My wife has gone walkabout (or perhaps it should be flyabout) so I am consoling myself with Elvis and noodles. These were particularly odd, with a bright pink package:
Pink Noodles
Category: Personal
A Lack of Vision
In short, whether driven by idealist or materialist presuppositions, contemporary theories of knowledge fail to articulate the impacts of the distinctive arrangements of discursive matter as it flows through both biological bodies and other media.[*]
C.M. Condit, “Race and Genetics from a Modal Materialist Perspective” QJS 94:4 November 2008
I got news today that my sister-in-law has completely lost her sight in her left eye. There is no word whether it is permanent or reversible; it is tremendously difficult for poor people to get straight answers about health care in this country. A cancer survivor, she is being shuffled from clinic to clinic as her vision progressively gets worse. It is a blow to me, because she and my brother are the main allies I have in caring for my mother as her condition worsens.. The hospice system is quick to offer counselors, but slow to assist her in day-to-day issues like washing up. My sister-in-law has been helping to take up that slack. Her problems add complexity to an already mind-numbingly complex scene.
Words
Placing one word after another. That seems to be a real problem lately. Dealing with the sheer scale of the decisions I’ve had to make this past year makes it hard to take any time to narrate, to try to make sense of the changes that have happened. For the first time ever, I have absolute confidence in the “support systems” that I have in place around me, but just the same, I miss writing.
It’s all so personal, and frequently painful that I hesitate each time I try to find some way out of the trap of silence. Back when the stakes were lower, when I had less to lose, writing came much easier. The true weirdness of it is losing the ability to write about things that aren’t personal, that aren’t painful—along with processing the other parts. I woke up at 3a.m. a day or so trying to complete a sentence in my head. It was a simple sentence meant to crystallize why I’m here, what I was working on before all these changes happened. I couldn’t find the word. And I was filled with such a deep sense of terror that the word wouldn’t come. It still hasn’t.
Chewed up, but not spit out.
Times have been extremely difficult. Trying to keep up with this blog has really seemed to be at the bottom of my list of priorities. In fact, reading blogs has fallen very far down my list of things to do. I don’t think this is a permanent condition, so I’ll spare you any talk of suspending things.
My activities have really centered on taking care of my family and keeping myself reasonably sane. Winter is coming, and with it those fits of introspection that this particular space was once known for. Right now, I’m focused on my future and what I would like to be when I grow up. One day at a time, it seems like I get a little closer to realizing things that used to be dreams.Hopefully, I’ll be able to write again sometime. I’ve really missed the writing, but feel absolutely tongue-tied by the horrific mess that the world has got itself trapped in. Politics, in particular, bring on a sort of rage that I have not felt since I was teenage. But I didn’t want to rant and rail here—and it really seemed like the only thing I that would come out as writing.
I made some noise a while ago about writing about lighter topics like food and restaurants. That didn’t really materialize, and I apologize for that. For me, topics need to digest for a while and I try not to spew too much ill-considered or unruminated trash. Lately, my thoughts have returned to music and audio gear, so maybe I’ll at least try to write some things about that. But I should know better than to promise, when the playing field changes every few moments with different responsibilities and stresses.
There will be a winter trip this year, which should be really fun. There have been some images building up that may get tossed up here randomly, and I would really like to find my way back to my research. But even that has suffered, as things have twisted and fouled up in my head. But nothing lasts forever, and I hope I can straighten things out soon.
Philosophy: Pay Attention
An unauthorized photograph
I was wandering through the furthest end of the public skyway system downtown when a voice came on from an unseen speaker questioning me, and later chastising me for taking pictures. This was after being chased away from an enclosed mall for taking pictures of shop fronts. You can’t take pictures here!
I’m very interested in the issues surrounding photography in public places, and this latest instance of photographic prohibition is not a civic/governmental intrusion, but rather a power-play by a small time security company. I have no compelling need to photograph in the skyway system, but it bothers me that this avenue of examining things might be closed off. Unlike the subject of the linked article, I was chased down by three guards and interrogated— for taking pictures nowhere near the new stadium. To his credit, the senior guard sent the other two away and seemed to sense the ridiculousness of the prohibition. He told me precisely where to go to obtain a “permit” to photograph.
