Who Am I and Where Have I Been?

These days I'm waking up feeling lost in my own life. The six months from Sept. 10-March 10 were spent in a perfect storm of death and illness and paperwork and duties. It ended all right, really, for those of us who survived. Our dads did "live a long life" as people say, often adding that it was a "full" one. I'm not so sure about the latter. FFP survived two surgeries and a lot of tests to come up allegedly cancer-free and also avoid radiation and chemo. It seemed like there were enough 'have to do' things every day to reduce decision making to a minimum. What follows is an eclectic recap of that six months, the time since and my life in general. It will undoubtedly end up sounding like an extended whine from someone with a charmed life. Because it is. However, I feel that I can't move on as a writer without publishing this. Odd, huh? I don't really identify as a 'writer' anyway. I made up business cards when I retired that said "Pretending to Write but Really Just Blogging." The other day I took a red pen to some of these and scratched out Write and replaced it with Blog. And Scratched out Blogging and replaced it with Tweeting.

The events of that six months have gradually faded. I'm putting together the last pieces of my dad's estate that will let me finally more or less settle it although the CPA says I'll have to file a tax return for the estate for 2011 or something. I'll address this when the time comes and pay anything owed out of my own pocket just to get things cleaned up. We have tenants in the house we own that Dad lived in. His stuff has been sorted and dispersed. (There's a job with potent emotional and physical toll for the healthiest among us. The whole process might also be the subject of another piece at some point.)

FFP got his dad's will probated and and got his mother's new widowed life somewhat settled. I've managed to start using a new mail server. (This was necessary for a weird reason and harder than it sounds. I hate this type of change.) As these things fell away, we started thinking maybe we should get away from duties and do more social and charitable things.

During this six months we did some social events in spite of trips to Houston's MD Anderson Cancer Center including surgery there for FFP, another surgery for FFP in Austin and the deaths of our dads. We even saw a few films in the Austin Film Festival and managed to attend the event we helped chair to raise money for AFF's Young Filmmakers Program. But we also didn't sign up for a lot of things, canceled events and gave away expensive gala tickets we bought before we knew what was going to happen.

As things settled out we went a little overboard agreeing to events and buying tickets to things. One day, we decided that we should buy SXSW film badges. At the point we bought them the price had risen to $500. (If we'd purchased them in September, when we were facing the big cancer threat, they would have been $375. The walk-up rate was $550.)

On March 10 we attended the unofficial opening of the SXSW film festival, the Texas Film Hall of Fame party. Some friends had purchased a table and were kind enough to invite us, gratis. (This is not officially a part of SXSW and the $500 badge does you no good for this one.) I learned what Ted Nugent looks like and how he sounds doing the Star-Spangled banner. I was reminded of how much I enjoyed FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS and of the familial relationship between Sissy Spacek and Rip Torn. I really enjoyed hearing about and from John Hawkes who I only knew from his performance in WINTER'S BONE. All of the above received awards at the event. (Well, not WINTER'S BONE but, rather, John Hawkes.)

I looked forward to seeing some films, especially documentaries, and being able to walk to many venues and feel the throbbing vibe of the huge SXSW machine while still being able to retreat to our condo.

I usually play tennis three times a week. I played on Thursday, March 10th, and again on Saturday, the 19th, making sure my film festival didn't need to start until that afternoon. I'd missed a lot of tennis dates during the six months of 'the troubles' but at that point I'd been getting to it pretty regularly, weather permitting. One morning I cleaned house, several others were spent regrouping from the arduous film watching or sorting out bill paying and such.

But I spent a good deal of time from March 11-19, nine days, watching films programmed by SXSW film. I didn't attend any panels, spent probably 20 minutes walking through the trade show and attended a party hosted by Austin Film Festival. I watched eighteen movies. I watched a few Q&As. I waited in lines for many hours.

I'm going to summarize that experience here, in a moment. But I reached the end of the festival thinking "I'm watching movies created by someone else, about lives that aren't mine, curated by these SXSW folks."

I decided I needed to be creative myself. Or, at least, be picking my own input (newspapers, books, magazines, movies, images). Yeah, at least I need to be doing my own aggregation! We spend so much time looking at what someone else tells us is worthy of our attention. Yes, I'm going to get creative on my own terms. I'm going to write. I'm going to work on my photography project. I am going to call my 'work' (based on my photos of shop windows and other reflections): Multiply Appropriated Portraits and Landscapes. But more on that later. Perhaps much later.

The Sunday after SXSW was over I finally got around to reading The New York Times magazine for the prior Sunday (March 13). This article resonated with me, expressing a feeling of disconnection from creation that surely critics and aggregators must feel. Bill Keller, executive editor of the paper, was, of course, speaking from a very different perspective. The original reporting he oversees is being co-opted by aggregation. But so is my brain. I no longer give myself time to have an original thought. Not even about whose thoughts to let in.

Yes, it's time to stop and reflect. Reflection seems in order. Reflection on the last couple of weeks and the last six months and, indeed, what I laughingly call my life. Reflection of this sort is so long overdue that it took me over two weeks to write this entry which is now a rambling mess but which I think I'll post anyway. As I said: not publishing it seems to be holding me back from my usual writer's block on other things.

SXSW
As I mentioned above...we bought those film badges. I canceled three tennis dates to clear time to pursue movies and whatever else came our way. We live downtown and we didn't have to fight traffic for the most part. Not in our car anyway. I didn't start my car for over a week. FFP started his three times I think. Others weren't so lucky, haplessly belching fumes while in gridlock or waiting for buses that never came or came too full to take them. Bike riders dodged cars, threatened pedestrians and had trouble finding a proper bike rack. SXSW was too crowded and on the edge of out of control. (Sometimes going past the edge.) People stood in endless lines to get into stuff or to get free stuff. We stopped by and got a free Pepsi Max, no line. Otherwise, we only stood in line for movies or credentials for the fest. I always feel like I should 'review' what I see although I am a hopeless critic (except of my own life). But I do feel the need to wrap it up. So here goes.

We often got to the venues too early (we call this being pathologically punctual), rarely tried to see two movies in a row, even at the same theater, and, with our badges, got into every movie we set out to see and got good seats. Of course, we probably stood in line 16-18 hours. We read magazines or used our iPhones to pass the time for the most part. We talked to people in line, getting ideas of what to see, learning some stuff about Formula One Racing, and meeting some neat people such as Photographer Brian Gray and actress Aimee Thomas. Lines can be at once the most frustrating and the nicest, most serendipitous things about the festival. We also saw lots of people we already knew in lines, while standing in them and watching people go by and in the venues. We saw movies at seven different venues. (Rollins Theater at Long Center; the newly-renovated State Theater; Paramount Theater; the Convention Center Theater, branded Vimeo for this festival; Regal Arbor; the Alamo Ritz; and Alamo South Lamar). We only drove to the Arbor, walking to and fro all the other venues from our condo.

We ate lunch on the patio at Trio at the Four Seasons on the Thursday before the festival began. Most of the time during the festival we retreated into the lounge at Ruth's Chris steakhouse or ate sushi rolls from How Do You Roll or subs from Thundercloud or prepared food from Royal Blue Grocery. Oh, we had a cheese plate at Highball and a few bites and drinks in the theaters. We had snacks and drinks at Manuel's when we went to the Arbor. Restaurants were jam-packed. On the first day of the film fest (the 11th) we thought we'd go to Frank but it had a wait. We did get a table at Second. After that we eschewed the choices popular with SXers.

My festival was almost derailed by my guts. During the second movie of the first day, I had some slight stomach cramps, a sweaty hot clammy feeling. Left the theater a couple of times to go to the rest room. Washed face. Felt better. But that night I lost my lunch, as they say. And I was fragile for food and drink for a day or two.

But we did see two showings that first day: BEST of VIMEO SHORTS and PAGE ONE: INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES. Both were at the Convention Center at the Vimeo Theater as it was branded for the festival. This is the uncomfortable chair theater. After these two shows we learned to sit on the front row of the risers, the most comfort you can get in that venue.

Some of the shorts shown were animated. I particularly liked an animation of sand and snow. There was a helmet cam video from a bike race over a harrowing urban course that was pretty fantastic, too.

I loved PAGE ONE. I'm an avid reader of the NY Times although I don't do a good job of keeping up with who's who at the paper. (After seeing this movie, I decided to pay more attention to bylines.) David Carr is an interesting character and the story he was working on (the bankruptcy of the Tribune company) was relevant to the overall hand-wringing over new media, newspapers, reporting, etc. The film touched on lots of issues: plagiarism, declining advertising revenue, Wikileaks, rise of aggregation, pay walls. The blogger turned journalist, Brain Stelter, added a face to new trends. I wanted to go home and gently pat my stacks of newsprint. I missed a tiny bit of the movie and some of the Q&A to feeling ill. I regretted that.

I didn't know how the first Saturday of the festival was going to play out for me. I awoke feeling better after getting up almost hourly all night to drink sips of water to rehydrate. I managed to get down a little coffee, a little Gatorade and we queued up for SENNA. The eponymous F1 driver was an enormously successful driver and a hero in his native Brazil. He was killed in a race. I didn't know any of that before deciding to see the movie. I knew nothing about this form of auto racing. Or really any form of auto racing. The movie was a very human portrayal, done without using posthumous interviews with people who knew him but rather using archival footage of him and of people speaking about him. My fragile constitution survived the 'in car camera' racing footage, too.

We tried to get express tickets to get into EL BULLI so that we wouldn't have to queue so long. There weren't any left. The idea that you get a badge and then you queue up to get a pass to get in front of the badge line is not the best idea SXSW ever had. We decided that we'd queue for the movie anyway. We went to the Driskill and relaxed in the cool lobby for a bit after taking advantage of their bathrooms. It turned out we were first in line for badges without special tickets. So we got the aisle seat that I thought I needed given my fragile condition. After watching starred Spanish chef Ferran Adrià make wild, innovative dishes I retired to Ruth's Chris lounge to test my stomach on a plain baked potato with a little cheese and sparkling water. I liked the food shots and people in the movie but the sound track was very weird in places.

