Tag: family

My Husband

My husband sews buttons

on clothes

My husband makes

jewelry

from shells

and wire

from beads

and love

patient*seeing*

intensely looking

with the eyes

that I love

My husband sews buttons

Featured Family #3

No Prom Queen I have this picture in my mind ~ as I lay in my bed of comfort.

Like a soldier -years gone by – the war is over.

What happened to Vietnam? Where are all of the naked babies, covered in flies?

Where are the dead bodies, scattered, limbs askew?

Where are the exploding buildings, silent, in flames?

Did Saigon fall hard like a rock into a pool of charm and drift like an empty raft on to a shore of safety?

Or did it run away in Nikes?

Fights*Battles*Fought*Lost

LOST LOST LOST

Thank You Mama

       Snapping peas in harmony

long rows of squash

walking lines of berries and straw

life was good

Growing balanced watermelons

under the waves of clothes

they baked

dry in the sun

life was good

Now I have an orchard

I reap and I sow

here a while~there a while

life is good

THANK YOU MAMA

Featured Family #2

                           I have a friend that swears, this is the happiest man on the planet. I’ve never met anyone happier than Nestor.

He invests in his children’s lives. I heard someone on the radio putting it like this~many father’s don’t want to talk to their children or drive to their events. They make excuses. If they could look at it as if they were engaging in efforts, that would make them a thirty thousand end-of-ear bonus; and that bonus relied on having conversations they didn’t really want to have, and driving to places they really didn’t want to go-we all know most men would do those thing for the money.So, if you treat your children as if they are your greatest investment you will surely reap a treasure of great magnitude.

He treats his wife like the queen of his castle. His enchanted humble abode is 400 square feet. The table for this cake was the washer and dryer. The dryer seconds as a storage bin, so critters won’t be feasting on the weekly staples.

This picture has technical problems, but you can’t out do it, for the expression of love.

Is she straightening his collar? That sure is a funny outfit he had to wear to school.

What are little boys made of?

She’s sugar and spice.

In my life, I am fortunate to have this example of~how to~in the realm of family experience.

Featured Family #1

 This is the first of my new series, Featured Family.

This is my trainer and his family. If you don’t think you have the best trainer in the world, then you don’t have the right trainer.

This is Chris’s son, surfing grommet style.

This is one of my favorite shots. This little girl loves her Daddy.

Who says American values died in the fifties?

They look alive and well to me!

*I didn’t like any of the definitions of grommet~in the manner that I have used it So this is my definition. Surfers started calling kid surfers, more or less, 15 and under, groms. Grom is short for grommet, which is a mechanical term for a small steel ball.  

A Sprinkle of Chemicals

I was asked to share about my old life. I care enough about the person that made this request, to do so. 

 I have journaled for many years. This particular page, Chemicals was written in May, 2011, on a day of reflection.

Chemicals in me. Chemicals in others. The ones I took. The ones they are on. The ones that become upset in our bodies due to our emotions.

From time to time, I still have the image of the LA bathroom flash in my mind. I can remember how I wanted to capture the moment. I wanted people to know about the intensity of that bathroom; as if it wasn’t me that was there. And everyone needed to know. I would be the liaison of information. I wanted pictures. I wanted to paint. I wanted people to know.

It was probably a 3 by 5 space. Entering into that bathroom to shoot heroin with people I didn’t know. People I had never even seen before. How crazy is that? How desperate is that? What was I thinking? It seems like there was a bare bulb that hung over my head. I know there was. I would feel that feeling and feel the rush in my head. And I wanted everyone to know what it was like to be a junkie. I wanted them to know that it was not what they thought. I was just a regular person.

There was nothing regular about me.

Living in East Los Angeles has to be one of the more crazy things that I have ever done in my life. It was colorful, fast and explosive. We moved  to Echo Park, my husband, myself and my daughter, along with our dog named Fido, in July, 1985. We found an apartment for three hundred dollars, which was an outrageous price for a tiny downstairs room. The landlady’s son lived on the top floor and we soon learned that he was on methadone and had been in prison for killing his father.

It was the summer of the Night Stalker. My husband and I, both got jobs right away and my daughter went to Elysian Elementary. He would go down to Echo Park and fish in the lake. My husband is an avid fisherman, no matter where he lives. There were dead rats floating on the surface of the water. A dead body was dragged out of the lake the day after he had caught a few fish from the bank. Only someone in the euphoric state of heroin induced bliss can accept this as an average daily occurrence. We didn’t eat the fish.

We bought two cars from a Mexican man down the road. One was a 62 Impala and one was a 63 Ford Fairlane. We ended up losing the Impala in Vegas, but kept the Ford and drove it all the way home back to Florida. What a great car. We pulled a trailer carrying our treasured washer and dryer that we had acquired from the side of the road in Hollywood Hills. They have the best trash there.

