Ann, Vinalhaven Ferry, 2003

Countryside Ice Cream and Snack Bar, Pennsylvania, 2010

République, Autumn 2010

Paris, Autumn 2010

Breathing is an icepick.

My life spools out from the end of this line of ink. A cloud of resistance packs its ice around my chest. Everyday I breathe, fight through it. It’s a quiet, rainy morning, the trees fall in an arc. Writing seems like the only option to reclaim my experience. How can I not feel my life? I seem to ask this again and again. Ideas spark large then dissipate, I must “chop wood, carry water”, to actualize them: Follow up on the tiny details, lists, phone calls. In this way, dreams are sieved out of thin air and become real. The “known world”, the conscious, has limited avenues. There’s an underground river, though, and I have a lamp-lit, rickety boat held together with gaffer tape, soapsuds and beads. It’s a leaky old thing, barely seaworthy, but the wood is thick. I keep dry on a rope bed suspended above the wet floor.

360 degrees in Jamaica, Queens before flying to Port-au-Prince

April 2011

the last time i saw you

 

 

 

Centralia

            “Warning: Underground Mine Fire.  Ground is prone to sudden collapse.”

                                                                                                            -for Pasquale DeCusatis

April again, sky low and silver

as a handful of quarters.  Decaying leaves.

Forsythia in bloom and the squelch

of muddy grass perforated by high-heeled shoes. 

I’ve come to the grave in crooked lipstick and earnest

beige stockings, plastic-wrapped flowers clenched.

It’s easy to miss if you don’t know how to find it: back up

against the statue of Saint Christopher, take ten paces

toward the tree that resembles a bent man,

…nine…ten,    look down.

Mine fires fifty yards underground suck on the graves—

rows of sunken cheeks— town holding its breath.

Trans-illuminated smoke rises from gashes in the skin of soil.

I drop small prayers scrawled on airline napkins into the pit—

How far I’ve come

How long it’s been

Since the last time I saw you and we spoke in Italian

How then I knew you knew that would be the last time

"I learn by going where I need to go." ~T. Roethke

Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga in Kibera today

Prime Minister Raila Odinga registered to vote at the District Commissioner's grounds in Makina Ward, Kibera, Nairobi among crowds of supporters of his party ODM (Orange Democratic Movement). All Kenyans of voting age must register anew this year via the new Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) system. Voter registration is organized by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC).

Mariam and her dad Salim at home in Dandora, Nairobi

Tunis, outtakes. October 2011

"Even in Kyoto, when the cuckoo cries, I long for Kyoto" ~ Basho

There is truth in these intangible dreams.

Dream. You and I were sitting on bar stools drinking whiskey. We were laughing and high-fiving and you were wearing a black t-shirt. A man at the bar had a box of 100 white lilies. His lover rejected them so he handed them out to people at the bar. E was there too; the guy gave her a lily, leaned in close and started flirting. We toasted and said, We're not needed around here. My diamond earrings were in pieces on the bar top. I fixed them and put them into my ears and I could hear again. We tripped out the door and onto the shining wet streets with laughter in our throats. The last days.

Mombasa/Diani, June 2012

Repurposed. Esplanade du Parc de Belleville

Found Dream. On the Hackney Canals

The convergence of many loves: books, water, boats, blue nights, November.

Yellowjacket Trap: Once he gets syrup on his wings it's over

1 août 2012 

A drawing a day Day 17

Works in Process

10 August 2012. My boxes in a closet at my parents' house in Pennsylvania. I dream of them. In the dreams they are lost in the damp basement and I search for them while ghosts tug at my sleeves and I try to avoid the clump of darkness that sits in the corner. It is August in the leaf dark of Pennsylvania and the backyard is vined and snaked and patterned with green trees. The crickets in the locust trees saw their legs. The air is heavy with the rain that fell all last night and this morning. I bring the rain everywhere: in Northern Uganda, George named me Akot. My boxes are full of photographic paper, printed paper, bound and scuffed paper, painted-on, scribbled-on, drawn-on paper. These boxes are my identity--for now.  

