This picture was taken in Utrecht, Netherlands, of me and my friend Bob. I don't look that happy, do I?
[This is a back-post, added at the date the picture was taken but in fact added 2014-05-14. I post this picture mostly because it is the picture which shows me at my maximum weight..]
I don't remember the exact date, but around Christmas of 1994, right after having my having returned from 6 months in Chile, Michelle, Jeffrey and I traveled to Los Angeles from Minneapolis, to visit my father and family. This was one day when I think we got into my dad's 1928 Model A Ford and drove to the beach. Here is a picture of me and Jeffrey with the car in the driveway of where my dad was living at that time, which happened to be right next door to the house he grew up in.
[The "retroblogging" project: this is a "back-post" written and added 2013-05-06. I've decided to "fill-in" my blog all the way back. It's a big project. But there's no time limit, right?]
I don't remember the exact date, but we took a number of fall camping trips to Northern Minnesota during the period 1987-89. I chose this date as plausible but it's at best a guess.
I was standing in a campfire (notably, a failed campfire), probably making a goofy speech. I really enjoyed those camping trips.
[The "retroblogging" project: this is a "back-post" written and added 2013-05-05. I've decided to "fill-in" my blog all the way back. It's a big project. But there's no time limit, right?]
Picture taken at the pier in La Libertad.
[The "retroblogging" project: this is a "back-post" written and added 2014-05-14. I've decided to "fill-in" my blog all the way back. It's a big project. But there's no time limit, right? This is a rare picture of me – I scanned the degraded photo in 2007 and finally go around to posting it.]
14 janvier 1985 lundi
The weekend was busy. Saturday, recall: the soft chilly gloom of Chartres, an amazing cathedral, so dedicate to god, as were the generations of men who created it. Each window, her own story, framing the illiterate world wherein the medievals lived placidly, sheep of god. The cathedral seemed the sort of thing that I though only appeared in myth, or in the daydreams of young children (like I once was) who went to be architects someday (as I once did). But I watched too the midwesternesque french countryside roll by outside the frosted bus windows, and watched the little farms and towns swing past, and the vast wires which swooped by only to be caught up just before they fell, under their heavy electric loads, by another prententious tower of gaudy, post-industrial steel. So much for Poetry. I spent that night – the whole night – at La Piscine – a strictly across-the-channel sort of scene (i.e. Londoneque). But I stayed six hours till 5:30 am. Not drinking, not dancing, but just watching several hundred disaffected french, british, american, german, etc. youth party all one Saturday night. It left me content but exhausted. You can feel all the shields of a thousand static individual clash, and smell the hot, empty ozone of their lonely intermingling. Some were happier than others.
Yesterday, having slept 3 hours after taking the 1st metro homee (yes, I got that wonderful, almost ecstatic sense!), I staggled off to the Louvre, looking for something meditative. I hit the whole thing, spending 7 hours there, and despite my exhaustion, I felt somehow compelled to see it all, and meditate a little on each thing I saw. I spent a lot of time especially with the early rennaissance schools of painting in Italy. I could spend hours watching the renditions of so many vivid imaginations.
Well, I did miss the Ancient Near-Eastern part, basically. But I meditated too a great deal on the displays of tapistries and works of Coptic Egypt. I recalled several books I'd read last spring on gnosticism, and how one of the centers of that alternate, powerful christian spirituality was coptic Egypt. I tried to squint my eyes and visualize the vibrant, christian faith in its hydra-headed, flowering, youth among the dead stone and starched styles – but all I felt were the overwhelming waves of heat, that desert, where those same artifacts waited 1200+ years after Islam had ousted the coptic vibrancy. Etc.
So I spent today pretty much recuperating.
[The "retroblogging" project: this is a "back-post" transcribed from a paper journal on 2013-04-26. I've decided to "fill-in" my blog all the way back. It's a big project. But there's no time limit, right?
I will concede: frankly, this is very pretentious, embarrassing, unpleasant writing to look back on – especially considering it was my own journal? In 1985, who was I thinking was going to read it – some futuristic world-wide computer network?
The picture is from a scan of one of the rather extensive set of photos that I took in 1983-1985. It shows a view looking toward Sacre Coeur from one of the bell towers on Notre Dame.]
This picture was sent to me by my family. It's only here as a kind of memorial – I was not communicating well with them at this stage in my life.
[The "retroblogging" project: this is a "back-post" transcribed from paper on 2010-11-28. I've decided to "fill-in" my blog all the way back. It's a big project. But there's no time limit, right?]
Last year, I got a pretty nice camera from my uncle (used). It was a Pentax.
I took it out while home in Humboldt for Christmas Break this year, and took some photos of the world. One place that's important in my own psychological evolution: Lufenholtz Beach, in Trinidad, California.
[The "retroblogging" project: this is a "back-post" transcribed from memory on 2012-02-17. I've decided to "fill-in" my blog all the way back. It's a big project. But there's no time limit, right?
The above picture is from a scan of one of the rather extensive set of photos (mostly of nature) that I took in 1983-1985.]
Prefiguring future Halloween activities during my stint teaching in South Korea (2007-2018), I dressed as a mummy for Halloween when I was age 11 in 1976.
[The “retroblogging” project: this is a “back-post” added 2021-05-23. I’ve decided to “fill-in” my blog all the way back. It’s a big project. But there’s no time limit, right?]
My sister and I got dressed up for Halloween.
[The “retroblogging” project: this is a “back-post” added 2021-05-23. I’ve decided to “fill-in” my blog all the way back. It’s a big project. But there’s no time limit, right?]
My first New Year's was pretty uneventful, from my perspective.
[The "retroblogging" project: this is a "back-post" written and added 2009-11-20. I've decided to "fill-in" my blog all the way back. It's a big project. But there's no time limit, right?]
