Better

The fear that I had a stroke is passing.  I'm more stable now as long as I don't turn my head rapidly or bend down to look for something.  Those are good signs that it is a displaced crystal in my inner ear, so. . . I am almost relieved.  I am still miserable but less terrified.  

So. . . I sounded the alarm.  Just remember, it is here that I reveal the workings of a fragile mind.  I am prone to panic.  It is, I think, part of having a very strong and active imagination.  Such things are a blessing and a curse, as are most things in life.  Can't have the yin without the yan.  

So they say.  

"They." 

The pressures of caring for my mother, however, have not lessened.  Indeed, they are becoming greater.  She is hallucinating more, mostly in the night and when she gets up in the morning.  She is like a wild animal caught in a trap then, eyes uncomprehending, mouth agape with panicked moaning.  She wanders about on her walker tilting her head side to side looking at some strange land she's never seen before.  Then she'll cry out some nonsensical question.  It reminds me of the scene in Bonnie and Clyde when Clyde's brother, shot, is dying.  Without reason, he yells out, "Where's my boots?  I believe the dog got my boots, Clyde."

During the day, she is totally rational.  I'm sure this is common, something like "Sundowner's Syndrome," but I haven't researched it yet.  

But there is never a time she is not miserable.  It is terrible and terrifying, the thought of living in constant misery without moments of happiness or joy.  Surely this is where the concept of "hell" was birthed, a ceaseless and never ending torture.  

The "innocent happiness" of a child, the opposite end of that spectrum, must have been some imagination's conception of "heaven."  To enter "heaven" is to be like a child, an innocent "lamb."  

I am somewhere in that other place, "purgatory."  It all seems crystal clear to me now from where the conception of these ideas of the afterlife sprang.  

"Have sprung." 

Did you click on any of those links to the brief docs on photographers yesterday?  Surely not.  But here's a name for you.  Michael Ackerman.  You can test your eye and brain to see if you tend toward the commercial or to the "artistic" side of photography.  My Miami friend sent me some new photos of herself.  Good ones.  She has a good commercial eye.  She is now the head of branding for a line of baby clothing.  Not bad for a kid just starting out.  She's a worker and a real go-getter and will do fine.  

But looking at Michael Ackerman's work, along with the works of Martin Bogren and Antoine d’Agata, I realized I'm somewhere trapped in between (link).  I was taught by imaginative photographers who manipulated the straight image.  I weaned myself first on the incredible precision of Edward Weston but then fell under the spell of Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand.  Then came Diane Arbus.  If you try to be an amalgam of this group. . . well, you can't.  And so I've tried to work in many ways.  And that, I am thinking, will limit your ability to grow in any one direction.  

That's one of my "catalog" shots at the top.  I've been waiting to see JP's before posting mine, but he still hasn't produced.  As I have reported, I was always standing behind him trying to stay out of his way, so my angles were limited.  I didn't mind, of course, for this is not something I wish to pursue.  I would like, however, to gain access to the studio for my own wicked reasons.  But what I really want is to have my own again where I can experiment to my desire's end.  And as I watch my mother and consider my own lifespan, I think more and more, "why not?"  You can be feeling fine and be struck down, reduced, compromised, in a mere moment.  There comes a point where you know you can't count on tomorrow.  

Here's a short fluff network piece on a photographer who has photographed the worst of human conditions his entire career, a photojournalist, a kind of photography I have ever had much interest in pursuing, but when he comes home to Paris, he makes "postcards" of Parisian life.  I love his "postcards."  I think, like him, I am drawn to extreme poles.  I will reconcile myself with thinking that.