Over the summer I unplugged from most digital communication and made a drawing a day. When it was going well, a veil descended and I shifted out of a restless mind frame and into a state of complete openness and receptivity, calm and silence. Some of the drawings were speedy outlines of whatever was next to my borrowed bed. And there were so many borrowed beds as I traveled/worked/visited family and friends in the UK, France and America. Sometimes I spent an evening on one page, as in the above drawing. I stayed at a friend's room in Montmartre with a sweeping view of the sky-washed city. I felt protected within the structure of my teaching schedule, which, though intense, left time for long quiet spaces in the evening. In Northern Europe, in the summer, the daylight stretches out until 10 o'clock at night. I finished this drawing and a sadness came over me, Paris, a place I lived for years, the calls of the swallows as they swooped over chimney pots a'flame in the setting sun. The unpacked suitcase and the hours.

360 degrees at City Park with monkeys

In May, I traveled to Garissa, in the arid Northeastern part of Kenya, to photograph pastoralists and Adeso's cash-for-work programs in the region.

Angels in the Ghetto (written in April 2005)

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Angels in the Ghetto

On 2 April 2005, Pope Jean Paul II died and massive crowds began forming in Rome for the funeral, set for 8 April. I made plans to travel to Rome to photograph the events surrounding this event. In his 27 years as pontiff, Pope John Paul II distinguished himself in numerous areas. An engaged politician, he travelled extensively. He spoke out against Apartheid in South Africa, supported the Solidarity movement in Poland and contributed to the end of communism in Poland and eventually across Eastern Europe. The first pope to go to Israel, he sought dialogue between religions.

Because the authorities were diverting many flights from Rome, I left early Thursday morning to catch the 12-hour train from Paris.  I arrived at Gare de Lyon before the gate was called, as usual, and sat writing in my journal.  By chance, I was seated with Jean-Michel Turpin, a freelance photographer on assignment for Figaro Magazine. Jean-Michel had worked for the photo agency Gamma for 15 years, covering major news stories, working on long-term photo essays, and examining situations that resonated with him and also had geopolitical significance. We spoke about the universal aspect of photography, being able to communicate directly with people of all languages, without the need of translator. On the train, Jean-Michel was collaborating with a staff journalist from Le Figaro, talking with Catholics making the pilgrimage to the Vatican. Families were on their way to Saint Peter’s Square with their children, without hotel reservations, with backpacks and sleeping bags, planning to sleep in the street. Later I learned that Roman police blocked traffic from many streets in the city center, making it possible for hundreds of thousands of people to camp in the open air. I spoke with one couple who decided to make the pilgrimage after they heard the ringing of Le Gros Bourdon, the bell in Notre Dame cathedral.  This 13-ton bell rang in August of 1944 when Paris was liberated from the Nazis, and it rang 83 times on Saturday night after the Pope’s death, once for each year of his life.  The sound is low, grave, heavy; the vibrations can be felt throughout central Paris. 

I arrived at Termini station and headed out with my camera. A screen was set up in front of the Colosseum, emitting Pope-glorifying images.  Groups of people were lying in front of the screens in sleeping bags, planning to watch the funeral on CCTV the next morning at 10. City administrators had set up similar screens in 30 locations around Rome, in an attempt to diminish the sheer mass of people crushing into Saint Peter’s Square and the surrounding avenues.  

The Tiber River separates the Vatican from central Rome, and I arrived at a police barricade on the Vittorio Emanuele Bridge.  The carabinieri had stopped allowing pilgrims to cross, so they were lined up along the avenues in sleeping bags or sitting on mats, waiting.  Rumors circulated about when the police would open the bridge again.  I worked hard with my six Italian phrases and learned that we would be allowed to cross early in the morning.  This bridge and the bridge to the East were blocked off, as were many streets in this area and so hundreds of people found a place to sit or sleep and wait until morning. 

