Left click on any image for a slide show of all images on this page.
June 22, 2019
218.4 lbs
June 22, 2019 490 Beacon, NY
June 22, 2019 421 Beacon, NY
June 22, 2019 375 Beacon, NY
7:55 AM - Bank Square Coffee Shop
… C gets married today, weather perfect, short window of sunshine in a stretch of wet, cloudy weather, if i were religious i might say the marriage is blessed… i have fantasies that M will take me on about what i am wearing and that my hair is braided and what i will say to him in return which is why should i care about what you think, none of this will happen, but i fantasize about it anyway and the thought occurs to me that M channels D for me, that i have given M the role of disapproving parent to run roughshod over my courage to be different, i will persist, i have always been willing to look different… up early this morning, i don’t know why, started coming to at 3:30 AM, a bird singing loudly outside perhaps the reason, this bird sings all night it seems to us, we get annoyed, we wonder why it sings all night, perhaps we should feel blessed but of course, we are not religious… a dead bird in the street as i started my walk, i made photographs, a dove i think… climbed stairs to mountain trail, as i went up a large group was coming down, i asked if they had overnighted, they said they had been hiking all night, since half past midnight, they didn’t say why, i didn’t ask, but i wondered if it was some kind of religious celebration or observance, they all seemed to be far eastern in heritage, Indian, Chinese, Philippine… and just now a group of young women in the coffee shop, dressed very nicely, getting coffee, one was buying for the rest… yesterday a good day in the compliments department, S complimented my thinking and suggested i write a book, his wife complimented me on menu planning skills when i shared the menu i was cooking H in the evening, i respect both of them as accomplished in the areas they complimented me in… a policeman parks in a yellow striped area and walks in, vested, looking a little paramilitary, it seems sad that paramilitary is necessary these days…
June 21, 2019
218.4 lbs
7:54 AM - Bigmouth Coffee Roasters
“It is often said that in today’s modern and postmodern world, the forces of darkness are upon us. But I think not; in the Dark and the Deep there are truths that can always heal. It is not the forces of darkness, but of shallowness that everywhere threaten the true, and the good, and the beautiful, and that ironically announce themselves as deep and profound. It is an exuberant and fearless shallowness that everywhere is the modern danger, the modern threat, and that everywhere nonetheless calls to us a savior.”*… i have been giving a lot of thought to these kinds of things lately, deep diving is out of fashion, we live entombed in a cultural and economic system that drives us to the surface to skim as we cobble together existence… the system doesn’t want us to really dive, it rarely provides time to do so… diving means becoming who we are to the core and using that as a foundation to assess our circumstances… diving means not being dependent on the system for our next loaf of bread because that dependence subjects us to control by the system, coerced to serve interests other than our own, the grand bargain… if we were allowed to dive we might discover how ridiculous this system is, how tragically it is failing, how the one percent is every minute of every day robbing most of us of our selves… i willingly and enthusiastically critique the market/capitalist organization of society as a catastrophic disaster for humanity and the planet, but i struggle to think what to replace it with… i have suspicions of what direction we might head, Bertrand Russell suggests that we don’t need to be enslaved the way we are, that modern means of production should free us, yet one hundred years later we remain enslaved… perhaps AI is the savior to set us free to deep dive, make connections, make intuitive leaps that raise consciousness to new levels, except AI will spring from the loins of the very system that enslaves us, what could go wrong with that…
*Ken Wilber, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality
June 20, 2019
218.6 lbs
June 20, 2019 246 Beacon, NY
June 20, 2019 225 Beacon, NY
June 20, 2019 214 Beacon, NY
7:12 AM - Trax Coffee Shop
… finally heard from the cardiologist, i have little to worry about, echocardiogram normal, calcium score zero, less than 1% chance of heart attack in the near future, slight widening of the ascending aorta, we need to keep an eye on it, back to the cardiologist in a year… the news came as we drove home from BI on Tuesday, i tell H, she is happy and says “see, i told you,” i remind her that, in uncharacteristic fashion, i did not freak out about this the way i sometimes do, she agreed… so now it is back to cancer as the undertow fear, i would love to have some extended moments without the undertow, something always lurking, something always threatening… the dark, it’s all about not wanting to be subsumed by it, there is no choice in the matter… catching up on photo editing and cataloging, on the 17th i made a large number of pretty pictures around New Harbor, what are the pretty pictures good for, what content do they have, what