breathing underwaterland

i am not a race car driver.
but...
i am a pilot, yeah. i am the only pilot on the planet known for a particular specialty: i fly 'em low.
jet pax
hovercraft
flying platforms
backpack helicopters
airplanes,
whatever i'm drivin that's not a UFO??? i drive it low, very low.
and so it happened that one day i was too low at the wrong time.
i knew i was pushing it; i mean, i could feel people's hair flying in the wind, brushing the underside of my airplane belly. i remember holding hands with the trees: my wings in their branches. and most dintinctly i remember thinking in my most graceful way,
"jesus SHIT...i'm going to kill someone."
but i was having too much fun to care about jesus' shit.
and so...
i kept it low.
and
and then

a tumbling impact of head on metal of metal on brick.n.cinder and shards flying like drunken bats, gray fracture of concrete and seeping, slowly leaking all the fluids right on out.

*** *** ***
i wake up and i feel bleary like wrappt in cotton. a sticky something glues my cheek to the concrete floor. wetness all around me, the floor, my skin, the walls, the air. and i know when i breathe, i will drown...
puffyheaded silvergirl,
i lift my hand and touch my head. dreads, bumps, hills & valleys. the surface of my head like a planet, a topographical map, a landscape of grass and sticky rivers.
"hey...hey smith." simon's voice; he's here. i lift my head, easier to raise the dead than a 10 ton boulder...now a weight i can barely manage: my own head, much less the rest of me.
"here," he says, "i brought your gills."
and he plugs them into a port in my sternum...i lie back down...i reach for him.
but
he's gone...unfaithful little fuck.

*** *** ***
i can feel him now.
i can feel the stripes and down and whiskers, and the vibration of his purr through the thickness of fabric, leather, skin and rock. it's like in me. his purring is in me. and i realize he never left; i was just too sick to see him.
the gills are off, he must have done that for me.
i sit up, and feel my head...it's hair up there. and one bump.
i look around.
the room: concrete. through the open door i see vast spaces with gigantic windows, none of which contain glass.
and things blowing...scraps of paper, wisps of smoke, errant gauze and the dust of a thousand shedding skins.

and

i'm late.
and i have to get to the conference.

*** *** ***
i find the room immediately. 12 gray business suits, 24 manilla folders, a long-skinny table, and several pitchers of water...ashtrays, lit cigarettes. all men. and me a woman-and-a-cat, barefoot in a gauze nightshirt, oily and wet and a little deformed.
they are not speaking.
not to each other, and not to me. they don't need to, the staring is enough.
and now
movement on my face -a mini-scratching -right there below my eye...
and now an itch on my chin.
and a tickly-meander in my hair. i touch the bump on my head, it is MOVING, it is positively writhing. and noises coming out of my mouth...i recognize them as noises of fear, but somehow they are "hers" and not "mine".
and me, outside of myself, i watch her have NOISES.
and i see her itching, tickling, scratching little problem. she can't hide it anymore. the bump is bugs
and they are in her/me, and yes, they are emerging now.
they are coming out through the pores of my skin through invisible, unknown passages that have been bored through my flesh. i am the earth, the earth full of tunnels and rivers. the bugs -they continue to surface and emerge. i pick them off, i squash them, but there are ALWAYS MORE...they are in me, they are a part of my constitution -the writhing bump below the surface of my skin, hidden by my hair, hidden by the wildness of my gauziways. i squeeze the bump on my head, and i can feel the 1000's of small, squirming bodies there. and i don't know if even simon can fix me now.

hmmm...there is something going on with me and WIRE. gosh, that sounds perfectly ridiculous...but it's true. i am attracted over and over again to this image:


"betsy, wired"

i like the light in it.
i like that it is less person-oriented and more RELATIONAL-oriented...the body to the wires.

a good while ago, i also did this image:


