I have heard that due to the economic crisis and possible political instability (from a US standpoint of course ) there may be a drop in enrollment this spring.  This is believable in this day and age and perhaps this is one curse of the electronic info-era we currently live in.  There has always been and always will be economic woes and political upheavals.  The media has blown so much of this out of proportion that it feeds the fears of those who stay glued to their TV sets and believe everything they see and hear from that medium.  As a student of history I am thrilled to be living through and in this period of time.  Once again we are perched on the brink of change,  imminent growth and cultural wisdom, but only if we take a helpful and positive track.  Hiding in the shadows helps no one.  As a species we are slowly overcoming many of the angers and fears that have directed our thinking for millennia.  The currents flowing down the river of change are paced by the fierce creatures that run along its muddy banks.  They wave crude spears and dark banners, shout slogans designed to divide and alienate and try in vain to alter the water’s course. But water always seeks its own level and these creatures have historically been left behind, rendered hoarse and obsolete by time.   All of this is out of my hands.  I am grateful for that.

I have mailed 5 boxes to Greece so far.  1 today and 4 last week.  The first 4 have arrived and are being inspected by customs.  If I have to pay fees for these I will, but I hope not.  They are not consumer goods, but rather goods I have purchased for my own use at the Aegean Center.  Most of it is used gear anyway.  The rest are books–a small library consisting of some collections: Hemingway, Chekhov, Callahan, Kertesz, Frank, Ashbury, Oliver…the list goes on.  To be honest I chose the best of my personal library and then weeded that out some more. Ex Libris Paros…

I have my painting supplies and will be carrying them in my checked baggage during the flight. There are  no caustic materials and I am already in love with many of the names on the list…Permanent Alizarin Crimson, French Ultramarine, Payne’s Grey.  Soon I will be an undeniable beginner again, a place I enjoy of only for its foolish zest and unknown questions.  I will be asking for a lot of help in the next few months.

JDCM

I have been preparing for my return to Paros for two weeks.  This time it will be for an extended stay, not the three-months-on-three-months off that I have been experiencing for the past two years.  To that end I have been divesting myself of my unneeded possessions, mostly books and musical equipment.  I have given them away, with no misgivings. I have kept one guitar, a Fender Telecaster I bought in 1986.  It is a candy-apple red 1962 re-issue and holds too much sentimental value to discard.  The books are a mix of volumes never read, read too often and those whose message I have outgrown.  Clothing has been gathered and that, too, will be given away.  The monumental task of collating and burning the  set of my 1200 CD collection has been accomplished and my laptop is now full of the best I have collected since the late 1980s, when CDs were first released.  It is also a mix: classical, jazz, old rock, new rock…the list seems endless but of course is not.  These will go to the local library in Hillsdale.  I have packaged up four large boxes of goods to send  ahead and will mail them tomorrow.  One more box remains because I still have some darkroom work to take care of.  This box will contain last minute odds and ends, some clothes, a few books and some more darkroom gear that I still need to process film.  I cannot send any liquids, however, which means that my developers stay here in the US.  I can purchase replacements in Athens.  I have decided to take one extra checked bag with me this time instead of my usual  backpack/camera bag combo.  This will allow a few more items than I have usually taken with me.

It really feels like I am leaving, which I am, but this has been coming for a long time.  I moved back to the Hudson Valley in 2004 for personal and family reasons and in many ways my job here is done.  It is time to go.  What I need to do for my family I can accomplish easily via email and telephone and I proved that last year when I adjusted insurance payments over the phone from the island after being alerted of a payment glitch via my Gee mail account.  The modern world has its benefits but I am looking forward to the upcoming year, a year of photography, writing and painting.  Will I begin and finish my book?  Only Kronos knows and that giant sleeps too deeply to wake for the answer.  The future, like always, is unknown, but this time it really feels as if I am departing for the next phase of my life.  I have been a professional chef and an unknown rock musician, a composer of hook-laden pop tunes.  These paths led to a certain point where I then abandoned them like a sailor diving into the ocean lest he go down with the ship.  The lifeboat that found me has proved to be more than a rescue craft.  Its design for living has been impressed upon me and I have followed it, despite my fears.  These have turned out to be echoing voices from my distant past.  Unfortunately I have listened to these voices too much, but to quote a line from an old Chinese morality tale, “How do I know?”  Indeed, how do I not know that it was necessary for me to begin this new life now, on the eve of my 47th birthday, after enduring all that I have in the past?  This is how it is, I think.  There is always the illusionary choice of a straight line, filled with drudgery and boredom.  I was on that track.  As one of my sisters commented, living is not a straight line.  There is no simple way to get from A to B.  Perhaps there is no ‘A’ or ‘B’ at all.  The life ahead is not a known set of coordinates on a chart.  Each of us has his or her own map to design.  Only hindsight shows us where we have come from and the seemingly strange coincidences that have made up our non-linear path.