So Sunday (3/13/2011) comes along and I've been to four screenings and already feel a little tired. It feels like work. I know how lame and elitist that sounds. The hour lost to Daylight Savings wasn't really missed too much, at least not that day, possibly because I didn't drink Saturday night. We start our fest day at a brunch given by Austin Film Festival for AFF alumni who are local or in town for the SXSW. I eschew the tamales and have a little fruit and a pastry. I pass on alcohol, too, which I often do early in the day anyway. We walk to Whole Foods and buy a few things including a growler of Dogfish Head Midas Touch which, of course, I won't feel like drinking just yet. We only make one screening. We go to Morgan Spurlock's GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD. Morgan is there. It starts late. It is, well, as advertised: a big advertisement with a message that we are always being sold to, even in movies. We go to Ruth's Chris I think. At home I try some Midas Touch. Not too much, though.

On Monday we decide to get Express tickets for the movies we want to see. There are badges. Badges are seated first. They are all equal whether Gold, Film, Platinum or Interactive (for certain movies they are admitted). The festival issues VIP tickets for cast and crew and the like to trump these, though. Then they got the idea to issue special pieces of paper to trump other badges. Sigh. (And there are also film passes, would-be single ticket buyers and people who pre-purchase a single ticket but may not be admitted but are admitted before other single ticket holders. Neither volunteers nor film-goers quite master this before the fest is over.) We get in line before this line up opens. There are at least a hundred people in line. We do get these special tickets but we've wasted at least an hour of our time getting them. Since seating can occur thirty minutes or a bit more before a show we will still have to waste at least thirty minutes per show in a line. In these lines we will be given another paper ticket to prove we were in line. Later in the week they will ditch the film express tickets, thankfully. We won't queue for them again.

We saw SMALL BEAUTIFULLY MOVING PARTS in the newly-renovated State Theater. I liked it very much. Gave it four stars. The theater that is. But also the movie was pretty good. Quiet movie about family dysfunction, parenthood and the connected world of technology. Starring Anna Margaret Hollyman who has been in some shorts we've seen and also in one of the 'bumpers' for the festival. (Apparently that is what you call funny little pieces that precede the films.) Family dysfunction will be a thread running through most of the narrative features we see.

We rested up a bit and walked across the lake and up South Lamar to the Alamo South. We were extremely early and we had those extra special express tickets. So we went to Highball and had a drink (me: Guinness for $2; he: Coke for free as DD although we told the bartender we were walking) and a cheese plate. What a great Happy Hour with pints for $2! We loved, loved, loved A MATTER OF TASTE. Sometimes filmmakers get so lucky. They start filming someone when they are struggling a bit to get a film made and the subject is struggling in his endeavors. Time passes. Something happens to the person (two Michelin Stars!) and the film gets finished and has a nice dramatic arc. So the filmmaker, Sally Rowe, was lucky, but also very good at capturing this journey. The chef at the center of this piece, Paul Liebrandt, was at the screening. He was so nice. He seemed to know who he was and what he wanted. We want to eat at Corton when we go to New York. And, conveniently, we've just scheduled a trip to New York in June. We made the dark walk home and got ready for another day. I think I showed my age by already being weary but, of course, I had gotten a bug or some sort of upset on Friday.

On Tuesday we go to the Convention Center again to see SOMETHING VENTURED. We got those front row seats in the risers. I would have been more comfortable if a guy with about the girth of The Simpson's Comic Book Guy hadn't slipped (well more like plopped) into the seat next to me well after the movie started. This is a great film about the history of high-tech start-ups and venture capital. The dominance of men, then and now, still upsets me, though, even over eight years after my retirement and after some success at beating the odds. That one of the entrepreneurs, now a venture capitalist, was someone whose company I once worked for made it uncomfortable as well. Too close to what I laughingly call my life. Too close to 'what might have been' and missed opportunities. At some point, walking through the trade show, I will also have flashbacks of working trade shows, trying to convince customers that my stuff is what they should buy, not the stuff peddled in the next booth over.

And then...we started a car. Yep. We (well FFP) drove out to the Arboretum area, stopped by our house (where Dad used to live, which is our rent house now) and then grabbed a quick drink and snack at Manuel's and saw a SXSW movie at the Arbor. BEGINNERS really grabbed me. It was a highly personal story, you see. It involved the death of parents. While my dad didn't reveal that he was gay after my mother died (this was a plot point that moved this movie along), I felt such a resonance with the material that I found real tears going down my face. I was especially moved by a pile of garbage bags. Seriously. (See above re: cleaning out the Dad house.) Great movie about loss and love and how to really live. Reminded me of seeing my dad after he lost my mom when he tried to capture some happiness after several years of bumpy health problems for her and sitting with her for 100 days in the hospital. That Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer were in this project comes as no surprise after you see the piece and realize the power of the script. I understand this film (written and directed by Mike Mills) is highly personal and semi-autobiographical. The 'happy ending' for the son distracted a little from the piece but overall I was so impressed that, honestly, I wanted to see the character break out and embrace a relationship. It will be interesting to see if this guy can write another great script using either material he is also this close to or material that requires a little more reach of imagination.

On Wednesday (we are at 3/16/2011 at this point) we spent the morning taking care of our lives. I cleaned the bathroom and the bedroom and took care of bills and stuff. FFP took care of some of his mother's business. But in the afternoon we queued up at the convention center theater for a showing of BOB AND THE MONSTER which is a documentary about Bob Forrest and his rock career, addiction, recovery and attempt to help others recover. It was quite interesting on several levels: music, drugs, recovery and redemption.

In the evening, we went main stream. Jodie Foster's THE BEAVER was showing at the Paramount. She directs and stars opposite Mel Gibson. We were probably in line behind a hundred people with the line stretching far behind us, around the corner, out of sight. Jodie was there, but no Mel Gibson. Forrest was impressed with her legs when she introduced the movie. In my opinion the movie's premise was just a little too wacky to support a real portrayal of mental illness. By that I mean that people went along with the puppet much more than they would in the real world. Yes, the beaver was a puppet. I predict it won't do well in theaters. So...it probably will! I find my tastes don't track with the mainstream. After Jodie did the Q&A and sidestepped the Mel questions we went to Ruth's Chris. I had a Manhattan. Yeah, it didn't take me long to get back to drinking after my stomach upset.

When Thursday rolls around it is St. Patrick's Day. The combination of the holiday and its drunken celebration, the SXSW music being in full swing and film continuing make the streets and sidewalks of downtown both amazing and daunting. It is a day when we will somehow manage to watch three movies. We do this by only going to the Paramount and doing what I said above we never did: seeing two movies in a row at the same venue. But it was the Paramount which is a big venue. Started with APART. Some movies ask you suspend disbelief. Let's say they ask you to believe people can have shared delusions. OK. Accepted. Then they ask us to believe these delusions are really prescient. OK, I'll bite. Then they ask us to believe that the delusions caused the protagonists to act out in the delusions. OK, we've come this far together. But. Then this piece ask me to believe that another character, apparently sane but upset over the death of his son, could instantly figure out the psychosis and initiate a plan to help the pair escape the horror they've caused and get cured. He would do this by committing a crime and covering up another crime. Well, no. Didn't wash. Wrap it up some other way and I'd have enjoyed the diversion. This plot turn stuck in my craw. After I'd allowed them so much leeway. I'd say that the above paragraphs were spoilers but somehow they really are not. Oh well. We should probably stick with movies that are strictly about family dysfunction.

As I said, we managed to watch two movies in a row by immediately going out and queuing for LIVE AT PRESERVATION HALL: LOUISIANA FAIRYTALE. To our delight the Preservation Hall Jazz Band came marching around the corner and entertained for a bit in front of the theater before going inside. When we got in they were performing some bluesy numbers with mournful singing. During the movie, the parts where the jazz guys played or they talked about the history of Preservation Hall were great. But the collaboration with My Morning Jacket was mostly painful to me because their music is so monotonous and dumb in my humble opinion. When their lead singer fronted the jazz classic in the title, that wasn't horrible (not great either) and sometimes a jazz guy accompanying the muck couldn't stand it any longer and just started to improvise and that provided some relief. Now I'm sure My Morning Jacket is a hot new band. Or a venerable hot band. So sue me. If I'm going to be spoon-fed by SXSW, I'm going to still try to retain the ability to form an opinion about what I like.

We regrouped, caught a snack and drink at Ruth's Chris and queued for ATTENBERG. It was very artsy. It had everything required of an art film. For my taste I just couldn't bond with the characters due to the silly sequences and inside jokes. But it was good at being artsy. And...we had seen three movies. Yeah.

When Friday, March 18th, arrives we realize two things: SXSW Music is in full swing and we have been watching movies for a week. I start to feel like an SXSWimp. I know I'm clueless about a lot of the music. (See above: My Morning Jacket.) I know that I don't like excessive drinking, loud claptrap or places that are too crowded.

We see that they are playing the Grand Jury Narrative Award winner at the Rollins over at Long Center. We haven't been to the venue during this festival. And we've heard good things about the film, NATURAL SELECTION. So we walk across Lady Bird Lake and queue up. Only two people in line and one is a gal we queued with at the Arbor, Aimee the Actress, and we enjoy some conversation. The movie's premises are improbable, the arc for the characters unlikely and the movie is thoroughly and completely raucous but somehow it's enjoyable and beautifully crafted. There were interesting subtleties of settings and nuances that redeemed any criticism. Roger Ebert liked it, too, although to me...that means nothing. I make my own decisions. It is my last shot at free will. NATURAL SELECTION could be described as dysfunction of non-family, but it had family complications, too, and that segued nicely into the evening's movie. ANOTHER HAPPY DAY is one of those films that I can both relate to (it was full of family dancing, as I call it, and anyone has seen a bit of that in life) and also feel divorced from (the family place on the Chesapeake is far from my reality). But there was the interesting reunion of cousins, the consternation as old age decimated the powers of the older generation, etc. Those things I get. I like seeing the multiple generations of privilege flailing anyway. Ellen Burstyn and Ellen Barkin were great and Demi Moore camped it up. It's easy to hate Thomas Hayden Church so he was able to make you hate him and yet feel a little sorry for him.

