"DEAR LEADER"

Back in May, I reluctantly picked up blogging because my friend Steve, at Robyn, kept on needling me; and I kept on telling him to “blow me”. And then, my mother mentioned that I should write more regularly; I listened politely. Maren kept harassing me too but what else is new. So, Thing one led to Thing two, and Thing three led me to reading other people’s diaries; or as they say “bloggentries”.

In the world of photography, Alec Soth’s blog is high up on the people’s list, but frankly, anyone who regularly posts “Friday Poetry” is a little too Garisson Keillor-ish for me. I’ll have to go back and read more of it, but so far I glaze over quickly. Maybe, Ritalin and me have our very own theory about Alec’s poetry: Maybe, he is to photography what John Philip Sousa is to infantry; but more twenty first century. If you don’t know what I mean, that’s okay, I’m already knee deep in shit with this entry. So nevermind poetry….

Meanwhile, back in May and in New york City, I spent one night in Brooklyn. Raul, Jen and I had finished eating dinner when I began to contemplate the long trip back to New Jersey so I begged them to let me stay and play.

The very next day, I tearfully went back to the City, leaving them to potty train and spoon feed purée; rode back to New Jersey and back again to the City. Later, I got on a plane, landed, drove home and waited.
Later, after a few days, during those hours between night and day I had a dream about Raul, Jen and Raul Andres. It was one of those dream within a dream, a personal favorite I must say. A dream within a dream; how fucking great? Like Turducken*, but meatless, guey…!

I don’t really remember the dream within the dream, just the dream about waking up from the dream within the dream, and it went like this: Raul and Jen had since become “Yurt-parents” and had once again let me stay and play, presumably to save me from the long overnight trip back to Alma-Ati.

Upon waking, I noticed that two of Jen’s Korean relatives were covered in frost; the kind of frost you might see ruining a farmer’s crop. I too seemed frosty but felt perfectly dandy underneath my flowery quilt. They just told me that this was the best way to keep your cheeks rosy and stay healthy, so, why not me! Next thing I know, Raul Andres saunters over to proudly sit on his potty, right next to me; releasing quite a stink and waking me back to reality.

I have had every possible dreamable dream there is to dream, but smelling shit, in a dream, while dreaming about waking from a dream within a dream, was positively, weirdly dreamy. There is something to be said for waking up to a toddler’s feces, I’ve lived it, but to dream it…and survive it, NOW, that’s a blog entry, if I’ve ever smelled it.

* A Dreamdrucken.

Back in 1995, I was in Guangzhou, P.R China, on assignment. It must have been around midnight and I had just stopped working. I took it upon myself to stop by a favorite restaurant within shouting distance of the White Swan. I was gnawing on crispy pigeon, I love pigeon, when a young woman came up to me and asked if I was interested in modeling. When I answered that I was not, she sweetened the deal by offering me a couple hundred bucks. I greedily and promptly agreed, a date was set, and the next morning I was on set, smashingly dressed in “Vincent‘s” finest.

The shoot went by quickly and the photographer was remarkably swift, shooting less that a roll of 120 per outfit. We were done before lunch. I pocketed my Remembies and took her out for tasty treats. We talked about her family and all I remember was that her father happened to be China’s most famous sports journalist. There you have it.

Yesterday morning, and for no apparent reason, I was feeling rather agitated. After-all, it’s easy to do these days. Once you reach marriageable age and have pills to pay, these twin curses focus their hideous gaze and swiftly cheat you of your hard earned money.
So, as previously noted, I was feeling agitated, which in this great ape, tends to rattle his lavishly appointed cage. Maybe, now that I have reached a certain age and have participated in said “Rat Race” for a couple of decades, I can, at times, bounce off the walls and nervously pace .

But help was on its way. I picked up a freshly painted copy of The New Yorker and turned to page 68: “In 1943, when I was a fifteen-year-old schoolboy in Danzig, I volunteered for active duty”. I went back to bed and read “How I spent the war”, by Günter Grass.

Just the same, when I saw the “Tin Drum” in 1979, at a Paris matinee, I remember feeling similarly oppressed and agitated. The theater was Parisian small, and packed with the unemployed and the disenchanted, or was it a Saturday?

For lack of a better day, I had gone to see the “Drum” with a classmate I had just befriended. I can’t remember his name as we did not remain friendly for long; after-all I was on my way upstate. On his being the pompous spawn of old Parisian money, I remember going to dinner at his parents’ well appointed hotel particulier, where less than public servants served us dinner in white gloves and tails; on silver plates.

What struck me most was that Grass’s Oscar (our tiny protagonist) had remembered his birth date. Not long before seeing the movie, I had had a dream where my only and very still view of the world consisted of a grey metal dresser, pale yellow walls, an open window and in the distance, a reddish-grey-brick mural, upon which a faded ad had long ago been painted. A sunny day…..

I remember waking up and feeling that this was the room where I had spent my first uterus free day. I walked downstairs to talk my mother and described this fuzzy dreamscape and this is what she said: ” That’s where you were born Olivier”. She looked a little dazed and our conversation quickly ended, which seemed a little strange given my mother’s more than garrulous ways. May be she remembered that day, as if in a postpartum haze. Unfortunately, my first earthly day had almost resulted in making it: Her last day. She had bled profusely while her attending was away, delivering someone else’s birthday cake. She was close to death when my father finally came in and alerted the ward’s nurses. They managed to stop the hemorrhage and someone else’s blood saved her from her impending fate.

When we walked out, it was one of those dark and dreary French winter days. My schoolboy date wanted to chatter in a Montparnasse cafe but I felt irritated and only listened to him halfway. I finally came up with an excuse to run the hell away . He, no doubt, followed his golden crumbs back to his well appointed home and pontificated.

When I finished reading Mr.Grass’s essay on his days as a Waffen S.S, I was, magically; no longer agitated. So, if your mother lives ten thousand miles away, and you don’t want to wake her up to help you sooth your nervous ways; read a little Grass in the middle of the day.