the highway. Conversations subdued. It was night. It was late. It was quiet. People were sleeping and we had a long way to go before the next rest stop.

THE END

THE END.

2009-06-30T17:42:00.000-07:00

The end. Aug. 28, 1958-June 25, 2009

I remember he was too thin and tubercular. He was always somewhere on the scale of "the end" for years. Some people think he died a long time ago. Maybe he did and we won't admit it. We bought into the disappearing act. The con. We like being lied to and we do it best to ourselves. Nobody lies to us better than we do. Frank Sinatra did it to us. Elvis did it to us. Liz Taylor did it. Lisa Minnelli. Other female impersonators. Male imposters. Big fans of Mike's. We can think of many others whose careers died, they were memorialized, buried, cremated, innocence forgotten....... and then overnight they were reincarnated. And in the end, nobody dances. Not a soul. Maybe that's what "come backs" are all about. You die and then you "come back" bigger and better than before.

What happened on June 25th is nothing new. It's about time. Not that he deserved it because he didn't. He didn't earn it. It's not like earning a reward for walking across a parking lot or escaping a movie theater in the middle of a bad movie. As soon as he was out of sight it happened, like climbing stairs to a hotel room. Like the eyes of a woman standing in a doorway without moving, worried she had too much perfume. He reinvented himself with broken fingernails. He was reborn, repackaged and redesigned in the mind of a gullible public like hungry derelicts with no destination.

Highlights of his life: He curled his lips and sat on the bed. His fingers were always in my pants. He was too anxious to get my money. His soul was ripped to pieces. His mouth bit my lower lip. He danced like a great author who was a lover of man and beast. Our sickly eyes watched him starve. We never let him kiss our sister. We let him drag innocence into the sewer. He had an odor of oldness. He put his hands on his hips. Disinterested in merely sitting down, he annoyed us with the absurdity of a hopelessly bad lover. He made gestures with his fingers. He pulled off his coat. He talked too little, too much. He was scared and smiled weakly at what he'd done. It took a long time for him to breathe without rouge. He didn't know what was happening.

I thought about it, how I felt, not feeling anything. I had liquor on my breath. But it was about time anyway, meaning it was like turning out a light, sleeping in a chair, jumping off a bed, smoking a cigarette, going outside, tearing up the lyrics to a song. What took him so long to shake hands, to drink and dance? When the mask concealing his unimpressed expressions knocked on the door to deliver his invitation to the dance, what took him so long to open it? Was he pale and trembling? Was he prepared? Sad that a man's death isn't his own, that we all bought tickets to this spectacle. We were corporate sponsors. we were the organ donors dragging out the inevitable. We felt dirty and guilty the way you do when you get away with a crime. When he crossed the street in front of a speeding truck, we watched him through the window. We saw him coming around the corner but we didn't run to stop him.

Beauty & the Bukowski Chapter One

2009-06-30T17:41:00.000-07:00

Some people have bad breath. Some people have bad teeth. Bad gums. Bad credit. Bad examples. Bad coffee. Bad drugs. Bad health. Bad marriages. Bad luck. Me, well, I've got all that and then some. The worst of it is, I have bad dreams. Nightmares! Hideous dreams that give me convulsions. Makes me want to drink myself into the dust. Makes me want to throw up my lunch in a doorway somewhere. Makes me want to go back to my room, lay in the darkness, order a beer, look at the ceiling, disappear behind a wall, jump out a window, clamp my lips to the back of a cable car, put my hands in my pockets and be dragged away. The only reason I don't is because I wanna be a photographer. Someday when I grow up, I'm gonna be one or know the reason why! But for right now, I'm in the middle of a sidewalk taking pictures of a cigarette butt I found in the gutter.

By the way, clonazepam doesnt always work. It has too many mood swings. Today's one of those days. One of those days when jazz is crude. It's either too fast, too slow, too sentimental, or too square. Sitting in a cafe nobody's there to wait on me. My thumb on my left hand is in a splint. It wont bend. It hurts if it bends. My meds arent working either and I'm feeling depressed. I've got a bottle of Jack Daniels and vicodin. That might help, but probably not. The fan on my computer is too loud for some reason, it's never this loud.

I took some more pictures and fell asleep on the sidewalk outside a bar. I went back to my room, found a note on the door. I dont know if I read it or not. Maybe I ignored it. I stood close to the wall, slid into my apartment like somebody's tongue in my mouth. I sat on the steps, my head in my hands thinking. I put the note next to me. I heard Coltrane pacing around in the room next to mine, playing modal scales over and over. I was in a bar being talked to by a woman with a dark face, big dark eyes, long white graceful neck. Full red lips. Her face torn apart, torn open like paper. I read the paper looking inside her mouth. And what a mouth it was! Her tongue had faces of women all over it like fever blisters living in the spare room from the world of tomorrow, a grim horrible vision of my wet hands wrapped around her throat, sweat dripping from her hair, lips smiling. I opened a door and looked inside for a magazine. An old dog lifted his leg and pissed on my computer. I walked across the street mad enough to kick him but I was in a robe. No, I wasn't in a robe. I was in my bed and a red light flashed on and off through the window. I remembered that I changed my mind about the photo shoot.

It was nauseating but when I thought about photography I forgot I was sick. The woman with a face like dull darkness bent over at the waist and her short skirt got even shorter. She gave me her hand, I gave her something else. She pressed her body against me. I was embarrassed that I couldn't think of anything else to do so I picked up my camera. I was furious that I couldnt kick the habit. It was unnatural. It was absurd. I sat down across the table. She crossed her legs and they fell off her body. I took a picture of them and had no repentance, not even an apology. She laughed. It was terribly funny. I felt crushed. I dropped my camera...... again. Without saying a word her skin began to crumble off her face. That gave me bad gas. My stomach was bloated. I was in a pure state of morbid illness.

I remembered what Dostoevsky wrote: "Every decent man of our time is and must be a coward and a slave. That is his normal condtion." The next thing I knew i had dizzy spells. Insomina. Pains in my chest. Shortness of breath. Loss of appetite. Itchy skin. I lost five pounds in a week. Ten pounds in a month. When I pissed it burned. When I slept I had night sweats. I dreamt I saw a photograph of my father. What the hell does that mean? The psychic said I was clinging to false hope. Guilt. A happy situation in the past I wanted to go back to. Something isn't as it seems to be. Isn't that what photography is?

I began to toss and turn. It hurt. I woke up on the sidewalk. A cop was shaking me awake. I had a broken bottle of whisky next to me running, spilling out on the street corner. He was yelling at me. People were walking past taking pictures of me. My camera was gone. My money was gone. Then the answer came to me: in America, nobody listens to each other. We listen to what other people say to other people. We eavesdrop! I don't look at other people's photos; I only look at my own and admire them. I eavesdrop on myself! I con myself. I scream about my own stuff and die for photos I can't take myself!

Beauty & the Bukowski Chapter Two

2009-06-30T17:40:00.000-07:00

I hung a sign outside on the door to my apartment, three floors up from the street: "Photographer for hire. Looking for women who want to be photographed in the worst way. Must be willing do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to get it done, or else don't waste my time. You get the experience but not the money. I get the money, I don't need the experience. Interested? See occupant inside apartment #9. Or go to Club Open 24/7 and ask for Benny the Jazz."

A few days later I woke up to some loud knocking on my door like a machine gun. I was sound asleep at 5 in the morning. Who could it be and why would they wanna see me? "Go the hell away!" – I yelled half asleep. I'd forgotten about the ad. "Hang on! Wait a minute!" - I said. I sat up in bed with a wool blanket and a white sheet wrapped around me just like in the hospital. I threw both feet on the floor with a hard thud. I pulled myself up without any help, barely standing straight. I rubbed my eyes to get the sleep out and looked around.

I walked over to the light switch and turned it on. I stood there some more, naked. I took some time to admire myself in the mirror. Winked. Flirted. "Not bad" - I thought. My tan, thin, young naked body may be all the rage but it was no way to answer a knock on the door unless I know who it is, and even then what the hell! My blue jeans hung over the back of a chair where I left them. My wallet was in my pocket but it was empty. I grabbed them off the chair and slid 'em on like slippery snake skin. I snapped the fly shut. They fitted loose but snug, hanging below my belly button to show just enough hair above my crotch to be interesting depending on who was interested. Low hangers. Hip huggers. Waist huggers. Whatever....... they fit like they belonged to a bricklayer.

There was another knock on the door even louder than the first. Didn't sound like cops. It didn't have that ominous wooden night-stick sound so familiar. "Hold on!" - I yelled, again. I didn't have a shirt but I didn't care. I liked the way I looked. I had new definition and muscle tone in my arms and chest so I didn't care about a shirt. Without a shirt it was still cold in here since I didn't have the heat on. Trying to save money. Another loud knock. "Bang! Bang! Bang!" I went to the sink. Brushed my teeth. Wet my hands, splashed my face and brushed my hair.

I looked around to check it out, turned the coffee on. Another knock. Wham! Bang! Bing! "OK! I'm coming!" - I yelled again. This time I walked to the door. Looked thru the tiny peep hole and opened it.

"Good morning!" - she said. I stood there bare foot and half naked and looked her up and down, undressing her with my bloodshot eyes. I saw she had small hands but big dark eyes with rings around them. I saw she had fake eye lashes scribbled on her forehead like a Jackson Pollack painting. I saw she had small feet with luxuriant red polish smeared between her toes. I saw she had long legs, stilettos and a lacy red French thong underneath her short skirt. I saw she had a small female body: narrow, slim, slender, white, pale and a little sickly. I saw she had teeny-tiny freckles all over her body. First impressions, I thought she had low blood platelets, about which I had some personal knowledge. I dismissed that idea as soon as she opened her mouth and wiggled her tongue. Her lips were perfectly luscious! But I wondered if she had freckles in her ears. I saw she had thick, long wavy red hair past her butt. It looked like she had a tight butt. I wondered if her pubic hair was red, too. I never trusted women with pubic hair a different color than the hair on their head. It reminded me of spaghetti in a dish of water.

Anyway, she stood at the door and glanced at my empty bed in the corner of the room, what I call my "photographer's studio". The cold air in the room hit us like a thousand needles. That made me think about Needles, California, how hot it was and how much I hated it. And that made me think about the freckles covering her face like ants covering a bowl of cat food. Needles had a lot of stray cats crawling out from the contaminated Colorado River, and everybody hated that! Which made me think about her eyes which were dark and hard to forget. I didn't hate them; I was afraid of them. That made me think about the old mattress I used to have when I lived on Van Ness. It never got wet except during sex, but after a hundred, two hundred nights who cared?

"Who are you?" I said. "Whaddya want?"
"I'm here to get my picture taken", she said.
"Whaddya talking about?"
"You need women to photograph, right? I saw your ad. Here I am"

Then I remembered. No wonder she smelled so good. She had creamy looking legs. My attention was glued to the muscles in her thighs and calves. Out of the corner of my eye I saw she looked around the room. She looked at the bed. "Where's the bathroom?" - she asked plaintively. I pointed to a door with a towel hanging on a hook. She walked over, opened it, went inside and shut it. A few minutes later she came out. Something must've pissed her off. Probably the dirty toilet seat. I felt like spitting. Everybody in the apartment building knew what she was up to except me. I wished I had a bathtub!

I felt like washing my feet. Her thighs were looking cold with goose bumps appearing under her skin. She was smooth as silk. A smooth operator. She had nightmares each night, the giant dirty hand that plucked her from her bed, carried her to the bathroom, and shook her out over the toilet...when she awoke in the morning, she realized they weren't nightmares, they were her life--the dream was that she had fallen asleep in the first place...She must have shaved her legs this morning. I ran my fingers up and down the backs of her legs, up and down the insides of her photogenic legs. I couldn't stop thinking about legs. The photo shoot would be all about legs, legs and more legs! Smooth black legs. Clean legs. White legs. No stubble legs. I figured she'd do just fine for the photos. I said - "Let's do it!"

But just to be sure she was the right one I asked her if she cried much lately. I had to know. It was important somehow. She said she cried the night before. I asked her how she did it. She stuck a fork in the bottom of her feet and sucked the tears out the tips of her toenails. She put her hand thru a plate glass window but couldn't cry. Couldn't bleed. Didn't know why. Ended up in Oakland in an apartment complex. I had friends there. As it turned out they were heroin users.

I tried it a couple times but wasn't into it. Junk was good to write poetry and stories like this one here, but that was about all it was good for. I got sick. I remember I was laid up in bed with my legs hanging outside over the side of the bed, just like in the hospital waiting for girls to come in, or nurses, or whoever...hallucinating they kissed me goodnight, tucked me in before I threw up in the waste basket. I wrote a poem about it on morphine, for pain, you know (LOL). Anyway, a shadowy apparition comes in my room, stands over me, looks down at me like the death angel or something worse. My shirt ripped open, unbuttoned to my waist. My legs hanging over the side of the bed like I'd stolen a motorcycle. My eyes blurry, wet, out of focus from dampness and fog stinging my face at a hundred miles an hour. Heroin and morphine made me look sexy. Ah! the painkillers. My good buddy, "Benny the Jazz", helped me mainline it. I couldn't go home for days. Now I'm getting off point.

I had the women ready and set up for the big photo shoot. We were in a beatnik hotel in North Beach, somewhere downtown San Francisco.... Every morning we'd walk down the hall to the showers. We'd make coffee in my room but we couldn't take a piss. We'd brush our teeth in the sink but we couldn't take a crap. We'd watch the news and polish our boots but we couldn't turn on the heat. Ms. Hotel Manager made us remove our gloves and wash our hands before getting undressed. She had a college education. It wasn't much of an education but just enough to know how to cook burritos at a carnival. Women always meant trouble for me but I couldn't help liking them for that.

Beauty & the Bukowski Chapter Three

2009-06-30T17:39:00.000-07:00

I was bored again today. Like everyday, but today I was indifferent. It was another day as useless to me as it is to you. I decided to take photos of women - broken women, ugly women, strange women, beautiful women, women with drugs, flaws and hangups and women who liked to drink. I put an ad on Haig's List: "WANTED. Women to be photographed in bad lighting. Must have sad lives, empty, miserable and meaningless. Must have a few hours to kill. Hours that you'll never miss."

I got dozens of calls. I took them all. How lonely they all were. And then the depression came. How sad. How tragic. All together, their breath smelled like an outhouse in Montana, but another 100mls of MS Contin and I'd be alright. When I called their names one by one over the loud speaker, their sickly lovely eyes filled with tears like blood. Just then I wanted to send them all away with a flurry. It was on the tip of my tongue, but I knew I'd never say it because they shared the soul of a thief. These were starving women wearing short little sexy nurse's aprons. In their hands and arms they carried paperback books and fashion magazines held close to their chests like nursing babies sucking on their tit. I was hoping they'd find out for themselves what it was all about, because I sure as hell didnt know.

They got to my place, my "office" and walked in to my studio. I told them to sit down on the floor in the corner, to cross their legs and wait. They waited for me to kiss them, but that never happened. Instead, I made them kiss a lizard's head and something I pulled out the ocean, something that pounded in their throats, gagging them just a little. So I stroked their foreheads. Yeah, I did, that's right... I did it to each one of them to get them relaxed before the big photo shoot. I knew how nervous they were. They looked at me and I told them to close their eyes. I knew their thoughts. I could read minds. I could read palms. I studied their faces and I knew they loved somebody else, not me. But that was good news. I knew how hard it was to be with several women at the same time and talk about how great other women were.

It was hot in my studio before we went outside, and it was hot out there, too. But they sat some more, a long time really, and waited for the cobwebs to fall from the ceiling, but that didnt happen either. They waited to burn incense and drink something new from the urban jungle of a big city that tasted like a small town. It was a drink that was vague and nameless. It was stronger than lonliness.More bitter than restlessness. Blacker than a disturbance. Harder to kick than thunder, death and self-destruction.

