Meeno

Letter To A Young Photographer

2008-01-11T12:01:00.000-08:00

Here's your next assignment. Do the Mario Testino thing. Omar told me that Testino said to him, "You know why I make millions doing this, you know why? People think I'm some amazing photographer. All I do, I make the clothes look really good."

What I'm trying to say is get at what is elemental about your subject. If she's not drop dead gorgeous, either make her so, or concentrate on her character. Or on her clothes, or her sex, or her doubts and hopes and the miracle of her becoming a woman. Make everything real, and really amazing. If there's an ounce of contrivance - just like in acting - the whole thing's shot.

So when I look at this shot I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be amazed with. And I shouldn't be thinking about that. My disbelief should be suspended and I should be swooshed into your world. Your light is clean, but to what end? Remember, if you're going to shoot fashion, it has to be a revelation of how we see the world. And if you shoot a portrait it's a revelation of how you see a soul. Rock? Everyone's a Rock God. Stella Adler says we go out to eat to be served, when we could just as easily feed ourselves at home. We go to the theater to be served emotion, though we get it everyday in real life. We view pictures to see God. Everyday is Sunday when you raise that camera to your eye. Everything is holy, and perverse. The sky and the very bottom of your churning bowels. The Light and The Dark. We go to photography to See, to verily see, despite the eyes in our heads. To spite the eyes in our heads.....

Remember, I say all of this as much to you as I do to myself.

Full Steam for '08

2008-01-03T01:18:00.001-08:00

Each day the feeling mounts that I'm gifted with a life at the pinnacle. Everything is so good, marvels and magics and each day imbued with fineness and silliness that makes all the quotidian of my life picaresque. Every thing's a tale in my existence. My incredible family and our city farm, the burgeoning career handed to me on platters with a gift that comes easily and it's all as if it were inscribed to be nascent. The glow of the lights that so rarely leaves me. And the overarching awareness that so many others have it so vile at this very moment on the face of the earth. The substance and consequence of hope and desire and compulsion and compassion and maturation and nurturing are the same, the sun rises, even through muck in the sky, and it feels like a new day - for all of us - but the possibilities are commensurately, exponentially, more flowering for me. And thus I try, with each of the wonderful new days, to be as reverent as I am gleeful. And I try to not steer from that glee as an act of reverence. Thus I am a faithful man, committed to the gift of my birth at this most amazing place and time. I do like gifts, and this's a good one.

What Barbie Told Me

2007-12-29T23:25:00.001-08:00

Chinadoll Perfection, Note frozen nail polish on eyelid

2007-12-29T21:24:00.001-08:00

Morning Glories

2007-12-28T00:42:00.001-08:00

Papa's Aviary didn't come out too damned bad....

2007-10-14T00:29:00.000-07:00

I don't know how to build these things. But my wife exhorts me to build them and so I follow the aesthetic line where it takes me. If not the Devil, then why not let it be my beloved wife's fancy that leads me around through this garden of our making. It's a good Sky Farm Red we've built; chickens, dogs, cats, birds, turtles, bees, daughters and all. It's a good damned life all around!

Ilse's glory world is ever strong.

2007-10-14T00:20:00.000-07:00

Note: There were still teeth.....

2007-10-14T00:17:00.000-07:00

The Yarg Y'Cam Show. Celebrity Rap Superstar: Perez Hilton.

2007-10-14T00:00:00.000-07:00

And then we went to the fine, silken underbelly of culture.....

Tooth loose and fancy free.....

2007-10-13T23:48:00.000-07:00

With the one gone and its mate hanging like an old Texaco sign that migrates in the void toward the center of the mouth, the hill billy is strong in my daughter. Yes, the milk teeth are retreating. Sophistication begins its early adavance. And it positively kills me to see her grow so huge before my eyes. The lisp leaves with my wits and I'm left to sit, again, in awe. The Loren Hutton rears its head in her, in all its finess. But there's a promise of orthadontics there too. How old and glad and grand will she be before I glimpse her with a pearly row again, my sweet babe advancing in age.

The Yarg Y'Cam Show. Flash B Interview Part 2

2007-10-13T23:46:00.001-07:00

The Yarg Y'Cam Show. Flash B Interview Part 1

2007-10-13T23:43:00.000-07:00

Meet one very profound dude. It's no wonder he's so tight with Yarg. They have deep roots, go way, way back.

The Yarg Y'Cam Show. Bobby Brown Interview Part 3

2007-10-13T23:42:00.000-07:00

The Yarg Y'Cam Show. Bobby Brown Interview Part 2

2007-10-13T23:41:00.000-07:00

The Yarg Y'Cam show. Bobby Brown Interview Part 1

2007-10-13T23:33:00.000-07:00

Here's a new show I'm directing.

Yarg's a terrific character, really drills his guests to get the most out of them. We're having a shit load of fun. There are such things to witness on this earth! O, the vastness of it to plumb. May as well start in Pamona.....

In Great Sport They Grow!

2007-10-04T15:53:00.001-07:00

Mette Home With Cold

2007-10-04T13:46:00.001-07:00

Ah, the ability to entertain one's self.....

Surgery (Fashion) Victim

2007-09-27T09:45:00.001-07:00

No animals were hurt in the production of these fleeting, wholesome, filially innocent and introspective moments.

After The Rain

2007-09-25T00:24:00.001-07:00

The City has a whole new magesty every time the draught is broken. That fleeting respite is even more acutely good here in the hills, our country hills in the city.

My Blazing Saddles

2007-09-19T22:13:00.000-07:00

Auto-Coronation

2007-09-19T22:01:00.001-07:00

The Last of The Successes of Summer

2007-09-19T21:51:00.001-07:00

The Window My Daughter Crashed Through

2007-09-19T21:43:00.001-07:00

A Powerful Compliment at Octoberina's 80th

2007-09-19T13:07:00.000-07:00

"Hi Meeno: Thank you so much for making the women feel so comfortable and important. Each of the eight women you have met and photographed has struggled to regain their sense of self. They want to tell their stories. They want people to see them for who they were before they came here---accomplished women who lived their lives with conviction and passion. This need is profound. Your genuine interest in their opinions and experiences is a great gift to them. And to me as well. Sincerly, S___"

Home Sick Girls

2007-09-16T13:17:00.001-07:00

Don't Get Fired, Get Paid!