JDCM

The promotional work I am photographing for a friend is moving along.  She only needs three or four pieces for her website, but that still means the same amount of work for me.  It is excellent experience and although I do not do this type of work often, I can see how my own aesthetic plays a large part in how I view the event.  I suppose everyone brings their own vision to this kind of work.  The results will reveal how I view this kind of labor.  So far, so good, actually.  Perhaps she’ll let me use one of these for the blog as an example.

The darkroom moves along and I hope to expose a roll of MF this afternoon and develop it as well.  I am scheduled to be working in there tonight but I have forgotten when I signed up.  I think 22:00hrs.  I have to print at least one piece from the Villa, maybe two if I am lucky, so I can show them to Liz and see how she wishes me to proceed.

I have picked an odd time to move to Greece.  I haven’t looked at any apartments yet, but that will be this week.  I have two, maybe three to check out.  One is a very humble flat in the middle of Paroikia and the other is a bit more lavish old house, I think, not quite on the outskirts of town. I don’t know the prices for either.

More to come…

JDCM

I arrived in Florence around 9:00 hours and had to wait a few hours until my room was ready.  The Hotel Orto di Medici was kind enough to let me sleep on a couch in the day room until 14:00 when I could check in.  A simple but clean room was presented to me and a crawled into the sack for some more shuteye.  That evening I walked around and found a decent trattoria: carpaccio with spicy arugula, baked beans with garlic and tomatoes and fried rabbit reminded me that I was no longer in America and safe and happy here in Europe, a place I seem to be calling home more often than not.  The next morning I awoke very early and took a dimly-lit walk through the empty streets, down to the River Arno and onto the Ponte Vecchio, devoid of tourists and closed for the night.  It was lovely.  The street cleaners went about their business as I strolled about, buying off the jet-lag and getting my bearings.  My internal compass is more-or-less realigned.  I returned to the hotel, snoozed for a couple of hours and woke up to one of the better continental breakfasts I have had.  The salami and mortadella were excellent, the cappuccino was tasty and they even had rice cakes as a choice over than toast.  I ate well, knowing that my day trip to Fiesole would burn off the calories.  I took the bus to Fiesole and walked around the Roman and Etruscan ruins virtually alone–after another cappuccino.  I came back to Florence by lunchtime and made my way from the Piazza San Marco to the San Croce area and visited the Museo Galileo, which is also called the Science Museum.  Wonderful, really fantastic.  Measuring devices of all types, styles, eras and functions were on display, most collected by the di Medici family over the centuries.  I was hit by an understanding of the nature of man, or of at least intelligent man.  We are born to measure, to divine distances and directions, pressures and quantities physical and ephemeral.  My common metaphor of the sailor’s compass is held up by the cases of quadrants, octants, sundials, Jacobs staffs, clocks and globes of any and seemingly all varieties.  I am inspired.

Today is Thursday, September 1.  I am meeting some spiritual friends for coffee and conversation at 13:30.  Before that I hope to beat some of the crowds to the Palazzo Pitti and then head to the Museo Zoologico la Specola.  In the afternoon My day is free to wander.  I would like to avoid the crowds for an hour or so and then come back to the hotel for a short siesta.  Then I’ll pack my bags.  Tomorrow I head to Pistoia, the Villa Rospigliosi and the Aegean Center.  First, however, I am meeting up with a fellow student at the train station, which leaves me with Friday morning free before I check out and dump my bags (carefully re-packed) at the left-luggage office, Firenze Santa Maria Novello.  I can only imagine what awaits me…

JDCM

I have run a ‘test pack’ and am fairly secure on what I am bringing and what I am leaving behind.  Since I will be in Italy for the first month I need to bring some nicer clothes with me.  Long pants, shoes, shirts, etc…One cannot dress down in Florence and Rome like one does on Paros.  The Italians frown on shirts and t-shirts in their churches and restaurants, and with good reason: it’s smacks of laziness, poverty and disrespect.

The American culture, or the ‘Culture of Death’ as I like to call it, raises this attitude to the level of acceptance.  What we consider mainstream here in the USA, i.e. fashion, music, food and general knowledge derives itself from abject poverty and ignorance.  The other day I was driving behind a large Ford pick-up with the proud emblem ‘Redneck’ on the back; the television is rife with political religious crazies espousing a dangerously medievalist and venomous doctrine geared towards the poor, the paranoid and the poorly educated; the radio airwaves are saturated with violence, misogyny and anger; I look around at the sullen faces of today’s youth and wonder who these people are that could be our future?  This can be a daunting vision, all of this.  I find light and growth in isolated pockets of humanism and spirit.  Arts communities are more important than ever these days, and of course they are the first programs to lose any outside funding front the powers that be.  That money must go elsewhere.  I am convince we are either on the brink, or already within, a New Dark Ages.  The Enlightenment is over, as is the Renaissance that preceded it.  But this is a natural cycle.  It is just our luck to be at the low end of the bell curve.