While I was getting my camera phone ready to flip open, the sophisticated women waited to sit at my feet. They begged me to turn on the air conditioner, but I made them get on their knees and adore me like as if they had finally found the one true love with all the passion they read about in those paperback books. They waited for me to cover their faces in rouge and powder but I just laughed at things not amusing. They didnt understand what was happening. I didnt either, but I didnt care. I looked around for more liquid dilaudid and took a hit. I was ready. I knew that when night came I would know what to do with it. And when it was done, I knew they'd all be fatter than when they started. Their faces would look unhealthy. They'd be drunk. They'd look grotesque.

We went outside. I took out my camera phone and started taking pictures. I did it upside down, rightside up, sideways, backwards, inside out, anyway I could. The morphine made me feel like a snake crawling through a parking lot. It was madness. Some of these women were housekeepers. Maids. Some were married. Their husbands had been unfaithful to them. Some of them drank all day and became reckless. I tried to forget the ugliness, but I wasn't that good of a photographer. I tried to imagine the spirit of a woman stumbling around at night in the dark with a wet tongue, wet lips, the taunting kiss of death and sweet body oils with the fragrance of impetuous youth. I wondered if it was as ugly as the flesh.

We did the shooting on location all night and all the next day. I nailed one of the girls to this great white cross pointing to her brain. We all know we're going to die someday and there's nothing we can do about it, but when it's over, they'll be laughng and crying hysterically. So I got them lying on their faces, pulling and scratching at each other's eyes and hair. A real cat fight. I got them to scream at each other about nothing, because it was all so silly. They were persecuting themselves. They didnt listen to reasons. It didnt matter anyway whether they committed mortal sins or not. Psychologically speaking, the photos were images of guilt and forgiveness. They were myths. They belonged to fat days.

They were all starting to irritate me and I had to get the hell out of there fast. The painkillers were wearing off. I needed my daily fix of clonazepam. I could feel temptation knocking on death's door. I could see golden blond hair growing out of the heads of old women in black. I could hear the cries of young girls with no shoes, boys with no clothes, men snoring, sleeping on bus stop benches, getting wooden slivers in their legs from turning over. I saw food spoiling on the shelves of the super market.

So I told them all to wait, that I had to go down to my car (which I didn't have a car) and I'd be back in a minute or two. I told them to get dressed and comb their hair in front of the mirror. I lied. I was tired. I walked out the door and said "goodbye, take care of yourselves." But there was no escape from the odor that was on my pillow when I tried to go to sleep later. There was only the smell of sadness.

The Cafe

2009-06-30T05:40:00.000-07:00

(Cafe with Fire Hydrant) There's something existential about cafes. They're social gathering holes that remain as ambiguous as possible. They're places where people can go without making any committments to go anywhere else afterwards. They're places to go for a quickie or to break promises over a bottle of wine and roses, maybe violins at the table if it's a real sob story. Cafe's are places businessmen can go for lunch and back out of contracts. Husbands and wifes, or casual sex partners of either sex can eat and drink at a cafe and lie to each other, cheat on each other in the middle of the day between meetings and make promises they never intend to keep it. Cafes also have several names in case you're interested: like bistro, coffee house, restaurant. The French spell it like cafÃ©. Italians spell it caffÃ¨. There's also the cafeteria, the romantic sidewalk cafe, a tea shop, an informal bar that only serves beer and wine, and of course the internet cafe. Sometimes a cafe is referred to as a greasy spoon. Whatever, these are photos of cafes in San Francisco. I never ate in any of them. I never had a drink in any of them, which is not to say they water them down; I'm sure they serve nice full bodied liquor. (Cafe and Me)

(Cafe Atmosphere) The last time i was in San Francisco I didnt drink a drop. Nothing except carbonated water and lemons. And coffee. My favorite "cafe" (Vesuvio's Cafe) isnt really a cafe. It's a full-fledged alcoholic hangout beatnik bar. It serves no food whatsoever, but you can buy food somewhere else and bring it in and eat it at your table, which is pretty cool. It stays open 365 days a year from 6am to 2am everyday without fail, holidays and everything, they're always open. It's the only bar in the city that does that. They've done it that way for years. (Cafe and Wooden Chairs)

(Cafe Mainlining) The last time I was in San Francisco for medical treatment a couple months ago ($10,000 a day, for four days. No lie! luckily I had high-end insurance) I stayed at a cheap North Beach hotel just a block away from Vesuvio's. I drank my first morning cup of espresso coffee in one of the booths upstairs overlooking Columbus Ave. It reminds me of a European cafe, but it's more of a dingy beat up old jazz bar that sponsors art exhibits inside the club on the walls. I mention all this only because that's where I feel the most connection to the dead, the presence of the dead walk around that place like misty vapor coming up from the tables, or downstaitrs in the men's room, in the basement. The ghosts. The great writers all passed thru there drinking and talking. How many of them took a piss in that same location? Maybe I stood in the same spot where Kerouac shook it off and zipped up afterwards. How cool is that? Or maybe Chet Baker went down there to shoot up in the toilet stall when he was on a break from playing Enrico's or the Keystone Korner, where I saw Elvin Jones and Art Blakey play there to an SRO crowd. (Cafe and the Three of Cups)

(Cafe and Condiments) I used to cop some coke and go down there and open up my little paper and stick a straw in it and snort it up and flush the toilet to hide the sound of my inhaling it. It wasnt very good coke mostly, not from those street sources, but I'd get it from a guy named "Copperfield" and we usually had a good old time drinking and talking afterwards; it was cut with speed which was OK with me. I'd drink JD straight up doubles. The cafe is a good place for that kind of social interaction. But that was then, and this is now and fortunatelty I can still remember it without any liver damage. (Cafe and Feet)

(Cafe, Flowers and Empty Glasses) Anyway, I hung out there upstairs at a table by the windows or at a private booth and took tons of photos out thru the windows. I took photos of tables and chairs; they've got some beautiful tables. Finally, I got bored and thought I couldnt find anything else to photograph. I started changing the angle of the picture. I'd put the camera on the floor, above my head, behind my back, upside down, inside out....all photos of cafes. Cafes are places where people go, that's for sure. Some cafes stay open later than others. In Chinatown, late at night, they're almost empty. Very lonely looking places. Very sad looking people with chopsticks and tea. But anyway, these photos are pics of cafes in the city. Maybe one day some of you will visit San Francisco and recognize one of these places. Go ahead and put the bill on my tab. (Cafe with a strange man in ther window)

Honesty and Simplicity

2009-06-30T00:00:00.000-07:00

(Cafe 1) I'm letting Hank Bukowski's writing style influence perspectives for my photography. Meaning, I want to take a photo of something just the way it is, just how the thing turned out without any touchups, without doing anything to change it or make it more appealing, or think it's more appealing, or self-edit it, or censor it, or whatever I could do to make it look different, or better than it really is. (Cafe 2) I want to take the photo and leave it alone, like if I was using a typewriter instead of a word processor, where I cant cut and paste and rewrite the damn thing and use spell checker. Like, using an old typewriter and just typing it once and letting it go at that. (Cafe 3)

(Cafe 4) These photos of mostly closed San Francisco cafes, either before or after regular working hours, are some examples of this idea to leave the photo alone no matter how it looks. (Cafe 5) Of course, I selected these and I have others and I'll probably put more up tomrrow. I like the emptiness of them, the colorful way they are designed, the way the reflections appear in the windows. There was no double exposures or any thing like that. (Cafe 6)

(Cafe 7) In some other ways, they have sex appeal and sensuous female vibes, short skirts, high heels, a feeling of transition, of passing crowds going in and out the front door constantly every day, going in and out like thru a revolving door, customers coming and going, impressing people, themselves and each other, credit cards, ordering food in different languages, spending money, cash tips, drinking, entertaining, (Cafe 8) convenience, travel, meetings, business, dating, drinking coffee black, espresso, expensive wine, hard liquor, chop sticks, napkins, bathrooms, valet parking, nice clothes, work clothes, expense accounts, sea food, no smoking, singles, gays, the theater crowd, businessmen, handsome women, repeat business. (Cafe 9) So, I'll put them up here on JPG directly from the camera like plain and honest words typed with simplicity on a piece of paper on a typer. (Cafe 10) And then we'll see. (Cafe 11)

Exhibit

2009-06-29T11:09:00.000-07:00

Exhibit: "To put something on display."

since i've been getting medical attention, i put myself on display: i'm an exhibit and the meds make me less inhibited than ever. it was kind of like i was outside my body, up above the bed looking down on my body laying on the bed. i didnt care if i was under the covers or half naked on top of the blankets. the sheets were thin, the blankets were thin and light blue, the pillows had a fleshy hue to them and the smell of medicine. i could look down from the ceiling as i floated up above the hospital bed and look at myself laying there. nothing bothered me about my legs gripping the side of the bed and riding the sheets, waiting for the lab techies to come in and take blood. i didnt care if the blinds on the windows were up or down. the door could be open or closed; it didnt bother me either way. i got really good at taking self-portraits. i took better photos of myself than i ever had from any body else.

even now, when i'm alone, i can see shadows move at the corner of my eyes, they move around the doors and windows, i can see them. i look really fast but there's nothing there. in the hospital room, it was dark sometimes, and i could see shadows move across the walls, i could feel my hands touch my skin like as if it was the skin of some other thing. i started to listen and in the dark, against the wall, i could hear whispering sounded like my own voice talking to myself. i'd take photos of my feet, my hands, my legs, my eyes, my face and hair, my shoes, my arms...i'd take photos from above on the ceiling floating around up near the walls and put the photos in an exhibit, like a public display that was better than anything else i could do. and i couldnt stop. there was always something more to see. more to do. more places to go at night alone. i took long walks out in the garden wearing nothing but a robe, and carrying roses and a camera phone. i wouldnt even wear shoes and socks. i would go down the hall and nobody would even see me or hear me breathe. i went to the hospital library and took out books that were written about narcissism and nihilism. i read them in bed. i memorized them in the shower. i recited them to my nurses and doctors and lab techies when they took blood.

i took photos of the hair on my toes, little gentle slightly sensuous hairs on my toes, my hands and fingers, very soft hairs that photographed well. in the dark, in bed, there was a light behind me, behind my bed that i kept on all night in case i woke up and wanted to read or take photographs of my bed. i took hundred of pictures of my body in different positions on the bed, on the floor, in the shower, in the bathroom, in front of the mirror, shadows on the wall, in the hallways, hanging from the ceiling. i took pictures of the blood being sucked out of me by the lab techies in the middle of the night, around 2am, or 3am...they'd come in one at a time and tie me off and pull the blood out and we'd talk and i'd take photos. self-portraits. i got good at doing different angles and colors. the light from outside would make great shadows against the back of my head. i could read with my eyes closed. and i could listen to jazz all night. the photos got better and the jazz got louder. the legs on the chairs werent as attractive as my own legs, but i took photos of all of it. i was preparing an exhibit of my body and my mind and i was going to stay up late every night until i had the photos put together in a complete package. but i never could stay awake long enough.

i fell asleep and had dreams. always dreams. my hands and arms grew longer and my fingers were able to reach everything and hold onto the doors. i went into the shower and the water was so hot. i took off my clothes and sat on the floor of the shower and let the water slice my body in different shapes. i took the camera and snapped photographs of my legs falling off and clinging to the side of the shower wall. they looked so sensuous hanging there. beautifully shaped. the skin tone is beautiful and dark, like a tan from mexico in the summer laying on the heavy salt water. i was still in the hospital in the morning and the door was unlocked but i didnt care if anyone saw me or not. i didnt have any clothes, and so i was on the bed under the white sheets and i could see my skin through the thin sheets and i could hear the drummer next door pounding and beating his drums, playing a solo with the bass player. it was so good. my photos came out great and i could eat whatever i wanted, whenever i wanted, as often as i wanted to eat. little portions of food, fruit, meat, water, coffee......whatever i wanted, whatever food made my body hard and tight and beautiful to look at it.

i got dizzy. i got hot. i couldnt stand straight up. i couldnt walk in a straight line. my mind was thinking backwards, like the words were being pronounced backwards. but it didnt matter to me as long as i could see the mirror that was hanging on the wall in front of my bed. it was so quiet at night, even with the window open. even with the sirens screaming and the girl next door making noise. i think she had her boyfriend over there with her banging her head against the wall, banging the bed against the wall right by my head where i put it on the pillow and tried to sleep; but i didnt try very hard. i tried to sit up in bed but i'd slip down beneath the blanket. the sheet was wet because i was sweating. the heater was too high and i couldnt turn it off. this wasnt a dream, either. this was the normal stuff that happened every night and every day. the only thing i could do to pass the time was to take photos of myself, photos of my legs, my boots and my feet, my hands, my stomach, my head and my face. i'd find ways to take pictures using different lighting effects. i'd go down the hallway, i'd walk to the bathroom, climb in the shower night after night, and find ways to get a new viewpoint. i'd find ways to let the damp night air climb into the room and get in bed with me and massage my legs until i'd drift off to dreamland. i took so many drugs, so much medication, so many pills in little plastic cups.

i had a calendar in the closet and i'd look at it every day or so to see where i was at, to see how many days i had left before i'd get out. i marked off the time with little marks on the wall using a small pocket knife, marking little notches in the wood, in the wall so i could count the days and the nights. my body was getting thnner and thinner. i was losing weight. i was getting fevers at night. my shoes didnt fit me anymore. the drugs were making my eyes blurry and the money in my wallet was turning into sand. i had piles of sand in the drawers. the bathroom mirror was full of sand. my shoes wouldnt fit me. my fingers were getting too big for my hands. i had to wear gloves but the only ones i could find were red. my room was red. everything was red. i tried to call my doctor and get more meds. i tried to get in the elevator and go to the 6th floor and play the piano but it wouldnt go that high. i tried to climb the stairs but the doors wouldnt open. nothing worked right. the pills were making me dizzy. i couldnt sit up. my legs looked long and lean and i thought about buying new blue jeans, but thinking about it gave me a headache and made my ears ring, buzz, hiss. it was really bad.

Hotel Jazz

2009-06-29T11:08:00.000-07:00

I'm in a hotel in San Francisco. I call it "Hotel Jazz" because it smells like jazz, it smells like body odor and bad breath, it smells like dirty socks, lipstick, sex and perfume. It smells like dope and wet kisses slowly dripping down my face, dripping down to my boots. I can polish them with the spit from leftover lip locking the night before. If it's lucky, the club smells like money, like history, like a museum. That's the first thing I notice when I open the doors and walk in, the smell of the past, not only the night before but weeks and months and sometimes years before. It's not a fragrance; that's too good a word for it; women wear fragrances, men wear aftershave spray, but a bar has a smell it can never get rid of. "Smell" is like somethng you want to forget but you cant; it gets in your skin, on your clothes, in your hair and in your mouth. There's a smell of a jazz club 6am when the bar opens. It's wet and damp and salty, and always sticky in there; and it's cool, before the sun comes in the tinted windows from the eastside looking across the street where it's still shady and windy and heats up the place. But in the morning the inside of the bar is comfortable and empty. The tables have been wiped up, chairs pushed in, feels quiet and safe. That early in the morning, there's only a few local drunks sitting around talking too much, looking at their drinks like charlatans staring into a crystal ball looking for their fortune, holding their glasses, slowly spinning that crystal ball around on the tips of their fingers. That's how you can tell alcholics from drinkers who arent: they'll hold onto their glass while they sit there, between hits; they wont let the glass sit there without holding onto it. They wont let go of it till it's empty. They'll nurse it along, holding it, protecting it, mothering it, guarding it, keeping it safe. At my favorite bar, the bathroom is downstairs and that's where I go before I order my first drink. After I walk from my hotel to the bar, by the time I get there I need to piss. I feel so relieved afterwards and accepted. I belong there. This is my home. The hotel is just a stop on my way to the bar. It's a place for me to sleep it off or sleep with it and shower, shave, clean my teeth, change my clothes and try to look like I know what I'm doing and why I'm here.