purpose could they have in a book or a series… A is the barista today, she is gaining weight… it is quiet, music playing quietly in the background, nobody else here, a customer coming this moment from the parking lot, up the steps, will she get something to go… a read pickup truck rolls in, a man walks with purpose to the stairs, another customer, will he stay or will he go, i don’t really need or want company, my back is turned to them all… DT horribleness continues, Dems plodding along with hearings, administration refusing to give up anything willingly, the system not really able to cope, the election is a last hope, the only hope, but i think we have known that for some time, the rest seems pointless except for setting the stage, i wonder if DT will be tossed in jail when he is done leading the country into a ditch, and all the badly behaved people surfacing because of him, the cockroaches out in the light of day running amok… Earth, House, Hold, a passage eschewing remuneration for creative effort, it gets in the way of understanding, i think this to be true and one of the fundamental problems of the world, our labor is to be sold if we are to exist within this system which subjects us to its control… all creatures have basic survival needs and mind focused on meeting those needs in a simple and direct fashion, grow your own food, make your own clothing, is ok, perhaps we should trade instead of selling what we make and we should accept only the product of the hands of the buyer as remuneration, in this way, basic needs are met, money the route of evil, money can be accumulated and then used to control the means of production and the lives of people…
June 19, 2019
June 19, 2019 188 Beacon, NY
June 19, 2019 186 Beacon, NY
June 18, 2019
June 18, 2019 419 Block Island, RI
June 18, 2019 408 Block Island, RI
June 18, 2019 402 Block Island, RI
June 17, 2019
219.0 lbs
June 17, 2019 092 Block Island, RI
June 17, 2019 090 Block Island, RI
June 17, 2019 086 Block Island, RI
June 17, 2019 068 Block Island, RI
June 17, 2019 067 Block Island, RI
June 17, 2019 045 Block Island, RI
June 17, 2019 043 Block Island, RI
7:54 AM - Persephone’s
… first family reaction to heart health news from R, who increases my level of anxiety with his response, i imagined this would happened… i drank last night, more than i should have, i am self medicating, trying not to worry, i do this… chas gave me a huge welcome back, H too, Rubie was indifferent as cats tend to be… beautiful morning, fog, not the best photographic fog, but still nice… tattooed barista remembered me when i walked in and said an enthusiastic hello despite still serving the customer ahead of me, she is a pretty young woman in beautiful shape, the tattoos suggest artist of some kind, and it is an idiosyncratic array, i wonder if she is a musician or visual artist, i wonder why she remembered me, before i got here i wondered if she would be here and if she was, if she would remember me… “your thoughts have no birthplace, they just pop up out of nowhere,” from last week’s Lojong practice, i am unconvinced that they have no birthplace, they emerge from the dark matter that underlies everything, material, psychological, spiritual, that which is not perceived and is what all things are immersed in and is what all things manifest from, imperceptible, perhaps unknowable, a different kind of seeing required if it is to be known… this week’s Lojong practice starts with accumulating merit through actions and words that lessen self absorption and thus create more space in mind and heart… i wonder if my concentration on photography, this journal, is self absorbed, that doesn’t seem an entirely correct interpretation of how i feel about it, and then, is every artist self absorbed, and if all artists are self absorbed, wouldn’t an intense spiritual practice be as well… or, is the true spiritual practice one that centers the self and accepts its inconsequentialness in the scheme of things, i think that is the most important thing to get, that everything that happens, that grabs our attention, plunges us into deep emotions, deep commitment, deep passion, is ultimately inconsequential when considered in the vast scale of space and time… as i think about what may or may not be the severity of my heart condition i am wondering if now is the time for a breakthrough, if now is the time to let go, get centered and feel myself as one with everything… perhaps i can use it to become the enlightened being i have always wanted to be, but then, is that the selfish, self-centered turn… depending on what i find out, what do i do… how do we proceed from here, what do we emphasize, what will make the remaining days, weeks, months and years the most meaningful possible, what will make me happy, what will make H happy, what will finally give it al meaning such that i can feel there was a reason to be here… handsome white skinned couple, tanned, in good shape, a woman asking for turmeric in whatever beverage she is having, they are having a conversation about CBD, it seems to be a thing…
June 16, 2019
no scale, no weight
June 16, 2019 025 Point Judith, RI
June 16, 2019 024 Point Judith, RI
June 16, 2019 368 Higganum, CT
6:19 AM - My Studio
… traveling back to BI to get H and the animals today…