2007-09-15T11:15:00.000-07:00

Remember when we raised our children in Morocco....

2007-09-10T17:23:00.001-07:00

Baby Coffee, Note the Pinkie.....

2007-09-09T23:24:00.000-07:00

Sophistication has no limits.

2nd Grader Prowess

2007-09-09T23:22:00.000-07:00

Pre-School Sophomore

2007-09-09T23:20:00.000-07:00

"First edict, dress myself for school."

My Wife Does All Sorts of Amazing Things

2007-05-07T22:01:00.000-07:00

Now that the birds have their new home, the porch has been fully reclaimed. All bird screed scrubbed immediately away and a fairy tent swiftly erected for the CHICKS.

Tellin' it to the 1st Graders

2007-05-07T21:08:00.000-07:00

Here's my view of Bindi's class as I saw it from my chair on Career day. I was showing 'em how to be a top notch photo man, of course.

This Saturday, Fun Crime.

2007-05-03T08:31:00.001-07:00

Here's one of the coolest things to do in LA.

Crimebus!

My pals at Esotouric take you on an amazing journey around the city you thought you knew. Just wait till you start picking at the scabs. My experience was that it was doubly thrilling because so much of my own history of being an Angelino was playing out before me as we drifted in the somnolent high-up bus seat through stories and blocks ragged chronologies of blood and misdeed in this dodgy and semen seamed town. And now they're branching out to include the literature, architecture and food that makes up so much of this City's character. All eyes, ears and mouths open for Esotouric Tours!

Dig it: http://www.esotouric.com/

And don't miss the blog that started it all: http://www.1947project.com/

For The Birds

2007-04-20T09:24:00.000-07:00

The Aviary's coming along just fine. Soon my wife and our feathered friends, for now the two Frida's, and I'd not gainsay soon more, will thank me heartily for the fine addition to our splendid garden, my woman's majestic laboratory. And I'll be thanking all the friends who've pitched in mitzvah's of leveling, righting, erecting and design suggestion. Soon the Spring will see my work done.

Decisive Moments

2007-04-17T08:34:00.001-07:00

Sometimes the camera is ready quicker than the Parent Response Mechanism. Or is it just the preternatural absorption of the photojournalistic eye?

German Lives & Jason Bruce Lee

2007-03-25T23:21:00.001-07:00

Dragged through really good German film making today. "The Lives Of
Others". The Academy award it received is almost a joke. Best Foreign
Language film. It's so beyond American film making that it's just
weird to even be included in that cheerleading contest. Though it
does seem we're in an era of good film again. It's been a nice season
with an occasional date at the Arclight for my dear lady and I. More
than ever I want to love my family and take pictures and read books
and write about it all. There is nothing else. And see movies and
galavant around the earth. There is nothing more.

And go to play with my old friend Jason Lee for the first time in way
too long. Got a look at his new project, giant Polaroids from a
gorgeous monsters of a gargantuan red leather camera. 20x24 inch
pictures this thing takes. The big beauty that goes up on your wall,
that's the thing that came out of the camera. No enlarger. Start big,
end big. Tremendous Wow factor. One of only a handful in the world.
And he's doing this really nice set of portraits in the verdure with
it. A major execution for simple and lovely outcome. And if it calls
for an entire new room built in his studio for it - well then the
walls go up. That's the lesson I love from Jason Lee. If you want to
do something, do it. And do it well.

I got in a couple of new portraits of him as well which is always a
treasure. He complimented me on my approach as well. "You're your own
man, Meeno." That summed things nicely for me. Good fellowship and we
got to make things while we yucked it up together. Isn't that how it
should always be? A simple piece of intimate interlude. Sex, taken to
a different end and angle. All photography for me is fucking, a nod
to that great generative energy: the impulse to create.

Havana Time

2007-03-19T12:32:00.001-07:00

The time goes nicely on the isle. You could spend months in Havana
and call it a day.

Dig the Future. You can Touch it.

2007-02-19T06:17:00.000-08:00

http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=j_han

Glamor in the Bambi's

2007-02-13T11:13:00.000-08:00

Quarters Go Far

2007-02-12T22:57:00.000-08:00

Quiet Pageantry of Daughters

2007-02-12T22:47:00.000-08:00

Charity Has No Vanity

2007-02-12T22:27:00.000-08:00

National $afety & $ecurity.

2007-02-07T11:41:00.000-08:00

Fashion Week in Lincoln Heights

2007-02-02T08:39:00.000-08:00

Moments on Sky Farm #147

2007-01-28T22:21:00.000-08:00

My wife wanted a "Big Sur fence" for her veggie patch. Here's my stab at it. Today my mom told Ed Begley Jr. that my wife grows all our own food. That was generous. We'll see if the gophers allow us a lettuce this year. But "Big Sur" will at least keep the dogs from rooting in the freshly laid horse shit. There's something about the smell of a sodden garden, it's so alive.

Take the Guts, and the Laughter

2007-01-19T23:50:00.001-08:00

I have taken it upon myself to embrace Joseph's death with this edict: the dying give us the nod: Live!

Now freed from the confines of the illness that had laid siege to his body, Joseph is free to live in us all. All that is miraculous carries forth.

That incredible man was never bereft of his mind and his guts, even when each breath was a gurgle and his skin gave way everywhere to weeping, still his heart beat strong. He did not want to let go, ever the patriarch and the rock, that tough bastard just wouldn't let go. But they were there, his loved ones, some of all of us who have been made so strong by him, and they carried him across. The assured him and let him go. Maybe even in that he was teaching us all how to be strong, how to do things creatively, how to make things work best and with a flair and signature. Send me to death, and make it really delicious. He gives me that knowing smile from beyond the pale now. He gave me that smile and I'll always have it and it will take me as far as I want to go. That is what a patriarch does, gives you the tools and the impetus to use them.

So in that vein I go forward with a bit of a new lease on each day. I have appetite and a great field of food to the horizon. There is consuming and consummation en masse before me. And I have but to breath and focus and toil and rejoice and see and marvel and pinpoint and feel and felicitate and fornicate and make proverbs of all my silliest thoughts, be my king and own jester, succeed and overpower and gracefully stroke the long bangs from my daughters' faces such that they may see and have balls galore too. Joseph taught me to be a marksmen. "Every shot, you've got to put your mind and your heart and your cock into it." He was talking cameras, and everything else, and I got it so well. And thus I'm in love with all this living.

