September 2008
Monthly Archive
Wed 24 Sep 2008
Posted by rmr under
Notebooks by Ron SteinmanComments Off
“A man’s rhythm must be interpretive. It will be, therefore in the end, his own, uncounterfeiting, uncounterfeitable.” Ezra Pound.
Someone else said “Each line of a poem, however many or few its stresses, represents a single breath, and therefore a single perception.”
And “The poet must forge his rhythm according to the impulse of the creative emotion working through him.”
Some outside reading:
“Rats Lice and History,” Dr. Hans Zinsser
“Post Mortems,” and “Mere Mortals,” Dr. C. MacLaurin.
“Anthropology and Primitive Culture,” Sir Edward Taylor
“Mind of Primitive Man,” and “Anthropology and Modern Life,” Franz Boas
“Early Civilization,” A.A. Goldenweiser
“Racial Basis for Civilization,” F.H. Hankins
“Wandering of People,” A.C. Haddon.
“To melt and be like a running brook that
sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness
To be wounded by my own understanding of love
and to bleed willingly and joyfully
To wake at dawn with winged heart
and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
To return home as eventide with gratitude:
and then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved
in my heart and a song of praise upon my lips.”
The Prophet, Gibran
Idea. Idea. Idea. Idea. Idea. Idea. Damn it, none. Pray it through.
So near and yet so far.
Finders, keepers, losers, weepers.
Political nature abhors a political vacuum.
“Cynic: A snarler, a misanthrope. One who believes that human conduct is motivated wholly by self interest.
Cynical: Given to contemptuous disbelief in man’s sincerity of motives or rectitude of conduct. Characterized by the conviction that human conduct is suggested or directed by self interest or self indulgence.”
Read more of the following and in a hurry.
Emily Dickinson
Sidney Lanier
William Dean Howells
Edward Rowland Sill
Stephen Crane
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Robert Frost
Ezra Pound
Amy Lowell
Wallace Stephens
Robinson Jeffers
Gertrude Stein
T.S. Eliot
Hart Crane
William Faulkner
Man-environment; Environment-man.
Rip the paper. Go on. Tear it. Leave it lifeless. It’s dead. I have killed it. No one else has. No one else could. It was lifeless anyway, for the moment. For one brief moment I had the audacity, maybe the guts. The courage to transform it, the paper, into a living and monumental entity, is mine for the asking, for the doing. Well, possibly not monumental. That may be going too far. Not monumental to others but to me because it represents something I did, something I feel is more than another person has done. After all, what does another do? In reality, they do nothing. While I attempt to do something I create even if the creation is weak and not as good as something someone else is doing or has done. I, at least, try and don’t sit back to wait for things to happen to me. That would be the easy way, the simple way. It isn’t difficult to be lethargic. I must admit it’s fun. It presents no problems. I can hear the cheers: Way to go! I’ve often thought it the best escape from reality.
I sit and wait during a night’s vigil. The world lies before me. I wait for something to happen. It doesn’t. I must make it happen. I must cause the action when the opportunity arises. Arise, opportunity. Please. It’s the only way I have of testing my true nature.
I’m sitting in a bar in Easton where prostitutes were once available to Lafayette College students in the nineteen twenties. My half-full seven-ounce glass of beer is losing its edge. Empty pages in a book, my book, my notebook. Fill the empty pages—for kicks, if for nothing else. It matters little how many words appear as long as some do . . .
I have to start thinking about a job, any job, since it’s work that will put bread in my mouth, food in my belly. Make a list of employment agencies and go begging for work, any kind of work. There are ads for college grads for executive trainees, whatever they are. They want college grads as trainees in sales, advertising, public relations and promotion. There are openings for recent college graduates in television administration. They have ads and ads and ads—for everything, for anything. “Come and register at our agency,” fee paid by the employer. Sometimes I must pay the fee, me. Lose your dignity, my dignity, and line up at the slave auction. Sell your skills, my skills, whatever they are, to the highest bidder. Enter the land of the employed no matter how hopeful, no matter your dreams. Soon you will be in a place where they subjugate the self as an adjunct to the imperial might of corporate America. Shit. But I guess it has to be done if I’m to survive, especially since I don’t know what I want to do, what I’ll do, how I’ll do it.
When reading short stories or novels, I usually find women, men, buildings, places, drunks (hard and soft), junkies, scenery, stock characters, some thinking people. Duds, all. Almost. All the fears expressed are the same. All the misgivings are the same. All the worries are the same. Hot dog! Am I reading the right books?
When is this nonsense going to end? There is desire but where is the drive? My drive? Even these notebooks concern me. Sometimes they are silly. Often they are unreadable in the original. I write in them, the scribbling flowing over the lines, the letters crabbed or too large, sometimes smeared with beer or ringed from the wet bottom of a glass. I don’t review what I write to see if they have any strength, if the thoughts make sense. Can the ideas and descriptions that fill these many differently sized sheets be anything more than squiggles of ink on the page. I am most inclined to think the notebooks are useless. Yet they do serve a purpose. They use time and they are good for introspection. They are wonderful for show (and tell), especially around women. The small books work in my favor in bars and mainly in fraternity houses when on the honorable mission of bird-dogging, the surreptitious hunt for another man’s chick. The books help create some suspense in my life. They give me the space to write the many questions I enter each time one comes into my head, drunk or sober. The books enlarge on the mystery I face daily. Lately the notebooks have been taking longer to complete than when I started. Is it because there is less to say? Have I recognized the value of quality over quantity? Is it because I have become lazy or am I too busy with other things, such as comprehensive exams, and I don’t have the time to devote to them? Or is it my slow realization they are truly useless. Is what I write without talent? Are they a waste of time? I suspect this musing is premature. I damn well hope so. I’ll have all summer to see if there is anything inside me worth bringing out. My byword for the moment is time. My by-phrase for the moment is I want to see what happens. Am I anticipating fate? Hoping vainly? Hoping against doom? To an extent, everything plays a part. When any one piece of the puzzle becomes the dominant factor, everything could collapse as evidence of weakness or the self will rise like a totem pole, evidence of untapped power. Son-of-a-bitch. Dance to a different beat. I graduate soon and then I’m off and running. I hope I get my second wind. Easton, Pennsylvania. May 31, 1955. It is 10:30 p.m. Time for another beer and maybe some fried clams. Both will be great for my stomach.
June 1, 1955. Easton, Pennsylvania and Brooklyn. “Modern Man In Search of a Soul,” Carl Jung. “The Rebel,” Albert Camus. Old Testament. Numbers R, XIV, 10.
