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Back on Paros…

–It is quiet here.  The rain falls through the night and the clouds cover the sky during the day.  There are moments of sunshine–brilliant, silver and brief.   I hope to get out and shoot some film in a couple of days when the clouds roll away.

–I have been out biking, for which I am grateful.  The sense of freedom on a mountain bike that one does not have in either a car or walking.  Fast, but not too fast, panniers full of cameras.

–The people, food and music of Greece keep me here.  The light is nice too.

–I will be going through my files and uploading all my past “header images” from this blog to my Flickr site.  It might be interesting to see how they all look together.

–I have decided that I would like to be known as someone who worked hard rather than someone with any great talent.   Dedication and hard work has always brought me farther than subjective opinion.  I can measure the first.  The second is fickle and none of my business.

–In February I begin a new 7-year cycle of life.   I can already feel the shift.  It feels tectonic.

JDCM

 

 

Dream people…

I dreamed that I was at my mother’s house and discovered something wondrous, something I could never have imagined.

There were other people living on the property other than us.

The first group lived in the wetlands at the bottom of the hill.  They lived in homes made of sticks and mud.  These homes were not some kind of story-book hut, all warm and cozy.  They were wet, cold and the wind ripped through them at night.  They looked like beaver dams.  But the people were happy.  There were about 7 or 9 of them–an older woman, maybe the grandmother, some middle-aged men and women and some children, as old as 12 and as young as 5 or 6.  This was the family group.  To look at they were dirty but I realized that this was actually their skin pigment, like camouflage.  Their clothes were the color of dark wet mud, their hair full of rotting leaves and twigs.  To them it was perfectly normal and I was the outsider, too clean and worried about getting my socks wet as I stumbled through the muck.  How I discovered they were there, I do not remember.

Then there were the people that lived in the densest part of the forest along the ridge above my mother’s house.  They lived there like foxes, or rabbits, in homes made of sticks, leaves and packed down earth.  Dens.  Once again, nothing cozy about these places.  But the people were happy.  They had the same kind of skin pigmentation coloring   as the others.  Their clothes were the color of reddish damp earth and rotting leaves, their hair full of pine needles and bark.  This group was about the same size and make-up as the other group in the wetlands.  They were a little more outgoing, however, and as I now know, they were the ones with whom I made first contact.   It had been a cold, winter night. The wind was blowing and the temperature was subzero.  I happened to be looking out a window, out into the field behind the house and I saw 5 or 6 people trudging through the dark.  I followed them.  They saw me.  No one ran.  They told me to go.  I said I would but if there was anything they needed that they should only ask.   Through the Earth People I met the Water People.  My relationship with both has been one of respect and distance.

There was also a single person–the grandfather of the Earth People group.  He lived in a large pool , half submerged, next to my mother’s barn.  He had a small platform which held his campfire above the water and the chair he sat in was just high enough to keep his upper torso dry.  Over the fire he brewed coffee and fried bacon.  He was the shyest of them all.  The Two Peoples cared for him and kept him safe.  He was a therianthrope, a Shapeshifter.  When he shifted they confined him to a type of barracks surrounded by electrified concertina wire.  When he was in human form he sat quietly in his chair, in the pool, tending to his small fire.

I know enough of dream analysis to recognize that all of these people, these groups, are elements of myself.  I am the Water People. I am the Earth People. I am the Shapeshifter.

JDCM

Pinch me…

–They say our reality is Krishna’s dream while he sleeps on a lotus flower.

–It seems like a dream.  I woke up a few minutes ago, startled and disorientated.  Jet lag.  I am in Athens.  I walked out onto the small balcony of my hotel room overlooking the street.  It is quiet at 04:00.  The city sleeps, breathing slowly.  Two days ago I was in America, visiting family and friends.  I am in a different world.

–In America I ate hot dogs, apple pie, toasted peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, beef jerky.  There have been excellent sit-down meals too.  Very American food.  I have been able to stave off the calories at the gym.

–There was lots of snow there, and rain, and frigid cold.  It was lovely. There was an abundance of water.  On the little island I call home water can be scarce.  We use less.  Long showers are a luxury.  I luxuriated.

–On the Massachusetts Turnpike I drove through the kind of rain, wind and fog that made it seem as if I was driving underwater, surrounded by a screaming mass of tractor trailers and SUVs all moving at 80 mph.  I had little choice but to keep up.  Every light on my little car was switched on so people would see me.

–Photography during the winter allows for simplicity.  Sticks, snow, shadow, light.

