Around Here

My New Year's Eve gig fell through yesterday - a development in which I quietly  and secretly rejoiced, mostly because it keeps me off the road, and out of the  punch. So although I'm in favor of any reason to party, especially for no reason in  particular, I'll probably be marking the New Year by sleeping through the midnight  passage this year - and thus celebrating, with a slice of unconsciousness, the  continuum in which time actually exists. My earliest memories of New Years revolve around the party hats and frilly  noisemakers that would appear around the house on New Year’s day, remnants of  magical adult goings-on, from which we kids were cruelly but provocatively  excluded. And the equally mysterious but somehow evocative strains of "Auld Lang  Syne". Soon enough, as my friend Rick pointed out, we were "in on the magic",  and I was celebrating with my own tribes and lovers from snowy fire-lit soirees in  Michigan, to snow...

My brother called from his cell phone. "A plane just landed on Country Club Boulevard. I don't think it's going anywhere for a while." Turns out engine trouble brought the little Cessna to the ground, after clipping a couple of street signs on the way down. The pilot, who had skillfully maneuvered the plane onto the edge of an empty lot, walked away without a scratch. I spotted a couple of reporters from one of the local newspapers (the main rival of my former rag) standing on the sidewalk discussing... something. I sidled up for a little eavesdropping, hoping to cull a few details. But they recognized me and, casting sideways glances resolutely, mockingly, refused to talk about anything but the coffee at Brewed Awakenings. I went away uninformed, and craving a cappucino.

December 24, 2001. It was my first Christmas with the local newspaper; I drew the Christmas eve beat. My only assignment was to scout around for a Christmas shot. With the city lit up and festooned the way it was, I knew that wouldn’t be impossible. The biggest challenge would probably be choosing which house, draped with twinkling icicles and studded with store-bought cheer, to shoot. It was a challenge I wouldn’t have to face. As I was driving by St. Andrew late that morning, I spotted a family visiting the nativity scene. I pulled into the lot and started to walk across the lawn… and to my disappointment, the family was starting to leave. There is a proscription in journalism against setting up a shot, so all I could do is watch helplessly as the moment dissolved. The toddler, however, seemed to be lingering at the crèche…fascinated, no doubt, by his sacred counterpart, asleep in the hay. I introduced myself to the parents, but they didn’t speak English. I gestured that I would like...

It must have been close to Christmas, but on which side, I don't quite  remember. I suspect it was sometime in the January doldrums when all was  frozen and gray. My friend Walter decided it was a good day for a dog. To get  one, that is. "I know I'm me, because my little dog knows me," Walter once  quoted Gertrude Stein. With his boyfriend Joseph away in the hospital, the house  had an unaccustomed empty feeling. And it had been without a dog for too long.  The shelter was in Ann Arbor . We piled festively into the car for the outing. It didn't take long to find her, a black and white ragamuffin puppy, so excited to  see us that her tail seemed to wag her whole body. "This one?" I said, my inner  ten year old going can we get her? Huh? Can we? Can we? On the way home in  the car Walter chuckled, "I don't know whose eyes were more pleading - hers or  yours." Walter named her Agatha, in honor of Miss Christie, the doyenne of our  mi...

The more I freelance and meander the fringe, the more at home I feel. My fall back position, joining another newspaper, seems no longer possible. I scarcely want to notice the current of public events, let alone photograph or write about it. I started a small oil painting of a dragonfly on a twig. It's been years since I've set brush to canvas. The creature is an eastern pondhawk dragonfly, an alpha predator that I photographed while hiking a trail. Its chromium green exoskeleton looks biomechanical, the details of which I won't try to render. I see it more as a luminous sketch, in transient repose. A gleaned gleam.

