this day sucked

This day sucked, I had a day off from shoots and was going to work at home on miscellaneous design projects, and just take it easy as I am still fighting off a cold. I woke up at 7:45 to the crashing of shingles being ripped off our roof and power tools drilling and vibrating the house. Hubby went and fetched me his heavy duty earphones he wears to the shooting range. I had to lay on my back and couldn't turn on either side or my stomach. I passed out for 3 more hours.

When I woke up I walked out to my office and my carpet was coated in a blackish-brown dust as well as all of my computer equipment, scanner, printer, etc. In denial I walked right past it, and then upon returning noticed that one of our skylights was ripped out and debris was just flying into my office from the gaping hole. A man's fat ass was sitting in the bottom ledge of it so I tapped his back and started to talk to him. Then 3 dusty Mexican faces appeared and apparently not one of them spoke a word of English. I just kept saying "shit" and pointed to the debris coated room.

Then I went back into my bedroom for about 4 minutes and upon walking out of it (you can only access the bedroom through the office) a man was standing there with bags over his shoes and a mask on his face, standing on a huge plastic tarp he laid out over my floor and our desks. I tried to talk to him but every time I spoke he just looked up at another man leaning in the huge hole and they conversed, and then completely ignored me.

Anyway, now the genius' nailed the huge tarp to the ceiling and instead of coming straight down on my entire office, the debris slides along the plastic and pours out conveniently on all of the wiring behind my desk. This day sucked.

check this link out

I just found this link on Slitely Askew's blog and had to spread it.
To quote her: The blacks "loot", the whites "find"
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robert johnson

Today at work while searching through a new boss' music collection I spotted one of my favorites: Robert Johnson. I put it on the stereo partially to test the boss, to see if it was his (it's a shared studio space) as a person's music collection is very important to me...very revealing. [Quick digression: I once went to the house of a classmate and upon asking to see her music collection I immediately knew we could never be friends as she had only 2 CD's: The soundtrack to The Titanic and one very lame country compilation CD]

Anyway, I really dig New Boss so I wanted this to go a certain way. I put the CD on and walked over to stand beside him then waited while watching the profile of his face as he worked on an image. Then suddenly he jerked and smiled saying "Ahhh - you like the bluuues" while peering up at me over the rim of his glasses. "Precisely..." I nodded slowly with the music "...precisely" ...smiling all the while.

Not familiar with Robert? Legend has it that he went to the crossroads where he met with the Devil and sold his soul to him in exchange for musical talent (guitar namely) and fame. My brother passed that information down to me when I was young and it instantly captivated me, that may have been one of the catalysts for my adult obsession with the American South (it's voodoo/religion/soul/blues/music). Anyway, you can have a listen here if you'd like.

cuckoo

[This story was just emailed to me and I found it funny. ha. ha.]
Why females should avoid a girls night after they are married: The other night I was invited out for a night with "the girls." I told my husband that I would be home by midnight, "I promise!" Well, the hours passed and the margaritas went down way too easy.

Around 3 a.m., a bit loaded, I headed for home. Just as I got in the door, the cuckoo clock in the hall started up and cuckooed 3 times. Quickly, realizing my husband would probably wake up, I cuckooed another 9 times. I was really proud of myself for coming up with such a quick-witted solution (even when totally smashed), in order to escape a possible conflict with him.

The next morning my husband asked me what time I got in, and I told him "Midnight". He didn't seem pissed off at all. Whew! Got away with that one! Then he said, "We need a new cuckoo clock". When I asked him why he said, "Well, last night our clock cuckooed three times, then said, "Oh shit.", cuckooed 4 more times, cleared it's throat, cuckooed another 3 times, giggled, cuckooed twice more and then tripped over the coffee table and farted."

up by 7am

This is the first sight I see every morning these days. Because I work in the photo world and every day is a new shoot with new call times, different studios, etc, I have to write a note to myself on a 1/4 piece of recycled paper every night and tape it to my alarm clock with three pieces of tape.

I always have to figure out my wake time, leave the house time, and call time. It sucks and I hate it but otherwise I'll be all anxious in the morning and not know why I'm waking up and then I can't enjoy my snooze time which is crucial to my having a pleasant morning! It also serves to cover the digits on the clock so I can't see what time it is, therefore I avoid my night time insomniac anxiety where I have to look at the clock every minute, and then deducting that from the time I have to wake up the next day to see how mow many hours and minutes of sleep I'd get if I fell asleep right that instant!

ssa ym ssik!!!

I'm going to ramble because I'm sick and delirious right now. Ssa ym ssik.

Saturday I got Elliott Smith's album From a Basement on the Hill when I was on my way to a housewarming/block party. I was feeling sick and nauseous but we made it to a music store, made the purchase, then cabbed it to the party. I needed his little face peering out of my purse all night, it somehow soothed me every time I saw his little face.

The block was barricaded off and there were kids whacking piñata's and a huge 3 story King Kong balloon in the middle of the street. Every door on the street was wide open, every stoop was cluttered with people, music and barbeque smoke whirled in the air. My eyes were closing and I had to sit down often. Somehow 6 hours passed by. At least two of them were spent talking about the Civil War to a friend I hadn't seen in a few months, and she was genuinely very interested and enthusiastic about hearing it all!


Sunday I got Beck's new album Guero. I wasn't going to get it after I heard he was a scientologist because they're all evil nut-job zombie's. Anyway, I wasn't going to let them interfere with my universe in the end. Ssa ym ssik Ron L. Hubbard!

I don't have the strength right now to back up my hatred of Scientology. I don't hate many things in this world, hate is a strong word which I learned at a young age not to use lightly. In any case I lived with one of those zombie's for a year of hell and that's all I'll say...great my blood pressure is rising now.



