2018 in 9 photos

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1) from trip to yellowstone in october where we saw a lot of great stuff and I tried finally taking my camera off automatic and experimented with shutter speed and exposures. noteworthy b/c i was in throes of crowdfunding and there was some interior darkness starting to assemble that the majesty of the landscape was helpful in neutralizing. also: amazing place and how had we never been there before? already planning our return.

2) from trip to Humboldt County, CA where in addition to running Avenue of the Giants with friends we took the kids to Patrick's Point and walked them out to Wedding Rock where we'd been married 18 years previous. hall of mirrors that we will return to this May to run the same half-marathon

3) a still from Microaggressions, the 6 part webseries I wrote, funded (thanks RACC), and made this fall. currently in post production. was excellent to be back on set, was excellent to see it come alive thanks to the great cast/crew. was also excellent to work in diff format (ie webseries) and most especially to have such a quick turnaround time from conception to wrapping. very eager to share this. stay tuned. 

4) from our first full night alone in 7 years. we had drinks, saw Free Solo (A+) , heard some live music (Mel Brown Trio, A+), played pinball, slept in (ie past 6 a), read the sunday ny times in bed. It was a long overdue restorative and much too quick.

5) from camping trip to Jesse Honeyman State Park. a reminder to camp more and to turn off my phone and live more presently (though that sounds a little goofy and simplistic compared to the profundity of the sensation). also a reminder to clean my lens more.

6) in april got home to empty house and found the flex piping under upstairs sink split and for an hour or so 50K gallons of water were pouring through the house. repercussions still being felt/managed but suffice to say it was disruption and introduced imbalance that persists but one that may in the end be useful in terms of resetting things in a better place. 

7) from trip to Ecola State Park in June w/ family and mother in law wherein I was reminded to not try to control everything. (read: I desperately did not want to go on this trip but it turned out to be really fun)

8) after years of resistance to ever crowdfunding again I pulled trigger to raise some $ for Sister/Brother, in large part b/c having little success via other channels and this movie isn't gonna make itself. I wrote this positive affirmation at start of campaign and put it in my wallet and forgot about it. It's notable b/c to experience this go round of crowdfunding was to enter a dark and rocky place with little hope of positive end result. but by the end it worked out. (note: that sounds more quaint than the experience was, b/c the experience was horrible).

9) one hazard of prepping/making webseries and then 4 days later launching month-long crowdfunding for feature and in the middle of all that going on trip to yellowstone was that I stopped running for a couple months. This fact - in combo with all the bottomless negative sensations that crowdfunding activated - sent me into a tailspin of deep darkness. In November I made a deal with myself to run everyday for 1 to 4 miles. It was not sudden or automatic but this continued action helped me slowly return and gain a modicum of control over the chaos. this pic from Springwater Corridor in early december pretty much sums up the feeling.

Bus Project

Lately I've been drawn to taking pictures of people on my morning commute (mostly) and afternoon commute (sometimes) on the 75, 17, and 9 bus-lines here in Portland, Ore. This is kind of new b/c previously I mostly have focused on more benign things like bridges, trees, clouds. Taking candid photos naturally involves subterfuge - after all I'm not announcing it or following up afterwards - and a peripheral concern presents itself as to whether my action is appropriate, even if it's technically legal. I don't want to be all creepy about it. (There is perhaps a longer inquiry here to be made about how I relate to people and need some sort of artificial buffer zone just to engage with them but that's the topic for something else). I find something glorious about these moments in transit, all of us wishing we were somewhere else but stuck together. I also feel like this transitory zone allows people to sort of relax and drop their masks, even momentarily, across all sorts of backgrounds. A note about the particulars: these are solely photos of convenience in that I am sitting somewhere for a practical reason, usually an empty seat. I am not sitting near selected people to take their photo. I look up and they're there and sometimes the light is good. I generally take between 1 and 3 or 4 photos in rapid succession on my phone, save one if it's workable and delete the rest. After messing w/ the image I delete the original.

Margaret Malone is the best!

