BirchLane.net

December 2005 (editing)

Saturday 31

Four Photos.

Friday 30

"For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning."
-T.S. Eliot

Thursday 29

Gray Day. The French King Bridge in Greenfield, Massachusetts:

And over at Live Journal:

(click on image)

the goal To write in a paper diary/journal every day in 2006, beginning Jan. 1st. Entries may be as short as a word or a sentence, or as long as several pages. Visual journal entries are also encouraged, including sketches, collages, or photography. Missing a day is not failure... simply go back, and add an entry based on memory for that day. Back-tracking is better than skipping, and it will keep you motivated to continue with the project. why? Because in this digital realm where we can so easily delete and repeat, concretizing and externalizing in the form of a paper journal just feels good. If you still want to delete your thoughts when it's all over, you can have a ritual burning. ;) what should you post in this community? 1. you can post scans of your paper journal entries. 2. you can talk about the benefits/challenges of the process. 3. tell us what you wrote about on a given day. 4. post prompts or theme ideas. Ex: "today, write a memory involving rain." 5. just chit-chat on the topic of self-narrative, diaries, etc.

I applied for a job at Trader Joe's today; they are hiring. On the way there:

Betsy gave me her Olympus Ultra Zoom (2.1 mp) to use until I can afford to fix my Canon Digital Rebel (6.3) or buy a new camera (I saw the Nikon Coolpix 8400---8 mp---marked down to $400---thats a $500 savings!)

Wednesday 28

Is it the season? I have a profile up on one of those online dating services. It's been on it for a little over one year. I have received e-mails from only two or three people over this time. I wasn't particularly interested in any of these people. When I returned from Christmas in New Hampshire I found seven e-mails from women in my inbox. What gives? Is it the season? Funny; I do not even want to date--and I don't have any money.

One woman writes:

"Are you very shy? Very busy? Or just not very interested?
You are the mystery man Bruce.
A beautiful girl gives you her phone number and you don't call...."

It must be the season.

Today I went to the Unemployment Office. I am eligible for unemployment insurance---starting sometime in January.

Tuesday 27

Two Days after Christmas in New Hampshire. After we ate dinner last night and sat at the table talking and drinking wine and coffee, snow started to fall.

Monday 26

The Day after Christmas in New Hampshire. A quiet day. Paul told my dad and I some rather interesting stories about his family and we watched "We Were Soldiers." I read a few issues of Bon Appetit and looked at Paul's books on meditation and Budhism.

Sunday 25

Christmas. Daryl and Danielle came over for breakfast and then I drove to my sister's house in New Hampshire. I was somewhat reluctant to go (feeling the stress of the season) but I am happy I went; it was a great time and my sister, dad, and niece really loved seeing me. And we laughed.

Saturday 24

The Pageant and an Angel. Was it just a few short years ago Daryl was Joseph in the Christmas Pageant?

I need an angel.

Friday 23

Early Morning.

Thursday 22

In The Jewelry Store. (notes to self; poem to follow)

Wednesday 21

Working with Jeff. (words to follow)

Tuesday 20

Sidewalks. We were not as busy as yesterday but Jeff fell on the sidewalk delivering a package and broke his thumb. People in Northampton (at least on our route) do not seem to believe it is important to shovel their sidewalks and front steps.

Monday 19

320. 360. I worked a full day today for UPS. It was, according to Jeff, the driver I help, the peak day of the year (Tuesday could be just as busy.). We delivered 320 360 packages--mostly boxes. A rather strange experience: delivering first to retail stores along Main Street; people shopping for gifts and carrying paper bags filled with toys, jewelry, clothes--I feel so disassociated from this holiday season; of course, when you have no money to buy gifts this impacts one's mood quite dramatically. After spending a few hours on Main Street, we delivered packages to a residential section of Northampton near Smith College. On the one hand it is fun to get a peak into all the lovely and beautifully decorated homes, and on the other hand depressing; having gone from having a beautiful home (and family) to a small loft that I now share with a tenant; seeing the children inside the homes eating or playing, families sitting down to dinner. We finished at eight. I was exhausted and my pinched nerve keeps my right hand in a constant state of numbness. My driver said I did a great job. He tells me most UPS employees are part-time full-time. Maybe I can work there in the new year. I am sure he would give me a great recommendation. They pay fairly well and part-time employees are given health insurance. And, I think, my age would not be a factor; I feel I am being discriminated against at many of the places where I have applied for sales/marketing positions. Plus, the nature of the work at UPS (and the hours) would allow me the time to grow my wedding photography business and keep working at my fine art photography.

One December day:

Sunday 18

If Only For A Moment. One of my good friends, when seeing this image for the first time said:

.....leisure, innocence, dreams, bliss, all those things that seem to become scarce as we grow up. Photos like this bring them back, even if it is only for a moment......

Saturday 17

Themes. I was thinking today about the themes found in my photography as I spent a few hours scanning old negatives; there is a continuity through the years: people I have worked with, people at parties/bars, self-portraits, NYC street photography, nature--little has changed; this makes me happy.