Anyway, then we went to a lounge bar and watched a drag queen falsetto singer and a drag accordion player do Aerosmith polkas and opera duets. We met up with a bunch of girls I had met in a photo class last year, it was all girly and fun.

Then a friend I hadn't seen in half a year was at a bar a block away so I walked over there and he came out and met me on the street corner on my way home to give me a warm hug and a 10 minute run-on sentence before he hailed me a cab and sent me off home where I quickly crawled into bed.

And now I will do the same...it's only 7:17PM...actually Brown Bunny just came in the mail today. All I know about it is Chloë Sevigny gives Vincent Gallo a blow-job, he supposedly has a huge dick, and he is a motorcycle racer. We'll see if I have the stamina to watch it tonight...

burping hubby

Hubby woke up with a nasty hangover this morning. He shouted across the apartment asking me if he could have some of my hoha-hola (coke). "Ob gourse!" I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth. Then when I lifted my head and looked in the mirror, Hubby was standing there chugging a glass of hoha-hola so I turned and watched him lower the glass, and begin little throat burps, his eyes were burning red and watery.

This was such a sweet little sight, I went and put my arms around him and patted his back. Then I heard him say in my ear "Are you burping me?". "Yup". Then I heard little bubbly fizzles and gulping as he drank some more and while I still patted his back, our chins resting on eachothers shoulders, and then silence and we waited there a moment until finally ".....grrrp...rrrrp". Then we giggled and I let him go and we walked our separate ways.

my best fiend klaus kinsky

We just netflixed the documentary My Best Fiend Klaus Kinsky and I highly recommend it. Werner Herzog traces back over the 6 films he directed Germany's star actor Klaus Kinsky in and tells of their love-hate relationship. My favorite was when one of the tribal chiefs that was an extra in one of the films, offered to kill Kinsky for Herzog, and he wasn't joking. And that Herzog actually hatched a plan to kill Kinsky himself at one point later on. Klaus Kinsky, what a freak...

now there's a sexy red-head

Last night I dreamt that I married Willie nelson. Here's how it started: I was about to enter a grocery store and while I was walking through the empty parking lot I noticed Willie Nelson walking my way so I whistled at him (the whistle you make when you see a sexy person) and shouted "Now theeeere's a sexy red-head!". I kept walking and he looked over at me suddenly and then shouted back in his grainy voice "You said it, now THERE'S a sexy red-head!". I proceeded into the grocery store and a few minutes later he came walking up to me, he had been looking for me, we started talking and then I walked him out to his red beat-up truck in the parking lot. A little 4 year old boy was sitting in the driver seat who called Willie "Daddy". That's when I realized that I had blonde hair and that Willie was drunk and about to drive with this little boy in his car. I was bummed at this minor imperfection as I had felt strongly attracted to him.

Willie told me he felt a strong attraction to me and that he wanted to take me out sometime and I told him that I didn't date drunks and that if he wanted to do that he'd have to sober up for at least 6 months first. I drove them home and then we went our separate ways. Then my dream proceeded to follow Willie around as he cleaned up his life, sobered up, bought a house in the town I lived in to settle down in (because he was only passing through on tour).

Then he came and found me at work one day and professed his love and told me he had changed and that he wanted to take me somewhere. He drove us to his new home in his red truck and in the meantime he had all of my family and his at the new house waiting to surprise us. They had all been there a while as they were moving all of my things into his place and when we arrived they all shouted 'surprise!' and he got down on his knee and proposed to me. I accepted and we all got in a circle holding hands and danced around a huge world globe in the middle of one of the rooms.

Then the scene swapped to him on tour and he and I were walking with our arms around each other and my long straight blonde hair was blowing back in the breeze as he and I looked each other in the eyes and smiled. I loved him something fierce.

Then I woke up and mumbled my dream to Hubby while I wiped my eyes. And he said "Hmm, a 40 year age difference...that should be nothing to you since you already had a 30 year difference." See that's the one drawback about being friends before lovers, neither one of you forgets any of that shite. Anyway, in the meantime my heart is all-a-flutter over this picture of my second red-headed husband, I am experiencing one of those painful dream-induced crushes.

my little pussies are going ape-shit!

The incessant and horrifically loud noise the roofers are making these past few days is making my cats crazy. Aside from hiding in strange places and acting like little ape-shit monsters, they won't eat their food. When I see their food dish still half full upon returning home I am shocked, they usually eat it all as soon as I pour it in their dish. Instead of being worried about them like I should I am actually a little pleased by this because they are overweight according to their vet (and all of our meaner friends who laugh and call them fat names). So I stood there shamefully thinking "yesss, good...they could stand to shed a few pounds heh-heh".

What a dip-shit I am. And I'm actually thinking of having kids someday? I can't help but think I'm prone to be a bad parent whenever I catch myself thinking things like that in my head about my cats. I had always thought The Little One was little until his first vet visit 2 months after we got him. The visit started like this:

Vet says as T.L.O. popped his head out of his carrier "Oh what a tiny little head you have..." And then when the rest of T.L.O. stepped out "...on such a big body!" And then turning and saying scornfully to me "Oh he has to lose weight, he's much-much too big Lorena!"

He ended his sentence by saying my name, I was mortified. The cat isn't even that big! In any case, ever since that day, I look at T.L.O. as a mini beach whale and now sometimes we joke and call them little fatties and make fat jokes.

The bigger cat was always big but that's because he's italian. I got him as a kitten whil I lived in Italy, and then I brought him back with me when I moved back to the U.S. The cats in Italy are larger, like raccoons. When I call him fatty I say it in Italian so he'll understand me. It's mean I know....bad Lorena. Bad.

big brother a.k.a. the patriot act

"The FBI, using its expanded authority under the anti-terrorism law known as the Patriot Act, is demanding library records from a Connecticut institution as part of an intelligence investigation..." read more

yay - you're not my brother anymore baby!

