… 12 poems by Basho… i read about abandoned two year old children, tossed some food; horses eating hibiscus; the frost of old age; aging; darkening seas and wild ducks calling; years passing and more of the same; the mists of spring; that oaks are not interested in cherry blossoms; azaleas and women tearing codfish; drunken bees and peonies; that shepherd’s purse hides under hedges; that frogs create sound from water…

Kristina Shakht, To Be Or To Become

… an article, This Zine Celebrates the Female Body in its “Raw and Authentic” form… the artist is a survivor of sexual assault i am told… she has made a zine representing how women see themselves i am told… the photographs are various, women, some flowers, some landscapes, the women in various states of undress and exposure… the lead-in photograph is of a young woman, naked, crawling across gravel, she is thin, angular, almost childlike… one feels the pain of gravel on knees… i suppose it is raw and authentic if one thinks that nudity is raw and authentic… i find it mostly engages my male gaze… that is, it is mostly sexual… the images are well made, artistic…

_ “(The zine explores the) modern-day female experience: the way we feel ourselves, the way we move, think, and live that’s beyond sexuality and being sexual. I wanted to show that naked body doesn’t mean sexual, that it can be just body._¹

… i would like to see the Zine itself, but i discover it is being issued in a very limited and very expensive format… book formats and zines in particular are not generally meant to be so pricey, a larger audience is being courted, usually…

… i am left with the images in the article, which mostly seem to objectify the women… that is my older white male take…

Space reserved for being serious is hard to come by in a modern society, whose chief model of a public space is the mega-store (which may also be an airport or a museum).¹

… in a secular society, particularly a capitalist one, all public space is for the dissemination of goods, services and corporate/state propaganda… there is little sacred space… we are left to cobble together whatever sacredness of space we can in our own homes and find it in nature…

… Sontag has a point, what do we do with imagery that should have a sacred setting for interaction?… how do we facilitate a reverential response when setting is so much a part of that response?… Sontag posits that books may be a more appropriate spot for images demanding reverential respect, in that the book is a one on one experience…

_ IS THERE AN ANTIDOTE to the perennial seductiveness of war? And is this a question a woman is more likely to pose than a man? (Probably yes.)_²

… one wonders if it is probable that there is an antidote and yes, a woman is more likely to ask the question… or, if probably yes applies to both?… punctuation suggests the latter, situation suggests the former… i used to be sure about the woman part, less so now… i think women ask the question as long as they have not gained the power to be war makers… as they acquire this power, it seems less clear that they will do something different with it…

… Sontag discusses Jeff Wall’s Dead Troops Talk (A Vision After an Ambush of a Red Army Patrol near Moqor, Afghanistan, Winter of 1986),

© Jeff Wall

… and i think to myself, there, there is the difference, between me and some photographers, my subject is the mundane everyday, not historical tableaux, what every day is made of… not significant statements to be fully made in one image, twitter bursts, Facebook posts, etc…

… well, there i am, finished with Regarding the Pain of Others…

… this painting drew me in…

Malak Matar, “When peace dies, embrace it. It will live again.” (2019)

At age 21, Malak Matar, a Gaza-born artist, has survived three wars and untold trauma. She also recently lived through the 11-day Israeli assault on her city that killed over 240 civilians, including dozens of children. A fragile ceasefire was signed on May 20 between Israel and Hamas, which rules the besieged Gaza Strip. But suffering in Gaza, one of the most impoverished cities in the world, hasn’t ceased. The grief and loss continue with entire families slain; over 70,000 people displaced; widescale damage to property; and continued misery under Israel’s ongoing blockade.¹

… her paintings are hopeful, remind me of the primitivism of Picasso, Gaugin…

… her Etsy store…

… an article arguing not so much for the abolishment of museums, but their transformation into cultural institutions that serve the people, not the power structure of the white heteropatriarchy…

… museums exist because they are funded by the power that prevails and they purposely tell the cultural history in ways that support that power… is this another sign that the multiarchy is rising?…

The new museum requires an ethical reorientation from our old ways of thinking, a divestment from a conservationist and capitalist ideology, and a centering of voices previously silenced by the colonial project. People and art deserve a better form of art stewardship.¹