It is the last day. The ninth day! Saturday, March 19th. We see two films to make an even 18. For which we paid $27 each by buying our badges. We saw two documentaries this last round. The well-crafted WHERE SOLDIERS COME FROM didn't just give one pause about our current wars and their effect on young people who sign up for National Guard units for a bit of money. It gave me pause about the millions of lost young people with no idea of vocation or goals. I suppose they've always been out there. In an era without a draft they are most of our non-comm soldiers. They are ill-prepared by training and ill-prepared emotionally to fight a battle against IEDs. This film gives an inside look at one group of kids and their families and friends and shows how they could end up in uniform thousands of miles away after taking up soldiering with no more thought than their winter sledding or graffiti project. The film is also very revealing concerning how these families pinned their hopes on Obama to end the obligations their enlistment entailed and how they were disappointed to find little changed. And there is a priceless bit of film of a PowerPoint presentation about Afghanistan given during an army orientation. That alone was worth the price of admission. The return of these kids with their possible unseen traumatic brain injuries and exacerbated lack of focus is painful to watch.

The finale, the finish, the 18th film, is a documentary about Willie Nelson, KING OF LUCK. Billy Bob Thornton directed and it is one awesome piece of music history. We walked out more in awe of Willie than ever. Which was the idea I think: to make a paean rather than a bio. The current footage is presented in black and white to match the archival stuff. Willie is definitely one of a kind and here we see him with a bunch of unique friends and family talking about him. Great as it was...we were so eager to slip through the crowds and be in our apartment that we didn't stay for the Q&A with Billy Bob. Facing down a river of people headed toward E. Sixth, we made our way home and collapsed. Of course, soon enough a long fireworks show boomed across the lake and we stepped out on the balcony to watch it. It lasted so long I was glad when it was over.

At the end of the day, we did see some pretty good films. Ten documentaries, seven narrative features and one short program. But it was draining and I'm not sure it was worth it, all in all, to see all those in such a short period and stand in line that much.

As I write this I've actually been to two movies since the end of the festival. One was a preview showing of WIN WIN (also shown in the festival although we didn't attend). It is an intriguing tale of right and wrong and the mushy area in between, families and what they will do to each other and, at the end, for each other. Also...how the concept of family stretches to sometimes admit strangers. The movie didn't try to tell us everything, taking advantage of ambiguity to make it a bit more real. Which is to say they intentionally left unanswered questions about guilt, innocence and what would happen when the characters left the frame as well as what their complete history might reveal. All you knew for sure was that some situations do have a WIN WIN outcome but maybe not where we expect to find it. I liked Bobby Cannavale being cast as the over-enthusiastic friend, too, which reminded me of STATION AGENT.

We also saw a documentary about the Rural Studio Architecture project (CITIZEN ARCHITECT: SAMUEL MOCKBEE AND THE SPIRIT OF THE RURAL STUDIO). We saw this sitting on the rooftop of Arthouse at Jones Center on a chilly night. It is a nice doc. I'd heard the film makers speak about it before and was glad to get to see it.

We've also been to some benefits, a wine club party, a ballet mixed rep. And we made a round trip to Houston to have a check-up for Forrest.

I'm exhausted now, describing the last couple of weeks. Nevertheless, I want to keep writing, to keep blogging and to reach back through the last six months and try to write some sense into it. I don't know if it will work. In fact, I guess, from experience, I know that it will work but only to a small degree.

The Six Months
You come home from a vacation. You dad has had a rough time of it, been to the emergency room a couple of times, had to sweat out an AC repair during a blazing hot August at the house where he's living, our house, which we are responsible for. We've ducked our responsibilities for a couple of weeks of driving across the great American West and visiting friends. We've left him in the care of repairmen and friends.

We are not home for long and he needs to go to the emergency room again. Instead of relying on friends I have to ditch a party and take him. The next week I take him to the doctor and we think he's doing pretty well. I take FFP to the eye doctor where he will have what turns out to be the last of many excisions of a growth on his eyelid that is not benign, as the ophthalmologist thought for two years, but a rare cancer. I only go because he will have an eye patch for a few hours so I go to drive him home. It is a day I spend in doctors' offices but things seem to be going OK. The doctor does a biopsy. He says, "I'm pretty sure it's not going to show anything." Or he says something like that. We don't worry. Not at all.

Until the afternoon of the next day. We are sitting around thinking about what to wear for a black tie event that we will go to in a few hours. And the doctor calls. He wants to send FFP to an oculoplastic surgeon on Monday. Because he has a very rare cancer. Sebaceous Cell Carcinoma. Before we go to our event we have time to make the appointment. A new doctor is working us in. As soon as possible. We have time to search the Internet. Yikes.

Monday we see the new doctor. He refers us to MD Anderson. We will see a doctor there, probably the leading expert in the country (if not the world) on this type of cancer. On Friday. Friday is a race through tests and more tests and doctor visits. MD Anderson is a massive, daunting place but we make it through with a little help from the staff. We are given an appointment to come back on Monday and get needle biopsies of a mass shown through ultrasound in his parotid gland and one in his thyroid. The word metastasis creeps into our vocabulary. But. We will just take this a step at a time. And worry, of course.

On the weekend that the MD Anderson visits on Friday and Monday (and the three hundred miles of driving) surround, my dad is celebrating his 94th birthday. Fortunately, his two sisters and one brother-in-law have driven down to visit. A friend has a little get together for him on Friday night which we miss. We go through the motions of visiting with the relatives on the weekend and trying to explain what we know about the medical issues.

Monday brings needle biopsies. The parotid probe hurts more. The thyroid one is done twice. The parotid one is identified as benign. An adenoma. The thyroid comes up with Hurthle cells. The problem with this tumor is that it is probably benign but it can be cancerous and metastasize and you can only tell by removing it. This type of tumor is also rare, apparently.

But we have to take care of other things first. The eyelid. The cancer must be removed along with a normal edge and the eyelid reconstructed and biopsies done for skip lesions. They want to do a sentinel node biopsy. A head and neck surgeon will do this using traces from radioactive isotopes injected during a test and again before surgery. Into his eyelid. Without anesthetic. Ouch. Hurts to think about and it wasn't me.

We get ourselves prepared for all this, get hotel reservations near MD Anderson. We have a couple of weeks to ponder it and we try to go on with our lives. I get a haircut. I take my dad to get a haircut on a Friday. It's been two weeks since FFP's diagnosis. Dad says he's feeling a little weak. He complains about his blood pressure monitor not working and I reseat the batteries and fool with it and get it going. He jokes with the barber and looks good with his fresh haircut.

On Saturday I call my dad, as I do every morning for the most part. He says he is 'feeling better.' I guess I wasn't aware of how bad he felt the day before. I don't see him or speak with him again that day. The next day when I call, he doesn't answer on the first try. I try again. The phone is off the hook. I hear something but he can't speak to me. I tell Forrest, "I think this is it." I think of calling the neighbors. But they aren't friendly about being roused so early. I get in the car and drive out there myself. He is in his bed. Struggling for breath, gurgling a bit. I call EMS. They are there in a very short time. They ask me if he has heart problems. They say he is in afib. "That's never happened before," I say. They ask when he was last normal. He seems to have put himself to bed for the night. Or, could it have been for a nap yesterday? Later I see his tablet in the dining room beside his blood pressure monitor. He has recorded his blood pressure the night before and written the time: 8PM. The blood pressure shown, however, was a little was a little low for someone with high blood pressure: 94-58. Was he already in afib?

He is transported to the emergency room. After a CT scan they see he's had a massive stroke. They struggle to get his blood gases up. His heart isn't beating correctly so his pulse races but he isn't getting enough oxygen in his blood. The doctor mentions 'hospice.' By 6PM I've had a visit from the hospice people. They talk about transporting him to a hospice facility. I look at him and realize that we might as well stay here. I've called everyone. My Colorado relatives start making plans to come this way. I don't leave his side for long. The next morning a friend stops by to sit with him while I go shower. A lot of people visit and then they are all gone and FFP joins me. We slip out for a meal and the food tastes so good. I feel bad that it tastes so good. There's my dad, unable to swallow, on hospice care across the street. We rush back to his side. Even though they've removed the oxygen all together, he holds on for a while. And then: he's gone. While we wait for a local funeral home to collect him and arrange for his body to be transported back to Dallas where his burial will be, we call people, e-mail people. I feel a huge weight on me. FFP's surgery is a week away.

My nieces arrive the next day: one by car and one by air and rental car. Each has a three-year-old in tow. They switch gears from trying to see their granddad one last time to helping me arrange a burial in Dallas. He has sisters there, nieces and nephews, friends. We get the funeral home to call us the next day and arrange everything. One niece's van won't start so they switch everything to the rent car and set out for Dallas to put him to rest. They call their parents (my sister and brother-in-law) and tell them to go straight to Dallas. They reserve hotel rooms, order a casket spray and flowers. The next day they bury their granddad and the niece with the rent car drives back with her son to catch a plane back to Denver from Austin. The other niece and my sister and brother-in-law stay over and come the next day to get the niece's van going. I feel bad I didn't make this service but we will have a memorial a few weeks later in Austin. We will try to delay it long enough after FFP's surgery that he can make it. We succeed in this.

We find out on the day before surgery that unless FFP is willing to get a parotidectomy to rid himself of the adenoma the surgeon won't do the sentinel node biopsy. He doesn't want to operate on the face twice and the adenoma may one day cause trouble and require removal. This makes the surgery kind of a bigger deal. Anyway, we spend almost a week at MD Anderson. Child's play considering what some people I know have been through. But tough enough to suit me.

It is day surgery. In that he's not really admitted to the hospital. Only...we are there from before 7AM one day until noon the next. I thought I'd drive back that day. But I haven't left the hospital either, have gotten little sleep. He's had six hours of surgery, a little bit of a rocky recovery, has a drain coming out of his neck, his eye is swollen shut, etc. Luckily, they were able to repair the eyelid without grafting tissue from the lower eyelid. So he might be able to see out of that eye when the swelling goes down. Needless to say, we spent another day and night in a hotel room, sleeping, managing his drain, doctoring his eye, eating room service and entertaining ourselves with TV and iPod tunes. On Saturday I manage to drive him home. We managed for a couple of days, his eye gradually opening, me taking care of the drain stitched in his neck. On Monday we got his GP to remove the drain. That was a great relief. Gradually he gets better. News gets better, too. The sentinel node biopsy showed no cancer. We start getting out and going a few places.

