Finally — it’s time, it must be. Actually, it’s about time, about only, and nothing other than — TIME. . . No, wait, that's stupid. Talk about obvious! Back up, rethink this whole thing. Start over and try to hold off on your pretensions for at least as long as possible — no highfalutin’, annoyingly cerebral allusions to the melancholy flow of hours (Nietzsche), the countless chain of years (Horace), or this bloody tyrant, time (Shakespeare). It’s like a sickness.
Seriously, find another way to start; otherwise, you know damn well, from those abstract references to measurement, you’ll certainly and unavoidably end up staring at a page filled with repetitive talk of moments: frozen, stolen, captured, immortalized — moments. Then there’ll be more blabbing about f stops, shutter speeds, film: the flypaper of time, the long lens of time, time exposures, and on and on.
It could get embarrassing before you’ve finished one page.
And even that wouldn’t be it. I mean, unless you mend your ways (mend your ways? Christ, cliches already?! Oh, go ahead, one more:), if you continue down that path, there will follow those unendurable, heady lists, inventories, itemizations, and roll-calls you love so much. It’ll be an unjustifiable parade of eunuchs, Harpies, satyrs, cardinal sins, Squanks, eternal suffering, locusts, prodigal degenerates, Sirens, sobbing immortal beauties, scarlet ornaments, serpents, fools, lepers, freaks and zealots, strumpets, pools of tears, an incubus and a succubus, 72 virgins, Babylonian whores, forbidden fruit (of all kinds), noble philosophers, eternally plagued by idiots, false prophets, and Sophists; and, of course, Odysseus will be in there somewhere early, and Alexander will stop by, which will open the door for Achilles, stoic armies of Visigoths, Huns, Teutons, Achaeans, and a couple Crusaders, just for the hell it it (pun intended), and maybe Molly Bloom, Ophelia and Larry Darrell for sure, possibly Henry Chinaski, and, lest you foolishly believe it could possibly be avoided, the Bible, yes, it will get in there too, probably 1 Corinthians 15:26: The last enemy that shall be destroyed, is death, thereby, with necessity, resurrecting and ushering in, Eugene Atget, E. S. Curtis, and August Sander, all three aggrieved, one way or another, by stories of eternal suffering and a bunch of gnostic secrets privated from common humanity since the beginning, and, doubtless, until the end.
The end? And now we’re back to time, as though it were all some sort of sick circularity.
Shit, I’m making myself tired, and I’m out of wine.
Okay, let me try again, start differently. . . . no, first I’m going to go across the street to the store, get some food to shove down my throat and secure another bottle of wine. Yes, that’ll give me time to think this over and come up with a new way to begin (Yes, I’m aware of the redundancy). I have all night. What’s the hurry? I’m going to take my time and. . .AHHHH! There it is again.
That’s it, I’m hungry.
Second Attempt :
Of course, in a more poetic, even mythic world, a world of omens, oracles, augury, and purpose, this beginning would have burst forth on a portentously blustery New Year’s Day. Then again, I might have been moved, irresistibly, toward action on an important birthday, or possibly the day my father died, or some other such day, arbitrarily invested with empty, manufactured meaning — meaning more a product of romantic superstition than reason.
But the world is really much more ordinary than all that. In the end, governed by intelligent retrospection, all of those presumed meaningful events, anniversaries, and harbingers add up to little more than repeated illustrations of the Flitcraft Parable.
Whether appreciated or not, we live in a world of cold and arbitrary causation.
So that’s it. This is much better, more to the point I really wanted to start with. Keep going.
Yes, this day, which I pardon myself for not earlier identifying, March 23rd, and into the 24th now, is as appropriate and meaningful as any other, as worthy of being the day on which I begin this thing I’ve delayed doing for so long. Yes, I’ve procrastinated with admirable, even staggering stubbornness. I’ve talked endlessly with friends about it. I made hundreds of preparatory lists, scribbled copious notes, and sketched innumerable ideas, most of which have since been misplaced or lost. Also, so that they'd be close at hand, anxiously awaiting that pregnant moment of inevitability, I very diligently and carefully arrayed in my apartment, all the tools I’d need for the project and then completely ignored them, for months, years now — until today. (Yes, I know I just committed the fallacy of reification)
Today is and was, quite ordinary. This Sunday has moved along almost exactly as I planned and imagined it would.
I loaded up my 8x10 and headed down to the Saloon at 4:15 to hear Blues Power play, and possibly make a photograph or two. The music was great, as usual. I interacted with all the usual people in the usual ways, and I made one photograph, another one of David, that I think I’m going to like. And around 8:30 I started home, on my usual route through the narrow alleys of Chinatown that lead to the Stockton Tunnel, listening to familiar music on my headphones and, as usual, I stopped off at Li Po for a last drink before mounting the stairs at the North Portal of the tunnel and beginning my climb up the hill toward my apartment.
It rained earlier and now it’s cloudy and cool. I’m sitting at my desk looking out the window at the building on the other side of the courtyard, watching the bald-headed guy, another one of us night-owls, as always, stretching that old pink sheet that has acted as his curtain for the last ten years, across his window so that he might have some privacy.
My point being, other than having begun this?. . .this?. . . .Hell, what is it? A book? A diary? A journal? A bunch of eventual photographs? A comically narcissistic overestimation? Alright, for now, let’s just call it my work, since, this early in the process, it's hard to say what, exactly, it will end up being. And, I suppose, to call it work isn’t particularly accurate either. I mean, I have no job, I have no boss, no wife, no children — I’m able to do as I please, which is precisely what I’m doing right now — my work. But other than this beginning, the day was wonderfully ordinary.
Actually, I have what will be, at least, a working title, but I think I’d rather just call it work, or the book for a while.
And, anyway, my central point is, whatever this thing turns out to be, however long it takes me to consider it finished, even if I never finish it, at least I’ve begun my work.
Maybe tomorrow, or sometime soon, I’ll try to describe what I have in mind for this new endeavor, and why. But, for now, at least I’ve begun.
