Life, The Universe And Everything
A historical record of the people i meet, the places i go and the life that can be found here, there and everywhere.
PORTFOLIO
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A Little Bit Of Everything
Dominican Republic
April 2013
The minute the job wrapped in Bavaro i rented a car and lit out for Sosua. 150 miles away should be no problem, hell, im from Texas. The roads in the Dominican Republic are a bit different i found out right quick but the rest is mostly the same. It doesn’t really matter where i go anymore. I just keep becoming, regardless of where im going, if that makes sense. For example…
An hour into what would be a 7 hour drive i ran across some sugar cane workers resting for a moment, laying down in the felled cane, carving with machetes, smoking cigarettes. They let me join in and it was just another of many times that i regretted my lack of education and language skills. I think these guys mostly spoke Creole so i was really in the dark. In the end though, the common ground was me pulling out a swiped bottle of champagne from the resort i had been working at. Their excitement at this was beyond what i expected and if you haven’t seen the image of that moment, which i posted a few days back, you oughtta. Close to bliss. As i drove off i praised myself for always stopping to visit with people and realized all of the brief but meaningful moments of connection i have experienced as a result. I also couldnt help but think about what need and want does to people. Most everywhere i’ve been in DR and in other similar countries, i am viewed by most as someone who has something that they want. In some places this kind of expectation would be the worst kind of etiquette but in places where it is common for everyday needs to be unmet, it only makes sense. Another reminder that some of us live pretty charmed lives and dont even know it.
When i got to Sosua about 7 hours later i realized yet again that i had walked blindly into something and my odds of finding a story weren’t so great. But the story was this. In 1938, the Evian Conference was held to discuss the mass exodus of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany persecution. Of all 32 countries present, only 1 offered to open its doors to a substantial amount of Jewish people. That country was the Dominican Republic. One of the lingering questions in the wake of the Holocaust are why more people didn’t help. Many believe that silence is akin to consent or even worse, participation. I wanted to find a story of one of the original Jewish settlers and hoped that in their personal story, a reminder of the importance of looking beyond nationality and race could be found. I thought this could be especially useful in the wake of recent events which are likely to refire the immigration debate and contribute to the flawed ideas of Us and Them.
The universe has a sense of humor for sure. Almost EVERYONE i spoke with upon my arrival said that there was one lady who would be perfect to talk to. One of the original settlers and very vocal. Unfortunately, she died about 2 weeks ago. Without making her life about me, my intentions and the project, hearing this over and over again was a discouraging blow. It ultimately became a reminder however of the importance and urgency of gathering these stories while the Survivors are still with us. As i drove around searching i met another family, the Katz family, and their son Emil Katz García was especially gracious and helpful to me, even though my presence was an interruption to the business they run and the monday morning whirlwind. They referred me to a man named Herman Strauss.
While killing time and waiting and hoping for Herman to be available, i drove around and visited the Sosua Synagogue/Museum as well as the Jewish cemetery. I was greeted at the first place with a wall of photographs of the first children born in the new settlement of Sosua. These children who otherwise wouldn’t have ever been born. I imagined their parents and the 1,100 or so original settlers finding themselves on a near tropical island after living all of their lives in Eastern Europe. What was that assimilation process like? I really wanted to know. At the cemetery, i was reminded again of my tardiness when i was greeted with a mound of fresh dirt. At this point i asked myself again why i volunteered myself to be gone away from my children for a few more days just for this. To have my whole trip here hinged upon a guy named Herman who may or may not even agree to meet with me. The car rental, the gas money, seemingly small but truthfully, my bank account is too. I’ve put all the money i have into the pursuit of this project and im down to 3 digits here. So i drove around and reckoned about all of that and lost faith and found it again and did all of that stuff i do everytime im hunting and searching.