–So I am back in Greece.  Last night I ate yigandes, patzaria, and briam for dinner.  Greek food.

–I am back in Greece.  I have a few days here in Athens then I hop the ferry back to Paros.  What is waiting for me there?

–I was thinking of taking pictures of metro stations.  I need a new header image before I post this entry.  I’ll use one of those.

–Life is like a dream.  Row, row, row your boat…

JDCM

 

Happy Christmas!

Snowy morning sunrise, December 19, 2013

Snowy morning, December 19, 2013, 16*F.  Leica M8

 

 

…and a few days later.  Very weird.

…and a few days later, December 22. 68*F.  Very weird.  Leica M8

 

 

 

 

Christmas is here and all through the house it is very quiet.  The cat plays with her tail, my mother sits in the living room reading the New York Times.  Tonight is Christmas Eve and we are having a Mexican dinner–pork quesadillas, guacamole, salad and a candied pumpkin dessert.  The tree is up, decorated and there are presents beneath its bangled branches.

The best gifts this year have not been material.  They have been the deep changes I have felt within myself and how I perceive the world.  This, in turn, gives me the opportunity to respond in new ways.  I am not always familiar with these aspects, nor am I always comfortable, but they are for the best and I feel have improved as a human as a result.  Here are some off the top of my head…

— My role as a teacher is not to reward or punish via the archaic system of “grades” so common today.  I am there to guide, lift up and hopefully inspire.

— My own work is a testament to long labor, arduous and fulfilling.  I am grateful to have been able to have an exhibition of my photography this year.  I am also grateful to have been allowed to exhibit it in a place I love–Paros and The Aegean Center for the Fine Arts.

— My future is unknown and uncertain. The best I can do is show up and be part of life’s rich pageant.

—  That’s OK most of the time.

Merry Christmas and have a lovely New Year!

JDCM

Session end approaches, etc…

I have a lot on my mind these days and it feels difficult to try to sort it all out.  Thoughts meander…

My most recent post was in the form of notes.  I think I will keep it that way for today as well.

–The session here at the Aegean Center is almost finished.  This week is the final full week of work.  It is also American Thanksgiving and Chanukkah.  Lots to do (food, work, art) and I imagine emotions are running high for those younger students who have never been away from home on these holidays.  We will have a big pot-luck feast on Friday evening, since Thursday is a work day.  We supply the side dishes.  JP supplies the turkeys and gravy.  I am making roasted butternut squash.

–The students who are working in the darkroom are making some interesting work.

–I have been able to noodle about with my own work, but nothing really substantial.  I have tried some portrait work with minor success.  Siga-siga.  If one were to ask how I think I am doing these days, the answer would have to be divided into three parts: personal, artistic and academic.  Personally I am doing alright.  I am building solid social bridges to people in the community who have little to do with the school or the arts.  I am biking a lot and feeling good about that that.  Artistically I am, as I said, noodling around.  I am letting the students have the lion’s share of the darkroom time.  The third aspect is etsy-ketsy.  I do what I can.

–Am I an artist-in-residence or faculty?  I have no idea anymore.  I have worked to define these boundaries within the small community in which I labor.  I can only guess that I receive unknown support and back-up from those I respect.

–I am opening a Flickr site and will post photos there, images that never made it here and other things.  Mostly travel stuff.  I’ll add a tab to the website next time I post.  Until then I have added an autumnal image: olive oil fresh from the press.  Yes, it really is that green.

Happy Thanksgiving!

–JDCM

Fresh olive oil from the olive press at Kamari.

Fresh olive oil from the olive press at Kamari.

Notes from the mainland…

October 30, 2013

–The weather is still hot during the day but the mornings are cool so I wear a sweatshirt when I leave the hotel.  By 10:00 I am in my t-shirt.  I have driven through hundreds of orange groves in two days.

–The ruins in Ancient Corinth are vast and the typical jumble.  The Temple of the Corinthian Apollo is Doric.  Lots of Roman stone.  St. Paul was here.

–Akro Korinthos, 3 km up the mountain from the site, is massive.  I have walked the walls.  Easily as large as the outer walls of Dubrovnik…5km if I remember correctly.  Walls built on walls…Mycenean, Byzantine, Ottoman and Venetian.  Everyone knew a good site for a fort when they conquered it.  Impregnable and all but hewn from the living stone.  Few people there today.  Some workman digging a new drainage ditch.  They are stone-faced when I say “kali mera.”