This past Friday Margaret and I stayed home from work to do our taxes. I think most would agree this is naturally a sort of depressing undertaking but for two artists who haven't quite yet monetized their enterprises it can come bundled with deep review of life-decisions, adding in turn to the register of depression. The table was spread with receipts - a burrito I bought in Idaho when I attended the Boise Film Fest; some gas Margaret bought en route to Seattle for LitFix etc - true artifacts of living the dream. Right smack in the middle of that the phone rings and it's the Pen New England Foundation calling to inform Margaret that she was selected as a finalist for the Pen/Hemingway this year.

Shortly thereafter we found ourselves out of the house drinking champagne for lunch.

Margaret hasn't had the traditional sort of writing career trajectory. She doesn't hold an MFA from a prestigious program, much less at all. She's not a veteran of the A-list writing colonies and fellowships. (Now, granted being veteran of those corridors doesn't guarantee anything but it seems/feels like lot of awards at this level share some commmonality of authorial career heritage.) Margaret has worked on PEOPLE LIKE YOU in various forms/iterations across a decade plus while also managing day jobs, pregnancies, variety of spousal issues, child-rearing et cetera. So to have her book recognized at this level is a gut-punch (if there's a way you can see a gut-punch as really really awesome) especially because Atelier26 her publisher is about as indie as they come (current staff: 2). This means one can safely deduce the award is solely on the merits of the work, which is incredible. Yes, all awards probably should just be on the merits but other factors leach in (consciously or not) and the deck can feel stacked so it can breed cynicism (note: in people like me). Margaret getting this recognition feels like a deserved tax credit in the universal balance sheet after years of programmed systemic penalty. Also, it is possible. It can be done. It is all worth it.

Okay, I am a biased party obviously but you should know this about Margaret if you don't already: She is a force in both the artistic and actual sides of this whole ride. In addition to being a ridiculously talented writer I have never met anyone in this world with deeper reserves of kindness, charity, humanism. She's authentic, hilarious, self-deprecating, inspiring, singular just like her book PEOPLE LIKE YOU which you should consider giving a read. (Trailer below!)

put another way: Margaret!!! Yahoo!!!!!



More at Margaret Malone's website here

Disneyland

spent a few days in Disneyland last week, staying at the Disney Hotel and going to the park on a two-day pass. difficult to summarize the sensations it provoked. I'd been to Disneyworld 2 times as a kid and to Disneyland many times as a man in my early 20s. Here, as a parent this time, I felt the strange and luminous intersection of past/present, child/parent. I felt some parts of myself surrender seeing it all through new sets of eyes. I felt the ephemeral hum that marketing sometimes calls happiness or magic. Let's instead call it a light, shining forward and backward, illuminating all the good parts (okay, mostly the good parts. there are still lines, there are still un-wonderful people), the best parts. Floating in the pool with my son, looking at the blue sky; riding Splash Mountain with him, a split-second decision; the caves on Tom Sawyer Island, etc were tiny unlockings, tiny steel doors rising in mostly rocky corridors.

This is not exactly a newsflash, but the Disney operation really has their act together, sustaining the illusion on myriad fronts, buy-in from all parties big and little. I did not want to leave. I ached as the bus pulled away and took us.

in the cave, photo by MM

I left wanting to cling to those small moments, protect them and keep them close and readily accessible. There is something instructive and uniformly true inside them but I am unable to fully articulate it at present. But I can feel it.

silence, gratitude

this past saturday 9/19/15, the per se anniversary of us pulling out of the driveway on SE 14th (see previous post), we are walking in Tryon Creek with our kids, the sunlight mottled on the ground, the faintest smoky whiff of autumn on the edge of everything. I feel momentary overwhelm-ment, a quick involuntary flutter of air-gasping akin to one drowning breaking the surface prior to sinking. Could I be any more fortunate? I thought. Holy shit that was a quick decade I thought.

Everything that resounds and thrums with the amazing vitality and presence of true living is the quiet and mundane and uncelebrated. Markers and rituals are important but nothing trumps a lazy unanticipated moment, hidden significance tucked inside the quiet.

