Form vs. Content

I awoke this morning with the brightness of the day filtering its way through the blinds. I was sort of light headed and a little confused. For a moment, I thought it a workday and was wondering why I was still here at home. Finally, I realized it was Saturday. The day seemed surreal. It was a continuation of last night. The feelings of diassociation were there and I felt like an automaton as I made my way to my car and went off to the darkroom to get some work done.

The sky was clear. It was high and vast and played games with my sense of perspective this morning. Everything seemed too bright like an overexposed photograph. If I had been in the desert, it would have been beautiful and would have fit with the landscape but here, the sky seemed out of place and somehow out of synch with the cityscape.I thought of that photographic assignment that I did for homework a week ago.

The assignment had been to photograph both all form and all content so as to show as much of a differentiation as possible. As I drove up Sepulveda, I realized that all I was seeing and feeling was form, form without content. Buildings were rectangles, the windows, more rectangles within a large rectangle. People appeared as shells, empty of impressions. While waiting for a red light to change, I found myself behind a minivan. Staring at the rear of the vehicle, it seemed as if the vehicle were no longer real. I felt that if I were to get out of my car at that moment, I could have taken my hand and, with a gentle push, topple the rear of the minivan to the ground like a stage prop.

I got things done, my homework, working out at the gym, blah, blah. None of it felt like it meant anything but I did it anyway

“It’s only a paper moon hanging over a cardboard sea, but it wouldn’t be make-believe if you believed in me.”

The day was very busy and wouldn’t let up. At the end of the day, I told a rather persistent requestor that instead of tonight, she will get her data on Monday. Making changes on reports that will be reported externally and not having sufficient time to make sure everything is accurate and agrees to the 10K is too risky and makes me want to take my time before a stupid mistake gets missed.

I finally left for the day. God knows how long I could have stayed if I actually wanted to stay.The traffic going home was heavy and, although the sky seemed relatively clear, rain fell for most of the trip down the 110. During the time I got into my car and was driving home, I began to feel very depressed. The switch had been flipped. Everything changes rapidly after that happens.I arrived at the gym to do some cardio. As I put in my time, emotions quickly became more negative. The environment became a little more distorted and surreal. People seemed so far away and empty like cardboard cutouts, other times, ominous and seemingly full of evil intentions. I felt that familiar empty feeling within me and that gnawing sense of meaninglessness.

I kept plodding away physically but everything was rote and my mind swirled with thoughts about how pointless it was to keep trying and making an effort. What is the point and who cares? Intellectually, I know that I just need to bite the bullet and let this pass. It will, eventually, but it will also be followed by another episode. I finished up at the gym. On the way back to my car, I got only the most fleeting reprieve from the melancholy. I walked onto the side street where I had parked my car. The street ran along a field enclosed by a fence. Now, the field lay dark and empty. A strong breeze was blowing, rustling the leaves of the trees in the field and the palm trees along the street. I looked up at the sky (as I always do) and saw, through broken clouds, Orion and Taurus high in the Southern sky.

For just a moment, I sensed peace. I wanted to wrap myself in that moment and remain there forever. I dreaded leaving it to return to the painful thoughts waiting to impinge upon me. Unfortunately, we can only lose ourselves for a brief moment and then we have to turn and face reality once more.What to do now. Is it a Lorazipam sublingual or staring at the walls?

Potty Humor

Lately, we have been having some flooding in the men's room on a rather regular basis. Today, someone told me that the latest deluge was the result of someone taking a crap in an upright stall. I couldn't help busting up. It is so unprofessional, unbusinesslike and reflective of elementary school behavior that I couldn't help but laugh for a long time. I love when off the wall stuff like that happens.

