Misery is a match that never goes out. - Thomas Huxley
Moon 1
Here are some of my dark images from my sessions with Moon and Valya. Tough to look at, work with, or even title. Interesting how Valya and Moon took their feelings and emotions into different areas. Thanks to both for your hard work on this hard subject.
These images represent the crepitus aesthetic of my night terrors. In them, they are how I see and sense these horror dream. Sometimes I am the observer, the victim, and on rare occasions, the persecutor. With all, the grisly feel in the dreams are close to the content of these photos.
I want to say it was my direct intent to make these photos with Valya and Moon as a concept photo of my nightmares. It wasn't. I was hesitant at first to use the projected image because it looked disturbing. After talking with both models, we decided to work with it.
The Original
I chose this image a while ago as one I could project onto them. You may recognize it as one I took at a local abandoned building on a closed naval base. The look and feel of that environment has a creepy sense of familiarity and closeness to me. Something has made me return to that location four times to photograph in it, including once with Mollee.
Valya 2
Maybe my subconscious mind made the connections for me to use that image and project it onto the models. Once I saw how both reacted and worked with it, I knew I was discovering something important. It wasn't until I started working on the images did I begin to realize why this was important.
The first time I looked at these photos in their raw form, I was disturbed. I even looked away a few times and closed Lightroom. I felt a personal connection to the models, the scene and the disturbing concepts of the captured moments. After working with the images, I gave up hopes of beauty and decided to make them convey misery and other dark emotions. I soon discovered that what made these feel personal and connected was that I live this type of scene almost every night.
Moon 3
In these dreams I usually feel helpless and at the mercy of others, or helplessly watching others go through the same misery. These dreams have deep colors, gore, guts, and sound. I hear joints popping and grinding (crepitus) and the soft moans and sobs of despair. In all of them, the dream keeps progressing so slowly until a semi-conscious part of my mind tells me to wake up and say, "Get the fuck out of my dreams." I usually fall asleep again and the cycle repeats, but is shorter as I make the same realization. After a few repetitions, it goes away and I either dream about pleasant things, unimportant things, or they are completely forgotten for the rest of the night.
Moon 2
Valya 3
I am starting to honor these dark patches of my psyche and try not to bury them as the tortures of the night and only the night. They are a part of me. My subconscious is trying to tell me that I need to do something with them. Maybe it will help heal me. Maybe it will make some ugly art.
PHOTOS NOTE: I left these as large "clickable" links for now so you can see them big. Please look at both models' eyes. They tell volumes.
Post Script - Ok -- I guess they were too much. Tuesday (090710)
I've been working on more of my photos with Moon Marie that we took while I was in New York in June. Many of these images were harder to work with since I was using the LCD projector and I have to really work on them in the post-processing phase.
The image above was a treat and came out so well. I played with the colors and feel it celebrates her sensual beauty. Moon has a quiet grace, elegance, and erotic aura about her in so many of her images.
Some of the projector images of both Moon and Valya are hard to work with. The content was disturbing to shoot and more disturbing to work with. They are not pretty photos, they are harsh, graphic, and while not directly violent, have feelings of post violence. They haunt me when I work on them for a few days, but they have a meaning to me that I am trying to figure out.
Once again, Moon is a true gem to work with. Her elegance, enthusiasm, hard-work, creativity, and willingness to really push herself in every image made it a treat to create with her. If you are in New York and need a model, work with her.
It was a full moon a few nights ago. It was like that when I was in NYC. Seeing it reminds me of my work with Moon and my short stay in that city.
What reinvigorates, cleans, brings clarity, focuses, de-clutters you? For some, practicing yoga, meditation and prayer do the trick. Others achieve this through exercise, talking or writing with others. What is your method?
For me, I feel this after sex, a good night's sleep, or a good day cross-country skiing. Each of these brings my thoughts under control and focuses my energy, creativity, and action. Each of these offers me different rewards.
Sex needs to be one of those things that can not be multi-tasked with other things. During that alone or shared time, all that matters is the pleasure that grows, flows, fills, and moves through those involved. I hope the one I am with is not thinking of work, taxes, or dinner plans. Through this intense, focused time with or without someone, we rid our minds of extraneous things and only that moment matters. After we (or if solo, I am) are satisfied, I have a clarity and purpose brought by the release of all the tensions and passions that had built up. I have mentioned before that sex is a type of baptism and cleansing. We are cleansing all these things for a brief time. Fortunately though, this is not a one-time baptism, but one that must be done again and again.
