AWAKENING FROM A DREAM, ALREADY BEING FORGOTTEN, WITH ONLY A FEW CLUES LEFT LIKE THE CRUMBS IN THE MINOTAUR'S LABYRINTH.......

On a tear, earlier, I wrote a long chain-of-consciousness poem.....with photos to illustrate whatever it was that "was" emerging from that cluster of cells that stores the diagrams, abbreviated for later disentanglement in interpretation......then, awakening from a lucid dream.....remember those dreams in 'school', when one dreams that one is going to class, taking notes during a lecture....even taking an exam.....only to awaken, having missed the "real" event about which one had been 'dreaming'?......with a fully realized screenplay with storyboard......left behind....in the dream.....This image remains.....one from my labyrinth of photos......that was to illustrate the metaphor that was the now totally forgotten dream.......more ambiguous without the context of the 'dreaming' and the unconscious structuring that never emerged........So....I'm certain that this will emerge, suddenly and without anticipation.....like.....when I'm being instructed by my accountant..to gather 'paperwork' and documentation that I have little interest in.........Oh, there it is........the now full-blown concept Art......as the accountant, blabbering on the speakerphone, implores...."Are you there, Reed?''.....Hello.....Hello!".............. "Oh", I reply......"I was looking for something....What was that again?".......

IN BED FOR MOST OF THE PAST FEW DAYS, I WAS NOT IN THE 'MOOD' FOR WEARING THIS 'X-MAS GETUP'......NOW, CONSIGNED TO THE OLD DRESS FORM FOR SOME SANTA REDNESS..........

HIDING IN THE SHADOWS AFTER SEEING THE PINK LINE ON THE COVID TEST STRIP.........

I had to don a pair of reading glasses to detect the very faint pink line.......just photoshopping into a desaturated 'art photo' doesn't change the Facts Of Life, however.....So.....back to the mattress and comforter.......grateful to have replaced the 40-year old "Spinks", that I've slept on since 1981, with a fabulously comfortable new one, recently.......

X-MAS @ SONYA NICKEL ARMSTRONG SCOTT'S.....34 YEARS AGO!

 Steven and Sonya....and, perhaps, our 'server'...whose name I've forgotten.....who was sent over by our Caterer, George E. Ashmore...........and George Ashmore, our Chef.......are dead now........That 'leaves' Me, Branton, Steven & Maria's son, then, my Godson....in my lap...and Maria, now Steven's widow.....who are 'not speaking' with me.........{a photo of the 'sometimes sad dynamics of Change and Dissolution'}    

PLAY "JESUS"....IT ONLY TAKES SOME STRAW, SOME FIGURINES AND AN 'EASTERN STAR' TREE ORNAMENT TO GET STARTED.......

a perfect seasonal game....play "Jesus' ......walk on water, heal the sick, have ex-hookers and 12 hot guys follow you around.......take donkey rides, feed hundreds on a quarter.....make champagne from toilet water......then get arrested, jailed, flogged and hung out to dry.......compete with your friends to be the 'best' Jesus.......This all begins with Christmas, so get going....

THE 'BATMOBILE'

I was just waxing some nostalgia about my old Cadillac [that I traded for a new lime-green Saab 99, which I never drove, and gave away to a total stranger, a homeless heroin addict that declared that his life was only the result of not having a car....Yeah! Sure!].........The "Batmobile" got only 6mpg with premium fuel......I was penny wise and pound foolish.....c'est la vie...

A SAD MEMORY THAT EMERGED IN A DREAM LAST NIGHT.........

photo that I took, of Katrina Motiska and Tim Brogan............Katrina was later strangled by an unknown killer and her body dumped into the lake at Friendship Park.....Tim died from complications of AIDS........c. 1970's

as the connective tissues beneath epidermal layering disappear, the surface of the past is revealed.......and, beneath this surface....the core of our lives......pulsing, blue.......contained by an increasingly delicate, thin membrane......

FLITTERING MOMENTS MIDST THE 'FACTS' OF LIFE

The 'News' has always been 'BAD'...with inane cartoon interludes..the 'comic strips'......And Winter has done in the last of the butterflies.....flittering moments of hopefulness....Jeweled butterflies are some relatively lasting, momentary compensation in this rigorous emotional cycling......And, I reckon, idiotic sit-coms have been/will be a perpetual source of illusional cognitive processing in dead-end developmental displacements, for which a new Orwellian neologism is ever being devised........first, the Fear......next, the 'potential' Reward for sustaining Anxiety; then, as always, the suggestion of 'a better day.....tomorrow'........d.s. al coda ........