"krystal, wired"

this is the gorgeous daughter of amatorah. it isn't the first time i wanted to wrap a model in wire...:)

recently, i was listening to my neighbor's birds. they're in cages. wire cages.
birds on wires.
loooooooooong wire, with a bunch of little bird bodies all in one spot.

like the internet...a loooooooooong set of wires. and here in this little corner a cluster of people who check in on each other regularly.

when is a cage no longer a cage? when it's big enough?

why is my house not a cage? if i had a mansion would it feel less like a cage?
(to simon, the house IS a cage.)

if i need my house to stay warm in the winter and to protect me from the elements, how would i ever NOT be married to this cage i call "home?"

at the end of this day i am turning off my computer for two days.

there's always a task.
a direction -a journey.
the reason?? "BECAUSE"
if i were smarter...maybe then i'd get it. but as i am, the buzz of that gnat, the glowing ember i know as "the sun," the ebb and flow of the tide...it all eludes me.
me.
i am a bee.
a drone
slave to the pollen
slave to the queen
slave to the flesh.
i am driven by a hundred and one forms of instinct...i sleep and wake on a schedule deterined by the weakness of my flesh. my breathing is something i cannot help. i flirt and fuck and call it "love" but love is nothing more than a way of disguising the truth...that for reasons beyond the scope of my understanding, all i really wanna do, is BE.
* * *

and now: a forest. saw palmetto and live oak and the smell of salt in the air. i am so much meat, climbing on all fours...ground-low...and through vertical slits, the rush of root & rock, as high on the horizon, through thick, waxen leaves, i see it:
the crystal home.
that's the task...the direction and journey.
* * *

"hay, girl!! where ya goin? the condo's THAT way!!" my sister, gold rings clacking, points in the opposite direction: down the hill toward the beach.
"yeah, i know where the condo's at, ding dong! can't we just go for a walk?"
"sissy, it's fucking hot, koda's thirsty and tired...let's go back."
"no. i need to go up there" i gesture up the hill, through the plants.
"but, sissy, there's not even a path there, i'm going home. you can come or not."
"well, then. NOT. i'll see ya in a few hours, k?"
"whatever...see ya for dinner. we're going to charlie's crab. so don't be late."
i veer off the path.
guilty...i should leave shit alone, follow the rules, stay on the path. poor deer having to dodge mindless tourists like me, as we tread onto their turf. oh well, i make a silent oath to self: "tread lightly." and lightly forward i tread.
ahead...a...hmmmm...structure?
i move towards it and discover that it's a form of transportation. there's one seat in a little car. and a sign that says,
"HI SMITH!
THE CAR KNOWS WHERE TO GO.
GET IN; IT WILL TAKE YOU BACK WHENEVER YOU ARE READY"
i get in.
it goes.
and all around me becomes like a blur. like a sea of memories processed in a cuisinart...i recognize random sensation-fragments as they whiz by. i taste honey; i feel the sussrrrrrush of fur and whiskers...and now, my feet on the ground: bipedal primate. smith. forest. the car vanishes, and it's me and trees and rocks and roots. i look up the hill and see the thing i'm supposed to see: the ice house.
it is my destination.
when suddenly,
i'm there. and i realize...i've paid my dues: i've already climbed that hill. i've climbed it time and time again. i've climbed it alone, and i've climbed it in pack.
i stand at the doorway of the magnificent earth-and-glass structure. to my left, on the ground, i see a broken biological form. it is humanish...no blood, but it's torn and bruised.
i open the door and walk into a vast room jammed with cages. there are hundreds of them, all sizes and shapes. the cages are sitting all helter skelter atop gorgeous, hand-knotted tapestries. in the center of the room, amidst the cages, i spy a series of horizontal rungs: a ladder rising from the floor to a platform far above, encircling the space...i walk to the ladder. there's a sign on it that says:
"HI SMITH!
THIS LADDER KNOWS WHERE TO GO.
GET ON; IT WILL TAKE YOU BACK WHENEVER YOU ARE READY"
i climb the ladder.
it disappears, just as the one-seater did...and i peer over the railing and see that the tapestries are more than decorative designs. together, they create a symbol...but there's some missing, and whoever laid the tapestries put it together incorrectly...it looks like this:



and then suddenly there are animals in all the cages. an elephant crammed into a large cage...i can't figure how she got into the hole. a mouse stuffed into a tiny cage...and i think, THIS IS EVIL SHIT. i need to let them out. my ladder is gone, but it doesn't matter. my desire puts me there. and i disassemble the walls of the elephant's cage and let her out...she leaves through the wall. i disassemble the walls of the mouse's cage, and a horse's cage and let them out...they also leave through the wall. and i simply set about disassembling cages.

when.

i turn around and realize that the cage i just disassembled has somehow magically reassembled itself...and there is another squashed elephant...i know i can let him out, too. but once out, there will be another and another...

and i am crying. and i know it's too late for supper...i want to go home. i don't even know where "home" is anymore.
i am standing at the entrance of a tunnel. there is a sign that says,
"HI SMITH!
THIS TUNNEL KNOWS WHERE HOME IS.
GO IN. IT WILL TAKE YOU BACK ANY TIME YOU WANT."
i go into the tunnel.
it's dark and i'm scared to shit. there are windows in the tunnel wall. they are dirty. i try looking thru them, but can just barely see form and color. i think i see an elephant in a glass case...i wipe my tears onto a cloth and use them to clean the dirt from the window, but as i do so, what is removed is NOT the dirt, but any semblance of form that existed BEHIND it. it is now smeared beyond all recognition.
i allow myself to imagine that it was not an elephant.
there is a light ahead. i am going to that.
i know it is "home"
i think of my sister. i remember her clutching her stuffed tiger to her chest as a little girl. i remember her at 13, with pimples all over her face: big trauma. i think, too, of my brother, of what he went through at the hands of my father, and in my mind i encircle him with a warm light. i think for some reason of james g and of my mother and of summer corn, of heat and water and the sensation of simon, purring on my chest. i remember -a wrinkled, ancient hand dropping a single peach onto the conveyor belt at jewel...the checker, passing him thru without charging him a penny...throwing 2 quarters into the till from her pocket as i paid my bill. i think of the hammering next door as my neighbors love their delapidated house into a home. i think of scott and david and of mike roig. and finally, i think again of georgia, sitting alone at charlies crab. and hope she will forgive me for not showing up to dinner.

'The truth about childhood is stored up in our body and lives in the depth
of our soul. Our intellect can be decieved, our feelings can be numbed and
manipulated, our perception shamed and confused, our bodies tricked with
medication. But our soul never forgets. And because we are one, one whole
soul in one body, someday our body will present its bill.'
-Alice Miller

first, the fun stuff -another image from the shoot with river



and now, the life-stuff:

i've been working pretty hard on the dammasch show in november. i'm making huge image files for the new printer, and on tuesday, i had a get together in my back yard to stuff a bunch of little sewn forms i made out of the curtains gathered from dammasch. i had a great time with those who came and also really appreciated the help. i will probably have another "come and help me stuff it" party in october; i hope it's as much fun as this one was.

i woke up today and knew i was going to cancel my april show if i don't get the grant. i see it this way:

1. i spent 10 years busting my ass making installations, have received maybe 5 good sized reviews (not a ton, but enough) and a whole bunch of silly one-paragraph deals. meaning: i have a proven track record of doing well, following through, etc.

2. i have never made a penny on any of my installations.

3. i'm 50. meaning: i'm tool old to be PAYING TO WORK.

4. the dammasch project scheduled for april will cost a butt-load and NOT BE MARKETABLE. it is intellectual property/sociopolitical commentary, as opposed to being "beautiful" artwork fitting for display behind someone's couch.