I graduated from college. My parents and sister were present. Nothing special. I just graduated. No school. No future. My sheepskin is still rolled, tied in a ribbon. No job. Nothing. I now have my degree despite everything. And yes, that includes me. I have a near useless degree in history. Oh yeah. Pack up my bags and head home, home to Brooklyn and the end of everything or the start of something new. But, what? Don’t want to teach. I want to make some money. I want some freedom. I want time to think without external pressures. I’m moving home for the duration because I have no place else to go. I don’t feel sorry for myself. I’m just in a kind of limbo. After a week of doing nothing, I’ll start looking for a job, something, anything, to keep body and soul together until I discover what’s inside me.
The graduation was strange. We were all in ill fitting mortarboard flat tops, wrapped in black bird-like cloaks as if we were disguised refugees from a police lineup. I was damn hot. I sweated. My mind wandered and I barely heard my name called to get my diploma. There were the usual pictures. My parents wept as much for themselves as they did for me. Then I changed into real clothing and brought my bags down to the car. We drove home in silence, still unconnected. There was more but that is all I want to say about the day. Perhaps there isn’t anything else that warrants comment. Except. Except I managed to escape the campus without saying goodbye to any classmates. I’ll probably never see any of them again and it’s just as well. I doubt any of them will miss me. Most of them had very little to do with my life. Looking at them seated under those crisp blue, cloudless skies, sitting there in static rows, their WASP selves encased in amber, dressed alike, combed and cut alike, smelling alike, thinking alike, it’s no wonder that I had very little to do with them.
Symphonies and poems. All are beautiful. They bring flights of imaginary sounds to me, to you. They bring songs and pictures to me separately. Yet they seem to come together as they twirl their mystic tops, as they spin and spin. Sometimes they spin ferociously. Sometimes their magic spins calmly, almost like invisible spirits. Imagination, mine and that of everyone else, holds important hope for survival in the world. The final hope, though, is still up for grabs.
©2008 Ron Steinman
Wed 24 Sep 2008
Posted by rmr under
Notebooks by Ron SteinmanComments Off
I can start over. I can build anew, now. I may only be for me. I have no girl, but I will find one—in time. The need is there because women are the greatest tension relievers and sounding boards who ever lived. They are useful and enjoyable, necessary for the house. Here are women at two for a quarter or on any street corner. Take a long look. Don’t touch. Step right up and make your choice. The Last Chance Saloon. Buy a beer. Get entangled with the most electrifying, delectable, enchanting beings ever created— sponsored by the greatest entrepreneur in existence.
“Go away boy, you bother me.”
The way I think is at times appalling. I should be ashamed of myself. You should be ashamed of yourself, is something my mother would say. But I never feel it for long. A long trip is in order. Where? I’ll be an old man before I finally figure myself out and I wonder if all the time spent will be worth it.
My daddy. My mommy. That’s how they want me to think of them. It’s who and what they are and they can’t forget it, even if I try my hardest to erase them from my life. I’m tired of puppet masters. I must pull my own strings. For once. For all.
In the middle of all my anguish I think about Carole again. What is she doing now? How is she doing it now? I miss her. Someday I may find her again. Maybe I’ll even look for her again. When I’m with her, I love her. When away from her, I miss her and I’m curious how she thinks of me even after seeing her and opening myself wide to her a short time ago. She could be in the arms of another now. Then she would have a hard time remembering me, who I am, who I was to her. I must be getting soft, a sentimentalist, a misplaced romantic. It can’t happen here. That’s what they all say. Who are they? It happened once, twice and if we are lucky it may happen a third time. If we are really lucky it will never happen again.
April 14, 1955. Brooklyn, New York. Two-fifteen in the morning. Another late night. Raw taste of beer. Dead cigarettes inhabit my mouth and throat. Shards of tobacco cling to my teeth. Raw taste of ugly emotion.
April 15, 1955. To write or not to write. Stream of consciousness.
A perplexing question. I write. A penny a word. Payable on demand. Balls.
Words: pleonasas, aulic, propitious, contiguous, tired (how did this get in here?), attrition, palimpsest, said (huh!), declared, stated, jejune, valetudinary, exacerbated. Words, words, words.
“The Company She Keeps.” Mary McCarthy. Should shake them up a bit on campus.
How many days until the end? Definitely not mine. How far can the cable car go without stretching the cable beyond its normal tension point? Torque tension drive cannot go without fuel, some kind of fuel. Is there a proper fuel for discourse drive, for the time-honored so-called treasures of shelled, hollow husks of physical beings, if that’s what we can call ourselves? Easy—nothingness.
Luther. Circular reasoning rarely gets participants into trouble, especially with themselves. Circles are circular and not square and when a man enters one of these geometric sets and closes the door behind him, if things go right, there is little doubt he will end exactly where he started. He will also run into the occasional paradox. That, too, is inevitable. Luther locked the door but by virtue of some very neat logical interpolation, he justified his enclosed, locked-in, swinging self. For the illogical, inconsistent thinker he is, he does an unusually fine job of rationalizing divine law, natural law (Scholastic in theory) and the relationship of the church and state. For me, and this is quite unfair, but I don’t care, my inference is again we are seeing the fallacy of simple logic. After all, I am Jewish and he is only Luther.
Carole answered my letter.
History, said Aristotle, represents things as they are, fiction as they ought to be. Tonight I met a woman who said she was born in a police station at the age of four. I think I heard her right. And if she is right, what then? There is something in that someplace but damned if I know what it is or means.
An idea is forming for something that I’ve wanted to do for some time. One man is talking, remembering, reflecting. Or he is reliving the experience in his mind. No. He is not, I think. Not exactly reliving but close to reality or as close as he wants to get. It is difficult for me to formulate the idea. I am tired. I need sleep. I can’t write now. I don’t want to write now. If I write, I will miss my badly needed sleep. The coming weekend might tell part of the story. What story? In truth, it is not the whole story. In reality I haven’t done anything yet to have proven myself. That will wait. Meanwhile, I’ll have to try to work out the ideas floating in my head. This is an important pursuit of mine.
Work on history as I have been doing. Time is drawing near. Try to read what is really important. But isn’t it all important? Discipline is most important.
I wonder how Carole will answer my last letter? It seems I’m always wondering what women will say to me in their letters. Usually they give up on me, figuring something is wrong with me. Or they don’t answer me at all. Some fun. It’s interesting, though, how women, the majority, do not really understand what I say. Or why. They can’t be all that stupid or am I so far above them? Am I? Nah. That can’t be it either. What is it? Am I the bad risk my parents believe? Yeah. I guess that’s it. My arms hurt. I’m, sleepy.
They all look alike, every one of them. There is not one bit of difference between them. Look at them hard. Look at them carefully. Hey, just look. They walk. They swing their arms. They move their feet. They swing back and forth, a step forward, always forward. When they run away from you, they continue to move forward. Faster.
Hey, wait for me. Where you going, huh? Geez, I don’t know but come away with me anyway. We may find out a thing or two.
They went. I watched them go. They are two halves of a whole. One not knowing the other and the other half knowing, which isn’t really anything like the sum of its parts “knowing.” They went: side by side, forward, forward. Always forward. Never backward. Restless. The two always are moving ahead. A straight line.
