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.....