I headed west, and the Principe Amadeo Bridge was open.  I crossed this bridge, walked back up to the Vatican side of the Vittorio Emanuele bridge, and continued on to the very end of the Via Della Conciliazione (VDC), the long avenue that leads directly to Saint Peter’s Square and the Basilica. A press platform was set up at the end of the VDC and the international press vans were parked nearby. Because the VDC was already full of people, the police closed it off to the pilgrims who continued arriving with knapsacks, flags, and sleeping bags in tow. They got as close as they could to the barrier, then sat down in piles, one on top of another. Nuns, rabbis, children… people camped wherever they could, even among the press vans and in the garden nearby. Photographers and TV news cameramen circulated among them, and I watched the scene.  I moved into the crowd and prepared to wait out the night with them. A priest started singing “Emmanuel” in German, and the song continued in call and response, in Polish, in Latin, until most of the crowd was singing, waving flags, lighting candles.  We sat like this for hours.  A blind man stood with police on the other side of the barrier and sang “Ave Maria”.

I got three hours’ sleep and went back.  I took the first bus to St. Peter’s square, but police stopped it; they closed all of central Rome to all vehicles except ambulances, police cars, and presidential cavalcades.  I walked all the way down the Corso Vittorio Emanuele in a crowd of pilgrims.  At about 7h30, I reached the Vittorio Emanuele Bridge, it was open, and I crossed it, immediately running into Jean-Michel, who was on his way to get press accreditation.  I watched the teams of police prepare for the arrival of the world’s leaders, including Moshe Katsav, Jacques Chirac, Aleksander Kwasniewski, Mohammad Khatami, as well as Clinton, Bush and “Bushette,” as the French like to call him.  I moved into the crowd on the Via Della Conciliazione, where people were plastered together, pushing toward the basilica.  I, too, tried to walk towards the basilica, but the crowd was too dense, impossible to move through, so I moved farther down the VDC.  The carabinieri had erected two metal barriers in the middle of the VDC, creating an opening for police, press, and emergency workers.  Hanging out along the barrier, I watched the photographers, cameramen, and police hurrying up and down the open alley in the middle of the VDC, which stretched all the way to St. Peter’s square.  At random, I struck up a conversation with a French couple who were being followed by a camera crew from Canal+, a French TV station featuring excellent documentaries and narrative films.  The Canal+ crew had taken the train with them from Paris and lived with them in one of the shelters set up by the Catholic church, discussing why they had made the pilgrimage, their faith and views about Catholicism in the current world. After about 20 minutes, the Canal+ crew came over and the man I had been speaking with says, “Hey Bruno, here’s a young photographer without a press pass, can’t you let her jump the barrier with you guys?”  So I did. I spoke with him about the project, then said thanks and started walking up the VDC through the police and EMS crews and journalists.  The sun was up but diffuse.  It was 9 o’clock.  Heart a flood, I kept my eyes fixed on the dome of the Basilica di San Pietro and walked quickly for a few hundred yards.  People were pressed against the barriers, looking exhausted and shell-shocked; a nun with her head in her hands, a man flying the flag of Lebanon… the gift of the sun on their faces.  I made these photographs as I walked all the way up to the base of the square itself, when a cop told me I couldn’t go any further, but I could cross through an opening in the barrier to the right.  At that moment, the police were allowing the waiting pilgrims into the square itself; they had been kept out all night. I walked with the pilgrims through the colonnade into the square.  The funeral began, they carried the Pope’s casket into the centre of the church steps.  The sun, intermittent clouds.  The ceremony lasted three hours, you could tune into a radio station hear a live interpretation in your language, and CCTV screens were set up to either side of the basilica.  At the end, when they carried the Pope’s casket out of the square, the crowd was overcome.  I don’t think I have ever seen such unmasked emotion on such a large scale, profound sadness and elation. There was no holding back.  They forgot themselves in the moment of frenzy.  There was nothing contrived about it.