FOCUSING FROM FUSTICATION

when overwhelmed by loud noises or several people talking at once.....I discovered, long ago, that the best thing for me to do...is re-focus...replacing the stimuli to one sense to that of another.......especially on nearby sharply defined objects, which seems to muffle the edges of my diminishing constraints. Yellow, with green, is especially effective....... I think this is one reason that I became a photographer.....to re-focus on still, visual stimuli rather than endure cacophony.....

ON REMEMBERING EX=ATLANTAN ARTIST, LENDON SADLER, SADLY.....

 After moving to Atlanta, and quickly discovering the 'STRIP'.....one thing led to another.....to the ambiguous, gender non-specificity of the 14th St. Demi-monde of hedonistically narcissistic underground performance artists, drifting in the clouds of pot smoke and hallucinogenic conceptual art and film-making.....Mother David's weird spawn of luminous creatures spread across the country to foster self-discovery and immerse themselves in even stranger, Big City climes......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL1OfzJCL18

GIA ADVENTURE IN LONDON

 Hobnobbing at Goldsmith's Hall, Oct, 1981......at the 50 Years of Gemmology, Golden Jubilee.....Meeting all the then famous gemologists, Richard Liddicott, head of GIA, Robert Crowningshield and Dr. Eduard Gubelin, the 'father' of modern gemology...with my friend Jeannie Litchfield......At a dinner party, afterwards, at Lloyds of London....I was treated to 'see'...not touch!.....the deBeers collection of rare colored diamonds......one thing leading to another, I met the Lady Mary Grosvenor, who took me to her bank vault and handed me a box of jewelry worn by her ancestors, instructing me to 'take them to Atlanta and sell them.....whispering, a bit drunk, "I can't sell them in London because my friends will think I 'need money'!" This was the 'lift off' for my career at that time...

I DIDN'T GIVE A FIG THEN, AND DON'T NOW........'Be who you want to be, do what you want to do.....before 'Reality' stamps out YOU'.... (The Sopwith Camel...1967...Kama Sutra Records)

Another 'ad'.....for a Circus 'side show'......locals lined up to see the 'Freaks'.......i thought...at 12....hmmm......'aren't we all a bit of each sex?'......then headed to Dunnavant's Dept. Store, downtown, and bought a pink shirt and a pink and black bow-tie, a pair of suede shoes with inlaid dice, bleached my hair and put on a pair of pink shorts under my not-then-stylish corduroy jumpsuit.......feeling just fine with that! Gender role-playing seemed, even then.....sort of arbitrary and institutionalized.........there are animals, and plants that even change their 'sex' to accommodate environmental or social conditions......big deal! i've always felt most comfortable around those that exist in the Demi-monde.....the world of Art and Literature......Vita Sackville-West and Quentin Crisp are my spirit animals, after all.........

STUFF CARVED ON PALEOLITHIC CAVE WALLS.....STILL 'CARVED' INTO DNA, THEN REINFORCED BY RELIGIOUS CUSTOM,......

When perplexed by the goings on of the World......my thinking reverts to more philosophical, theoretical thinking, which allays my anxiety about how incredibly stupid it all appears to be......

"NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES IT IS DIVIDED, THE UNIVERSE IS STILL INFINITE, FOR EVEN WHEN LEFT WITH TWO PARTICLES, THE DISTANCE BETWEEN THEM SEEMS TO STILL BE INFINITE, RELATIVE TO POINT OF VIEW, WHICH IS ALWAYS OUTSIDE THE INSIDE......" Veristes

