You sure do remind me.

4:09am.

Eventful Day / Paint A Pretty Picture / Gave My Best Try.

This morning when I woke, it was later than I'd intended. That's no fair fucking surprise, since I'm pretty sure I didn't see sleep until sun-up (again). It's not what I'd intentioned, but with the best of every gesture there can only reasonably be expected very appropriate failure to follow hot on the heels.

However, what I remember and what I don't are things that are outweighed heavily with the latter presuming its spot foremost. When did I ever become this lad who stood at the bottom of the stairwell that leads to wonder, only to pass out before taking the first step?

Thank goodness by body runs on instinct and motor response, otherwise I just might fall the fuck down on the ground and pretty much fucking stay right there. Oh buddy.

When I did happen to crawl out of bed and have a few glasses of water, I set to cleaning up and preparing the house for a photoshoot with Catriona. And it wasn't until after the shoot that I realized I haven't shot with her since Christmas Eve of 2007. Time has been slipping by at a very fast rate for me this past year; that's over half a year since shooting with somebody who I would regularly think as one of my favorite people to photograph.

Here are some photographs from that time, the afternoon before Christmas, last year:







Catriona boarded a transit bus and disappeared back to her side of town, after which I went out with my good friend Angela to attend a photography exhibit presented by the very talented and intriguing staff of Blue Moon Camera & Machine. This is a shop run by Jake Shivery and houses under one roof some of the finest photographers in Portland, inclusive of the inimitable Zeb Andrews and the aforementioned fine gentleman Jake Shivery.

Spending time with Angela is a great joy, and having drinks with her is just about heavenly:









After two bars and some wine at the art show, Angela promptly deposited my person back home, whereupon I had a short conversation with my friend Shane, who happens to be an exceptional chef who lives in the house that I do:





At which point I was picked up by my friend Jill:



We drove to my favorite bar in Portland. Tim was bartending. The chef dropped a bottle of Corona next to our table and I got doused in it. I love that shit! It was a beautiful day off.

Yours,
JARET.

Preoccupied little koala boer.

3:55am.

Sometimes I'd like my life to just stop.

Usually it's the drink talking, but I don't think it must have to take a wizard to pick out those hidden little pockets of truth. Emotional barbed wire is silly and often times more of a hindrance than something you can hold and mold. It feels good, I admit, to just coast by with a blank stare, but this sort of shit is paid with a price. Try banking on it. See the stocks plummet. See the ocean floor and all those kooky little gorgeous unknowable specters making a life out of the bottom. It's just a circle, revolving over and over again, and with each hundred or so revolutions, the same old stuff starts to look a little embarrassing. If you can call wake-up calls embarrassing. Ever felt that funny moment where-n-when you realize, all of a sudden, that it just doesn't really matter?

Good-mornings and good-nights starting to ring a long running, very hollow bell? God I need a hug.

Have you ever woken up suddenly, bright as the explosions in pitfires, wide awake as the moment you are slapped right in the face on a street corner, to find you're standing outside of the world . . . but right in its belly too? Oh tapdances, you're so pretty.

I don't matter.

Love,
JARET.

Here's some photographs...









...it's your destiny to become something outside of the regular range of availability, I say to myself. Of course, it's only your stupid dreams talking.





...what else have you got to do but not become?

If you forget to be there for me sometimes.

5:54am.

I must have passed out sometime around 10pm last night. Which would have had me in bed by the Witching Hour, which would probably be the first time it's happened to me like that since the mysterious flu epidemic that rendered half of Portland incapacitated and bedridden earlier this year.

By the looks of things (bundled up t-shirt for a pillow, a pile of unfolded laundry tucked into the far corner, the freshly cleaned sheet tossed halfway across the mattress instead of fixed to it properly), I must have been awful tired. During the afternoon, while working on photographs, I'd started drinking with a Mickey's, which is not the usual for me in any respect, but rather something introduced to me by friends who had recently spent the better part of July staying with me at my house. Following upon the wildly galloping hooves of this mischievous intoxicant there flowed a steady but regular stream of other things. But I think that again, the sheer mystery and deviousness of the Mickey's provoked in me an unstoppable end to sleep deprivation; exactly as the first time, in July, I woke up in a disordered bed, not having been aware of any attempt made to sleep -- the next day, no less -- properly refreshed. I do feel as if I can run a mile. But I can't of course, as my lungs are no longer the picture of health. Until the oxygen in the open air is supplanted with Albuterol, there will be no more jogging in my lifetime.