Are we almost there?
No. We are not.
Are we half way there?
No.
Then where the hell are we?
I’m tired. The journey is too much, too rushed. Please tell me where we are.
I don’t know. I really don’t but, you know, you know I wish you knew.
Let’s continue. We must go forward.
Turn your back on the others and lets get our asses out of here.
On the BMT Brighton line to 42nd Street. I’m going out to play alone fortified by six glasses of beer. Schaeffer is on tap.
Four girls sitting together on the subway, huddled against the varnished wicker seats. They can say more about nothing than one hundred men—at least, from the point of view of one hundred men. They talk. Ultimately they walk and that is good to watch. Still they say nothing, or nothing I can hear them saying. Happy little useful creatures how I wish you were only more so, plus or minus. Four must be a female number. They move with each other tonight. They hold only to each other tightly for fear if they move or separate from each other they will perish from this earth. Clinging vines. Old and new wine. Seething teeth. Huge sides of beef. Coral reef.
Club Metronome at 52nd Street and 7th Avenue. Swinging people, what there is of them. Place is mostly empty but the people at the bar are okay. All of them are at ease, at least on the outside. Hope they make it whatever they do, whatever they are up to. The stage is small. The acoustics are poor. Yeah. Joe DeRies swings as does Vickie Carrol. Don’t press for drinks, I tell myself, because I will soon run out of money. Nurse your beer. Dashes, not words, fill the lines.
Later. What do I know best? Good question because it immediately asks what do I know at all, of anything, of nothing, of something? For my purposes, all for the moment will be the same. I will weed this out another time.
Middle class money.
Middle class ethics.
Jewish home.
Jewish family.
Anti-Semitism.
Conservative home thus begets conservative parents.
Sports. Street sports. Roller hockey. Stick ball.
Brooklyn—When growing up—the neighborhood, the streets.
Brooklyn—The kids.
Brooklyn—The Bigger Kids. The block bully.
Trial. Error.
Drink. Confusion.
A whore.
Balls. That lousy drunk finally catches up with me after being on my tail for about six or seven blocks. Man, let me tell you, he is one cat I just do not want to have anything to with, ever. It is a drag, like really obnoxious. Sickening. If he ever changes his clothing, even takes a bath, he will become a candidate for a presidential citation from that dame in Washington who runs the Health Department. I feel a saint compared to him. Of all the bums to discover me, he is the worst. He smells like horses. He must have been sleeping in the stables at Prospect Park and Caton, near a rare traffic circle in Brooklyn.
Clash of values. Father and Son. Conservative middle class father. Arguments that never end. Quiet mother who says nothing. Everything implied. Suppressing violent emotions. Son striving for independence. Father stuck in a rut. In the past. Clash, clash, clash. Old world and new world. But old world is not old in reality. It is old world, as derived from old European world. Father says, son do this. Son says, yes. Then, pop! Son decides he wants to do what he wants. His life. Hell with others. Son remains tied to parents and past because they are his endowment. They are deep inside him. There is little he can do to exorcize them. So there it is, the basic conflict between parents and parents, and between son and son. Within themselves. Within himself.
Now the problem is how to resolve the question. Introspection plays a major part in the confrontation. Son is at a point where he is the only one who can help himself. He becomes reconciled to his fate. In any event, he decides to sever diplomatic relations at home and take off to foreign points, points unknown, or something. No longer is he facing a decision about the basic issue causing the split with his parents. School? Choice of profession? It is tied with elementary middle class Jewish psychology, strangling him slowly.
Change is sudden but it has been building for many years. Son doesn’t think clearly how to tell his parents of his apparent, sudden change. He has to approach them carefully and gently but he doesn’t know how to handle them when he does finally face them. He blurts everything in haste, anger and confusion. Shock on part of parents follows. Argument follows shock. There is no meeting of minds. Emotions and perceptions are too far apart. For the moment, the son is also confused, bewildered, bitter, cynical, skeptical. Wildly so. A young man who believes he is wise in certain ways, doubtful in many others, puzzled with most of what he faces. He is fighting everything: society, his friends, girls, his parents mainly, and above all, himself.
After all this, the least I can do is send a Mother’s Day card. Jeezuz.
The street. My street. Streets I grew up on. I walk alone. Abandoned objects are on the street. There are too many things on the street that affect me, the walker. Dirt theme. Impassive. Unmoving. Embodiment of static, of non-dynamic, anti-intellectualism. Pound. Pound. Glorify it. Wind blowing all the garbage. Heavy feet, light feet. Light head—whore for all, mistress of none.
Magnificent. It knows of all things, yet allows no one to know it. Subjected to everything, yet it doesn’t allow others to know anything. It always remains emotionally the same yet it changes continuously, but only in a physical sense. People move over it, walking, crawling, running — over it. The street can care less. It’s the only real unity of life. It’s not in the Dark Ages but it may be Medieval because it’s static, it’s in chains. It has no desire for change but we change it anyway. Progress goes on and it remains emotionally the same. Life rises and falls around it, on it. Wine runs in its gutters. Our blood is heavily cast on it, over it, staining it permanently. Marching feet pass over it, forever. The street has one name, sometimes many names, names created over time, some political, others frivolous. Everyone wants control over it. It wants control over nothing. We use it without permission. Those with passports need not apply. It looks askance at the user.
Man cannot alter its foundation, weather and time withstanding. It’s the sounding board for everyone. All desecrate it. It has no respect from anyone. It does nothing, accepting all comers playing the role of a loyal servant forever in bondage. The great and not so great have walked on it and over it. It’s faithful to each of its owners in turn. Rarely is it worshiped. Consecrating it would be the epitome of all man’s striving. The crowning achievement. The end of all life, love, happiness. It takes everything in its stride.
The trials it has withstood would have been enough to destroy any mortal, any being, anything in creation. It has managed to survive, ready to receive the vicissitudes of life, death, destruction, struggle passion, and red, red, wine. The street never forgets when the wine flowed, when heads rolled, when. . .
May 10, 1955. Easton, Pennsylvania, 11:35 p.m. Why must mysteries always seem to plague me? Is it because I question and therefore invite problems which must fall in the category of the mystery because they remain unanswered? That must be it. Because of my concern, I put myself into situations that perplex me. Perhaps I would be better off if I didn’t think of those matters that could and do generate problems.
If I were a mechanic, a laborer, any man who works with his hands instead of his head, I would not have a life that would lead me to my place in the universe. I don’t have the answer why this is important to me, why I have to discover what that spot is and where it can be found. It’a important. Everything that I do centers on me. Is that wrong? Where? Why? When? How? Etc. I’m upset because I never come up with an answer. Sometimes I think I have the answer. Sometimes I think the answer will be found in others. If so, I would then be prepared to accept their theory. What will happen when a new generation evolves? I can’t believe the new generation or even parts of it will ingest the past. It will go seeking in its own way, trying to fathom its place in this, our expanding universe.