Perseid meteor, originating from Comet Swift-Tuttle, from the ISS

… an article on meteor showers, known to be the debris trails of passing comets and responsible for spectacular meteor showers… the upshot, cosmic beauty, possible devastation of the planet, because, of course, if we pass through debris trails we might one day encounter the comment more directly… Comet Swift-Tuttle was thought to be a looming danger in the 1990’s, less looming now, as a near miss is not projected to happen until 3044, and who knows if humanity will still be here?… still, in the department of awe, something to help us contemplate our significance, or lack thereof…

… another example of sex selling, it almost always works on me… i wish i could say that was not true, but it is, and perhaps i shouldn’t feel so bad about it because it works on the majority of us and maybe we should have less prurient idea of sex and the naked body… though, its her nakedness that sells, he’s just a prop… the male gaze sought and secured…

… it turns out that the film still is from a movie that will be discussed in the pilot episode of the podcast series reported on in the article…

_The season’s pilot episode will dissect Paul Verhoeven’s second feature Turkish Delight (1973) – an intensely violent and erotic film charting the fallout of a stormy love affair. Although unsung on an international stage, it has been named the greatest Dutch film of the 20th century by critics in its native Netherlands, and played a significant role in the country’s countercultural history.¹

… a fashion spread that looks more like a high concept photo book, grainy pictures here, blown out lighting photos there, few images allow the close inspection of the craftsmanship of garments, meant mostly to evoke a feeling of the ancestors in the present day…

Did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there?

Photography and styling by Manglien Ganté

… on figuring out that human depravity is a base condition…

Someone who is perennially surprised that depravity exists, who continues to feel disillusioned (even incredulous) when confronted with evidence of what humans are capable of inflicting in the way of gruesome, hands-on cruelties upon other humans, has not reached moral or psychological adulthood.¹

… innocence is abominable after a certain age… we need to know what is possible… we need to fear a Nazi Germany type white supremacy in this country because we know what happened in Nazi Germany… we need to fear the atrocious and atrocities because we know these things are abundant in the world… i wonder if one day in my lifetime i will bare direct witness to unimaginable human suffering, succumb to that suffering myself… cosmic chaos is banging on the door…

If the goal is having some space in which to live one’s own life, then it is desirable that the account of specific injustices dissolve into a more general understanding that human beings everywhere do terrible things to one another.²

… and this is what H and i have had all of our lives, some space in which to live our lives, aren’t we fortunate?… a modern life, Sontag tells us, seeks our attention in a myriad of ways, mostly, i think, to sell us something… Sontag tells us its ok to spectate, that spectating is a natural human condition… perhaps we will learn what to avoid…

… today we harvest chickens, i will come home with five of them… today my iPhone 12 Pro Max will arrive… i would like not to feel excited, not to feel like my life is about to be transformed, because i know that isn’t true, but anticipation is a wicked thing… yesterday a new bluetooth keyboard arrived, i anticipate it will be handy when i start returning to cafes and while on Block Island…

… i am hoping the Pro Max 12 will solidify and raise to a new level my notes project, but where do i want to elevate it to?… what is lacking now?… i want it to add up to something meaningful… useful to others… i am the only one who sees it, reads it… i keep telling myself that it does not matter as long as it helps me, but it does… we all want attention, i am unwilling to do what grabs attention… or maybe my life is not attention worthy… how could it be?… we go nowhere, it’s Beacon most of the time, Block Island some of the time, frustrating sameness in Beacon for sure, even on Block Island… we need some adventures, we need to figure out how to make that happen…

… sitting by Fishkill Creek, near the old bridge, almost halfway point on this particular walk route… strange, an earlier note deleted and replaced with a new one, somehow confused in the backing up exchange… a bird pecking away nearby, i can’t find it with my eyes… the sound of a branch falling through still attached branches in a tree, a large bird flapping off into the distance, two men walk by chatting, the creek burble-gurgles, birds twitter and call…

… it occurs to me that to write strong words one needs to feel strongly… it occurs to me that most of life is not felt strongly… to reflect life, write mostly the mundane sprinkled with crescendo moments… it isn’t all about the peaks and valleys…

… an article by Sebastiaan de With on the capabilities of the 12 Pro Max…

… as i said earlier, i have purchased an iPhone 12 Pro Max… this is a photography purchase, a movement in the direction of iPhone only photography… i look up and read about its capabilities…

… i wonder what i will do with those capabilities, have i arrived at the place where my Nikon sits on the shelf most of the time?… could be… but, how will it change/enhance my photo practice?… here is what i imagine… it will further solidify my “notes on attention paid” direction, a photographic and written journal on what catches my attention… it will make that practice refined and seamless… i will be able to photograph my nice’s wedding in September with much more pleasing results… i will be able to leave my Nikon behind most of the time…

Bangkok. 2012 (remixed 2021) - Developing Polaroid © Rhiannon Adam.

