Reenact

to act out the past again.

sciatica

and it couldn't have happened at a better time,

with finals approaching and work stacking up.

i feel very overwhelmed.

shit adds up.

I can no longer

sit
stand
lie

still without a tremendous amount of
pain knocking my brain off course.
I have become completely derailed.
I went for acupuncture today and now
i can bend my neck.

Hallelujah.

Melvin Sharek

Melvin Sharek is my next-door neighbor. He is the mayor of Savoy Plaza, living the last four or so decades, within walls that have seemed to grow smaller during the years. I first saw Mel one evening while I was sitting on the patio smoking; I looked over at him and smiled, finished my cigarette and went back inside. A couple weeks later again I held the elevator for him while he was checking the mail. We journeyed to the eighth floor; he was quite polite told me to have a good night as I watched him hobble very slowly to his door. When the subject for my outsider tanked on me, I was left furious and very worried, but then I remembered good old Mel who lives inches from us, he always seemed very open and inching to speak so I asked if it would be to much of a bother to invade his space on a Sunday morning to listen to him for a few minutes, his eyes lit up.
Mel will be 80 next year, he has been living alone since his second wife passed on, he calls himself very unlucky in love. He is a veteran of the Korean war, all he showed me from this horrible time were his hands and feet, as Mel has nothing from this moment in his life, his first wife left with everything and has since died as well. His estranged son hasn’t spoken to him for years as he is in and out of hospitals and mental states, while his daughter does the best she can from Texas. Mel avoids looking at me too much, on the first day of our shooting we took over soup, salad and fruit for him, to open up the conversation. His space is constricting, his motion almost to slow for me to capture. He told me a barrage of clean dirty jokes. Humor is an ever constant in his life as it lifts him out of his reality.
The claustrophobic nature of his apartment restricted me very much. I tried to parallel this space restriction and translate it into a vision where there is a tactile revelation of Mel, This reality is at times distorted and very limited. Learning how to maneuver around this small space initially felt very frustrating, I had to give up my sense of control over subject, as Mel isn’t very mobile anymore. I had so many ideas after the initial shoot but mostly I just listened to Mel in the end. I guess that this investigation into his life will take more than three weeks. He is interested in this continuous documentation so I have promised and invested time to him. The old man who hobbled slowly and barely speaks now comes knocking on my door to make sure that I am okay. On Saturday I made some prints and carried them over for him. He was very ill and canceled our last shoot because of the pain, tears weld up in his eyes when he looked at them.
I am no longer an outsider in Mel’s life, he is now my friend, someone who I can listen to and share time with. In the end I think that this project has started something bigger in my life, what is presented here is a minute glimpse as to who he is, there is so much more waiting to come out. Meeting him has challenged my thoughts on age, solitude and abandonment. I know by the end of my time here that a phenomenon much more important than photographs and cataloguing will have come out of our time together.

a love dwells far away

and we both exist in/out and as bystanders now.

It is hard when the heart becomes ridged to deal 

with separation and the dire sense of loss. The impatience

and apathy is hardest for me.

Most days i numb myself, most days she becomes 

my beacon of strength, the light in this world of solitude.

I never realized how absolutely alone I have felt, she makes

it more noticeable.

74 days till i see her, till then life is strange for me,

the change is becoming more despairing. But I am learning

a new kind of patience while the nights become colder and 

the days brim with doubt and fear. 

Of one thing i am sure, she is mine 

and i am entirely hers.

 

ICP

www.icp.org


the website gives you no idea as to where i am really.
after yesterday i now know that this choice was exactly for me.
i am no longer afraid, well a little bit but I am coming
around and slowly realizing what is before me.

Love and Light to all

In Transit

If  this is what it feels like then i don't know how i am going to deal with the numerous arrivals and departures that will forever be a part of my life. I used to consider myself a nomad even when I had a home, I guess my heart always felt as though it belonged more than one place, it has settled. Now it needs a dissection, come to think of it my spirit and soul also needs a partition or two. I was unaware of how conflicted and "under stress" I was but now that everything is sorted out (almost everything, odds and ends still to fall) I feel overwhelmed.

The state of my life is simply now going in a direction that i can not fully control, not that I have assumed that I had control in the past but  I had stability. The stability of love, work and monotony, now they have been wrenched from me and I feel abandoned. Change will fuck you up if nothing else will, it is strange how I live in a constant state of change but only feel the reality of it when the decisions I made start to shift everything. Even though I have been aware of these choices and I have been strong enough to delude and postpone to much thinking, now it is all setting in.

I said my goodbyes to the mainland people, Holly does not do goodbyes, I do the I'll see you soon again and if i didn't get around to do that then you have to forgive me because it is hard. It should get easier as i get older but it doesn't. How absurd to think that when you get older you would be able to deal with leaving love and home better! Of course it should rip your heart out. If nothing else does leaving the people you love behind should tear you apart.  I guess I am blessed because I am also going to those that I love as well, but the transition is hard. 

I don't know what i want to say completely but I know i want to express my fear, the fear of leaving and have everything change. I don't want disconnection. I fear it right now more so than anything else. To make sure that my fear is grounded I attempted a reconnection to kind friends from college who were so close with me not even two years ago, what I received was generic and lacking.  I guess they cant be blamed for much, I am the type of person to throw myself completely into what I am doing and those that I am around and shut out the excess. I have to recondition myself to remain open to, to keep compassion at the forefront of my emotional wall.

I guess I have a lot to look forward to. New challenges, ideas, hopes, devastations, goals and a new me. A new life approaches with haste and i am crawling slowly, when we collide it will be interesting to see what spills out. My one wish is that I remain faithful to who I am, I have been lucky so far to be surrounded by love that keeps me grounded and I know that now i am armed with so much more. More than one human being should have. I am beyond lucky, way beyond blessed.

To all the moon filled nights on cool sheets, in the arms of love. My spirit remains.

Virgin

I am not a blog virgin. Far from it in fact, I have started over five of them, all failing because I become silent at times and of course like most people i get tired of things easily. It is hard to keep up with myself, so this is my present attempt. Everyone started creating these and frankly I felt a little left out, even my user name shows how horrible my previous dedication is- bynoeh- obviously I ran out of options.

I will be moving to the NYC/NJ area in two or three weeks and i hope i have the ability to keep up with myself and put it here, to keep those that I love and those that stalk "up to the minute". In fact i am really pissed off presently, i created a beautiful blog only to have it disappear. I am such a novice, the insert photo here option puzzled me and the page failed. So my first rambling is gone replaced by this, so dearest, loyal readers I hope there is enough intrigue so bookmark and follow me as my cocoon breaks.

Love & Light