The last time we left him in Kauai I took one last look back. I wanted to seal it in as the last. We were leaving down the balcony and he was heading back in the door to his Sulawesi kit-house marvel. The afternoon sun was on him and he stood as the golden lion there, the perpetual Ram, Aries king, saying warmly good-by with his eyes. In his left hand he held the door handle, a terrific sculpted reptile in that dark, heavy jungle wood. His right hand was held up in a fist, "Stay strong, stay soulful," that fist said to me, and that was all I needed to hear, I heard it through those blue eyes and that smile, just the same as when he was condoning your actions when you had done something really right: got the shot, had the kid, built the house, something really right, by your own hand. That golden fist and that smile and the pacific aqua eyes, and he knew he was giving me all the power I would ever need to go on without him in the world, without him now in such a way that the fist is everywhere, the eternal smile and all the strength that confers. I promise you, Christ didn't not look down woefully from the cross like in all those paintings. He looked down with the blue eyes of Joseph, whipped a hand right out from the nail and gave the soul brother fist of gold and the parishioners had hosannas forever thanks to that. That's a hell of a way to say goodbye, it assures you he'll always be there. And he is, I assure you. I run ten miles tomorrow, easily, in honor of it.

m e e n O

www.meenophoto.com

323) 4 2 2 .5 5 2 0

Olbermann On Bush's Push Into Cambodia

2007-01-17T10:18:00.001-08:00

Finally, someone in the major media has made the reference without nicety or too much explication, that is, he made a real (and relevant!) literary allusion. In listing Pres. Bush's lies and convolutions Oberman says, "Oh, and one more to add, tonight: 'Oceania has always been at war with East Asia.' Mr. Bush, this is madness." How I've longed for just this nod.

Check it out here: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011207A.shtml

January 17, 2007

2007-01-17T01:43:00.001-08:00

Ruminations on death.

The message reads, "He was your teacher, you were a good student. Your note came just as the call to prayer echoed out over Kerala. I'll say a prayer to the waters from our houseboat." That's a perfect scene to me just now. The sunset, gold and awash in subtropic warmth. It's the kind of prayer Joseph would have completely appreciated. I've been to waters like that with him. Seen that kind of summery gold at dusk, coming from both sky and water, marveled with him, as lens-men do, at the majesty of magic hour.

It's all such fancy, to be able to share these confidences thus. Age old urgings for the gods to ply their beauty and wisdom in amongst the small and interminable strugglings of man and his stumblings about on the saber's edge until it flays him. It is the old way, ancient, for a brother in arms to be pious for another brother when a Godfather has been lost, and this has been so well served by the shooting of epistolary electrons around the globe tonight. I wrote to RTO earlier "You once sent a note to India about Charlie. Now it's my turn. Joseph sings with Siva..." All the power of that pronouncement, all the finality sent off to the great land of wildest mortality, that great reckoning that would affect a blood brother of mine to kneel down before the still sunset waters as though for an Imam, the call for Gangic rights, the piety toward The End, all went out from the little piece of glowing plastic in my hands. I texted such prophetic news, fancy that. And I had been so impressed to be floored by the news of Charlie's OD seven years ago in what at the time seemed like the ultimate in instant postcards: an email. How awkward it was to cry in the glare and un-private setting of an Udaipur email shop. The Israeli next to me was buxom and young and worldly and probably knew a lot more about death for our comparative years. Her small smile helped a lot. And the next day I was able to tell Joseph about it, on a marvelous pillow filled veranda overlooking the sunset waters and their magic. We ate and drank and shared stories about the crazy ones and how much they bring to our lives. Joseph was there with us, laughing and hearty and full of as much life as that entire mad continent.

Yesterday I watched the sun go down from my perch above Los Angeles. It was the same gold as in India, always all that gold. I thought, "That's the first sunset in 65 years to go down without Joseph here to enjoy it." And enjoy it he would have. He would have liked that chilly fireball in the glass of wintery downtown and especially our vantage on it. He would have laughed and said, "You sure got it right." And I have, because I've been a good student. It's exactly what he taught us to be, and we're not such fools as not to listen. It's some fine technology he left us; the ability to look and laugh, and own it all by making it yours.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

2007-01-16T02:54:00.000-08:00

What pain to have seen Joseph today. Things so beautiful around me in life just now, and momentum under full steam. Things coming so easily. And then to come through the door of my sister's house, the broad beam slow swinging door through a curved portico into thick walls and to hear reverberating through those halls and rooms that voice, that rich voice of delight and fascination with each new turn. The full voice of Joseph, so thick and happy and full of life. Calling out to my daughters in their blue ball gown finery. Low and beholding their fanciness with accolades and hoots. Pure Joseph enjoying the stuff of life at hand. And then to come around the corner to find him in his room, the revamped dining room, in his bed, a mattress and box springs on the floor, his legs propped up onto a giant wedge of orthopedic pillow, some big green castor to keep his none circulating legs, thick like elephant trunks elevated. His cheeks puffed with it too, with whatever was slowing his blood - his own ill heart - and then here he is turning the weight of vastly immanent death into a cherubic rosy cheeked, puffy eyed look of Santa-in-a-slow-spell. The mirth was into total swing, unmitigated by rot of the corpse, the soul is so free in its play - he loves the things he finds amazing and makes each sweet moment with him poignant. That's his kingly advantage, you give him he importance of magic man relevance and he hands it back as full sage anointed. His seal is the fine and bold imprinture we're all wanting, because it carries such easy proof of validation, he knows the good shit and admires it unvarnishedly, when it's good, from the simple moment of seeing the child, to the many well bound bits of photography I shared with him, when it's good he lets you know in the best terms possible. He gives you such strength in this way. And thus it's amazing to see his body ravaged, because the giving soul is so perfectly undiminished.

God love him. He's on a road trip, and seemingly enjoying every minute of it. There's more bravery there than a thousand Evil Knievals.