–I have seen more Golden Dawn graffiti here than anywhere in Greece.  Lots of spray-painted Greek meanders…this is a ubiquitous symbol.  It is on my bathmat in the hotel where I sleep.  It’s on tourist swag.  Now it means something else, something terrible.  They have taken a design everyone knows as good and twisted it with their broken thinking.

–Nafplio is not Paros.  The mainland is not the Kyklades.  There is a roughness here, less open than the Greece I know.  Fewer smiles.  Gruff.

–Epidaurus tomorrow and Schliemann’s second site at Tyrins.  My last full day here and I want to make the most of my little car.  I might brave the winding mountain road to Ermioni for lunch after visiting the theater.

October 31, 2013

–Epidaurus, Tyrins…quiet but there are still buses and tourists.  Mostly older groups and I seem to be shadowing a school group of American kids. They were at my hotel too.  Quiet as mice.  A nice thing to experience.  Corinth yesterday and the theater today.  Also the Nafplio museum…

–The winding road to Epidaurus and grove after grove of olives and oranges.

Epidaurus: ancient script.  Leica M8, f/2.8, 1/2000, ISO 320

Epidaurus: ancient script. Leica M8, Voigtlander 28mm, f/2.8, 1/2000, ISO 320

–A group of Russians at the theater…testing the acoustics with pebbles.  Wonderful.  Tyrins on the way back to Nafplio. Not much to see but an observation:  the technique used to build the large Mycenean walls is the same as the wall building I have seen all over the Kyklades.  No walls here, nothing crisscrossing the landscape. The Mycenean civilization was large.

–Blue domes are now terra-cotta tiles.  I had forgotten that about the Peloponnese.

–When I was a boy, about 5 or 6, my grandmother gave me gifts from her time in Greece: a small model of a Greek house with a windmill, a komboloi, an Evzone figurine.  She planted this seed.  She was here.

–I am still enjoying my short DoF exercises.  The stones, greenery and blue skies are perfect for this.   Shooting at f/1.8 to f/4 only…

JDCM

A column section from Epidaurus.  Leica M8, Voigtlander 35mm Nokton, f/2.0 at 1/4000, ISO 360

A column section from Epidaurus. Leica M8, Voigtlander 35mm Nokton, f/2.0 at 1/4000, ISO 360

Nafplio, Ohi Day and some more…

Temple of the Argive Hera, overlooking the Argolis Valley

Temple of the Argive Hera, overlooking the Argolis Valley

It is the autumn mid-term break and I am off-island.  I am feeling a bit of culture shock.  There are so many people here on the mainland.  So many cars…

I arrived here on Sunday, the day before ‘Ohi Day’.  It was also the weekend of Agios Dimitrios, a saint of some popularity here in Greece. Everyone with a connection to the saint for their name day celebrates.  It was a long weekend.   Weekenders from Athens and Corinth mobbed the narrow streets.  I had left the quiet calm of Paros and landed here.  I felt like hiding.  My meal that night was good: Gigantes, fried zucchini, lamb chops and the waiter tried to stiff me 10 Euros until I confronted him.  He was so very apologetic.  Kleftis!

Ohi Day was a grand affair and just before the big parade, I decided to not stick around.  I took a long walk around the massif on which the Palamidi Fortress sits and then on my way back climbed the 900+ stairs to the top of this Venetian citadel.  The view was lovely, but the tourists were there too.  There was an American school group, and I observed how they behaved in a foreign country.  Like bumpkins, I tell you, bumpkins.  The Aegean Center students would never act as they did.  I left the castle and went back to the town, searched out a car rental agency and rented a car for the next day (today).  I ate a wonderful meal at a small taverna off the main drag and had some of the best skordalia (garlic paste) I have ever had.  Superb gavros, too.  No billing issues last night.  I might go back there tonight.

Today I drove my little silver Hyundai north to the Mycenean ruins at Mykine.   This is the spot where Heinrich Schliemann found all of the gold and proclaimed (incorrectly), “I have seen the face of Agamemnon!”  Still, an impressive site and worth the trip.  When I left I headed to Nemea and marveled at the ruins of the Temple of the Nemean Zeus.  This was one of the centers for the Panhellenic games beginning in the 5th century BCE.  Superb.

The clock was edging into the mid afternoon and I decided to call it quits for the day.  I headed back to Nafplio.  15 minutes later found me at the ruins of the Temple of Argive Hera, an enormous jumble of stone and column sections of what must have been an imposing structure overlooking the wide valley.  Like Mykine, the sea was visible and I imagined in its heyday it gleamed atop the hill from which I viewed the olive groves and vineyards stretching out before me.