My room is small. I've got a bed big enough for me to throw my legs around and pull on the blankets, pull them up, yank on them, get tied up in them, and messed up. My bed faces a color TV in a wooden box. It's got a remote control. I've got three pillows and I sit myself up so I can sleep or watch tv at the same time. There's a wall right next to my right hand, a blue wall, cool and freshly painted with a painting nailed to it to give it a home atmosphere. I wonder whose home it's supposed to be. I've got a bed table next to my left side of my head. It's got a lamp, a phone, and an ash tray. I dont smoke, so I put it in the drawer. There's bible in there and some information about the hotel. I put my wallet and small change in there. I've got a window with blinds on it. It opens good and the blinds work. I can lock it, and I do lock it whenever I leave, which is all the time, everyday I leave and go out. I'm like a homeless person with a shelter at night and I wander the streets during the day, like I'm getting ready to play my jazz gig at night, to do my hot improvization, or get my blood looked at in the blood lab where I can pick up my perscriptions. There's a desk and I put papers on it and cans of tea and towels. There's a sink next to that, with a mirror. I put my stuff in there and hide it. There's a closet with my clothes hanging. I'm a very neat guy. Very organized. I keep everything straightend out, almost obsessively. But it works for me. I keep the key to the room on the wooden tv box where I wont lose it.

I take photos of this room and me in it. I found all sorts of things to take pictures of, close-ups of things, weird angles, weird shapes, weird shadows. And I started taking pictures of me, of myself, my body, legs, my back, my hands, face, hair.....using a camera phone. I really got into it, listening to jazz and taking it with me to the bar, which I should call the Jazz Bar. Jazz does something to my mind and I work with it all the time and walk with it, everywhere I go I have it with me in my head and I hear it everywhere, that beat, that feeling, smooth, fast and hard and sharp like glass piercing my feet as i walk, like ice covering my body with a numbing sensation. Makes me want to sleep or stay awake for days, like jazz speed, speeding like a jazz drummer. that's what I do, I play jazz drums. I like to play hard and spontaneous anmd move hard with a piano and bass and go outside and never come back. So I get my breakfast ready to eat and I lay out my meds to get the day started, before I walk up to the bar and do my writing or whatever. I put the meds out on the table in a nice orderly line according to color and size: Zolpidem, Clonazepam, Hydrocodone, Morphine Sulfate, MS Contin, Naproxen, Cyclobenzaprine, Lexapro, Propoxyphen, Flomax, Trazodone, Lisinopril, Promethazine, more Morphine Sulfate, Methocarbamol, more Hydrocodone, Meprozine, Oxycotin, Dilaudid, liquid Morphine and water. After breakfast I grab my drums and keyboard and I head on up to the Jazz Bar to do my jazz sets and read some poetry.

Dream Images

2009-06-29T11:07:00.000-07:00

I'm in an old volkswagon with no gas but i'm driving trying to get out of the parking lot. It's an apartment building parking lot and i've been here before but now i cant get out. cant find the way out of there. im driving behind the buildings, where the cars are parked and the signs tell me to go in circles so i drive up onto people's yards and dig into their front yards and pull out some of the grass and plants and finally i find the main highway, which is a strip of hotels and motels with flashing neon lights. im running out of gas again. i get in the right lane and it's blocked. there's a cop behind me because i got fired from my job as a drummer in a band because i'm a crystal meth addict and i didnt show up to the gig so i go driving around in the old volkswagon with no gas and i go to one bar after another till i get to the outskirts of town trying to sit in with other bands but they all have drummers and nobody wants to hear me play. they talk behind my back and i feel threatened. i cant pay for the drinks. i'm drinking a lot. putting it on a tab that i cant pay. i start to leave i want to go but i cant find my way out of the parking lot. the lanes on the highway i drive in get blocked with construction work. i move into the next lane and i hit a car and the radio is playing really loudly. i move back to the other lane but the cop stops me with a big flashing red light and a white light and he searches me and finds a syringe and a bag of dope and tells me to follow him to the police station but i dont do it instead i drive in another direction to get away but i get lost again because now i'm in the apartment building parking lot again and cant find my way out of the parking lot where my friend used to live but he killed himself driving off a cliff in california. the car i'm driving is out of gas but it keeps running anyway and i get hot and sweaty and feverish, i think i'm in las vegas and i hate being there but i cant get out cant find my way out of the vegas parking lot and the car has no gas and i dont have any money to buy any. i wasnt using drugs. i was framed. it wasnt mine. i dont know how that stuff got there. she must have put it there in my sleep.

i said goodbye to her and cried. The tears felt like stones and rocks, like iron chains unforgiving and bitter hanging around my neck. i couldn’t leave her even if i wanted to but I walked away. Never looked back. Never spoke about it again. Never saw her except when i got drunk. Thinking about her made me sick. In a dream i saw her crossing a street in San Francisco walking into the wind. The fog was thick. The wind tossed her hair in different directions like a field of wheat. The slender fingers of her hands gripped life in a suitcase. She got on a bus. i ran to catch it. She looked up and saw me standing next to the liquor store. She opened her mouth to speak. She pushed the door of the bus to open it. It slammed in her face and closed. The bus disappeared around the corner. i stood there in the fog.

she hates shadows and fog, hates being alone listening to voices. hates everything and believes nothing. hates growing up. hates it when nobody talks to her. hates thinking she’s ugly. hates the dry heaves making her blind. hates rich thick almost black ultra dark deep purple blood. hates slamming it. she hates missing. she hates expensive habits. hates that it cost her everything and everyone she loved. she hates using. hates losing. she hates flirting. she hates kissing. hates being naked. hates her sexy tan. hates the smell of flesh. hates perfume. hates her arms covered with long sleeve shirts. hates walking around not knowing if jazz was sick or if he was just refusing to hate himself. hates average people. hates ordinary sacrifices. hates crawling in disgrace. hates the collection plate. hates attending an ordinary church. she hates the bible. hates him, too. hated it that she lived with one abuser after another. hates her brother for dying. hates ultra rosé. she hates rock for being an idiot. hates being concerned about anything! hates it that having all the money still wasn’t enough. she hates thinking she could get away with cheating. hates drug deals that go bad. hated practical jokes. hated the magicians who thought they had the answers. she hated zenn and the magic circle. hated other females and all men. hated spiders under her bed. hated answering every question with yin and yang. she hated children who let snakes eat them. she hated the virtual kundalini. hated innocent lives cut short. hated poisonous venom. hated funerals. she hated weddings. hated having no one to talk to. hated having nothing to do. she hated it that no one listened when she talked. she hated adagio for building an ark of ideas. hated him for killing the garden. hated him for destroying his mind. hated him for not being able to laugh: alcoholics are angry sad people who get drunk more often than other people. they laugh like drummers who have no groove. we make connections with other human beings who are the most powerful force of all. methedrine was hidden in a condom. the police can arrest us if they want. what do we care? adagio composed an eclectic performance of silence and it exploded inside the ark and blew a hole in our soul. dance condemns everything we couldn’t get out of eden. it was dead anyway frozen by words on paper. belief defended the barking dog the way of the dog went barking to a baritone sax. but the tao was how things would go when we first realized we were gods.

Sadness

2009-06-29T11:06:00.001-07:00

I'm unbelievably sad today. I dont know why. I feel cold in my body. Shaking inside. It's like I'm gripped with sadness. Like a hand of sadness is around my throat squeezing it. I just want to cry but I wont let myself. I cant even work on photos. I cant look at them or think about them; nothing new at least. I put up three new ones but they're months old at a time I was in the hospital. The flowers were from Nico. Maybe it's the drug I'm on, and I'm trying to get off it, and I'm having a bad time with it today (clonazepam) I dont know........this is my essay contribution for the day. I'm done for now.

Then I slapped myself in the face once or twice and got a nose bleed. Then I said, shape up you twisted whimp and pull yourself together. So I did. Now I'm righteously pissed off at the world and I'm ready to slam some more photos, really ugly photos, photos of people dying in hospitals and crossing streets and people looking out for themselves. I cant wait to put 'em up for all to see.

Better Red than Dead

2009-06-29T11:06:00.000-07:00

I grew up during the Cold War, in the 50's. Nuclear war was a real possibility as far as my dad was concerned. He got involved in a company that sold fallout shelters and he had one built in our backyard, free of charge, as a demonstration model, as a showroom model for making deals to sell them to people in the community, which was Henderson, Nevada at the time. There was a big war-manufacturing plant there, a Titanium plant, a horribly ugly smelling stinging black sooty thing in the middle of the desert and everybody was convinced it would be a target for nuclear attack and we should all have fallout shelters. (Number 1)

(Number 2) During this period, between 1948 and 1960, the phrase "Better Red Than Dead" referred to the "red" Soviet Army. The John Birch Society was big at the time and people were pretty much whacked out on the extreme right wing, Republican Christian conservative world view. It sucked then and it sucks now, but I was too young to know that it sucked back then. (Number 3)

(Number 4) I got to see the atom bomb tested out in the Nevada desert maybe three times, maybe four times. The first couple tests, we would all drive to Boulder Highway and sit up there and wait and watch. Las Vegas is in a desert valley and Henderson is above it, up above it on the way to Boulder City. So we'd sit up there on the Highway with a picnic basket and sit in the car, or get out and sit on the hood of the car and wait for the test. Then we'd hear the countdown on the radio and then we'd see the airplane bomber flying over the desert if we had binoculars and then we'd see the blast, feel the earth shake, and watch the mushroom cloud rise up higher and higher and blow away over towards Utah. We didnt really care about the radioactive dust since the cloud blew towards Utah where greater numbers of people got cancer than anywhere else. (Number 5)

(Number 6) We watched the tests for a few years. I saw maybe three more. Then they started doing underground tests and we'd sit up there on Boulder Highway and feel the earth shake but we wouldnt see the mushroom cloud anymore. We were disappointed. My dad used these tests to stir up interest in his part time fallout shelter business. Some of the principals of the company got arrested for fraud and for swindling old people out of their money by selling the shelters but never installing them. My dad was OK. He didnt do anything illegal. He ended up selling his house many years later to his other son and they used the fallout shelter as a spare guest room for friends when they come to visit. (Number 7)

Impressions of Bukowski

2009-06-29T06:07:00.000-07:00

Dear Nico:

Been reading Bukowski. A little depressed. Not feeling all that great. Havent been eating much, it's hard to eat sometimes, hard to fix something, hard to care that much. Maybe i'm just lazy. I'm off the clonazepam, but i'm taking the vicodin substitute. Not so humid now. I love you and i miss you and i wish you were home. It's too quiet when you're gone. The cats miss you, too. Please call.

Your devoted R

Cream Crackers

2009-06-29T06:05:00.000-07:00

I started drinking too early this morning. I dont usually drink. Not since I got out of the hospital and all that. But then, little by little, every now and then, I'll pick up a small bottle of JD, a "pony" it's called. Then the next day a half pint, then on the weekend a full pint. And then, like today, I had some left over from last night so I had some fresh hot coffee with JD mixed in to cool it off and to heat me up. I thought I'd work on these coffee house photos for a change, the ones with people in the photo. I can quit drinking again tomorrow, or some other time after that. At least I dont do drugs anymore, except the perscription kind. Those are even worse. But you know how it is: sometimes I just get bored being sober and straight, unless I'm really into meditation, and practicing clairvoyance, which isnt very often. But I can do it at the gym and really stretch my muscles and build them up, get them hard and tight so I can do my psychic readings, my intuitive counseling. Yeah, right. Does that ever happen to you? So anyway I took my psych-meds this morning, my one little daily dose of anxiety pills that are more addictive than heroin the doctors tell me (thank you, very much! Why'd they get me started on that in the first place if they knew it would be so hard to kick?) I also took three hydrocodone/lortab tabs just for fun to see how it would react with the coffee and JD. They're almost useless compared to morphine sulphate or dilaudid. I dont know if it does anything or not to take this stuff. When I mix chemicals with jazz, fast jazz, hard driving stoned hot avant garde jazz, the kind with no key, no tempo, no melody, no nothing....well, it's too much to resist! Can't do it. It just sucks me in. Ever listen closely to a sax player? Some of these guys play their phrases real easy-like. They slide each note one note into the next note sweetly, blending the notes together softly and smoothly; Stan Getz is like that and that can be OK if I'm in the right mood for it. But there are other players who hit every note hard and separately, they literally hit each note one at a time percussively, rhythmically, individually. Coltrane was like that and a bunch of others. Dexter Gordon's another one. Sonny Rollins. The list goes on. I like that harder sound better than the other smoother sound. Right now I'm listening on web radio to this New York jazz station a recording from Blue Note records, probably early 1960 and it's fast. It's hard. It's over the top and I love it. And drummers. I love it when these guys play with no repetitive rhythms, no time at all, just a lot of movement, and sound, and tight drum heads that glance off the side of their drum sticks and bounce off the walls, the cymbals that sizzle and shine and of course the bass drum that's tuned really high, really tight so it makes a tone, a "boom" "bamb" "pop" musical tone. And when I can hear the click sound of the stick on the cymbal I know that the studio engineer has placed the drum mike right up against the ride cymbal. "Click, click, click!" The heavy ride just floats away and the back hand of the left hand popping that snare drum interactive flesh and bones hitting the bass. It's too much, man. How can I NOT get inspired? My photos sing out to me some kind of scat singing. It's all improvizational. And unpredictable. And I dig it.

Street Corners

2009-06-28T05:44:00.000-07:00

Except for the one photo in the coffee shop, these are all people walking on the same street, or crossing the same street, or close to the same corner, or whatever. And the coffee shop is near that corner. (Number 1)

(Number 2) I wish you could hear the music I'm listening to when I'm working on these photos because it makes a difference to me to work with music, with jazz. It inspires me to do certain things with the photos, or at least it inspires me to choose one photo or a set of photos to work with over another photo or set of photos on a particular day. Today, this morning, I'm listening to the Ornette Coleman Quartet, 1960....a CD called "Change of the Century" with Charlie Haden bass, Don Cherry pocket trumpet and Billy Higgins drums. One of the best examples of the direction jazz was beginning to take at the beginning of 1960, and Ornette Coleman was at the forefront of what would be called "avant garde" jazz. This was before Coltrane pulled out ahead of everybody, but Ornette Coleman is still alive today and is still far ahead of most jazz musicians when it comes to changes in direction, free form jazz composition and improvization. This CD, "Change of the Century" is one of the best demonstrations of Charlie Haden's genius and Billy Higgin's playing set a new direction for jazz drumming. If you havent heard this stuff, by all means get the CD, download it to iTunes ASAP. (Number 3)

(Number 4) "On the Road" was published in 1957, three years before this session was recorded. The "beat generation" got into its movement between 1957 and 1969, when Kerouac died. In 1959 Ornette signed with Atlantic Records and recorded a series of albums that would redefine jazz the way Kerouac and "beat" writers and poets would redefine and distinguish a new generation, before Bukowski redefined it even further, without metaphors! "Tomorrow Is the Question" came out in 1959, "The Shape of Jazz to Come" came next and in 1960 he recorded the album "Free Jazz: A Collective Improvization", which was a double quartet (4+4), featuring his regular group plus a second group with Freedie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy, Scott LaFaro and Ed Blackwell. In 1969 he was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame. While this was going on, Lenny Bruce was performing in San Francisco in the late 50's, arrested at the Jazz Workshop Oct. 4, 1961, performed at Carnegie Hall earlier that year, and performed for the last time at the Fillmore in San Francisco, June 25, 1966. He was dead by August. In 1967, Bukowski started writing "Notes of a Dirty Old Man" for Open City, and started writing for Black Sparrow Press in 1969. Between 1957 and 1969 Ornette recorded over 26 albums which opened new directions for jazz composition, improvization and performing. He's one of my favorite artists to work with whenever I select photos to work on and post. His work, the beat writers, Lenny Bruce, Bukowski, they were all moving in the 60's in new directions and it makes it easy to get inspiration from their work. (Number 5)

(Number 6) The photos posted today were taken in San Francisco this past March and April when I was in a convalenscence center recovering from a near fatal bone infection. As I improved, I started taking long walks and hanging out at a local coffee shop/sidewalk cafe on Polk Street. I've posted several photos from there already. The photos in this collection were taken in that neighborhood, near the same street corner, the same block of sidewalk, the same area in the Polk Gulch. I used a camera phone, which was the only camera I took with me.

(Number 7) I got into the practice of taking photos by holding the camera upside down in my right hand and taking the photo of the subject behind me. I would try to see how close I could get, how clearly I could make the shot. I made a lot of shots deliberately cutting subjects heads out of the frame, deliberately getting only feet, legs, hands....most of time the shots were totally "free form" and I had no control over how they came out. Those are the ones I like the best. The photos here are examples of some of those. (Number 8)

(Number 9) I used a setting on the phone which is easily identified as "sepia" and I used that tone because it made the picture turn out the sharpest of all the settings I could use; that's the only reason. And my camera phone had some peculiar responses as it was running down, dying on me, getting worse and worse as a camera and finally it wouldnt work at all. I've had to replace it, but it worked OK in San Francisco. The effects I got in these and other photos were not deliberate; the camera produced them itself. The sepia setting made it easier to photoshop contrast, sharpness and black-and-white effects than any other setting. I had to resize all the photos, too, because the original size wasnt acceptable for JPG's standards for posting online. Anyway, I thought this might be interesting background information. (Number 10)

Untitled

2009-06-27T04:50:00.000-07:00

The untitled photograph, i dont know if that's a title or not. "Untitled".....is that a title? i'm at home with the darker images, the darker places, spaces that dont seem to have a purpose or a point: a bottle of water, a pen, a coffee cup, shoelace, cell phone, check book, broken glass, empty shelf, man standing in the middle of the street, woman eating fish, women buying clothes, men combing their hair, sunsets, rain, jazz, children sleeping, babies screaming, old couple walking, drunks in a bar, late night crowds, cops, hotels, old streets, taxis, crowded freeways, flat tires, boredom, hospitals, drugs, suicide, wind, cold, dry heat, wrong telephone numbers, politicians, magick, cats, poetry, chinatown markets, crime, clocks, sex, old age, death, religion....these are the untitled inspirations for untitled photographs.

What i want to do is photograph what there is in front of me, not just the obvious visual image but the stuff that it's made of, the substance of the stuff behind it, around it, inside and the stuff that puts it together that i cant see but i can feel it. like jazz. like jazz improvization. i dont care anymore if the photo is a photo of people and their heads are in the picture, or their feet, or whatever. i dont care if the buildings are straight or round, or upside down, or if the people are upside down. what matters to me is the atmosphere of the photo, the cloud that hangs around the obvious image, the intangibles, the transcendental, the undefined, the lost, forgotten, the stuff with a beat, with a jazz beat that goes on forever. anyway, i want my photos to have some kind of poetic substance to them that goes beyond the image and hits something i cant see, but something that's present, a presence.

Low-tech equipment works better for me, at least so far, to get the look and feel of a darker, dreary, more dismal, gloomy side of life that's out there that i like to photograph. high-tech digital and film cameras are too clean and sharp and crisp for what i want to feel. recently i had to exchange my 5-yr old camera phone for a newer model because the old phone finally broke down. the camera wouldnt work at all. i hated to let it go. i havent used the new one yet for pictures. it's best to take photos with a camera phone in congested places, big cities, crowded places, dirty streets, alleys, kitchens, cafes, sidewalk cafes, coffee shops, gutters, crossing busy streets....it's best to use a camera phone for fast, spontaneous photos that are done in secret, hidden from view, where i can get close-up face shots of people and they dont know it. there's something about getting a natural expression on someone's face, a real expression, a real emotion that's unguarded and not safe..there's something exciting and fulfilling about it when i get the photo home and there's nothing to do to it, no processing, no manipulation, no alteration. i like it anyway....and it works good for self-portraits. i dont know anything better for self-portraits than a low-tech camera phone.

So i loaded up on morphine, hydrocodone and clonazepam and john coltrane's "love supreme" and went out to find my self-portrait. i had to get dressed finally, i couldnt walk around the house or outdoors completely naked forever. i got dressed and made a drink of soda water, juice and ice cubes. i probably should go to sleep and maybe i will, but something has happened to me since this medical interruption, this "untitled" medical portrait photography, has laid itself upon me, since it laid its hands upon me like a priest, a madman type priest dancing in the black shadows of a life and death photo of incompletion, fear, the scars of uncertainty and the flesh of my body.

i've gotten really interested in the untitled meaning of narcissism. i think of it as self-love, self-absorption, self-consumption. maybe it's because my body was so ripped apart with pain and drugs, medications that killed every bacteria i carried around. i started seeing everything in terms of my body: where it was, what it was doing, how it looked, what it ate, like it was something separate from "me", which it is, like the Self and the body. i started dressing it up and weighing it everyday, and feeding it only so much small portions and cleaning it, washing it, showering it, brushing its hair like it was a child's doll, putting it in warm clothes, walking it around, showing it off. i started showing it off like it was an appealing trophy. appealing to me. attractive to me and me to it. i started listening to jazz on my headphones in my hospital bed, really loud piped in my ears, and i guess i flipped on a switch and went out thru my ears or my nose or my eye balls and sat on the edge of the bed playing with my feet, rubbing my legs, massaging my legs and photographing them with my low-tech camera phone. i couldnt stop. i was addicted to it. still am.

And everything just went faster and louder. and it was untitled. especially the drum solos. late at night there was this street light that came into the hospital room, thru the curtains, in between the curtains, right above the heater that never worked, right thru the window that i kept open just a crack so I'd make up stories, stories i'd get to say what they mean. Stories of narcissism that came from inside and outside the window passing by where it became a dwelling place where i could hear hard jazz for hours: the street light that pulled infection out of me, it's attraction that i felt magnetism with my body when it pushed out of me it's street light shape of the forbidden and the reckless, the beautiful, forgotten and things better left ignored. But it doesnt matter now. the point is, i'd lay in bed under this thin brown blanket with a sheet and the street light would light up my little area of the room just enough so i could see my feet, my legs, my arms....and i'd lay there and write, scribble in my journal and get out my camera phone to take self-portraits in the darkness with enough light to make sense. i started walking around and taking pictures. i'd go to the bathroom and get next to the mirror and take photos that would be untitled. sideways photos of my head, my face, my hair, my neck, my chest...anything that would take my mind off where i was and what i was doing. all this before the nurses would come in to take blood or hook me up to an IV drip, or whatever. it was dark but not completely. there was something warm and comfortable about it now that i think about it.

every photo i took became a self-portrait no matter what it was. i could take a photo of a bus stop and it would be a self-portrait. i could take a photo of a marketplace in china town and it would be a self-portrait. every photo was a self-portrait. the photos i took at the hotel even the ones that were blurry and didnt come out were self-portraits, even more so because they were blurry and werent any good. photos that were too dark were self-portraits. i became consumed with this experience of being material, being the substance of everything around me, being the energy and the mass and the electricity of everything that was made, of everything was made out of me, out of my body and my mind. i became possessed with the experience of being in all things, but not like spiritual gratification, more like sexual transference, or a sexual postponement of satisfaction, located in everything, not only located there but made out of it, made in it, from it, made within and without it.

i took photos of homeless people and those were self-portraits. i started taking photos of myself in mirrors, in windows, as a shadow walking down a street or up against a wall. it didnt matter what it was, or if it was even music, the music was a self-portrait. and it worked the other way, too....a photo of me was a photo of something else, someone else, somewhere else. a photo of my hands was a photo of anybody's hands. and there was sexual energy in the hair on my arm, my legs were sexual portraits of energy that touched everything around me, touched me in a conversation with the world. the more photos i took, the stronger the conversation became, the louder the words, the more the communication started to scream at me, or me screaming at it. and it was all untitled. none of it had any purpose. none of it made any sense. and my self-portraits became the essence of everything i photographed.

Universal Daughter

2009-06-27T04:49:00.001-07:00

jen bellefleur posted a beautiful photo and commentary to which i replied. As i was reading her message to me i had the thought that some of the darkness and edgyness i want to get in my photos, and maybe the lonliness and futility i want to see in life around me, and the hopelessness i look for, and look at, and experience in human existensystems may be a result of my shitty relationship with one of my daughters, who never talks to me, who is mad at the way her life turned out, who blames me for it. maybe jen's photo opened a possibility that the darkness i obviously feel and try to photograph constantly somehow comes from that feeling i have of failure, or of life as useless, or of youth as stupidity, or of love as scarce, love as valuable because it's scarce, love as scarce because it's valuable and not abundant. and i look out in the world and i see all the not-love, the not-happiness, the not-pleasure, the not-successful, the not-joy, the not-wellness. the relationship i have with my daughter is such a deadend, that jen's photo just opened these wounds a little deeper and a little more bitterness dripped inside the open cuts. i dont know whether to thank her, or slap her. Nico doesnt think my photography has anything to do with my relationship with my daughter and she's probably right; but it makes a good story.

the photos in this collection as in others like it were taken with a camera phone.

The Hardest photos for me to take....

2009-06-27T04:49:00.000-07:00

....are photos of my self, self-portraits; everything else is easy. Taking self-photos of myself means telling a story, showing the lines of my life and the tears fall where they may, or may not..... tears that may or may not be too strong enough to taste or touch, or maybe they're too strong to even confront.

(These are duplicates. When I post some others soon I'll replace these with current ones. But I wanted to get the story posted first.)

It means showing fear of alcoholism, drug addiction, mental and physical sickness, real and unreal. Taking a photo of myself means showing happiness, doubt, sorrow and letting it fit in, letting it find its place of balance.

It means showing vulnerability, weakness and loss. It means showing the images of funerals of family and friends written across my forehead and maybe forgotten, maybe just remembered, maybe just recently eulogized....and it means telling the stories of the weddings, the births, the divorces, all the pleasure, the unbelievable love that never ends that finds its mark on the lines and grooves of my face; and a self-portrait means a mental picture for all time and of all time come and gone, life time after lifetime. It means the passing away of my youth and the coming of old age.

A photo of me means showing the way my mind works or how it doesnt work. It means an image stimulating my art, creating my music, relying on, or being discouraged about life and hope, or hating it for its hopelessness, shallowness and uselessness. (The Eyes of March)

A self-portrait means I get to reveal the dark and the light of my inner tumultuous yin and yang that never quits, that never stops spinning, that never gives me a moment's rest; and why should it? Why should I expect it to?

A photo I take of myself is an image of grief and laughter contradicting each other and never getting resolved; and I get fed up with it. It's an image of wanting, missing and sometimes mostly of finding, if I'm lucky.

It's an image of conversations and memories of travelling companions moving across my skin on my face like shadows from clouds in the sky. A self-photo is an image of the waiting and the useless, pitiful, purposeless praying to empty nothingness of an image of stark putrified disbelief in all things holy.

A self-portrait is an image of anger, my moodiness, isolation, socialization, visualization and often my pathetic attempts at aloneness, as a hermit, as a ghost.

Self-portraits are images of ambition, drive, the down-time filled with relaxation and sleep, and it's a photo of good and bad misfortune and all the upside down relationships drawn across my face, scratched across my lips, sliding down the side of my head like blood.

When I take photos of myself it means a whole entire identification set of selfs, of my history, the crimes I've committed in the past all there on my face for all to see if they know how, hiding in secret behind the rocks and stones and behind of the soft valentines of kisses. It's an image of my secret personalities, the strange identities and the special moments filled with dreams that have come true and those that failed to make it and those that would and will never come true.

A self-portrait means I get to shine that camera lens directly into my own eyes, into my own face as deep and as hard as I can drive it in until it hurts, as far as I can let it go to penetrate deep into my brown eyes, to let it go past my soul, to get beyond my spirit (if there is a spirit), to go way back into the back of my head so far that it pierces my heart, cracks thru my mind's eye, touches my diseased body (past-present-and-future) without restrictions, without censorship, without alteration, without bias, without manipulation, without affectation, without personal affection to try to "look good" and feel good about it.

As far as I'm concerned, a self-portrait (a photo of myself) is the hardest most difficult photo for me that I'll ever want to take because it means putting that camera lens directly into the deepest places, into the deepest best and most worst spaces where I never let anyone go unless it's in a photo, where I guard it night and day, where very few people ever stay too long. And when that camera lens is pressed into that spot, then I let it snap, and snap, and snap again, and snap again as freely and as fast as I can snap it.

And what's the point of all this? Because for me, for my personal concerns and issues as a photographer/artist or whatever it is, the intimate self-portrait, (a photo of myself) that I can share with others ...it says to the world around me, "I was here. Somebody was here, somebody lived here, somebody had a life and lived it.....and that was somebody was me."

Everything else..... all the other photos I take, they're easy.

The Origin of Number 9

2009-06-22T05:04:00.000-07:00

If you notice, #6 and #9 look a lot alike. You could say that one of those numbers, or both of those numbers are "upside-down"....of course, you'ld be wrong to say that because they're not upside-down. There is a big difference, a huge difference between taking a photograph, a "normal" photograph that is taken and that is seen right-side-up in the mind (the way most photos are taken and seen in the mind) and then flipping that photo over to appear upside-down.....on the other hand all of these photos were photographed by taking the photo upside-down in the mind, in other words, seeing it upside-down in the mind, seeing it upside-down, experiencing it upside-down in the mind, in the experience of the environment. These photos were taken upside-down to begin with. In my mind, in my relationship to the environment, they were taken actually physically upside-down mentally and holding the camera upside-down. They were all taken with a camera phone, which helps the process.

There's a huge difference between a photo that was turned upside down (flipped upside-down) and a photo that was taken upside-down to begin with, in the mind, in the experience to begin with. There is more than one way to see an environment, or to see/experience an atmosphere, or an environmental area, or a subject than simply one way, one straight up-and-down way. Seeing a subject straight up-and-down, the "normal" way we relate to something we photograph is only one way to view it, or experience it. We can also see it upside-down, like seeing #6 and #9. There is a huge difference between the Hanged Man (6) and The Hermit (9). It helps to have a knowledge of Tarot Cards, but only slightly.

The important point is, the photos in this collection were not flipped over upside-down. The photos in this collection were taken upside-down, photographed upside-down to start with, they were seen upside-down, they were experienced upside-down to start with before I took the photos with the camera. They were not turned upside-down. It has to do with the Number 6 and the Number 9 in the Tarot Card deck, using the Hanged Man (#6) and the Hermit (#9) and I could see a connection between 6 and 9 and how they looked like they were upside-down, but they're really not. Neither one of those numbers is upside-down, in the same way that these photos are not upside-down.

Don't take all this "occult" language too seriously. It's meant to help bring out the conversation re: upside-down photos, which, in my mind, are not correctly called "upside-down" photos. In the process of working on this, I found something I had written a few years ago concerning Tarot Cards and divination and so I posted it up here to bring clarity to my "upside-down" photos.

Background:
6 of Wands Jupiter in Leo. 9 of Wands Moon in Sag.
6 of Pentacles Moon exalted in Taurus. 9 of Pentacles Venus in Virgo.
6 of Swords Mercury in Aquarius. 9 of Swords Mars in Gemini.
6 of Cups Sun in Scorpio. 9 of Cups Jupiter rules Pisces.