Kerouac's Headphones December 27, 2006

2007-01-16T02:39:00.000-08:00

There's something about the West that calls to Hobo'ing. It al makes me think of Kerouac. I have this vision of Kerouac's creative process. He looks out on everything. And in the midst of it, anywhere he looks, he casually discerns a hole, it doesn't obscure anything, but it's there always waiting and available. The hole's a headphone jack and anytime he wants he can just plug in and the phantoms sing to him. They tell him everything. They allow him all reconnaissance on every angle of the street corner he perceives or the sailors or Dean's particularly perfect abilities as a parking attendant. He just plugs in and the sounds of the rest of the world fade away. All he can hear is this amazing steam that he takes to be his own consciousness. He just scribbles furiously, getting it all down, from where ever he points his eyes, these sonar locators. He can know everything, because everything is to be know by plugging into this jack, all revelation from every seed kernel to curb stopper, every bit of grit sings up to him, and he transcribes the song. I like to think too that he was handed these special headphones as a courtesy from Henry Miller.

O! to sit in a comfortable private car with you half-sleeping daughter quietly there across from you beneath the window that holds all of dry winter, slightly snow drifted New Mexico out it.

Friday, January 12, 2007

2007-01-16T02:23:00.000-08:00

I had the most amazing dream. I was being put into a special school because I was slipping into a vegetative state. The classroom was in my beloved Red Barn classroom from Apple School days. But the room inside was different, institutional, like public schools with no windows, for patient's safety. I realize now it was a dream about my shirked duty to write. How I've been retarded in my efforts to get it down for the past few years. Even now, I'm challenged, I should have written about Joseph last night, but opted for trying to get some rest. He's leaving this world now, maybe even gone by this morning. It must be heralded, the loss of this great man. A word must be kept as a memento of prayer at this time of such a passing. I look up into the dark clouds of the pre-dawn sky and realize that there's a broken patch of the faintest blue. Day is coming, a renewing savior robed in baby pastels. But they glow! And ever more so! And it must be recorded for others that Joseph did this amazing gift for all of us; taught us to do exactly what we wanted to do, and to do it very well and with tremendous balls and that in the end that will lead to creative fulfillment, sagacity, and the ability to inspire others. "There's a lot of room at the top," he once told me. And then the cat jumps up beside me and sneezes muck on my hands and the keys. But I'm too loosed to effort now, and the dream runs thus:

I'm being checked into the class. I'm answering a few questions like name, date of birth. I can feel my head plastered over to one shoulder in that strange palsy of a slow boy. Then the TV tube of my vision starts to go dark at the edges, and then it's all black. When the lights in my eyes come back on it's two years later and I'm being checked out of the class. I have this feeling of amazing clarity, and a real sweet taste of satisfaction in my brain that is a direct result of having my brain back. I'm realizing that I've been a mush pot for the past however long and that I've checked out completely in that interval. I run over to one of the teachers desks and ask him to show me some of my class work. He holds up a page of big block letters in some obtuse sentence. That's not so bad, I figure. But then I realize that I was just filling in a couple of words in the middle and those have been pecked in such chicken-scratch that it's barely legible. That just about breaks my heart, it's then that I realize how handicapped I've been. The sentence is something about a human being a stump of wood.

Out into the light we go, a glorious day on the old Apple School campus. I'm with my mom and my youngest daughter, Mette. She's still two years old though, lovely that. And there's an amazing blond. Young and vivacious and with great trestles of hair. She comes as an amalgam of some of the girls from a recent casting for The Blond Book. In the dream she's the teaching assistant and I've got an inkling she's the one that's sprung me from my chambers of darkness. I'm still coming to and just getting a grip on things. She's hustling a ride from my mom to get to lunch and now she's climbing into the back seat. Her summery dress rides up a bit high and I get a peak of panties and then those fall a little loose to one side and there's the curlies and even the quickest glimpse of pink. I know I'm back. She getting in the back seat of the white Volvo. She's getting into the baby seat. What a goof. What a glorious goof. I've got to see this. I'm putting Mette in and have to convince this lovely to scoot over out of the kid seat and I'll just stay back there and query her about my absence.

We're all strapped in and going. The drive is like the float of a low flying plane. There's an exuberance in my head as I look out at the billowed clouds and blue, a glorious day. This is when I find out it's been two years. I cry a bit at that, the loss of such time. But it breaks into laughter as I remark that for the first time in as long as I can remember I feel truly rested. I dawns on me that I must have just taxed my brain too much, that it just shut down to heal itself. A great sleep. I ask the lovely blond when it was she knew I was coming out of my moribund state. "When you looked at me. All of a sudden there was this look, and it was so deep and so warm and so scary. You looked to me like a man."

That was certainly satisfying enough to reassure my resurfacing. I felt full of power, like I could look anyone in the eye with such force and persuasion.

Just then we passed a place, perhaps a liquor store, with cartoonish figures and a boat outside. I seemed to recall the place as a warm childhood memory. I asked my mom in the front seat if that was indeed important to my youth. She said no, not that one, but one like it. I wanted to share its whimsy with my young daughter there in the seat beside me none the less. And then we pulled into McDonalds. Another childhood goodie, an early taboo that was only for special occasions and that much sweeter for its inferred licentiousness. Again, I was eager to share this special thrill with my little girl.

Inside was a small and laughable miracle, Starbucks had merged with Micky-D's and the tenor of the place was transformed. I had been out of it for a while and this whole-new-day business was really egging in from all sides. Burgers and coffee, what could be more American than that. But this, with high ceilings, high expectations, wooden convex counters and cellophane food was so Euro-American. And you didn't quite know where to line up. I felt satisfied and hungry, and dispossessed of some piece of my childhood all at once. Funny that two days later, on the Black Dalhia Bus Tour we would stop way down Crenshaw at Krispy Kream and find that Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf was safely tucked inside. All is history, all is new reality, all is my drift through my city, remembering what little bits I can. And my lovely daughters. And my love of blonds.

Mr. Reeves in Pain & Pleasure

2006-10-14T01:23:00.000-07:00

Note To Steve on Addiction 10.14.06

2006-10-13T18:01:00.000-07:00

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.

First Impressions

2006-10-05T03:34:00.000-07:00

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.

The Line, It's Dots, and Your Signature

2006-04-18T22:49:00.000-07:00

Easy to see why I'm so happily sworn in for the Adventure.

A Sister Chit

2006-04-18T22:28:00.000-07:00

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.

AV in TV

2006-04-14T00:52:00.000-07:00

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.

Clouds for Sunday

2006-03-15T22:47:00.000-08:00

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.