… an article in the British Journal of Photography about Rhiannon Adam…

… the artist mixes polaroids with NFT’s (non fungible tokens)… in the above example, a succession of images of a developing polaroid, made of a polaroid… NFT’s intrigue me, the idea that royalties can be built into the artwork, which when transmitted to a new owner, are paid to the artist… blockchain can do that…

Thomaz Farkas, Ministry of Education (Ministério da Educação) Rio de Janeiro, ca. 1945, gelatin silver print, 12 7/8 × 11 3/4″. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the artist.

… another article, this time in Paris Review, on Fotoclubismo, a group of amateur photographers based in Sao Palo… certainly an exhibit i would like to see…

… what we choose to publish and promote in bookstores has consequences argues Josh Cook in an excerpt from his new book, The Least We Can Do…

… should there really be free speech?, shouldn’t the dissemination of some ideas be suppressed?, it’s a slippery slope and, in any case, largely out of the hands of booksellers; because of social media; because of anyone’s ability to set up a website attract followers and disseminate dangerous ideas…

… some amount of censorship is needed, but who decides?…

… Sontag opens with two ideas…

… imagery preferred by the media direct public attention… the reason one needs to claim the news cycle… the reason 45 was so effective at controlling the narrative, though he did so with tweets, perhaps the snapshots of writing… as visual as pictures?…

… the world is so saturated with images that all imagery has a diminishing effect… it becomes important to note what we linger over in this context, we are offered so much eye candy, which we speed through until attention is arrested… this is what makes an image decisive, it arrests attention… but, not for long…

In the more radical—cynical—spin on this critique, there is nothing to defend: the vast maw of modernity has chewed up reality and spat the whole mess out as images. According to a highly influential analysis, we live in a “society of spectacle.” Each situation has to be turned into a spectacle to be real—that is, interesting—to us. People themselves aspire to become images: celebrities. Reality has abdicated. There are only representations: media.¹

… we live in a society of spectacle and we all compete to be the spectacle everyone wants to see… there is no room for an appreciation of the ordinary, unless it is a cute cat, or dog… these are the proxies for our inadequacy as social media stars… we devote pages to our animal celebrities, in lieu of having our own… every day life is boring…

… the most interesting part of Sontag’s critique of media driven image ubiquity is that the news is entertainment for those who live in rich societies with little to fear of the kind of violence found in other parts of the world… something, though, has changed, the compelling imagery no longer comes exclusively from professional journalists, the compelling imagery comes from citizens who always have cameras with them… much is made of the filming of George Floyd’s murder by a teenage girl…

All images that display the violation of an attractive body are, to a certain degree, pornographic. But images of the repulsive can also allure. Everyone knows that what slows down highway traffic going past a horrendous car crash is not only curiosity. It is also, for many, the wish to see something gruesome. Calling such wishes “morbid” suggests a rare aberration, but the attraction to such sights is not rare, and is a perennial source of inner torment.¹

… all of it, but especially that violations of an attractive body are pornographic, that is, sexual, we respond sexually… why?… we feel guilty over this, i have…

… Georges Bataille, a great theorist of the erotic… kept a photograph taken in China or a man being dismembered and flayed on his desk… he found it both ecstatic and intolerable…²

… Sontag points out the religious nature of a fascination with suffering and its elevation to the ecstatic… one endures what one endures for a higher ideal…

… Sontag notes the growing indifference, the growing entertainment value of violence in mass culture…

… we can be brought images of suffering from far away, but it is easy to turn away from them, not do what we are being asked to do, because we are warm and safe and, at the end of the day, we are mostly impotent to help, what part of our resources we are willing to devote to assuaging cruelty, our consciences, is limited for most of us…

So far as we feel sympathy, we feel we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering. Our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence.(Ibid)