The Hanged Man and the Hermit. This is a baptism unto death symbolized by water signs and cups: the trinity of illusion and delusion represented by Neptune and the twelfth house. The Hanged Man represents man's inititation into the lowest order of the Rosy Cross, and his transformation as the serpent and the Dying God become the Ascended master of his death, with divination and powers of transformation of life itself. Nine is the number of "Redeemed" man ascended. He is the same man as the Hanged Man, only now he is the Lord of the Earth signified by Virgo with all dominion and power. Mercury is exalted in Virgo and Virgo is the crust of earth over Hades. The photos are the same photos, one is not "upside-down", but rather like Six and Nine there is an energy of transformation that occurs.

The Lamp of the Hermit is the light of the King of Fire, the Secret Fire of the Father, which is the transformation of six into nine. This is where the idea of the upside-down photo starts to become a conversation, because it's not upside-down, but rather it's a visual transformation of spiritual energy; the photos represent this as a movement of energy; turning something upside-down is a movement of energy, a movement of magick.

Man (Number Six) hangs on the Rosy Cross in the Light of inferior darkness, and is baptized unto death, a symbolism. But the Hanged Man, as the hidden serpent, is raised from death to new life (Number Nine), emerging from his initiation to the occult wisdom of the prophet's secrets: The Hermit, or a conversation known as Number Nine.

The origin of the Number Nine is the turning point when death of the Hanged Man is transformed into the life of The Hermit (it helps to look at the Tarot Cards and see the images, the "photographs" of the cards themselves). This is the transformation of the past becoming complete and no longer in the future. The Tarot Card no longer is a future-oriented experience, but instead is a past-based experience after the time of baptism, which is The Hanged Man (Number Six). The image of returning life is the photograph of life returning, which is what I was trying to say with this collection. The initiation of man's spiritual energy is not forced, but is natural, arising spontaneously. This is the transformation of the past. The past is complete in which the future is a space of possibility.

The Hanged Man becoming The Hermit (symbolically) represents a transformation in six stages, or six days: on the seventh day the Hanged Man returns from death, symbolizing the descent of the light energy and man's decline into darkness. It is the symbolism of the return of the light of the Lamp of the Hermit as Number Nine, ascended in the seventh double hour after his baptism and death. The Hanged Man represents winter chi, symbolized by thunder which is still unmanifest, unconscious and hidden in the depths of illusion and delusion's trinity of water signs and cups. As this chi (energy) is stirred, the Hanged Man is redeemed as The Hermit. The photographs are not "flipped" over upside-down, but instead they are a conversation of redemption.

Six becoming Nine, or a photograph appearing upside-down is the natural and inevitable origin of that which "comes back" or "returns" in a cyclic motion of completion and communication. The appearance of a photo being upside-down is the returning or the coming back of the image. The Lamp (symbolizing the Sun, or positive and negative light of photography, contrast, brightness etc) returns with fertility and exhaltation upon the earth.

This transformation from Hanged Man to Hermit leads to, and is led by, self-knowledge, sybmolized by the light of the Lamp from within, from inside consciousness, from awareness of awareness of everything/nothing, as a creation of word to world manifesting. From the depths of the Lamp (light), the Hanged Man sees the "Divine One" - he sees himself in the mirror of his own shadow. The Hanged Man (Number Six) changes to Nine, distinguishing shadows in relation to cosmic forces. The number Nine is, therefore, the ascending foce of life itself in all of nature and in the baptism of fire in the burning man, Number Six.

Number Six becoming Number Nine is a movement upward from below, from hell to heaven. Light energy is the creative principle of life itself. The Hanged Man and the Hermit represents the eternal cyclic movement between the two polarities of yin and yang, from which life itself emerges just at the moment when it appears to collapse.

The Missing Answers

2009-06-19T23:12:00.000-07:00

(Girl at Tosca Party) It was three o'clock on a Sunday morning. It was hot and he couldn't sleep even with the windows open. Something's missing", he thought, "something's always missing." So he took off his t-shirt and his underwear and wrapped his left leg around the wet sheet, tugged at it, pulled at it and held it tight against his chest like a little kid afraid of the dark. He laid there staring at the ceiling and the chipped paint. Then he looked at the doors and the walls and the carpet and started counting things he saw in the garbage can. The light was still on in the room; he guessed he left the light on when he went to bed and the TV, too....that was still on, but running quietly. He didn't know where the TV remote control was; it was missing, too. He thought it might be under the bed, or in the bed lost in the sheets, or inside the pillows. In fact, things were deliberately made to appear to be missing, appearing to be seldom sufficient, hardly adequate and never enough. So he sat up in bed and got drunk and scribbled "WANT" on his chest with a black magick marker so that no matter what else was missing, no one could doubt his sincerity. (Untitled)

(Paint on a Wall) Conceited and cynical, he ignored criticism accusing him of exaggerating his importance. Personal ambition was just another thing missing. To escape his fantasies, he withdrew to an isolated point of view and made demands on the privileged few who never showed respect for everyday things; deceit was concealed from him by his own reflection in the bathroom mirror. He looked at the TV and watched the show for a few minutes. It was some kind of religious fund raiser (aren't they all?) It was a advertisement for gym equipment for Jesus, like "get in shape for Jesus", "the lord is returning for his bride and he wants his church to be in shape", and "be hot and look good!" This made him want to be a writer in the worst way, so he called in to make a pledge for some money so he could learn the Christian poet's mystical language whose mathematical ideologies, like his own, were stolen from jazz musicians playing out of tune, struggling to keep up with drummers on speed always one or two songs ahead of everyone else. Jazz was missing from the bad side of his mind, missing more or less the same today as it was the day before. On weekends we'd watch him perform; we'd hang around and drink. His condition got worse as time went on, spitting out stupid words, spitting out of control. (Breadshop in Chinatown)

(Breadshop with Reflections) He decided he had to go to the bathroom but he forgot where he put the room key. He had to piss really bad and almost used the sink but at the last minute he saw the key on the floor under the bed next to the remote. He grabbed both of them, slipped on his robe, put the remote in one of the pockets and opened, unlocked and locked the door behind him. It was so very quiet out in the hallway, dark, gloomy, cold and empty it reminded him how he once produced an artsy noir film about a transsexual circus clown cleaning bathroom floors with only a toothbrush. According to the "true" story, a Christian cult popular among marines outside a base near San Diego, California, called the Guardians of the Missing Order of the Thorny Rose, apparently descended from heaven and made hell on earth their home. On their way from there to here, they left something missing, something tasteless, colorless, and odorless and this was known as the Crypt of the Missing Broken Straw Man, Indian chief of all the Dead Eagles. But memories or not, it didn't matter; he still had to go to the bathroom really bad now, even worse than before, so he opened the door to the final sacrifice and became the first man to burn the sign of the cross on the frozen earth! (Mail)

(Untitled) In a hurry to piss, he tip-toed to the bathroom down the hallway and while he hurried he heard noises from the rooms. He heard the TV, people talking, the radio, snoring and he heard a man and woman doing something sexual. It sounded like one of them was slapping the other one with a belt, playing sex games. It must not have been going too well because he heard the woman ask the guy to take a break. By now he was finally in the bathroom. He opened the door and felt the cold air coming in from the other side of the building, ripping through the holes in his robe. He opened his robe just enough to get a grip and he took a long hot satisfying steamy piss. When he was done he turned off the light, opened and closed the door and started down the hall. The couple was at it again, but this time she was hitting him, at least that's what it sounded like. He was whimpering like a baby, she was laughing. He stopped and stood by their door for a few minutes, looking up and down to make sure nobody else came down the hall. He was getting bored and nervous so he hurried to his room, unlocked the door, opened it, closed it, put the key on the desk and threw the TV remote on the bed. (North Beach Hotel)

(Old Phone Booth) There was a TV show on. It was some interview with a kid hooked on speed. The message of the show was unclear, but its meaning was unavoidable. He sat up on the edge of the bed to listen and play with his toes. His cell phone was plugged in to get the battery charged up but the timing on the clock was all wrong. It was between four and four-thirty AM. He sat there on the edge of the bed with his robe opened, pulled down over his shoulders, slowly falling off his shoulders and falling to the bed and then sliding off the bed onto the floor. It was still too hot to sleep and since he had been swallowing copious amounts of hard drugs for the last several hours, he had severely and irrevocably damaged his capacity for pleasure, including sex. He decided to go next door and get some hot coffee. All he needed was $1.60 so he counted his change and found about $4.00, got dressed, put on his coat and scarf and boots and got his key and went down the hallway for something to eat and the coffee. Unfortunately, his brain had been so badly compromised on his way to the elevator, to the downstairs lobby and to the sidewalk outside, that he went from one flirtatious meaningless love-game to another ten times worse than the one before. He opened the elevator and said "hi" to the girl receptionist downstairs at the front desk and she said "hi" back to him and smiled. He put his hands in his pockets anticipating a cold wind to hit him. He knew his bank account was empty, but he hoped that later on, in a few minutes, when he came back with the coffee – one for him and one for her – he was hoping that he could make up for the sleepless nights when nothing mattered. But the missing things he left in his room could not explain to her why he lived in a dumpster, and why he registered at her hotel with the last few dollars he had. He didn't have any answers. (The Garden of Eden)

Narcissism

2009-06-18T15:56:00.000-07:00

I think it's got a bad reputation. I don't even know what it is. But I have an idea that nihilism, narcissism and Nietzsche's will to power -- they're all connected, linked up, lined up, hooked up tight as a drunken triangle, like a machine that drives and pushes something or everything or nothing all the time. (Emotional)

For three weeks I slept alone in a hotel room with a desk, a sink, a closet, a rug, a door and a bed with two pillows. I watched TV most of the time when I stayed in there and I watched myself in the mirror. I'd put one eye on the TV and the other eye on the mirror. I'd watch my body move this way and that. Narcissism is one thing, but nihilism is like a different idea that there isnt any truth to anything, no values, nothing that means anything, no meaning...and I'm ok with that. That's all fine and dandy with me. I've thought that way for a long time. In fact, I once started writing this story, a theory really that the so-called "original sin was MEANING. Meaning or making things mean something was the original sin that cursed the world. (Mind of a Shadow)

So in my story we had this garden and in the middle of it was the fruit tree of good and evil. Of course, good and evil is what something means. The great liberator of knowledge had the finality of a poisonous spider and so I wrote the story of how the garden of eden was the beginning of narcissism and nihilism: "I slept with the egyptian only twice -- once on her stomach biting the back of her neck and once on a planet so immoral it's impossible to even think about it." Narcissism was as mysterious as a lighthouse: no longer the effect of constipation (because I drank so much coffee in the morning before I took a hot shower) it gave me hemmorrhoids that felt like a wall of bricks around the tree in the middle of the garden protecting the unfaithful servant because it had no moving parts in her body anymore. (Room of Shadows)

Adam's real name was Adagio and Eve was called Evil. They ran for days and never slept, crashed hard, nobody could wake them, they wouldnt answer phones, read mail or pay rent. They picked blisters off their faces. They loved to look at their own legs and they would touch themselves, touch their smooth skin. They pulled things out of their skin, things that itched, pulled out of their body pieces of things from Planet Zero. Once she blew her nose so hard and loud in the car she was driving, she lost a blood clot on the mirror. Her face turned red and her hair was covered in beautiful dark red and purple blood; she even threatened to stab people with forks if they didnt pay her for the work she did and they seemed to love it. I'd sleep on the bed in the hotel room before I'd get up and I'd hear the sound of sex in another room. I'd try to guess which rooms they were in. (Tattooed Arm)

In my story, they were brother and sister, or two lovers, or two schizophrenics having hallucinations, or two strangers at a bar. Nihilism and Narcissism slept on scratchy woolen blankets laid out next to each other on hard wood floors with entire families picking out their laundry, standing waiting for the mail, for their government checks, drinking hot coffee, smoking cigarettes. They heard voices from inside their headphones, voices without bodies, shadows within and without. They hated the slow dance because it usually spun out of control and then there was no key, no chords, no meter and no purpose to it, which is nihilism. (Untitled)

My hotel room was too small for all of us to fit in and narcissism made me sweat. I couldn't remember my name and I didnt know for sure if my name was really even important. But the girl in the room next door, down the hall a few feet, the girl with the swollen right red eye and the left green eye said there was a space, or there might be a space between imagination and intution, between trust and love, between a to z and back again, on another floor of the hotel, where the elevator didnt go. She said it might be the dark moon shining against the window, hitting the stone towers with black lightning, starring at blue eyes and a red sky. Whatever it was, I didnt care. I was always hungry, but I never ate. And I never drank. But I finally apologized for hiding behind the screen and watching her eyes roll up into the back of her head. I wrote a poem dedicated to nihilism and narcissism: "backward collars of the church hide crosses in their pockets/adolescents paint pimples with cream to hide their imperfections." She seemed to like it. I thought about it every morning before I took a hot shower. The water was so hot and so wet, and the window was open and the wind was cold. I'd get out of the shower and the cold air would blow into the shower stall and turn me on.

There were a few couples in the hotel who wore leather belts that held up the baggy pants of men who in the hotel, which was also called Eden. Women fell into the crack and got lost eternally entangled in the testicles of fat men. They made it mean something that religious delusions were supposed to be good and men could hear voices and make up stories. The fruit tree was able to talk and grow scabs. It pealed off my skin during the night when I slept, when I was taking photos of my legs outside the bed covers, when the sores got really bad and dirty, and turned beautiful and sexy and that was the end of the game. It gave suicide a bad name, like narcissism had a bad name. The problem with narcissism and myth as truth was that they became a belief in a universe selected for extinction. This was the cost of evolution and there was always a little change coming back.

I began to doubt my own mind and panic over everything, especially getting to the bus stop or taking a ride across town at rush hour. I started taking clonazepam and trazodone and lexapro and flomax and lisinopril and hydrocodone and codine and morphine and other stuff several times a day until I was hooked on all of it. I didnt live in present time anymore. I was in a future time, but my body was in one spot and I went exterior and far away from it in another spot, outside and far from it. I shoved myself back into my body, rolled myself backwards in the rain, slammed myself down on the wet street in my underwear soaking wet, but I was beautiful to look at and took lots of photos, narcissistic photos and nihilistic nothingness of my body. In my dreams, sleeping in the hotel, or sitting at the computer downstairs at 3 or 4am, I dreamt I was buried in a bed with a soft cable wrapped around my neck with a scarf when it got cold. I liked to wear leather wrist restraints and a metal ring in public places just to embarrass myself. This made it impossible to remember the color of my own hair.

My bed in the hotel was on a platform off the ground on stilts and there was a wooden ladder that I had to climb every night. I had soft lights built just for me so I could see the soft shadows against my body, to make shadows on the wall outlining my body against the wall when I floated around the room. I could smell polished oak walls, waxed wood floors, stained wood beams, the ceiling and a stone fireplace and flowers from the kitchen garden. The winter snow fell silently on the full moon coming thru the window in my hotel room, and I had sex with myself but I never woke up. I enjoyed it anyway. It wouldve been OK........all this wouldve been OK, but sadly it was over by the time excitement turned into resentment. My name was on my lips like spit, and my body was at its lowest point of ecstacy: self-love smelled like an outhouse in Montana.

Even after therapy, I still wanted to abuse myself because I still had nightmares and my arms had one thing in common: I was ashamed to move to a cheap slum because the laundry rooms were pieces of art. I was becoming extinct: a secluded beat, worse than a sacrificial angel. I had no inspiration after three nights in vegas. An old woman blocked her phone because I had no money, no way to stay away from lonely, no therapy, nobody got crucified, no prophets and no little drops of glass on a mirror. There was so much confusion about the Tao. The ivory addiction kept me bleeding and narcissism became extinct.