A grove of trees, weather-worn and majestic, silently growing alongside one another.

whirlwind May, ie hall-of-mirrors

My film the black sea had the grand good fortune to be accepted to the Seattle Transmedia & Independent Film Festival (nee Seattle True Independent FF). At once a vindication and a validation for me as a filmmaker (my first festival acceptance ever! which while yes, probably shouldn't be the metric by which artistic pursuits are gauged, felt resoundingly assuaging to my wounded pride/s), the true joy for me was sitting in a darkened theater with friends, cast and crew watching the film unfold.

filmmaker pass, STIFF 2015

we drove up from Portland the day before, checked into our airb-and-b (sp?) in the tangletown hood abutting green lake which we skirted prior to meeting the woman who graciously would babysit the kids the next night so M could accompany me to the screening. After we went to the T's house for dinner. In a sort of mythic bookending to the film's existence (which I am prone to seek out due in small measure to my insistent non-self-effacing) the first time I ever entered the beach house in Arch Cape that inspired the film was with M and the T's (M and ST were colleagues at the time and the house belonged/belongs to their boss). In fact, it is their very likeness in the 'the black sea' postcards that were created during the fundraising stage of the film (see below).  It is fair to say then in a general sense that they helped to inspire the film. We had a quick dinner and then I dropped M and the kids at home and headed off to the festival, quite uncertain what to expect.

ST & AT look out the Arch Cape windows

At the grand illusion cinema I met Jason K, the filmmaker whose feature showed that night (SEAHORSES, see it!) and tried to remain as calm as possible. I still had this nagging sensation that some mistake had been made and would be corrected momentarily by flushed-face staff escorting me out the back door. But no one came for me and I was allowed to sit in the cinema and watch the film.

check out #4

Next AM was an exercise in patience as I awaited my screening at 8 pm. Kids help keep you grounded  though and so busy that you can barely register anything beyond getting to the next muffin, the next playground, the next nap. (A highlight, we managed to go paddle-boating - a sentiment I never thought I'd find myself expressing -  on Green Lake.) The weather was pristine and the day was glorious. And before long it was time to go to the screening. M and I went and had a necessary (for me) beer. I could feel myself tail-spinning, nerves overwhelming my excitment. She ran through some steps for me to remain calm and talked me down. I owe her everything.

the great Erin McGarry (Charlotte) and  Bill Sebastian (Paul) bookend 'the black sea' director (ie me) and fellow filmmaker (in hat) Rick Walters

Before long we were there outside the theater as friends, cast, crew, other filmmakers began to arrive. I felt my body relax into it and was sustained by all the love.

Before long we were inside and 'the black sea' started. A variety of sensations watching this thing with others, in public forum, after much passage of time, primary among them: films take a long time to make and shit, my cast is amazing. Afterward I did a Q &A and went for beers w/ some black sea crew, DP and co-producer Scott Ballard, gaffer Kevin Forrest, fellow pdx filmmaker Ted Davee and the rad Bill Sebastian. (who plays Paul in the film and who flew up from LA to see it (!)).

I made it to bed late and drunkenly, fumbling quietly in the air-b-and-b (sp?) to not wake anyone up, riding huge waves of satisfaction. 10 years prior I had had 2 brain surgeries and faced an uncertain future, convinced I would be dead within months. Now I had succeeded in not only making a feature film but in showing it. So much work and life - a decade's worth - in an eye-blink. And the older you get you become increasingly aware the eye-blinks are finite.

children at dawn

5 days later I am back in Arch Cape, staying with my family at the very house we used to board/feed the crew while we shot 'the black sea'. It's 2 spots away from the house in the film (ie the one in the postcard, ie the one that inspired the movie, the one where we shot the movie). From the right spot on the deck or the beach we can see into this house, we can see that it's inhabited by a celebratory cluster of people on vacation. Shared meals, beach walks, fires in the fireplace. What milestones occur for some that go unnoted for others? Which rolling wave is the one with meaning and which is the one that is only memory? What film/s will I have summoned a decade from now? These thoughts churned in my head for awhile one morning as the grey sun rose, finding no solution or resting place. And then my son woke and we moved to a muffin, a playground, a nap.