Everyone 'sees' it all from his own limiting consciousness....and believes that the view though his own prejudices is, somehow, some absolute Reality.......Fashionable thinking is just a miniskirt that will, in the blink of the Cosmos, be as embarrassingly out of style as the once accepted belief that the world is a flat plane at the center of the Universe......or the pop song that was once thought to certainly become a classic.....to be revered for generations to come......but is now forgotten, except by those whose never left the context of that Time.... Religions are but frozen concepts, best left in the dark caverns from which they emerged, with the glowworms that inspired the primitive brains that that spoke to those who could be both placated and controlled by the nonsensical dogmas that postured as the Reality of a few words.....the interpretation of the then unknowable.......Slice it, dice it, then kick around the pieces, like the stones of Babble.....each, subsequently picking up his grain of sand from the rubble, thinking it must reveal the Grand Enigma or be a clue to some plan for Eternity......when, in actuality, it is but a fragment from which little can be extrapolated by even the most reverential observations, of the relative vastness that it was once a part of.......When one considers the possibility that from something even smaller than this grain, whole constellations of galaxies evolved.......Well, all this seems presumptuously inane and simplistic......

THE DETRITUS OF EXPECTATIONS

  10 years ago, I posted some words about letting go of non-mutually-beneficial relationships.....Not so easy, as people..myself included... tend to perpetuate predictably co-dependent scenarios.....Yesterday i made a few difficult decisions and unfriended some "friends" that, over years to decades,increasingly offered practically nothing and that i had become indifferent toward or that had defined the parameters of 'relationships' by limits, restraints, apathetic indifference or inexpressiveness.......What's the point? Many of my friends from youth are dead....I don't want zombies to replace them........communicative vitality...well...yes!

THE CRITIC........WITH A LOADED 'GUN' OF WORDS..........

'Shooting himself in his foot' before his Tantalean uphill climb..... still following the assumption that 'goals' are 'up there, somewhere'...... relic logic from generations of ideational apraxial thinking..... when, actually, the 'goal' is within thinking, more than the external manifestation of preconceptions, shared with billions that act on their prejudices and concrete constructs, unaware that these are the limiting formulae for their 'original' thinking...... thus, resigning them to being critics rather than artists......

AKA......"VERISTES"....... Nom De Plume for this writer.....Reed.....who actually does all the thinking...and writing....and Art... for him.........

Veristes is just a facet of an intricate equation.......naked in Thought alone......

.......Yet, there are those that have isolated it as a singular manifestation....and choose to love or do war with it! I am both flattered and annoyed.....z(n+1) = z(n)^2 + c wherein

"c" is x+iy, corresponding to any point on the (x,y) coordinate plane and the result of one calculation of the fractal equation, as this becomes the z input to the next calculation, ad infinitum, ad naseum ad exhaustion....This format for viewing Mind, expressed in the co-ordinates of imagined mindscape can be highly unsportsmanlike and makes the development of significant relationships a struggle of wit and imagination......as the constructs of thinking fold back into the darkness of unexplored territory......bringing light, or awareness, to tissues, newly awakened to consciousness.....it is inevitable that the reptile brain will be in the spotlight and forced, by coercion, to waggle it's tail, thusly twitting the dunes of the time-space continuum.....the sleeper must awaken!

A BIT OF A MOOD INDIGO TODAY, HAVING HEARD OF MY OLD FRIEND, BEN SMITH'S DEATH THIS MORNING

 in my 1967 Commodore Yearbook....,a Impact Symposium Program, from a highly political Gathering at The Memorial Gymnasium,,,,on my birthday, no less! This day still lingers in my Consciousness over 50 years afterwards,.......Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, Strom Thurmond and Allen Ginsberg.......by the next morning, i had experienced a huge shift in my thinking, got drunk with Stokeley Carmichael, smoked weed with Allen Ginsberg and 'slept' with my housemate after breaking up with my girlfriend, Barbara Stein, only hours before...A week later, i awakened at Vanderbilt Univ. Hospital from an overdose of sleeping pills...then, ..a month later, i sold my gold watch, bought a ticket for Proud Clarion "to win" the Kentucky Derby....which he did!.....and, inspired by Allen's poem about 'sooty penises', left Nashville to live in an Airstream trailer...in Warner Robbins, Georgia.....where i wrote a book, put it in a box, and mailed it to my 'lover' who had escaped Vanderbilt, also, and had landed in Washington State......Later, the Book was returned to me, via Parcel Post, and became the first of my many 'book burnings'.....A sheet of yellowing pulp paper brought this all into focus.......Hmm.....rather than worship this Nostalgia.....i'm going to burn the Program in my driveway.....Yes! Perhaps this prevents 'Living in the Past', even though it WAS the year of The Velvet Underground and Nico, The Electric Prunes, The Jimi Hendrix Exprience, Surrealistic Pillow and The Doors......Then, suddenly, i was almost 24 and the page turned.....i drove my car off a cliff and moved to Atlanta......with only a camera, a typewriter, some notebooks and some thrift store bellbottoms, fringed leather boots and a couple of psychedelic t-shirts....turn the page....new chapter.......

