Recently I have been in touch with people from way back, in the 1980s, from my years in Colorado.  It’s interesting.  We are all many years older.  Time has molded us all, as time does.  People have died.  People have had children.  Marriages, divorces, etc…the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that come to us all, I suppose.  My choices haven’t been theirs, and vice-a-versa, of course.   We all find happiness and our sense of being in our own way.

There is no denying that the pandemic has changed my thinking, as it has for many.  An old friend fled LA at the beginning in 2020 and moved ‘temporarily’ to New Mexico.  He’s still there.  He’s found his place, one of many in his lifetime.  Others have drifted until they found safe harbor.  Whatever it takes.  I followed the route of many others and bought a small house, renovated it and have been living in it since November 2021 (please see the previous blog entry).  I have also been taking piano lessons for over a year.  I’m better now than when I began.  I have picked up the guitar again after a long hiatus and am enjoying that too.  My photography has been fruitful, mostly analog, and my darkroom is a busy and deeply satisfying place to work these days.  Work.  I love that word.  I love to labor at my craft.  Once in a while I splash some paint on a canvas and see how I feel about that.  I try not to take things so seriously.  I think being happy is better than being right.

In my family, common questions were ‘How’s your work?” and ‘What are you working on these days?”  Of course this never applied to our day jobs, how we paid our bills.  “Work” was always “work.”  In my case it was music, writing, photography…my sisters each have their own artistic paths–visual, literary and academic.  That’s just the way we were raised.

There is a wonderful quote by the techno-music godfather Giorgio Moroder that has been informing me these days.  Taken exponentially, I find applies to anything, not just music…how I navigate life.  He said, “Once you free your mind about a concept of music and harmony being correct, you can do whatever you want.”  That’s it, isn’t it?  It’s so easy to fall into a pattern of ‘correct’ and ‘right’ whether it is in life or the arts.  It’s a place of stagnation and boredom.  The random and potentially exciting is supplanted by the predictable and mundane.  Work becomes toil.  I become serious, rigid.  Inflexible.  Moroder’s philosophy demands work, some internal yoga to loosen the thinking, stretch the concept.  As I said before, being happy is better than being right.

And so I work.  I take pictures, develop the film, produce the prints.  I use a digital camera too.  I play piano and guitar.  I study music theory.  I stretch canvas and splash paint.  I ride my mountain bike and even swim in the sea during these winter months.  I read good books and eat healthily.  I sleep well.  I try not to take myself seriously.  I find happiness.  I let go of the rest.

–JDCM

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A friend wished me a happy rest-of-my-weekend the other day and qualified it by remarking “…as if there’s a difference in these amorphous and indeterminate days and weeks of the covid epoch.”  This sums up much of my emotional state since this ‘epoch’ began last February: one same day after the next with the same news feed, everyone seemingly watching the world turn while quarantined inside our homes.  This isn’t completely true but it feels that way.

Last February I was wrapping up a winter-long darkroom silver-gelatin printing project.  It was for a solo show in July. At the same time I was mapping out a 2-3 week bicycle ride through northern and western Greece that would have taken place in May.  Needless to say, neither of these events came to pass.  The show was cancelled and the ride was put off until the autumn (when it did not happen again).  By the end of October I was left with a porfolio that meant little to me and a lot of maps going nowhere.  But that is looking at these past months the wrong way.  So much may not have happened yet so much actually did occur.

On the advice of a friend (to whom I am eternally grateful!) last March or April, I bought a little house.  The papers were finalized in August and a full renovation began, finishing in the first week of November.  The place really needed to be gutted.  Ancient electrical, plumbing, crumbling walls, etc…I documented it online.  I have now rented it to someone who needed a home.  Then I got the wild idea that maybe I should stop paying rent and buy and renovate my own space!  So I did.  In a few weeks (crossed fingers) I will finalize that deal and begin renovations.  I hope by the end of November 2021 I will have moved into my new home.  So to my friend MM who started this process…many thanks and eternal gratitude for shifting my thinking.

                              Prickly Pear #1

Photography…writing…I have come to the conclusion that, for me, social media, as a whole, is a stifling and shallow platform for art or communication of any true depth.  These applications have actually hampered my creative process.  I have produced less photography and written fewer blog entries since I started being more on my phone with a popular social media app.  I let it suck the creative juices from my mind and soul.  So…I would like to make more real photographs in 2021, write more, produce more real work.  The new house will have space for a darkroom and a small digital area–room for a printer, perhaps a computer with a larger monitor than my laptop.  A place to work.  A home studio.

