BLUE COUP D’ETAT

I stumbled across a wedding at a Shinto Shrine in Kamakura. Music by the American Dollar. ***Slight revision***

longmarch

imagining a face

early abstraction when I only had two colors

another on the abstract face side

I drew most of the stuff that I’ll post on little tiny pieces of paper with markers when I was unemployed for four months in the year 2000.

Meant to show you something else but I love this, so beautiful and incomplete. Hope you enjoy. Running out of batteries right now, gotta hurry.

beautifulgesture

A spike in her chin, two studs in her nose, two-tone hairdo maroon and black, matching lipstick, thumbs open Beyond Good and Evil, first page tough page, haven’t read it but I’ve read some Fredrich, “We knowers in honeybee hives of knowledge know not what we know” or something like that. She’s lingering, struggling with that first page. Finger to eye, thumb to ear listening to a Walkman floating in noise narrated by Nietzsche. I’ll have to read that page. She was still on it when I got off to catch the express 3 train…

Ender’s Game
i buy this book for lots of people
heard wolfgang peterson is going to direct a movie version
that is disappointing
but read the book
a real page turner

The roulette wheel of faces screeches to a halt and begins again until one day you can’t take it any more, you try to stop the mechanism by throwing wrench in it, removing chance when you can’t stand having that face in any hands but your own.

The blue retinal stripe that occurs at the meeting of two shades of turquois causes me great pleasure without making me smile.

This one goes out to that lady with the yellow summer dress with pink and green flowers, a fake fur coat, purple gloves, blue jeans, and gold shoes with the fifties style look, a tan and a wedding band.

Accidently erased this! I think I wrote something absurd; probably. Anyway this was revised and now erased and now reposted. It is weird to look at myself in all these old tapes, actually kinda scary to see myself from seven years ago. Even scary to see myself from yesterday, at least sometimes it is. Today it is but I won’t get into it. FORWARD as Derek would say.

*****Special thanks to Joe for his astute observations which made this piece much more comprehensible (it still might be incomprehensible but just imagine what it must’ve been like before!)

JTkungfu2

The Way of Carey continues, Grandmaster Flash, getting and giving, and other ideas about life.

WAYofCAREY3

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEREK 2006 part 2
Walker and Derek

walk3dayold_2

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEREK 2006 part 1
Walker, Derek, and Shannon.

walk3dayold_1

Shannon teaches Walker about not going out in the road.
Special photography by Chizuko Niikawa.
Takes a minute to load up, not sure why. Be patient, it is worth it.

walkshan

Late night drive making it to Texas from Colorado. Deep night. Meet Joe and the Quest.

JTonwardTX

Punic 2: born into battle and bloodshed during the first Punic War, Hannibal Barca at age nine and age twenty-six. Jim’s Trip is revealed, partially. The first stop is ahead.

PUNIC2

The Way of Carey continues with the life of an L.A. actor hustling with hope.

WAYofCAREY2

More stuff, this time it is leaving home. Leaving the nest, getting kicked out of the nest. 1999. July. Colorado.

jtLEAVEhome

This is a little rough cut with some music from LOTRANE. It is a poem about swimming and bloodshed. And it isn’t done. “Pretty vague, I like it” to paraphrase Ken Jacobs. And weird.

TRIPswim

The views of Charlotte and Sydney on spinach.

CharSydSpinach

peterson by the AMERICAN DOLLAR.
additional photography and thanks to Steve Hidinger, Joey Curtis, and Derek Cianfrance

PETERSON

That confused expectation at the end of the work, young men standing poolside in goggles and speedos, knowing that they’re there to win but not really sure why or what for or who for. The result of the work is often overshadowed by the work itself, the time, the effort, the drive, the desire–it’s all supposed to be embodied in this moment when you dive into the pool submerged in a roaring silence of displaced air, breath, and motion broken by the crowd of stuttering voices discernable the way speech penetrates deep sleep or a lapse into unconsciousness, all garbled and distant but undeniably present unlike the sound of an empty pool, the smooth breaking strokes crisp and rhythmic, extended bubbles, a breath and the left arm coming over dunking my face back into the water at the front of the wave that carries me across the water.

OLD WORDS ARE THE BEGINNINGS OF MANIFESTATION–Maintain focus, the process of doing is where happiness comes from. Practice and execute the things I know rather than talk about them. Things get done a little at a time; build the steps to make it over the wall instead of dreaming about what’s on the other side. Doubts will assail me, let them keep sailing and believe, really believe. Gotta take those steps every day to get back to where I was the day before, the steps only get easier after long repetition and even then they can be hard–the road I travel isn’t easy and its starts fresh every day.

it has been a rather ridiculous amount of time since i posted anything here
i am in bangkok now
living life
watching it go by
whizzing on motor scooters
elephants walk the streets after midnight

The heating pipes clang at 2am, making little taps like an array of tiny, retired miners swinging away with pick axes.

Need space, privacy, retreat. Need to remain accustomed to being alone so it is familiar, just as I need to remain accustomed to living among people–balance of the two states.

I have a group of tingles that are lodged in the back of my left shoulder, something like a ghost patting my back, a shiver without cold.

The buzz in the back of my left shoulder is some sort of hole into the past, things fly in and out tickling my muscle, the feeling spreads, soon it’ll be my whole back that memories swim in.

Kind people that were staying at the Gaijin House while I was in Tokyo. The twins are beautiful and funny.

