A new beginning

So, I've purchased myself a used scanner (Yea Craigslist!) and fully intend on showing off some of my better photos. This one was done with the software that came with the scanner -- I need to configure it to work with Photoshop so I can adjust the photos' levels and colors and all that.

This first test photo was not posed. I shot the candid at Delaware Park for Joan Good around 1990 for a project she was working on about children for her graduate teaching degree.

Look for more good photos to come!

Heroin

(a found poem)

I don't know just where I'm going
But I'm gonna try for the kingdom, if I can
'Cause it makes me feel like I'm a man
When I put a spike into my vein
And I'll tell ya, things aren't quite the same
When I'm rushing on my run
And I feel just like Jesus' son
And I guess that I just don't know
And I guess that I just don't know

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I have made the big decision
I'm gonna try to nullify my life
'Cause when the blood begins to flow
When it shoots up the dropper's neck
When I'm closing in on death
And you can't help me now, you guys
And all you sweet girls with all your sweet talk
You can all go take a walk
And I guess that I just don't know
And I guess that I just don't know

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I wish that I was born a thousand years ago
I wish that I'd sail the darkened seas
On a great big clipper ship
Going from this land here to that
In a sailor's suit and cap
Away from the big city
Where a man can not be free
Of all of the evils of this town
And of himself, and those around
Oh, and I guess that I just don't know
Oh, and I guess that I just don't know

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Heroin, be the death of me
Heroin, it's my wife and it's my life
Because a mainer to my vein
Leads to a center in my head
And then I'm better off and dead
Because when the smack begins to flow
I really don't care anymore
About all the Jim-Jims in this town
And all the politicians makin' crazy sounds
And everybody puttin' everybody else down
And all the dead bodies piled up in mounds
'Cause when the smack begins to flow
Then I really don't care anymore

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Ah, when the heroin is in my blood
And that blood is in my head
Then thank God that I'm as good as dead
Then thank your God that I'm not aware
And thank God that I just don't care
And I guess I just don't know
And I guess I just don't know

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Still Life of a Reporter

It took me a while, but I successfully gave up drinking Coke. I was exercising often, if not every day, and I was going weeks between ingestions of Tums. Then, my new job happened. And it's all gone to pot.

Lost and Found

As fond as I am of found poems, I'm just as fond of found art. So I was pleased to run across the foundmagazine.com website, which features found notes, postcards, photos and the like which people have come across in their life wanderings.

What it reminds me of was this little junk shop on the side of 39 North between Louisburg and Henderson that I occasionally stopped by. And by occasionally, I mean like twice. The owner seemed to despair that far fewer came by his little lightless shop than they used to, or at least fewer than he expected to. Outside, among discarded refrigerators, furniture, tires and other junk too large to put on a shelf was a penned off area with the cutest puppies ever to be born in the wild and cared for by a strange man of indeterminate age whose dream of escaping his life as a handyman by renting a shack in the middle of nowhere and selling old Mickey Mouse glasses and old scratched up records by bands you've never heard of was clearly a failure.

I almost got one of those puppies, but we still had Fifi, our aged cat at the time, and she would not have been pleased. I was devoted to that cat and so would not have upset her intentionally. Beth's been taking it pretty hard since she died. It's been several months and she can't even tell the veterinarian why we haven’t been by -- every time she tries to call or pen a note, she can't do it. Thank God for "Squeak," (the subject of another post).

Inside the shop were rows of curios, boxes of clotheslike items, and other junk. I actually left the place with a $15 pair of used binoculars. They were the good kind, but have a loose part that you can hear when you shake them. But a new pair of that quality would be at least three times the cost, if not more.

What I didn't walk out with, to my later regret, was a box of letters and postcards that had been picked up from who knows where. The most interesting item in the box was this letter from a man to his girl. I recall that the man was writing from prison, though not much else, except that he professed his undying love to the girl. At the end of the letter, on the back, he had drawn a picture, using only his pen. It was a cat of some sort -- perhaps a lion. And it was beautiful. I don't believe it was a sketch from a photo; it was like a cougar's face peering from a group of flowers. Seeing that freehand drawing made me really sad. Here was a letter that had been discarded for who knows what reason -- a letter whose author had the raw skill to draw something that touched me through time but was wasting his talent away from behind the bars of a prison cell.

I don't know the story behind the artist and his would be lover, but if I had to guess, I would think that it would have any number of sad endings.

I wish I'd bought that letter, and the box of other ramblings, but I didn't and the place has since closed up, leaving me wondering what happened to those cute puppies, their benefactor, a woman who may or may not have loved a criminal, and a man whose artistic potential most likely never got the recognition, or exposure it warranted.

That's the tale of my piece of found art -- just in case you were looking for a little bit of melancholy to add to your day.