Well it’s my birthday, literally today is my birthday, and so I wanted to give you a present. I’m 57 years old today, in case you were wondering. Frankly, because of some mental-health and past booze-related reasons I’m amazed and very happy to still be here. But that’s a story for another place and time.
Right, on to your gift.
2020 was a shitty year for many reasons, mostly the COVID-19 pandemic. I mean, my daily movements and social interactions were restricted, your daily movements and social interactions were restricted, we had more free time, more booze, more Netflix, less money, less security, and less hope. It was a big fucking mess that will hopefully come under rapid and compassionate control due to the leadership of our new president.
Anyway, what I did most of last year during my short trips outside my house to the supermarket, the pharmacy, and a few other essential places was take photographs of people in masks doing the same ordinary, essential stuff I was doing in our vastly-altered national circumstances.
And now I’ve made a book of my favorites of those photographs.
And, as with my last two books, I’m making it available to you for free. It’s full of both color and monochrome photos of folks in the same kinds of places doing the the same kinds of things you have been doing since this national disaster started in March, 2020.
I’d love to hear your comments or criticisms. You can unload on me about “It’s In Their Eyes” by leaving a comment on this post, or by contacting me via Facebook, or Twitter.
Thanks for having a look, and I hope you enjoy “It’s In Their Eyes”.
(Brisbane, California, January 21, 2021. See my other work here.)
In darkness
we cannot
shine a light,
so we
undervalue
our own radiance.
We pick locks
we cannot see,
taste foods
we cannot smell,
and gossip about things
we do not know.
We enslave
ourselves
and blame
others for our capture.
We stop loving
our lives
and blame
others for our cold empty.
In darkness
we dance
with the children
we used to be
and wonder why,
now we’ve grown,
we don’t dance
any better
than we used to.
(Photographed in San Bruno, California on Christmas Eve, 2020. See my other work here.)
My wife and I,
imprisoned with each other these past one million days,
decided on a Saturday morning
to hope in the car and go see the edge of the world.
(I meant ‘hop’ but the effect is the same.)
When we got there
I looked out
at the crest of the ocean,
the horizon it made,
and I wondered if
there were people in Japan
looking from their edge of the world
who couldn’t see me either.
It’s probable.
It’s likely.
My wife and I blew
the dreamers on Japanese coasts a kiss,
and laughed because we love
that the ocean is here
at the edge of the world
even though we rarely come to see it.
And then I thought
in 31 years
of bad careers, drink, and madness in California,
she has been my sun.
My sun more than the actual fucking Sun.
And all the bad
was erased
standing on the edge of the world with her.
Everything bad
in my life, in our lives,
was all worth enduring
to be able after 31 years
to stand at the edge of the world with her.
And I told her that.
And she kissed me.
And I knew, once again,
we would be okay.
(Photographed at Thornton Beach, Daly City, California in November, 2020. See my other work here.)
He said
he was bored
and, the day being hot and slow,
I understood that.
And he said
he was on mushrooms
and, being a recovering alcoholic,
I smiled quietly at that.
(Photographed in Brisbane, California in September, 2020. See my other work here.)
And, lo, there was a bird
outside the picture window
of the living room
where my father-in-law died.
It was a day of peace
and happiness.
I was entertaining a friend
with dinner in the living room,
and the bird was
just being its bird self.
It had nothing to do
with what happened
to my father-in-law
in that living room,
but being there
made me think of him
and whether in some way
he was in the bird
and looking in
on the home of the life
he left behind.
(Photographed in Brisbane, California in September, 2020. See my other work here.)
After 20 years
I don’t have it
in me anymore
to not love you
more than my life
more than mankind
more than any life
but yours.
You have saved me
so many times
from myself
I’m pretty sure
you hold the mortgage
on my soul.
If I believed in souls.
If I did
you would be one,
an immense, timeless
born-before-god-and-sin
holy, anti-entropy soul.
And I love you
more than
any version of god
anyone ever invented
and sold by the pound
to the poor, needy,
and helpless.
You are better than all of that, ever.
You are beyond that
in my uneasy mind,
a mind troubled by
literally every fucking thing
but you.
I want to hold on to you
to love you
and have you
near me
for 100 years more.
Alive, I mean.
I know you knew that.
There’s no sin
in the simplicity
of hoping for
an impossible wish.
I already got one: you.
And I want
another 100 years of you,
because the 20
we’ve been married
just doesn’t
seem like enough.
(In California in 1991, 2005, and 2019. See my other work here and here.)