Praise for Good New Toys

2006-03-07T22:43:00.000-08:00

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 Cheers For Kickin' Cancer's Ass

2006-03-05T22:40:00.000-08:00

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

2006-03-05T22:19:00.000-08:00

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

2006-03-05T22:00:00.000-08:00

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.

Verging Toward Venitian Puberty

2006-03-04T07:22:00.000-08:00

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

2006-03-04T06:46:00.000-08:00

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.

To School She Lectures

2006-03-01T09:53:00.000-08:00

She has begun to be very explicit in her mumblings. Mette is a woman grounded in soil while buena vista eyed.

The Cross Roads

2005-11-13T02:52:00.000-08:00

And the power of Rock was bestowed upon her.

The Learning Process

2005-11-13T02:09:00.000-08:00

I see how lucky these girls are, everyday. I call it the learning process. And it goes, more or less smoothly, in both directions.

And, boy, do we learn from them.

Bindi, Stylist

2005-11-11T23:22:00.000-08:00

And I think you'll appreciate my budding Stylist. She was integral to the shoot, as she's always been, but now it's more than just bringing a smile to my subject's face.

We Would Celebrate None The Less

2005-11-01T22:17:00.000-08:00

With the ultimate in fanciful creatures at our disposal, how could we not throw ourselves wholly into the season? This is the essence of all this business. There can be nothing but now, otherwise your children will grow right up past you. It's the only way to stick a foot into the business and that's to kick enough ass such that you're always there and present. Wouldn't want to miss a moment of the mischief. Here's three cheers to Harvest time!

Queen of the Fairies

2005-11-01T22:13:00.000-08:00

Yet another of the several reasons I've taken this blessed woman as my own. How could I not when she's so blessed and I'm so blasted?

My Floating Tiny

2005-11-01T21:57:00.000-08:00

There was a band in The Cornfields. They played music to accompany the landed space ship. There was free candy all around. This creature of mine was drawn to these like a Greek to libations. So recently unfettered by gravity, she shot herself across the fields as if floating in her ball gown. Every so often one small red leatherette shoe would show, but then just that lilt across the grass. From the candy back to the music again. The music was as big and queer-turned as anything the Velvet Underground might have done on a Halloween long ago. And Mette was stoned on her first free flow of chocolates and gummies. Christmas is good when the take's fine, but Halloween's always hallowed from that first novitiate's sweet tooth on. Possession and nine-tenths of the law. They get candy, they get it themselves without so much as asking, just a demand and take and sweets; some damn perfection from a child's perspective. Freedom in brightly fringed wrappers. Run Child, next, Run!

Fairy Family Holloween

2005-11-01T21:54:00.000-08:00

On the spur of the moment - nightfall - Bindi no longer wanted to be a vampire.

"I want to be a fairy"

"Alright," says Papa. "We'll be a family of fairies."

"Pink fairies."

"Are there any other kind?"

Once dressed, Bindi looked up at Papa and said, "Daddy, you look like a Rock Star."

Right answer, kid. Right answer.

Fairy Princess Decor Especial

2005-11-01T21:40:00.000-08:00

My fine big CHICK is so fine in her finery. She says, "When I grow up I want to be an artist. After I put up flowers, like mommy." She means landscaping, fantastic. Her mother says, "Pushing up daisies?" Mommy appreciates the irony to all our nonstop work. We're well pleased that it's all bound in daily reverence of the children, the CHICKS. My, my how your proffered youth that you give so willingly to your children slips quick and sleek over to them. I told a friend recently, "I had no hair on my chest when I started college. I had no white hair on my chest when I started pre-school." And now my Thumbelina's grown to be the queen of the tiny flower people. Art and flowers and my painted lady. It's Halloween every day.

Death On A Small Roadway

2005-03-27T08:38:00.000-08:00

March 25, 2005
En Route to Sea Grove, near Pottery, N. C.

“How about if my baby in my belly died and you were the only one who knew. O.K.? Let’s p-tend.” Ah, the whispered life of four-year-olds. Then just as soon all attention goes back to the tandem grooming of their matching white unicorns. Bindi and Kaelyn, mirror image Ackermann’s in so many ways. Sharing toys, “Oh Honey, what have you been doing today. I’ve got to brush your hair again; it’s so snotty today. Are you ready for your lessons? You know I’m so angry with you, my daughter. Now I’m snuggling up with you cause you ate a good dinner and I’m giving you a candy an tomorrow we’ll go to Disney Land and get you a lot of candy. But you’ve got lemon in your hair.”

Meanwhile, we’ve got ideas of death and dearth of our own. A nice big headstone with one name, Bland. A white poaching bloated deer roadside. A new spring lawn mowed down. A magnolia so wanting of sun that it might lay back to branch. A foot walk’s worth of daffodils so bright, but waiting to be trod or parked upon. A pretty yellow house with a crescent of matching workshops and a sign, “Faith Cabinet Works.” God in every drawer I suppose. A hollow laid low under that fettuccini of gray hair again. “It must be the Kudzu,” I remark to Ilse, hoping she’ll notice that I’m doing well in my schooling of flora that she’s so good to give me. I continue, “It must get all over its host in that embrace and then smother, smother until it’s host dies and the tangled Kudzu with it.” She parries, “Or it’s just hibernating.” And we pass on.

Ducks on rain ponds shriveling slowly toward summer. Goat mothers laid up sideways like child-sized mounds. Sleeping calves, their heads turned back on resting shoulder blades, as if broken back says my city eye, cowering from the lucky butcher. All the fields, now cute with small sheep or one Brahma bull, are all fields that might be battlefields – O! How I long for more history. A cute little white kitty in a jumble of its own cranberries, fetal near the centerline. A lonely A frame mobile home with big windows and no one in it. In fact, that’s the deathliest part, not a soul to be seen anywhere except for one corpse of a woman dragging from a butt on her impoverished porch off the lee side of her strip home. Rusted bus hulls beside foundering hay lofts. Empty parking lots of churches, Solid Rock Baptist Church, Kind Cross, White Steeple. A graveyard with is stones all festooned in ribbons and flowers like so many winners at a pony show. A wrecking yard outside Jugtown. Hulls upon hulls giving unto clear-cut swaths of the reddest earth.