The question of place, of position, seems possible only for those who embrace religion, philosophy (either political or spiritual) or some form of physical escape that often includes self abuse. All, in their own way, are mental crutches. Don’t accept anything too profound. Don’t be too concerned with another’s plight. Don’t give a damn. I can’t be that way. I’m still looking and I’m still unsatisfied with what I see, including what’s inside me. I’m still trying for the brass ring. Maybe I’ll never capture it like other people. Possibly it’s my destiny to search forever, to never solve the mystery of why, when, where and how. Somehow the simple things also count and my goal may ultimately be found in love.
Simple/complex.
May 11, 1955. It shall come out of thin air. (Sounds like H.G. Wells.) Let it flow for itself. (Sounds like a musician on pot.) Let it bring forth anything that is present and alive in the innermost portals of my immature mind. Flow, damn, flow.
Contrast between something untouched and something touched.
Trying to do a story on someone I know. Explain to him that some ideas come from him but it’s really not about him. Who, then? A man has immersed himself in fear, too deeply in self, in conceit and distrust. Tell him that a good part of the situation stems from him and from others in the same position. It doesn’t reflect on his reality because it’s something that I can only guess. It’s also as much about me as it’s about him, about anyone. Finally, it’s about a search for place, for peace, for truth.
©2008 Ron Steinman
Tue 23 Sep 2008
Posted by rmr under
PhotographyComments Off
LEICA S2 – Remarkable new camera from Germany redefines the professional DSLR class with a custom 37.5-megapixel, 30 x 45 mm sensor built into a 35mm-sized body.
Some companies tweak the features. At Leica, we transform the concept. That’s why the
introduction of the flagship Leica S2 is not merely an incremental advance. It is nothing less
than a watershed event that sets an entirely new performance standard for professional
digital SLRS. With a custom 37.5-megapixel, 30 x 45 mm sensor that is 56% larger than full
frame, it establishes parameters of imaging excellence that are well beyond those obtainable
by conventional pro-caliber DSLRs.
In the Leica tradition, it utilizes the classic 3:2 aspect ratio that corresponds to the human
field of vision and is widely acclaimed as the “Leica Format.”In designing this brilliant newcamera, Leica’s engineers took a close look at the best existing DSLR designs and then
synergized them into a radical but practical new camera thatcombines the performance
parameters of a medium-format digital camera with theergonomics, form factor, and handling
ease of a 35mm SLR. The result is the new Leica S2, an entirely new, finely crafted,
professional tool developed in-house by Leica with hands-on input from some of the most
renowned professional photographers in the world. It incorporates an advanced new dual
shutter system with in-body focal-plane shutter for fast lenses, and in-lens leaf shutters for
high flash sync speeds, an ultra-high-precision autofocusing system, a new series of lenses
designed for the highest possible performance with the new sensor, and a Maestro image
processing system that provides twice the speed of comparable medium-format backs,
reduces power consumption, and provides in-camera JPEG capability. Remarkably, all of this
has been incorporated into a camera that is smaller than a full-size professional 35mm SLR,
and still has the unmistakable look and feel of a Leica.Like Leica cameras of the past, we
designed the new Leica S2 from the inside out, and its robust styling is a classic example
of form following function. We began with a cutting-edge, large-format CCD sensor and
literally configured the camera around it rather than adapting existing technologies. In this
way we achieved a new level of performance without sacrificing
size or convenience.
Mon 15 Sep 2008
Posted by rmr under
PhotographyComments Off
Editor’s note: the following is excerpted information from the news release for Leica’s much anticipated upgrade to their M8 digital rangefinder camera.
The new LEICA M8.2 integrates a new extra-quiet, low-vibration metal blade focal plane shutter which allows the photographer to determine the right moment for cocking. This addition brings the digital LEICA M8.2 extremely close to the ideal of the famous rubber cloth focal plane shutter of its analog sisters. Responding to the request of many professional photographers, the new model has been given an even more inconspicuous design: the Leica dot and the accessory shoe now blend in with the color of the camera. The black version of the camera boasts a new extra durable high-quality deep black finish.
The new snapshot mode will appeal to all who want exceptional results immediately without having a vast knowledge about photography. If the shutter speed dial is turned to the new “S“ setting, the camera controls all the key features automatically, such as automatic exposure (aperture priority), automatic ISO speed setting and automatic white balance. For the three most commonly used subject modes, the LEICA M8.2 gives suggestions on aperture and focus settings, which can be seen when the “INFO” button on the camera monitor is pressed. Portable information can be found on the new brief waterproof instructions which can be folded to the size of a credit card.
The automatic ISO setting can be selected in all operation modes of the LEICA M8.2. Another new feature is a quick override setting: When the shutter release button is sustained as far as the first pressure point, a correction of +/- 3 stops in 1/3 steps can be made with the dial on the back of the camera. The setting is shown in the viewfinder. Further modifications include a more pronounced detent mechanism of the main switch of the camera to prevent inadvertent activation of the self-timer, and redesign of the bright line frames in the viewfinder to allow more precise determination of the picture frame for longer distances.
The new LEICA M8.2 is the first professional digital camera to use an ultra scratch-resistant sapphire crystal as coverglass for the camera monitor. It is so hard that it is repaired exclusively with special diamond tools and is permanently resistant to all mechanical or abrasive stress. The camera also has a new easy-grip and specially robust “vulcanite“ finish.
The new compact charger unit is designed to take up a minimum of space in the photograper’s bag, and charges the lithium ion battery to 80% in only an hour and a half. This is sufficient for an average of 400 exposures, so that recharging the camera in a very short time is possible, especially when the full 500 exposures is not utilized.
The new LEICA M8.2 has inherited the superior image quality of the LEICA M8, resulting from the combination of the legendary M lenses with a CCD image sensor specially designed for the requirements of the Leica M system and high-performance image processing. The new Capture One 4 raw data converter of the Danish manufacturer Phase One ensures the best possible picture quality in the camera’s DNG mode. Unlike any other digital camera, the LEICA M8.2 is compatible with almost all Leica M system lenses produced since 1954 due to their high standard of performance.
Like its predecessors, the new LEICA M8.2 continues in the tradition of easy operation, concentration on the essential, few controls and logical, easy-to-follow menus.
The LEICA M8 launched in the fall of 2006 is still available as an alternative to the new LEICA M8.2. Following a tradition of the Leica company that is unique in the world of digital photography, many elements of the new LEICA M8.2 can even be integrated into the LEICA M8: the shutter, the sapphire coverglass or the new viewfinder frames can be retrofitted by Customer Service.
Mon 15 Sep 2008
Posted by rmr under
Videojournalism and MultimediaComments Off
Drew Carey takes us on a guided tour of Second Life (SL), a virtual world with more than 500,000 residents. This short documentary was produced by Paul Feine and edited by The Digital Filmmaker’s Roger M. Richards.