We were there from July to September, but it seemed a lot longer than that. Everyday was action packed. Over the course of those three months, which seemed like three years, I became a light weight junkie and knew I had to flee. We had gone to LA, running from a Mexican coke connection. I was always running. He wasn’t after us, like we owed him anything. We had become guinea pigs for quality control and I had lost it. With a Mexican drug dealer pumping your veins full of coke on a daily basis, you can become toxic pretty quick. In both Texas and California we lived in Mexican communities and we experienced the other side of prejudice. It was hard.

When we ran from California, we returned to the Island, where we discovered, we had escaped the influx of crack. I was filled with gratitude for my good luck. B E and K had come to town, filling all of our old friends pockets, just long enough to turn it over to the crack dealer. I always felt like I escaped the tragedies and hardships that so many others stepped in to. I escaped them by being “out of town”. I escaped them by being smarter than the average; independent person that I was.

It was all in my mind and in my perspective. My outlooks saved me and they were killing me at the same time. I was just a short time from death. A death that I would survive. Lucky me.

Gratitude

I came to Starbucks today to establish an internet connection. I had in mind to write about gratitude. The reason being, I am inundated with stuff. I had to get the tumbler, in my ignition, replaced. It took two days and a rental car. I have had to work on getting a permit, for a building on my property. I’ve never liked bureaucracy, however, through this process, I actually have made some friends. Good things happen when you least expect it.

Having said that, I want to share with you, that right when I was getting out of my car, I received a text. My granddaughter has graduated. She didn’t graduate with her class. She had to do summer school. She’s always had to do summer school. I’ve been suspicious that she does this, because she likes to be at school.

My gratitude morphed into happiness.

I come from a long line of drop-outs. My mother was a succesful, business woman. However, she only went to the ninth grade. I don’t know what I was thinking when I quit. So, I certainly don’t know what my daughter was thinking of when she quit.

Today, I’m a believer in education.

And today I am so happy.

My granddaughter graduated from a real High School.

I heard it once said, “you can go to school for the rest of your life, but graduating from high school is a one time thing.”

YOU GO GIRL! YOU ROCK~CONGRATULATIONS!

I Shoot People Too ~7

Imagine all the people

Then imagine all of their imaginations.

I had this idea rattling around in my head, since I wrote last. I kept remembering being on trips with my parents. I would be in the backseat of the car, heading down a state road and passing all the people. I would wonder, who are they and where are they going? What do they do? What do they think? What goes on in their lives?

I’ve always enjoyed traveling and people watching. Rarely do I feel the need to talk to anyone. It might destroy my image of them. Just imagine, all the thoughts people have in their heads, as you’re passing them in the street. That’s a lot of words and ideas. Delusional snapshots of life, firing through everyone’s brains. And you’re left in your own silent, talkie, until you decide to say something.

And I did.





In the sea of people~

See the beautiful.

I Shoot People Too ~ 6

This set of ten portraits makes a total of sixty. Today’s cover shot is my brother; the one and only. My siblings consist of one brother and three sisters. He is the second oldest. After my mother had her first two offspring, she said she had achieved her quota. That concerned the responsibilities of children and school. According to him, it was after the firstborn. We have our varied perspectives on life in general, and our histories together.

I have come to believe that the devil IS in the details. When I use to share with my friend, stories about my family, he said, “That sounds like a Pat Conroy novel”.  So, I read Pat Conroy. The father in the Prince of Tides was a mild mannered, southern gentleman compared to our Dad. Our family life took it’s toll on my brother, as it did all of us, in our own ways.

At one time, I adored my brother. In 1968, he had a green Road Runner. He took me to my first concert, The Allman Brothers at Jacksonville Beach. We went 110 miles an hour on I-10. I was use to fast cars. I  can remember my him driving a white station wagon of my father’s. He would practicing spinning it around to go in the other direction. He would pick up speed, hit the brakes and turn the wheel.  Those were the days, full of danger.

I always drove his motorcycles, including his Harley Low Rider. Women didn’t ride back then. I once heard him tell someone, “If it’s got wheels, she can drive it!” That was a proud moment for me. I always wanted to please him.

Here and there, he let me be his pool shooting partner. He’s always been a gambler. After work one Friday, he took me to shoot dice out behind Ardsley’s Liquor Store on Beaver St. It was by default really. I just happened to be in the car. It was probably dangerous, but back then, without danger I wouldn’t have known how to act.

68′ was quite a year for me. I was twelve. I can remember looking in the mirror and teaching myself to cuss. I got pretty good at it. I was trying to survive; but I was still the Catholic School girl that wouldn’t walk on the grass.

It was a year that my life soared in a direction that had been a long time coming. It would have been really weird, if it had been any other way. There was no one there to save me. I was on my own.

The wild and crazy stories seem endless if I start telling them.

Here are some more people


I see people~beautiful!