Before we know it the holiday season is on us. Forrest's dad has his 100th birthday right before Thanksgiving. There is a come and go party at their house. It exhausts me and seems to energize FFP's parents.

FFP has another surgery, here in Austin, to remove half his thyroid and have a look at that growth in it. It is benign. So he keeps half a thyroid. He recovers fast from this although he's still recovering from his eyelid and facial surgery, too.

We continue getting out to more stuff. We eat in a brand new restaurant and, the next night, go to the ballet. FFP gets violently ill later in the evening. Food poisoning we think. It sends him reeling, the doctor giving this drug and that and he finally ends up getting an IV to rehydrate and gradually feels himself again.

And we think maybe we've turned a corner. I'd gone to court. I'd cleaned and sorted and discarded and donated and organized and executrixed my way through my dad's affairs and leftover things. It wasn't done but everyday...closer.

A new year arrives. We actually have a pretty good New Year's Eve, wandering the building to various apartments for partying.

The first day of 2011, we stretch and yawn our way through the day and settle in for some nachos and TV.

And the phone rings. And thus begins the fall for FFP's dad. A literal fall getting up out of a chair. A broken hip. Pain. Breathing problems with painkillers. Nothing to do but try to pin it. Surgery a success but patient's blood pressure never stabilizes. The next week we are organizing another funeral and beginning another bit of estate management and trying to help his mother through it all. Between the death and the funeral we have to make a round trip to Houston and get a check up on the whole cancer thing.

I keep trying to hang on to things that are 'normal.' I manage to play some tennis. Go out with some friends. Go out with Forrest to a restaurant. To do chores and projects around the condo. The house which had been so great for Dad becomes a burden without him. Stuff seems to multiply. Each thing has to be dealt with. But, finally, we remove enough to get the floors steam-cleaned. And we find friends to lease from us.

And it's tax time and I spend time getting all the tax things underway. For us and my dad. FFP does his mom's. The CPA and I wade through the business stuff.

Then it seems like we've come out the other side. At this point that we start to play a little fast and loose. We think we can do things. Like get our money's worth out of a SXSW film badge, make it to some galas, go out with friends. I think I can really conquer the chores and stuff around the condo now that I'm not sorting detritus from the life of dad and mom and playing the companion role for the sick.

Of course, we over-commit. Of course, I start to feel nervous and distraught. I toy with solutions. Becoming a recluse watching old episodes of "Northern Exposure." Spending more 'analog' time. (Reading newspapers and books, writing in longhand, playing tennis.) Going through tasks meticulously from left to right, top to bottom, believing that you can conquer. Scheduling trips to look forward to. (We have only been out of town to drive back and forth to Houston for medical treatment for over six months.) Trying to write about what's happened. What's working? What isn't? Hard to say.

How'd I Get Here?
It's funny, isn't it? How your life is just one thing, another thing and then there you are, living with a man you've been married to almost 35 years owning a ten-year-old Honda Civic with an insult on every body panel, a condo, a tennis racket older than the car. Your health is good as far as you know. You are living an urban lifestyle. You feel you've done your duty these last six months, these last ten years, your whole life. You've been responsible. Paid for your mistakes. Paid your debts. Paid your taxes. Not stolen from anyone. And here you are. So I'm going to explore that further. I'll enter some more blog entries here, segueing from images and ideas into an always incomplete but exhaustive exposition on "who is the Visible Woman and why does she do that?" Or not. Maybe I won't write another thing in this space. After all, I've been working on this entry for over two weeks and I'm still not sure I'll publish it.

Missing

I made that commitment to Holidailies and then, after the 15th I could not bring myself to write a word. I felt bad that I couldn't write some drivel every day. How hard could it be? I have produced reams (if pixels can be considered in paper terms) of daily stuff. In fact, I went looking around and I could show you an entry for every single day in 2005. Well, almost anyway. But it would "bore [you and] me terrifically, too." (Points for knowing that reference.) I got mired in 2005 for about fifteen minutes when I thought about it and had to go get coffee and make up the bed to escape.

The fact is writing, and keeping a promise to get pixels to screen every day, used to help me get through.

Here's why: I used to find the humor in it. Even if I seemed down last year (when I got through Holidailies in fine style while dealing with quite a rough patch for Dad's health) I was on the lookout for a bon mot, a bit of humor, to make writing a little easier. A funny hook for a serious discussion maybe. Maybe my dad was the one that helped me find that. Maybe without him writing blog entries will seem empty and silly. It's sure looking that way. Sigh.

Divagate

Am I there? In the picture I mean. My life is like that.

Yesterday I uploaded this picture, titled this entry 'Divagate' and typed "Am I there?" Then I could do no more. I had no words to spill into pixels and keep up the stream that is supposed to be my (almost) every day Holidailies 'obligation.'

I'm a wanderer. It's so with tasks. It's so with reading. It's so with my stories.

I love this word. This title. Divagate. No, no, it isn't a scandal at the Metropolitan Opera.

divagate, v. intr.

1. to wander, stray
2. digress in speech

Love it. This was dictionary.com's word of the day sometime in the last couple of weeks. I actually pay them money to have access to the site with more info and less ads online. But word of the day, facebook and the iPhone app (which is ad-rich) are free. But...I digress.

I was so, so sad yesterday that I couldn't write. I felt empty. We went out to our house which Dad used to live in. Every time I go out there it makes me sad. And sadder. Like when I'm tossing and giving away 'stuff' I'm emptying my dad, maybe even my parents, from my life. Some of that stuff had been with them as long as I knew them. But. Oh. Well. It's really the memories, right? That's what people say. Of course, I have a lot of pictures and souvenirs. If a computer goes to screen saver after a few minutes a picture of my dad or mom will flash up.

I was also sad because we are getting old. My skin is getting thin and these red 'blood under the skin' bruises appear out of nowhere. Sometimes the skin breaks. We have our ailments. We are old. We both get Social Security checks. For now. Who knows what the Congress has in store. FFP's troubles and surgeries capped by a mother of a stomach ailment last weekend just made me feel it was all worth nothing. There would never be fun again. Just illness and worry. Trips to the drug store, etc. My in-laws are still alive. But old. I worry about them. My dad's youngest sister was in the hospital after falling. (She did get to go home and sounded pretty good today.) She is only 17 years older than I.

I am so lucky. But still I was sad. But words can make me smile. But I wander. Divagate!

Get Control of the Papers

This picture was taken some time in the late '90's I think. Not sure. Found it in my dad's stuff. Perhaps my mother shot it with her camera. And, yes, I look like one of those 'paper and bones' ladies surrounded as I am by newspapers and magazines I'm trying to sort. Or read. Or something. I see a precipitous pile of magazines on a table in the room, too. This was our media room and the place we sat in chairs and watched TV for a while until we moved that activity mostly to the bedroom. We also entertained in this large room. You know, when it wasn't so messy!

I have a real love/hate thing with newspapers. I love getting my three papers every day really. (Except on Sundays. Then only two.) And, of course, we pick up those weekly give away Chronicles and get a West Austin News in the mail every week.

I hate the way they pile up, taunting me. If I try to trim the pile down, quickly tossing the sports pages, some business sections, ads, etc. then I end up with a smaller but, in a way denser, pile of arts sections, interesting front pages, metro sections (gotta read those obits). When we moved to the condo, I had to do a better job of controlling the accretion. I decided to use two bins I had. One would hold that day's papers (assuming they weren't stacked on the dining table or beside my chair). One would hold those sections I couldn't bring myself to discard and the ones I hadn't even sorted. When the latter got too unwieldy...I'd do something about it, by golly. I usually do. Although lately there have been some tough times and getting reading done didn't seem to be in the cards.

Plus when I settle in and read the papers it depresses me. The bad news, of course. But also the things I just don't know about that seem to be dispatches from another world. You would think, with all this newspaper reading that I would know a lot about world issues, local issues, politics, the arts. But really. No.

And yet I can't give up the papers. I do get lots of news on RSS feeds, through links on social media, from the TV and even sometimes on the radio. But. I need to be a person who gets the papers. I am a newspaper reader. I need to work the Monday New York Times crossword and feel that smug satisfaction of getting the puns or whatever. Yeah, yeah, Monday is easy. Sometimes I can work the Wednesday or Thursday one. Or the Sunday magazine. Without cheating too much.

It's been a rough day. FFP was sick this weekend but is getting better, I hope. (He's got the energy to take a load of papers down to recycling!) Actually getting sick after his surgeries and recoveries was an unnecessary blow I thought. And so it goes. I guess I'll go read some papers. And work that Monday crossword. I am so lame.

Can You Really Control Anything?

Action/reaction. Cause and effect. Can we really control anything? There are all the things we are supposed to do to stay safe and healthy. To keep things running in our modern world of cars, computers, gadgets and appliances (all which have filters if they involve water or air in any way).

The worst things to control involve other people. People you are supposed to be there for in their time of need, physical or mental.

I can't shake the feeling that my dad would have had a different outcome with a different caregiver. Don't get me wrong. Everyone owes a death. I did my best and maybe his came later than it would have in other circumstances. But you make all these tiny decisions even though you are essentially helpless in the world of doctors and treatments. You try to encourage behaviors, look up drugs, get the right professionals. You help make decisions.

With FFP's health I always feel inept as well. After all the surgeries and such he has come down with a stomach ailment. Complaining of cramping and nausea he took himself to the doctor, got drugs, tests. He feels awful. I feel helpless.

And through it all I have been trying to keep things going. Changing light bulbs, getting cars serviced, paying bills, getting Dad's stuff and affairs in order. It runs away from me.

When FFP is ailing (and this happened during stints babysitting Dad at home and hospital and doctor's offices), I sometimes give myself a vacation from all other duties and just sit and read and eat and don't exercise and just be there to fetch things while entertaining myself reading or with my iPhone or iPod.

And, of course, this brings up the question of when caregivers get sick. How do they manage to postpone the sniffles, the sneezes, their own stomach ailments, their own major complications? Last year at this time a friend was at the hospital every day as his wife fought deadly complications of H1N1. Now he fights cancer. Should we be trying to harness this delay of symptoms so that, even if we have something terrible, we can delay the onset because someone else is sick?

Plus...does anyone else think that the routers, computers, phones, Internet access, cars, TVs, appliances, etc. really have a mind of their own and will only work when you, the caregiver, hold your mouth just right and delay getting that cold or allergy attack?