I have rested on what laurels I may have gathered long enough.  I will make a new commitment to my art, to my life.  Wheels are in motion.  Let them stay moving, well-greased and clean running.

–JDCM

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America’s a big place. Maybe too big, maybe not. Certainly larger than any European country, and third largest worldwide in population after India (2) and China (1). Home to numerous ethnic groups, multiple languages, a geography spanning Alaska to Hawaii and everywhere in-between. From Portland, Maine to Los Angeles, California it is just over 5200 km. That’s a good stretch. You can drive it in 48 hours if you want, but it’s best to take your time. Because in between you’ve got pretty much anything you can think of: bible thumpers, truckers, rock ‘n’ roll, barbecue (too many kinds to count), corn, wheat, mountains, prairies, big rivers, cities, towns and wide-spots-in-the-road, liberals, conservatives, pro-choice, pro-life…man, the list goes on and goddamn it if never ends. It’s the Great Experiment, the City on the Hill, home of Elvis, William Faulkner, Miles Davis, Robert Motherwell, James Baldwin, The New York Yankees, Ansel Adams, gumbo, The Ramones, The Dallas Cowboys, Emily Dickinson, stock car races, hot dogs, Bob Dylan, apple pie, the New England clambake, Raymond Chandler, Pete Seeger, rodeos, Hollywood, Robert Johnson (sitting at that crossroads hoping to make a deal), the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Mississippi River, Tom Petty, Mark Twain…and did I mention the barbecue? This is the thing. Where do you start? It never ends!

Ok…we have fucked up a lot–who hasn’t? Name one non-American country that is not guilty of racism, xenophobia, and mindless, senseless bloodshed? Yes, America is guilty of terrible genocide against the actual residents of the North American Continent. We are also guilty of propagating slavery into the middle of the 19th century when everyone else had made it illegal–and a racism that still haunts us after a devastating and still unresolved civil war. We’ve poisoned rivers and levelled majestic mountains–nothing unique there. Yes, yes…I know all this. But most of us are willing to change. Most are willing to take responsibility, heal and move along. Maybe it’ll be like pulling teeth, but it’ll happen. There are some rotten apples. There are rotten apples everywhere, not just the USA. Look to your own back yards. I think ‘back yards’ are American, by the way.

I guess what I am saying is that despite all the crap we have been accused of and all the people around the world who point fingers at us, blaming us for this and that, cringing at how loud we are in restaurants, how boorish we can seem…such barbarians at the gate…ha!

If you’re not an American you have no idea what it’s like to be an American, to be part of this experiment, this massive work in progress, to know and feel what that means. To paraphrase Louis Armstrong (another American), it’s like jazz. If you have to ask, you’ll never know.

–JDCM

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Like all diaspora they brought their food. Many years ago I spent a summer cooking on a small island in the Elizabeth’s (a small island chain off of New Bedford) and made more Cioppino than you can shake a stick at. I drank enough Vino Verde (courtesy of Padanaram Liquors) to satisfy any thirst and ate enough fresh baked pastries to choke a cod fish. However, the best Portuguese dish, I feel, is Portuguese Kale Soup. I am not sure if they made this in Portugal but all up and down the New England coast you can find it, especially when the weather turns foul and the rains begin and the winter sets in. I grew up eating this soup in Provincetown and Truro from the time I was born until…well, now we come to it and to be honest I am getting a little weepy right now.

It is December 3, 2019 as I write this and I will post this tomorrow, December 4th. My mother died on December 4th four years ago, surrounded by love, and as peaceful as if she had just gone to sleep. She made Portuguese Kale Soup and that’s how I will always remember it. The recipe is simple and begins in the meat section of the A&P out on Shank Painter Road in Provincetown where mom would buy a package of Gaspar’s linguica and a box of frozen kale, a can of whole peeled tomatoes, a couple of potatoes, onions…the rest we had on hand. You basically just put it all in a pot, cover it all with water, add a bay leaf or two, some salt and pepper and cook it until the large-diced spuds are soft. As memories go it is a real winner. So much so that for the past year I have been trying to have some linguica, real-Massachusetts-grade-A-Portuguese-linguica, sent to me here on Paros. My sister brought some from Maine but the TSA took it. Every outlet I tried in the USA told me they couldn’t ship it overseas. Even Amazon didn’t have the right stuff. You see, there is a difference between Portuguese linguica (from Portugal) and the stuff I want. Worlds apart, as they say. And kale in Greece? What the heck is that?