Two months ago I decided to dye my hair dark brown, partly so that my husband and I would no longer be mistaken for siblings as we both have the same red hair color, same dark eyes, same pale skin and freckles (same color palette as I like to refer to it).

Anyone who knows my husband and I know that I attack him on a regular basis with hugs, kisses, and love punches. Apparently strangers have been offended by this to the point of voicing their disgust to ME by approaching me and telling me to "stop kissing your brother inappropriately". Yes, this really happened, twice now. The effect this had was that I became insecure about showing my affection to him in public.

So I told my hair stylist to make me super dark at my last appointment. A few days later he and I were standing in line at the airport when I first realized I didn't have to fight the urge to throw my arms around him in public any longer. I jumped up and down once and then leapt at him, throwing my arms around his shoulders and squeezing him and shouting "Yay! I can kiss you in public now and no one will yell at us for being brother and sister!" Then I accomplished one or two quick cheek pecks before he turned crimson and put his hand up to cover my mouth and then put the index finger of his free hand over his mouth and "Baby! shhhhhhhhhhh"-ed me.

"wwwhaaaat..?" I whispered slowly while grinning really big. He simply shook his lowered head and added a big smile to his blushing face. This is very typical of our interactions.

bound for glory

The Farm Security Administration heavily photographed and documented American life during the Great Depression through to WWII. Few people know that the FSA photographers were also given color Kodachrome film to go out and shoot with in addition to the standard B+W film. This is the first publication of these color FSA photographs which were lost for decades due to being wrongfully stored with the WWII slides. These images are striking to me because they show us a period of American history which we only understood through B+W prior to this book, not to mention the fact that I've always been fascinated by the Great Depression.





When we have dinner guests, sometimes I'll bring out my photography books as Hubby prepares our after dinner espresso's and dessert's (I bring them out as a reference if the conversation strayed in that direction at some point during the meal). When the night is over and our guests have gone home, I always clean up the dining room table, leaving only the books out, as a temporary souvenir of sorts. I find it sweetens my mind with memories of the evening's conversations as I walk by later, so sometimes I'll leave them there for weeks at a time. (NOTHING else in our place is allowed to lay around for longer than a day as I am an obsessively neat person). My whole point - this book just got shelved finally moments ago, and I thought I'd share it as it's one of my favorites.

retirement fund

I just received an email informing me that this was my friend's retirement fund. I thought it was funny/sad because he works with homeless people and gets paid diddly squat, so it's unfortunately fairly accurate.

abandonment

I love illegally entering abandoned motels...

houses...

hospitals...

or trespassing...

and photographing the decay.

soldiers on my roof

This morning I woke up to the sound of soldiers slowly and heavily stomping up a stairway which circled my house. I could hear the spurs clinking on the tall leather riding boots of the cavalry men which for some reason were on foot climbing my house to convene on my roof. I pulled the sheets over my face and lay there smiling with my eyes closed. There must have been 50 soldiers at least and now they were stomping over my head. I was in that half dream state.


Last night hubby, a friend of ours, and I went to see the new Jim Jarmusch film Broken Flowers. My friend announced his dismay to find me driving because he had a gift for me. Before he handed the gift to me he segued: "Seeing as you're always complaining about how Hubby doesn't ever buy you anything I thought I'd buy you something to make up for it". We all laughed and then he threw a bag of 'Authentic Gettysburg Action Figures' onto my lap as I drove. I started shouting and gripping the steering wheel tightly and shouting to him that ever since I was in Gettysburg in June I had wanted a set. There had been this immense battle scene in a museum/store we went to that I took a bunch of pictures of. Ever since then I started daydreaming of setting up my own little battle scenes.

In any case I credit that gift I was given last night for my half dream of mistaking the sounds of the day laborers climbing the scaffoldings outside our house to fix our roof - for Civil War Soldiers meeting on my roof to discuss their next battle tactics. Sigh. In any case, the stomping on the roof was unbearable yesterday but now thanks to my half-dream I can't help but imagine them as soldiers. It actually lessens the aggravation they are causing me as I try to get some work done here. Of course my 2 days working from home they have to be working directly above my office, but what are you gonna do? Anyway, back to work...

the man outside my shower window

I just went to take a shower and a man was standing outside of my shower window. I live on the third floor, but they are redoing our roof so there is a scaffolding up to our level. I took a towel and tried to pin it up over the window because we don't have blinds over that window as we are on a hill and our view overlooks the city and why would we want to obstruct that?

The towel wouldn't stay and the guy wouldn't look away so I shouted "Nasty!", dropped the towel and ran out of my bathroom. Yes I'm extremely immature under some circumstances. In any case, what the hell am I going to do? They are taking their fucking lunch break or something outside all of my living room and dining room windows so I started going up to each one and shutting the curtains while never taking my eyes off of them.

grandpa

This is my shrine to my grandfather who died on September 11, 2002. He let himself die that day because it was the first time he'd been away from my grandmother in many many years. We all believe that he didn't want to burden her with his death.

The only reason she was away from him was because she went down to the ceremonies they were holding for the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11 the previous year. That plane landed on her families property in Pennsylvania. My grandfather was too sick to make the trip with her but it meant a lot for her to be there.

He passed away late that evening. My brother, mother, uncle, and little niece and nephew were there with him at his house that last day. At one point that evening my brother said my grandfather walked by him and it made my brother shudder because he watched my grandfather slowly climb the stairs up to his bedroom and my brother thought he was a ghost. He could feel the death trailing behind him. It was as if he was already making his ascent to whatever awaited him on the other side. My brother ran downstairs and locked himself in the bathroom for a while until he could regain his composure to go out and be around his kids.