Five years back, my word(s) of the day.....to ponder.......Dilemma, Assuagement and Oblique Palliation.........in the context of being perpetually presented with contradictory inputs that require ethical or moral judgment calls, while simultaneously avoiding the pitfall of mitigating my and others' feelings in the struggle to maintain congenial, open correspondence while being characteristically direct and to the point, even when I realize that I am merely extrapolating from creative equations that have no purpose other than the intrigues of mindful coincidence and creative waterfalling.........Watching the rather profound episode of GOTHAM....."Follow the White Rabbit", after re-reading the Lewis Carroll books and, obliquely, re-watching the film, "WHAT THE BLEEP"....and really relating to James Gordon's frustration and disempowerment by the irrational insanity of The Mad Hatter......noting the parallel of my trying to make sense of the expressions of those in more intimate correspondence with the "me' that resides outside intellectual thinking or artistic contrivances......I was left totally perplexed, as my mind attempted its usual pattern recognitions by assembling new constructs from not quite random juxtapositions......Sometimes, I think I am the Creature, floating on the ice flow; and other times, i envision all of humanity...floating, with pretentious directivity, into caverns and lakes of their individual imaginings, to create Structure from Chaos.......a process, which is itself just compliance with the way our brains have evolved in social contexts....to make this disarray pass for Reality.......

HALLOWEEN, BUT NO PLASTIC PUMPKINS, PLEASE....

like any other evening.....Halloween may have a couple of pumpkin candles....not in the windows......but, otherwise.....just like any other day.......watch out, pre-diabetic 5-year olds in polyester store-bought costumes......I've made white asparagus witch's fingers, dipped in thickened beet-blood.....the mini-snickers and sugary treat-bags are 'down the street' at that house with a giant plastic balloon ghost, hooked up to a vacuum cleaner.......over by the one covered with "sprayed on" spider webs.........get out of that tree, miss Havisham, and pull the shades down, there's a pack of little masked kindergarteners, leashed to Bo Peep, begging for high fructose treats......hide the Valrhona!

IT'S BEEN ALMOST 8 YEARS SINCE I VISITED LES RECONTRES.....MY CABIN IN NORTH GEORGIA........SIGH!

 

JOHN H.

I 'lifted' a post of an old, faded 1975 kodacolor photo of John Herrmann and 'revitalized' it in Photoshop.......I remember our first meeting, as he descended the stairs after his bath at a friend's house........the next day he was climbing the 3 flights of stairs to my apartment...and voila! we became friends.....as John was 'finding' himself, we played as children play, in places where children are told not to go......But when you finally 'get' there, the same people are so proud of who you always were to begin with! Here, an inward, searching John, bravely determined to find what he's not sure will be...but, he has a pretty good idea....oh, yes......

 My last photo of My Maternal Grandfather, R.W., around X-mas, 1982.......Wearing a hospital nightgown, he decided to walk out of Huntsville Hospital, after being diagnosed with heart disease and terminal, metastatic prostate cancer.......on his 'walk' home, he was struck by a vehicle while rescuing a plastic ball that was being 'played with' in the street by some young boys.....and was returned to the hospital, having suffered some serious injuries.....which ended his life, shortly thereafter.......He was both my first piano teacher and the 'one' who encouraged my poesy via his circumferential story-telling that allowed 'the listener' to decide what his 'story', that evolved at his whim, was really 'about'......R.W. once built a mop factory from old ammunition crates and Industrial Revolution iron machines that he purchased from salvage yards, after he quit his job as superintendent of Ragland Cotton Mills....because he didn't approve of the Child Labor Laws...what little existed of them at that time....or the early 20th Century's Dickensonian workhouses that many young children labored within.......

 thinking of those 'jobs' that I've had reading palms, handwriting, tarot cards, head bumps...and on and on.....even my participation in the Kirlian Experiment.......I remember, fondly, with some amused smile, Bruce and Clarice who, with a grain or two of salt, took their metaphysicality 'seriously'.....as was the 'Fashion of the Times' in the early 1970's........Ironically, some thought me "serious", when I was only trying to be 'amusing'.....