I arrived back in Nafplio, parked my car and took a well-deserved siesta in my hotel room.  Tomorrow is another big day.  I will head a bit farther north and see the imposing Akro Korinthos fortress and Ancient Corinth.  Thursday I return to Epidaurus after over 7 years.

The town has quieted somewhat, but the cafes still hum.  I am still in Greece, but away from the island, Paroikia and the Aegean Center. This is good.  I need time to let go, reflect and otherwise contemplate my place in the Universe and what that means.  These imposing structures, their tons of crumbled stone and absent civilizations are a humble reminder of my abilities.

RIP Lou.  Your dark candle burned so brightly.

 

The Temple of Nemean Zeus, Nemea, Argolis, Greece

The Temple of Nemean Zeus, Nemea, Argolis, Greece

Bike-hiking and new gear…

I have been exploring the island these sunny, warm days.  I have found a couple of small, very rocky and rough beaches on the north side of the bay, facing Syros, north along the coast from the cave of Archilochos.  They are all but inaccessible unless one rides a bike, hikes or has 4-wheel drive.  A few days ago I went back to one of them with the goal of not returning the way I arrived.  From a decent height I could see smaller paths and a narrow road.  I knew I couldn’t bike it, and that I would have to push/carry the bike a certain way uphill, over rocks and walls, before I reached the road.  According to the map, the road wound about until it reached the Delion of Apollo, one of the higher points on the island and an ancient temple site.

So that’s what I did.  I biked down to the beach area, went for a swim, then packed up my panniers (more about them) and pushed the bike up the hill.  There was some real problem solving involving a small gorge, some backtracking, plenty of thorns (shades of Sikinos!) but I eventually made it to the road.  It was a pretty easy ride to the Delion after that and then a downhill ride back to town.  It was only about 8 km but with all the uphill struggle and 15 kilos of bike and gear, I’ll add another few km to that count.  A nice day, and fun.

I bought panniers for the bike.  Now I don’t have to wear a day-pack anymore.  This was making me top-heavy.  The center of gravity has been lowered and I am finding them convenient and efficient.  Below are four incarnations of my current mode of transport.  There is enough room for all kinds of gear.

Beach Bike

Beach Bike

Mountain bike

Mountain bike

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hiking bike

Hiking bike

Shopping bike

Shopping bike

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JDCM

The reward of September…

 

Blue Menu #1

Blue Menu #1

 

August is past and July is a memory.  The streets of Paroikia are no longer mobbed with summer tourists.  The groups of families have departed, returning to their homes.  The weather is lovely,warm and sunny–breezy and cooler at night.  The beaches are quiet, all but deserted.  The wind is from the north, about Force 5, gusting to 6, which is about 33 to 38 km.  This made for a nice headwind as I rode my usual 11.5 km out to a beach on the northern part of the island today.  I was alone for a solid hour until a couple walked onto the sand.  I swam, read my book, and left in no particular hurry.  I had a tailwind all the way back to town.

I am still very pleased with my exhibit.  I take it down in a few days and put it away.  It has been a good run.  I have had excellent conversations with other photographers about the craft as well as people wanting to know more about the Aegean Center.  I feel my work spoke for itself.

So for all of our industry and patience during the summer months, those of us on Paros are presented with the reward of September.

JDCM

The exhibition…

My solo exhibition opened Sunday evening.  It was a joyful relief to have it up an on its way.  I realized that I have been building this portrait project since October 2011 while also working on (and completing) several other portfolios in both photography and painting en route to this destination.  No small feat.  It feels as if this has been an overreaching arc representative of all my labors to date here on Paros.

I have had some interesting comments regarding the 22 photographs.  One on-line viewer remarked that I had created a community.  I can see that too: a small town.  I have a butcher, barber, teachers, students, potters, cafe owners, artists, farmers, families, etc…The portfolio could stand alone as a village almost anywhere.  A visitor to the exhibition last night said that I had captured the souls of these people.  I like to think I only borrowed them for a brief moment.

I was too busy to take any pictures of the opening, but I know others did.  When I have some of those, I’ll share them.

I think I will concentrate on portraiture for a while.  My other photography is good, solid work.  It is like doing push-ups or lifting weights–all preparation and training for the real event.   I will begin a second round of portraits in late September, once the light has shifted a bit and people’s schedules have settled down.

Thank you, once again, to all those who helped make this happen.  You know who you are.  Yes, I did the work, but without the support of the Aegean Center and the people of Paroikia this project would never have seen the gallery lights.

JDCM