Every winter I go cross-country skiing as many times as possible. I've been doing this for over thirty years. The ideal day starts with the drive to the beautiful mountain location. I get my skis off my car and put on my boots. After putting my pack and skis on, I am ready to take off. The first mile is a semi-quick warm up as I focus on getting all my muscles used to this new method of self transport. The next five or six miles I get into my own rhythmic groove with minimal breaks for water or rest. The world is "shushing" by and all I hear is my breathing. I think about my life, desires, situation, and where I am. I usually stop to eat lunch with the friends or family on the trip.
Joshua Tree National Park - Hall of Horrors
By this time I am about two thirds done. My joints and muscles are getting tired from the exertion and sudden lunch stop. As I start off I feel my body's reluctance to get going, but as the food and water replenish me I get back to my natural stride. Many times at this point it begins to snow, or snow harder. I love to stop, listen to my breathing and take in the most peaceful bliss my heart can ever enjoy. I hear the snow actually landing on the ground, on me, all around me. There is a muffled silence that fills me with warmth as the only movement around me is my breathing. Sometimes you can hear the wind flowing between the trees causing them to shake and making the snow blow sideways. This is my most private and personal moment with nature. It is just me and her living and breathing together, her wind and my exhales making similar airy sounds.
Snowy and Windy Day on Top of Mt. San Jacinto
As dusk approaches, I am about a mile from the car and things grow darker. With the peaceful quiet of the falling snow and the white blanket on the ground easily visible, I find my car. I snap out of my binding, shake off the snow on my hat and coat, stow my gear, start up the car and drive home. During that drive and for the next few days I feel the exhaustion and fresh air still running through me. My mind is peacefully calm and not really focused or concerned about anything. This is more peaceful than any day at the spa for me.
We all have things that help bring us back. These are three of mine. I also feel this after reading a novel, a long drive in the country, and many other activities. What are yours and how do they make you feel?
I've written about my nightmares before. In many of them I am killed. The most graphic dream of this sort was when I am unlocking my car door in broad day light. I take my keys out of the lock and in my peripheral vision I turn and suddenly there is a guy one foot from me who stabs me in the heart. He kills me instantly, dream flicks to black and I awaken hyperventilating.
I've died in many dreams from accidents, murder, and other nasty endings. Each one ends with the suddenness and finality of a song stopped mid beat. My light is turned off. Each is terrifying in its finality and instant switch from living to empty black void of nothing.
Last night I had a new dream. Not only did I die, but I was dead. In this dream I was in a room at a construction site with a group of people. My dog was there and suddenly I see a flash. A second later a narrator says, "You will notice no gore or pain. All fifteen of you were electrocuted and died instantly. " All of us in the room look at each other confused and then suddenly we see the images of us leading up to it and again, flash. We know we are all dead and having to see our last moments replay again and again. No gore, just seeing our last five seconds happen over and over. At one point we wonder if we can change the scenario by avoiding the situation that caused the electrocution. Nope, we are all dead and this is our eternity.
On my drive in today, I thought about this dream. It wasn't scary. I realized this was first time that I knew I was dead in a dream. I wondered if my Christian upbringing affected my interpretation of death and how this dream played. I thought about what death must be like. I do not know how to interpret this dream. This was the first time I internally learned the difference between died vs. dead. Died is the instant when life ceased. Dead is the result and lasts forever. That seems obvious, but I had never felt it in my core being. To die in a dream is scary, to know you are dead will make you think a bit.
After crossing the Bay Bridge, I switched mind gears and thought about moments in our lives when we have mini-deaths. These are moments when time has no meaning and we are out of existence. I came up with at least four instances this has happened and will write more on each over the next few days. Next will be human administered mini-death.
The masochist was begging, "Please, PLEASE, hurt me. Beat me. Hit me. Degrade me. Use me. I need the pain to feel fulfillment! PLEEEASSSE. I only feel pleasure from your hurting me."
The sadist looked smugly and dismissively down on the masochist and simply replied, "No."
I never really understood the mind sets of these two sides of relationships until I heard that joke. I wonder in myself if I desire the pain and the desire to inflict it. Do we all have unconscious or even conscious needs and desires to feel and give pain? Many may feel they don't, but I wonder.