5. i just got another show in may at guardino gallery. THAT will also cost both time and money and promises some return. i will be showing with a glass artist named andy paiko. look how kewl his stuff is:



this is a "spine jar". kinda works with my images as i have bones in a number of them. he's also created functional measuring devices, all out of glass. a seismograph, for example, and a balance.

anyhoo...thoughts before beginning work...

here are two starts from the film. they're not spotted. and the prints are not done. i want to print at a lower contrast, tone and lightly hand color. don't give me shit for the hand coloring, i already know you don't like it. i do.

RAWR!

i hope you see these before photobucket freaks out about the breast in the one image. between this model and the last one i had, i had a hard time keeping the clothes on them!!! a couple of times i had to tell river to put it in the dress, please!!! BUT. . . i actually like some of the nudes. so i might use them anyway.





i'm playing around with doing my next november show on mythological figures. only, i want to tell the other side of the story...to re-write / re-right the woman who is traditionally
cast as the "bad guy". the title of the top piece, and the title of the show would be "redeeming eve"

i was so excited to print the contacts and a few test prints from the film i shot of river. so. i wandered into the darkroom last night and poured from the container of developer concentrate, a dark brown glop...yes, i got the contacts out, but i just can't see spending all that cash on nice paper to dunk it into a pool of butt-brown developer. so the real prints have to wait til tomorrow night. i hope the store's open tomorrow. i think it is.

i love film.

it is just so sexxie!!

muddy hands

whenever i get an image like this, that i crop:


muddy hands (2)

and then crop again,


muddy hands (3)

it's obvious that i don't have a perfect deal. well, I WANT A PERFECT DEAL. in fact, whenever i go out on a shoot, that is exactly what i'm looking for. i want something perfect -something that achieves its own sort of escape velocity. i am not a great lover of images that require neighbors for context. or of "small" pictures. of course, i have thousands of "small" gems: i have rubies and saphires and emeralds by the dozens. and i stash them in folders on my desktop. sometimes i just throw them out. why? because they're not diamonds.

a month ago when i got the acceptance from calyx, one of the images they chose was an image i have always loved, but don't consider "perfect". it's the image of the one-eyed woman holding the crow. they chose that image OVER one i think is perfect. it got me to thinking of this:

my perfect isn't your perfect.

small things are perfect in their own way; there is amazingness in non-perfection.

i tend to approach my entire life way i approach my artwork. i don't really allow for imperfection. i don't really allow for things like vacations. i want things done correctly right NOW...etc. in my race for the the perfect thing, i miss or squander piles of experiences that add depth and substance to life.

about the image i posted here, what i like about it is the light and the gesture. it doesn't look like a photo to me, but more like a painting. like a modern rendition of a caravaggio...at least in the treatment of the light relations.



I WILL BE 50 YEARS OLD TOMORROW.
:(
the magic moment when we become aware that there is more life lived than left.

STORM LARGE.

what an amazing human.

this is clyde.


this is daisy.

i have lived with daisy for 13 years. that's a long time. she growls at her brothers a lot.

what i do not like about the digital camera is the lag time between when i push the button and when the shutter trips. it's weird. and i'm not so good at taking focused images, either, if that is what i care about. all in all, i am not sure i'm cut out for digital as an art form. i am too in love with my old fashioned film cameras. 'course these are just pix of my kitties. on thursday i have a shoot with tao_de_soma. i think i will bring both digital and film. and 35 and medium format.

it's been awhile since i went on a shoot!

from tao_de_soma TOTALLY FUN!

http://www.jacksonpollock.org/

ok. i'd save the drama for my momma, but she doesn't fucking want it.
so
what's left to do with it?
AH!! I KNOW!! LJ!!!!!
i mean, that's what lj's for, right?

last weekend...sunday, to be precise...
oh what the hell...let's start with saturday.