But I found some kale…a little pale, but sturdy enough–fresh, not frozen. For the sausage I had to compromise. I will be using a mildly spicy Italian sausage I bought in Florence a few weeks ago at my sister’s suggestion. I am also using a little stock, not just water. The rest is the same. Almost. Yes…a little weepy again, but that’s alright. I have my mother’s spirit guiding me and her practical kitchen sense approving the alterations I must make. Because you see, the temperature is dropping and the rains are beginning and the winter is setting in on this little island in the sea and what I want is a bowl of Portuguese Kale Soup and the memory of a steamy kitchen filled with garlicky aromas and a voice saying, ‘Now…we’ll just let that sit and tomorrow it’ll be terrific…”

–JDCM

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The bicycling itself was quite easy. I had already practiced a bit here on Paros, so I knew what it was like to ride 70km on a bicycle weighing 50 kilos. I had ridden up and down hills already on the treacherously questionable roads of Paros. Imagine my joy at the roads of Ireland–smooth, well-paved, clean and, until I reached County Antrim, free of potholes. So riding 50-80 km a day on the bike was not difficult. The hills and “mountains” of Counties Cork, Kerry, Galway, etc…not so tough. What was difficult was Day #4, when I woke up and realized I had to ride another day. And then Day #5 when I was resigned to my fate. After that I rarely thought about where I was going or how far I needed to ride that day. I had established my routine. When it was raining I packed up the tent and rode in the rain. There was no other choice. As I remarked to someone in Donegal Town, “If I didn’t ride in the rain I’d still be in Cork City.”

And it rained a lot. Sometimes three times a day. Mostly on me. I got wet. I didn’t melt. I dried out. I rode the kilometres I needed to and then I was done. I saw some beautiful sights–dramatic cliffs all along the coasts; sudden bursts of sunlight that made the landscape glisten and sparkle jewel-like…it’s all there. You can have it. I have learned there is no need for me to return. Rain is one thing, but every day, twice, thrice a day…no thank you. Such was the learning curve. You’ll have to pay me to go back. And that old saying about “the soft Irish rain…” Bullshit. It’s rain.

I missed Greece every day. I missed the food, the people, the climate. The food in Ireland is alright. Not great, really, yet ideal for the weather that one is forced to endure. Heavy, thick stuff, devoid of fresh produce (except potatoes). Mussels cooked in milk (yuck!), a severe lack of garlic and tomatoes that would be best used to repair dry-wall. I missed the heat of summer, the boiled-honey sun glazing the earth in late July through August, the din of the cicadas. By the 2/3 mark, the rain was not so much an obstacle but rather a tedious bore, a meteorological raconteur drawing out the same dull tale. I doubt the temperature ever rose above 22C while I was there. I missed the 35-40C days here on Paros. I missed the people I know, I missed my friends, my parea. This was the learning curve I traveled.

I enjoyed the long-distance bike tour. I enjoyed the hills, the distances. But I knew that going in. I had researched enough before hand and was prepared regarding gear. Everything I brought with me, I used. My kit was sound: waterproof, windproof, serviceable, warm and dry. My Dawes Karakum was the right bike for the job and I enjoyed riding it. I brought it home with me to Paros where I use it throughout the week. I am already looking at next year’s ride. I will stay in Greece, a country I love and in actuality have seen very little. I will ride in May so I don’t miss my summer heat and early morning swims. I will ride for a month because I can ride 2000km in that time. I will ride into the mountains northwest of Athens, to Corfu. Then east through the Pindus to Ioannina and Meteora. South to Trikala…these will be the places I visit. It will rain some but that’s ok. I won’t melt. But I will never leave home.

–JDCM

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The weather will be interesting, and I am prepared for rain with enough Gore-Tex to cover myself, and the bike if need be. I am expecting daily rain, not necessarily torrential downpours, but sometimes maybe that too. As one very experienced touring-bicyclist mentioned in his blog, when it rains, you ride anyway.