A woman from Hearst Magazines (late 70s , early 80s):

A women at Tin Pan Alley (a bar), 49th Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue:

Self-Portrait in window of old Bonwit-Teller ( how sad to see this store gone):

And then later in the day, I found this story in today's New York Times:

From May 1952 to June 1966, a troubled recluse named Angelo Rizzuto stalked Manhattan with a camera. He saw a city of solitary beings isolated amid the architectural grandeur, cold streets prowled by disillusioned women, exhausted men and vulnerable children. He ended every roll with a portrait of himself, alone in a spare room, sullenly staring or bizarrely grimacing into the camera, a loner among loners. No one saw these images while Mr. Rizzuto lived. When he was dying of cancer in 1967, he asked that his photographs - some 60,000 of them - be sent to the Library of Congress, along with $50,000 from his estate to finance a book of his work. The library printed a cheap, staple-bound booklet, then used the bulk of Mr. Rizzuto's money to acquire the work of more famous photographers like Diane Arbus. It would be another 40 years before Mr. Rizzuto got the book he deserved: Michael Lesy's "Angel's World," published this month by W. W. Norton & Company. Mr. Lesy first saw the photographs as a young scholar in 1974. He and Mr. Rizzuto were an inspired match. The year before, Mr. Lesy's doctoral thesis in American studies at Rutgers University had been published as the book "Wisconsin Death Trip." A startling, dreamlike montage of photographs and news clippings documenting a small town in the 1890's and 1900's, "Wisconsin Death Trip" exploded familiar conceptions of the Gay 90's. For the aptly named Black River Falls, the era had been more like the Extremely Grim 90's, filled with murder, suicide, epidemics, madness, debt and despair. After 30 years and a number of other books, "Wisconsin Death Trip" remains Mr. Lesy's signature work, the one that established him as a maverick prodigy in academia. Mr. Lesy was fascinated by Mr. Rizzuto's work, not as great art photography but as a visual diary of a disturbed and obsessed mind. "In the Jewish tradition he'd be called the 'hidden saint,' " Mr. Lesy explained in a recent telephone interview. "The solitary, inspired, diseased, clairvoyant lunatic." Over the years, Mr. Lesy tracked down Mr. Rizzuto's surviving relatives and neighbors, piecing together his strange, sad story. Mr. Rizzuto was born in Deadwood, S.D., in 1906 and grew up in Omaha. His father, a Sicilian immigrant who founded a successful construction business, saw to Mr. Rizzuto's education, including a brief stint at Harvard Law School. When the father died, his sons fought viciously over his estate, a protracted battle that pushed Mr. Rizzuto to a suicide attempt and left him convinced that his brothers were in league with an international conspiracy of Communists and Jews. After drifting around the country and working odd jobs, he settled in Manhattan, a bitter, paranoid outsider, and began observing the city's multitudes through the camera lens, "as remote as a recording angel," Mr. Lesy writes in the book's introduction, "bearing witness to a world of pain and geometry." For "Angel's World," Mr. Lesy selected 98 photographs from the thousands Mr. Rizzuto left, carefully matching pairs of images on facing pages to create an almost cinematic montage both sad and exhilarating. He says that the art of winnowing such a huge collection is "a matter of visiting and revisiting, a level of persistent viewing, and the ability to enter into a relaxed but alert state of looking. It's almost a yogic practice. Over time, you begin to recognize in a large body of work that there are things a guy like Rizzuto kept returning to - sorrow, solitariness, loss, reverie, the grandeur of space. You begin to understand that this guy, like all of us, had certain melodies he kept playing." In the past, Mr. Lesy has ruffled some academic feathers by arguing that what he calls "demotic photography," like family snapshots or picture postcards, deserves the same level of scholarly study traditionally given only to art photography. He writes in "Angel's World" that once, when he presented the work of the unknown, half-mad Mr. Rizzuto to a group of his colleagues, they reacted angrily, as though "he was a naked fool and I was a charlatan." "The art and photography historians really do not want anyone to say that the canon is something larger and more mysterious than they are willing to accept," he says. "My whole intention is to subvert the canon. I'd like to blow the whole thing up - not to destroy it, but to open it. To say the world is a far more wondrous place, greater in extent and breadth and twisted, gnarly depth than you could ever imagine. There are possibilities that go beyond the safe definitions of what an artist is and what a camera is used for." Mr. Lesy is currently on sabbatical from teaching literary journalism at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, working on his next foray outside the canon - "Murder City," a study of newspaper photographs and articles documenting Depression-era homicides in Chicago.   In all his books, he said, his ambition is "to touch the soul and the heart and the mind." He continued: "And that's what I think academics are bad at. They don't understand the heart. They deal with photographs as aesthetic, intellectual constructs, or as integers in philosophical or linguistic argument. That's not all they are. They're slippery and deeply emotionally charged. A photograph is a thing which, to use an old scholarly word, needs to be 'unpacked.' There's the manifest content, then half a dozen layered contents." By JOHN STRAUSBAUGH

Must enter this competition.