GOTH

On the topic of goth, I was thinking about my days as an undergraduate back in the 80s. I remember dressing in mostly black and going to The Cure, Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins and Smiths concerts and how the goth culture back then was a little different. It was more centered on melancholia, feeling out of place and not fitting in with the rest of the world. At concerts, people were all in black, often dancing by themselves or just swaying, into the music and doing what goth people were known for at the time: shoe gazing. T

he metal, S&M scene didn’t really fit with the goth scene back then. I kind of liked it back then. I think anyone who didn’t fit with the rest of the world could dress in black and drift away to music that celebrated not fitting and welcomed you to feel sad instead of berating you for not being happy. Goth is a little different now, actually, a lot different. It has a great deal more sexual and violent side to it. I guess when something is around long enough, it eventually becomes spoiled by sex and violence, kind of like TV and movies.

Hey, I have to do portraits for my next photo assignment. So, anyone who wants to volunteer for a couple of portrait shots should step up to the plate unless you fear that your soul will be captured or something.

I was thinking about a conversation regarding what may be the antecedents of submissive behavior in men. So, I thought I would write some thoughts on submissiveness. I think it might actually be interesting to do some research on the issue. I still kind of know my way around the ol’ college library. I am kind of curious to do some literature search on the topic, both old and new theories.

With that said, I am sure a lot of it simply has to do with the simple fact that most men (and women, of course) are raised by women. Most of a man’s formative years are spent looking up to a woman, obeying her and receiving nurturance and comfort. Ultimately, men are supposed to reject the mother and ultimately realign their sexual impulses on other women, the whole Oedipal thing. It seems reasonable that a man may retain some of these impressions of the mother figure, albeit perhaps unconsciously, when interacting with other women.

For many men, those impressions are perhaps more powerful or perhaps for certain men, the issues regarding their mother are unresolved.Some women, especially those that are more domineering or forceful probably evoke those impressions left during the formative years as well as the sexual psychic energy that is attached to those memories. It doesn’t seem too hard to believe.

Er, yes I did have a rather controlling mother….

God, I had a horrible migraine last night. It was very odd because it hit me around 11:30 and just got worse and worse. I felt as if my head were going to explode. I took a larger than normal dose of Tylenol, hoping my liver was up for the challenge. The pain started to subside but I still can feel it today. Migraines suck. What is weird is that I rarely got a migraine in the past. In the last few years, they are becoming more frequent. Maybe I need to explore possible allergies that could be triggering it. I guess the cheese-chocolate-red wine diet is not for me.I just hope it isn’t some delayed reaction to one of the various treatments my brain received back as a teenager. Back then, I had planned to be dead way before I reached my thirties. I never planned for hitting forty and beyond.

At class today, my instructor liked my "content and form" photographs. He told all of us in the class that he could begin to see individual style coming out of the works he reviewed. I think I got some pretty decent shots. I am going to do more shots downtown.

I really need to thank a certain LA loft dweller who told me to take a walk one day and observe my surroundings. I used it as an opportunity to think about shots, observe things in a different manner, content and form for one thing.Anyway, I need to finish my "Details" photographs and then I have a rather more difficult assignment afterwards. I have to do two portrait shots of eighteen different people. That is not going to be easy. I am not sure how to round up people for that. What makes it harder is that our instructor would like one shot to be a sort of Diane Arbus type shot and another in a more Richard Avedon manner of shooting. Gee, real easy!

Anyway, I need to start getting ready for that.

Oh crap, I almost forgot that I have to go to Cal State LA tomorrow afternoon. Great! Can I get my game face on for this one? Should I pop another Celexa tomorrow? I may need a little extra serotonin. The world of accounting ain't pretty.

It was a busy sort of day. I got up early, went to the gym and then drove over to the art college to make some prints in the darkroom for tomorrow’s class. They are okay but, now that I have had time to analyze them, I wouldn’t mind doing some of them over. Actually, the roll has some good shots to print but I may not get around to doing enlargements right away. I will try to put some on my website soon. I think I will create an LA by day to go with the night shots.

Anyway, after the darkroom work, I got together with a friend for lunch (Mongolian Barbecue on Sepulveda in Manhattan Beach). My friend wanted to see “Along Came Polly” so we went to the Galleria to see it and, subsequently snuck into “The Butterfly Effect” afterwards. It is kind of nice to experience an old fashioned double feature even if you have to break the rules to do it.I wasn’t in the greatest of moods for socializing today. Some might say that I never am. The truth is that I never really know from one day to the next how I will feel.