In any case I am out of here soon enough.  I’ll leave the bucolic Hudson Valley behind for a few months  while I engage in a lengthy peripatetic lecture through Italy and Greece.  I’ll try to update this as I go along, I hope more than I usually do.  Next post: Florence, Italy.

Caio,

JDCM

I am having my horoscope read today by a fellow student from Belgium and it will be interesting to see if the reading matches up with my current life changes and bio-rhythmic waves. I am packing boxes for storage and shipping having already shipped my portfolios and a box containing my 4×5 back to the US already.  The shipper said 3 to 5 days, which means a week at least.  I hope they reach Ancramdale in good shape.  The weather has been odd.  The scirocco that has been coming through the Cyclades as of late has brought with it dust, hot Saharan winds and a general laziness that speaks of even hotter climes than Paros.  Yesterday was hot and cloudy most of the morning and I lay on the beach enjoying the heat without the direct sunlight.  Back at my flat and after my siesta I awoke at 4:30 to find that the clouds had rolled away and the sun returned in all of its blistering glory.  ’Hot’ is a relative term, but it was that alright.  By sundown it had cooled a bit but I slept with the air-con blowing so at least I was able to get a full night’s rest without sweating.

I have been given permission to update my photo site with some of the figure studies I have created.  I call this series ‘Opus’, which in Latin means ‘work’.  They will be in series and I will have to have the prints scanned when I get home.  It will take some time, but time I have.  Strange…Many years ago I was in a rock band called ‘Furnace’.  I wanted to create a larger, longer piece called ‘God-Family-Work’.  This idea was pooh-poohed by the other band members and I was eventually drummed out of the group for being too irresponsible and lazy.  Now I am creating a piece I call ‘Opus’.  Perhaps this is a philosophical thread that has always run through my life.  Today I search  family, or more precisely a community of fellows; I continue my seeking for guidance from a Power greater than myself and I labor for the results I wish to attain.  Am I living the design I hope to create?

More to come..

JDCM

My photography is progressing.  I have several lovely images from the figure sessions (both film and digital) and will be cranking out more in the next two weeks.  In the past few weeks the digital lab has increased its output and a couple of people who had been spinning their wheels seem to have had a fire lighted under them.  This is good.  To be honest I was growing disillusioned with the student body (my problem, not theirs), but hey, they are young and full of beans.  Everyone is working at their own pace and they will all receive a wonderful gift of having been here.   I can focus on my own work from here on and finish my portfolios.  The group show is on June 3rd or 4th, which isn’t a lot of time…

More to come…JDCM

Other big news:  I have been offered a chance to return in the fall for the fall term here, which begins in Tuscany for September and then returns to Paros in October for another 2 1/2 months.  This is something I wanted to do last year but could not let go of my responsibilities at home, emotionally speaking.  Now I can and I am grabbing hold of this chance with both hands.  This term will be more historical in nature and will obviously focus a great deal on the Italian Renaissance. So I will return  to America on June 22nd and turn around and leave again on September 1st or close to it.

More to come…

JDCM

I didn’t sleep on the flight from New York, so I hit the sack when I checked in to the Hotel Attallos, just off of the Monastiraki.  I slept for 6 hours then I went out for a coffee and met up with some Greek and ex-pat friends closer to the city center.  I came back, grabbed a gyro and hit the hay.  I have slept for another 4 hours and am now wide awake at 1:40 in the morning.  No worries.  I am in town for another day so I can use that time to re-aquaint myself with a museum or two.  I need to buy my boat ticket for Friday also.  I am meeting up with some returning students today and we’ll all go to Paros Friday morning. 

I have an idea for a photo shoot based on the pre-Olympian gods, the Titans.  It might make for interesting subjects for carbon printing or at least large format printing.  I invision Edward Steichen’s images of sculptor Auguste Rodin and I see gods and goddesses in his place…

More to come,

JDCM

My five years at SUNY gave my life structure and without it there was nothing to guide my life, just too much free will and randomness.   So I took a month off from thinking…

I am beginning some work (digital and film, abstract and realist) for a nearby hotel which will hang with a couple of other artists for a few months; I am currently printing a small series of snapshots from last spring for fellow students and my own records; my reading list includes some books on artistic aesthetics as well as technical dark room stuff.  In short, for the next three months I am understanding that I am still in school and traveling the academic path to knowledge.  What a relief.

I am always relieved to know that I find greater freedom in structure.

More to come…

JDCM