Friday 16

Friends. Oh. I am struggling to make ends meet so I decided to rent some space in my loft to a friend who is in need of a place to stay for a month or two. Her girl-friend lives down the hall. This will be a major change in my life as I have never lived with anyone before except for Betsy when we were married. There is a side of me that is very worried about losing my space and privacy but there is also someone inside of me that says maybe this is good thing; she is helping to pay the rent and the challenge to communicate with someone is a welcomed challenge.  She's a writer and a graduate of Bard College, very smart and kind. And yet, all of a sudden I feel as if I am an actor in Friends or some other soap opera. This is her--Rebekah:

Thursday 15

Positive Thoughts on Having a Broken Digital Camera.  Patience. Funny, when I took my first photos with my Canon F1 today I kept looking at the back of the camera expecting to see the image; not there--on film. I think this is probably a good thing; the camera breaking--forcing me to slow down, shoot with film for a month or two while camera is repaired (the part if on back-order and will not be in till February). I will shoot with film and continue to scan old negatives--as pictured here in one of my favorite images:

Daryl and Danielle--and Daisy.

Wednesday 14

Every Cover of Esquire Magazine.

Tuesday 13

Part-time part-time. Yes: today UPS called and said they didn't need me as a helper today but they would call tomorrow. I applied for sales jobs at three car dealerships in Northampton today. Time for pictures because I am pretty much speechless now:

And:

Monday 12

UPS. Today was my first full day working full-time/part-time for UPS. But when I got the Northampton and met the driver at 11:00, he said he didn't need me until 3:30--so I worked 3 1/2 hours. And right before I left for work, my camera stopped working; it seems Canon Digital Rebels have a shutter life of 50,000 cycles--I must be somewhat--if not a lot above that. I brought it to a camera repair store: $220 to fix. And no camera for Holiday Season.

Sunday 11

 

Saturday 10

And God shall wipe away ALL tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. ~ Revelation 21:4

Photo from contact sheet:

 

Friday 09

Snow and then Sun.

 

in the sun and in the rain and in the day and in the night pain is a flower pain is flowers blooming all the time. --Charles Bukowski, "my garden"

Thursday 08

Danielle's Diagnosis. Danielle called today. She asked me a few questions about the pain in my arm. And then diagnosed me as having a pinched nerve in my neck. I was so proud of her.

Wednesday 07

Pinched Nerve. The doctor said I have a pinched nerve in the back of my neck. He gave me some exercises to do and a referral to a physical therapist.

Tuesday 06

My Arm. I hurt my arm moving into my new apartment. The pain has slowly become more acute and the numbness in my fingers has steadily increased; so much so that when I went to fill out a job application yesterday it took all my strength to grip a pen and write--the writing was slow and deliberate (the pain in my hand and wrist severe)--the words almost illegible. I see a doctor on Wednesday.

Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that is wrong. They know less, that's why they write. Trying to find out what everyone else takes for granted. Margaret Atwood

Monday 05

An artist must never be a prisoner. Prisoner? An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success, etc. Henri Matisse

Sunday 04

Snow.

 

 

Saturday 03

Test.

Morning:

"Bagpipe Music" by Louis McNeice

It's no go the merrygoround, it's no go the rickshaw,
All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow.
Their knickers are made of crêpe-de-chine, their shoes are made of python,
Their halls are lined with tiger rugs and their walls with heads of bison.

John MacDonald found a corpse, put it under the sofa,
Waited till it came to life and hit it with a poker,
Sold its eyes for souvenirs, sold its blood for whiskey,
Kept its bones for dumb-bells to use when he was fifty.

It's no go the Yogi-Man, it's no go Blavatsky,
All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi.

Annie MacDougall went to milk, caught her foot in the heather,
Woke to hear a dance record playing of Old Vienna.
It's no go your maidenheads, it's no go your culture,
All we want is a Dunlop tyre and the devil mend the puncture.

The Laird o' Phelps spent Hogmanay declaring he was sober,
Counted his feet to prove the fact and found he had one foot over.
Mrs Carmichael had her fifth, looked at the job with repulsion,
Said to the midwife 'Take it away; I'm through with overproduction'.

It's no go the gossip column, it's no go the Ceilidh,
All we want is a mother's help and a sugar-stick for the baby.

Willie Murray cut his thumb, couldn't count the damage,
Took the hide of an Ayrshire cow and used it for a bandage.
His brother caught three hundred cran when the seas were lavish,
Threw the bleeders back in the sea and went upon the parish.

It's no go the Herring Board, it's no go the Bible,
All we want is a packet of fags when our hands are idle.

It's no go the picture palace, it's no go the stadium,
It's no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums,
It's no go the Government grants, it's no go the elections,
Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension.

It's no go my honey love, it's no go my poppet;
Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.
The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall for ever,
But if you break the bloody glass you won't hold up the weather.

Afternoon:

 

Friday 02

Darkness.

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

~from Stephen Mitchell's translation of Tao te Ching

Thursday 01

Themes.