read a good poem: "tossing and turning"

untitled, #1447-a, 1996. by todd hido. via the rose gallery, santa monica, ca.

The spirit has infinite facets, but the body

confiningly few sides.

There is the left,

the right, the back, the belly, and tempting

in-betweens, northeasts and northwests,

that tip the heart and soon pinch circulation

in one or another arm.

Yet we turn each time

with fresh hope, believing that sleep

will visit us here, descending like an angel

down the angle our flesh's sextant sets,

tilted toward that unreachable star

hung in the night between our eyebrows, whence

dreams and good luck flow.

Uncross

your ankles. Unclench your philosophy.

This bed was invented by others; know we go

to sleep less to rest than to participate

in the twists of another world.

This churning is our journey.

It ends,

can only end, around a corner

we do not know

we are turning.

"tossing and turning" by john updike, from collected poems 1953-1993.
via the writer's almanac, feb 19, 2009.


i hadn't read any of john updike's work until this poem, today. i had made a plan to, though, after reading this recent tribute by my favorite writer...i'm getting excited all over again.

i love "unclench your philosophy" -- those few words stayed with me all morning.
my co-workers were like, "what's with you, smiley?"
i don't know--that line just woke this little mind up.

"uncross your ankles" is a pretty great line, too.

right after i read the poem, i did a quick search for a photo that might be suitable.
i happened upon todd hido's work--i love the moodiness.
if you're interested, here is a link to more of his photos on the rose gallery site and on the stephen wirtz gallery site.
i also found an interview from 2007, where he discusses his book, between the two. i enjoyed reading his thoughts on portraiture and the book editing process.
here's a taste:

re: his focus, and his portraits of women...

To me it is no mystery that we can only photograph effectively what we are truly interested in or -- maybe more importantly -- are grappling with. This is often an unconscious process. Otherwise the photographs are merely about an idea or a concept; that stuff eventually falls flat for me. There must be something more, some emotional hook for it to really work for me. I tend to photograph things I've had problems with or I have struggled with, stuff that used to keep me up at night. It's the same process with my photographs of houses -- they are about recognizing some mysterious element of my childhood.

I've read that sources of terror in childhood often become sources of attraction in adulthood. I've found that true. It's disturbing to me how many of the models remind me of past women that have been in my life -- not in terms of how they look but in terms of who they seem to be underneath their surfaces. There is a familiarity to them, something that resonates, something kind of troubled about them that is very recognizable to me. It is endlessly fascinating and utterly simple as to why we gravitate to what we do. Of course this is not stuff that I've worked out completely, which is precisely why it's engrossing to me. That is why I do it. That is the focus.

re: editing the book with chris pichler of nazraeli press...

The editing process is part of making the work. I gather up the images I am interested in and then start to lay them out using just a standard book dummy, weaving the images together over a long period of time. With Between the Two, it took about three years of constantly shuffling unpublished work in with new images that I was making on a weekly basis. There was real joy in leaving the darkroom and stopping by the copy shop to make Xeroxes in order to slide them into the dummy, seeing if they fit in someplace. Sometimes the images would work, and sometimes they don't. But almost every image I've made in the last few years was tried out. Some were perfect and added just what I needed and others I've saved for the next project, whatever that may be!

want more? here's a link to the full interview, between hido and darius himes ...

making the personal, political

shahar peer. grand central station, nyc, 2006.

when i picked up the sports page of yesterday's nytimes and saw harvey araton's column, with a photo of shahar peer, and this headline, "a political swing at one player sours a tournament for all" i thought, uh oh. this is big...

and it's getting bigger...

i've been trying to keep up with the news and the blogosphere during the day while formulating my own thoughts. here goes.

the situation room: shahar peer, an israeli player currently ranked 45th on the wta tour, was denied a visa to enter the united arab emirates, to compete in a tournament for which she had qualified (and in the eyes of some, based on her play coming into the event, had a decent opportunity to win). while wta officials long feared she might have trouble securing a visa, it seems they were offered some assurances that it would be granted...at the very last hour her visa was denied. officials have gone on record to say that the denial was due to "safety concerns." the atp and its players will also have to confront this issue as it appears that andy ram, a doubles specialist, may also be denied a visa for the upcoming atp tournament there.

the reaction (as of tuesday, feb 17) : while it considered cancelling the tournament, the women's tennis association, decided to proceed (to the dismay of many), issuing this statement. the tennis channel has dropped televised coverage of the event (earning praise from many). more to come from the atp, i'm sure...possibly (hopefully) the players...

the good word: tennis' top writers have weighed in on this, with tennis mag eic james martin, calling out not only wta chief larry scott, but the wta players for their unwillingness to pay more than lip service to the matter; my favorite writer acing one out wiiiide--noting that the atp players (especially federer, who lives and trains there in the off-season) should make their voices heard on this, too; and tom tebbutt asserting that after this year tennis in dubai is done. and how.

my take: many fans are loathe to mix politics and sports, i don't think the two can ever really be separated. sport is a part of our culture, and it reflects whatever dynamics loom large in the world. sometimes it reveals exquisite acts of sportsmanship, but it also exposes cheating, racism, discrimination, violence... and i think that athletes, especially the most high-profile ones, should take a stand, especially when their own sport is affected.

in the perfect world (inside my head), my favorite player would withdraw, offering some simple, but totally right-on, no-nonsense reason: "if it is not fair for one player the way he is treated, it is not right for everyone. it's simple, no?" and then call on everyone to boycott! but with nadal and federer both suffering from injuries, it's possible that both may escape making some kind of statement on the situation that the wta and atp are facing, at least for now...we'll see how things unfold.

i don't toss out the notion of a boycott easily. i took gymnastics for a spell when i was a kid, and was obsessed with the sport. in 1980, kurt thomas was poised to make history as the first american gymnast to finally break through the death grip that the soviets and eastern bloc nations had on the men's event, and win the gold medal...and then president carter ordered the boycott of the moscow games. dream over. as a fan, i was crushed. i don't know how the athletes managed. but when you're part of a team, especially a national team, you have no choice. and anyway, those were very different times. you couldn't try to escape the link between sport and politics...

these days, most athletes will try to dance around a political question (hell, athletes are so media trained, you're hard pressed to find anyone to answer a question about a game that's not rehearsed and repeated from day to day to day, let alone say something political. jordan, jeter, tiger woods are inoffensive to the point of being...uninspiring).

but in this case, absent a brave decision by the atp or wta, or the player's union, the individual players should have the option to boycott the event, without penalty. i don't need the players to tell me their views on middle east politics if they don't want to, but i would want them to simply think about it on a personal level: if you care (and i think you should) and if these players are your friends (as some say they are) and if you put yourself in his or her place, and then think about what it is you might really be losing by taking a stand--or not taking one...take all other considerations about money and points and ranking out of the mix (and this is where some might need a ruling by the sport's "governing bodies" to help them clear their mind?) and make the personal political, then we might start to see progress toward a solution where they all have a safe place to play--here, there, everywhere, from now on.