But now I am right in the thick of this life lesson. The lesson of death’s patience. Even after months of expectation, now with her gaunt skeletal face and withered limbs, unable to speak, to rise – her final passage still waits. As do those who attend to her. Our impatience with the unseen plan, suffering the guilt of selfishness in wishing her release, we try and make normal the visit, where normal does not exist. Yet death’s truth, the finality and reality of the eventual and its illumination on living, being normal suddenly seems unnatural, ignorant.
The lesson is the perverse savoring of a loved one’s life’s passing. The playing out of the conclusion of someone you have known intimately and whose absence will color the rest of your days.
Sitting bedside holding her hand, stroking her arm staring into her eyes as they bore into your heart, fading from conscienceness then returning. Sitting back searching her face for the words she can’t speak. Then there is the time outside the room, watching TV, cooking, taking a walk, always carrying the expectation, the guilty anticipation, the waiting, in your body. Exhausting.
Each morning a mixed feeling to see her eyes open watching.
But then she makes a gesture, a squint or smiles, and there is my mom.
I knew I had to be here. Selfishly I figured I could be of help. Turns out different.

To arrive at this juncture has been a long journey of choices, lately not so good ones. The main impetus for the descent was/is paralysis. Rather than work my way up I decided it was easier to not try. And necessary to this paralytic choice was, and remains to be, a numbness of the senses. Hence I don’t really feel a great deal of pain after hitting the bottom. Maybe I didn’t really drop that far.

So I’ve been here kind of doing what I can to maintain myself and my current path of paralytic idleness, similar to a child playing with his toys while his parents argue. Rather than face the prospect of his world collapsing the child will immerse himself in the world he makes up, right then and there. Truly in the moment. The fantastical yet very purposeful world of trucks moving around, hauling dirt, building tunnels and mastering the environment can be, needs to be, and is fully engaging, all in the name of waiting until the real world is fathomable. Even though I am playing in the real world and much of what I have done hints at being engaged, it still remains a means of idling. Trouble is in this current stage of my life it really is my job to right the world, and waiting for it, or for someone else to do it, well, is just stupid.

So when my wife shines a light on the utter stupidity of my situation, I am shamed, yet expectantly not experiencing a lot of pain. Certainly not enough to actually grow a pair and do what so many other worthy fellow humans have done and face their unbalanced life and make it right. A friend asked me what would it take to make me crawl out of this hole – losing the house, or losing my marriage? I chose to ignore that train.

The train I had taken is one shared by many. You move along with your life, make choices that fit, ones that profit you in some way. Specifically job choices – you find something that you can do and along the way opportunities arise that are a no-brainer and you ‘advance’, improving your material growth.
I had certain talents, intrinsic skills, that proved to be useful so that my first ‘career’ path fell into the above playbook. Ba-da-boom, things went smoothly.
Then they didn’t. When assessing the new status, I figured I could adapt the playbook to new chosen fields of endeavor. Figured wrong. The first ‘career’ was successful because of an external very comprehensive initial training, correlating intrinsic skills and a fairly predictable playing field. The new playing fields, though very shiny with possibility, had only very minimal introductory training. The fields themselves keep morphing, which is very annoying, but at first consideration was thought to be a great way to keep things fresh with constant opportunities to learn. The trouble turns out to be my intrinsic skills, it seems I am not one who can juggle, constantly. Turns out my intrinsic education is good for distraction and static playing fields. At least that is the impression one has when sitting at the bottom of a hole.

The light has been turned off for now. Another day (not a ‘new’ day) is here. We’ll see.

Just to drive the point home:
The stability of our country, our world, is dependent on a vast middle class that seeks to protect their own, yet oftentimes feels the need to protect others because they understand they themselves as being the ‘others’. The extremes exist because we need to define the edges of what can be, we need to see the endpoints to adjudge the whole, to maintain the message.

My photography has always been about opening up that snapshot moment either by capturing at unusual times or with different “eyes” (night photography; infrared or high contrast film), expanding the moment (long exposures), or working with a series of images like my latest Over Time studies:

Over Time

After being ejected from the city my new environs were surrounded by the rolling hills of the east bay. On my walks with my new best friend Ginger (a Queensland Healer) I chanced upon one hill that from the trail presented its rounded evenness in a very captivating manner. Each new time The Hill looked different, equally captivating and so I ended up photographing it often wondering which one would represent the feeling I had standing there in its presence. As you can see Over Time began to take shape. It wasn’t just The Hill but the many times I returned and the many moods I was in and the varying times and weather that I found myself pushing through. Once the project began to take shape I expanded it to the other two subjects I had been enthralled with in this same walking space.
Putting together images of one subject Over Time expands that snapshot memory, drawing upon the collective and individual stored information, to give The Hill, The Pond, The Tree a much bigger voice about their unique presence.
Though not conscience at the time of this project (poor thought process from a schooled artist) I was unconsciously influenced by other artists from Cezanne and Monet to Misrach on the effect of portraying a subject in time.

