nyc journal : Graeme Mitchell

Remnant: Matchbook #1

photo: Match Book #1. ©Graeme Mitchell 2008.

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NYC Journal 62

A passage from Lowry’s heartbreaking and destitute and beautiful novel that drifts from sober fogs to drunken moments of incredible clarity:

……Night: and once again, the nightly grapple with death the room shaking with daemonic orchestras, the snatches of fearful sleep, the voices outside the window, my name being continually repeated with scorn by imaginary parties arriving, the dark spinets. As if there were not enough real noises in these nights the color of grey hair. Not like the rending tumult of American cities, the noise of unbandaging of great giants in agony. But the howling pariah dogs, the cocks that herald dawn all night, the drumming, the moaning that will be found later white plumage huddled on telegraph wires in back gardens or fowl roosting in apple trees, the eternal sorrow that never sleeps of great Mexico. For myself I like to take my sorrow into the shadow of old monestaries, my guilt into cloisters, and under tapestries, and into the misericordes of unimaginable cantinas where sad-faced potters and legless beggars drink at dawn, whose cold jonquil beauty on rediscovers in death. So that when you left Yvonne, I went to Oaxaca. There is no sadder word. Shall I tell you, Yvonne, of the terrible journey there through the desert over narrow gauge railway on the rack of the third class carriage bench, the child whose life its mother and I saved by rubbing its belly with tequila out of my bottle, or of how, when I went to my room in the hotel where we once were happy, the noise of slaughtering below in the kitchen drove me out into the glare of the street, and later, that night, there was a vulture sitting in the washbasin? Horrors portioned to a giant nerve! No, my secrets are of the grave and must be kept. And this is how I sometimes think of myself, as a great explorer who has discovered some extraordinary land from which he can never return to give his knowledge to the world: but the name of the land is hell.

-from Under the Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008

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This is a new series that I’m titling artifacts (no, changed my mind) Remnants for the time being. The idea behind these is correlated to NYC Journal. While out shooting on the street I’d become interested in, well, garbage I guess.

I might end up being in the shadow of Penn and his “cigarette butts,” but I aim, probably superciliously, to climb upon his shoulders.

We’ll see.

photo: Cigarette Box #1. ©Graeme Mitchell 2008.

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NYC Journal 61

“Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.” -John Milton

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008.

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NYC Journal 60, including text

[Insert text here on the state of the psyche-state with impetuses ranging from changing of seasons, the economy, voting, war, forsaking by G_d, the economy. Mix hopeful and rhetorically clever platitudes cloaked in flowery speak w/ laconic jabs of irony and maybe-it's-a-conspiracy-half-joking-humor, mix should be approx 70 to 30...% that is. Note story of Slavic man who swam laps in the Atlantic Ocean at Coney Island on a cold cold day (ex-Russian special forces, possible if not likely). Connection: not sure, but have you ever? Highlight, the 2 fights at the grocery store the other day, which neared punches been thrown, involving all old people. On that note you can if you wish go into how reactionary people have been towards...no never mind, but do note the the group of guys who alluded to you getting stabbed (as in shived) if you took pictures. As for these scenarios, maybe suggest sublimation if you're the aggressor, or remaining numinous if you're on the receiving end. Touch on the changing of the leaves and the coming of a revolution, spiritual, political, whatever, (but don't shy from a heavy-handed analogy there in regards to the possibility of being on the brink of something akin psychologically to the the landscape post apolocolypse (this fall seems feasible (or maybe it's not (but still pretty sure that, yeah, it is)))). There could be some value in quoting some dark passage on Hell from Lowry's, Under the Volcano or Gass', The Tunnel. (Praise Gass' prose on par with Joyce, and a tonic that can get you stewed and through the hard nights that follow these sorts of hard days.) But do not, I repeat, do not, go on at length fondling this literary tangent, b/c nobody cares, nor furthermore do they think it has anything to do with pictures; you've concocted that construction entirely in your head. And as far as the, the pictures, try and say as little about them as possible.]

Photo: © Graeme Mitchell, 2008.

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NYC Journal 59

“Whosoever unceasingly strives upward…him we can save.” – Goethe.

photo: © Graeme Mitchell, 2008.

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NYC Journal 58, and empathy

Hey there again, so there’s a hope that you’d know this, but only seeing these online I’m not so sure, so I want you to, I want to make jarringly clear to you, the imperativeness to know this: that each of these people is an extension of me, and I of them. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, voyeuristic, or parodic, or deriding in these, no shell of sarcasm or hyperbole. No, they are offered with incredible tenderness…unimaginable really. Do you see this? Or at least can you believe this? For all that goes into them, I still worry it is lost b/c of stunted capabilities, on my part of course, not yours, b/c of my limited reach. Often it feels like a scream-whisper on a windy day, that for all the effort and intent dissipates to bad-noise and then nothing before the count of one-Mississi… Imagine near-tears near my eyes when I work one these, as it’s something much like that.

Apologies for authorial trespassing and arm twisting.

Here you go:

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008

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NYC Journal 57

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008

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NYC Journal 56, loners.

You know, I thought it incredulous to think that each of us isn’t all alone.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008

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NYC Journal 55, August

August, the odd-ball-bastard month in NYC, chalk full of near contradictions and almost mysteries.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008

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NYC Journal 54, two years

This month marks my second year working on the project that was casually given the working title of NYC Journal.

At this point (not to suggest any sort of point has been achieved at all) the experiences I’m having and the things I’m learning while working on this are foremost, while the pictures are a by-product of those experiences, or maybe a cataloging of them.

And with every added photograph I get the odd yet unmistakable feeling the less complete it all becomes.

Like questions leading to bigger questions.

Scratching hard at a surface.

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NYC Journal 53, and on letting go

The act of letting go is a courageous thing b/c it is contingent on an honesty that is often brutal and seemingly dangerous. This relinquishing of control (or the illusion of it) is not to be confused with acts of self-destruction, as it is often those who seem bravest in their recklessness that are grasping tightest…(suicide (figurative in this case), someone once offered, is cowardly). No, what I’m speaking of is a less superficial and more difficult motion that is manifested externally more subtly than one would think. Probably b/c it ends up being a paradox. The further you commit to it’s uncertainty the more capable you may be to survive. But, again, this honesty I think is probably one of the great difficulties in life. Self-deception is a great infirmity of humans, a thing we are terribly crafty at.

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NYC Journal 52

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NYC Journal 51, and why the Siesta

Summer’s humid-hard-hot-haze, and between 11am and 5pm the light is as ugly as hell. That’s why.

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NYC Journal 50, Coney Island on a Fri 13th

I’m not prone to superstition, but for some reason the shutter on my F3hp was hanging up all day so half my shots were ruined, grossly overexposed on the right of the frame. It worked fine the day before and it worked fine the day following. Ghosts, jinxes, or the gawds being rude on this ominous date, I don’t know but odd regardless.