WHO'S NOT REALLY "CONNECTED" .......Yeah, you guessed it!

Great Aunt Glenn, painter/taxidermist; cousin Robert Earl Hollingsworth, general jerk, mechanical-minded Creole Cooking Chef; Me, awkward loner, and before my Dumbo ears, mysteriously, 'moved toward my face'; step-brother, accounting-minded Tommy;   and 'little cousin" Rita Mearl Teal, 'white-sweatered', before her later career as a Merle Norman Rep and her brainwashing, via "Presbyterian/Mormon", Aunt Frances, at Bob Jones University.......  posed, for yet another 'Family Photo' by my Enigmatic Mother, always 'camera in hand', hidden behind an Argus C-3's  rangefinder.....1950-something......    I have the pearls that Aunt Glenn is wearing in this photo......the Rest is an evanescent memory....I was 'instructed' to take off the shirt, with flying bats, and don a 'decent white shirt', before 'posing'.....like a member of The Family, although I shared only some ancient Homo Erectus  genes with 'the Others'.......

 

POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER SEEKS ITS CAUSES

Photo, taken at Backstage, 151 Powell St., San Francisco....Aug. 8, 1945.......Of My Uncle John Savage and 'Friend', returning from their participation in the firebombing of Tokyo......in which, 100,000 Japanese civilians were incinerated by thousands of tons of incendiary bombs, hailed from American B-29's....just months before......The PTSD that resulted, after some 'thinking' about what had happened, finally 'got to' Uncle John, who became a hopeless alcoholic...dying young and disillusioned.....Upon their return 'from the War', as Gov't contracts with Redstone Arsenal were cancelled, whisky rations were doubled...... to permit two quarts per month in Huntsville, Alabama, for the newly unemployed and soldiers, now unemployable, due to emotional problems that resulted from their participation in The War......after which......the sales of shotgun shells and other 'ammo' doubled.........as people 'readied' themselves for the 'next war'....soon to come, in Korea.......

LESS IS MORE

 simple pleasures of youth in 1950's Alabama......cousins Charlene and Larry, struggling to get into a simple tree swing.....the 'back yard' had a badminton court, of sorts; a horseshoe tossing strip, a croquet area, a 150 foot 'gardening strip'; a couple of tree swings and a ladder to the branches...to climb around on; a couple of galvanized tubs of water to 'play' in; pet dogs, cats, and a rooster and chicken that I purchased before Easter @ Kress' or Woolworths for a quarter each; ......but no other paraphernalia other than our imaginations to keep us entertained........Then....came TELEVISION.....marketing just about everything one could 'want'....as it is now! We're living in a material world more than one of imagination.......

THE ROGUE...IN VOGUE .....DACRON POLYESTER BEGINS TO COVER THE WORLD LIKE SHERWIN-WILLIAMS PAINTS.....SUPPLANTING NYLON.....NIK NIK BEGINS ITS RULE OF GAY URBAN SOPHISTICATES', OUT OF THEIR CLOSETS AND INTO EVERYDAY LIFE, OUTSIDE THE OLD PARAMETERS OF HETERO-NORMALCY.....

"space age" synthetic materials,such as retro-Lurex, inundate the men's clothing market in the late 1960's and oil-based polyesters 'snag' the attention of Gay America....alas.....I lived a couple of blocks from "The Rogue", that touted this ultra tacky fashion trend.....a 'fashion police' friend, who worked there, teased me for dressing 'so Saks 5th Ave' and for wearing 'old', 'used' clothes....like 1940's styles that came from thrifts and Goodwill stores.........I'm still laughing!

BUT, ISN"T LIFE A HOLIDAY? WELL, A 'PICNIC', AT LEAST!

Constance: Well, you did say "Dress for Dinner", Furtwreingler!