Everywhere and everywhere, mobile homes, as much a blight as the Kudzu. The placement of a mobile home upon the land almost certainly ensures the withering to mulch of any other structures of ancestry still on that chunk of lot. There’s an amazing lie being passed down to the new generations, one that says vinyl will keep out the elements forever, the chicken coop will keep, the shed is leaning and don’t never mind, pappy’s old place is gone swayback too, and with pappy still in it – ain’t it all how it really looked! – and don’t you never mind no how. Yes, some houses, though so empty with neglect, looking like they must somehow be inhabited despite the tilt and toothlessness of the lost mortar between old timbers and you’d never think but for story books some old hobbit would therein lay up but for the small smoke rising from a bent chimney.

More Penn Warren's Trees.

2005-03-25T08:19:00.000-08:00

IMG_1976, originally uploaded by MeenoPhoto.

Imagine the susurrous rustle when there was leaves and when there were fields of sleeping soldiers.

Slave's Quarters.

2005-03-25T08:18:00.000-08:00

IMG_1918, originally uploaded by MeenoPhoto.

I've got to imagine this was a favor, built in plumbing.....

Cass's Trees

2005-03-25T08:15:00.000-08:00

IMG_1833, originally uploaded by MeenoPhoto.

Virginia Tech has been watched over by these trees since it was a military acadamy, a fortress two thousand feet up the Appalachia spine.

Hill Towns

2005-03-25T08:14:00.000-08:00

IMG_1698, originally uploaded by MeenoPhoto.

Westward Urges.

2005-03-25T08:13:00.000-08:00

IMG_1910, originally uploaded by MeenoPhoto.

How I sympathise with the Gentle South and the North's school taught moral superiority. Hell with it, I'm a California Man.

Spring Sun Embodied.

2005-03-25T08:11:00.000-08:00

IMG_1937, originally uploaded by MeenoPhoto.

We bring our own trees for fruiting, and how our magnolia blossoms!

Ganges Headwaters

2005-03-25T08:09:00.000-08:00

IMG_1897, originally uploaded by MeenoPhoto.

From this here Godhead do all my waters flow. I am a blue jacketed aggressor swarming on a single stead toward this belle on her bellum porch. Fortunately, she'd have me.

By Virginian Waters

2005-03-25T08:07:00.000-08:00

IMG_1889, originally uploaded by MeenoPhoto.

Venus and Birth et al.

South Again On Small Roads

2005-03-25T07:12:00.000-08:00

March 24, 2005
Virginia, just the bottom edge of it heading back to Chapel Hill

6:45pm on a small road, our favorite kind, the kind that make America so kind, toward Mt. Airy, Maundy Thursday, Spring making long and lingering of the light, still blue and suffused through these easy rolling Appalachians as if it mighten’d get dark at all. A young white calf breaks into a run towards its mother, that stiff high assing cow’s canter.

From Floyd in the last of the cool and butter warmed sun before the sun goes lower in the fine haired trees like the trees that you might find in Robert Penn Warren’s mind when he conjures up Cass Mastern’s time beneath them, quietly at his journals at night after war “by the dying campfire in some bivouac while the forms of men lay stretched on the ground in the night around and the night was filled with a slow, sad, susurrous rustle, like the wind fingering the pines, which was not, however, the sound of wind in the pines but the breath of thousands of sleeping men.” And we follow along through all these trees southward toward the N. Carolina boarder where instantly things want to be farmed and pushed down flatter and then at a bend you come across the most impossible lawn ornament acre, a sloping hillside parcel rising up to the horizon and the trees with gray sculptures waiting for homes and finishing. You can buy any genus of creature from griffin to gargoyle to mermaid birdbath or even a life-sized baby elephant; and if you accord the vendors any influence over’n yer aesthetic you’d paint that big mother pink. And as we descend through this flattening canyon toward Flat Rock there must be something to the rock in the soil here – everywhere, different species of rock, like India with its regional cows and sanctities – because, though none as fantastic and choked as that high country plantation of lawn fancy, there seem to be more of these types of awkward and front yard littering cottage industries using the goods of the earth for their kitsch quaint wares. And why not? It’s more and more like the Far East here with its homey and regional redundancy of commerce, whole villages given over to batiking…. Only there is a massive dearth of cottages here. Mostly it’s box homes with siding, and oftener an old beautiful place that’s crumbling to sod while a single-wide sits idylly by as the frontage anchor to a vortex of all life’s broken litter, just trash strewn everywhere in the post plastic era when the effluents will outlast the cultures that spat them out. The funny thing about all the pottery-esque lawn decoratives is that there are none to be found on any of the lawns of any of the homes anywhere for miles. How, in this regard, do they know any better?

Then just as the dark completely falls it’s Mt. Airy, the mythical Mayberry. Andy Griffith has a playhouse here, a parkway, several waterworks and an electric utility. It is in actuality the place where all things come to be reborn after death. Wherever they may die, they have hope of resurrection here in one of the two thousand thrift shops in the town of 500 people. Ilse and I make a pact to come back the two hours on the 52 some time soon for treasure hunting.

Real History.

2005-03-24T08:09:00.000-08:00

IMG_1671, originally uploaded by MeenoPhoto.

Salem - Old Salem - every Southern state has a Salem, but only the old Salem's are real Salem's. They are empty and cobbled with bricks made wih hay. They are ghostly and real and Historic and filled only with the sun we've brought from California and the two hundred year old sent of bees wax ovens simmering hot cross buns. Further North Salem's smell like crisped Witch. Here, further South, there were in all ways more gentle.

Lipstick & Fried Shrimp.

2005-03-24T08:03:00.000-08:00

IMG_1731, originally uploaded by MeenoPhoto.

Eclipsing even a big basket of Barbies, Bindi's new found hot pink lipstick kept her avidly at the mirror in the Destiny Christian Consignment Store. Re-application after grease and salting is essential for thorough coverage. Pinking is close to Godliness. This Southern Gal'ness is forever seeping, as is the slightest balm in the air.

Mobile Snack Shop, Ilse.

2005-03-24T07:56:00.000-08:00

IMG_1730, originally uploaded by MeenoPhoto.

She feeds us all.

My Three on Wicker

2005-03-24T07:51:00.000-08:00

IMG_1532, originally uploaded by MeenoPhoto.

First taste of Southern Gothic. More to come.

The Man.

2005-03-24T07:48:00.000-08:00

IMG_1734, originally uploaded by MeenoPhoto.