Second Life isn’t your typical virtual world. Unlike other popular massively multiplayer online role-playing games, like EverQuest and World of Warcraft, there are no defined roles or objectives in SL. Just like in real life, SL residents determine their own goals and decide for themselves how best to achieve them. Moreover, virtually everything in SL was created by the residents themselves using tools provided by Linden Lab, the company that launched SL in 2003.SL is based on a simple set of institutional arrangements that would make F.A. Hayek proud. In essence, the people who own the property in SL make the rules. The result is a spontaneously ordered world in which residents are free to fly, teleport, build, trade and interact with others without interference from the state.
Recently, Linden Lab—the SL equivalent of a state—has begun acting more and more like a real life government by restricting activities such as gambling. But open source competitors based on the SL platform are currently in development. so better virtual worlds offering even more freedom are just around the corner.
Mon 15 Sep 2008
Posted by rmr under
FilmmakingComments Off
The headline reads: “The Dark Knight swing past $500,000,000 in tickets worldwide.”
I grew up when Batman was a mere comic book character and, at that, a flawed superhero who sometimes ran with a sidekick, a kid named Robin. None of us wanted to be Robin and if you asked then and also asked now, I could not tell you why. With my friends, I wanted to be Batman because he seemed closest to being real. Or better, Plastic Man, but that is another story. Batman wore a protective suit. He drove a powerful car. Sure, he could fly, but sometimes not very well. He had his bat cave, unrequited love, a fanciful disguise and won his battles by cleverness, strength of purpose, and drive, meaning he outsmarted and outlasted the bad guys. Incidentally, those bad guys were unique, not quite loveable, and easy to hate. It was easy to tell the black hats from the white hats, good from evil. Now along comes director Christopher Nolan and in his two Batman films, he changes the ground rules and effectively removes our empathy for Batman. I am not sure it is for the best, or, more pointedly, the best for my original take on that heroic crime fighter from my youth. In fairness, before Nolan’s two films, the franchise faced death. That is no longer the case.
Despite all the changes, and box office success, this latest entry in the Batman cannon “The Dark Knight” is in some ways a massive failure. The film is loud. It is dark. It makes little or no sense. Yes, it is a fantasy and as such it does not have to make sense to be entertaining. The driving music helps keep the viewer tense beyond reason. Too much happens too quickly. The Joker with his crew plant bombs with impunity. Explosions blow up everything at will. All the characters, good, bad and indifferent, migrate from point to point as if they were transplants from a Star Trek transporter. Yes, I know and understand the movie is a fantasy and anything can happen when you suspend disbelief.
Most of the actors are dull, lifeless, and unconvincing, including and mainly Christian Bale as Batman. Next time Mr. Bale, I would appreciate a bit more emotion, please. Of course, that remarkable performance by Heath Ledger as the Joker, mad as all get out, and very weirdly funny is the only character in the movie with a personality, except for Aaron Eckhart, who has a delicious insane turn in a movie where most everything is predictable and for all that noise and action, actually dull. While watching the film I sometimes wondered what other movies some of the other the actors had wandered in from. Many of scenes felt as if they were strung together only because they seemed like a good fit and in the context of a messy film, it did not matter that a piece of action made little or no sense as long as the action never flagged. And, by the way, it never does.
Christopher Nolan’s pseudo intellectualism is the sort that 15-year-old boys wallow in after they learn that all in the world is not what it seems. Video games only add to the confused philosophy of life that inhabits our young. This is true especially when a person can find anything on the Internet to energize a mind that more likely than not overflows with too much potted junk anyway. Nolan, it seems, wants us to believe that the way of the world is a world gone mad, a world in constant chaos, a world mired in hopelessness where evil is good and good is evil. Because of this confusion, morality is non-existent. There is no civility in Gotham City. The people who live there think Batman is out of control, a villain and vigilante. Nolan revels in the hopeless that for some accompanies life in the big city. We have to ask ourselves if Christopher Nolan’s cynicism should be our way of life in a world we cannot control.
Think of the end of the movie with the Joker hanging off the side of a building, facing Batman who finally has his enemy at his mercy. Batman has the opportunity to kill this madman who has been trampling Gotham City with impunity. The Joker taunts Batman and effectively says you can’t kill me because you don’t have the courage to see me die. The Joker may be right. Batman leaves the Joker hanging and runs off to do what he considers his duty elsewhere. Despite this moral dilemma, by allowing the Joker to live, a sequel is sure to come. The box office beckons. And who says Hollywood doesn’t know what it is doing.
When I saw the movie, the audience was attentive and very quiet, except for the occasional intake of breath during an exciting sequence, or a barely suppressed giggle whenever the Joker appeared. I can only guess that the audience assumed it was watching art instead of succumbing to clever commerce.
Just because what we call entertainment, in this case a Hollywood film, makes a lot of money and has a huge and growing audience does mean that it is great. The Dark Knight has all the flaws I mentioned and more. Perhaps Christopher Nolan knows whereof he speaks and his mixed message is the right one in an uncertain world. In a age where terror lies around every corner and in which military might does not often succeed in fighting fanaticism, with extra effort I can understand why the audience is rushing to see a movie where good and bad are not opposites but the same side of a single coin. More and more it seems to be the way of the world. It doesn’t make Christopher Nolan and his writer’s right, but it may make their muddled mess so.
Some may think I do not get it. They may be right, though I think you are not. Really there is not that much to get, and except for a cynical take on life, there is little to hold the movie together. It is a tribute to 21st Century blockbuster movie making, but that is all it is and nothing more.
©Ron Steinman
Mon 15 Sep 2008
Posted by rmr under
Notebooks by Ron SteinmanComments Off
Have I exhausted everything? Has everything that grew and might continue to grow, flown the coop? I sometimes wonder, especially when I sit damn patiently waiting for inspiration, for something to happen that will move me off the dime. It’s not really inspiration, but creative genius used to its best advantage. Sure. Nothing comes, and all I can think of is passion. Sex. Passion. Getting laid. Of lying in bed with a woman and feeling her closeness, her warmth and achieving mutual orgasm, if only once, only for a moment. Nothing happens. Still I wait. I sit and wait. I tell myself soon the waiting will be over. Then there will be action on all fronts. No matter how good it feels I am tired of jerking off my mind and body.
Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn— a neighborhood I rarely enter, a neighborhood I hardly know. I walk down the street looking for the right address. I have it on a small piece of newspaper— the white part at the top, the empty part. I finally find it crumbled in the pocket of my shirt. In what is fast becoming a habit, a now familiar scene, I walk up the steps to ring the bell so I can get in. Since losing her, or better yet, since I denied her and we denied each other, I have not been the same. I dated, but I hardly took anyone out more than twice unless they were willing to go down regularly, which sometimes but honestly rarely happened. Slowly I tired of blind dates. Trite, yes, they had become a bore and took too much out of me. I lived by my emotions as much as the next guy. There was no one who could feel what I did, who could sustain the self pity, who could give me the understanding I badly needed. The past is long ago, at least for me at my age. I wondered what she is doing, how she is doing—if she is happy. That and other thoughts go through my head, my searching head. I reach the top of the landing and place my finger onto the raised button. I ring the bell. I shuffle my feet. I’m nervous, just apprehensive. I’d become a specialist on blind dates. I’m a seeing eye-dog that crawls on two legs chained by my own desires and feelings of being lost. Hell, I know I am lonely. I straighten my tie, look down at my carefully polished shoes, an event itself, and manage a self-induced, wan smile. I’m practicing. It has become difficult for me to be Jewish-nice, especially when I have to be false, have to be a phony. Good the whole world could exist that way and good that I knew it.
The door opens and there she stands in all her finery. I have been reading too many Western novels, seeing too many Western movies. All her finery. I, my heart, jumps. No. No. It cannot be. It is impossible. She starts to speak, but she says nothing. It is suddenly a game. She catches my impossible-to-hide signal and pretends she does not know me. We say hello like strangers. We are stiff. I shake her hand like in a French film, not to be formal but only to hold her fingers and feel her warm skin. It has been so long. I say you are pretty. My first words. You have such lovely eyes and your smile is an ad man’s dream. She smiles and says, one moment. She grabs her coat, slams, then locks the door and we fly down the stairs. She hands me her key and says that I should hold it. Everything is formal except those first words from my dry mouth. I couldn’t speak then if my life depended on it. My name is the same but she had changed hers, I thought. Or is it a trick, a game on her part, something I want to believe, knowing her name is really still the same?
I couldn’t take my eyes from her face.
I feasted on her once, twice, again and more. She finally breaks the silence.
It’s been so long, she says.
Bring me up to date, please, I say.
I’ve missed you so much. You’ll never know how much I’ve missed you, she says.
It seems like ages, I say.
And it was, I thought.
Good line, she says.
Ages, I say. Again, to myself. Ages: rock of, concert for. Nuts, I say. Lets say it’s felt like forever.
Forever is a long time, she says.
So is love, I say. So is life, I say. If you want it to be, I say. So is infinity, I think.
Damn them all, we say, almost in unison.
It hurts. I’m the hurting kind, or didn’t you know, I say. I’m a slow healer. The scars are still red and raw. They remain. They still burn. They sting.
She looked at me. You’ve changed again. Always changing, she says. Can’t you slow down and catch up to yourself just for once?
I’d like nothing better but it’s a roller coaster life. My heart is forever in Coney Island.
My mother always thought you were adorable, she says.
Out of character for you. Since when do you compliment anyone? Not your style. Not normal for you.
She moves away just a bit and then smiles her ginger smile. It’s not very hard with you, she says. You are not people. You are just special people. So there. There’s your compliment. Fight me if you can.
I’ll slap you down, I said—not really meaning it. Not hard, but only hard enough to try and kiss your lips away, to regain what we lost — if possible, I say. I want to grab your waist and squeeze until you disappear; pluck your eyes out and mount them in platinum; make a silken robe of your long hair; use your teeth for a necklace; smother myself with the gentle fairness of your skin. Perhaps then I will sleep at night.
Pretty speech, she says. She starts toward me, almost floating. She seems serious, not her usual cynical self. I detect a strange sincerity in her. It is something new. I don’t continue. My voice is hoarse. I am a changeling in puberty, still not twenty-one.
I know you pretty well, she says. Although I haven’t seen you much these past three years, I think back on all the situations we were in at the time. We didn’t know what to do with each other. We were too young and too much in love. I really wonder how well I knew you? It may not have been that well, after all, but still, some things do remain. Some things don’t ever change. You served me once in a way that frightened me. You were too much for me, wanted too much from me.
I wasn’t right or ready for you then, I say. We were both so young and as trite as that sounds, it was and is true.
You were crazy. You asked me to marry you. How would we have lived? We were both still in high school. Neither one of us knew where we were going, what we were doing. So we split up. I found a guy who left me alone. He didn’t know how to touch me, though to give me what I needed. That made my life simple. Then I got bored with him because he didn’t have any imagination, or at least not enough for me. He’s gone. Now I’m back. And though I used dishonest means to see you I hope you won’t run from me the way I once ran from you, she says.
I look at her, locking my eyes with hers. I want to inflict hurt and not be hurt this time but I also want to take what she offers, if the offer is genuine. Her look begins to destroy me. It destroyed me the first day I saw her when she was only thirteen and I was fifteen. Here it was almost eight years later and we still couldn’t separate our lives. My pride vanished when she left me. Vanquished, I tried hiding it but in doing so I tortured myself. I blamed everything on her. My poor work in school. My lapses into rebellion. My awful relations with my parents. My cynicism. My sarcasm. My drinking. The huge chip that I wore on my shoulder, so heavy it almost bent me in two.
I blamed everything on you because I loved you so much. Sure, some if it had been there anyway, the amount impossible to figure. Ignore it. Pay it no mind. I have a fear of really letting myself go. You recognized it years ago. I found an easy excuse to build a wall around myself. I always did everything against convention while inside I suffered because everything I did, I did against my Jewish middle class upbringing. Only lately have some things changed enough for me to break what had become my norm and not feel guilty about it. I was in a chasm for a long time but now I’m pretty well out of those depths. My future still is doubtful because I feel there’s nobody to care with me—at least inside my reality. It boils down to being my own boss, to do, think, feel and act as I please. I enjoy it, most of the time. I figure I’m nuts but I’m trying to cultivate it and use it to its best advantage. And of course, my best advantage.
She looks at me and says, I love you. She says she missed me and wanted me now, sooner than later. I tell her I had missed her terribly. I found her key in her small purse and we turned back to the apartment house in which she lived. We walked quietly, knowing that we were starting something again that this time would have a different middle and end, though the cast of characters was the same as it had always been.
April 12, 1955. Easton, Pennsylvania. One-thirty in the morning. After that night with Carole I must write her the loveliest of love letters. It is as it is and I am now beyond redemption.
April 13, 1955. Another day breaks, only this time seemingly more slowly than the last. It is wet and dreary. The rain, though not heavy, steadily falls, playing its floating dance through space as a nymph on a high. Roofs suck in all the lonely water. Roofs allow the water to fall off so the earth can receive that gift from heaven. All things belong to nature—some directly, others indirectly. All things return to nature, even man, even men. But that is a long time away.
Brooklyn for the weekend and a bad experience.