Escape from a San Francisco Hospital

2009-06-17T06:39:00.000-07:00

Jack Kerouac would have never hung out at Vesuvio's. Lenny Bruce would've never have worked in San Francisco. None of the jazz clubs would have opened if the city was like it is now. The great jam sessions would never happen. Nobody would have listened. "Howl" would have never been read, never been published. It just would have been doodling on a legal pad in an oriental alley, and would have never been any good; it would have sucked. (Escape #1)

(Escape #2) "San Francisco 2009" is a phantom souvenir. It's an apparition of mental and emotional defiance. It's a city of cheap melodramatic memorabilia. It's a piece of costume jewelry. It's an over-sized, over-blown, over-hyped, over-populated, over-charged postcard. It's an amusement park with no amusement, appealing to asexual bored and boring new-agers, an entertainment centerpiece for phony adult sex with a hypnotic-induced, IV-infused memory that was never a memory, but only an experiment. (Escape #3)

(Escape #4) San Francisco today is a wafer-thin skin-and-bones male priest smoking in the confessional trying to decide between masturbating against his obsessions, or sleeping alongside a visiting fat man from the Vatican: an ugly, balding useless used car salesman with a telemarketing con who lived everywhere below Market and 3rd as an addicted poltergeist impersonator. The priest was a murderer with a thin shadow that hid in doorways, making out with a disembodied love-goddess resembling facsimiles of dead artists, dead writers, poets, dead jazz trumpet players who sang, "My Funny Valentine" and photographers, publishers, drunks, drug addicts, comedians, and dead rock stars who moved out long ago. (Escape #5)

(Escape #6) They said goodbye to the hypertension power lines and turned their backs against the wind constipated from eating crack. They washed their face to hide black rings around their eyes listening to Harry James get sucked into the sentimental mid-western, non-black middle class suburban lifestyle. San Francisco 2009 is a Warfare-not-Welfare summer retreat sleeping with a vagina, pressed down, shaken together and running over every female whore and slut who spreads excitement for Jesus, lapping her sucking spit, face-sucking pimples right off the blackheads of her plastic face, grinding her teeth thru the night, grinding them into the shape of a crucifix with aluminum-plated braces pumping oral gratifiers down her long, narrow, virgin sperm-free firm, shapely, long, slender, tan throat. (Escape #7)

(Escape #8) I used to love the fog and would have stayed for that slippery dampness if it would have been authentic fog instead of a tourist con; even wet grey and white clouds stopped coming around; even jazz singer, jazz crooner Tony Bennett promised never to sing about the heart he left behind, because it was the heart that made all the noise and it was the last heart with a rosy hue, and it was replaced by the sound of a solar clock from a microwave oven. San Francisco doesn't have a heart anyway; apparently it can live without one. It hasn't had a heart for years and nobody ever noticed. The big tourist attraction was a fake heart fitted with a peculiarly large pace-maker programmed to skip beats then stop, reboot, restart, stop again and restart. This was a favorite tourist con. (Escape #9)

(Escape #10) The city has no passion. Intestinal cement and steel glue was poured into old places. It has no real-life pulse that can be felt. All it is now is just a tikity-tokity-tokity-tikity irregular beating almost a whisper, almost as soft as softly as in a morning sunrise with that make-believe west coast sunset beach that puts me to sleep after I'd been awake for a several days; but not anymore, because that's part of the lost memorabilia.

People who work here don't really work here, not like Salt Lake or Detroit. In San Francisco, they play a con game dressed up in a discount party-atmosphere. They wear a cultural "garb" period-costume pieces, like old-time leathery-hippy outfits, or slick hipster mirror-image dirty faces, head shot photographs carried under one arm with creatures and voices nobody else can hear, sarcastic and cynical HIV-positive hip cats zoot suit Chinamen skeletons wearing colorless necklaces, colorless shapeless hairpieces, knee high boots, rip torn temptation-driven miniskirts and those sexy long black eye lashes matching the color of shoe strings tied around their ankles and their necks. (Room #72, North Beach Hotel)

Streets have the same names as before but the real essentials of the city aren't the street names but whatever it was that made San Francisco a place to be from. The essences have been replaced degraded disgraced with Spanish-American motif essentials common to other dull places like San Diego, Seattle, Portland, Burbank, Santa Fe, Reno. San Jose....anyplace that could be any other place without trying. I never know where I am; it's like going to a Safeway, a Wal-Greens, a Wal-Mart, a K-Mart in any city, twenty-four hours a day, any day of the week, in any part of the country at any time and you can't tell the difference between one place and another. When you go to pay your potato chips and beer, you wouldn't know if you're in Boulder City, Needles, or Las Vegas; you'd be in San Francisco and never know it, because there are no essentials anymore that make San Francisco a space. It's a space but it's not a spaceship. It's an empty black hole space, a white noise space, a crowded bus space, a crowded elevator space. Crowded. Cramped. Hungry. Paranoid space built on cheap illegal counterfeit US Navy landfill space that can't hold up a strong earthquake.

The San Francisco Bay harbor and beautiful brightly lit skyline, even scary old Alcatraz are famous landmarks and points of interest but they're nothing really but used canvases dug up from an alley somewhere. It's a loose fitting canvas of sticky dry paint, semi-abstract commercial wallpaper scraped off the walls from a cheap hotel, mediocre replicas vaguely vulgar renditions of art, but instead of fifteen minutes of fame it's a bus pass that'll take you to a dead prostitute, a dead hooker, or a toothless-rotted-out-mouth-cum-sucking-vitamin-destroyed sex-giver, not a care-giver, who's banged and sucked her way to be a poster child for a poster city. San Francisco is nothing but a souvenir hunter, a type of Mexican-Indian-Jew, a type of middle-class evangelical-charismatic revivalist, a type of credit-card-pinching-lying-tax-dodging-patriotic-rightwing-extremist and proud centrist soccer-mom, a type of secret alcoholic flag-waving member of her most faithful church on a mission to stop adultery. They hate Kerouac and Ginsberg; idiot nerdy-America was ahead of its time out there on the farm. They knew it when they heard it and they heard it all and hated it all and killed them all: the jazz musicians, the drug dealers, the pot smokers.

They hated Lenny Bruce, Steve Allen, Burroughs, Ferlinghetti and Coltrane. They hated black Miles, black Max Roach, black Monk, black Basie, black Ornette, Bill Evans. San Francisco is a trinket to collect like matchbook covers and stamps, like fake bus stops, like fake trolley cars, like gangland slant-eyed Chinatown-mafia hit celebrations for the year of the "whatever". San Francisco is the best fake backboard, best fake book store, best fake coffee house and best fake windy ocean breeze. The steep hills and sidewalks are being leveled out and flattened like a swollen bulging stomach to make it easier for fat Americans fat beans-and-rice, arrogant slant-eyed biased, prejudiced, obnoxious, selfish, self-righteous, superiority-complexed Asians, and the mumbling whiny insincere complaining guilt-ridden, tear-stained old testament buried beneath a Judaism-mindset walking down the hills to Coit Tower which already stinks of religion.

Vesuvio's Cafe is a place where the tourists are too scared to go inside or stand outside and sit down, or go upstairs, use the toilet, drink the water, watch TV, order something to drink or eat peanuts. Homosexual sluts, transgender female impersonators and male castrated Grand Masters of the Dungeon tell wild sex stories about the bad old days and the dope addict jazz muicians who raped daughters and wives and got away with it while their husbands watched drunk. They snap their phony photos with their wide smiles plastered across their clean-shaven face like sterile toothpaste. They grin and show their white teeth for thirty seconds and then get the hell out of there, walk away fast and don't look back, walk in the opposite direction, get away and never come back. San Francisco has become that kind of place: a speechless town. Not even language is spoken here.

San Francisco was intellectually buried in a black hole, a black-pot-hole in a vacant lot cars buses, taxis with their radio's broadcasting pick-ups in the Fillmore, trucks diving off the road around the Cliff House. It's not even an empty scenic town. Once the music is gone the sax stands on its head and starts a nose bleed, or a brain bleed because of the bruises on his body, bruises all over his body because his blood platelets fell to less than 2000 and he almost died; but once the soul is gone, what's the point? The thing is gone, and I do mean "thing" and it's not there.

San Francisco is a small man with big plans. It's a small man's world with a fat man wearing big pants. It's a small minded man with a big city idea. It's a small man caught lying about a big circus clown's big top-big town. It's a big man wearing big black small man's underwear. It's a big town eating a small man's thongs. San Francisco is a big tall man walking taller and wearing little man pants crawling slowly away on his knees like a small man's large. It's a skinny town filled with fat men. It's a big man's balls who wear a large small athletic cup on his small man's penis. It's a small man's bad breath blowing a large man's big and large ding-dong woody. It's a small man wearing a tall small and big fat. But the small man is still out there and he's trying to find the large man where he can hear the big fat man talk big fat and louder at the smaller fat clown when the fat man screams at the small man and they look at each other and pay no attention because that's what kind of a city San Francisco is, where nobody pays attention, because nothing goes on there that isn't a vague disguise, a phony con, a fake con, useless, worthless cold and wet con.

I stopped to listen to late night jazz in a hole on Green and didn't drink and didn't want to drink because there wasn't any jazz and I didn't want to be there. Old jazz used to play there. The sax talked a story with his horn. The snare drum hit the brushes like a washer and dryer inside a machine. What am I doing here? Someone asked me. It's a small fake world a small fake business to get my stomach flattened and tight and sexy brown skin Indian color. I love taking hot showers on every floor in the hotel being naked and wet taking photographs of myself running up the hallways outside the window and fall onto the sidewalk. There's no point to it; not to anything. The whole earth is ready to explode ready to say goodbye Mexican Rose, you can't keep the Ring. I'm wearing the Ring you're not getting it back. I'm wearing it forever because the Black Rose Ring is what I want.

The nurses said they were sorry. There's nothing they can do except send squads of cops. That nurse gave me a real sick feeling with a dirty needle trying to get some blood where there wasn't a vein. "You said something you didn't mean!" What? "A sixty year old gentleman is a musician and he is very anxious!" I had a piece of string tied around my neck, hanging from the ceiling. It was their bad behavior that provoked me. Everything upset me and made matters worse.

All great revolutionary music turns into simple commercial jingles at some point, short catchy melodies commercial tunes; it's all a con. San Francisco is a con, a big con, a scam, a scheme, a laundromat gallery of dirty wet clothes, a carnival ride that breaks down, costs too much, ends too soon, never starts fast enough. The essence of intellectual viciousness is about the a big con dressed in a suit speaking prophecies with a full metal jacket of mental disease with fat pudgy fingers standing in a fat pudgy gesture of pudgy love of pedophilia.

San Francisco is the leather gun, a strap-on dildo concealed weapon under the shoulder between the legs, worn in the belt, worn under the belt buckle walking in the Tenderloin's final goodbye, like reaching for it to squeeze it to touch the package, that was his final "goodbye"! I'm still not drinking, still not drunk, still not stoned, still sitting here at the bar Kerouac probably wouldn't even sit in, wouldn't even walk in.

I sit in this bar paying for water and I a cloud of darkness comes over me, my emotions, demanding more than I have. San Francisco has had a "alteration de la personalite" among the sick, the feeling of loss of power and confinement is enough to inspire belief in God. The city is cluttered with parking lots, cluttered with bars: all I see is cheap nick-knack clutter, dust attracting clutter sexual mutilation compelled to taste fresh blood, like the vampire he's always wanted to be.

Mediocrity swept thru the city in an invasion of religious believers, the most naive and backwards of the species of man today. What we need is more rituals to pound out a beat, a little con with sickening mind-bugging moral values that reek debasement of man so bad and horrifically stale and dry that the moral values of western religion has castrated mankind's intimate personhood, castrated San Francisco's intimacy making it a pocketbook guide to interesting places nobody cares about, ever heard of and ever thinks about.

I used to think my photos were a function of being creative; I thought maybe I was compelled; cause and effect were split up backwards and upside down, like the old rugged crucifixion cross: it ought to be turned right side up, head on the bottom, feet on the top, arms and hands out to the side, blood flowing up, not down. An anti-gravity miracle of God, performed as an act of will. I was anxiety-driven not creativity-driven. Music was depression-driven. Anxiety-driven behaviors might be constructive and produce "good works", according to St. Paul, that great infamous Catholic Jew, who, if he had a digital camera, would've taken commercial photos of great mementos of Christ, pretentious and fake!!

San Francisco is a mutilation of paper. It's a holy lie. It's compared to the weakest and most subhuman afterlife possible. Before San Francisco turn into an afterlife, it's a grave site for the deaf, a sanctuary for the blind, a dog house for the lame, a barbershop for the cripple, a beauty parlor for those people with bad breath, who should sleep in a straight jacket, street sweepers. And now it's all quiet. Nobody is talking. All there is left is the lobby and the sidewalk shadows and phantoms wandering in and out of the Chinese herb stores tapping the fat American beast on the shoulder asking for money. San Francisco has turned into an injection. It's turned into an anxious infection eating away at the bone marrow. San Francisco used to be a "used to be", but now it's a "time to leave, time to go". It's become what it was always meant to be: an after-birth by the bay, a still life, an abortion burning at the edges, a cancer victim, a wheel-chair bound handicap person racing down one of the steep hills without a break.

My body was and is a chemical plant and it's killing flowers where ever I walk if there's flowers around me, and I stand near the flowers, they die at least they die mentally in my mind or my idea of my mind; they probably don't really die. I just kill them with the stench of the smell of the chemicals coming out of my skin; but that's not true either. I've got bad breath, too and even my dad can smell it all the way from the grave. His grave is in Montana and I don't have a grave but if I did it wouldn't be in San Francisco because he could smell my bad breath all the way from there to here. No, it'd be in Nashville and it would be an ash can, not a grave. It mustn't be too deep either to put the ash can in. I never stuck my feet in my dad's grave. I wonder how loud the rock music really is when you're buried in the dirt.

Self-hatred and Ambiguity

2009-06-12T08:34:00.000-07:00

I'm finally beginning to get Nietzsche: it's as if he was standing next to me in that blackness, in that space photographed around me; See the photo as if Nietzsche's mind is able to be photographed as space, as darkness, as black space surrounding the mind of those with whom he's having conversations. There's a conversation going on between Nietzsche and me right at that moment I snapped this photo; more like a dialog with me doing the listening and Nietzsche doing the talking. I can see him standing next to me, right behind me to my left talking into my left ear and if you look into that space you'll see it, too.... He's talking to me about self-hatered as the highest form of power, will and strength there is; because "self" is the will itself. He's saying self-hatered is an illusion and as a false conflict with something "bad", like a con game (ambiguity) it originates from the suppressive religious icon of evil competing with "self" for its share of god-worship as another form of a con.

This is the beginning of a study of my experience with physical pain, the development of turning anger into a form of self-hatred and depression, but then eventually letting self-hatred express itself as a positive and powerful force for creativity. By accepting what-was, what-is, what's-so and what's-possible within the limitations and insecurities of physical and psychological uncertainities, I'm able to acknowledge new relationships, new forms of communication and new conversations with new language between me and my environment, both internal and external. This generates, as in causing, a fresh relatedness with life itself that I can photograph from new perspectives. Some of it is filled with emotion, some of it with no emotion at all; some of it is clear, other parts of it is unfolding, or even closing up.