That night I was out at a show at Bimbo's with some friends who bought us tickets to see their favorite band. The main band hadn't even started yet and suddenly I was overcome with something heavy and devastating and stood up and excused myself. I whispered to my husband that I had to leave immediately and that I needed to be alone. He started to rise to accompany me but I pushed his shoulders down and sternly told him to stay, my eyes were beginning to water and I had to idea what the hell had overcome me. I had just been happily looking forward to this evening out with our friends, happy to see their band, etc.

In any case I left the venue and started walking, at first I thought I would just stand outside? But no, my legs kept walking, and an hour later I was home. My husband was there and looked up at me, he had gone looking for me against my wish and not finding me took a cab home immediately. He was kind of upset by my actions, but I had no explanation for him so we didn't speak that night and I just silently crawled into bed and turned out my light.

The next morning my mother called and told me the news. I hadn't spoke to any of them for at least a week or two prior to that day, so I never even saw it coming.

these trees have nothing to do with it

I thought I found one of my many half brothers the other day. Every once in a while when I see a father & daughter I get really bummed and then go online and start doing Google searches for my father and siblings. The other day I found his third wife and the store she owns and then I thought I found one of my half brothers from that marriage. I emailed him but it was the wrong Alex. I gave him a succinct 4 sentence response when he wanted an explanation to my email but he never wrote back again and it made me feel a bit vulnerable and regretful that I even tried explaining anything to him. I'm not sure why it's bothering me. I guess because I'm usually secretive about my life...that is until I started this blog which I still have mixed feelings about.

My dad took off and left my mother with a newborn (me) and my 2 older brothers. He left her for a young rich girl who drove a fast red sports car and then married and had two boys with her. Before he met my mom he had a son with his first wife. Last I heard he was on his fourth wife and family (that was 14 years ago).

He wanted to meet my brothers and I when I was 10, so I saw him a few times over the course of about a year and a half??? The last time I saw him I was visiting his city doing a swim meet and staying with another family at a hotel where he was supposed to meet and take me out to dinner. He was very late and the family I stayed with very sweetly invited me to come to dinner with them instead and made up excuses for my father's apparent absence.

We put on our jackets and descended to the lobby in the elevator, and once the doors opened, there stood my father. He brought his 17 year old "babysitter" with him because supposedly his car broke down, so she gave him a ride. "You don't mind, right!" he told me.

He then gave me $5 to go and get quarters and play the pinball machine. I obeyed even though I didn't want to play pinball, I wanted to be with him, so I hurriedly played the $5 worth and ran back to the dinner table to find him kissing this young girl. He was about 40. I walked slowly to the table and sat with my head lowered the rest of the meal. I didn't understand at the time why it made me so ashamed to witness that.

One day, 6 years ago, a friend of mine basically kidnapped me and drove me out to my father's city and pulled her car over to a pay phone once we reached downtown. She asked me my half brother's names and I told her a bit reluctantly, not knowing what she had in mind to do. We found one name matching the older boy so she put her coins in the phone and dialed his number then handed me the phone once it started ringing. Fuck. It was the answering machine and I was about to hang up but she grabbed the phone and pushed it back to me mouthing "leave a message". Ugh, you can imagine how that went.

After that I hung up and we walked around the corner to a church and although neither one of us is religious we entered it and leaned back in a wooden pew and talked for some time. Sitting there in the calm of that building with her made me so happy suddenly, because having a friend like that far outweighed the sadness I had felt that day over my father. The whole reason she took me there in the first place was because we were driving home from the Renn Fest (where we worked at that time) and I was telling her about a dream I had about him or something that bummed me pretty severely that day. She asked if I wanted to go and see him and I said of course....I think I do? She turned the car around, peeling out in a gas station and started heading in the opposite direction.

Anyway, these trees pictured have nothing to do with my story, they just feel like home as they are right outside my apartment. I needed something comforting to go with this entry.

lewis powell's twin

I saw Lewis Thornton Powell's skater twin at a party last night. Sitting on my husbands lap I pointed the twin out to him in the small audience of us watching the other skaters shred in an empty mini pool in my friend's back yard. I couldn't take my eyes off of him and my husband whispered to me that he could go and punch him in his left jaw to complete the boy's look, make him more authentic. Then we smiled at each other and I hugged him tight and kissed his cheek.

See, Hubby knows that Lewis Powell was kicked by his pet mule when he was young and it broke his jaw, making it more prominent than the other. Hubby's favorite picture of Lewis also happens to be a profile mug shot where his jaw looks disfigured and immense in proportion to the rest of his face making him appear freakish and in other words...ugly (according to Hub).

When we were leaving the party I had to make an urgent pit stop inside to use the ladies room and wouldn't you know the twin was waiting outside the bathroom. I paused at first and then I kept walking and entered the kitchen out of his sight and upon seeing people turning around to look at me I opened the refrigerator door, glanced at the food, closed it and walked back by the twin and ran down the stairs and outside. A few moments after we got inside our friends car to begin the long drive home I began wincing and whispering to Hub that I had to go to the ladies room so bad.
He whispered loudly "Didn't you just go?"
- "No"
- "Well why not?"
- wincing "Baby! Because Lewis was standing there and I knew I would say something stupid and scare him away. You don't understand!"
- "Oh my God...Baby!" he shook his head and looked out the window, but I could see his big cheeks smiling.

don't judge a book by it's cover

I just bought this book online. I've wanted it for some years now, but due to my current obsession, buying it now made sense to me. I bought it because I was glad that someone took the time and interest to go back to all of the big battlefields of the Civil War and rephotograph them. Supposedly the photographer reshot the places that Alexander Gardner and his assistants had shot the scenes that documented the horrors of the aftermaths of these battles.

I was so disappointed that most of the pictures this guy shot were abstract closeups of mud puddles, rivers, and walls, and sure the pictures were beautiful but its hard to understand why someone would go through all the effort of conceiving of this idea, spend the money traveling / photographing / acting it out, and then instead of choosing landscapes like the one pictured on the deceiving cover would instead choose to edit those down and publish closeups of mud! God damn you!