***

Bamboo Speaks

Mind moving beneath the soil. Not a kind mind, but lovelier, and tricky, thinking in every direction. And more of life and more of life and more.

Paul Lisicky (eleven eleven, Issue 7, 2009)

The first medium I chose to explore this conversation, and foolishly thought to attempt solution, was Mathematics. This came only after realizing I was uniquely not intimidated by the language. Of course there were many side shows going on – sexual obsession, drugs, friendships – but they, for the most part, only added to the wonderment; Mathematics as I progressed seemed to offer a viable solution by isolating and explaining the core of the palpable. I was intrigued by the idea Leibniz’s development of the language of calculus was in some ways a means to prove God’s will and hence God. That certainly had merit, no?


What eventually happened was I enrolled in higher mathematics studies with a boatload of ‘unique’, zealous, math embracing students, where I quickly became overwhelmed by the language and the accompanying minutiae, which is Mathematics. I began having difficulties grasping the higher concepts – the comfortable world I had so loved was becoming a incomprehensible concrete bunker. My desire was to be awash in the wonderment not hunkered down with infinite minute details. This path became unacceptable.

So then, what next?
– In attempting to explain something one often relies on the simplistic model of cause and effect. As we all know it ain’t this simple, life is not as linearly as is seen when someone attempts to explain a life from a hindsight position. I was at SF State at this time, this being my third attempt (the second also at SF State) to finish my higher education. The second attempt involved following a earlier inclination to become a photographer, that also had been abandoned because, again, I felt overwhelmed, this time in trying to make a living. But the seeds of being exposed to the Art World had been germinating since then and when it came time to find a new path – blossoms burst forth within. (Again it seems first this, then that, but truth is I had been writing stories and had been photographing whatever pleased me during all this time, so no, it just didn’t happen; but I like the blossoms, it makes me feel all warm inside.)
So I shifted and pursued a double major in Art/Photography and Creative Writing completing them in May of 2000.

What lead me to follow this path was the ability of Art to explore any aspect of human endeavor. Very similar to the language of Mathematics but rather than focusing on the concrete, Art uses our own stored and shared experiences to hint at a meaning that is a accumulation, assimilation and morphing of the details; the conversation with myself broadened and deepened using the ethereal language of sense-experience, a layer of communication lacking in the previous path. I realized, to my satisfaction, that there wasn’t a solution it just simply is a life sustaining conversation.

Prior to seriously engaging the intricacies of the world of Fine Art my explorations in writing and photography had been occasioned by curiosity and experimentation loosely influenced by what little writing I had read and the f64 group. Mainly just fun. Well that changed.

Something for a later entry.

Her music is wistful, wanting, in a quiet learned sorrowful way, with the soft underbelly of longing. I am pulled in immediately then sent on an introspective solo journey to my center.

Seek the dias in the midst of the cacophony, sit quiet and listen, soon the distractions will recede and you can spend time with the flow of you, alone. I so miss that.

This year has not started well.

A good friend is shocked to be told “Get your things in order.”

Truth talk on the mesa above the strait that shakes the foundation of a life lived, though of late without the enthusiasm that used to sustain.

The ugly face of life’s economics stares at me. I must give fight.

In all this I am thankful to the woman who still chooses to remain my companion in our trek. Her perseverance, generosity of spirit and love sustain me, give me hope and a lovely reason to wake in the morning. I seem to need less of the rest, for better or worse.

This is a photograph of the end of a deserted hallway in a concrete ski lodge. It is very still. The block of elevators are at rest. The overlarge wall mirror echoes an empty corridor of worn grey carpet stretching down the hall. Harsh artificial lighting illuminates the absence, making deep dark hollows daylight will reveal tomorrow. It’s three in the morning and everyone is in their rooms. I took this while on vacation. I do my best work on vacation, because I do not expect familiar, I am open to the possible.

In these absences I take photographs of ghosts. As in this photograph my parents are not there, very persistently not there. My mother, in a long slim dark blue dress with a fake mink brown fur collar, stands stiff with indignation staring straight ahead, stubbornly waiting for the elevator. My father, who looks so sharp and certain in his tailored suit, ignorant in his drunken willingness to please, shifts near her, trying to understand again. The way they argue, like annoying mosquitoes, trying to make their words invisible. She speaks to the elevators, he to his feet.

