10.31.11

 I woke up from a dream yesterday at 4 a.m. because I had just been broken up with by a make- believe Girlfriend that my subconscious had created for me. I had never met her before, of course- but I really, really liked her. Guess what my subconscious had her say to me. It had her say this: "You and I just never really connected... everything was just so... even sex, the sex was just so... painful..."  

So, a couple of things: I was in a great mood when I got up because I got to experience a rush of gratitude at realizing that no one had actually said those words to me- and I also was happy because I have respect for my subconscious these days. If I'm in need of some ego deflation and I'm not getting it from the outside world, my brain steps in, creates a lovely girlfriend from previously stored data and has her dump me in a not-so-gentle way and then lets me off the hook by waking me out of a dead sleep, as if to say "smarten up, Buster... next time it could be for reals. We can kill a few housepets tomorrow night, as well... or make you have the tropical fish dream again." As for my make- believe ex Girlfriend, I just want to say briefly: "Tammy (I'll call you Tammy, if that's ok), I really enjoyed our time together. I don't remember much about our relationship but I'm sure it was nice, with some sweet moments. The last 11 or 12 seconds were hard for me but I appreciate your honesty and really wish you well in future fake relationships. Don't let the (dream) door hit you in your (make- believe) hind- quarters on the way out." Which brings me to the very next thought I had after ending things with Tammy and regaining consciousness: the Occupy Wall Street protests. 

Here is a *slideshow of my photographs from the last couple- o' weeks of my hanging out down there. I will try to say this "in a nutshell", as they say. OWS is now a movement. It was a protest but mere protests are easy to stop with indifference or pepper spray and batons. 

Few people really appreciate or enjoy extremism. I've learned in recent years that for me, extremism is a drag. It's irritating, it's violent, it begets more extremism and ends, usually, in a very sloppy, bloody mess with very few people the better as a result and with many people missing body parts, or worse. I've spent a fair amount of time down around lower Manhattan over the last year- when Osama was killed and during a couple of 9/11 anniversaries. I avoided OWS for two weeks because of these past experiences. What I saw and photographed during these past events went something like this: A heavily guarded media event on the inside and a vaguely startling collection of anarchists, conspiracy theorists, fundamentalist religious people, communists, tourists and zealous patriots on the periphery, all being stiffly directed here and there by a tense and heavily armed police force... and lots and lots of t-shirt sales. I got the impression that everyone had an explanation for 9/11, terrorism, whatever- and that everyone had a solution. Their solution. There was an unpleasant edginess, even with the quiet ones who stood silently behind intricately hand- drawn signs, what with so many people jockying to co-opt the tragedies of the planet and spit them back out in such a way as to promote their own world views and agendas. During the 9/11 memorial, I hardly thought about the victims. I left, edited a few photos and put them away and haven't looked at them since. 

 The slideshow I've made is trying to make a point about what I've seen so far at OWS. Some of the media and much of the political machine has been doing it's best to portray the OWS movement as simply a "protest"- a rag- tag group of extremist, bored or privileged radicals and frustrated, unemployed recent college graduates who are pissed off, jealous, lazy. What I've found is that that's actually an assessment that's either based in ignorance, fantasy or a deliberate attempt to discredit what is happening with OWS. Those elements must certainly exist but they alone could never sustain something like what OWS has become- and at this point they're outnumbered by the "regular" people. When a protest starts to resonate with the middle, lower and even some of the upper classes- with Fathers, Mothers, Siblings, Neighbors, Children and Grandparents- that, like it or not, is called a "Movement". Have a looky-poo!

* please go to this url for a much higher resolution version:

http://youtu.be/bZmPK_Fc0XY

 NY, Oct. '11  East River Ferry. This boat ride easily ranks in the top five scariest ferry boat rides I've taken in the last year.

  Randolph, Vt. October, '11  Kitty and "Joe",  pt. 2

10.3.11

 Tunbridge World's Fair, Vermont Sept. '11 The Tunbridge World's Fair takes place in rural Vermont  every fall and has hardly changed in almost 140 years. I love it. I hadn't been there since I was a little kid and all I could remember about it were some teams of oxen, apparently competing against each other by pulling blocks of granite, some very large vegetables, chickens in a barn and bikers- which turns out to be accurate... but this time in Tunbridge I saw that there were also pig races, which made me feel confused. It was just very... I thought they would be funny- actually, I don't really want to write about that right now.
Ok, listen- I had a little break and I feel like I can write something about the pigs now- not directly, but I'll just give you this: When I was a senior in high school, we had a class picnic during our graduation week, attended by ourselves and the school faculty. We were allowed to drink back then because Vermont was the last state to change the drinking age and most of us had been "grandfathered" in- so we were partying at Lake Champagne (a body of water in my town that looks nothing like the larger, more majestic Lake Champlain. Lake Champlain, in the northwestern part of the state, is the 6th largest lake in the U.S. Lake Champagne is a pond in a campground/trailer park. The only thing the two really have in common is that if you jump into one, then jump into the other, you'll get wet both times). At some point, after several beers and hot dogs, a small-ish group of us decided it was time to take some revenge, veiled as lighthearted shenanigans, on some of the faculty whom we had harbored resentments against over the years. I think we splashed some water on the science teacher, maybe put some pie on someone else... it was good fun. I don't remember if we consciously chose to save Mr. Duffy for last (real name Mr. Kilduff but I'll just call him Mr. Duffy here) but by the time we got to our endomorphic guidance counselor (who kept a couple of goats on his front lawn so he didn't have to mow... he also refused to let me take typing class because it interfered with a required home economics credit or something- I'm typing with three fingers at this moment, still, after all these years) the energy had become  more aggressive and a bit surly. Everyone was still having a reasonably good time, I think, but the smiles were a bit more severe, more purposeful on our side- more hesitant and questioning on theirs.  I remember Mr. Duffy backing away from us slowly with a stiff grimace on his face that seemed to say "I'd like to take this opportunity to... to just apologize if I... if you'll just... no... I don't want you to do that...". As we seized him, knocked him down, grabbed his arms and legs and began dragging him to the water's edge, he started to struggle as if we were about to hurl him into a volcano. It was disturbing.  There was something about his humorless state of panic and the way he gasped and groaned, twisting and convulsing to free himself, that I found depressing. It was such a shocking character break for a guy I'd only ever seen sitting behind a desk. I had a moment of pity and almost let him go... but by this point the group conscience far outweighed my own  and we threw his ass into the pond.
Later, I drove (under the influence of canned beer) with two female friends to my house in the village. I was covered in mud and decided to jump in the shower. I had come to within what I now believe to have been seconds of convincing one of my female companions to take off her clothes and join me in the shower when I heard my Dad's car on the gravel as he arrived home early from work.
I still wonder sometimes what it would have meant for me, for her, for all of us- if my Father had caught his naked, teenage son in his shower with someone else's naked, teenage daughter. 
My Dad would be obligated to tell her family. My Mom would be deeply hurt. There would be shame, guilt, remorse, lengthy punishments and restrictions, probably the school would be involved, there would be meetings, councils, tribunals, seminars, sentences, lost trust, news vans. A Priest would want to speak to us both (separately- I would never be allowed to see her, or any female, again). She likely would be beaten, sent away- but rather than go, she would hang herself dead. I would to this day be learning to cope with the repercussions of my self- centeredness and irresponsibility.
I hope this helps to illuminate my feelings about the pig races somehow. Try to make it up to the Tunbridge fair sometime, though.

Bethel, VT.  Post- Irene

New York, Sept. '11