...And my mother always told me "Don't judge a book by it's cover"...

two old suitcases

Yesterday I went to a flea market that consisted mostly of Spanish DVD's and Spanish rap tapes and assorted junk. There was a furry Chewbacca mask that I tried to blackmail a friend into buying because he wanted us to go to his place afterwards so I said I would only on the condition that he bought it. He didn't buy it. We went directly to his place after the market. At one point we stood and stared at a little table of trinkets and miscellaneous...crap (for lack of a better word). We stood there for about a full minute all staring quietly and I finally broke out of and shouted "what the hell are we all looking at?" If I saw us I would have thought for sure we must have looked like we were on acid. Anyway after we snapped out of it I went to a huge part of the pavement that had thousands of papers flying around haphazardly.

It was there that I spotted two old suitcases laying open with letters, documents, and photos in them. I found a bunch of new photos to add to my collection. There were many photos documenting the life of the girl pictured above with her dog. She didn't look much different as an adult. There were personal letters, cards, the deed to a cemetery plot, class pictures. I was tempted to look at some of the letters but it didn't feel right, I already felt invasive rummaging through the suitcases.

A little old man came up and saw me looking though the pictures and started telling me how his wife had found a box of old love letters there last week that documented a mans entire life starting when he served in WWII. He said she sat there for a few hours reading though them and then only bought a small selection because there were hundreds and they charged $1 per letter. He kept shaking his head, he thought they were amazing and he was glad his wife bought them. I was glad he started talking to me, he just stood in the piles of paper with me and watched over my shoulder as I made a little pile of my selected photos, talking all the while. Every once in a while I would look up and squint at him and smile and ask questions, I didn't want him to leave. He was momentarily distracting me from the slight melancholy that usually arises when I get glimpses like this of someones entire life belongings turned instantly into junk. Anyway like I tell all the new photos I add to my collection "You matter to me now! I'll take real good care of you".

what if...?

I love playing "what if" games. One of my brother's and I have an ongoing "what if":
If you could have a party and invite anyone in the world dead or alive who would you invite?

This would be my guest list today:

takeshi kitano
milan kundera
anais nin
leonard cohen
bill murray
noam chomsky
david chapelle
maya angelou
bill hicks
woody allen
howard zinn
vincent gallo
nina simone
william t. sherman
elvis
ira glass
nikita mikhalkov
click and clack
andre 3000
david sedaris
mark borchardt
tupac shakur
my husband
shelby foote

Who would you invite? (not that anyone reads this but you P.)

i'm happy but i'm not

This is me 2 years ago outside of my meditation room. Had not taken any self portraits for about a decade at that point. Now when I am sad I take a polaroid of my wet face. Last time I did that I taped it to my wall in my office next to my desk...to remind me. Only thing was that I couldn't quite figure out what those images were meant to remind me of. Now they are taped to my journal to remind me of what I have already forgotten when I am old and look back on them. I think they were meant to show me that I am not always depressed but I only understand that when I am depressed so what I really need to do is to take a self portrait of me when I'm happy to remind me when I am depressed that I will be happy again.

3 days now. Of these crushing grey skies. They are heavy and weigh upon me. They murder me, I can only thrive in sun and warmth. But no new pictures this time. Only songs. Mostly blues.

3 songs to let you hear how I feel when words can't work:

one

two

three

Anyway, my husband will be home soon and he is taking me out to dinner and we will need to get dressed up. No special occasion, just that we both really enjoy excellent food and wine. And I'll order the assortment of cheeses with my port and espresso after the meal. I will paint my nails a deep red and find a lipstick to match. We will be silky and dark, our voices creamy laughter. The wine will drip and stain the white linen and that will make me smile.

aura lee

I just found out that the melody to Elvis Presley's song Love Me Tender is in fact an adaptation of an old Civil War era song called Aura Lee.

a night alone with fellini

I went alone to a double feature last night of Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" and "La Strada". I love going to the movies alone. I love being there without distractions, particularly because I get swept away and when I leave a good film I am walking within it for hours after I leave the theater. If you go with other people, they politely ask you if you liked it, if you didn't then why, and then some choose to dissect it until its lost it's meaning. I just prefer to walk in silence with my thoughts staying put inside my head.

The venue was the historic Castro Theater in my neighborhood here in San Francisco. Before each film the little organ player donning a suit jacket rises out of the stage playing theme music to the featured film on the elevating organ. That's when I sink back in my chair and let the eyes well up with tears while spreading a huge grin on my face. That's where I saw the film Bubba Hotep and so the organ player had played Elvis songs that night and the other theater goers went wild while my eyes welled up with tears from the excitement of it all!

It's funny noting how we've grown or changed when we revisit places, films, music, books we once experienced years before. For example, the first time I saw "La Dolce Vita" 6 or 7 years ago I so adored the women's statuesque faces, gigantic eyes and eyebrows, their dark hair and sexy voices, their feline movements. Marcello's grainy voice and dapper attire. Then a few years later it was the extravagant party scenes that allured me. How I wanted to take Nico's arm as they all went ghost hunting that evening and she wore the metal knight's helmet and laughed her boorish laugh "a-hoo-hoo-hoo". This time I was excited to see Steiner, I didn't know it until Marcello ran into the church after he saw him enter it. I suddenly remembered him faintly and my heart sped as they went up to the organ loft and Steiner played a sad Bach tune on the organ. I found myself waiting anxiously for more Steiner. I choked when he said "Don't be like me. Salvation doesn't lie within four walls. I'm too serious to be a dilettante and too much a dabbler to be a professional. Even the most miserable life is better than a sheltered existence in an organized society where everything is calculated and perfected."