Furtwreingler: Well, I DID say "A picnic in the woods,

Constance"......No matter.....you brought a beautiful red picnic cape/tablecloth! I was remembering a picnic that was hosted by Marjorie Oberne, Barbara Kay and a friend of theirs, whose name I've now forgotten........the three 'older, more formal 'Older' women and Barbara's son, Rick and some of his friends.......We.....the 'young friends'.... had to lug these huge picnic baskets, candlesticks, linens and covered silver bowls up a mountain side and set up a Buckingham Palace worthy picnic on the grass.........Now that I'm a few decades older....like 5......I'm not very excited about pizza in a cardboard box or burgers in a bag, either......Please....no paper napkins!

PIECING TOGETHER ALABAMA FAMILY HISTORY FROM BITS IN BOXES, ON HANGERS, AMBROTYPES, TINTYPES AND DAGUERROTYPES .......

old tintype.....after much 'cleanup'.....some Civil War Era teens, posing with cigars........Oh, my....that's an earlier version of 'me' .....actually, some now forgotten ancestor, anyway....on the right, wearing a brooch and cap, as I do now....I have the jacket, worn by the lad on the left, in my 'costume' collection......a few small moth holes in the wool, but...still... wearable, over a century and a half later.......and, ironically, someone tossed a little cigar from a car window, just this morning....just like the little Tiparello cigars, made in Dothan, Alabama, that these naughty boys are smoking....

EVENTUALITY & HINDSIGHT ........THE ILLEGITIMATE OFFSPRING OF PRODIGIOUS YOUTHFULNESS' CURELESS CONUNDRUM

 the aftereffects of childhood and early adult injuries manifest in aging body components......When 10, I was thrown from a speeding bike, falling on my head and rushed to the emergency room, with a gash in my skull's integument and a concussion that led to many years of migraine headaches, exacerbated by the  oncoming hormone rushes of adolescence... At 21, and again in my late twenties, I was gas-poisoned by Natural gas leakages......Now, half a century later, a complex array of 'symptoms' has arisen, and been largely neglected by me....more avoidance than denial......So....enter some more current 'Medical Science'.....to discover that both the 'ringing' in my ears, due to youthful concert-going to Frank Zappa and, even, Black Sabbath 'Shows'......and my current vertigo and nausea.......are due to structural changes in my 'inner ears'......The persistent tinnitus is the after math of aural subjugation by loud music having destroyed cilia and damaged other components that translate sound into electrical signals that are sent to the brain for further processing;  the Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo is due to the degeneration of the vestibular system in the inner ear due to aging.......So......Doctors' Orders......no climbing on ladders, rushing up/down stairs, standing on chairs to hang pictures or retrieve pots and pans from overhead shelving.....no sharp turns or back-seat sitting in vehicles......no bicycling.....forget about sports, more arduous than miniature golf or croquet..........  'Aging' is not for the Young, but, counter to any TV ads for Eternal Youth Drugs, the aftermath of Youth.....

NO GODS OR DEVILS, BUT FOR THE ART OF IT ALL

I've heard or read a couple of dozen requests for prayers in the last 24 hours.......I don't "do" prayers, folks!.........I don't believe in spirits, God, gods, angels, demons or devils....reincarnation or other manifestations of afterlives...well....ANY of that!.......{however, I do like the whacko religious imagery..... in Art...that is}

Going though notes and letters written to and from my Mother, long before I was born....This note is particularly amusing....considering how tight lipped she was..... I must have inherited my loquaciousness from other genes.....

 I saw pics of Lotte van Reil and Alexis Lamoureux's renovation of the one "one buck' cave that they transformed into Chez Hélène-Amboise Troglodyte.......I've thought about similar projects since my teens, but never went as extreme as they........I still wish I had been involved in the Coober Pety underground developments, but Australia seemed so far away and it was a challenge to go such a distance into a World of unexpectations....I settled for remodelling a house in Midtown and a Condo at The Desoto, on 7th St.....Now, I'm set in my labyrinthine dwelling, but am fortunate enough to still have the option of vacationing at the cabin, Les Recontres Naturelle, in N. Ga.......My advice to the young? 20-30 is the Time, my friends.....the time to experiment with your Life.......Go for it! "Non, je ne regrette rien" is a better memory than "J'ai perdu ma vie"......Just don't linger around the deep well of unrealistic expectations......