The porch had three sides, one ran along side the next door property and was heavily meshed against intruders coming from the roof of the one story backyard home that bordered our backyard. Across from this was the stairs leading down to the first floor landing. From this lower landing there extended out a three foot wide narrow wooden walkway (attached to the side of the aforementioned one story backyard home) suspended three feet above an adjacent concrete sidewalk abutting the meager backyard leading to a mysterious back studio that I liked to refer to as Steven King’s bedroom. Above this elevated walkway was a slanted semi-translucent yellow corregated fiberglass roof. And suspended above this flimsy roof was the spreading yellow plum tree that stood two stories high and covered, at that time, ninety percent of our postage stamp backyard. Ahh, the little yellow plums.

As I mentioned we had been living at this flat now for eight years. Eight years of gatherings where this porch offered a place to smoke, a place for a small BBQ (another story), many drunken clatches of loud musings on every sort of philisophical meanderings, its railings often leaned against and sat upon. Eight years of viewing owls, bright halos of unseen fireworks, sunsets, curious arguments of various neighbors, what stars one can see in the city and the occasional sitting in the sun with tea and cats. Even with the lack of maintenance never once did this porch hint at anything other than its solidity.

That included the third side railing that stood across from our back door looking out upon the backyard and down upon that aforementioned narrow walkway running perpendicular away from this railing. On this day an acquaintance of my wife had come by to engage her in some 5 Rhythms conversation over lunch. My wife was not in at the time and one thing led to another and here we were heading out to the backyard to pick some of those Autumn ripe yellow plums. He set off downstairs to pluck from ground level and I favored the idea of picking the lovely ripe ones closest to the sun just off our porch.

Again, eight years and no hint of any instability in this porch.

I leaned forward with my full weight intending to use the rail as a brace as I reached out for those little yellow plums. Which by the way I never did think tasted all that good, even told the acquaintance but to no avail. So as I began to lean against the railing at the very first touch the entire top rail snapped from its moorings like a pressure sensitive gate dropping away and hanging down along the face of the stairwell. With my momentum, since I was not expecting this, I also folded right over the side of the porch.

Here is where time slowed way down. I recall reaching out at the face of the stairwell with the idea of trying to stop this fall and having nothing to grab. This gave me pause to reflect on how I am out of control of the situation, that there was nothing in my power to change what was to come and in that sense an odd feeling of letting go permeated my being. I actually think I relaxed. Following the revelation I was unable to stop my fall as I broke through the branches of the plum tree (not even thinking about picking anything on the way down) I began to think about what this fall would do to my slowly recovering chronic lower back injury. And this then led to obsessing over how hard I had worked to be able to just walk down the street without having to sit out the pain. As I broke through the flimsy yellow corregated roof I began to get a bit panicky as the inevitable end of this journey was coming up shortly.

Then SLAM I was on my back on the narrow wooden walkway as the accumulated debris from the flimsy roof slowly rained down upon me. Relieved it was over I took a breath, then screamed. Breathing it seemed was going to cause me a great deal of pain since slamming onto the walkway had, unknown at the time, broken my sixth thoracic vertebra, basically dead center to the middle of my back, highly affected by the filling of my lungs. I tried a miniscule amount of motion and got the same result. My thoughts then were to heed my body’s desire to completely shut down to the pain and stay put right there on that walkway for the next six weeks until whatever was causing this incredible searing pain healed.

The acquaintance of course had watched my fall, even marveled at the graceful half gainer I performed on the way down. My wife arrived home just as I screamed and was there immediately at my side urging me to do exactly what I never planned to do for six weeks – get up. I did, of course, very very very gingerly, managing to move in such a way as to not aggravate the angry gremlin in my back. And at the same time noting that my lower back was not complaining in the least which I could either count my lucky stars or attribute to the loss of general feeling due to shock.

We get up to our second story flat and into the bathroom where I am stripped of the soggy autumn leaf and soil detritus impacted clothing, given a shower (truly a miraculous thing shock) then laid out on the bed for further considerations. My wife and acquaintance head out for their lunch and I drift into semi-I-don’t-want-to-be-conscious-conscientious. I awake as friends have been called in to assess the next step, all being medically connected. It was determined that we were off to SF General, where a good friend presided over the the ICU, and of course over my strenuous ineffectual objections, for a full work up to determine any internal damage.

The hospital is another story, suffice to say I only suffered fractures to my sixth and eleventh thoracic vertebra. Once I was up with the help of a brace I went to the back porch and marveled at how my luck worked out. That walkway when I slammed into it gave at least five inches on contact but still held. I could have missed the walkway entirely landing another three feet down onto the concrete most assuredly increasing my injuries many fold. I could have hit the walkway’s railing, again, I’m sure incurring worse injuries. Just the day or two before my wife had removed a plethora of glass jars and bottles that had accumulated along that very section of the wooden walkway. And it turns out my lower back was unscathed by my unexpected descent from the second story porch.

As a reminder of my fall I retain a nagging ache in my mid upper back that even yoga has been unable to fully assuage as it has so wonderfully done for my low back.