SATURDAY
well, i had a date with james smith. i like james smith. i have thought from time to time that he would make a good BF (that's Boi Friend...get yer mind out of the gutter!!) i've never been too sure of that, tho, for the following reasons:

1. he's masculine and i tend to prefer feminine, bespectacled, intellectual geeks. you know, the college professor type.
2. he's broken. meaning, i think somebody dipped this dude in freon.

he has MANY good qualitites, tho. so whenever we spend time together, i go back to wondering about the BF-thing.

we already had a plan. he was going to show up with an arm-load of vegetables, i was going to provide the shrimp, the rice and the cooking skills. and we were going to make a great supper and then watch fight club.

i wanted this to be a really perfect night. perfect and seamless and FUN. i decided we were going to take my imac outside and pretend we were at a drive-in. to this end, i went down to the local video store to get the DVD. only...
they didn't have one. so i rented the tape.
and decided i HAD to have a DVD...so i went to a video store a little further away. they didn't have one, either.
so i went to ANOTHER video store, and yes they did have it.

i bought a pound of shrimp.
and fancy rootbeer in the bottle, cause i knew he'd drink it.
i cleaned my house from ceiling to floor.
i even took a shower and washed my hair.
:)

he is always exactly 30 minutes late. so at 6:30 he wanders in with the vegetables. and, and it WAS a seamlessly perfect night. we had fun. after fight club we watched a short by takahashi miike. and then we played with the photobooth on my imac. he was hesitant at first. -he's bad at PLAYING. but the photobooth has distortional effects and he really got into it...i mean, dang dude -i actually have images where he's smiling.





ok. that's the synopsis. he left at 2 AM. and i was pretty wound up. i think i went on line and played pacman for about 30 minutes. then i went to bed and read. finally at 3 AM i decided to turn out the damn light and try to sleep even tho i wasn't tired.

3:30 -urg
4:00 -double urg
4:30 - WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
5:00 -i get up and take a double dose of valerian.
5:30- urg
6:00- i finally decide to get up, with absolutely NO SLEEP-not even a second's worth. i go to the computer to work on my images. at about 8:45 i realize, "hot shit!!!!! i am FINALLY TIRED!!" and i quickly scoot off to bed.

ok. good for you! so what's the issue?
the issue is that james smith and john black were coming at 10:00 AM to work on the cob bench.
my phone rang at 10. john. say's he's going to be late. (hey thanks for the call, dude.) 10:30 i hear james smith in my front yard...he's calling me on his cell.

so yeah.
i got AN HOUR AND 15 MINUTES OF SLEEP. no one (perhaps not even i) will remember the post i made about a year ago about my camping trip with nyodene_d. until saturday, he was the only person in the universe who knew how bad it was to be with me when i don't have sleep.

i get seriously weird. emotionally unbalanced....and i can't figure shit out.

SUNDAY

11:00 -john black finally shows up. the 3 of us sit around the table being social -drinking coffee- easing into a day of work.
11:30 -john decides he's hungry. i fix him a 4-egg open faced sandwich with fresh tomato and avocado.
12:00 -john decides he doesn't want to work...we should work on a day where there's "more time". I GET MAD. and tell him, "NO!!!! we're working on this toDAY, john. i've had my front porch wrapped in plastic for a fucking YEAR. all that's left is the cob ceiling (which i didn't even want...it was his idea!!!) sooo...
12:30 -we're outside preparing to work. and james smith wants to know if there's any shrimp left over, he's hungry. i go in and make him food.
1:00 -now everyone except me is fed and we're all out there trying to work.
john says, "smith, i need a sprayer; this one's broken"
only, i'm DONE scampering. "so go get one, dude. i'm not leaving here."
i begin to apply stain to the bench.
i've never worked in this medium before. it looks completely different dry than it does wet. i have no idea what it will look like oiled. i have a limited amount of color. it looks like shit, i think. out of the corner of my eye, i see john and james talking under their breath -sort of whispering to each other. then john comes over and says,
"smith, how would you feel if we decided not to do the ceiling?"
"actually, john, I NEVER WANTED THE FUCKING CEILING...it was your idea and you forced it on me. when i asked you a couple of months ago if we could take the lath off and quit the ceiling you told me "NO!!" the reason you gave me was because removing the glued slats would destroy the plywood."
"it'll be fine, smith."
"whatever, then. take it down."