A few years ago I was very mad for months at a person close to me who had hurt me. I kept waiting and waiting for her to mention something about it and I had a response to it that would be devastating. I rehearsed it in my mind and crafted each word with the greatest delicacy and determination so it would not only hurt, but do both blunt and acute damage. One day, almost a year later, she asked why I no longer did a certain thing. At that moment I let go with my stored response. Her reaction was as pained as I had desired. The rush from the moment of it flowed through me filling me with righteous delight in the moment. She cried and went silent. I suddenly felt vindicated, but also an abuser. As time passed that moment, I've felt no pride in what I did. Our relationship was permanently hurt by it.
My family has a deep and dark history of sarcasm, judgment, and belittling. We are the masters of the passive-aggressive insult and attack. Any one statement is not a major issue, but the toll of absorbing (and giving) them is tearing the family apart. Last night I was chatting online with my 18 year old niece who was staying with my parents for a week. She was upset by the vitriolic dislike they have toward each other and the rest of the family. I hope she realizes now how much poison is in the family and finds a way to protect herself from becoming the werewolves we are after suffering the numerous bites of a lifetime.
This is the song I awoke to this morning. How fucking depressing to wake up and have this song shape your mental state for the day.
Video
Video
He's a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody.
Doesn't have a point of view,
Knows not where he's going to,
Isn't he a bit like you and me?
Nowhere Man please listen,
You don't know what you're missing,
Nowhere Man,the world is at your command!
(lead guitar)
He's as blind as he can be,
Just sees what he wants to see,
Nowhere Man can you see me at all?
Nowhere Man, don't worry,
Take your time, don't hurry,
Leave it all till somebody else
lends you a hand!
Doesn't have a point of view,
Knows not where he's going to,
Isn't he a bit like you and me?
Nowhere Man please listen,
you don't know what your missing
Nowhere Man, the world is at your command!
He's a real Nowhere Man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody.
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody.
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody!
PHOTO NOTE: At the top of the Beartooth Pass on the Montana/Wyoming border. 10,900 feet above sea level.
ZINC, Ark.—A child of members of the Knights Party, 2009
Photo by Bruce Gilden - Magnum Photos
...what people do in Your name.
I saw this photo essay. The first photo made me wonder where it was taken in the 1950s. It was taken in 2009.
This scares me more than 2257. I think 2257 and PROP8 are parts of the mentality shared by these "people" - intolerance, hate, and violence. There are shades of those characteristics all about in our culture and are growing like a slow malignancy, easy to ignore until you notice the lump.
I know Hamlet was contemplating the benefits of suicide at the moment, but I was not making a comment about suicide on the post. It was just a line I thought of for that moment. Since then I've read these famous lines over a dozen times. Each time I get something new from them.
I suffer from sleep walking and night terror dreams. Every night I sleep: perchance to dream. Many nights my dreams and sleep are peaceful, frivolous and sometimes fun. Other nights, not so great: ay, there’s the rub for me. Which will it be tonight?
It has been 23 years since I really looked at this famous speech, soliloquy, or whatever its literary term is. I was a junior in high school and had lived through a close friend’s suicide (you can read about Laura’s death here). I read this play in my humanities class. Back then, I didn’t see Laura’s death relating to these famous lines. Now that I’ve added some life experience to my mix, I still don’t know if these thoughts went through her head before she jumped off the cliff.
Occasionally, I contemplate suicide. I don’t think I suffer from depression, but sometimes I wonder if my existence needs to exist. As I read through Hamlet’s contemplation over the issue, I deeply understand his questions for I ask them of myself.
... To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. I wonder if my friend Laura felt this overwhelming need to end those thousand natural shocks.
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
I don’t usually feel weary, but I feel life can be dreary and empty of fire and passion. When I feel this, I wonder if there is any worth or meaning in my efforts to accomplish anything. I question if my accomplishments even have meaning beyond my existence.
But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of?
There is the ultimate question of faith. We fear that undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveller returns. This bit is the most powerful part of the whole soliloquy for me. Of course it applies to my fear of death and the unknown beyond it. Is there some spiritual afterlife or when my spark of life goes out, is it gone from the universe?
While that question of faith and the great beyond is there, I also see the last part of it as a test to my ambitions to try anything new while living.
And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of?