I recently took a long weekend to another island and did a little bike-packing just to see how it was traveling for long distances with all the gear, making camp, etc…Although the geography was different and the weather more so, I learned some important lessons. The most relevant is that I am not longer in my 20s and the romance of wild camping really has lost its charm. Sleeping on the ground is a pain. Literally. As someone in their mid-50s, I will do a little wild camping, but the majority of my camping in Ireland will be in organized or semi-organized sites that provide showers, laundry, electrical hook-ups, sanitary facilities, etc…a couple even have cafes. I like my creature comforts. I have booked a few BnB stays and also a few actual hotels (Dingle, Donegal Town, Kinvara, etc…) for more than one night. Yes, there are a couple of places where I am kind of forced to find a spot off the road for the night, but even then I am waiting to see what happens. You never know. The kindness of strangers.

The first stage (Map 1) will be, by necessity, the fastest part of the trip. Although I am sure West Cork, Kerry, etc…are beautiful, it will also be the most touristic section. I will have to be extra careful of traffic on little roads. I am also riding 100km days (6-7 hours of riding) for the first week. I want to be off of the Ring of Kerry by August 1st. The second stage (Map 2) will be slightly less difficult, with some chill 60-70km days with a couple of 100km days mixed in. I am meeting a friend in Galway for a long weekend (August 9), so that is a date I have to make. The third stage, through Northern Galway and most of Mayo will be more relaxed still. The tourists will mostly be left behind, the tourist season will be slowing down and the roads will be a little more wild, a little more quiet.

By the time I get to Donegal Town, it will be the end of August, the end of the tourist season and I won’t need to make a lot of reservations before hand. I have learned this from different people I have already spoken to on the telephone in Donegal. In fact, by the time I get to Donegal I will have 25 days left to cycle about 600km. Do the math. I can dawdle.

This is all the Big Plan. What it is actually going to be like on the ground will be something else. I know I can do the distances. I know I can make the waypoints. It’s just a matter of doing it. I will be using Instagram as a platform for ‘blogging’, so to speak, with more pictures than text. So keep up with me through Instagram.

For now…I think that’s it.

–JDCM

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I am getting ready for my bike trip in a big way. I have been packing, unpacking, trying to sort out what I really need from what I think I might want or what I could probably getting Ireland. Since I will be riding a fully self-supported ride of 2700+ km then I will need a fair amount of stuff–mostly camping gear. I hope to not be staying at any B&B, hotels, etc…unless I really feel I need a break (or a shower). I have been practicing with a fully loaded bike (42 kilos, including the bike) and can easily ride 60km in 4 hours, including the occasional stop for a snack, a coffee, buy a t-shirt, whatever…so I am hoping to make at least 70-80km per day. People have said, “oh but you will also be sight-seeing…” True, but a large part of riding a bicycle on long trips is trying to make good time, riding the bike. It’s not about lolly-gagging about or dilly-dallying along with my head in the clouds. It really is very much a ‘point-A-to-point-B’ event.

I will be buying Dawes Karakum touring bike in Cork. Not much else to say about that. Here’s a picture…look it up if you want the specs. I’ll be bringing it back to Greece with me.

I finally found a good tent in Athens last week. A North Face Storm Break 2, 2 person tent. It weighs 2.4 kilos and is my heaviest item. My new sleeping bag weighs 790 grams. You laugh. Trust me, 500 grams is a lot of weight when you’re cycling or hiking. (2.2 pounds in a kilo, right?) Here’s the tent, set up on my terrace. It took about 5 minutes to set it up. I bet it will take less when it is raining.

And here are some pictures that give you an idea of the gear and weight I am taking. It may not seem like much, but it adds up. Remember, the bike weights about 18 kilos, so an additional 24-25 kilos is a lot.

And this will be the contents of one of the rear panniers…clothes. Note that my rain gear is in one of the front panniers. It is easier to get to it that way.

The other rear pannier will have my house–sleeping bag, tent, ground cover…and food. And water. I’ll stash water in equal amounts around the bike the best I can. The handlebar bag will contain stuff like my phone, wallet, ID, snacks, glasses, a map…It should even out all around the bike with 60% of the weight in the front.