The South beneath steel Spring skies.

The North of The South

2005-03-24T02:37:00.000-08:00

March 23, 2005
N. Carolina en route to Blacksburg VA.

There is an oil to this hitchhiker. Greensboro 6mi, Winston-Salem 33. Why on earth, among the seats set out to watch the interstate and the lonely yards of red earth digging machine, the million and two waiting trees, waiting for leaves on this drizzly March day in young, almost stillborn Spring, why would a body, knowing they might just as soon be left off by some beaver dam bog with its moss green white skinned trees and never make it to the crop of pretty white blossom lovelies that grow all around the Comfort Inn and exit of outskirts of Wendover or Guilford Tech Community College and their attendant go-karts and bumper boats - though what would a an oily, crank filled son of a biker hitchhiker want with small golfing? – when and why would the man, who might and might not have any sense of all the battles that were fought among these balling strips of same-same earth, this ever land that is not New England nor the Deep South, this land where as everywhere there is patentedly nothing to the world as seen from the interstate, as they’d have you think there was nothing, and absolutely nothing worth fighting for on a gray drizzling day on the flats of North Carolinian highway with broad shoulders where a man walks backward in a t-shirt and old jeans and some small satchel snatched across his crotch looking for a friendly ride. Friendly, for we are in the South. There is gentility here.

Then like someone striking a Bic lighter the magnolia trees burst into view. We’re off the highway now, meandering through Salem-Winston past all the tangled gray dead floss of some kind of ivy or long gone Spanish moss type garlanded pasta plant that is not but so much stricken fiber now on whole lumpy covered acres. It’s gray, but it’s pretty. Now off the through way we can see things, the things that have been here a long time and have taken on some character. Even the Waffle House yellow squares sign has a flirtatiousness about it, something that says, “Dorothy, this is the South, follow this road, it used to be dirt and used to have carriages that carted about proper gentlemen and ladies while their slaves kept good house for them on silent padding feet and sweat in the fields to bring in the cotton. This is where it all really happened. This is where, over and above, and abetted by but despite of its barbarity this country once really had Culture, finesse, refinement and the slow moving nature of people enjoying their days and times. This is and once was the vaunted South. People are friendly. The ARE friendly.”

As we approach the border a tremendous storm opens up on us. The day recedes quickly. Directly ahead is our first mountain. It looms, bulb capped like some shrouded sentinel. Lightning cracks across the sky in every direction, four and five bolts at a time. It must be Mt. Airy. The rain pisses and the thunder rolls over the sound of the HWY. Ilse tightens her grip on the wheel and eases off the gas. After a while she steels up to it and I can feel us accelerate a bit. A sign rears up out of the gloam, Pilot Mtn. It looks like a wee version of the one in Close Encounters. You might imagine that it was definitely a Civil War Stronghold, or an Indian good killing perch. We cover the hump next to it and the day lightens a bit, a white steeple comes out of the trees ahead, it all feels like salvation after our bit with Witch Mountain.

Virginia now! By Shot Mtn. and Fort Chiswell the land has turned beautiful. It’s all rolling hills up and down and after every rise another hamlet of farms and small red churches. The grass is different greens depending on how chewed down they’ve been and the cows are fat and happy. A field of deer. Porches falling off on one side of beautiful relic homes next to old sun crisped barns next to brand now mobile homes. Fish Hatchery Rd. has a sky full of broken and wet to dry clouds above it. The trees all along the spines of the hills are still nude and make for spiny limbs fanning each swell and nipple of Appalachia. I’d have to recommend the 77 N. toward Wythville to anyone on a half rainy day in early Spring. It will instill hope in them, sustain them toward April, and the sun lays down like a lion’s back.

Tanning with Baby Oil

2005-03-03T16:55:00.000-08:00

Parenting is a process of entering ever higher echelons of a secret society. This society is full of knowledge beyond compare. As esoteric as the Sufi's, this knowledge is available only to the initiates. And there is only one sort of high priest or priestess that can fire brand you with this knowing: your own child.

Along these lines, other devotees proffer aphorisms like, "It goes so fast." What does that mean? Have children, you will know.

Recently, I've been offered this kernel from other knowing bicameral (or more!) parents, i.e. those with TWO. They point out that one of the reasons we as humans have more than one offspring is to return to that pulpy place of baby-parenthood; that place where our children are but chub and cuddles and toothless grins, when they demand nothing more than to eat and be held, when they haven't the foggiest notion of talking back and when they stay where ever they are put. This is told to me, of course, while the teller is staring down into Mette June's cherubic gob, making faces ten times funnier than hers.

I realize, of course, they're absolutely right. Bindi is a total woman now. Breathtaking most of the time is the only way to really describe it. And Mette June fosters again that feeling in us of possessing angel fat, of sunning ourselves coated in Cupid grease. We are taken back. And all this while we are so forcibly tied to the moment and ever going forward. Parenthood eclipses all as we star gaze our children

So in this vein, I delved into the archives and fished this up. Don't it take you back?: Young Bindi Movie It'll take a minute to load up - cause I haven't figured out the proper compression - but it's high res and pretty. As I said, it's pure conjured history.

Cont'd Letter To A Friend

2004-11-04T01:39:00.000-08:00

So she wrote back and was very eloquent. Some of her rap could have come from a Kucinich primer. But other parts of it were still mired in that less than ingenuous 'He's got the job now let's let him do it' genuflection. So I dove back in. On this ospicious day, going the length in words to an old friend in another pasture was greatly cleansing.