Sorry about this silly ramble, but it just amazes me that we can seemingly control so many things. And yet. Not.

[Photo taken in Vegas at fancy shopping.]

There's Always Something...

Dad used to say: "There's always something to take the joy out of life." He used to also say: "I've bought a lot of cameras but I never owned one." He didn't buy the digital point and shoot that I used to shoot the Harrah's sign in Vegas (in August) or the computer and software I used to snip it so it just said 'ahs.' But Dad speaks a lot of truth.

I'm listening to my husband moan right now. It isn't anything serious, I hope. Just a digestive upset and some pesky cramps. Still. No joy.

I'm getting ready to go play tennis. I love it, but I sometimes feel it's the only active thing I'm making time for and it shouldn't be. I have to go check on our other house after that. I no longer have to check on Dad, but I still have to check on the property. I'm ready to be done with it. Of course, I still have to settle his affairs and found out that the estate's inventory has to be on file for ten days and my sister has to sign a paper before I can finish up.

I feel OK myself this morning. Although I didn't get enough sleep because I went to bed too late. After going to see "The Nutcracker" and staying after to talk to dancers and walking home, I felt the need to stay up and read papers and watch stupid crime shows. I slept well but I had dreams. There were battles with office supplies and strange court room scenes where everyone was eating sausage.

OK, but troubled in a vague way. That's me. I need to straighten out a bunch of things. I need to find time to write and love the activity. This daily journal is a chore right now. It isn't Holidailies taking the joy out of it. It's something else. Always something.

Ephemeral and Colorful

This morning I was doing my best impression of sleeping in. Which due to tennis some mornings and other duties, like being at the courthouse yesterday, is surprisingly hard for this retired girl to achieve. But FFP woke me to see the contrail tracing up the sky by the Frost Bank. It was pretty dramatic. Fleeting. But dramatic. Dawn and dusk are like that: colorful and dramatic. Just like the drama at the beginnings and endings of everything.

Sometimes I wish things would be static for just a moment. Just hold up and let me catch up. I could get through the newspapers and the bills and the duties if more didn't show up each day. But every bit of life is a fleeting moment, a picture you can never take again. Whenever you stand over a dying person or try to help someone who has just been through surgery or just smile or frown at a stranger on the street? That is that moment and it is complete even as it flees across time like the contrail. It fades but it is that dot on the time line and it's irretrievable.

Knowing how ephemeral life is can give us a calm respect for how time towers over us. Or it can weigh us down as we try to do everything at once as we pursue a static place that doesn't exist. I'm trying to grab the calm this morning. To find some peace with the reality of life. To revel in the fact that this moment and its discomforts are soon gone. That things change and that's the good part.

Quit Whining and Pay Attention

It's been a surreal fall. Tomorrow I go to court for my dad's will probate and I was thinking "Life will somehow be 'normal' when I've gotten all that taken care of." Yeah, sure. Life is never 'normal.' It's always FUBAR. Anything else is an illusion. You just have to take the blows, feint left or right, dodge, go on.

FFP sent out an e-mail saying his latest surgery didn't find cancer. Yeah, we are happy and thinking about being festive and such. Someone replied that their journey was taking a different turn, toward hospice. And then we saw in the paper that our friend died on Sunday. I heard that my aunt had a fall. Don't know where that's going but they took her to a big hospital in Dallas from the suburb where they are living. Fortunately she's near Dallas, near my cousin. She doesn't have children, just nieces and nephews. So I'm glad my cousin's wife is there to help her husband. And her.

I have a feeling that I have got to quit whining and pay attention to things. But, of course, I feel like celebrating FFP's good news of the day. (The permanent sections confirm: no cancer in the thyroid. Turns out the tumor on his eyelid was the only thing that was cancerous.) I told him that for Christmas I wanted to dine in nice restaurants and he made a reservation for tonight at one of the best. Now, of course, I'm worrying about other people. Those not so lucky. But you just go on. You do. Grabbing what joy you can. Whining when you have no right and not paying proper attention to your duties. Fact is, we walked to a place for breakfast this morning and while crossing Congress, solidly in the crosswalk with a walk signal, a guy ran the light, managing to stop only after getting well through the intersection. FFP alertly grabbed my arm and we halted as he passed a few feet in front. I really, really have to try to pay attention even as I keep whining.

We took cabs back and forth to Jeffrey's last night so we could both drink and had delightful food and wine. We are lucky. No whining. Awareness.

Objects of Desire

I don't really want an art object that is a crane woven from what? Paper? Vinyl? Glass? I don't know. I didn't go into the shop. I just stole the image of it, added my camera-obscured visage and put it here. But thousands of objects, arty and otherwise, are in my possession or control. Dealing with them, their value, their weight and their emotional freight consumes a lot of my time.

Even my images, like this one, weigh down the hard drive, obscure other pictures. The more you have the less you can concentrate and cherish one thing.

When we moved we let stuff go. And go. And go. Lots and lots of stuff. I love a lot of what's left. That painting there. That book. My coffee machine. Some of my clothes. New Italian furniture we acquired. Even now we have to stay on top of things because we kept so much (or acquired the perfect object for this space) that the condo is pretty full. When we add something it threatens us.

Since we moved we acquired two new art works. We had to eject another work to hang one of them. I think the rejected one ended up in our condo storage cage. We managed to work out a space for the other new one. At one time we had several hefty sculptures. And some life-sized ones in the yard. No more.

I rarely see things I desire these days. But I must confess that I take a peek at most of the catalogs that come in and stare at ads in newspapers and magazines. And sometimes a desire is created, but, more often I see a possible burden. And some resistance ensues. I wish I could impose the 'one in, one out' rule. You know where if you buy a new outfit or new shoes then something old has to go. Instead I wait until things are out of control and get rid of piles of things. Or I find places to tuck the goods and wait, as my dad and my mom did, for someone else to deal with it when I'm gone. Six years ago I created a (of course incomplete) list of objects I owned in my blog. It would be interesting to review it and see if I still have the stuff and if I can even remember what happened to it if not.

Datebook

Going through my dad's things yielded some surprises, some tears, some real finds. OK it was mostly trash and moderate treasure headed to the thrift store without regret. A few things were saved for me or my sister, a few other things judiciously given away. One thing I immediately moved to toss and then didn't was an Austin 2004 date book. Apparently someone gave it to him, maybe for Christmas. If so, he didn't write who gave it to him inside. Maybe he'd bought it for himself. After I retired, I taught him to go to Barnes and Noble, prowl around, read their books in the coffee shop. Sometimes he would buy things there.

Anyway he used it throughout the year to jot down his appointments and in a few cases who he visited with and what he had to eat. Pretty mundane stuff. I read through it all and moved to throw it away and then didn't. I trotted it out again and read all the mundane entries. The name of the urologist he didn't like and later fired. A bunch of appointments to see about a large goiter we'd just discovered. Appointments with a GP I later fired. A note on one day that he spent $14.35 on food. Indications that he planned to attend water aerobics, later abbreviated to H20 Arb or W-A. On January 17, 2004 he wrote 'Rain 5 inches over 3 or 4 days.' Emptied his rain gauge, I guess. This was back when he drove himself lots of places. Not everywhere. The surgeon considering his goiter was in St. David's big medical complex and he wanted me to take him there. He noted cards he mailed to his grandchildren and calls he made to his sisters. The gate code for an apartment where he picked up a woman and took her to church activities. Dates were noted for parties for a friend's 90th birthday and a couple's 50th wedding anniversary.

On June 2, he noted 'Linda and FFP to France.' On July 20 he wrote 'Fly out 12:30P to Frankford [sic].' He meant Frankfurt. Germany. He was eighty-seven years old and headed on an almost thirty day trip to Germany, England and Iceland with a friend. On August 17 he wrote: 'Return from London.' On the 18th: 'From Chicago at 1:30AM No luggage.'

The last six years weren't kind to my dad and he had some difficulties even back when keeping this datebook, but somehow these few scrawls show me just how in control of his life he was then and how much he was enjoying it in spite of everything.

I still haven't managed to throw it away.

Festive Me

The 'Visible' Woman, you see, is a bit of a joke. I like to hide in reflections, opaque images and, if I'm honest, writing that obfuscates and complicates rather than reveals.

This year I'm only festive in reflections like this one. I'll be brushing the glitter off my hands from your cards (actually who sends those now? especially the ones with glitter?) and putting a Santa hat on in reflection only (at Top Drawer Thrift). I'll be looking at your lights and trees, drinking your booze. Oh, I may cook up a jazzy seasonal music play list to listen to on the iPod and I'll post seasonal pictures. But, honestly, I'm not doing festive this year. There was a time when I decorated the house, however idiosyncratically. That was when we had a house. And even a year or two when I had a Christmas party at that house. There were years I gave scores of gifts to relatives, friends and co-workers.

There will be presents for party hosts and my in-laws. That's it. Oh, I sent money to Colorado for the kiddies, but that hardly counts.

So, yeah, as Holidailies kicks off don't count on me to conjure up the smell of cider and cookies or to advise on roasting a turkey. I may, rather, be talking about my strange 2010 of travel and adventure, death and diagnosis, healing and milestones and, of course, downsizing. Downsizing is a favorite topic of mine and a time when you have to decommission an abode is ripe for downsizing tales.

Stay tuned, if you will, for the Visible Woman type of reflection. But, in any case, enjoy the writing that the Holidailies portal offers.

Frames of Reference

When you embark on some part of your life experience (marriage, moving, new job, illness, vacation) you have expectations from past frames of reference but really who knows what is coming? This year we tried to snap back from a time when my dad needed me very badly and tried to be those happy retirees in comfortable shoes who can drive long distances and fly off on weekdays. But illness and death had other things in mind. I can't find the words to describe my year and its ups and downs, trips and towns, exhilaration and gut-wrenching anguish (sometimes on the same day). So it won't be a year that I describe in a family newsletter or represent with a happy picture of our downtown abode. Which is why I'm not sending a holiday card. The collage above only partially represents my attempt to make sense of it. Maybe when Holidailies is done I'll have the ability to represent myself to the 200+ people I usually send a missive to on the holidays.