Today was just a slightly spacey day.Right now, the last powerful impression came in Nordstroms. Following the movie, my friend wanted to pick up an eyeliner pencil. While she was selecting and purchasing the pencil, I was standing there and looking at other people, looking at the bright lights, the merchandise, the sales clerks, the movement of people and I had one of those strong disassociative episodes. Everything felt unreal, cold, far away and I felt like I wasn’t really there or somehow out of phase with the world around me. I get these episodes frequently but more so in situations where I am exposed to people en masse.

Parties or social gatherings almost guarantee this type of response. I still act kind of normal on the outside but inside everything shuts down. We had both driven to the Galleria in our own cars so, once I walked my friend to her car, I left the mall and made my way back home. The rain was falling and my car made its way out onto Artesia and over to Inglewood Avenue. While waiting for a traffic light, I stared out the wet windshield at the myriad automobile and street lights, each source ringed by a rainbow like halo. I suddenly felt very alone and I started to cry a little. Right at the moment, I just wanted my Mom and Dad.

I just felt a little earthquake (approx. 9:16 PM PST).

The last few days have been busy at work. My desk is a nightmare of papers and schedules and I can’t seem to get anything finished. Every time I begin work on one project, a bunch of e-mails and telephone calls start up and interrupt me with more requests for information. Even delegating, it seems to pile up and, eventually, even if I delegate, I eventually have to review the work that I delegated. So, needless to say, it has been a bit stressful as of late.One thing that bothered me a bit was my boss telling me to “push back” on requests by others, claiming that we need to let them know that we can not satisfy all requests ASAP.

This, in and of itself, sounds like a reasonable sentiment; however, my boss invented the concept of taking on unrealistic requests and working until the wee hours to accomplish them. I remember being in a meeting with him, our controller and a few others, several months ago in which he was agreeing to all sorts of rather unrealistic requests and finally, the controller smirked, shook his head and said to him, “Hey, we don’t want people working 24/7 here.” I felt like laughing.

Much too much of my life revolves around work. It is hard to break that cycle. Tomorrow, though, I will need to do some printing and hopefully take some more photographs. This week’s assignment is to focus on photographing “Details”. That is, focus on an aspect of a scene instead of the entirety of the scene.

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Last, I want to thank those special folks who read my writing, encourage me and show me a great amount of kindness even though I don’t feel I deserve it. My life would be an empty place without you.

Someone asked me about my favorite movies and it brought to mind memories of early adolescence. When I was about 13 or 14, my brother used to take me to a little revival movie house in Fullerton called the Wilshire Picture Palace.

When I first began going to this theater, it was run by the students at Cal State Fullerton. The theater structure was not originally built as a theater. Its life began as an indoor swimming pool back in the 20s. If you walked around the perimeter of the seating area, you could see the tiles with the water footage numbers imprinted upon them. The slant of the pool gave the seats their incline.My brother was about 16 at the time and had just begun to drive so he would drive us there whenever the new films came to the theater. We were an odd pair as most of the people there were older, college students mostly. No one seemed to care about our age and we were never prevented from sauntering in to watch a variety of films, including X-rated fare. There was always a double feature shown and sometimes a triple feature. A cartoon, old newsreels and some serial from the 30s or 40s was always shown prior to the main feature.

Needless to say, it was an all night affair and we rarely emerged from the theater before 1:00 in the morning. The crowd could get a little rambunctious but it was never too loud or violent. People smoked inside the theater, mostly pot. In fact, joints sort of made there way up and down the aisles. Hey, it was the 70s! My brother and I never smoked anything but I think there was enough smoke hanging in the air to give us a buzz. For the most part, the atmosphere was warm and comfortable.That was the place where I was introduced to a larger world. It was my first experience with foreign films like The Satyricon, Day For Night, Shoot The Piano Player, Jules and Jim, etc., etc. It was also where I was introduced to a lot of the cult classics like Harold & Maude, Harry & Tonto, Where’s Papa?, Firesign Theater films and Monty Python. I saw the violent films like Straw Dogs, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Wild Bunch.