Damn, that is a powerful sentiment. I am looking at one of those moments in my life. I am forty. I am doing well financially (not rich, but comfortable and protected). From the outside I have it all. Yet my heart yearns for things that “ ...makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.”
I want to dedicate myself to becoming an artist. The creation of art is a deep part of my soul. I don’t want to create it to admired or loved (although the praise is embarrassingly pleasing). I want to create something that shows my soul and how I see beauty. This is my “undiscovered country.” Why was it so much easier at 18 to go to college and start that life change than to do it at 40?
I look at my friends, family, and coworkers and see how this fear of the unknown paralyzes us. So many times I hear them (and me) say, “I wish I could (insert dream or passion of choice here).” We are afraid of that big step into the next part of life.
Some of my role models are Dr. L, Z, Stephen Haynes, Jim, and Joe. They all have made(or in the process of starting) huge life choices that followed closer to their heart’s desires. They took that plunge into the “undiscovered country.” I hope to join them soon because I am already looking back at my life and wonder why I haven’t done it yet.
Here are Hamlet’s famous lines.
To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. - Soft you now! The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember'd.
Photo note. I love the empty decay of this room. One solitary bright chair in a dead place. I plan to try to get in there and work with a model in that simple setting.
Since I was about 22, I've had sleeping problems. I sleep talk, sleep walk, have night terrors, among some of the near nightly events. Almost every night is a dark tour of persecution, fear, and anxiety. Let me tell you about a few of the incidents.
One night I knew we were in our bedroom. There was somebody else in the room that was going to kill us with a knife. I said out loud to my wife, "He is in here and we need to get out, but if we move he will see us." Needless to say that freaked her out.
Last night I dreamed that my wife had read my creative journal (very private to me) and had written comments of disgust in them. I slept walked down a flight of stairs to find my journal to and read her comments. A week ago, after reading a bit about 2257 and censorship, a number of photographers in my dream were accusing me of stealing their photos and were tagging all my photos on the internet as fraud. I went down to my computer to see how bad it was. Of course nothing like that had happened.
Many of the dreams are horrific and gory. Animals or people being dismembered with noise and smell and all of it and some sinister being saying I am the reason for the suffering, but not telling me why I am the reason. At first I am anxious in the dream, but I've had these so many times that I realize I am dreaming and wake up. The bad part is that when I fall back to sleep, the dream continues on like a bad soap opera through the night.
One night, I thought some thugs were breaking into my car in front of my house, so I went outside barefoot, wearing my pajamas, carrying a can of pepper spray. It was all a dream. I am glad I did not try to get my gun. Since then, I've locked away my firearms.
My wife will usually ask me in a a loud voice, "Are you dreaming?" That usually stops me in my tracks as I wander out of the room. I will then spend a bit of time either explaining to her what is happening and she becomes part of the dream, or I stay quiet and try to figure out what is real and is not. She knows that if I am heading to the bathroom, that is just a natural event. If I am heading for the bedroom door, I need to be stopped.
When I sleep walk, I know where I am, it is always in my home. I never sleep walk when I am sleeping in a strange place (hotels, camping, etc.). I think that is because my eyes are open and the image of the strange setting is different than the familiarity of my room, so it wakes me up.
All of the dreams where I get out of bed our talk or take any real physical action have the common theme of me being persecuted. I am not getting whipped or hurt, but I am getting stalked or something I care about is being damaged, hurt, or killed. The anxiety this causes makes me want to check to make sure everything is OK.
Ever since I can remember, my dreams have always been vivid, and feel so real. As a kid I would have recurring dreams in the exact same place and situation. They were not all bad or good dreams, just every few years, the same dreams would pop up again.
My biggest fear is that I am going to hurt someone. I also fear that I am going to fall or get hurt. I have good dreams most night as well. Most mornings I wake up refreshed so I am not feeling exhausted. I love the good dreams. They are an unexpected gift that I relish the next day, especially the sexy ones.
I don't snore much according to my wife, so I don't think it is sleep apnea. I try to watch what I eat so I don't have acid reflux. I've tried sleeping on my side, back, stomach, with extra pillows, with no pillows. None of that helps. I have the problem when I am thin or thick.
Unless I sleep in different beds every night, I don't know what to do.I am getting tired of this, no pun intended. Is this something that can be treated or is it something I need to live with?
NOTE - Photos found without citations. I usually don't like to use uncredited photos, but these images were important for today's post.