It would be interesting to keep a movie journal. Make a section for each great film you know you will see again and again until you pass away, to note how you change, note what sticks out to you each time. I want to cry for Steiner because to me he was real. I suppose to me he is me. How horrid was it when his wife got off the bus and the paparazzi flooded her and she smiled and asked "Did you mistake me for an actress?" having no idea that her children and husband were awaiting her at their home...dead. Steiner killed them as they slept and then killed himself. She held her little packages and groceries she had just bought. How meaningless those items were about to become. Oh I am so depressed momentarily.

And then I saw "La Strada" and found myself loving the boorish male protagonist Zampano. I don't know why I am sometimes so fascinated with brutish animalistic men who don't hold any thoughts in their heads except the most basic and banal immediate concerns. he reminded me of Jake LaMotta in "Raging Bull", pure animal. I was crying so much when Zampano started crying on the beach after finding out Gelsomina had died, it was the only time his character showed any emotion other than anger. I ran out of the theater so fast as soon as the credits rolled. My face was wet the whole walk home. I enjoyed the cold air making it sting my face. Oh my heart is suffering so right now....

crazy p is dead

I just found out a few days ago that an old high school friend was found dead in a park behind his mother's house...we called him Crazy P---. He had a son. I remember him taking his son around with us in his stroller and P had given his son a green mohawk to match his own trademark hairdo. I remember feeling bad that a one year old had to endure that fashion statement for his parents sake. Unfortunately most of my memories of him are half faded as those days were heavily drug laden for my close friends and I.

I'm sorry he had to die the way he did, they found him in a real bad way. I just looked at my old high school photo album of all of us and he was so happy in all of my photos, always making us laugh, always entertaining us, always sweet to me. The friend who informed me told me that she had just seen him the day earlier and he was on his way to work, dressed in his work uniform and nothing was out of the ordinary. He was happy and in good spirits.

pure evil

I was just reminded of something. The cousin of the friend who went to Graceland with me bought an Elvis Presley purse a few weeks after our trip. She then asked my friend if she thought it would make me jealous when I saw it. My friend told her that it probably would. Her cousin then said "Good" and smiled. Evil. Pure evil. As it happens 75% of my friends are male, maybe more, and it's for reasons just illustrated that I tend to be more trusting of men when it comes to companionship.

I think that ever since I heard about that comment she made I began referring to her as my friend's cousin rather than my friend as she had always pretended to be. And no I was not jealous when I saw the rhinestone studded purse with a typical image of Elvis on it and fluorescent smudges of faux retro style paint dabbled on it. I found it hard not to laugh when she showed it to me knowing that she thought I was jealous of it.

gut instinct

One of my favorite bands -> modest mouse -> is coming to my town and no one will go with me, because the venue is too big. What the fuck is that all about?

I saw Radiohead there 2 years ago (my favorite band) after waiting 11 years for them to play in the same time zone and roughly same latitude because I had a knack for being out of town any time they came near California. In fact the time I DID get to see them, I'd just booked my tickets to the East Coast and it was the only time I could get out there the whole summer and then someone called to tell me that Radiohead was going to be playing while I was gone and I quickly got off the phone with her and then what?...I started crying out of frustration of course (Let me state that everything had gone wrong for me that day and that was the last straw for me.) In any case, she misinformed me, and they would be playing way after I returned as I had originally thought. When my husband took me up to the airport he told me he had bought 2 tickets for me and a friend to go.

When I did get to that concert finally, I experienced my last lesson in not trusting my gut instinct. It was open seating on the lawn and I had arrived with my friend about 5 hours early so we were among the first in line in the parking lot, and at the entrance. When we got inside the gates we had to wait about another half an hour before we could be let into the main lawn area. I wanted to get in line right away for the lawn seats and my friend wanted to check out shirts at the rip-off stands and so she used her lame tactic in telling me "trust me dude, that line won't get long for sooo long, we have plenty of time". I didn't want to leave the line, I didn't trust this but I followed her to the lame stands anyway and then when we finally got back to the line and I said "FUCK!" when I saw how long it had become and said she reassuringly: "No, dude, dude truuuust me dude, there's a secret line on the ooother side no one knows about, I come here all the time". So we hurried over to this "secret"
line and I screamed "LOVELY! God DAMN it!" it was longer than the first line. We went back to the original one and it had quadrupled in size. I was fuming. So we got in there and she found a shitty spot behind some huge poles where no one had sat yet....hmmmmm.

We're not friends anymore. She was an old work buddy, I knew her for about 7 years and had hated her passionately the first 2 years we worked together. I couldn't stand her "duuuude chill" mentality and valley girl vocabulary. Then one day at work I saw a little book of her poetry that she had made for a philosophy class laying out in the back room. I started reading it standing up, then slumped down in a chair and didn't look up until I had finished it. I was silenced and she traipsed into the back room. I looked up and smiled at her for the first time ever.

It wasn't too long before that that my coworkers had had to hold me back from her because she had provoked me and had taken it too far. I quietly went to the back, punched my time card, pulled my jacket on, then went out on the floor and found her in a corner and went right up to her, blocked her in and began shouting at her to never talk to me as she just had, and to never touch me as she just had (she had put her hand on my forehead and pushed hard at it saying 'duh'). After I yelled at her I lunged at her and my friends held me and walked me out of there....that was typical of our working relationship. I hated her and therefore everyone hated her. My boss had pleaded with me a few times to be nice to her and had told me that everyone at our store looked up to me and that since I hated this girl, everyone hated her and treated her the same way I had. I would coolly tell my boss that that was not my problem who people liked and didn't like.