… and…

To set aside the sympathy we extend to others beset by war and murderous politics for a reflection on how our privileges are located on the same map as their suffering, and may—in ways we might prefer not to imagine—be linked to their suffering, as the wealth of some may imply the destitution of others, is a task for which the painful, stirring images supply only an initial spark.³

… i woke up to the sound of dripping… i woke up earlier to the sound of animals fighting, not sure what animals, high screeching sounds, cats?, raccoons?, some kind of raptors?, it seemed vicious, and then was gone… when i woke up the second time, to get up, cats fighting, different than the screeching last night… fighting, it seems inevitable in the animal world as one creature encounters another creature threatening its existence… is that what is going on now in this country, two sets of creatures fighting for existence?, for power?… the screeching from one side is especially loud… does that mean those creatures are especially worried about their continued existence?…

… the loud bird is singing, Fiona on the bed, i hear her breathing… the quiet hours of the morning…

… i ordered the new iPhone 12 Pro Max, for the camera improvements… photography moving towards iPhone much of the time, iPhone only eventually?… one big advantage, no dust in the lens, on the center, save time on cleaning images, save images that can’t be cleaned… i ordered a keyboard for it… hoping to facilitate writing while on BI, when at cafe’s…

… struggling to get reception, finally, when there are least bars, it comes… notable, a baby snapping turtle, Fiona finds a deer well before i see it, scented it i think… a bird chattering… the sound of the creek flowing by…

… an art show at the Carriage Trade Gallery in NYC, curated in partnership with Rectangle, Brussels… the exhibition displays the critique of colonization by 12 artists… setting aside for the moment what John Berger told us about the capacity of the establishment to absorb critique and present it without doing damage to itself (art galleries are capitalist entities for the most part)… or can we?… how effective is the critique?… does it change anything?… or is it a PR campaign of its own, designed to suggest that Eurocentric capitalist culture is sensitive to its ill effects on the planet and its peoples?…

There is a common misconception that countries in the Global South are “developing,” when in reality, many of them are still recovering from centuries of imperial dominance.¹

… [an article](https://hyperallergic.com/645965/the-very-real-motherhood-penalty-in-the-art-world/ “The Very Real “MOtherhood Penalty” in the Art World”) on how women are penalized in their professional careers for having children… the art world is no different, given its male domination… and here is an interesting quote:

The cultural industry contributes a greater share to the United States gross domestic product than agriculture, transportation, or construction, proving that creative work is **work.¹

… a review of the films she has directed… i have seen one of them, Wendy and Lucy, slow, nuanced, poignant, sad… i am thinking it might be time for a film festival in lieu of our series binge watching… i watched Wendy and Lucy at the beginning of the pandemic because Michelle Williams was in it and i adore Michelle Williams, she is a courageous actor, a very good actor… she is in several of Kelly Reichardt’s films…

… a series of photographs on train hopping/homeless culture… it’s not pretty, each photograph assigned a number, no person is identified, almost all the photographs are people, the photographer travels with them, photographs them… hopping trains sounds romantic, looks anything but… a young woman, lying down, legs spread, menstrual blood showing on white panties, she has pulled a skirt up to give the photographer this view… she holds a paperback book, 3 By Flannery O’Connor, this suggests she is intelligent… the same young woman appears in several photographs… this is one of them…

1027, Photography by Mike Brodie, Taken from the series A Period of Juvenile Prosperity

… the title, Mike Brodie’s Pictures of the Fascinating, Fleeting Train Rider Subculture, seems misleading… there is a lot of squaller, many people in the series we feel sorry for…

… the usual early morning bird singing loudly… cat wailing downstairs… coffee made… dogs let out then treated… slept through the night, feel groggy… contemplating what needs doing before leaving for BI… looking forward to it, always do… will look forward to going home, always do…

… the cursor blinks a questioning blink at me, what’s next?… i would like to compose a beautiful poem, i tell the blinking line… but then i type and the words flowing out are not beautiful, just regular as H would say when complimented on their beautiful self…

… what will make today successful?, catch up on my photography, make a good number of photographs, there have not been many over the past four or five days… interruptions, outside of routine visits to sister-in-laws and cousins… contact with family, hugs, wonderful, tiring drives…

… i track shipment of the new SPF 50 pants i bought, still in a kind of limbo, left the warehouse, not really on its way… i went with free shipping which saves money but leads to impatience… old fashioned anticipation…