Yesterday I returned to my exercise routine after a brief hiatus when my energy went a.w.o.l. More mindful, now, of the inner workout. I always know when I'm on target: my routine slows down and becomes effortless. Getting more out of less. Perhaps I can pare it down indefinitely, until just the activities of everyday life suffice for effective mind-body self-maintenance. I suspect that's the way we're supposed to have turned out. Granted, I’m not chasing antelope through the bush with a blowgun for my daily bread. But the fallout of some ancient catastrophe still seeds the thorns that impede us all. So for now, since I'm helplessly fond of food and futon, it’s push-ups, crunches, and detestable squats to offset my personal Koyaanitsqatsi . The truth is, I enjoy sensing my location and specific gravity (and the fitness that thwarts it) in the physical realm. And trying to stay, if not 25, at least human-shaped for as long as I can.

Today I put out the six little pieces that still remain of my mother’s old crèche.  Baby Jesus and the three wise men are the only survivors o f the original set that  date back to my childhood fifty years ago. My mother died three years ago today, after a difficult struggle with cancer. She  had "the faith of a mountain!" as she used to boast, and that sustained us both  in the gathering storm. Eventually Hospice stepped in, and they were a help,  paying home visits while I scaled back my job to part time. But then one day something went wrong in her brain and she took a sharp turn  into picasso land. By then morpheus, and his pharmaceutical namesake, had  made inroads as well. But her intellectual energy was still formidable, so  episodes could be quite vivid. One minute she'd be lucid, winning at cards, joking  with uncanny presence of mind about her illness, the next there was a descent  into a house of mirrors, with sord...

Struck by Anthony Hopkin's blue face on the DVD cover at Blockbuster, I rented  Titus, Julie Taymor's film excursion into Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. I'm glad  that I'd set aside some time for it. It's a bizarre and absorbing experience. Shakespeare has been updated before. Brannaugh's Hamlet, for instance. I think  there's an Edwardian Midsummer Night's Dream. But Taymor's Titus  transmogrifies across multiple periods and resonates with the story’s surrealistic  pastiche. It won the 2005 Oscar for costumes. The play is a Shakespeare potboiler, plenty violent, and the playwright doesn't  wink at it. There are consequences. The violence is scarring, accumulative, and  like a collapsed star draws everything into its annihilating gravity. As William H.  Macy said, in a criticism of modern operatic film violence... “when you get beat up  in real life, you stay beat up a long time.” You don't jump into your Ferrari after a  hit of scotch...

Today I got a sudden craving for Sigourney Weaver. I know it's odd. Last time it was for Val Kilmer . It's wonderful that they're so available. Not that I want to get to know them - I just want them to hang out for an hour or two, then leave. Is that so wrong?

I missed the annual downtown tree lighting festival last night, I had an assignment elsewhere, but despite the hoakey artificial snow and ubiquitous t-shirts and shorts, a bit of yuletide magic always seems to materialize. The timeless brew of all things Christmas rarely fails to summon that old feeling. My favorite is the snow pile in the parking lot that invariably turns into a hysterical melee of snow-sodden children. The rules of engagement evaporate within seconds of the ribbon-cut. Yes, the snow does fly in Florida... most likely in your face, if you get too close.

After going through some routine hoops this morning, I pedaled down to the local beach. I began to notice people's beach gear, the still life of beach stuff. Bags, bottles, towels, umbrellas, sandals, and toys, all randomly scattered and grouped in the ubiquitous sandscape. Sometimes I'll go out with my camcorder, just for fun, to see what I can see. Like this...

I felt a little ache today, a wee rumbling from the gravel pit… I like to eat  everything that is said to favor kidney stones: grapes, chocolate, tea... I've  punched out three. Those of you who have not experienced the fellowship of the  stone, but are destined to, are in for quite a surprise. My second, the most memorable of the three, hit in the car, must have been five  or six years ago. First it was a sudden spasm in my back, lower right, that could  have been mistaken for a kink, but I knew it wasn’t. Moments later the demon  seed was clawing its way down my renal ureter. The pain suddenly deepened, with  an intensity that made me gasp with surprise. I suppressed my body’s impulse to  writhe; my skin went clammy and I thought I might soon vomit. Then random  waves of agony molested me, and threatened to wrest control of the steering  wheel, while I watched myself negotiate, with absurd decorum, the afternoon  traffic. I tossed...