A good bit of what I saw probably flew way over my head at the time but I like to think that these films pushed me to think about ideas and ponder larger concepts beyond what I was normally preoccupied with as a kid in school. I think that it was also a time when I felt a lot of bonding with my brother. It was something special, something he and I did together, just the two of us.

Lucky me. I get to go to Cal State LA next Monday and be part of an informal recruitment get together to describe how wonderful it is to work at my company. Does the management know who it is that they are sending?

Driving down Sixth Street in the night or early morning, there is an almost Black & White quality to the scene. This lack of color is more extremely felt when I pass the colorful neon sign advertising the La Jolla Hotel. Probably one of the many signs having been refurbished by the Neon Preservation Society here in L.A., it stands out very boldly against the drab background of the buildings on Sixth.

Further down, I drop my film in the night slot of A&I on Central & Sixth and proceed down Central. The trucks are all parked along the street, forklifts whizzing about, loading and unloading the trucks. The place is awash in early morning activity. A right onto Eighth and back towards the parking structure on Eighth & Olive. It is always interesting to drive towards the heart of downtown from the East. I like the way the shiny, monolithic facades of the high-rise buildings tower over the drab and colorless landscape of smaller structures in the foreground.

From a distance, the high-rise buildings provide a sense of wonder and anticipation of great things waiting to be accomplished.

Soon, I am in one of those buildings, going up the elevator and realizing that looks can be deceiving. For all the outward wonder, behind the scenes, there is nothing magical. It is merely a different vantage point with its own set of positive and negative characteristics.

So, I am in a meeting with my boss and a couple others. We are discussing our upcoming Sarbanes-Oxley work for the quarter. One area we did not look at last year pertained to blanket work order transactions for mass assets, typically pipeline. We didn’t test the area because we really do not review those transactions and so have no controls in place. Now, the question as to whether we should is a legitimate one but, for purposes of Sarbanes-Oxley test work, I do not see why we should include this area. In fact, I think that testing it will lead to a question of why we have not been actively reviewing and monitoring these transactions since day one.

My boss could not get it through his head. He kept repeating that we should do some random testing of this area. He was vague and refused to hear me. I kept repeating my concerns and he ignored me. I don’t understand. One of the reasons he hired me was supposedly because I have this wonderful audit and accounting background but I guess my opinions are only valid in so far as they agree with his conclusions. I swear. He really is an asshole. I am getting sick of it all. On top of that, I have to put up with his favoritism. He wants me to supposedly learn and develop and become specialized in different areas but he only wants to work with a couple of his personal friends. It’s really stupid, unprofessional and unproductive. I try to keep the attitude of “who cares as long as I am getting paid” but I guess I care too much about my work and doing a decent job.

Now that I am slowly getting over my cold, it is once more time to blog and let out my dark thoughts. So, here it goes and everyone have a great day!

I’ve noticed a pattern in responding to CL personals. I will send a reply to a post and often receive a very positive response telling me that I sound like I have a lot of great interests and how I share similar viewpoints and sense of humor. After a couple of similarly positive e-mails, there is finally a request for my photograph. I send a photo and then I never hear another word. It has become darkly humorous in how predictable and flawlessly this seems to work. Now, when I am confronted with this situation, as I press to send my photo, I like to make a whistling, bomb dropping noise as I await the electronic silence to follow, like a can of Raid on an anthill.

I really should think of selling this as a service.I’ll call my new business, “Worth A Thousand Words, Inc.” Advertising will be aimed at successful, good-looking men who are tired of too much popularity and attention. For only $50 for the first picture and $10 a piece for follow-up, I will guarantee the user a quiet, restful life free of relationship entanglements and other social complications.I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. I remember a time when I was talking to someone at a place where I used to work and she was telling me about various relationship issues going on with her. She inquired as to my relationship experiences and I simply shrugged and said that I was pretty much a loner and didn’t have any experiences to recount. She looked at me and said, in all seriousness, “You’re not very attractive so you probably won’t ever attract anyone. But, you’re a nice person so I am sure someone out there might be interested in someone who is just nice.” I replied with silence and a blank look.

It was a strange remark but it somehow did not surprise me. In fact, it felt oddly normal and was somewhat easier to deal with than a compliment of which I always feel uncomfortable receiving. Insults seem more honest and straight to the point. Compliments leave me suspicious and when they are received, I feel as if there is a Sword of Damacles hanging over my head.

Well, most of my day was spent in the dark, darkroom that is. I arrived in the morning when the lab was just setting up and no one else was using the B&W area. It was nice to work without other people around. I don’t know what it is but I can relax and think more carefully in the darkroom when it is empty of people. I’m not sure about the psychology behind it.

Without trying to be funny about it, it almost seems to be an extension of the whole “piss shyness” that many men experience while trying to urinate in a public restroom where several urinals are set in a row and there are several men draining the dragon all at once. Anyway, I think there are similar feelings of not being able to relax or feeling hypervigilant. So, most of the morning was very productive and I had my homework photographs printed rather quickly and without having to blow through to many prints to get a decent print. Obviously, one could go on forever tweaking a B&W print but there is a point where one must stop and accept that print for the purpose that it will serve.

After doing my homework, I did a couple of prints of someone for whom I shot headshots a couple weeks ago. I will be showing her the proofsheets this week so I hope they are acceptable to her.I always kind of like the view from the school. While I waited for my prints to wash, I watched the jets taking off from LAX. The sky was crisp and blue and I watched as the jets went higher and higher until they disappeared, bound for exotic or not so exotic destinations. Why did it start making me feel a little spacey? Ah, the complexity of associations of sensory stimuli to mental responses. Where do you start to entangle the psychological mess?

Only a couple more people trickled into the B&W darkroom later in the day. By that time, I was pretty much wrapping up and just letting some prints fix and then wash before sticking them into my blotter book so that I could take them home to finish drying.

My checkbook is balanced for the month!A trip to the gym, few people were there. I did my hour on the stairs. What an exciting life!

Question for today: Why are pies kept in a safe? Why is it called a “pie safe”?

It is always interesting when homeless folks get specific with their demands. We are accustomed to being asked for spare change or a “smoke”. We have all heard, “Brother, can you spare a dime?” Of course, in more recent years a dime has moved up in value to either a quarter or a buck.

What is odd are the recent requests I have received such as “Can you give me 35 cents?” Even more peculiar was someone asking me for 55 cents.

Fifty five cents? I can just imagine stopping and rummaging through my pockets for that exact amount. “Oh gee, I only have a five spot and a couple ones. Could you make change for me?”

At least 55 cents is not an alarmingly large amount to request. A couple of months ago, I was in Santa Monica and one guy asked me for ten dollars. I guess he decided to go all the way and stop dilly-dallying with the small stuff.

Office politics is a funny thing. It makes a somewhat tedious job unbearable at times. I try to distance myself but you get pulled in regardless because you have to interact with others in order to get projects completed. I just do my best but I find myself spacing out and thinking about being somewhere else, an empty desert, quiet, calm and void of people. I always think of myself as being kind of fucked up, antisocial and not very proficient in human relations but I am running into an awful lot of people who seem to be challenging me for that dubious distinction.

Well, it is time to return to the darkroom and do some more printing. I need to print my landscape work. I am just about done with my roll of film for the form and content exercise. I hope those turn out. I liked those shots. These homework assignments are a bit challenging. Anyway, it gets my mind off of work for a little while.

I am feeling void of emotion today. I feel empty. I feel like all color has been drained. It is as if I were a black & white character in a classic film waiting for Ted Turner to colorize me. Things around me seem dead today. These are the days when the sight of great tragedy or great joy fails to produce a response in any particular direction. This is a day to hide and wait out the passing storm.I know I say it over and over, ad nauseum but I wish my fucking brain worked right.

My photography instructor rather liked my self-portraits. He thought they revealed a lot of thought. It was kind of surprising that he and the other students picked up on the themes and thoughts that I was incorporating into the shots. I guess it is good. I mean, it is kind of nice to know that what you are going for in your work is actually being conveyed to the larger audience as opposed to being totally misinterpreted.

Now, it is on to finishing landscapes. After that, the next project is taking shots that are Form and shots that are Content. I have ideas but it will be challenging. It is especially challenging to find the time. Many of my ideas would be easier if I could go away for a day or two. But, I must work with what is available. There is no real choice.

Crap, tomorrow is another day in the veal fattening pen of my cubicle. I wish I didn’t have to work or, at least do something that is a little more fun but who says life is supposed to be fun.

It was not the best of days. I had a lot of work and a crushing bout of depression that began late last night. I did my autopilot thing, feeling disconnected from everything throughout the day.After work, I picked up the negatives and contact sheet of my self-portraits. All of the shots turned out, a few were interesting since they were very experimental. The ones I took in which I was naked were strange to see. I don’t believe I have ever looked at pictures of myself without clothing. Of course, I don’t think I look good. I don’t think I look good with clothes. I guess it’s my body dysmorphic disorder. Anyway, I think it was good to try shots sans clothing for artistic experimentation. I will admit, there is a very real sense of openness and vulnerability that can be felt from such images. Of course, I am sure that with someone helping with lighting, the images could have been a little better. It is tough to light oneself and jump into a picture within ten seconds of tripping the shutter release.

I had spoken to a friend of mine about another friend I know that I have sort of had some feelings for but never expressed. She had advised me to take action and express them. Anyway, tonight I gave this particular person a lift home after work. I was feeling a bit down from all of my piles of work and getting over this cold. We met on Fifth, outside of the Gas Tower. She strolled across the street, her usual beautiful self, finishing up a call on her cell as we silently exchanged greetings and awaited the shuttle to the parking structure.

While we stood there, I was mentally drifting, lulled into an alpha state by the sound of the buses and cars and the lights of the cityscape. I glanced at my friend briefly and realized that I was kind of stupid for having these feelings and decided that such foolish infatuations must be let go and that, while it is hard to face reality, reality must be faced. I didn’t feel particularly emotional about it, more like a deep sigh, except it was all internalized. That strange empty feeling was there but I have long gotten used to its presence and I know that I can live with it.I drove my friend home and then resumed the drive to my little place.

We are all like beams of light traveling so fast over immense distances, separate and together. For a while, one’s beam may intersect another or run parallel with another beam or even several. Eventually, ones we travel with may fall off or disappear or change course. We all travel alone though, alone through the vacuum of space. We forget where we originated and have no real clue where we will end.

It is getting to be time to consider another trip out to the desert and Ash Meadows. I figure about another 4 or 5 weeks and the seasons will be changing noticeably. I will probably talk to the Director of the site and see how things are faring. I have some concerns about the amount of mud on the roads. The soil is very claylike there and gets to be almost like quicksand where the water table is high and seepages form. Still, I am eager to see the changes that will take place as the temperature warms, leaves come to the ash and the grasses go from brown and gold to green. I still have a tremendous number of negatives from my last trip to print in the darkroom. Most of it is color but also a quite a few black and white shots that I really want to see enlarged. I think that, with the class I am already taking this quarter, there will be many days to come in the darkroom. It is a good way to keep up my darkroom skills.

Celebrity sighting

I was crossing the intersection of 5th and Flower, on my way to the Arco Plaza when I passed Pete Wilson along with a few other "suits".He looks a little older and pastier in real life.What a day!

Sick with a cold, once more. I think it is just another head cold but it is still annoying. I have work to do and a photo assignment to complete by next Sunday’s class.I have to shoot some self-portraits. But, they are not supposed to just be typical portraits of my face or something. Instead, they are to be portraits that symbolize or represent things about me. I have a couple of ideas and someone gave me a couple more last night but it is a bit difficult. It is especially hard since, by the time I get out of work, there isn’t even any daylight. I’ll muddle through.My next assignment involves landscapes. We have to take several shots of different places in which one shot is expansive and the other, intimate. Again, it is just a matter of getting the time. I wouldn’t mind doing a couple of downtown L.A. Maybe I can shoot from the Griffith Observatory or some other place.