In any case, after I read her poetry, I let my guard down and so did she, we became close over the next few years. She was a 4.0 gpa philosophy major who loved writing poetry in her spare time. I hate poetry but she is gifted...my god that's putting it lightly. So we got closer and closer, but never too close because we were both Scorpios and very guarded being as we started off very badly those first years. We had seen the severity of each others wrath and never wanted to unleash that again, so we could never argue about anything personal and we never did...until Italy happened to us

We went to Italy together a year and a half ago. I'll make this quick. No I won't. We spent a week in Southern Italy with her husbands non-English speaking family without him. As I spoke Italian and she didn't I was the interpreter the entire time. I had talked her into taking an Italian course so she knew a little bit but refused to try, so the family, extended family, neighbors, and entire town for that matter ended up talking to me much more...go figure. I had even given her a crash course on the 12 hour flight over there, and then tried tutoring her every evening we were there! She just clammed up and became withdrawn. Every time someone would grab and hug or hold my hand I felt her eyes burning holes in me.

The second to last night she cut one of the neighbors off from talking to me and demanded that we go home right away. I told her it was kind of rude as they had us seated with little plates of cake on our lap and espresso in our hands. Very rude...as they were very poor, and obviously knew we were stopping by and had wanted to meet us and had made a fucking cake for Christ's sake! They were telling me they already knew me, that they felt they had met me before, they were giving me too much attention and I am loud and don't care at the imperfections in my Italian and this makes them laugh more and love me because I'm trying! Anyway, my friend hated this scene and demanded that I translate and I didn't want to so I gave her the abridged version so not to hurt her sensitive soul. She demanded we leave anyway so I had to take her mother-in-laws hand and tell her my friend was feeling ill and could we please be taken home. We left. I didn't look but my friend cried the whole ride home. She didn't speak to me that night. Then the next day it was as if nothing happened. The next night we boarded a train to Florence where we were to spend about a week with my old roomate/friend I had lived with there a few years back.

The stingers came out suddenly on a daily basis. Every little thing I did she complained about. Fact was she was deeply insecure and was making herself miserable. It turned into a nightmare. She was so paranoid she was telling me what I was thinking the whole time, that I thought she was this or that. She was insufferably jealous at my happiness to see my friend. So I arranged that my friends friends were around and that they please speak English since they all could. Even planned a day for just her and me...she STILL found reasons to bitch. Anyway, her weakness repulsed me and I found it hard to see her any other way since then so we no longer talk. She called me a month later to apologize for her psychoness. I'm too old for drama though, that's the last time we spoke.

Man, I guess I needed to get that off my chest, don't know how the hell that stemmed from not finding anyone to go see Modest Mouse with me!

that's the way it is

I just bought this DVD and I highly recommend it. It's a remastered version of a documentary shot in 1970 when he was making his big comeback...basically the time period between young/hot Elvis and middle-aged/rotund Elvis.

It is hilarious. I certainly had never witnessed this side of him prior to watching this documentary. I mean I had always considered myself a huge fan, I fucking cried when I finally made my pilgrimage to Graceland 2 years ago. Allow me to digress: I cried while purchasing my ticket at the ticket counter, and the woman helping me was trying really hard not to look at me and not to laugh as my friend was laughing her ass off, buckling over and causing more people to look. I remember standing in line in the parking lot waiting for the Graceland shuttle bus to pick us up and I was drying my eyes and trying to mentally control my lips from trembling. Didn't work. I scanned the people in the queue and was a bit put off that I was the only one teary eyed.

Well I held it together until I reached the tiny Graceland graveyard. I started crying against my brains request to stop, and so I stepped out of line and stood against a little wall and cried, I figured - get it out of my system and then get back in line. So while I tried to stop crying I was momentarily distracted wondering where my friend and her cousin had gone and that was when I looked up and saw her leaning over laughing really hard, holding her knees and taking pictures of me. Oh well, what are you gonna do....?

old photo collection

So I finished my little project, here is the site I created of my antique photo collection:
Antique Photo Collection
I've searched through thousands of photos over the past year and these each had something beautiful I was not capable of letting go of.

sidenote: I have to say that I've found it astonishing that in all of my searching I have only come across one non-caucasian photograph and that was of the 2 young Asian children.

strangers

I had the day off today, so I scanned/photographed each of my old photographs I've collected over the past year. I figured I owed it to them. They sit on my wall and stare at me when I am home working in my office. They at once comfort and scare me when I take little breaks and lean back in my chair scanning over them. I want to make a little website for them and this was the first and most daunting step of the process.

Some days I'll just pause on one image and I am flooded with little details about their lives, their relationships, their mental states. I get sad when I think that their photos are on MY wall, a complete stranger. Wasn't there anyone who wanted their images when they passed away? I've been keeping journals since I was 16, and the thought that someday they will more than likely be thrown away because no one will care about them makes it feel useless. And my family photos? I don't even want to think about the day that someone buys them in a large shoebox of miscellaneous junk at an estate sale or what not...and mingia, that's if I'm lucky enough that someone would even want to purchase my "junk" in the first place!

When I was in New Orleans last year I brought my stack of photos up to the counter at an antique store and the little old man behind it started telling me the people's names in the pictures, and little tidbits about them. He paused for some time at some of them and shook his head smiling...telling me where they lived, when some of them died, etc. That's when I noticed that of all of the hundreds of images I'd just browsed through, I selected a few of the same people throughout their life. Some still had the black construction paper on the back that had stuck to the adhesive that once held them in photo albums. They must have died and someone dismantled the books, and here they were indexed in large boxes in a small antique store on Magazine St.

