acupuncture and sainthood…
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a question about stress…
I get a lot of questions from young people in India…
and this one is kinda typical:
I am a 2nd year mechanical engineering student.
Will i become a successful engineer??
Will i get a good job??
Here i have a lot of stress.
Pls help.
Jung said that our western european consciousness is just a peninsula of Indian consciousness…
Maybe, when it comes to stress…everything is upside down…
I doubt it…but you can read my answer to the question here:
William Blake and Hollywood…
I just saw this William Blake image again, today…
Every time I see one of Blake’s images I think that someday, maybe… I might actually get around to reading one of his illuminated books…
That would seem to be the most potent way to get a real taste of his mysticism…
Fat chance of that though…
There’s just enough Gemini in my chart making it nearly impossible to finish any one of the myriad creative projects I’ve got in various stages of in-completion…
Just to complete a thought here…this particular image had always reminded me of Hollywood and Busby Berkeley’s über-elaborate productions…
And then somewhere along the line I saw Vincent Minelli’s An American in Paris…
I guess that Busby Berkeley wasn’t involved in the production…
but somebody in Hollywood musta’ liked and admired Blake…
Hasn’t anybody ever seen the resemblance…?
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a dream about standing in water…
Rosarium Philosophorum
Check out my new dream interpretation at kristo.com…
kristo
OWS & Luddites…??
Maybe it was in the stars…but I just found Thomas Pynchon’s 1984 essay on Luddites and see that he was talking about OWS…
It’s a fascinating read from that perspective…and these are just a few highlights:
“…a growing consensus that knowledge really is power, that there is a pretty straightforward conversion between money and information, and that somehow, if the logistics can be worked out, miracles may yet be possible.”
The only problem now is that there is almost too much information. The kind that anyone can convert into gold is either more like the needle in the haystack, or requires a kind of adjuvant, alchemical secret / technical sleight of hand that functions as a necessary, but seemingly über-scarce, catalyst…
This being so makes the 99% financial technology fools…since they (we) seem to have little of the catalytic information, technology, or savvy necessary to compete with the 1% in doing whatever it is they do to leverage that same information…
“If this is so, Luddites may at last have come to stand on common ground with their Snovian adversaries, the cheerful army of technocrats who were supposed to have the “future in their bones.” It may be only a new form of the perennial Luddite ambivalence about machines, or it may be that the deepest Luddite hope of miracle has now come to reside in the computer’s ability to get the right data to those whom the data will do the most good. With the proper deployment of budget and computer time, we will cure cancer, save ourselves from nuclear extinction, grow food for everybody, detoxify the results of industrial greed gone berserk — realize all the wistful pipe dreams of our days.”
“…get the right data to those whom the data will do the most good.” Of course Pynchon doesn’t say that “those” actually have to do anything good (i.e. something that would benefit anyone besides themselves) with the data…
He doesn’t have to… Anyone who can “read and think” should be able to see that he trusts this to be self-evident…
“The word “Luddite” continues to be applied with contempt to anyone with doubts about technology, especially the nuclear kind. Luddites today are no longer faced with human factory owners and vulnerable machines. As well-known President and unintentional Luddite D.D. Eisenhower prophesied when he left office, there is now a permanent power establishment of admirals, generals and corporate CEO’s, up against whom us average poor bastards are completely outclassed, although Ike didn’t put it quite that way. We are all supposed to keep tranquil and allow it to go on, even though, because of the data revolution, it becomes every day less possible to fool any of the people any of the time.”
Maybe he’s right…but the way things stand now, I just wish it were true…
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Courbet’s l’origine du monde…
all of this buzz about Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde just reminds me that cultivated gardens can be delightful…but a nice area of wild growth tends to inspire my deeper passions…
in other words…neat cultivation tends to remind me of a surgical field….
I just don’t understand any man’s fascination with shaving away the mystery of what an Italian might call “la bella selvatica.”
but then again…most american men don’t get the charm and raw beauty of natural underarms, either…
Starved Rock, Illinois © kristo
more roadside street photography
Pennsylvania trio of the 99% c. 1996
I can’t recall exactly where I took these photos…although it was somewhere between Altoona PA and Lanesboro PA.