end of year

posting has been slowed to a trickle of late. busy few weeks in a busy couple of months that involved m being gone for a month, us going to SF for xmas, etc. very good news on several fronts at once. more about all that in the coming weeks, but the short of it is that m and i each won a grant for our work (actually m won 2) and we hit a major stride with our memoir. i'll have to leave it there. specifics to come in 2011. happy new year!

speech

the above is from david foster wallace's speech to graduates at  kenyon college in 2005. it's been floating around for awhile but i never read it all the way thru until yesterday. and i haven't stopped thinking about it since. sometimes interior matters are addressed in an abstract manner (ie, do good, think peacefully etc) that, for me anyway, goes out the window at the first signs of actual friction, stress, real world etc, but this speech successfully includes the non-abstract. block off ten minutes and read it.

five year eye-blink

The me of 5 yrs ago, at this very moment i type, was laying in an ICU bed, hooked to machines, drainage sacs filling slowly at my neck, a jigsaw swath cut across my head, wondering where i'd be in 5 days much less 5 years, thoughts of the future reduced by brain tumor to small bits, all durations now measured by the length of time to the next medical event: the next treatment, the next doctor appointment, the next specialist, the next MRI, the next follow-up, the next moment of being swallowed by black pools of fear and uncertainty. Reaching backward through time, the me of this moment is watching the icu me, saying to look past the immediate, to summon the strength to place yourself five years into the future. I am telling myself that a mere five years from now you'll be alive, having a dream-like weekend:

friday you'll have dinner w/ m and discuss her grad-school rejection and how outside affirmation doesn't matter as much as the doing. later you'll see The White Ribbon, the 1st of 5 movies you'll see in 48 hours. Saturday, you'll run around the mt tabor reservoir; Later you'll see old friends in old neighborhood and context will widen as they are changed but not really; Later you'll see Brute Force; later you'll attend a glorious and unique celebration dinner where issues of life, art, fear intersect in smashing magnificence, food and wine and drawing breath; Sunday, you'll see the inspiring and tremendous Syndromes and a Century. You'll have breakfast and read the sunday times. Later you'll see Kings and Queen. Later you'll see Red Road. Earlier, as you're en route to pick up the footage for the last short film you directed you'll see the hospital up on the hill where you're currently recovering. You'll note the normal sensation of the afternoon, the rain, the drivers, the walkers, the bikers, all moving with a normal unhurried gait, all caught in the splendid gift of simply being. You'll know that at this very moment, five years hence, there are others arriving at the hospital, choked w/ fear but you right now you are just a man in the passenger seat, headed east on Hawthorne, thrilled to be alive, remembering the strange gift/s of trauma, the radiant and sometimes transcendant power. And you'll keep going.

spring cleaning

one of those wknds: car returned to our clutches on friday. we park it on the street instead of our driveway b/c the street is better-lit...we watch 'hunger' friday night and as a result spend saturday am on internet learning about the ira and ulsterism and the 6 disputed counties of northern ireland...saturday AM i go for a run, m goes up mt tabor...we get bad news from a friend...we begin emptying our kitchen of all the things that do not belong. this takes much longer than anticipated and is exhausting...somewhere in there we get bad news of a different stripe from a different friend...bone-tired we ride our bikes to montavilla and eat dinner...sunday am, walking lennie, we are both consumed with worry and sadness for friends in distress, 2 entirely different scenarios but each w/ life-altering implications. we have lived in that zone before but still fill ill-equipped to say/feel/do the right thing...at yoga later that morning the focus is on equanimity - it is the spring equinox after all - and the breath. The way intake/exhale should be the same and how a certain pose or practice will interfere...we meet an old friend in town for a couple hours. she has her own news w/ ramification and implication...we go home and clean out two closets using the same principle as the kitchen: we subtract what does not belong...we load the car w/ everything we're losing voluntarily. we donate it...later we think of the open heart, the equanimity, the meeting joy/despair with the same face...later the health-care bill passes...