The square slowly cleared out, but many exhausted people lolled about in the afternoon sun.  I walked away from the scene and down the long avenues, back to take a shower and a nap.

I still have many questions about what I saw.  The why and how of it.  The details.  The impact of religion.  The blurring boundaries of religion and government.  Religion and politics.  It was hard to accept many things about this pope: his refusal to OK the use of condoms contributed to the spread of HIV, his rejection of gay people, women in the priesthood, marriage for priests.  And so do those millions of pilgrims feel this way too? 

I am back in Paris now, waiting to see if the frenzy of mourning and elegiac, glorifying articles in the French press will die down and maybe this weekend (when the weekly magazines come out) there will be some critique of his policies and all the ways he was immovable and how his retrograde thinking caused more harm.  

On my last day in Rome, I wandered off into the rain and ended up in the old Jewish ghetto from the 30s and 40s.  There was a sculpture in an arced enclave called Angels in the Ghetto by Goncalo Mabunda.  I stared at it for a long time, standing in the rain.  A clamour of winged creatures ascended into the sky. 

Diary scraps

5 February 2000

I'm at my own desk for once and the light is good--sun, although weak, through the

geraniums.  I'm wearing two sweaters because it's February and mildly cold in

here.  I realize I don't give a damn about much but writing and I want to

inform myself of all else through this act.  Trying to "put together" my poem

about Louise Bourgeois, I have a line-up of dashing exercises to write all

over her sculpture.  Hands, scraps, Memory.  In my conversation

with Dave Griffith @ Beehive I said that we all have a preoccupation with

Memory and it is hard to assert our experience without self-trivializing.

That contradiction is always with me, the fever burning through me.  I

cannot "pin down" the poem because I haven't written it yet.  Perhaps I just

want to write only essays and diaries.  The word "diary" makes me want to

write.  I love the thought of my diaries all lined up, frayed and damaging,

telling my truth in the midst of great self-deception.

Journal scraps. January-February 2012

Friday night at the picnic table, wood smoke, crescent moon, candle under hurricane glass. All I’ve seen of Nairobi as I walk in the red dust is tips of trees in the sun and exhaust pipes and sun glinting off the memsahib’s tennis bracelet as she steers her big SUV. And cracked pleather matatu seats, shredded foam and metal, hard sun on broken glass embedded in garden walls. And 6 Kenyan ridgebacks, gold and copper dogs, the blue and red wool blanket in my single berth where I dream of a home and a small fleeting peace, a tiny white flag to wave, to declare a truce of calm and silence. The dreams continue: glass boats, birds that carry their nests in their beaks.

I’m staying near the Arboretum, the room is high in the trees, and every morning at 5h30 I awake to a clamour of birds. They scream. With a caw that is harsh and fierce, the ibises call to each other across dimensions of time and space, puncturing my dream, until they stop, abrupt, all at once. The silence fills in the cracks in the sound barrier. The first night here, the room filled with mosquitoes dangling in the air. They kept me tethered to the waking world, but now I’m using a pyrethrum flame and they line the windowsill, feet up. The light across the bed is sharp and white. If you were here, you’d hear the wood saws, distant hammers, as Nairobi expands and construction fills in every possible green space. You’d see the shaky concrete structures of future apartments. Since I arrived 2 months ago it has been hot and dry and I walk for hours in the red dust, though the long rains are coming.

I want to take my eyes out and lick them, taste what they’ve seen.

I don’t miss Paris but I do miss walking alone at night and feeling perfectly safe. I miss the twilight that would stretch out for hours and the city would go liquid, sun on every wall, a Dali painting. October in Paris, the air crispens,

wood smoke smudges the sky of the damp, grey city: her rose-lit windows, high ceilings, scarves and green winter parks. Here in Kenya the sky closes all at once like a shade being drawn.

I wake up chewing the air.

You see the dream in front of you as you live it/autumn/heart over fire.

360˚ at Qaddafi National Mosque, Kampala, Uganda