After leaving the mountains, I passed some sort of factory where this affable trio of workers was maintaining a picket line. I don’t know exactly what drew me in, except that the pathos of the situation was striking. Probably because of the difference between their friendly demeanor and that of the security guards, who looked more ominous than the Walking Boss from Cool Hand Luke.
I also don’t know if I have any photos of those guards, since most of my negatives are in storage at the moment, but they were highly visible and not just intimidating. Even standing rigidly behind a barrier across that road / factory entrance, they managed to look threatening. So it just doesn’t surprise me that I wasn’t up for the possible consequences of another photo confrontation, even though they themselves had a video camera set up on a tripod and were taping the picket line (and me)…or at least pretending to…
I took a number of shots of the group, looking for an angle to capture whatever that ethereal, elusive thing that drew me in was. We chatted while I kept snapping the shutter, although I haven’t the faintest recollection of what I might have said. I think that most of the images were pretty nondescript and cluttered snapshots like that first one. Although I vaguely remember feeling that the clutter was somehow important…
A couple of weeks later, when I finally got back to the darkroom, I found this:
Locked Out... Pennsylvania c. 1996
Hooray!!
Not so odd, I guess, how the Occupy movement is an awful lot like a strike…
It just doesn’t seem to be costing the 1% anything…
Not even the salaries of all the sunglasses…
kristo
Street Photography on the Road…
Pennsylvania c. 1996 road trip to ny through the mountains
When I was still practicing as an OB/GYN, getting out of town for any length of time was next to impossible, but I always made time to get together with my family for the Labor Day weekend… This photo might have been taken in 1996, which was the first year I quit practice and could afford the luxury of driving back roads all the way from Chicago to NY to look for images…and didn’t have to arrange for any patient coverage…
Hey…the Interstate may be efficient…but it kinda kills your creativity…
And oh, yeah…
This isn’t my family.
Driving through the mountains outside of Altoona, I saw this scene and just knew that there was something compelling in it. As you can see, I really didn’t know WHAT that compelling image might be, but this first shot looking for it was taken from the passenger seat.
It’s not all that much of a photograph.
Just a snap, really.
But great photos don’t ordinarily happen by snapping the shutter just once…
At least I didn’t do the one thing that completely kills a photo for me (after botching the focus, that is)…
I didn’t cut off anybody’s feet.
Hooray!
Pennsylvania c. 1996 road trip to ny through the mountains
I didn’t stay in the car, either…
Moving in closer with a 50 mm lens, which is what I normally do, constitutes a definite invasion of personal space…
But that’s where the image is gonna be found, if it’s gonna be found anywhere…
You can see that the first color photo shows this pair to be more engaged with each other than what I was able to capture… My fault, entirely…but it’s not exactly a fault…it just goes with that more intimate, 50mm territory…
Unfortunately, my people skills, which are normally lame enough, can be just awful while I’m holding a camera… so this lady had every right to stiffen up…
Not that I was obnoxious…but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t particularly talkative or reassuring…
Damn photo’s outta focus, too!
Ugh!!!!!
I still have dreams where I’m having just an awful time trying to focus my camera and compose a shot…
It always bugged me that I couldn’t figure out exactly what that dream activity was supposed to symbolize…but then my lack of focus in a few too many areas of life is something of a double edged sword…
(one of those edges being awfully blunt, of course…)
Hey…I’m glad that in this digital age there’s no more need to carry around 2 cameras…if only for the sake of B&W vs. Color film…
Pennsylvania c. 1996 road trip to ny through the mountains
I guess I only took 2 photos of the baby…since I didn’t want to bother this lady any more than necessary…and well…at least this one’s in focus…
Introversion & Extraversion
Hooray…I found it!