he takes it down.

and...
yup, my ceiling looks like total SHIT. the paint is off, the wood is out in huge chunks, splintered here and there. the cobbed posts don't go the the ceiling; they go to where the lath went, so now that looks like shit, too.

i'm sitting.
i'm staring at my poor destroyed ceiling.
i feel utterly defeated. i am TIRED. i haven't eaten. the stain looks terrible. my ceiling is destroyed. i say to john, "WTF, john?? that looks TERRIBLE."
"what are you talking about, smith?"
"my ceiling, john, it's destroyed. how are you going to fix it?"
"ah, no big dealio, girly-girl...a little spit, a little chewing gum, everything'll be just fiiiine."
james starts laughing.
they are now a gang of two. and both of them think my distress is hilarious. nothing could be funnier. and they start joking around about leaving like that for its "earthy" qualities...etc.
maybe i would have found it funny under well-rested conditions. but i didn't find it funny at the time. i kept trying to get answers out of john. all he would do is tease me. in the meantime, i'm just ready not to be living behind plastic...a year of that's enough. finally, i couldn't take it anymore. i asked ONE. MORE. TIME. they continued to laugh at me.
so i got up and said,
"i'm done."
and i walked into the house, closed and locked the door. went to the back, closed and locked THAT door. and laid down in bed to chill out.
john knocked several times on the door. i did not answer.
he called on his cell phone. i didn't answer that either. he finally left in a huff. and james was alone, cleaning the mess on my porch.

i got up and put his things outside.
silently, i began reapplying stain to the bench.
james comes up to me and says, "are you ok?"
i say, "no. i'm upset."
he says, "ok." AND HE LEAVES!!!!

is that one fucking weird response? i think it is!! i called him on friday to clear things up. he did not want to talk...HE'S mad at ME!!!!!!! said he was going to write me a letter over the weekend because he was afraid i wouldn't be able to hear him. today is monday. the weekend is over.
in the meantime, i've written him. and i'm delivering the letterS today. to his doorstep.
happy birthday, dude. have a letter or two.

WHATEVER....

last night -3AM.

and i'm cobbing. only my cob structure isn't on my house; it's on a huge hill, and the cob structure is somehow about safety. there are train tracks at the bottom of the hill that encircle it completely. to be honest, i'm not sure the train tracks go anywhere...it is a giant ouroburos -the boundary of my universe.
two dimensional mobius strip.

my job: to secure the future of the hill. and i realize it's not just a cob structure. it's a bomb shelter and a healing entity.
and i'm massaging oil and beeswax into its skin...making it strong, weatherproof.
i step back to gaze upon it.
and my foot slips.
i look down and realize that the hill itself is corroding...my solid structure is built upon a decomposing mound. and in order to protect the protector, i have to also maintain the whole fucking hill.
only.
::sigh::
the hill is soooooooooooo big.



here it is from the real mccoy from the outside. the section on the right is completely stained, the other side is only half stained... but unoiled. the oil darkens it considerably.

today, clairenolen and nicolachampagne posted lengthy tidbits about keeping a weblog. how personal is too personal? and what purpose does this serve?

i began my weblog just over 2 years ago. and what i do here has changed A LOT. there was a time when no one knew that i had one and i said pretty much anything i wanted. since gaining friends here, i try to keep things "palatable"?? i don't cuss as much as i would; i don't say quite the same things. i'm aware that others can and do read it. and in my opinion it has lost a little bit of its personal edge because of its public nature. things i would have written about in my journal if it had been private:

1. i met terry toedtemeier at my portfolio review. he is the portland art museum's curator of photography. and he seems interested in doing something with my dammasch images. partly, i'm afraid of jinxing it by making it pubic!!! but also, if he disappears into thin air and nothing happens, i am a public failure! gosh, that sounds so ridiculous...but there's truth in it.