This is something I feel very strongly about, this long distance bike thing. It’s one of the few things in my life that really felt right, does that make sense? As if it is a path I should be on for reasons perhaps I will never know. As if it is something that must be done, and done often. There are established bike routes all over Europe and even beyond, I’ll start with this one first. July 22 cannot come too soon!

–JDCM

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I guess I have to rethink the food thing, because in reality I ate a lot of Jell-O. And hotdogs and Campbell’s Pork and Beans. Also my fair share of Chef- Boy-R-Dee Beef-a-Roni and Ravioli. Then again, I was a just a little guy and my mother had figured out that if I was eating, that as fine, regardless. So who had the distasteful views of these forbidden fruits? Probably my father, who was so strict on himself and with others he could never really relax. His disdain for modern comforts like air-conditioning was offset not long after he left us by his embracing the machinery of mechanical coolants in his own home: central air. The way he looked down on certain restaurants in Provincetown as being beneath us was eventually nullified by his making these places his favourite haunts. Was he aware of the hypocrisy? Maybe. Who cares? I have my TANG.

I was thinking about this because I woke up early this morning, about 04:30. I heard the steady patter of the rain. I started the coffee, fed the cat, brushed my teeth and went out beneath the pergola to say hello to the Cosmos and encountered a minor flood. The drain pipe on my terrace was blocked and about 8 cm of water had pooled on most of the marble balcony. I found a wire clothes hanger, unbent it, and, while being rained on (I was wearing a hat and raincoat) reamed out the top of the pipe. Gurgle, gurgle…and the rater began to flow. As I was doing this I remembered back to how my father would wake up in the middle of a rain storm to go pull a board out of the spillway so the pond wouldn’t overflow. He grew to resent these aspects of his life, those rural elements that distracted him from the urban (and snobbishly urbane) lifestyle he craved. So he left.

After that, the menu was more relaxed. I even ate my fair share of Captain Crunch, another item on the Culinary List of Scorn. It seems that only one of my parents had had such hard and fast beliefs. So were they both liberal or was one more so than the other? Or, perhaps, one was willing to be flexible, more easy-going, than the other and, in the end, more independent. I must not forget that my mother was also one to wake up at 3AM, slip on her rubber boots and barn coat (before it was fashionable) over her pyjamas and trudge out into the rainy gloom, yank a piece of wood from the concrete spillway and go back into the house for a cup of coffee. In fact, she probably did it more often than he did.

It is supposed to rain all day. This is good. The island needs it. It drinks it in and, in a few months, will reward us all with a symphony of wild flowers. I will stay inside as much as I can today, venturing out only to go to the PO. These are familiar rhythms, movements I have learned. I am flexible. I can bend. I can let it go. I have my TANG.

–JDCM

PS: sorry about the size fo the new header, my dental X-ray. I can’t make it smaller and still have it fit.

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In the late 1890s, at the University of Iowa, there was a writer by the name of George Cram Cook.  From 1896 to 1899 he taught what is considered by many to be the very first creative writing course.  He titled it ‘Verse-Making.’  When he left in 1899, the course was continued by his colleagues and became what is now known as the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.  Cook then went to Stanford University and taught a similar course and, in 1915, after marrying his second wife Susan Glaspell, moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts where they founded the Provincetown Players, an avant-garde theatre group.  He produced plays written by Glaspell, some of Eugene O’Neill’s first plays and also those of Edna St. Vincent Millay.  That is just a small sample.  He worked with the group until 1919.  A long-time Hellenophile, he moved to Greece in 1922, settling in Delphi, home of the Oracle.  He died in Delphi 2 years later after contracting glanders from a dog bite.  The Greek government granted him status to be buried there, his grave marked by an ancient stone from the Temple of Apollo.  His daughter Nella was buried alongside him in the town necropolis and there is a memorial to Glaspell, Cook’s mother Ellen Dodge and his first wife Mollie on the wall above.

