...my 6 bits worth
That said, it's time to take inventory. What do I need to sell, what do I need to keep, what do I need to cast off, what do I need to drink, what do I need?
I know there are some cameras that I must part with, so as not to burden my family with the loads of gear I have gathered all these years. I have cameras going back to the 1870's. Yeah, analog genesis.
I also have a bunch of wine that needs to be dispersed to younger folk, people who will appreciate some of the stuff I've squirreled away.
Look, I'm not planning an immediate departure from these mortal coils. But you never know. My son, soon to turn 50, last month had a pretty close brush with getting jettisoned off the planet. So, take nothing for granted.
The last post I ruminated over the delusion of still self-identifying as a wine person. In an earlier post I tilled the soil over how I should be appreciating wine in this sunset era. I saw a glimpse of that last week when I was lunching with a younger friend, who wanted to pour over the acidity, the tannin, the greenness and ultimately not-readiness of the wines we were trying. I was just like, "Ok, this wine is sharp, this one is tannic, can I just eat my sandwich now?" I mean, I really have left the critical aspect of wine evaluation back at the starting line. I just want to easily enjoy the damn thing, point blank. That ease, I think, is the far side of the identity the two of the recent posts were still working through — not proof I've arrived anywhere, just proof the label is finally peeling off.
What I noticed though in my friend, especially when he was talking, with the-wine-person-in-charge-at-the-place-we-were-at, was that they were into the wine-speak (Graham cracker?). And they should be. They are in their peak years for livelihood. At one point I realized at this new wine bar, not far from the wine bar I once started and ran, that the wine bar buyer was born the same year I started and ran my wine bar up the street. Where did those 46 years go?
Or for that matter, the last 20, where I have been regurgitating my weekly thoughts in essay form, as if I were delivering a sermon to the flock. Ha! Yeah, I know where that's at. They've moved on to the trendier assemblies. All you have to do is scan wine news aggregators to know the world of wine writing has shifted dramatically.
I learned years ago, from photography, that what lives forever isn't always what is popular today. Not that I have any illusion that what I have written, photographed or done in the wine trade will add up to anything resembling a legacy — no sir, don't pin that tail on this donkey — I don't believe in it — legacy, that is. That is something to help make people feel important when they are alive and when they die, it gives other folks a box to put them in, aside from the coffin or the urn. No boxes for me. Dust in the wind.
In spite of that, the creative urge, like the little devil on the shoulder, says, "Ah, come on, make one more photo, one more article, one more anything." And not wishing to surrender, we fool ourselves for another foray into the fog.
In the three quarter-centuries worth of time I have put on this earth (3 quarters, 6 bits) I saw the first one as getting ready to be an adult. The second one I spent caregiving — first raising a son and then taking care of a wife who was dying at too early of any age (48). I was always shooting, all through that quarter — I never put the camera down, not really — but a lot of what I shot, developed and undeveloped both, got shelved. There wasn't room to do anything with it beyond the shooting itself; the developing and the looking came later, if at all, because there was a kid to raise and then a wife dying too young, and that took the hours the darkroom would have. What I pointed the camera at, when I could, was what was simply right in front of the camera. Some of that work I still haven't looked at since.
The third quarter, I worked on maintaining resilience and just working as hard as I could to get to a point where I could lay off the gas and coast for a few years. Right after retirement came Covid and then the “45-47” bane infested our world. I said to myself, "Look, it could be worse: you could have been a 60-year-old Jewish man in Germany in 1938, close to retirement, when the forces of evil had other plans for his abbreviated future." True. It hasn't been that bad. But it was unexpected. And because of that, it seemed like a veer off the rails and into uncharted territory.
All along I thought about what Carl Jung wrote about individuation and making sense of one's life and their "journey." I also remember something about how he spent his early years setting up thoughts, ideas, philosophies and theories, that he would spend the rest of his life working on. In a sense, I have done that with photography, and to a lesser extent, with writing coming out of the wine trade. I understood that when one is younger the ideas come faster and more readily. Then when the brain started shrinking, one, if they took the proper notes, could elaborate upon those inspirations. And today, photography is a place where I can do that, although it is a hybrid type of creature. I can still go back in time and pull up meaningful images and work — some of it, now, the first time in decades. Or I can grab a camera today and set out about recording new impressions. Or, thanks to technology, I can "paint with light" with augmented reality (i.e. AI) if there is something I want to say that isn't directly in front of the camera. So, I am staying engaged and keeping my guard up. Don't want the reaper to catch me unaware. Then again, it will be what it will be.
Do I really see clearly now, as I closed in my last post? Or is the fog so thick I imagine the clarity? Ask someone with a neurological malady, whether it be Alzheimer's or dementia, or the like? Some of them might just be as happy in the enforced fog as if it were clear as daylight. For myself, I haven't the foggiest. I do know I will keep on sucking till I do succeed. That is my sentence. My last sentence.