I try to keep calm when I look at them. It is too late. That’s all I can say. My head is pounding, my hands are wet and all I can say is no. No. My father blows up at me, becoming more angry by the second, angry as only he could get. My mother sits still, as usual. Very still. She says nothing, but she is thinking, I knew, I told you so, I told you so. Nobody, seems to understand, particularly them, my parents. Suddenly I am tired. Too much thinking, too much beer, too much worrying. I am too young to have this burden. It is unfair. You won’t hear me out, he says. How can I hear anything when he shouts the way he does? Instead I turn slowly, looking at them again and tell them as calmly as I can, no. I open the kitchen door and go up to my attic room. Throwing off my coat, I turn on the wall and kick it. The rotting, ancient plaster crumbles from my heavy foot. I take off my shoe and rub my swelling toe. I hurt badly, but it feels good.
For some reason I don’t scream. My throat clogs from despair, my head spins. I sweat heavily, it being moist and muggy. Why me? Possibly these are words to a song. How common. How trite. Others may wallow in their own pity but do I have to wallow and slosh around like the rest? I’m different. I am different. I try convincing myself. Can’t they? No. They. All. The world. It is stinking, lousy, vermin-filled, without sight. They are blind. The world is blind. Only I can see. I cry out. God! Then I stop. God? What has he ever done for me? Where is he when I need him? Faith? It’s for fools. That’s it—a slogan: Faith for fools, faith for fools. Damn them all and their weak need for crutches and walking sticks without pearl handles and long blades secretly enclosed in false outer coverings. I have my own crutch—me. I’ve leaned on them, my parents, for too long, making it high time I move to be on my own. Yes. Nice words coming from the mouth of a milk-fed calf who has been all but fattened and ready for slaughter. Be prepared. This calf may just be a bit smarter than the others. I may escape. My only question—is it time? Time means so very much. Time. Measured by clocks invented by lonely monks who had nothing better to do but to measure time. I hate clocks. The crunching noise under my one shoe, the one shoe still on my foot, brings me up sharp, waking me to reality. I move my leg gingerly to observe, all too late, the remains of my crushed wrist watch lying there dead, never again to utter its incessant, terrifying sound. I understand it, time, perhaps the watch, would return, that it would never leave me. I am cursed with time hanging over me. I become indignant. I’m blessed and I am the blessed, a strong man among the meek. Have I done wrong by denying my parents? Was it such a great sin to sever stupid middle class customs and decide what I wanted no matter whether it is right in their eyes? It didn’t mean anything that there is no resolution. I feel like a pioneer, a hero among men, or at least among my friends. In the eyes of many, especially my parent’s generation, I am about to commit suicide, morally or otherwise. But for me it is moral rejuvenation.
© Ron Steinman
Mon 15 Sep 2008
Posted by rmr under
Notebooks by Ron SteinmanComments Off
It’s easier to take disappointment, a failure, defeat, censure, when you are pessimistic. Praise is more heartily felt when in that state of mind. Praise is the unexpected and it means much more under those circumstances. When you are too optimistic you are hurt and disillusioned if everything doesn’t go the way you want it. Naturally, being too much of the one and not the other causes its own problems. There must be balance between the two states of mind. Realizing that both exist is necessary. Try and strike a mean between the two for one’s own well being and for the sake of others in your orbit. Otherwise, nothing is any good for anyone.
Add xenophobia.
This date is impossible to read on this page. Maybe it is at the end of February. Wilderness rears its prolific head, loosens a yawn, rolls itself around, awakens. Spring is here, so says the almanac. I ask, why don’t we call it winter because the cold lingers? Derived from use, probably some ancient and fanciful term. It comes, anyway, like a breath of something newly born. Call it a rebirth. Once a year. Here we have the second coming enacted every year on schedule. Do we really need anything else? Do we need more?
Easton, Pennsylvania. Early March, 1955. Promulgated. Juxtaposed.
“Our society is not harmonious. It is antagonistic and the state will always be the ultima ratio.” So says Newman sounding a great deal like Hobbes.
Charismatic.
More grad school thoughts. From now on I’ll prepare for a position in formal or informal education. Or. I’ll prepare, from now on, for a position in the area of formal or informal education directed primarily toward audiovisual aides.
Objectives: What position do you want?
What position would you like to hold ten years from now? Columbia wants to know this. Also, get advisement sheet for Master’s Candidates.
So again I sit and wait for something to happen. Why must things always happen? Unless things happened there would be no truth and unless things did not happen as things do . . . It’s inevitable. Pick an answer. Assuming I can. March is nearly finished.
It feels different. It’s not central. It’s only peripheral to the center and part of my core. It’s also obviously my massive insecurity. We are all insecure. Few of us are willing to admit it and fewer of us when we do realize it do anything to alleviate the omnipresent situation which presses its incessant self forever inward and, conversely, thence outward. Maybe I should burn all the notebooks. Burn these most revealing thoughts of my most intimate nature. Out of selflessness or selfishness? Maybe out of the realization they are worth very little, hardly worth the paper I’m scribbling on. But I guess I’m chicken to let a part of me go so soon, considering how little I’ve written. For now I’ll continue at the pace I’m recording.
An idea floating in my head is something I call, The Education of a Pagan. Early life. Later life. Once dead or the afterlife. Balls. If only I had more time, some more decent time.
Finished reading James Jones, “From Here to Eternity.” I can’t call it a great book. Very little is great, really, and that’s my critique for the day, especially over a glass of beer. Parts of it moved me but the total impact was tough and compelling.
March 26, 1955. Though I have started writing fiction I am unhappy with most of what I put on paper. I like the ideas but the execution is poor. I don’t know if I can become a writer of value. The act of writing is important to me. Do I continue these notebooks after I graduate? Do I get bigger books? I want to keep filling pages with ideas. Someday they will come back to free me. My thoughts work faster than my ability to write them. My thoughts are many jumps ahead of the mechanics of writing. I suspect the process works the same with everyone. If nothing else, I must find out if I can write. Do I burn these notebooks when I am older? Is that selfish or self-protective?
Notebook entry early April 1955. Easton. I smudged the date and time. I am sitting in a hovel in Easton on the hill, near the college. It’s a dive serving terrible food, bottled beer, mostly Rolling Rock in its green skin. The room, smelling from stale hops has too many sloppy, nondescript people. I refuse to count how many are sitting in here on this early spring day. I, too, am sitting and waiting for what I call some strange, hoped for inspiration. Someone is playing pinball. Bells ring. Buzzers buzz. Greasy American cheese sandwiches are sizzling on a small grill. The television set blares. Voices blather beneath the sounds in the bar. Everything in this place is moving forcefully and with a strange, stark strength. All are in contrast with me, a man not moving, going nowhere fast.
Shave every day. Drink no beer during the week. Eat light and eliminate starch. Drink beer on the weekend. Go to bed early. Sometimes. I must get up early because I have an eight o’clock class. Or is it at seven fifty-five? Try for confidence and not insecurity.
April 5, 1955. Easton, Pennsylvania. A memory of Brooklyn. Real? Imagined?