 another de-saturated day, of simplification of process thinking......I watched an episode....well, sort of, since it was so like a hundred other similarly-formatted reality 'talent' contests.....of Master Of Photography.......Even though the Program, itself, was a line up of appealingly on-trend, if governed by the ever-increasing 'rules' of 'how it's done'..images.....'correctly' within the 'dictates' of 'photographic' aesthetics......oh, pleeze!!......I didn't take my 'hat' off, of course......I thought of the praises and criticisms of Art, in its multifarious forms, throughout 'critical assessment' history.....laughed, not without a mental syringe of borderline contemptuousness, or compliance with any subliminal direction or suggestive musical soundtrack.....I thought Isabella Rossellini would be "there" for all that artsy-fartsy 'stuff'....That's really why I went there, after all.....

\

 “Yet the very society from which the individual is inseparable is using its whole irresistible force to persuade the individual that he is indeed separate! Society as we now know it is therefore playing a game with self contradictory rules. Just because we do not exist apart from the community, the community is able to convince us that we do--that each one of us is an independent source of action with a mind of its own. The more successfully the community implants this feeling, the more trouble it has in getting the individual to cooperate, with the result that children raised in such an environment are almost permanently confused.”

~Alan Watts in “The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are"

Rufus Wroden Gattis

this may have been the last photo of my maternal grandfather, Rufus Wroden....R.W........from a 16mm Minox spy camera negative.....soon after, he was taken to a hospital, diagnosed with prostate cancer.....in his nineties....When he was told that he was too old to go through 'therapy', he left the hospital....still in his hospital 'gown', and began to walk home.....to climb a ladder and paint some window trim that had been 'put off' for decades.....On his 'way' home from the hospital, he entered a trafficy road to rescue a young child that had run into the road to retrieve a rolling rubber ball.....and was bumped by a halting vehicle....breaking his hip....so.....back to the hospital...this time in an ambulance....where he contracted septicemia and died........'R.W." had been my single most influential person, philosophically.....and would endure my persistent questions, answering them with acerbic and hilarious quips and labyrinthine, circuitously didactic tales from his long Lifetime of experience in his Mind......When asked "Why do birds fly?", he replied.....'Well, they're smarter than people, aren't they?" or "Why do plants have flowers?"........."Well, the same reason people have babies...

KATRINA MOTISKA......C. 1970......SHORTLY BEFORE HER DESCENT AND DESTRUCTION.........

 

ENTRANCE/EXIT TO A 'GAY BAR'........C. 1961

 

HILL AND BILL

 Irony? I met Bill Mello (left), shortly after moving to Atlanta.....He had attended college at U, North Carolina, where he met Hillel Irving (right)....they dropped out of school during or shortly after their freshman years.....Bill had 'visions' of becoming a clothing designer/model....whatever; Hill, envisioned himself as an animated film maker.......I lived with Bill and my friend Johnny Lowe, from Vanderbilt.....not meeting Hill, for they had destroyed what was 'left' of their eariler relationship, shortly after moving to Atlanta....and wanted to have nothing to do with one another.....I met Hill, while I was living with Bill...only because Hill would bring his 'partner', Maria, to visit Bill...and then..Bill and I, while Hill remained in his car...motor running....waiting for Maria to 'leave'.....This was sooooo neurotic! A year or so later, Bill and I locked horns over a dozen 'things'....and he moved to NYC.....later, after Maria ejected Hill from their 'home' in Adairsville, Ga......he, too, moved to NYC and, discontinuing his 'FILM' career, he because a Master Cake Maker....(long story, abbreviated)....Then, visiting mutual friends in New York, Hill and I finally became good friends.....since we had much in common.....cooking, interest in Film History and photography, and...of course....cooking and eating aesthetically presented creative and unique Foods.....This photo was taken before I met either of them.....photographer, unknown.... It is the only photo that I've seen ....of them.....together...,sorta! Now....only 10,000 more 'old photos and negatives' to 'go through' and 'clean up'......

THE CURSE/REWARD OF THE 'HIGH INSTEP'.....

just a few thousand old photos to organize and "nostalgiacize" about........ I gave to charity Mother's huge collections of shoes......She, like Aunt Frances, preferred Farragamos because he manufactured them in 7 1/2 quad, with high insteps, which was very rare then......I have the same "problem".....narrow heels and ultra-high arches......so spend most of my time in bare feet or plastic flip flops or slide-in sandals.....