Part Two: Self-Hatred and the Con PART ONE: SELF-HATRED AND AMBIGUITY

(Study of a Hand in Motion) The pain he suffered completely zapped him of any sense of power of choice. He had no self-determination, no self-discipline, self-control, self-actualization, no self-reliance. He was in decline of self. He was a diminished insult of self. He was the disillusionment of a powerful, healthy self. He was an out-of-control loss of self-will, self-love, self-identity, personality, self-direction, self-affirmation and self-proclamation. Anything and everything having to do with him, with self, with his sense of communication with self-as-environment, self-as-atmosphere, self-as-space, self-as-power; anything having to do with him and his conversation with himself, with self-as-dialog, self-as-interactive mind, self-as-motivation, self-as-attraction, self-as-thought; anything that had to do with communication in thought-forms, thought-patterns, thought-as-security, thought-as-power, thought-as-virtual-intellect, thought-as-mental-processes communicating as electronic brain signals which gave him the advantages of a powerfully strong ambitious life were cut off and he was left like a dismembered carcass alongside a dirt road unceremoniously incoherent and isolated. (Jazz Improvization)

(Corner of Columbus and Kearny) Physical pain and weakness, psychological infertility and fear magnified are characteristics of Christianity, which restrained his humanity and denied "personhood". Without self-ambition, he had no will to crush the brutality of sanctimonious evil: self-sacrifice! Self-reliance, self-support, self-magnification of human love, fulfillment of self-love and the affirmative expression of self-hatred were helpless fatalities in a con game to which he became an unwilling victim, shattering his integrity. Self-degradation became "astigmatism in the eyes of an invalid" as his infection mimicked the Christian's herd instinct with distress and failure in a saintly reformatory of self-propitiation. Occupying the centerpiece of mindless blind faith, he had no weapons against priestly sadists using hope to perform dramatic ceremonies against him as life was in dissent against itself! (Untitled)

(Second Floor) Mind couldn't confront brutality and life-destroying misery and atrophy: "the suffering" was unbearable beyond unbearable belief. Body was defeated by pain. The most horrific pain conceivable was a form of malicious mental pain demanding stupidity and duty to a trust in intelligent design, destiny, reason; none of which had any value. He was barely able to survive "the suffering's" repeated evil penalties for injustice and dishonesty, failing to escape from which he almost callously surrendered to a con artist. (Reflections in a Hallway)

(Old Phone Booth) The Christian con artist is the servant of the con game for our sad and pitiful life: it's a pathetic wretched beneficence. That's the key word: "Beneficence": beneficial, the benefited one, benign beneficence, also known as the supreme being, not just "being", not just one who be's or is, but the one who only is. Beneficence is considered supreme and the benefits charisma too brilliant for weak-minded, poor-hearted, pitifully shallow, selflessly useless masochists to pay attention to their unending suffering, disease, hate, pain, distress, anguish, agony, death, blindness, war, famine, false imprisonment, bigotry, prejudice, murder, despair, mental hopelessness, addiction and enough curses for every man, woman and child. Christianity kills human life and suppresses excellence. It makes a mockery of beauty and calls it beastly. It takes a beast and calls it "but beautiful". (Stairway)

(Window) The Christian con artist loved him so profoundly it dropped an eye lash from its bloodshot third eye and let it fall to the floor with a thump. By enduring "the suffering", it promised him he would have a star on the sidewalk next to the virtuous and worthy. The con gave him a disease and packed him up with high doses of intolerance, but the "frail desolation" (i.e., pain killers) was the holy lie that made him suffer the most by seducing him to lock himself in the bathroom of a neighborhood bar and drink so much liquor he couldn't eat anymore; he drank so much his skin turned yellow; he drank until diarrhea flushed the rest of his liver down the toilet mixed with blood without platelets. The Christian con was made with throbbing delusion and tormenting unhappiness. Enough sadness and distress went around the room cursing him with counterfeit kindness, destroying him with fake self-love, deliberately causing melancholia dementia to set in. This was the origin of the "I-want-to-help-them", the "I-want-to-save-them", the "I-want- to-care-for-them", the "I-want-to-baptize-them"! This is the story of the sickly-giver who built a stairway with death and offered its twisted arthritic hand of salvation, buried six feet under ground where it won't smell so badly. This is the ultimate con game: if he doesn't accept the helping hand of christ, it kills him with it; and if he accepts it, both ways, it's a con and it kills him. It's a pious, hypocritical con that kills him if he doesn't and kills him if he does.

Self-hatred and the Con

2009-06-12T08:33:00.000-07:00

I'm finally beginning to get Nietzsche: it's as if he was standing next to me in that blackness, in that space photographed around me; See the photo as if Nietzsche's mind is able to be photographed as space, as darkness, as black space surrounding the mind of those with whom he's having conversations. There's a conversation going on between Nietzsche and me right at that moment I snapped this photo; more like a dialog with me doing the listening and Nietzsche doing the talking. I can see him standing next to me, right behind me to my left talking into my left ear and if you look into that space you'll see it, too.... He's talking to me about self-hatered as the highest form of power, will and strength there is; because "self" is the will itself. He's saying self-hatered is an illusion and as a false conflict with something "bad", like a con game (ambiguity) it originates from the suppressive religious icon of evil competing with "self" for its share of god-worship as another form of a con.

This is the beginning of a study of my experience with physical pain, the development of turning anger into a form of self-hatred and depression, but then eventually letting self-hatred express itself as a positive and powerful force for creativity. By accepting what-was, what-is, what's-so and what's-possible within the limitations and insecurities of physical and psychological uncertainities, I'm able to acknowledge new relationships, new forms of communication and new conversations with new language between me and my environment, both internal and external. This generates, as in causing, a fresh relatedness with life itself that I can photograph from new perspectives. Some of it is filled with emotion, some of it with no emotion at all; some of it is clear, other parts of it is unfolding, or even closing up.

Part One: Self-hatred and Ambiguity PART TWO: SELF-HATRED AND THE CON

(The Hotel Room) Control pain and those who receive pain can be controlled as well. His lack of self-importance was really emptiness-without-power made flesh. His mental and emotional organization collapsed in agonizing embarrassment; cruelty came only after the insurance was approved. "The suffering" was a compulsion of physical, sexual, emotional and psychological occurrences secretly known only by serpents, mental aberrations and apparitions. Naturally, he began to hate his body, convinced his thoughts were eating him alive like antibodies. He thought medical options were exhausted and spiritual opinions were simply more infectious holy lies, reproducing the con game by controlling him through suffering. The muscle-of-the-pulpit (i.e., "the stalker") made him believe leeches were a necessary treatment to suck blood from his hands out through an IV-needle, first a mouth sucker, then tail, then mouth again and so on, robbing his blood platelets by piercing the skin and bruising him while he slept at night. Half naked, covered only in a thin white hospital blanket rolled up past his knees, the edges stapled together like pieces of rough sandpaper above his thighs, his feet carefully hanging gently over either side of the bed as if he was modeling: 300mls of morphine taking slow effect made the ordeal not so bad. (Vesuvio's)

(Chinatown) But there was no sleep and there was no escape: hateful, horrific rage was constructed like a skyscraper inside his mind, disguised as drowsiness, inertia induced by love. Indifferent to fatigue-deadening narcotics which neither increased his metabolism nor did he sleep through the winter. He turned against himself like a razor blade. He blamed himself for guilt, self-humiliation and womanly meekness inheriting nothing but hurtful scandal. Isolated in his hospital room, he was afraid of fanaticism, and like bad food, he had plenty of it. Afraid of being reported as pathetic, a gang of med students watched him having sex with females dressed in male drag, students who depended on him remaining powerless as a junkie so they could stalk and harass him. Dressed like starving jazz musicians wet from standing in the rain all night, they'd come to his room passing through the door without opening it leaving no trace, bringing strangers to tag along to give him attention he didn't want or need. Unwanted phone calls in the middle of the night made him anxious of noises, yelling and being hit when he walked in his sleep. The only visualization exercise he could get away with secretly was to suffer in silence by memorizing the sequence of the holy lie: self-hate, ambiguity and sacrifice; the sequence and then the explosion. (On the Bus)

(Upside Down) When he wasn't medicated, he had long conversations using language of self-hate and ambiguity: Eight Principles of the Painless Tao (1) Running the con (power and control) is based on intimidation; (2) Pain is a con of emotional abuse and is often used to steal money; (3) Pain and the loss of control isolate body and mind from themselves and from other people; (4) Pain minimizes its effects and makes excuses for anti-social, socio-pathological warnings against mental illness due to constipation; (5) Suffering is used to con people, to scare and threaten them with the evil of disobedience; (6) The control of power and pain is a con rooted in male-dominant, male-superior, male-societal hierarchies and dysfunction; (7) Pain killers are expensive con games and destroys bank accounts; (8) Pain and control manipulates fear of never-ending pain and suffering, an agonizing con without end; not even death can relieve the burden of eternal expectation. (The White Hand)

Selfishness and interdependence became an issue for affixing blame on himself. Blame was fulfilled in one word; love your neighbor as yourself, but that's more than one word. Without medical insurance or a driver's license, schizophrenia began to spy on him, wouldn't let him go home, found ways to hurt him and bragged about pain in reoccurring nightmares of pre-mental sex. He was afraid to say "no" to virtual-sex. He was afraid to say "no" to imaginary drinking binges but he was always ready for morphine. (Upside Down)

(Hand in Motion) With his arms swinging from side to side, his body bleeding like a slice of lemon freshly squeezed from a tree, Piano Man and Drummer Man swapped fours like lovers swapped spit. They began to get a sense of his new powerful will-to-self. He scratched at the door of his hospital room and his hotel room where he stood for hours and knocked trying to open the Tao. His arms turned elastic in some kind of weird reenactment of the American Indian holocaust. But instead of a trail of tears he read about in books, real tears filled his eyes! His voice trembled. His feet were bound with bungee cord. His thin, bruised arms stretched out from left to right as wide as outer space itself making a black silhouette on the wall; a shadow of a fat ballerina. From across the room, a wheel chair with a Chinese woman tied up in it rolled downstairs and smashed against a window; he visualized himself as the source of power and choice. (Cocktail Bar)

(Face) His parched dry lips, forever scared with a scowl and swinging from a dead fig tree, kept company with two commandments of the holy lie hanging upside down like a tarot card with the law and the prophets. He spent most of the time in his hospital room or his hotel room, and the sidewalk cafe where he stayed out late every night. He drank coffee at the neighborhood grill and waited to take the bus down-town. Late-night, after-hours he went to the Jazz Bistro on Ellis, played drums and ate goat cheese. This was his self-encouragement for the story "Fig Tree for a Lynching": the story of the great con game hanging from a tree with the law and the prophets, being executed and dangling in the wind with the rest of the scriptures until they were dead little beads for his collection, until small drops of frustration made angles cry orchids. (Body Hair)

Conclusion

2009-06-12T08:32:00.000-07:00

I'm finally beginning to get Nietzsche: it's as if he was standing next to me in that blackness, Click Here for Photo in that space photographed around me; as if Nietzsche's mind is able to be photographed as space, as darkness, as black space surrounding the mind of those with whom he's having conversations. There's a conversation going on between Nietzsche and me right at that moment I snapped this photo; more like a dialog with me doing the listening and Nietzsche doing the talking. I can see him standing next to me, right behind me to my left talking into my left ear and if you look into that space you'll see it, too.... He's talking to me about self-hatred as the highest form of power, will and strength there is; because "self" is the will itself. He's saying self-hatred is an illusion and as a false conflict with something "bad", like a con game (ambiguity) it originates from the suppressive religious icon of evil competing with "self" for its share of god-worship as another form of a con. There's more to come .....and I'll write it up and publishes it as a photo essay shortly. So I wrote the ending first.

This was the beginning of a study of my experience with physical pain, the development of turning anger into a form of self-hatred and depression, but then eventually letting self-hatred express itself as a positive and powerful force for creativity. By accepting what-was, what-is, what's-so and what's-possible within the limitations and insecurities of physical and psychological uncertainities, I'm able to acknowledge new relationships, new forms of communication and new conversations with new language between me and my environment, both internal and external. This generates, as in causing, a fresh relatedness with life itself that I can photograph from new perspectives. Some of it is filled with emotion, some of it with no emotion at all; some of it is clear, other parts of it is unfolding, or even closing up. (Me and the Darkness)

(The Wall of Jazz) Pain and the loss of power and choice went out through the top of my head out the top and out my ears through my pores in my skin out through my fingernails and the wrinkles in my hands and the lines on my face the dark circles under my eyes the black marks around the edges of my face the jaw, the teeth, gums, my tongue and salvia and all the power over who I am, who I was being, or able to be and who I wanted to be, or thought I could be as being, or to be this or that. I thought it had to do with identity of personality as with a photograph, but that wasn't it and never was it, not even a mirror, not even a picture, not even an image, not even an expression of someone or something I thought I knew; but didn't. (A Black Boot)

(North Beach Hotel) Power = self vitality and strength. Performance. Determination. Choice and choices. Struggle-struggling, fighting-attraction, physical-attractiveness. Physical counter-balance, physical difficulty. Intrigue and ability. (The Ring Belongs To Her)

(Waiting for the Cops) This is power to me: The will to life, to live to survive the will. To over-come the will, over-whelm the will. To charm the will, to enlist the will to invite and recruit the will. To elect the will to expand the will. To increase to grow and manipulate the will. To emanate the will by expanding the will to build: to capture, dominate, defeat and conquer the will. To reclaim the will to speak language. To generate, to buy, to own, read and write about the will to produce to fail. To succeed to disbelieve the will. To live to eat to die. To love the will to come and to go. The power of the will to be born to endure. Power to confront the will. Power is everything Christianity is not. Power as the enemy of Christianity. (Hand at Rest)

Essay on Photography Scrawled on a Bathroom Wall

2009-05-16T06:42:00.000-07:00

(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

2009-05-16T06:41:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-16T06:40:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-16T06:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

"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

2009-05-13T07:00:00.000-07:00

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"

2009-05-12T20:35:00.000-07:00

[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

2009-05-12T08:56:00.000-07:00

"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)

2009-05-12T08:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-12T08:38:00.001-07:00

(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

2009-05-12T08:37:00.003-07:00

(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

2009-05-12T08:36:00.001-07:00

(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

2009-05-12T08:30:00.002-07:00

(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

2009-05-12T08:29:00.000-07:00

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.

The High Priestess of Occult Mysteries

2009-05-12T08:27:00.002-07:00

To the Priestess of love's Agony and Torture, accept my gratitude: Thy curses are more merciful than Thy blessings!

I worship the nauseating mist floating above the fog. In my grave, you gave me moist erotic dreams and in my ascension, you were my escort throughout the night in the hour of death's delirium! And you did not forsake me. I worship Thee and rejoice with the blind dog sleeping at Thy feet!

To the Priestess of love's Suffering and Persecution, accept my thankfulness: Thy curses are more generous than Thy blessings!

I worship the toilet seat and the black robe you made me wear to hide myself from your eyes. I covered myself with immodesty and false humility so you could crucify my guiltiness. You were my companion throughout the night in the hour of death's delirium! You did not desert me. I worship Thee and rejoice with the blind dog, vomiting at Thy feet!

To the Priestess of love's Pain and Anguish, accept my award: Thy curses are more forgiving than Thy blessings!

I worship the towel and blanket, the bed and window; the floor and ceiling spin around me! When I finally crawled out of my distress, like a diseased worm that burrowed itself in my sickly soul, you protected me throughout the night in the hour of death's delirium! And you did not abandon me. I worship Thee and rejoice in the blind dog's sickness sacrificed at Thy feet!

To the Priestess of love's Tenderness and Torment, accept my admiration: Thy curses are more lenient than Thy blessings!

I worship your pizza, cheese, coffee and beer. Your ice water, dripping from the tap of the ghetto, burned my throat and scalded my mouth and tongue with blisters and sores; it didn't matter. Still, even with my handicap and disabilities, I waited for you to come to me and carry me into the Clear White Light of death's delirium. From dust to dust and bone to bone you sat up with me until forgiveness passed over my bed like the plague. And you never left me desolate and barren; you did not sterilize me. I worship Thee and rejoice in the blind dog's fever burning at Thy feet!

To the Priestess of love's Grief and Sorrow, accept my esteem: Thy curses are more compassionate than Thy blessings!

I worship the unholy ground of Thy graveyard and crypt. O, may your phone, your door and your lock and keys rapture me from these intolerable restraints! O, tear me away and rip me apart from the chains of my body and soul, those manacles of my Mind that tie my wrists to a beam and bind me to the nauseating mist floating above the fog. You did not get rid of me or throw me to the pack of wild dogs scratching at my bedroom door: death's everlasting delirium. Nor did you punish me for being infertile, artificial and lazy, nor did you repeal the pardon you gave me for swearing an oath to worship Thee and rejoice always with the blind dog dying at Thy feet!