My smile is infected with bitterness, a spiteful smile, chalk full of sarcasm. True pleasure might start in a state of awareness, feeling affected, an act, not real. I suppose it all starts with the ACT, the seeming that becomes. It is a natural process: the choice, the effort, these determine the being, the becoming, the became. Become pleasure, become happy, become thought, become man, become love.

If seeming is being then becoming is the process of holding onto an image and redefining it as it applies to myself. Thus what I think something is may be only an appearance and through the process of becoming I discover the insides of the image, the guts that make it real, the work that makes it work.

Have love in your heart but wait to fall in love, dance with someone who wants to dance with you and be ready when they come arms out stretched because you know what it is to want with no response, to fly into flame instead of the warmth, the tenderness that the oblivious flame resembles as it shines and dances so vibrantly but the coldness is in the oblivious, the unconcerned, the unattracted and the flame is snuffed out entirely by the raging winds that try to possess it instead of seeing by its light, blowing softly on the light so it dances with joy instead of disappearing forever into the thinnest of air.

Comparisons are inevitable but useless. A man must be his own man, no other.

Can do so much and feel as though I’ve done nothing. Attacked by the need to see results but quick results are phantoms, heavy images built on nothing, sinking into nothing.

Essence of discipline–enforcement or enactment of what you feel to be right.

Intent involves planning, execution requires discipline, identification compels thought and deserves benign but truthful criticism.

When I draw up plans for a magnificent structure it is hard to begin with the foundation because there is the desire to realize the subtleties. Must make what is common to all strong before indulging in the details.

Work is essential, a rhythm, a refuge but can’t be used as a crutch. No hiding–work winds the clock but I do the ticking.

When I know what needs to be done, do it instead of diluting and confusing my resolve by getting the opinions of others and dwelling.

The tough maxims and explanations of philosophy are harsh comfort in the face of overwrought emotion.

My niece Sydney

This is the second of a collection of short experimental films that I made with Steve Hidinger and Zach Schethren.

This is a thought that I had sometime ago when I first moved to New York and was feeling oh so alone:

I’m a ghost outside of my room, people pass by quick and oblivious. Habit alone keeps me from walking through walls.

Standing outside of Shinjuku Station conjured a similiar feeling.

This is one of a collection of short experimental films that I made with Steve Hidinger and Zach Schethren.

FADE UP: Standing above the muddy Uptown banks of the Hudson River–New York City, Fall 1999.

It is remarkable how I can get caught up in irrelevant thoughts. Sidetracked as though I’m on the verge of finding the cure to IT when in fact I am just thinking about whatever will keep me from doing what I need to do. The mind is deceptive but I find it strange how it fights against itself, another paradox. My mind creates ideas and then it tries to come up with every reason possible for me to avoid following through, to keep the idea an idea rather than turn it into action. Discipline again; steps, goals, deadlines. Build the steps and walk right up or try to jump up a fifty foot wall, that is the choice.

CUT TO: Five years later standing before the Temple of Luck under construction–Tokyo, Japan.

The heavens weep for me and make the night an inky black shiney mess, my prayer lost on the pink lips of Shinjuku.

Kung Fu Dream Part 1

“It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.”
Jake Barnes, The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway), the last line of chapter 4

Lord make me an instrument of thy peace
Where there is hatred let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
Where there is sadness, joy

Oh Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console
To be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love
For it is in pardoning that we are pardoned
It is giving that we receive
It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life

(NOTE****THESE ARE WORDS AND IMAGES FROM NEARLY FIVE YEARS AGO)

I just found out Stanley Kubrik died, Derek left me a message. He sounded sad.

My dad told me he is getting in touch with his body. He is sitting in a chair in his hospital room with tubes in his nose, an IV in his arm, and a cathader in his penis. He has a button in his hand for “pain management” or morphine drip. Somehow he is wearing a pleasant look on his face. He keeps nodding, I think he’s doing his own personal form of meditation. I told him the prayer of St. Francis but I don’t think he really listened. He has to do it his own way. He has a gash in his stomach about the length of a hand which is held together by four staples. It is intentionally not sealed all the way so that the infection in his stomach cannot fester and abscess. The half closed wound reminds me that we are all meat just like at the grocery or the butcher shop. Our bodies can blow up on themselves, they can fail us and there is little we can do about it but we can be tough. Toughness is in the mind, the body follows the lead of the mind. Even though you don’t talk, you inspire me. They tell me his bowels aren’t working right now and I can see the waste that the machines are pulling out of his body. His urine is the color of used cooking oil, slightly red, scary color. The solids come out through a tube in his nose and resemble a measureing cup full of diarreha. The road to recovery is tough. “He says he’ll walk in a little while,” the nurse said. “He didn’t put out that much urine. The resident said the color looked terrible.”

The Room: 2 TVs, list of channels, attending physician Stiegmann, a menu, bouquet of bird of paradise flowers, a bulldog puppy get-well card with their paw prints, gauze and saline solution, a blower to help him take deep breaths, a Douer urine bag, oxygen from the wall. A stack of Medline powder free latex examination gloves small, medium, and large.

My Dad just gripped my finger–he’s strong. The two nurses are trying to figure out the machinery hooked up to my Dad. He rolls his eyes and I smile. I just saw the wound again–the edges of the openings look like ground beef and there are actually six staples and six openings in his stomach.

AFTERWARD–my Dad is alive and well this day Thanksgiving 2004 and I want to give thanks for that, amen.