Yours,
JARET.

Here are some photographs:

Already made it to the bottom of that well.

6:46am.

Hey.

The church was so silent at times that I could hear the soft, very soft hum of an air conditioning vent somewhere near the pew I sat in. For a moment it overwhelmed me and when I sighed it seemed to be in melody with the hush of cold music from the air conditioning vent, wherever it was. I thought maybe they might have been placed underneath the long wooden benches, but I couldn't just get down upon my hands and knees and go looking for them, and I leaned back, tilting my head, looking up at the rafters; pretending the vast beams and shadows of the ceiling up above were an ocean -- and I about to fall from the sky, into it -- I closed my eyes and let the words of the Pastor seep in.

Up to this point, the funeral had been a complete letdown. I hadn't come here to feel even lower, about myself or anyone else, but hearing these words, and looking around me, at everyone here who were all somehow connected to each each other in one way or the other through the young gentleman up front in the casket, the only thing that could come to my mind was a complete and utter submersion of this church and its present attendance, down into the deepest, darkest part of the ocean that no one alive could possibly still know about, if ever anyone did. I pictured the bubbles escaping from the dozens of breaths, and the light from up above fading until it was just a pinhole.

So I stared up at the ceiling, wondering how long it would be before, after the trails of years finally sputtered out, each of us here would be in our own graves. A hundred years from now, maybe. There's a lot of life left in some of them, I can smell that on the clouds of perfume and aftershave. Still tilting my head back, listening to the solemnity of the sweet words running around the open acoustics of the chapel house but not really hearing what its intentions were attempting to dig into the virulent sadness and silence of those gathered here today, I didn't smile or frown. I just pictured the ocean swallowing everything.

And I tuned out.

Good-night,
JARET.

As if the rain fell only upon you.

3:14am.

With an exception paid to showers and lunch and frequent trips to the corner store for Sparks, I've spent the better seamlessness of two days sitting here at my desk working on photographs. This afternoon I did have a short nap, though, on the floorboards half underneath the glass coffee table and with my head rested on a pillow below the likewise sleeping creature Lazerbeam:



Later in the evening there appeared a window of opportunity in which to have pints of beer and tequila with my friend Judith:



Most of last night I worked on a short presentation of the small amount of work I have been able to print from my recent tour with Unwed Sailor:

From the city of Austin, Texas:



From somewhere near the ocean in Florida:



From somewhere on the highway in Texas:

>

From the Colonel's empty mansion in Texas:



When finally my weekend came to an end and I reached home again, I found Courtney and Tony on the dual sofa machines, discussing what I gathered may either have been plague rites or steps to relinquish the hold drug addiction has on one's life. Tony's only been here for a few days but I wish he'd stay for longer, because even though I don't know him, he seems really funny, and Courtney likes him a lot and I like when Courtney's happy. But then they shut the lights out and so I came up here to say good-night.

Good-night,
JARET.

Ants gathering at the foot of the bed.

2:43am.

I suppose it's finally time for bed. It's been twelve days of 24-hour Mickey's and Sparks and Terminal Gravity. Now I feel like I know these drinks like people. People I can trust and people that don't always say thank you but, in the bottom gulps of their pooling hearts, still actually don't resent the open arms they're always showered with. We dropped Julie and Sean off at the airport tonight after dinner at the hands of Shane, our resident chef. After taking in a film with Courtney and Clint, I crawled into the attic to work on some photographs. Tonight I finished arranging forty of them and that's just good enough to be able to resume crawling, this time into the bed. Lately my blood alcohol level has been the exact level of blood. So I've been shivering, and frowning when I have to get out of bed. Tomorrow morning I have another photoshoot in North Portland, so I need to rise somewhat early to catch an appropriate bus.

More than likely tomorrow I will also have the first prints from my recent tour with Unwed Sailor. I'm keeping the thought I have in my head of the Devil's fingers, crossed. After a month-long trip, seeing first prints is a quiet little horror that is always somewhat welcome, but creates a nervous sensation that's not unlike anxiety or stress. And a few beers before coming home, I'll have that too. It will compliment the rum and soda I plan on having before getting on the bus.

Also, I posted the rough draft of a new story here, at Please Don't Leave Me's profile on MySpace. I was pretty surprised that with all the recent goings-on I could actually find the time alone to get a new story done, so I had a pleasant rest that night despite the four Sparks in my system that truly almost had my head squeezed dry of moisture. I think I drank a gallon of water the following morning because I couldn't feel enough moisture in my body to make it to the bus stop under the haze of the afternoon sun without recuperating.