I asked the guy what he was after

2009-05-12T08:27:00.001-07:00

What kind of a photo did he want, or did it matter? Like, with me, it hardly ever really matters just as long as I can bring something home when I go out hunting like I'm supposed to bring something back for the table. Most of the stuff that I brought home to fit on the table would fit in a plastic gallon zip lock bag.

I asked the guy what he was after? I saw him on the same bus every morning with the same brown and green shoes and a smirk on his contorted face trying hard to make it look naturally contorted, but it never did.His face had a scar that ripped out from inside his mouth from the development of bruises and petechiae on the extremities, bleeding from the nostrils and the gums and formed hematomas in his mouth and other membranes. He tried to hide the scar because it made him even uglier than when he was a kid after he went fishing and swallowed a fishing hook. I guess that's what he meant when he looked at my photos and said, "Good catch!" (Untitled)

I always felt a little guilty over that remark so self-consciously I tried to force myself to crawl on my knees out of the bus, crawling backwards away from him to make him feel more manly, more dominate, more self-assured. I've been thinking of changing my name, maybe to Rhio9.9 then I could wake people up early in the morning when it's time to start extreme marching. The key to any ambitious dutiful art form and drum section coordination for patriotic marches is to produce changes that nobody can understand. (Untitled)

I asked him what he was trying to shoot with his camera.......and he said, "I don't know, Anything. I don't care. What about you?" He meant me, of course, but I didn't have a camera so he said he'd loan me one for the night; bad idea.

( Now on the plane and preparing to land, to discend, to drift down under the runaway after the flight coming into Guitar City I heard the organ pounding it's big fat bass pedals and I saw flashng lights, bright sun where history failed to stay on the old road and instead ran off the runway at killed the farm goats.)

I was walking over to take my morning meds and I asked the drummer what he was after in the photos he was taking, or did he care much at all, and he said that he cared more about the blondy girly-girl he got hooked up with last night; I didnt like that answer, because I knew that she wasnt really a girl (if you get my drift), but I didnt say anything to him. ] (Untitled)

I was still constipated from too many times, too many days in a row, and I barely fell asleep ...or maybe was like a death-noir-type-blinds-on-the-window sleep, or maybe I was ready for a sleeping noir phantom to visit me? I dont know, but I stayed away from the water and watched the birds try to fly into the engines. I was seeinng double visions and moving closer to everything going around in circles at least more than twice, like going in circles and squares. (The Long Reach)

I was hoping that tomorrow I'd get some special equipment so I can keep everything separated on the plane. Maybe I'll start with intravenous steroids or intravenous immunoglobulin or a combination of all of them; that'll be a kick! Or maybe I'll get an infusion in an emergency bleed-type situation on the operating table. After I get to a safe level they might give me prednisone. Wow! Yeah, baby! Get me high! And if I respond really well during the first week they might lower the dose gradually, but not too much; they want to keep me strung out like if it was heroin; just enough to keep coming back for more and being grateful for all their insurance-billed, expensive HMO compassion. But the bad news is that 60 to 90 percent of patients relapse after the dose is decreased below 0.25 mg/kg per day and subsequently stopped; do I fir in there?. So what's the fucking point?

Anyway, we started to taxi down the runway and I noticed the arrows were brightly painted on all the runways and I couldnt focus my eyes to read anything. My handwriting was twisted and squiggly and turned to total shit for brains. For the first time that day, I begin to understand the total courage (or cowardice) it took to rule the universe when you're flying anywhere on an airplane. In the background, in the bathroom at the end of the plane, I heard loud guitar chords bang against the side of girl getting it on in the back of the plane, a nightmarish scream that got me excited, so I dug my face in the side of the window seat against the nightmarish moon light and I screamed into the loud speaker floating down from the oxygen strap with a little microphone built in for people like me, and I said "I'm not sure the new pilot is any better than the other one, but you're speeding up too fast! Pull up! Pull down!" Just about that time, the pilot came on the air and said, "Don''t worry. Sex is the rent we pay to fly on this plane and land safely. Have you paid your rent lately?" (Untitled)

I asked him what he was after when he took a photo. He didnt answer me right away. Maybe he was in the shower naked behind the curtain in the bathroom. He was obviously pissed and he begain to growl garbled sounds from the gutter where he scraped up cigarettes with his yellow bent teeth, and since he didnt have any fingers he pushed the notes out of the piano between the legs of the blondy girl's airflight controller manual, pulling them this way and tht way, banging them, dangling them, tangling them up, hurting them like the sadist he always wanted to be. (Self-portrait)

He was a fat man sitting on a skinny piano afraid that if he played too loudly at all he'd break her vulva membrane to her external genital organs. The vagina refers to the female genitals, although, strictly speaking, the vagina is a specific internal structure, whereas the vulva is the whole exterior genitalia. The piolt of the plane was concerned with the human vulva. The procedure in the back of the bathroom behind the see-through shower curtain with the little cat claws tearing it apart was called idiopathic (as in IDIOTPATHIC) because the cause of the condition is unknown; because they're idiots. So much for "intelligent design". What a fucking joke that is!

Thrombocytopenic means blood doesn't have enough platelets; so you see, there's scarcity automatically built into the illusion of an abundance of the universe. Purpura makes a person have excessive bruising. This disease, "ITP" has a real pretty name, dont you think, called "immune thrombocytopenic purpura." It just sort of rolls off your lips like a country western song: Immune Thrombocytopenic Purpura, makes my eyes for her so blurra!"

People with ITP have normal blood cells except for the platelets, tiny cells that conveniently seal minor cuts and wounds forming blood clots that seem to be kind of important. A person with too few platelets bruises easily and can bleed for a long time if they get injured or banged on the head in an airplane or get hit by a taxi door, or take a hot shower with the water pressue too hard. When the platelet count is low, below 2000, a person might have nosebleeds that won't stop, maybe bleeding in the intestines, or bleeding in the brain. But thanks to god's merciful kingdom of heavenclouds and sexual hellfire responsible for all of life's meaningless lessons torn out of the book of the talmud good only for toilet paper, there's always some good news floating around a black cloud with a silver lining: YIPPIIEE! Removal of the spleen is sometimes an option (I mean, who needs that?).

Platelets targeted for destruction often meet a spiritual fate in the spleen; so go ahead, cut the son of a bitch out; it's useless anyway, right?. Splenectomies are successful in 60 to 65 percent of cases, WHOOPS! Sorry! Too bad about the other ones who fall thru the cracks! But the bad news gets even worse because the surgery is less successive in older patients. Now, let's see, I'm 61. Am I an "older patient", or just impatient? The procedure is also risky due to the increased possibility of significant bleeding during surgery because the plateletts are LOW!. AAAHHH! DDDDDAAAHHHH> You think?

Anyway, I asked him what kind of a photo he was trying to get and he said he was after one deep color shot from inside a glamorer magazine where he would get lots of girly legs coming down the runway, walking down the wings of a plane with the wind blowing up their dresses like Marlon Manroe. I need the money so I told him I lost 10 lbs in less than a week when I got back out of the hospital. When I got back from SFO on 3-15-09 I weighed 175lbs. A week later I weighed 165. I asked him if he could take a picture of me and just pretend I was a glamore mag model. He looked at me like I was sick or something, which I was since I only had 2000 platellets. I told him it was the platellets talking and just ignore me, but I could tell he was seriously thinking about my suggestion. What did I care?

When I went into the hospital, my platelle count dropped to 2000, barely alove existing. I was admitted to the hospital ...About this time, I'm ashamed to say, I started going delirious and thining about Purpose. Worth. Value. Meaning.

When I was younger I studied all these alternative healing practices: eastern zen, eastern yoga, eastern magick, zen, acupuncture, accupressure, iredology, mediation, yoga, nutrition, exercise, visualization, affirmation, the mind-healing practices of tantric sex yoga, drugs, LSD, peyote, hiking, numerology, astrology, psychology, parapsyhology, pair-a-pants, alternative healing arts of the Rosicruscians, Scientology, St. Germain, Francis Bacon, the Mighty "I AM Presence"......I studied this for years and years devotedly lived with it night and day, camping out in Big Sur, doing mind-body transformational practices, levitation, casting spells and praying even to god (LOL!)...that was the stupidist thing I did, but I thought I'd mention it just to show you that even my humanity was defective....

I did all this work deligently just to get a leg up on overcoming the vicisous trend towards the steady psychological and physiological decline of Western medicine's crippling, invasive, surgery-obsessive, drugs-infested, body-invasive terrorism filled with horrific procedures from the blacker than dark ages, from those abnormal physical abusive, physical intrusive "treatments" even with leeches feeding on blood; 90% of them feed off decomposing bodies and open wounds of amphibians, reptiles, waterfowl, fish, and mammals including humans. A leech attaches itself when it bites, and it'll stay attached until it has had its fill of blood. Due to an anticoagulant that leeches secrete, bites may bleed more than a normal wound after the leech is removed. The effect of the anticoagulant will wear off several hours after the leech is removed and the wound is cleaned.

Leeches carry parasites in their digestive tract which can't survive in humans. However, bacteria, viruses, and parasites from previous blood sources can survive within a leech for months, and may be retransmitted to humans. These hospital techniques are deadly antibotic industry-strength one-stop-shopping killer plans for life-long committment to your ultimate death and destruction (death would be a blessing, but it wouldnt make the medicine industry any money, so it's in there sadistic interest to keep us alive..... if you can call that living..... for as long as possible, while they make opportunities available for several sizeable installments as a down payment on a permanent resperator so we go on living)

Want to read a stupid question I though of in my hospital isolation room? "Why did this happen to me!?" Like there had to be some idiot-defined unintelligent plan for torturing humanity. But there is NO WHY to why did I get sick from a totally healthy man to a sick man.

There's NO WHY to anything, and yet I'd like to have a WHY, as if that WHY would somehow make the disease go away and return to the way it was before when Niki and I played outside and worked in a garden and planted food and ate it took long walks and hiked into the Tenesse backwoods roads and streams and laughed 24 hours a day! But NO WHY to why not anymore! How stupid of me to think that if I only knew a "WHY" this or that happened, or WHY such and such a thing happened to this one or that one or the other one, or the one who'll get sick tomorrow but he's healthy today, like if there was a WHY to a reason, a plan before all this, like if there was a purpose, or a reason, or a righteous mandate ....whatever, from whomever.......but there's nothing but silence. That silence is the ABSURDITY. And the end of absurdity is the end of that silence. When that silence ends, absurdity will end and it'll take little Jesus and the little Jews and the little Muslims and all the little fakers and shut them up.

I think about THE WHY and I usually think and stink of zen in terms of god, some universal fuckhead no-brainer karmic piece of shitface mind sucking pigpuke, like there's got to be a big "WHY", bigger and greater than all humanity, where the sum of the whole is worth more than the parts...like some energy force so great and powerful like the mighty Oz behind the purgatory curtain of purification where vacant empty souls of the passing dead are made ready for heaven: they have to get dressed and showered and shave and brush their teeth and wait in line for their names to be called for dinner at a chinese cafe. When they finally get their table, they vomit over the freshly painted open-toed shoes of the pretty little short-skirted flirty closed-minded blind-dog hostess. This reward-punishment idea of purgatory has its ancient roots in early Christian mythology. The original conception of purgatory as a geographically situated place between here and there is the achievement of medieval Christian piety, superstititon, mythology, S&M, BDSM techniques and a fatally flawed imagination of guilt and murder.

Simply not knowing "WHY" as to why anything and everything is such an irrelevant WHY NOT, to something not so relevant at all. It has no significance or value, or purpose, or lesson, or solving problem formula, or hope, or justice, or fairness, or intelligence. Life has no lessons. There is no growth. No evolution. No progress. No advancement.

As hard as it is to tell, I'm past being angry. I'm past being mad. I'm past looking for THE WHY to something or other. It's not an addition or an inclusion or a solution to a problem or a question or a conversation that ever seems to comfort me or anyone else if they were honest about it; and who ever is? THE WHY is the greatest ABSURDITY there is. Somethings just ARE. Something just IS.

I got sick. Period. NOT because of any "WHY". One day, my blood platellets dropped just because they dropped for no fucking rhyme nor reason. And not because of a WHY. It just is. It just did. Now the question might be, "What do I do about it"? How do I deal with it, or do I deal with it. Is this a card came and I've got to play the hand I'm dealt or can I cash all the cards back in and pick up five more easy pieces? There isnt a WHY to why everything turned out the way it did. It just did. Why did my friend Dennis drive his car off a cliff in Dana Point California and kill himself this month?

Now that I've fully examined this issue, I can offically tell my readers that, "SINCE THE POPULATION OF THE WORLD HAS INCREASED, THERE IS NOW ONLY 15 SECONDS OF FAME SET ASIDE FOR EACH PERSON LIVING. They no longer have 15 minutes." That should give some comfort.

"Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?" American Homeless Part 2

2009-05-12T08:27:00.000-07:00

They used to tell me I was building a dream, and so I followed the mob,
When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear, I was always there right on the job. (Untitled)
They used to tell me I was building a dream, with peace and glory ahead,
Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread? (Reaching)

Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad; now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick, and rivet, and lime;
Once I built a tower, now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?"

With all the talk about recession and depression these days, since it's the biggest issue facing the world, I thought I'd share the lyrics to this 1931 hit song, Brother, Can You Spare a Dime," lyrics by Yip Harburg, music by Jay Gorney. It's ironic that the one great social equalizer turns out to be economics: instead of measuring prosperity by how much we have, we measure it by how little we've lost; instead of thinking in terms of who's gained the most, we start thinking in terms of who's lost the least. (Religion As a Crutch)

(Birdman of Haight Street) I once wrote a poem in which I envisioned a future where there would be a group of people who had more scarcity and hardship than they had earned, like as if poverty and homelessness had some value. The solution was to equalize everyone and what they had (or what they didnt have) was divided up among all the others who didnt have quite so little, so each would have an equal share of scarcity, hardship and depression. This way, no single group of people would have to enjoy the value of the burden all by themselves. (On the Street Where You Live)

(Help) That reminds me of a verse in the bible. "For to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away." (Mt. 25:29). So, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer......but the question is, when the RICH get poorer, and that's what we're beginning to see now -- the rich are losing money, going bankrupt, filing for "bailouts", cashing in, selling off, laying off, closing up shop...... So please tell me: When the rich go poor, where do we go? (Anger and Contempt)

Here's an interesting article from the Huffington Post When the rich get poor, the poor disappear

PS. Oh, by the way........i found that section of the poem I was referring to above so let me share it now. I wrote, "there was too much grief &sorrow down town hoarded in one place &there wasnt enough to go around scarcity was everywhere. so if someone had more unhappiness than they earned a portion of it was taken away &given to somebody else who had less."(Bye Bye Blackbird)

The Connectedness of All Things

2009-05-12T08:26:00.000-07:00

(Charles Unger) I asked myself what connected all these random, seemingly unrelated images? (The View) What, if anything, was the common denominator between them? What do they all have in common? (The Other View) For that matter, what do any of my photos, or yours, or anybody's photos have in common with each other, with anything, or anybody? (The Couple) What is the connectedness of all things? What is the unified theory that holds it all together? And then it hit me. (The Dragon) The answer is, ME. Or YOU. (The Girl) What my photos have in common with each other, or how they are connected is ME. (The Painter) It's MY point of view. (The Tables) MY emotion. (The People) MY experience of a painter, or a girl, or a lonely beach, or a homeless man, or a telephone in a window......it doesnt matter. I AM the connectedness of all things. I AM what holds it all together. AND you. AND all the rest. (The Memory)