Jump ahead about 50 years.  My mother, the ever curious historian, began to research the P’town Players, Glaspell, Cook, et al…At that time my family lived in Provincetown as summer residents and were a part of the arts community, largely due to my novelist father.  Mom’s curiosity was such that she planned an excursion to Greece with my grandmother.  Grammaw had lived and worked in Athens and Thessaloniki in the mid-1960s and, as she was more familiar with the lay of the land, joined my mother in a search for Cook’s grave.  I do not remember if they found it, and I sense there was some disappointment to their quest.  I would have been about 7 or 8 years old at the time, so this tale is bathed in the slippery mist of memory.  I am skipping a lot here, especially about Grammaw and her interest.  Another story for a later time.

Jump ahead again to yesterday, 23 June, 2018.  I had a free day in Athens so I signed up for a tour of Delphi.  I had been there in 2006, but the Mom/Grammaw/Cook story had slipped my mind.  I decided to rectify this and follow their footsteps to find the grave.  The tour was pleasant enough and an economical way to get there, see the sacred site, the superb museum, have lunch and be transported back to the hotel later in the afternoon.  My tour mates were mostly American and Australian tourists and were curious about this aspect of my trip.  It was fun.  They enjoyed the tale as well.  I related a more truncated, less rambling version, by the way.

During a free 45 minutes between the site visit and the museum, I scurried up to the modern town and asked a local about the cemetery.  It was easy to find, and when I entered I queried two workmen if they knew of the grave.  “No..no English here…no Americans here…”  Undaunted, I looked around the small cemetery.  Among the cleanly carved headstones and markers, one stood out, up in the northeast corner, beneath a cypress tree–an ancient marble stele.  There it was.  After sweeping off the graves and taking some pictures, I looked at my watch.  I had just enough time to make it back down the hill and join my group for the museum tour.

–JDCM

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My winter’s work with the Photografiki Omada Parou has been a real joy.  The 20 or so people that signed up in the fall for the 35mm analog project have all been enthusiastic, fun to work with and, without exception, have produced interesting and striking work.  Today I am meeting with one of them to develop their film.  Tomorrow I hand the camera over to another, and Thursday I work in the darkroom printing with a third.    I think I will try to print on Friday too.  This project has kept me busy through the winter but it has been much more.  I have come to know many locals who I had never met, and they I.  During the weekly club meetings (Wednesday, 19:30hrs) I get to hear at least two hours of solid Greek from numerous voices which has helped my Greek language studies which I work on every Friday afternoon with my teacher Stella.  So all around it has been a “win-win” situation.  They do all the work, by the way.  I am just a guide.

My own work?  This week I hope to submit a new portfolio of digital abstract work to the Antiparos International Photography Exhibition for the upcoming summer 2018 show.  This work is finished  so I can talk about the fantasy digital land-sea scapes I have found and photographed.  Very little Photoshopping, as you may guess.  Just a slight curve here or there for contrast and to keep it WYSIWYG.  Cross my fingers…I am also embarking on some alternative work which will open up some new technical and artistic avenues.  I won’t say much more except that if the winter time is for the darkroom, this project will be perfect for the summer and all of our sun.

Oh yes…the anniversary of my 53rd trip around the sun was a few days ago so I celebrated yesterday with some friends at a local taverna–that is was also ‘Katheri Deutera’, or Clean Monday, informed the menu.  The remains of the meal can be seen below.  Lent begins today.  I would like to keep the Lenten diet as much as possible for the next 40 days.  It is a healthy choice here in Greece.  Of course, this ‘diet’ predates any religious function as it was a result of the end of the winter, when the stored foods from the autumn harvest had run low (or out) and the agricultural population waited for the new crops of spring.  So it will be lots of veggies for me, seafood without backbones, no cheese, no meat…thank the gods the Greeks are sensible enough to still allow olives and olive oil…

The collection of my mother’s newspaper articles is all but done.  Last week I submitted the digital files to a printing company in Athens and the book goes to press this week.  Finally!  It has been years since I began this project, a memorial to my mother and a gift to family and friends.  And I like this book company.  They do nice work.  I may put together a book of my own.  A small collection of my photographs.  We’ll see…let’s not talk about it yet.

So thats it for February.  Right now there is a lovely, gentle, soaking rain blanketing the island.  It is supposed to rain all day.  Really great.  I am tired of winter.  I want spring, warmth and green things to see and eat.  I need to swim in the sea and shed some of the layers I have had to wear all winter to stay warm and dry.  The world moves ahead into the light and the alchemy I practice draws its magic from an ancient source.

clams, mussels, bean salad, pickles…

–JDCM

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