a shade left of happy: March 2005

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

people run at this time of day

631am

st. louis through the eye of my broken camera at 630am

a moment of definition

live for that core...live for the moment when you can honestly say what you thought with no regard to how embarrassing it is. i love that in this moment i can say that i do not regret one fucking photograph i have ever taken. it is the hardest place to dwell, but offers some relief...it is the place where i might feel like no words must be added, and none taken away...where no apology must be offered, and nothing to be edited...but it goes back to the mirrors of dylan, when we discovered how simple our drive...we absolutely at every level of being wanted and want to be liked.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

would you ever hit someone else's camera?

so there is the man who wants the audience, and he has it...there is the boy and his pseudo-girlfriend and they are the audience, and there am i, and i am the one-man paparazzi, and i am in the crazy preacher's line-of-sight but his words don't skip a beat, but the son-of-a-bitch with his sweatshirt tucked into his capri pants hits my camera...literally hits it...what does he understand about my appreciation for the man's appreciation of jesus? or perhaps the homeless man really knows JESUS. but this boy, this child with his elitist ears...i have been him. i have listened to the homeless man with one eye on the group...with one critical eye on the selfish, worthless beings who don't care to stop to listen to the people who failed on purpose or by mistake to achieve the American dream. but i tell you the truth, if that boy had been listening to someone spouting buddha, he would have been punched in the neck by me, and i only spared his pride because he had the opportunity to know my God. and i laughed as the insane man preaching advised him to "let (me) say that" as i said "i ought to punch you in your neck...don't fucking touch my camera" and i wanted to rant and rave but somehow i found peace in being thought crazy by the craziest man i saw today. somehow i know that the boy who hit my camera does not deserve to be beaten to a bloody pulp in order to understand true humility...perhaps one day he will realize that i did not fucking knock the wind out of him out of my own sheer desire to be a vessel of love, despite my intense longing to just hit him once in the stomach at least. or maybe in the ribs. but, just remember this about the 3rd st. promenade folks...the homeless man comes to be heard, and whether he pretends to be crucified on a palm tree because he huffed paint in the alley, or whether he stares at his shoes from atop his wheelchair and longs for his youth, or whether he is finally reeling in his greatest audience to have ever heard his life experience, he wants to know he is important and noticed for the right reasons...because he is a significant HUMAN, and because he matters...not because he is mocked, and i tell you the truth, i have mocked in years past, but today i saw each man for who he wanted to be, and that i s why i wanted to punch that capri pants mother-fuck...because he refused to see that i had finally mustered up the courage to photograph a man that i simultaneously thought to be fucking crazy and lovable as a member of my family. well that is a lie and a justification...i thought he was crazy and i thought he was to be appreciated in that moment only as such, and i didn't see his redeeming qualities because i was only thinking of some imaginary contest that could be won with the appropriate combination of light coming from the GAP display in the background and the wiry hair/glasses he held title to. so perhaps in his universe he had every right to hit me, and we both spared each other the wrath of moral outrage. that boy was listening, and he was a country that saw me as his sneaky neighbor smuggling nukes inside the circle.

Sunday, March 20, 2005

open your windows

there is something a-stirring in the hearts of all men, or at least i like to think that it is ALL men (and women) because it allows my recent adaptations and transformations to seem so much more the grander. it is a place called vulnerable and it is absolutely beautiful, and it is quite simple. just open the floodgates and let the language of your actual mind, that actual core that you (i) know so intimately...yes it is that breath, that tightness in the chest and the invisible release, and let your fellow man and woman know who you actually are. i can say that i have had a solid handful, and when i say solid, i mean solid like a roll of nickels in my hand...a roll of nickels worth their weight in gold...i have had a solid handful of these conversations in the last week with some of you, and you know who you are because i know also...somehow i trust that you shared with me the vulnerability that i shared with you in return, because the synergy was such that a delusion alone could not have caused the sensation in my mind that we were truly knowing each other perhaps for the first time. and still tonight i must remind myself gently, to listen...listen.