No feet were cut off or otherwise maimed in the making of this photograph…
Nobody was even inconvenienced…
No… really…
Well..okay….not exactly…
I can certainly empathize with the Introvert…
Takes one to know one…
kristo
Street Photography…and my damn Aries Moon
As much as I love taking Sagittarian-type road trips to look for images to photograph, it’s still pretty much a variation on the Mercurial theme of street photography…
Stopping the car, getting out, and pointing a lens at someone or something is a busy, but compelling sort of enterprise that I want to explore here by sharing some of my more successful images…
One of the things road trips can share with street photography is the sense of danger, since it can, and occasionally does, cause unpleasant confrontations…
landscapes only rarely get you into trouble, but leave it to me and my Aries Moon to change THAT…
I suppose I don’t get flustered when a state trooper pulls up behind me on a country road and checks out my ID and plates on his computer because I’m photographing some wheat field…but I DO find it ironic that taking photographs is considered a more suspicious activity than hunting…
Of course walking around town…any town…with a camera around your neck eliminates the business of stopping the car and attracting state troopers, but I find myself getting more and more gun shy as time goes by… And that’s something I want to change…
This image is from 1993, I think… I was pretty cheeky back then, and not so afraid of confrontation, but the people I pissed off never got in my face…even if they glared…
But THAT sure as hell changed!
I don’t consider this a great image, but as far as photographs go, it certainly captures an archetypal moment we’re all familiar with… something to do with Mars in Capricorn or Saturn in Aries, I’d say…
Chicago: an innocent street photograph c.1993
Despite my Aries Moon, I tend to dislike confrontations, but I know from experience that getting the kinds of images I really want will often provoke them.
This post on Eric Kim’s excellent blog speaks to the heart of the matter as it addresses the fear of confrontation in street photography.
He offers some useful advice and encouragement, but there’s really no avoiding the fear.
Street photography just requires a hell of a lot of courage…even if the only bad thing that can happen is that you can piss somebody off, or get arrested, or have your equipment stolen, or get beat up…or even knifed…or maybe worst of all: lose your film.
I guess going digital changes that all important last part…
but it doesn’t eliminate the fear.
It also doesn’t change the risk and danger of the absolute worst thing, which is to never take the damn photo at all.
Even if it sucks, it’s still your vision…and you’ve got to keep working on getting that vision in the / a frame so that it doesn’t just not suck…but completely takes your breath away.
Because if you don’t keep trying, you’re just not being yourself.
I only wish I could be myself without all of that Aries business…
kristo
cemetery dreams and road trips…
my cemetery dreams of of the last few days have abated but that image of the grave digger from my last post was the direct result of a much earlier cemetery dream…
the year was 1995…
I was still in practice (gynecology, that is…) and was indulging my passion for road trips along the back roads of the midwest specifically looking for images to photograph…
this particular trip was on the 4th of July weekend and involved criss-crossing the Mississippi on the way down to Memphis…
the destination wasn’t so important… I had decided that it was going to be either Memphis and Graceland or Kansas City and one of only 9 Caravaggios in the USA… Elvis just happened to win out over Caravaggio…
the second night of the trip was spent in some motel in Carbondale, IL where I had a dream of needing to dig things up in a cemetery… whether or not there were bodies involved wasn’t quite clear, but I remember having to use a shovel and thinking that this would be a hell of a lot of work if a shovel was all I had…
the next day, after crossing the Ohio River into Kentucky, I was just passing a cemetery when I saw two men at work digging a grave, but using a backhoe… so I stopped.
not to be a voyeur, but simply to honor the dream and the synchronicity…
they were pretty much finished with the job, and were very friendly while I went about photographing them at work in that very rich and red-looking Kentucky soil…
my favorite image is in color, but I was mostly committed to cross-processing my color film in order to capture the mood, and wasn’t so worried about capturing facts like exact colors…
what happened next is why honoring dreams and synchronicity matter…
A woman left a lone house directly across the road, maybe 500 feet from where this grave had been dug. As she crossed the road, I could tell that she was distraught and ANGRY…
apparently, the grave was for her grandfather, and she was furious that some stranger (me) was walking around taking photographs…
she was so enraged that I really felt that her threat to call in the state troopers was going to turn into something uglier than it had already become… and fortunately, I was able to leave without things escalating further…
The way I see it, this woman was able to vent her anger and grief over the loss of her grandfather by projecting it all on me… after all, I wasn’t disrespecting anything or anyone… but I certainly became a psychological lightning rod for some very intense emotion that she might not otherwise have been able to deal with very easily…
Who knows…
maybe it helped, maybe it hurt…but I tend to trust that synchronicities like this do much more good than harm… and without following them, or following up on them, we lose something of absolutely immense value…to whit, we let our Intuition wither and die…
kristo