[I threw this together for testing Holidailies. So expect more coherency when that actually begins next week!]

Lost Me

Normally I have a real good idea who I am and how I am feeding my own selfish desires. The last three months have been trying in this regard however.

My dad died. My husband needed medical care. My dad's affairs needed to be concluded. I began to worry about my in-laws more because, after all, they are 90 and 100.

So lately I keep asking myself: Where am I? What am I supposed to be doing? Why didn't I get to do the things I dreamed about when I managed to retire early and not completely broke?

I am selfish. I know I am very, very lucky. I have resources both physical and monetary against the onslaught. My husband is going to be fine. For now. One day we will all not be fine. The problem is that that day seems all too imminent of late.

And so....while others are shopping, decorating and celebrating...I'll be helping FFP through a surgery and recuperation and perhaps reading and blogging and pondering the rest of my life. I have made one or two momentous decisions: I won't do a holiday card for the first time in a very long time and I will blog in this space every day until the new year. I will write complete sentences. I will punctuate as well as I know how. I will complete thoughts and write my demons off in pixels.

Dad

This is my dad around Thanksgiving 2002. He was getting ready to go on a trip to Germany with a friend. He'd gotten over the mental and physical ravages of my mother's hundred days in the hospital earlier that year. After this he would have some other trips, get to meet two additional great grand kids, enjoy events with friends and family, lose scores of friends and family members and suffer a number of physical indignities brought on by time (and occasionally doctors' attempts to reverse it). On Sunday morning I made a welfare call to the house where he was living alone (with assistance with cleaning, cooking, errands, lawn, etc.). This was the one you dread. I found him in his bed where he'd neatly organized himself for the night and where he'd had a heart attack and a stroke. Thirty-six hours later he died. Dad was very much a presence for me, especially the last ten years since he moved to Austin. I cared for his needs the best I could. We had a couple of fun road trips together after my mother died and I retired. He kept his sense of humor until the end. I don't think I could have done.

Road Trip

In some ways the road trip we took, lasting a couple of days shy of two weeks and covering about 4500 miles, was essentially pointless. We had only two goals beyond the trip itself: (1) see some friends in Las Vegas and check out a hotel there that we had a free suite in for two nights; and (2) spend some time in the Portland, OR and Oregon coast area with some dear friends as we often do in August. We could have flown to these two destinations, burning three or four days on airplanes. Instead we spent about six and a half days on the road and spent three nights in Vegas and five nights in our Portland area destination.

The idea took hold, though. Once we decided to spend those days in those places and travel between them, I had a couple of long sessions with Internet TrikTiks from AAA, some scouring of hotel WEB sites, some conferring with friends on dates and plans, and the trip was afoot. Or acar, specifically, via our 2007 4 cylinder Honda Accord with new tires and a fresh maintenance run.

Getting away isn't easy these days. We arranged for people to give our elderly parents a hand, but then my dad ended up in the hospital for a couple of days after an antibiotic he was given sent his sodium perilously low. I almost thought we'd have to cancel. But we kept planning. I put together two notebooks, Outbound and Homebound with detailed driving instructions and hotel confirmations. I got new paper maps from AAA. I made lists, lists, lists.

There is something about the road running out under you, transferring you magically across the changing landscapes, listening to books on CD, nibbling road snacks, talking, laughing at what you see that concentrates your attention and gives you some perspective. I am energized most by the reality of people, what they wear, where they live, where they shop; by the signs, trash and animals (dead and alive and just promised by crossing signs) along the way. This is the same detail I find interesting in my walks around my own neighborhood but the details really stack up when you cover thousands of miles of the U.S.

So we do get to go on this lark of a trip. The car is all nicely organized. A bag with hiking boots, hiking socks, jackets and sweatshirts stuffed way in the back of the trunk for the Oregon coast. Small bags to take inside one night stand hotels. A bag with books on CD, an emergency first aid kit and a portfolio of DVDs. A small suitcase with some extra clothes. A laptop and its accouterments in a separate bag. Atop this in the trunk two hanging bags with extra shirts, slacks and a blazer each.

In the back seat, a small soft-sided cooler with a few drinks and a little cheese for first day. Also, two pillows; a canvas sack with plastic utensils, wipes and napkins; a canvas sack with peanut butter crackers, cereal bars, plain almonds, beef jerky; a backpack for each of us with gadgets and books. In the front a slim organizer for maps, directions, hotel confirmations, pens, receipts and two commuter cups full of fresh coffee. We are off around five in the morning. Our goal is to achieve escape velocity west out of Texas on our way to Las Vegas.

Las Cruces, NM is not a garden spot but it was a convenient place to lay over. We did our usual marvel at the 80 MPH speed limts on IH10 in W. Texas and the giant windmills turning ponderously on the bluffs in stretches of nothing. We ate at a restaurant specializing in New Mexican wine. In fact, I think, an actual extension of one or more New Mexican winery. The food and wine were forgettable. Our goal was to sleep and be off in the morning very early to make it all the way to Las Vegas. We had gone 618 miles. We needed to go 742 to get to Las Vegas.

Traveling is so different now than it used to be. Once there was no Internet mapping. No iPhone to pop out to help navigate. In fact, I remember road trips before air conditioning and seat belts. And certainly before cup holders, pay the pump, cell phones, singing shoulders (that rough pavement that wakes you up as you run off the road) and books on CD (or tape). Indeed before CDs and cassette tapes. And certainly before XM radio which the Accord also has. These things have changed travel as have more reliable radial tires. We saw few disabled vehicles.

I thought the car would become disorganized straight away, but the organization held up pretty well for the entire trip. Of course, I moved things around every time we stopped. The cooler only had cold packs when we had a frig with a freezer in the room which we did at most of the small Comfort Inns and such. Trash accumulated and was discarded, drinks were rearranged in the four cup holders in the front.

That second day on the way to Vegas was very scenic. From stately Saguaro cacti to mountains and amazing rock formations and rock-bordered lakes on the Colorado. I've traversed some of this before, of course. But it never gets old for me. I really liked Texas Canyon near Benson, AZ. I'm sure I'd been through there before, but I forgotten the majesty of the giant very rounded rock formations. I actually enjoy seeing the crumpled shells of old abandoned buildings and the various people at the stops. It's a long drive, though, and we arrive in Las Vegas pretty weary. We find the Wynn Encore and valet park, taking most of our stuff inside. We will stay here three nights. There are long check-in lines, but we finally get to a lovely suite. A sitting area, a perfect desk with power and Internet, a flat screen that twirls around between the sitting area and the area with the king-size bed. Lovely bedding, an iPod dock, a giant bathroom with a shower and a tub, two sinks, etc. This is no Comfort Inn.

Lest I devolve into a minute-by-minute (or day-by-day) account where I'm trying to convey some of the moments that make the trip worthwhile, I'll just briefly recap the rest of the trip. Spent three nights in Vegas. Ate several fabulous meals (one lunch with the aforementioned friends) and had lots of good eats and drinks. Slept, shopped, viewed a couple of the fabulous fake environments. Did not risk one cent gambling. Then we drove to Boise, Idaho. And then on to Vancouver, Washington across the Columbia from Portland, Oregon. We had a nice lunch on the Columbia, dinner in Portland and took off around noon the next day with our friends to spend a couple of nights on the Oregon Coast (Cape Meares). Then back to Vancouver. We made our pilgrimage to Powell's City of Books and added a new must-do to Portland shopping: Everyday Music down the street from Powell's. We attended an Oregon wine tasting, had a super fab meal where we got to see a very dear friend I've known since Junior High. Our Portland-area friends made every minute of these three days fantastic by knowing places to go, cooking for us and enjoying music and movies with us. Then we spent three days driving the couple of thousand miles home. I used to keep much more detailed records of the activities and not just in tweets and facebook photo uploads. Start here for such a recount of a 2005 trip. Sometimes I wish I kept the details of my life like that now, but it is just so much work.

Was it worth it? Did we see anything like the Eiffel Tower (real not Vegas one) or even the Grand Canyon (which was, after all, right there in Arizona)? Could it be said to be restful what with going from hotel to hotel and doing all that driving? To those who see the very real problem of making sense of this 'vacation' I can only offer the following bits of narrative and flashes of images which make it all worthwhile for me.

• Sitting down with our friends in Vegas, listening to the narrative of how they live in the Vegas suburb of Henderson, sharing stories and seeing how they are handling their retirement.
• Enjoying the wonderful suite in Vegas, having good simple steak as well as delicacies like lamb's tongue and sweetbreads and marveling at the over-the-top ostentation, but still getting a feeling of escape when watching the lights recede as we plunged into the lonely desert to make our way north on the loneliest highway in America.
• Wondering why all the road kill seemed so dry and dessicated as if it had been a long time since anything fresh was felled. Also, wondering at how trucks can throw all that rubber that I mistake for roadkill. Laughing as the silhouettes on the game crossing signs got more and more exotic with bigger and bigger racks with the passing miles on Highway 93 in Nevada aka the aforementioned 'loneliest highway in America.' Along said highway, by the way, we found the people very friendly and the restrooms rather clean. Highlight of our animal spotting was a walk to feed goats pinned near the Oregon coast and seeing a tiny pig survive a run across the road in Texico, NM. (This is the first live pig in the road on my life list. I have seen a dead one.)
• Wondering why every other customer in a combo convenience store/gas station/Domino's pizza joint was American Indian. Then realizing we were driving on a reservation.
• Loving the feeling of crossing the map, turning the pages in the book of directions, recalling past experiences in some of the places. Also: I can now say I've been in Idaho and Utah. I don't think I'd ever crossed those state lines before.
• Seeing the same franchises in place after place and knowing that it is really possible to mostly avoid them. An exception to this is occasionally made, of course. FFP finds a particular concoction of a freshly-made Subway sandwich good for filling his stomach. I started to laugh as he searched for Subway outlets, particularly before 9AM but he often found them. We also stopped at one McDonald's to fill a cup with coffee and use the bathrooms. We filled up at more local places on our one-night stands: brew pubs in Boise and Salt Lake and the Owl Diner in Albuquerque, for example. We were asked by one of the owners of our Austin Ruth's Chris if we tried the one in Vegas. But, no, only 'our' Ruth's Chris will do. We look for something different on the road and our affection for that particular Ruth's Chris is not transferable, generally.
• Speaking of dining: we did some of the 'fine' variety. Sure, Austin has a wonderful dining scene. But I swear Portland never ceases to make me sit up and take notice. This trip we tried out Wildwood, Metrovino and Davis Street Tavern. All stunning. Add to that the amazing cooking of our friend Tina and eating some fine food in Vegas and we had that element we demand from vacation: fine, fresh and adventurous food. From roasting freshly-bought oysters on a fire to eating offal in Vegas, I'll remember the food and the fun.
  