I think that one of the most powerful things that photography can do is allow us to examine things that flow past all too quickly as we go about our daily lives. I wasn’t going to say anything about this relatively inconsequential prohibition, but I was reminded of it when watching a series of videos from Aperture featuring Richard Ross:
Handmade Nation
From the trip to Milwaukee last Thursday/Friday
The weekend before last, I was reading about a benefit for a film called Handmade Nation. As a person with an interest in most things DIY, I made a mental note about it. It was a project conceived by an owner of a shop in Milwaukee called Paper Boat. Though the project is in progress, it dovetails with my current research obsessions in a profound way. The connections wouldn’t really be apparent to most people not inside my head.
My interest in Henry Hamilton Bennett and the Wisconsin Dells doesn’t have anything to do with the hype surrounding him as a “pioneer photographer.” It has to do with his copious records of the circumstances surrounding his photographic gallery. He was a small town artist, struggling to make a buck as technological and social circumstances changed at the turn of the century. He was only one of thousands. It’s hard to estimate how many artists struggled to profit from newly opened local markets during the settlement of the American West. We have often been, to a large extent, a handmade nation.
Farmer’s Market
Coffee Nazis
At a coffee shop in Silverlake, CA, waiting for my iced cappuccino
“No modifications to the Classic Cappuccino. No questions will be answered about the $5 Hot Chocolate (during the months we offer it). No espresso in a to-go cup. No espresso over ice. These are our policies. We have our reasons, and we’re happy to share them.”
At his cafe yesterday, Cho explained the policy: “The way we do espresso is different than what people are used to. It’s a very exacting technique. . . . When you pour it over ice, it creates a certain acidic reaction that makes the drink sour.”
He also said some customers have the audacity to order an espresso over ice, then fill the glass with milk at the dairy bar — creating their own iced latte, at a significant saving.
In his letter on Murky’s site, Cho wrote: “To others reading this I will say that if you don’t like the policies, I respectfully recommend that you find some other place that will give you what you want, or select something that we can offer you.”
I despise coffee nazis. I was frustrated in Seattle by the lack of places serving iced coffee drinks (Starbucks being a notable exception—but I would have liked to try some of the smaller places). I have an espresso machine at home. I make iced cappuccinos (including frothed milk) all the time. But you can’t get that drink anywhere, because, as one particularly snotty barista at a Starbucks once told me—it does not exist. Apart from powdered mixes at the supermarket, I suppose.
But at a little shop in Silverlake, the guy behind the counter went ahead and made me one, in disrespect of all the rules of snob coffee. I felt like taking out an ad—the world didn’t come to an end, the sky didn’t split open just because someone combined steamed and frothed milk with espresso and poured it over ice. Sheesh!
Quick Art
I spent some time a few days ago wandering around in Fridley, MN. It’s been hard this year to find things that I enjoy to take the pressure off. The long summer trip went well, but it will always have a sort of bittersweet tinge to it. It’s the wandering in man-made spaces that seems to always precipitate relaxing in a way that I can’t anywhere else, at least when I’m making or thinking about images. The more absurd the space, the more I enjoy it. Fridley is awesome in that aspect.
Coming Attractions
Stanley Fish’s article in the NYT struck a chord, given the way that I so often “miss” the glory of Shakespeare:
Shakespeare does many voices but identifies with none of them. (His, as Keats said, is a negative capability.) He’s hard to find, as his would-be biographers well know. Milton has many characters, but they all speak with one voice — his. You don’t have look for him; you can’t get away from him. Despite the variety of scenes and genres there’s always just one guy talking to you; the conversation goes on and on and it is a conversation in which, as Barrow first said, everything is at stake. This is a poetry that reads you.
One of my great flaws as a reader is my inability to track massive casts of characters during a story—I’ve always been drawn to lyric, to one voice that sings its own song. Conversation, in my experience, is always more rewarding in small groups rather than massive crowds. Fish continues: