10.14.2006
10.13.2006
Note To Steve on Addiction 10.14.06
I just had an epiphany about why people are drawn to addiction; especially in terms of a bright young lad like yourself.
There is a Buddhistic edict that one must give up desire. This is hard to do, particularly when your mind has a the bent and great yen for knowing and delving into so much; the heat for following your passions where ever they might lead. All this wanting to know often leads to a great deal of wanting to possess, if even because the acquisition of thing or person in question - that diadem you currently want to pluck - even if just because having it will lead to knowing it, and thus the world, better. Possession. The burning to have it, the great It at the moment, in your grasp. This is the sun-like engine of desire; it's very hot and can blot out all things near it. And how much worse if there's so many suns in your celestial cloak? So many because you want to know so much.
So then you go into deep and sustained meditation and give it all up, slow your heart rate down and begin in quietude to reach for only quiescence. The tree grows above you and you're free of that cycle of desire. And boy, ain't it all slow and easy.
But say you live in the city, that's usually all it takes to fuck up the rhythm in favor of wanting to know more, much more - all these info streams - and of not having the peace of mind to delve into peace of mind. And then a solution appears: total absorption in one desire. It's almost like a meditation in that is all but erases other desires. It quiets them right down in favor of it's own driving and all pervasive hunger. One desire, one great big feverish, warted and spunk seething Desire and aren't you almost an ascetic for giving yourself over so completely to the cause?
In my life I've primarily done my yen-ing for women, and in this centry I've been blessed to winnow it down to three women specifically, two of them still under four feet tall. That's my greediness. With my family as self-centered sacrement, I'm still aware that the need for Love is my driving force. Now in life it all comes to me so easily, but I don't forget how well it can sear at the flesh too. I know of the overarching NEED that is so painful but at least blots out other needs, and so I can take a shot at empathizing with you in your gut struggle. I raise a cheer to you for all that you are in all your great knowing's, and even in your struggles with being a Siddhartha of Substances. I'm proud of you for stepping up as Papa, for being the Man, when it could be altogether so much easier to just be the junkie. I'll tell Congress to send you a metal.
There is a Buddhistic edict that one must give up desire. This is hard to do, particularly when your mind has a the bent and great yen for knowing and delving into so much; the heat for following your passions where ever they might lead. All this wanting to know often leads to a great deal of wanting to possess, if even because the acquisition of thing or person in question - that diadem you currently want to pluck - even if just because having it will lead to knowing it, and thus the world, better. Possession. The burning to have it, the great It at the moment, in your grasp. This is the sun-like engine of desire; it's very hot and can blot out all things near it. And how much worse if there's so many suns in your celestial cloak? So many because you want to know so much.
So then you go into deep and sustained meditation and give it all up, slow your heart rate down and begin in quietude to reach for only quiescence. The tree grows above you and you're free of that cycle of desire. And boy, ain't it all slow and easy.
But say you live in the city, that's usually all it takes to fuck up the rhythm in favor of wanting to know more, much more - all these info streams - and of not having the peace of mind to delve into peace of mind. And then a solution appears: total absorption in one desire. It's almost like a meditation in that is all but erases other desires. It quiets them right down in favor of it's own driving and all pervasive hunger. One desire, one great big feverish, warted and spunk seething Desire and aren't you almost an ascetic for giving yourself over so completely to the cause?
In my life I've primarily done my yen-ing for women, and in this centry I've been blessed to winnow it down to three women specifically, two of them still under four feet tall. That's my greediness. With my family as self-centered sacrement, I'm still aware that the need for Love is my driving force. Now in life it all comes to me so easily, but I don't forget how well it can sear at the flesh too. I know of the overarching NEED that is so painful but at least blots out other needs, and so I can take a shot at empathizing with you in your gut struggle. I raise a cheer to you for all that you are in all your great knowing's, and even in your struggles with being a Siddhartha of Substances. I'm proud of you for stepping up as Papa, for being the Man, when it could be altogether so much easier to just be the junkie. I'll tell Congress to send you a metal.
10.05.2006
First Impressions
09.28.06
They live in a home built by an architect for himself. It's all lines and angularity, but done in wood and stone and almost-tadelacked walls with so much of the outside coming in through window-walls, that, for all its hard, jutting planed Modernism, the place is as soft as they are. And the furniture, low and plush, masculine, beckons you give in to repose and just watch the gardeners. There is an amazing harmony in their relationship and it's evinced in the lack of ostentation in their rich home. The army of small statured, good natured Guatemalans polishing the place, and even the sparse, good taste itself bely the money, but little else says anything but a rush to style and good living, clean living with all those well tending hands. And certainly very little gives away the newness of the money. There's the windowpane fridge. They had Puffy's assistant take a picture of his and recreated it. One side is full of labeled leftovers. The other half is, well, his assistant asked what I'd like to drink. It being a nice California morning I ventured, "Juice?" "What kind?" she asked. Now that's a simple piece of morning California conversation, you might even be able to get some unfiltered apple juice with a bit of pulp. But that's it right? Apple, orange, maybe some milk? She drew a finger up and I followed her into the kitchen. One entire wall sized cabinet of glass fronted cooler, filled. "It's like 7-11," A. said later. "My own 7-11." Every kind of beverage from top to bottom. And not just one of each, but a whole line of each just like a pop dispenser. Just like the one he stole from when they broke into his high school on his night of felonies, as we'd learn later in the tales of thievery and scarring. I helped myself to a watermelon juice.
But maybe it's her, She, she's a force of nature while still being a very laid back mama. And she's been in the dough for a long time now. Whether there's a mainstay of design directive in the household or they share the creation of it together, either way, it sure feels like the flow there spills out from their flow together. And all those lines everywhere, like the lines from the slat wood shadows, are broken both by their randomness of line, and all the unparallel jutting of the native grasses in stone beds at the foot of the windows and doors. This place is made to be open, and there's something congruently open about them together in their themness. And in our work today, I got to see it from him completely, on his own, as I always knew it was going to be there, knew it because my mom had told me so after she had him over for passover once and he chimed in with all his newfound love of Kabbala. He's a sweet gentle dude. You know it because of D., she wouldn't have it otherwise, you'd imagine. But then you finally get him alone and talking and you're proven completely right again.
They live in a home built by an architect for himself. It's all lines and angularity, but done in wood and stone and almost-tadelacked walls with so much of the outside coming in through window-walls, that, for all its hard, jutting planed Modernism, the place is as soft as they are. And the furniture, low and plush, masculine, beckons you give in to repose and just watch the gardeners. There is an amazing harmony in their relationship and it's evinced in the lack of ostentation in their rich home. The army of small statured, good natured Guatemalans polishing the place, and even the sparse, good taste itself bely the money, but little else says anything but a rush to style and good living, clean living with all those well tending hands. And certainly very little gives away the newness of the money. There's the windowpane fridge. They had Puffy's assistant take a picture of his and recreated it. One side is full of labeled leftovers. The other half is, well, his assistant asked what I'd like to drink. It being a nice California morning I ventured, "Juice?" "What kind?" she asked. Now that's a simple piece of morning California conversation, you might even be able to get some unfiltered apple juice with a bit of pulp. But that's it right? Apple, orange, maybe some milk? She drew a finger up and I followed her into the kitchen. One entire wall sized cabinet of glass fronted cooler, filled. "It's like 7-11," A. said later. "My own 7-11." Every kind of beverage from top to bottom. And not just one of each, but a whole line of each just like a pop dispenser. Just like the one he stole from when they broke into his high school on his night of felonies, as we'd learn later in the tales of thievery and scarring. I helped myself to a watermelon juice.
But maybe it's her, She, she's a force of nature while still being a very laid back mama. And she's been in the dough for a long time now. Whether there's a mainstay of design directive in the household or they share the creation of it together, either way, it sure feels like the flow there spills out from their flow together. And all those lines everywhere, like the lines from the slat wood shadows, are broken both by their randomness of line, and all the unparallel jutting of the native grasses in stone beds at the foot of the windows and doors. This place is made to be open, and there's something congruently open about them together in their themness. And in our work today, I got to see it from him completely, on his own, as I always knew it was going to be there, knew it because my mom had told me so after she had him over for passover once and he chimed in with all his newfound love of Kabbala. He's a sweet gentle dude. You know it because of D., she wouldn't have it otherwise, you'd imagine. But then you finally get him alone and talking and you're proven completely right again.
4.18.2006
A Sister Chit
Good for one hand-me-down moment of genius. Bindi says to me today in the car, "Do you know this really, really, really great artist. I forget his name but he was a really good painter and he was painting before the dinosaurs." "Really?" says I. "And what's he paint?" "Oh, stuff, houses and ponds." "Claude Monet?" "That's him! Yeah, we did paintings like him today." My girl's good. And she knows her dinosaurs.
4.14.2006
AV in TV
Here's a shot from my recent AV DAY 03.06. I'm doing an ongoing day-in-the-life project with our Mayor of LA, Antonio Villaraigosa. The idea is to amass a flip book of the Main Man as he courses through his term. He's a hell of a leader and to be led through this city, high and low, and quick and the blood pulsing always as he talks to the people, always the people about the people for the good of the people as a man of the people, a People United Undefeated realized in this man, The Man, a man who prefers the Salt for is of it and the Earth, to spend such a day is always a heady good fun one. And keeping up with that CA EXEMPT plate with it's hidden Starsky sirens when needed is always a test of an LA Man's - me - metal for driving the city wide and fast. If you ever really need to get somewhere in this town, just follow the Mayor.