• Speaking of filling coffee cups. Taking along our Nissan stainless 12 oz. commuter cups allowed me to have a steady stream of surprisingly good coffee provided at prices ranging from free (yes, free) to a little over a buck. That McDonald's filled the cup for thirty-five cents. And no. No, Starbucks. Not one. Of course, many of these spots were chain convenience stores associated with gas stations but they all had a whiff of the local entrepreneur about them.
  
• Speaking of gas stations. We stopped at several Sinclairs with the good old green Sinclair dinosaur. This surprised me because this brand was subsumed in Texas in the '70's I think, by Atlantic Richfield. Which became part of BP decades later, of course. I guess I didn't know the cute dinosaur survived anywhere, and it was one of those little details I enjoyed.
• Reading. Honestly, I took along several books and some old newspaper sections and didn't read much of them. But I did enjoy papers we bought or got along the way and I did enjoy the books we listened to on CD. We caught up with the Swedish novel "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." Even better relative to the passing landscape and the highway system, we listened to "Lolita" which besides being a telling investigation of pedophilia is a paean to driving the U.S. highway system with its motels and tourist sites in the '50's. We also listened to a book about the Panama Canal which was a constant reminder of how hard it was to cross the continent even in the early 20th century. Funny while driving in air-conditioned luxury at around 70MPH even on 'lesser' roads.
• Speaking of driving again, I find the long drives, supported by planning routes and sleep stops like a giant game. We try to observe the speed limits exactly, minimize wrong turns and long stops. Each caffeine-fueled mile feels like victory even when the scenery isn't the best.
• A walk on the beach. The beautiful Pacific. Sunset. A three or four mile walk. Ah. Of course, my mother-in-law didn't know why we needed to go to the west coast when we've 'already been to the east coast.' And, of course, we'd already walked on that Cape Meares beach, too. My mom-in-law has not seen the ocean to my knowledge nor left the state of Texas. She probably doesn't know that the Idaho license plate says something about Potatoes. I'm just saying. What's important in this world?
• People, people, people. Great to see friends along the way. But also great to see strangers. The couple reading books about beavers in Powell's City of Books coffee shop. She had a T-Shirt that said 'No religion. No flag. No fear.' The truck drivers and other travelers. Was a little upset with the guy dragging three trailers and having trouble holding the lane when I passed him and he was reading a book. But, yeah, all those people, doing their things. Including hundreds at the Tillamook Cheese factory. I didn't see the attraction, but I did enjoy seeing the tourists there. And wondering...why? Although there were free cheese cubes. And a cafe and ice cream shop and gift shop.
  

Yeah, I loved our trip. I think it puts me more in touch with the greater U.S. where almost twenty percent of people live in manufactured homes and where some of the clerks ringing up those coffee fill-ups may not stray far from the little town you are going through as fast as you can. I wouldn't want to only do that mindless driving, staying in Quality Inns and Comfort Suites, some of which look like they've fought a battle. But mixed in with fine dining, beautiful scenery, wonderful visits with friends, it worked for me. Missed a small crisis for my dad or, rather, got in on the tail end of it, but the caregivers managed it. So it goes. See you in the rear view mirror.

In the Abstract

I like abstract art. I like collage. I like pieces that use letters, words, portions of words, torn paper. I like this piece. Only...it's actually a photograph of a window in an abandoned store front that has had posters adhered to it then ripped away.

Still, I like it very much. It's accidental quality, curated by me with a digital camera, makes me like it more, maybe, than a painting in a gallery. Or less.

I love collage. Not every artist, of course. I've been a fan of Lance Letscher for a long time. We didn't discover him until he was famous and expensive. But we did recently acquire a piece. It's small, but that's OK because we would have had to give up some other art work if we had gotten a large one. We don't really live large any longer. Except in our heads, of course. Or reaching out into the World Wide WEB to fill our heads with news, facts, images, opinions. And we couldn't have afforded a large one anyway.

I also like Laurie Frick. She created a collage that is in the lobby of our condo. At the recent 5x7 fund raiser for Arthouse at Jones Center, I spied a couple of pieces that Laurie had donated. You aren't supposed to know the artist before buying but I identified the work by its style and, when I bought one of them and turned it over, saw I was right. (Someday we have to explore this whole thing about how we identify an artist's work, people's images, etc. again.)

I want to create collages. I sometimes make homemade greeting cards that are collages of sorts. I put them together with rubber cement which makes for easy work but fragile ephemeral results. I don't know anything about physically making collages that last. I have made some digital collages. I made one of photos I made of assemblages of stuff. I have made simple ones layering on the scanner. I have made them by manipulating ephemera on the computer. I've made them manipulating letters and words and colors and shapes and ephemera on the computer. Not that I consider any of this art, really. It's more practice looking, learning what I like free of the influence of others. It's not unlike looking at work and seeing what I like about it and learning something new about myself.

I'm constantly learning, really. What I like, how I react to art and what art work I might someday is constantly evolving. Can you be unfinished, still, in the year when you plan to apply for social security checks? I don't know if you should be, but I think I am. I think I'm growing and changing every day. And learning. And finding out what I like. Maybe that's how I cheat death until, like everyone else, I don't.

I have been trying to finish this for days. But, I looked up Laurie Frick for the hyperlink (does anyone call them hyperlinks anymore?) and ended up having to look at everything on her site, friend her on facebook and have a chat over there before I could wind up writing this. Then I look it over and I haven't really said much. So it goes. But there is the 'artwork' up top.

It's Right In Front of Me

Sometimes the answer to all your dilemmas is right there. In front of your face. Sometimes the answer is as simple as this: do your own thing, let others do theirs. That might take the form of not going along with FFP to workout at the country club and rather pretending to workout across the hall in the condo gym and really sitting here and working the Sunday NY Times magazine crossword and then blogging. It might be more complicated than that. Not trying to make others love what you love and not trying to be more than the audience for others' efforts, rather than a cheerleader and promoter. Not trying to be all things to all people, to be every place at once and to get people together who can allegedly help one another.

The head picture today was shot on South Congress at Uncommon Objects. I like it, particularly the way my face is pretty distinct except obscured by the ornate candelabra.

I was trying to work the aforementioned crossword puzzle in a printout from the Times digest (rather than in the magazine itself). There was a typo that caused puzzlement. (Or, you know, extra puzzlement.) Last week there was one also. Why always look for other people's typos? (Even if, as in this case, it interferes with your pleasure?) Mother's Day is driving me crazy as people keep saying "Happy Mother's Day to all the mother's [sic] out there." I had an e-mail the other day where an accusation on a heated topic used an adjective where and adverb belonged. For some reason, both FFP and I leapt on that. Just like we always do with something in print. Ignoring the meaning, ignoring the accusations, going for the syntax.

But I digress into my digressions. We were talking about art (were you here the last few days?) and what it represents and I mentioned we might discuss the delicious whiff of criminality that some art carries.

Today's picture has triggered my discussion above about things that are right in front of you or "as plain as the nose on your face." I was looking at how my obscured but recognizable face is an element of the 'meaning' of my 'art.' When I made an artist's statement back in 2006, I initially used a picture with the reflection of people, but absent myself. My partner in artistic pretending, SuRu, offered that the artist often makes an appearance and I added this revision. I appeared in that shot, although you have to look twice since the (non-reflected) person and shop window are so distracting. And, my face is obscured by a camera. (My jeans, hiking boots and black blazer are recognizable, though. My tramping about in other cities outfit. Paris in this case.)

What happens to obscure my face, what interferes with a pure mirror image, is important to the messages of the pieces. I love this picture because the whimsical irregular painting on the wall obscures the face. (It's reflected in the window of the sales center for the W condos, with part of the model building.) Whether obscured by folds and sparkles or partly by the camera and a pig's head or by light streaming from an opposite window, it's me. For sure. I love this one where my hubby is completely recognizable (to me) from the back with his head turned slightly.

To loop back around to the whole criminal element of these shots: I have actually been approached by a security guard at least once (at the fancy Domain shopping center) about it not being 'allowed' to take pictures of shop windows. This is the merchants, shopping mall people not wanting competitors to rip on show windows, I think. Because he said that it was OK to take pictures of people or the art work (outdoor sculpture, etc.). He really didn't know how to respond when I said I was taking a picture of myself in the window. Of course, when passersby appear, I (almost) never ask their permission. Photographers take crowd shots or details or full-on individuals. Sometimes they have permission, often not. With my shop windows, the art of them and the things they reflect may well belong to someone else. As does most everything but the sky and plants. Even domesticated animals are a 'possession' of someone else. Like graffiti artists putting their work on things, photographers and even painters take away images of things.

For all that I feel like this work is mine alone. Especially when it's stamped with an image of me, however obscure.

Art, cont.

No, you aren't getting off that easily. I'm going to keep hammering on these ideas until I bore myself silly. Which may be before you lose interest but more than likely will be well after. We like to listen to ourselves talk. We can take more of ourselves than others can tolerate. At least I can. I have just this instant decided to call this picture 'More of Me.' This reflection was shot in April at a fancy downtown apartment building. It was cropped and retouched for the header. There is me, recognizable as always. I'm looking especially, um, robust partly due to the backpack and jacket (still cool in April, sigh) and partly due to the full head-to-foot image. But it's me, three times. Really, there is no question, right?

Below is the picture again, after the crop, before the retouch. I now think I like this one better. I am definitely more recognizable but the loss of detail to the darkening above really didn't do that much harm to one's ability to identify me.
Since last I wrote I received a notice through social media that there was a show at a local gallery. The work intrigued me and I also thought how it meshed with this discussion. The work is at Big Medium and is by Jason Urban and I thought 'Wow, this idea of making pictures and then rearranging them on three-dimensional objects. Cool. I could steal that." Not really. But it is a little like my idea of printing my reflection pix and putting them in shadow boxes lined with reflective material or objects. Jason's work has that element of art that is the whole 'idea of it' that we so often see these days. Oil painters? Well, you can move beyond the medium and have an idea of it but often it's one someone else already had. (Lump up the paint, drip the paint and make friends with Peggy Guggenheim, add non-paint to the canvas, paint mostly all one color, etc.) Anyway, how much of art is the idea and how much is the execution? There's always some of both.