They caught up to them earlier and wiped them out, neatly. Again they beat me badly and left me for dead. I staggered up from the ground, wandered around, then passed out. My lips were like pulp, my nose demolished, my eyes like slits, bloody and a mess, when I walked into the pool room over the Leader Theater on Coney Island Avenue. A few guys dropped their cue sticks. Others could hardly move. They were in shock. After their brief agony, they ran to me. They carried me over to a pool table and roughly swept the balls aside to make room for me. They laid me out and started working to clean me. I could hardly move. I didn’t protest. I said nothing. Yes, I still lived. Go figure. They didn’t ask what happened. They knew. They lived there with a grapevine more wonderful and efficient than any set of jungle drums. After they managed to piece me together, they got me very drunk, took me to my parent’s home, rang the doorbell, propped me against the door, ran around the corner and watched me fall inside the house as they heard the stunned and terrified scream of my mother.
The next day, word went out to the pool halls and pizza joints to stay far away from me. Anyway, the shape I was in, I couldn’t retaliate for some time.
Meanwhile, things were happening in the neighborhood. A leader of an opposing gang, the gang that beat me, was found almost dead. I had nothing to do with it. His girlfriend had been gang raped; her face slashed. My bunch stayed out of it. To make sure we kept some kind of peace, we signed treaties with just about every clique we found. We were safe if we walked in groups of at least four. We still had to worry about the cops so we started being good boys. The heat was on and for good reason. Many joined the army. It was the easy way out. Two got married. Several got hooked on drugs. Others were caught breaking the law and some went to jail, their lives stretched out in an endless stream of empty days and nights.
As for me, I returned to school.
Far fetched? Don’t be too sure. All of this did take place on the streets of Brooklyn: Foster Avenue, Newkirk Avenue, Ocean Parkway, Ocean Avenue, the numbered streets and the side streets. It happened in the cheap, rundown bars that served minors because they seemed to have most of the money. It happened in the dimly lit pool halls along dying Coney Island Avenue. It happened in the school yards surrounded by chain-link fences deserted by teachers the minute the sun went down. It happened in the movie theaters with their back rows deep in used condoms, bloody, sanitary napkins, the smell of old popcorn, discarded gum and heaps of crushed cigarettes.
It took place one way or another, and it will continue taking place. It’s happening all the time now, only worse, with new twists, new inventions, new fears, new thrills. The past continues to repeat itself.
April 7, 1955. New York. The Chi-Chi Club is in a midtown Manhattan hotel. What the hell was I doing there? How did I get out of there and eventually home? On the subway, yet.
Idea. A car starts. End of idea
Nothing. Nothing. I wished there would be something else in my life. A car starts. Again. A car starts. A plane drones its lazy way across the sky. An excited cat screams its terrifying howl. A door slams its last slam. I walked into my apartment. The trip made me tired. It had been a long trip, too long for so short a distance. I was more than visibly upset. Kings and queens. Fops: Damn them all, each of them. I looked at the guests seated for dinner and smiled politely. Hellos flew, bounced off the walls, settled comfortably in the overstuffed chairs and onto the people like lichen. I knew I was home.
Was it for the last time? Maybe. Though probably not. I went upstairs with my one small bag, threw off my traveling clothing and washed. I went downstairs to eat. Crap. The same junk. Sure it was holiday, whatever that meant, though I knew its meaning, but so what. Where was the steak? No steak. It is holiday. Oh, yeah. I almost forgot where I was. Lose all track of time up there, I guess. A question. An answer. Glasses clink. Go to hell—silently. They couldn’t even make it up there where I spend most of my time. Reason my way out of destiny. Fate. Ordered system. Tension. Stress. Strain, pull and tug. Exit, entrance, entrance, exit. Circles, squares. Up and at them! My mother called for the sixth time. Be polite. Answer directly and quietly. Yes, the trip was lousy. The weather, worse. Note—the well-matched company had no choice but to end hating each other by the end of the line. But cramped buses are always like that.
The crowded room I entered had all sorts of faces: big ones, medium ones, black ones, yellow ones, white ones, brown ones. But mostly they were white faces. I couldn’t imagine how they all got inside that one tiny space. What were they doing there, together, all mixed up, not noticing each other, separated by a kitchen between two big, overstuffed rooms? Each room was the same as the other, yet they were different. One room had the drinks, one had dancing, both had people. Both really had people. Both had dancing. Both had drinking. Both had dining, dabbling, dames, devils, demons, dears, dilettantes. The rooms became so crowded with crowds of people I could hardly move from one to the other.
I heard incessant talk. Hello. Come over here. So what’s new? You don’t really say. No. I don’t, as a matter of a fact. Flowing beer. Cheap whiskey. No water anywhere. I didn’t want to pay the high price for staying. The sexes presented a problem to each other. They played the bar-game called guess who I am, catch me, hold me, keep me, fool, me, etcetera me. Roaring. A ball. A regular, overstuffed incinerator type ball-thing, which, well, you just had to be there to believe. Music in the modern mode advertised in bold neon at busy nightclubs along Flatbush Avenue. The lights were low. Pick your dance: Mambo, the calypso, the rumba, the tango, Lindy hop, jitterbug, waltz, the two-step. Conventional? Yes. Dance? Not necessarily.
Doormen collected money when you entered. You had no money when you departed. I wondered if my foot covered by my sock holding my carfare home would stay covered by my shoe? I had it when I left to return to the listlessness of everyday life and my home. I gasped for air. With floating fingers I struggled fitfully for reality. The wet, fresh winter air slapped me gently in the face on Second Avenue as I tumbled from the loft. Down the steps I went and the soaring cold night hit me squarely on my cheeks and made me blink my eyes in surprise. I checked my balls to see if they were in place. I had two, my most prized possessions, firmly in hand. My right hand, I might add. From habit I looked behind me as I walked and saw nothing but an empty street. I slowly raised my head and whispered inside my clouded mind, never again. I am a great one for kidding myself. I walked away alone, the dark street bathed in pools of light falling behind me as I searched for the nearest BMT entrance.
© Ron Steinman
Mon 15 Sep 2008
Posted by rmr under
PhotographyComments Off
There are endless ways to think about photographs. We have to consider the intention of the photographer and the situation he or she is in. Then we must consider the photos that result, whether as a photojournalist covering news, one who takes pictures of weddings, or who uses his or her pictures to create a documentary. There are equally endless ways to think about writing, and the combination of words that make us reflect on what the writer wants to say, his or her style, and the effect the writer seeks to achieve as he or she puts one word after another to create a narrative.
This essay is about photos and words, words and photos, their juxtaposition and interdependency. Sometimes each is nothing without the other. I refer here specifically to the pictures and words in the book, “I Thought I Could Fly” by Charlee Brodsky, a professor of photography at Carnegie Mellon University, who is a fine-art and documentary photographer. Continue reading this article at The Digital Journalist
©Ron Steinman