This shot is of him at the Radio & Television museum giving the Rap to all the collected gun powder of the Movie Industry. In capturing his political persona, I always try to conjure something of the powerful Radical that to me is a figure from out of the '60's when a world that predated me was coming bristling awake and aware and using the force of charisma and persuasion to change the face of the country. I can only hope that my own little propagandas will contribute to continued radicalization and change for the better. This dude, AV, is heavy enough to effect such changes. I'm only too happy to be rolling with him. And I was so pleased to have him standing, pontificating, in front of a Peter Max and Black Man Whopper and major-high-tech-instant-pleasure-precursor-to-my-beloved-digital: Peel-a-Polaroid as if he were not really standing in the museum but actually standing in my head in the exact spot I keep for him there to lay out his gospel.
3.15.2006
Clouds for Sunday
Girls know vastness, from the very start. Why? Because of their sleeping little wombs, tethered to infinity and holding a host of the rest of us still out there cloud bound.
3.07.2006
Praise for Good New Toys
I just used my Birthday gift card at Samy's on a little gift I might have otherwise overlooked. And I am loath to miss a good gift. It's a little external flash for my pixie cam - another unexpected gift, from X-Mas, that's worked its way quite nicely into my quotidian life. So with the little quick camera on my hip and thus always at the ready and now with this little slaved external light source out at arm's length, the whole nature of the snapshot is changed to something with a whole lot more teeth. And isn't that at the heart of what I'm doing? Raising the snap of life up toward the exalted moment, making celebratory and celebrity out of the simple corduroy of my existence. It's all in the daily business of observing my CHICKS, and paying them homage.
3.05.2006
3 Cheers For Kickin' Cancer's Ass
Pops is looking very strong and perhaps more importantly, very happy. His granddaughters come over and he just lets them light him up. He has a newfound lightness about him that is very obviously a big part of his healing. He's not making much of an effort to find a homeopathic answer to the ills that have beset him - old dog and his old tricks is just more apropos to the comfort of seven decades of being self directed. But I like to think that he's imbibing freely of this good medicine that are my CHICKS. Mette wouldn't even eat pancakes from me today, she only wanted to climb up into Pops' lap and be fed his breakfast, and he so willingly gave it all to her. It was magical. She knows the things she wants and needs and gravitates to them wordlessly, inspired only by the guts. In her presence he is moved by the same intuition. It's really a blessing to see the strength flooded back into him.
Lemon for the Box Clown
One of the big pulls of having another kid is the sheer curiosity around who they will be. Each is so different from the other. It could easily cause you to have so many. You're really compelled to see how the next one will be unique. They are made of the same stuff, harbor strapping similarities, but are born of completely different molds.
There is one common thread though that is always so fetching to witness: common fascinations. Especially when they are tied to a certain age or a certain level of burgeoning awareness. The young one comes to something that is brand new to her and wondrous, and you remember how the older one was once taken up in the same enthrall. And you wonder how you ever forgot that touching exhilaration in your own child, and how you never really even noticed that they had grown out of it. That's another big part of having number two, it returns you to so many precious epochs you've ushered into and - by dint of the hurly burly of childrearing - passed right out of without much ado. In this photo Mette, thumb stuck in a lemon, is finding the silly dancing clown in the cardboard music box at Apa Pops'. O! how he used to dance for Bindi, and his limbs are only looser now.
My Daughters of Rock'n'Roll Good Hair
They are freelance and very highly regarded in this business of always looking very chic. Good hair is about effortlessness. Here's the epitome, eh? Here's to Rock'n'Roll.
3.04.2006
Verging Toward Venitian Puberty
How is one so small, so big? How does the mercury of attitude switch so willy-nilly. This is all in the lay-you-low and humble of beholding daughters. May I wish it on every man.
Bert Leonard, Papa, Producer
This here is Bert Leonard. He's a formidable character. Long time Hollywood producer, several times husband, taciturn if you fuck with him, gentle lamb of his women, father of my proxy sisters. He's in a bad way just now, eating through a tube, no more larynx, biding cancer's time. But he's moved back in with his ex-wife and daughters, sort of a great big complete circle coming round to finality. His hair is kept by his nurse making him look all silvery and groomed. There is a large TV with Andy Griffith near by and the loneliness of old age seems fairly well kept at bay. He has that beatitude of one who does not speak anymore. He transmits all sorts of assurance through he eyes. To sit with him for his portrait was very peaceful. And I think it did everyone a moment of good.
3.01.2006
To School She Lectures
She has begun to be very explicit in her mumblings. Mette is a woman grounded in soil while buena vista eyed.
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