I promised that today we would trudge through some old reflection pictures and my comments about them. If you don't feel like linking, then stop reading now. Sometimes words without pictures are so boring.

Going back over four years, I want to call your attention to a picture replete with meaning and unintended consequences. There we are, of course, obscured and reflected (mirrors! yeah, more layers) but ourselves. I weighed eight or ten pounds more. (Don't ask how I know. The answer reveals an occasional streak of OCD.) The shop window is one at Uncommon Objects, one of my favorite places to shoot because I can rip off the fun objects they put in the window. The church across the street provides a shape and, in this case, a religious symbol, too. Pointed to by the hand of, well, of something. There are many 'frames within the frame' on this one. That is an attraction to photographers according to some words I've read from great ones. (Maybe they said amateur photographers.)

That church across from Uncommon Objects has appeared in so many shots, for so many different effects. Here is just provides a shape, cutting the corners of the photo. Here some shape and texture. Here it once again plays a church sort of straight up.

Some of the work also evokes an idea of a place that isn't Austin. In this picture there is an icon of the city I was in at the time, reflected in the distance. But somehow I like this self-portrait one at the same spot better.

Here's a shot where I intentionally (nah, probably accidentally) reflected something in the window object with my stance, hand up with camera, sort of evoking the statuary. I don't usually try to imitate the objects, but hey it's an interesting idea.

That's all for now. But after slogging through so much of my old 'work' I'm thinking of addressing this issue: why, when there is already so much writing and so many photos (a bunch of it your own), why create more? Now here is a (free idea alert) notion: a novel about a society that decided that there were enough texts and images and that no more could be created for purely artistic purposes until the collection had been adequately studied and cataloged. This would mean that texts would be limited to news stories, government documents, technical papers and that images would be purely for historical or personal identification. Naturally people would start trying to sneak the invented and inventive into the mundane. Doing art illegally. Which always makes it better somehow. Maybe tomorrow we will talk about how the whiff of crime can enhance art and how that applies to my 'work.'

More or Less Art

Today's picture (taken over on W. Sixth a couple of days ago) is not an all-time favorite. But it does represent a couple of the topics I'm flogging here.

I contend that the reverse images of FFP and I are recognizable although reflected and therefore backwards (note position of wedding ring if you take a closer look at me) and with parts obscured by objects in the shop windows (e.g. most of my face). I liked this better after I cropped it and adjusted the saturation to make us more black and white in contrast to the pink car (which was actually brighter pink in the real shot). Whenever you see those bank robber pictures in grainy security photos with caps pulled down, etc. don't you wonder how anyone would recognize them? But if you knew them well, I bet you would. Often when I'm on the tennis court I catch sight of someone on another court or walking by, not facing me, etc. I know immediately who it is from tiny clues. This line of thought makes me wonder if anyone ever appropriated those bank robber photos to make art. Wouldn't interest me, but who else is interested in my line of inquiry?

You can pluck and pick from the images in your camera, of course, taking the parts that fit your vision, the parts that give coherency to the things you are trying to say. Another person might eliminate self reflections (by the angle of the shot or in the computer). Here is an example of a another picture, taken from the same original. It could be used by an illustrator for an article about how we are running out of time to save energy. To me it's not art, but to someone else? Maybe. Also, it doesn't have the same coherency with my other 'work' as the head picture. This coherency is important in our response to art whether it's in the comfort of recognition or the upending of expectation. ('LB was in her shop window self portrait period during the early part of the 21st century.")

That's all for today, folks. Thanks for listening. Blathering on about this stuff makes me feel less adrift from the arts which I love so much. I should probably eschew active participation in this world, but because of blogs I don't have to sit on the bench. I can assert my art even to an audience of one. (Me, later.) Tomorrow maybe I'll create pointers to a gallery of old photos that illustrate some of my points. Hmm, what were those points again? Ah, yes. Layers, recognition, art and appropriation.

So Sue Me

This whole intellectual property thing is interesting, isn't it? (And, really, don't sue me. Please. I can't stand the paper waste lawsuits cause.)

Yesterday I talked about all the ownership problems with my reflection photos. Today, let's talk about an artist poet named Austin Kleon. He makes poems by redacting articles from The New York Times. He has published a book (Harper Perennial) of these poems. It's a fun book and it addresses the ownership of ideas in a couple of ways. First it's clear, of course, that the articles, word for word belong to the NY Times. But redacted to words and letters? Well, they don't really own them, do they? Second, he addresses all the accusations about his 'idea' of selecting words from newspapers for art not being 'original' by talking about similar ideas he found with research. So, go buy Austin's fun little book and enjoy some poems. Make some yourself even. He encourages that, too.

And now I'll steal his idea and talk a little bit about how that felt. Here's my first effort:This came from an NY Times obituary. If you like poems about death (or marriage and children) I would recommend using obits. I learned a couple of things doing this one. First, I was tempted to destroy it by simply blacking out every word. (Sort of the blank page poem equivalent of wadding up the paper and tossing it toward the trash can or deleting your file on the computer.) Second, I learned that although the page was full of words, I didn't want to use most of them. I found the blacking tedious at first and then sort of satisfying.

This is my second effort:
I clipped the crossword from The New York Times Digest that I receive on my computer each day. (I print the puzzle sometimes instead of doing it in the actual paper, which I also receive.)

I had worked the crossword. I wish I printed 'SANE' and 'JOVIAL' a little neater. But so it goes. I didn't get the idea to use the puzzle until after I'd been scribbling the answers in while sitting at a lunch counter eating hash browns and a sausage wrap. I didn't get any ketchup on the paper or that could have been part of the charm. I managed to sign this terse work by selecting my initials, conveniently arranged in yesterday's answer.

Is this art? Did I rip it off from Austin K.? First, yes, it is art. But, I'm thinking not great art. I didn't sense in myself the enthusiasm for the medium and the joy in the result that would make me defend it as my art. I must say I had a great time trying it out, though. You should try it. Or, you know, take a shop window reflection self portrait. It's fun to try stuff others suggest. It's much easier, in this case, to defend Austin's efforts as art. Is this just because I started with his technique? No. I simply haven't selected a technique which gives me the satisfaction of, say, collage or reflection photos. Those techniques are ripped off from practitioners aplenty, too. If you doubt this, type 'shop window reflections' into Google Images or study any modern street photographer. But I find myself expressing something with them that is deeply felt, like art is supposed to be, and unique to me, ditto. I freely admit their reductive nature. All art is reductive. Even the abstract painter uses shapes and colors that recall something else.

So what are we to think about the issues of art vs. not art and originality vs. plagiarism? I say we make what we respond to most deeply, that we look at and buy what moves us, that we listen to ourselves not the critics and, you know, wait to get sued. It's a litigious society, you know.

Exploring Creation

I've been silent in this forum for a while. Sure I've been tweeting along and commenting on facebook things and firing a picture a day into the City Daily Photo mist with my helpers. But Visible Woman is where you are supposed to keep up with me, dear readers. Few though you are, I'm supposed to write here and you are supposed to read it and confirm that I'm still here and still not crazy. Well, still here anyway.

I have written down some writing topics that I've gone over in my head, but at the moment I can't find all of that. Was it in a paper journal? A sticky note? An iPhone note? Maybe the sticky note app on one of these computers?

Well, never mind. I'm just going to start dumping out a few thoughts a day here while looking for my own notes and other inspiration.

One thing I really want to talk about is art. I've been supporting the art of others a lot lately and honing my ability to be the critic. (Read: "I know what I like. So sue me.") I've also been thinking about my own art and taking it more seriously. But, what, you ask is that? What art have you produced?

Well, if I may be so bold, this blog is my thing. Its words and pictures. The neglect I've been giving it is representative of how I think I've been neglecting my own creative juices, subsuming them to others.

Of course, I don't consider myself a great artist or writer. I can't draw or paint. My work is largely the act of appropriation with digital photography and collage. I fully understand that it isn't going up in galleries to be oohed and aahed over by the in crowd. Since anything that might be my visual art is going to begin with some derivative work, some appropriation, we are going to be covering that ground. Of course, I'll be arguing for the side that says everything is appropriated and some people try to hang on to things as theirs alone that are themselves appropriated.

My 'art?' (Maybe we should always use the quotes around it since if the artist isn't sure and confident, and I'm not, then it's certain no one else will be.) Most of it consists of quickly shot reflection pictures. Usually of shop windows, although any extra lens will do. I also dabble in digital collage. There are three ideas I'm exploring. The concept of life in layers, most unlike sharp photo portraits with simple unobtrusive backgrounds. The realization that we recognize other humans (and indeed objects) with the tiniest visual clues and yet have trouble describing people (or things) if they aren't in front of us. The notion that the appropriation that occurs in photography and collage leads to the breach of the intellectual property rights of others.

For example, today's lead-in picture. I have given it a title: "Self-Portrait, Spring 2010." However I haven't used a field of Bluebonnets with me in the middle, smiling at a time release shutter. No. I have shot my reflection in a window with fancy spring clothes that I'd never buy. The clothes were no doubt designed by someone. They are on mannequins designed by someone. In the play of layers in this reflection shot, you have a bit of me and my camera. Enough to recognize me. (At least I could do it even if I didn't remember taking the shot.) The shape of the head and hair. The stance. There are layers here. The reflection of the 'architecture' of the strip center and self storage across the street. The street itself. I chose a shot without a passing car (though I shot several versions with one). No other people are obviously reflected as often happens in these pieces. I didn't do much 'work' on this in the computer. But I sometimes do.

Is it art? Does it explore the idea of Spring? The ideas of transparency and opacity and layers? The idea of recognizing people from small cues? Does it toy with the notion of what is my work, my vision and what belongs to someone else?

Anyway, that's all for today. We will be exploring this further in the days to come unless it is like most of my projects and I run quickly out of steam.