11.03.04 Later
Sky Farm
I still don't get it. You're brilliant. You voice the Progressive agenda perfectly, and so palatably. And yet, I'm still getting this feeling that you've adopted that stance I've heard before of "I support the President because he's the President." Again, I can't resist the correlations to empire: "Love Caesar for he is Caesar." You say the people have spoken. Have they? This is such a close race that all that fancy work of the Rep's to deny folks the right to vote in the first place may have paid off. Moreover, these guys - and when you say Bush, you're really talking about his henchman, Cheney, Rove, Wolfowitz et. al. - ran like gang busters with their Project for A New American Century on the first go-round when the election was stolen. This time they're going to play like they've got a mandate. And yet this is the worst an incumbent President has ever done and still hung on. The race was won by a tens of thousands of votes out of more than a hundred million. The voice of the people said, we really don't like Bush's leadership but we've been too duped by fear of Terror (and homo-wives) to change horses mid-stream.
There's a book on my stack that I've got to get to. It's called What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. I remember the review in the Times. The gist was that Middle America rails at the moral turpitude of two rock star women kissing on stage and then goes racing to polls to vote them a giant tax cut. The illustration that went with the review was genius. It was a voter pulling an arm on a voting machine that in turn triggered a foot that kicked the voter in the ass. They'll vote down the "Death Tax" but then sit idly by as overtime is forfeited, lawsuits against workplace injuries are adjudicated against, a priori, and forget the bad pay, the job's gone overseas anyway. And still these Heart-landers vote Bush. The duping has been very cleverly done and mostly along evangelical lines. Hence, not only do you have the biggest give away of public trust to corporate greed in the history of the country, but you also have a return to the historical conventions of the Crusades. Go back to your tricks of language, the present Administration is deep in a Jihad. I don't like wars in the name of God, much less Oil. But, as one high desert Born Again sister I heard about today sums up every argument, "I'm just waiting on the rapture."
And what demolitions of the environment will be totally irreversible by 2008. The Kyoto Protocol set 2012 as the deadline for getting greenhouses gases back to their 1996 levels. Bush's team of scientists, the same ones who lobby against stem cell research and come from states where "evolution" is not to be found in text books, still say that Global Warming is not solid science.
I get your point that the silver lining is still the best motivator. I live that as my gospel because I've got a four year old silver lining to wake up to every day. She keeps me chuckling about all of this. There exists incredibly good graces and I live in the summery wind of them. I'm also glad I'm not a black gay Muslim Iraqi living in South Carolina. The Hindu system of rebirth has got me sitting pretty pretty this time round. But I'm also not employed by the Carlyle Group so I suppose I could still be doing a lot better.
I know you get my point and it's been of infinite relief to have this epistolary dance with you to get it all out. You are esteemed and your friendship treasured. It's been too damned long since you've been out to the Left Coast. Bring your new husband - Liberal or Conservative? - and we'll take the kids out to a gay bar.
And I still want you to find me somebody who'll make a cogent argument for voting for Bush other than God Fearing and Gay Bashing.

Papa Meeno

2004-11-04T00:22:00.000-08:00

Papa, originally uploaded by MeenoPhoto.

With all this sperm out there now, he's got to be critically concerned.

Letter To A Friend

2004-11-03T17:13:00.000-08:00

A friend in New Orleans would only cop this: "As for my voting habits this morning - I voted for 2 Republicans, 3 Democrats"
But was she behind the Bush Push? She wouldn't owe up because there's no way to appease both her Left and Right friends. So I persisted:

11.03.04
Sky Farm
I have a hard time weighing in as Kerry Supporter. I understand that in an election cycle that spends over a billion dollars on TV advertising you have to sell your soul directly to Big Corporate interests to raise the kind of capital that the game entails. So the lesser of two evils argument runs deep here, except that I think the Bush Administration is WAY more evil. The Neo-Con's have a very specific agenda, it's called Project for A New American Century. If you do not understand this philosophy and totally support it then I can't see any reason to vote Red. If you did vote Bush and are not familiar with the Neo-Con agenda then you may not be a sufficiently educated member of the electorate and that is specifically what the Karl Rove was betting on. Exit polling put a premium on a moral dilemma in this country. 11 states, Laurel, 11. People are afraid of fags getting married. That's the moral dilemma that brought out the Right in droves. There is no worry about the moral dilemma of bombing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in far away countries. We never much worry about that. Remember Viet Nam? There's no worry about all our boys and girls getting killed and maimed in Iraq - and for what? I ask you, for what, can you articulate our reason for being there? Because Saddam hit the Trade Towers, No. Because Saddam had WMD's, No. Because we're spreading "Freedom and Democracy", No. So why should there be thousands of American casualties post "Mission Accomplished." This is one big bad movie and if you're into it just because it's more exciting that Reality TV - as obviously a huge chunk of voting America is - then it's time for massive education reform.
We have a very dumb country, and the dolts have duped themselves as today's numbers show. You worry about your Republican friends chiding you for being a "bleeding heart." That doesn't mean anything outside of a Harlequin Romance Novel. But that is precisely the reality that these people are caught in. No hard facts, no hard education, in fact nothing hard, just easy Reality-that-is-not-real spiced with a fear of Fags and Muslims.
Bush was pulling ahead last night and I heard Gullianni say it, I heard Wolf Blixer say it as if it were a given, "Well, we're at war." NO. We're not at war. The war on Terrorism is not a war, it's an ideological putsch. It's a gaff of language to keep the Military Industrial Complex stated. It's the next phase of Cold War spending - only an unending war can necessitate 400 billion dollars alloted to military spending this year. Go spend the day trying to teach in a public school in any city of this great nation of ours and then see if you can stomach 400 billion going to the work of murder. Gay marriage is not going to bring this country down and Arabs don't hate our Freedom Loving Way of Life. Osama bin Laden said it most poetically this week in his speech to the Free World, "I say to you that security is an indispensable pillar of human life and that free men do not forfeit their security, contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom. If so, then let him explain to us why we don't strike for example - Sweden?"
We as Americans are not reviled and should not seek asylum under the shelter of missiles. Our Military Presence that amounts to foreign occupation is what is reviled. It is our Imperial efforts abroad that are not being swallowed readily. It's known in spooks lingo as Blow Back. We are bringing the biggest business in the world - WAR - to the world. And they, in fits and starts are bringing it back. Do you honestly think we'd be in the position we are today had Gore fairly won the election four years ago? This is not partisan. It's about sanity. Please correct me where I'm wrong. Because on a day like this I'd like to be dreadfully wrong.

Hind & Shoes

2004-11-02T23:14:00.000-08:00

Dogs & Shoes, originally uploaded by MeenoPhoto.

Four More Years of Halloween

2004-11-02T22:54:00.000-08:00

Counties with many graduate degrees go Kerry, the rest of the country are inborn mulliteers and hence you can hear the groundswell all the way out here on The Coast: Four More Wars!! I'm going to ask people who voted Bush to send me money, I feel that by their perversion in supporting the Squanderers they owe me. We'll have to pool resources right away to start working for that Clinton/Obama ticket in '08, eh?