LIFE ON 'EARL STREET'....1952

THE NEIGHBORHOOD KIDS PLAYED 'JOAN OF ARC', "playing like" WE WERE BURNING JOAN ON A CROSS....THAT WAS, ACTUALLY, A 'T'-SHAPED CLOTHES WIRE........IN FRANCE, KIDS WERE UP TO EVEN MORE SINISTRATED ROLE-PLAYING ACTIVITIES......WHO WANTS TO 'be' LOUIS?   

WHAT DEFINES 'GREY'/'GRAY'?

 HUMANS, CONGREGATING, WITH COLLUSIVE, DELUSIONAL CONCEPTUALIACTIONS ABOUT BEING 'DIFFERENT', 'UNIQUE' OR 'ARTISTIC' ....ALWAYS LEADS TO THE PLAINES OF MEDIOCRITY.......

FOOTSIE

 

Watching a bonobo or a chimpanzee drawing with its feet, or armless, legless humans, drawing, painting or sculpting with their mouths......Looking at my relatively useless toes, but for balancing, only good for 'standing or modeling thong sandals......I thought of how much fun it could be.....to use all four appendages ....to run up trees, play on jungle gyms or, simultaneously, write or draw four things at once......

A CAPTURED NAZI SUBMARINE, PARADED AS A SOUVENIR .......AROUND "THE SQUARE" OF HUNTSVILLE ALABAMA.......I'VE DIGITALLY RESTORED THE TWO PHOTOGRAPHS THAT 'MAKE' A PANORAMIC OF THE OCCASION......MY MATERNAL GRANDFATHER IS 'SOMEWHERE' WITHIN THIS PHOTOGRAPH........

the 'night lights'.....then, an experiment, to go....blindfolded....about the house...to test both memory and awareness......I think this is a response to having watched "Pain And Glory" earlier this evening.... Navigating the Past re-directs the Present and creates more alternative Futures.......

I dreamt, last night, that I was in an incense-smoke filled room....filled with 'burners' with bronze dragons atop them....From childhood 'fairy tails' about fire-breathing dragons, I suppose, these images inundated my dreamscape....Awakening, I left my bed, half-sleeping, and decided to floss my teeth to remove a chunk of black walnut that was wedged in the open space, between a pair of back molars, awaiting a dental implant, and ventured by the light of the moon through a window, falling over a rolled-up oriental rug, stumbling into the harpsichord, from which fell a heavy Chinese censer with a dragon atop its lid.....some kind of synchronicity, happenstance and coincidence conjured abstract considerations of Cosmic forces at play with my imagination....then, turning a lamp 'on'....the room was just a room, with blue, powered incense spilling onto the sound board.....Sneezing from having inhaled some of the blue crystalline powder, I glanced at the carved stone fire-breathing dragon dagger, mounted above a bathroom door, thinking....."i wonder what others, that ...as children....who were read Cinderella and The Prince and The Pauper as they drifted into slumber, their arms wrapped around a big, pink stuffed bear.....dream about" 

Perhaps, I should toss some of these old 'portrait' photographs.......they make it a bit depressive to look 'in the mirror', now~

 

Before I read The Foxes.....Before My Aunt Louise's Confession......Before I knew of Anything, other than '1950's Normalcy'.......

 

Perhaps.....because it is Gay Pride Month......I dreamt, last night, of my tap and ballroom instructor, Miss Irene Jones.....and her long-time 'lady friend', Miss Alta Trotman, with whom she lived for many years......I remember and dreamt last night.....sitting on their porch, under a flickering gas light, being hypotized by gazing into the tiny diamond, set into onyx, in my first 'diamond ring'....a gift from one of my Mother's admirers, when I was in 3rd Grade.....while waiting for my 'ride' home from Miss Irene's 'Dance Class'..........My transport was a half hour late, so I sat on a porch swing, lost in reveries, gazing into my diamond......noticing, through a gauzy, curtained window, Miss Irene, lovingly brusing Miss Alta's floor-length hair.......Not yet a teenager, but with some pubescent hormonal changes 'happening', I wondered.....mesmerized by 'diamond gazing'.......

jillionth take on a Southern staple......spicy collard greens with cake-style corn bread......