my sister

my amazing, lovely, courageous sister continues to inspire me. here's a video i shot for her this wknd to help her as she tries to get on 'the biggest loser'. send her your good thoughts and support. i love you sis.
xo

...we've been selected in this beautiful lottery...

it is of utmost importance to remain grateful, to recall the finite nature of breath intake, the ticking clock that tocks as you're sitting here. It is imperative to recall this when the mechanics of daily life intercede, say, when you go to pick up a pharmacy order that was a week late in arriving - despite info to the contrary - and you're told that the cost has tripled for no reason and is now so pricey that you cannot afford it so you have to tell them to send it back or, say, when moments thereafter you go to pick up your freshly-repaired car at the mechanics b/c they fixed the steering column and shaft after thieves took the car from your driveway last week and you start the car and it doesn't sound right so you look under the hood and there's smoke and radiator fluid 'coming thru the seam' so you have to leave the car there and get back in touch with the insurance company to alert them that the thieves screwed up the engine as well. these are moments when frustration, anger rise familiarly but you have to beat them back. it is a gift to stand here. you are lucky to be breathing.

pursuit

was profoundly moved by "Anvil! The Story of Anvil", a perfect encapsulation of the risks and returns of committing yourself to the artistic life. (Or maybe I can just relate a little too much to the rigors and annoyances of day-jobs while what you want lies elsewhere). There are no guarantees. Getting what you want might not look the way you envisioned. And so on. At it's core is a pursuit, spanning decades, a pact between two friends, endless tests, stumbles, setbacks and every once in awhile, soaring. Highly recommended.

kindness, awakening

given the opportunity on his last show at nbc to fully defame, besmirch, rail at, crap on, tar and feather, or otherwise blame his enemy for their stupidity, short-sighteness, unfairness, and callousness, Conan O'Brien takes the opportunity to express his gratitude to them.  it defies the baser default instincts of our human character. His resigned tone became not a capitulation but a mode of transcendance. truly amazing.

I am reminded of a phrase of St. Francis of Assisi, a phrase which dogged me for the past several years, one scenario in particular, a phrase easy to say, near impossible to put into practice, near impossible to mean, but one which at last I relented to :

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned

hits keep coming

received an excellent letter in the mail yesterday, excerpted below. though the news was expected, it was no less glorious to hold in my hand and read out loud. for the medically un-initiated or for those not interested in penetrating the levels of medical-speak, the phrase in question, ie the one imbued with life-extending, ie life-altering ramification is thusly:

"...the mass has not changed in size or appearance..."

patience, reward

the other morning margaret learned she won an oregon literary fellowship. the public announcement was to be that night at a reading featuring christopher hitchens. they comped us two tickets. in the sold out schnitzer auditorium margaret's name was announced - along with the other winners - and she stood in the warm glow of applause. we returned home to find in the mail a letter announcing the same news and a check for more money than we've seen in a long time for anything, certainly for creative endeavor.

we determined it's been at least a decade since she began writing in earnest. and what to show? a smattering of publications? a more substantial stack of refusals? the rewards are meager, few and far between. this fellowship felt like a long-forming reprieve, a tacit acknowledgment from the powers that be, a move up the ladder to the next level. sadly or happily, margaret realized this: we are so acclimated to rejection that our default state is to expect it, one presumes in fact, to invite it.

accepting and honoring what you deserve can run counter to one's internal mechanics. but margaret deserves it. for sure. at the same time there is a buddhist precept (i think, maybe it's from an old cowboy movie) that says: accept good news and bad news with the same emotion. this is what we are trying to do. Being grateful without being entitled. Altering the default setting to the one that engenders more scenarios like this, less piles of 'no thank you'. And yet at the same time committing to the work, not the response. The pursuit of applause is a hollow undertaking. It's delicious and satisfying but it's only garnish, not the meal.

also, it was a kick-ass start to 2010.