Anyway, it struck my heart as I stood listening to him, I am too sensitive for my own good sometimes but I just wanted to reach out and hold him. My eyes latched onto him with a severity. Every once in a while a complete stranger will be taken straight into the core of my heart. The fact that I was taking away a little piece of his history and memories with me really meant something to me. I didn't feel I had the right to take the pictures, so I guiltily assured him that I thought they were all precious and would be appreciated in my care. The whole process took about 10 minutes perhaps, but it doens't matter, its moments like that that make me know I am not as alone as I always think I am. We are all little pieces of those we love anyway, even if that person happens to be a stranger who we only had in our grasp for 10 minutes.

my favorite swear word

My favorite swear word is "faun" in Swedish. The Swedish spelling is "fan" but pronounced fawn and means 'devil'. It's an invisible word, every time I shout or yell it on a photo shoot for instance, I don't get in trouble and no one pays me any mind. It's even more fulfilling that my old favorites "fuck", "mother fuck", and "cocksucker".

I did enjoy calling people "crotch" for a while a few years ago...that was fulfilling, but rarley did anyone ever provoke me to use that word, so it was well kept and potent when the time did arise.

everything fades

Ughh, I feel sick. Summer is slipping away too fast, each morning in the shower I watch my freckles fade and then I look outside to dew and thick fog blocking my otherwise beautiful view of the city. The battlefields and the miniscule facts my brain held on to so steadfastly are fading now. I read on the wall of a bar bathroom Saturday night that we forget 80% of what we learn each day. So god damn it I hold tight as best as I can to the names and dates I read of before I go to sleep each night. Last week I finished the Ken Burn's Civil War documentary. I think I purposely put off the last segment about Lincoln's assassination because my heart could not deal with taking that DVD out of the player, sealing it in the envelope and mailing it back to netflix because I knew that somehow my obsession would begin to fade with all else.

Ughhh. Fuck. And as we were driving down Hwy 1 to Big Sur the weekend before last, I looked out of the back seat window and pressed my forehead against it (An hour earlier after I had just made the third trip to my car with our belongings I got in the driver's seat to start the car and the car wouldn't start. I called my friend who was already about 45 minutes on his way south as well and he came back to get me, and then we went to pick up my husband) while telling myself not to hold on too dearly to the upcoming weekend, because I just knew it would be fantastic, and I knew that if I met Lou or Jack that I would momentarily be torn away from my Civil War obsession and probably become obsessed/re-obsessed with one of them instead. What an idiot I am because I am feeling relieved that my Ramblin' Jack fuzzy feeling is leaving and I am cramming my head with Civil War facts once again, although not with the same vigor I had only one month ago.

When we reached the Henry Miller Library that first night, would you believe I got on the library computer to check my blog!? I was spotted by my friend who runs it as I was telling my other friend we drove down with about it. I saw such a look of confusion and mild disgust on his face as he watched me scroll over it. He was semi-paralyzed as he kept asking "Really?...really this is true, you are really into war...the civil war?? hhhnnnn.. I just don't believe it, I never would have thought." And who would? Anyone who knows me knows I could never face American History, that I purposely ignored all of the bullshit the biased textbooks fed us up until high school, where I was fortunate enough to go to a small art school, run by intelligent/artist/teachers. When one of my brother's gave me a book I requested for Christmas a few years ago by Howard Zinn (A People's history of the United States), he handed it over while he said "Is this more of your lame American hating shit Sucker?". "Gee thanks" I said before I even opened it. I can't tell you how many arguments we've had over the past few years, and now that W is fucking it all up in a way my brother can see, it has led to more civil conversations instead of our hate-infested yelling matches of yester-year.

Man do I know how to digress. So, in any case, all things American have always had my stomach in a knot. I was always very ashamed of American history and therefore chose to ignore it. But as is the case with all things, we can never understand where we are without looking back to the past. I just happened to become ensnared in one 4 year segment of it that I cannot escape. I won't let myself escape it though.

ramblin' jack + odetta

Last week was a hectic week, and it all sped by so fast, faster than usual that is. Don't get me wrong as I am thankful that so much work has fallen into my lap, its just that the local photo community is typically dormant the entire month of August so I was looking forward to some quiet time for reminiscing and savoring some events of late.

It's just that I was looking forward to a day to unwind after my last weekend down the coast in Big Sur. It was a last minute trip, I packed my bags and camping gear immediately upon hearing that Folk legend Ramblin' Jack Elliott was going to be playing at the Henry Miller Library that Sunday. We stayed with our friend who runs the Library and when I called him to confirm that we'd be on our way in a few hours, he informed me that we'd have to pitch our tents on the grassy patch on the mountain side of their land (they live in a redwood forest on a ridge of mountains overlooking the rocky Pacific Ocean coast) because Ramblin Jack was going to be staying with them and needed his privacy before the Sunday show. They gave him use of the guest house where he stayed with his daughter and son-in-law.

Our friends place was packed full of interesting characters that weekend. Our friend put up Lou Reed and his wife Laurie Anderson at a neighbors house because she did a benefit concert earlier that week for the Henry Miller Library. So when we arrived that Friday evening Lou's entourage was also camped out on our friend's property. We brought our tents but the starts were so god damn brilliant and beautiful, that we decided to pull out our sleeping bags and just sleep under the stars instead. I found it very hard to close my eyes for good those 2 nights...so many shooting starts.

Saturday night we were drinking and dining with the entourage and the air silenced momentarily when Ramblin' walked in the door to our cozy wooden cottage to sit down to the hot meal and glass of wine that awaited him. What a character. Beautiful soul, you certainly felt like you were in the presence of someone who had seen and experienced more than one could dream. The life of a rambler, oh the stories one will collect I suppose. I remember at breakfast the next morning he just shouted out "What a day! What a beach! What a dog!" after reminiscing about his dog. My head was a little cloudy due to the wine the night before and nothing could be mustered up in response. Besides, what do you say to that anyway. He was quoting some famous friend of his whose name already escapes me.

I am thankful for that brief brush with him, as it has since led me to research him, and because of that I was made aware of the musical genius of Odetta. I had never heard of her before, and for the past few days she is all I desire listening to. If you like folk+ blues + soul music you should check her out if you havent already.