2. the other day i got into a huge-o fight with john black and james smith...in past times i would have written about that. now it seems too personal.

back when i needed to vent about teal, i started a new journal that no one can see...not even mia.
but i'm not so interested in it; my history is here. when i first started my lj, i wrote this about the act of blogging:

i am a consumer.
an addict.
yep. unfortunate, but true. and just as unfortunate, OR NOT, i love things, all things in QUANTITY.
my house is jammed with shit i have collected over years. i have boxes of plugs drilled from whiskey casks, i have about 50 amoeboid pieces of plywood, painted red --some of those are nailed to my living room ceiling. i have books out of the wazoo, some inside the house, some stored in the garage...i have photos scatch-taped onto every bit of my refrigerator. it pleases me to see all this shit, en toto, all orchestrated into a visual whole. my home feels good just because all my shit is sitting in just the right place!!

diaries are also about the glories of accretion, somehow... and i keep two of them. one is in the form of a collection of books that i have made by hand. i love these books; they are sensual beings. i love looking at them together on the shelf. i love touching the beautiful pages, some written upon, some painted upon, some with drawings, some with bits of my hair &/or fingernail crescents attached (sewn) to the pages. there is a physical lusciousness about them, they are full of secrets. some gossip. they smell! (like beeswax, patchouli, incense) there is stuff in there i would really CARE about others not seeing. i also use these to fabricate a history. some of what i write there is true. some of what i write there is fiction. i'm banking on an interesting career as a faltering octogenarian...what i forget i may read about in my self-generated history. and by the time i'm crusty and finished, i will forget what was "true" and what was fabricated, and my dumb little hum-drum life will seem fascinating because of all the shit i made up.

my other "diary" is this weblog-thing. i first became aware of weblogs when my webSITE began getting hits from strangers' weblogs. this interested me and i looked around at people's weblogs...what were they were DOING with them? some of them were interesting but mostly they were completely stupid and i could NOT figure out why people would post all this shit on line, why they would accumulte lengthy "friends" lists, why they would go on line to say things like, "i'm bored." this made no sense to me. i also ended up google-ing "weblogs" and discovered this HILARIOUS webpage entitled, "why i hate weblogs" which i just went back to look at today.

so what IS up with my newfound interest in this weblog? well, here is why it is valuable to me at this point:

1. i can post and gaze upon images (my photos) that i would NEVER deem worthy of being included in my website gallery.

2. i can create visual adjacencies.
2a: example: the previous entry where i posted the starns' "triple christ" (a scan from a book) adjacent to the wilson's on-line image.
2b: example: the two versions of my OWN work that i got opions on from friends & family. if i only put them up on my server, people would not be able to see them side by side.

3. i am learning html! in order to do this, i have had to learn how to post images, (how to upload them to the server and then direct them to my weblog) i have learned how to link to other sites, how to center, bold, italicize. this is probably laughable to a skilled computer geek. but to a "normie" like me, it's KEWL!!

4. this is yet another way to wallow in the luxury of accretion. it is truly fun for me to look at the history of my own mental meanderings. i have no "friends." i have no delusion that anybody gives a shit about this but ME. but i, myself, really do.

so i don't know if there is a solution. or maybe the solution is to keep my paper journal up to date and go back to enjoying that for the personal stuff. i like this, tho. i like the speed of it./ and to be honest, mostly i really love the input of the people here.

anyhoooo....

me N levi


me N james smith

you can tell just by looking at the images who i have a more comfortable relationship with. images say sooooooo much.

I'M FINALLY DONE CLEANING MY 40 DAMMASCH SCANS for the first book project!! fiiiiiinally.

this image was a hole in the wall. we think there was an autoclave in it.