I own a mule?

Good-night, sailor.
JARET.

A bad day to fall winsomely in love.

-- Long Beach, CA / 10:52pm. --

You wouldn't believe the view here. In this town, at this barstool, next to this merchandise table . . . the view of the bar. They're creating beautiful pints of beer and sexy, only half-lucid cocktails. If angels exist I hope they come here and have drinks and ask me if it's okay if I stroke their feathery wings and scaly skins. And their sharp teeth and chiseled bones.

You know what?

Last night in Los Angeles my camera broke inside the Vermont House. First the focusing went entirely off and then the shutter blades inside the camera ate each other and left a meat cuttery to look at. A butchery it is. Several disquieting telephone calls and texts later, it became grudgingly decided that a new camera will be shipped to me somewhere along the tour in Texas early next week by my manager Courtney Eck. I do hope that IT arrives before WE arrive in the city of Austin. There's a hotel with a great bar that I want to photograph. And a haunting specter with large, pretty eyes and probably short bangs that I want to photograph.

Last night was alternately wonderful and relaxing up until the destruction of my peace of mind with this camera business. My dear friend Jeremy Talcott (late of our BradLeo & The Heartstoppers) arrived at The Short Stop, which is owned by Greg Dulli, a hard man with a wonderful turn of phrase. Then proceedings moved on past a potential knife fight on some well-lit streetcorner and a shockingly pretty glimpse of what appeared to be half of a stray dog, torn to pieces. I was glad to get to the Vermont House after these things; not because of the neighborhood goings-on, but because we had drinks to drink and Sybris to feel up. Sybris is the touring band that we're on tour with. They are from Chicago and they don't use the f-word so much but they make a lot of inappropriate sexual comments about seemingly dignified things, like lawyers and soccer games and wall carpeting.

Whiskey, wine and Colt 45 later, and then the terrible, nearly neck-choking sound of my camera fulfilling my great fear of an expansive loneliness that's not picture-perfect. And you know, it's hard to complain and pitch a fit because one ends up coming across like a self-concerned fucking joke of a man, but oh joy, I so wanted to just throw myself out of the second floor window. It took me a long long while to calm down, and I probably said some untoward things in front of people before passing out in the van. What little I recall (mostly it's vague) is the stern talking to that I gave myself somewhere where I most certainly hope nobody could hear me. But of course, I don't remember where I was when this happened or if anyone was there. I've grown a lot both emotionally and artisticaly in the past couple years since moving my entire life to the pacific Northwest, but with that growth has come some decently unwelcome understandings of myself that amount to the basic theory that I will probably be dead before I get a chance to have gray hair. I've always wanted to go silverish. But it hasn't happened. Watching Fugazi go gray was great and I felt jealous the first time I opened up the insert of 'The Argument'. Those guys are such gentlemen. Better people than I am.

Another reason this camera ordeal makes me feel shitty is the opportunities missed. Such as desert fucking landscapes. Guess I won't be shooting that goddamned cactus like I thought. And I met Jamie Hunt tonight. He's an incredible painter from California who did the artwork for Unwed Sailor's record 'The Marionette & the Music Box' and also the artwork for Johnathon's Circle of Birds project. At one point Jamie was going to provide illustrations for my book, before the book was done, but time never panned out the way I'd wanted it to and there are no illustrations in my book at all. If I had a camera tonight I could shoot some portraits of Jamie, which would be neat. I like portraits. Of people. A lot.

I really hope that replacement comes before I fucking throw myself off a bridge and sail down to the water without even getting to photograph it. Oh lord. I really do sound awfully lame dwelling on this camera thing, but it's really important to me the way a lot of other stuff simply isn't. Photography is one of the few things that I can do in this world that's not stupid. I can only just barely talk to people in any valuable sense, I'm thinking; sometimes I hope I'm wrong about that, but probably I'm not. So, not only can I never seem to make something more than a ghost of myself, but I can't even talk about it or relate to others about it. You'd be surprised what a shock it is to actually get through a conversation with a stranger without finding that I've pretty much distanced myself completely from the entire world. So I just shoot photographs of people and hope everything turns out okay in the end. I hope so.

Drinks are free tonight. Did I say that much? All night. At first I was like, "What the devil?" And then I said to the hotel manager, "Nice. Very, very nice."

I guess I'll sign out. Thanks for reading. And thanks for coming to see me, Jeremy.

Your friend,
JARET.