Finally, Herman’s secretary said for me to come see him at 4. I used up the last hour watching kids play baseball a few block away. I watched a few of them after they would get a good hit and how they would look at me out of the corner of their eyes to see if i saw. Been reading a lot about Mister Rogers lately too and studying why we say and do the things we do, especially on social media. We want to be seen. See me. It is beyond deep seated how much each one of us to want to be appreciated and encouraged. One of the problems though is that we are often so busy trying to earn and find that appreciation from others that we dont give it out enough. I know that has become my situation. I mean damn, i used to drive 3 hours to get dirt from someones hometown and put it in a baby food jar and give it to them for their birthday. Now i just like their comments on facebook most of the time. In my quest to be great/highlight the greatness of others, i have lost depth where interpersonal relationships are concerned. When i was in Sosua i somehow got reminded of that and how it’s not the end of the world, but truthfully if i leave here today, i haven’t always been the friend and father and brother i want to be. It’s funny the things you realize when you’re just killing time and watching kids play ball.
At Herman’s office i sat and waited. I read somewhere that he is the wealthiest man in Sosua and was wondering what would greet me in his office. I walked in, we shook hands and i sat down. He asked me if i thought that this Survivor Project was a good thing. I told him that i did, i had been receiving positive responses from people about the value of these stories and then he interrupted me and said, “I’m not so sure that it’s a good thing.” He said that people just need to forget about what happened. I told him more than the war and the atrocity i was focusing on the personal stories and the strength of the Jewish people and some of the ability to overcome that i’ve witnessed. He said he couldn’t really look at the Holocaust and see strength so at that point i just let him talk. He wouldn’t let me record but the two most memorable things he told me was that for him, the Dominican Republic had become and would always be home. When i asked him what he thought about the other countries not being willing to help, he said that the Dominican Republic just did “the human thing,” but that people couldn’t be expected to do “the human thing” and that our history has always shown us to be selfish, apathetic and even cruel. We talked for a few more minutes and he wished me well, also telling me that if i found myself there again, we could perhaps meet again and then he might share some stories with me about the history of the Sosua Jews.
From there i headed back. This time i took the Ruta Panoramica, a 60 km stretch of road through mountainous villages. Truly one of the most beautiful places i have seen. I took video with my iPhone over the steering wheel and addressed it to Lyric, telling her what i was seeing in each curve of the road. I kept thinking and wishing that one day i would find myself on that road again and have my babies with me. Along the drive i also met a man named Joseph. He was raking up brush and burning it, doing all he could to keep his stretch of the road clean and he had one of those faces that you can’t forget. Gentleness, simplicity and you want to believe it’s one that’s owner possesses the wisdom of the world. He could be the town drunk though. You never really know. Either way i wonder what he’s doing right now. I have been blessed to meet a lot of people and have had some pretty sacred and intimate moments of connection with them in my small life. But it always ends. I always miss them when im gone and wish i wasn’t just some guy that passed through their lives with questions and jokes and and cigarettes and sometimes a camera. But i am. And in the end there’s only one life each of us can live. I’d still rather stare at their eyes and love on them for those few short minutes though than to not stop at all.
I got back to Punta Cana in the middle of the night and slept in my car ouside the rental place. In the morning i went in, got square with them and then hitched a ride to the airport. It was there that i found some difficulty, getting bumped off of two flights because i was flying standby. I got all bummed out and as the post a few days ago attest to, a cat came out of nowhere and sat on my lap. That got a million or so likes but i dont know, it’s just another successful moment that either means something or doesn’t. It’s just a cat in an airport but for a minute or two it was more than that for me. Anyway, the cat left and they said i couldn’t sleep at the airport and all of a sudden i realized my credit card was frozen. All my money was gone so there i was looking real smart. The next 6 hours saw me sitting on the side of a highway in the wilderness. Of note is that the only people who stopped to check on me were natives. No tourists or Americans stopped. Yet there were these two girls riding one scooter that stopped and after they laughed at me they asked how they could help. I said that best case scenario i needed food and water and maybe a safe place to sleep. One of them pulled out a bag full of salami, cheese and plantains. The other gave me a sweaty 50 peso bill out of her front pocket. I didn’t want to take it because i knew to her it was more money than it was to me. But i did. And yet again, i see that often the people with the least give the most. I love and hate that about humanity in the same breath.
I’ll spare you the rest. I obviously made it through the night and made it home. Found some sidewalk talk in my front yard that made it all worth it. The only real difficulty on the road was within. At last count it wasn’t too bad and it wasn’t too good, it was just another experience i had. And like always, i find myself sitting here in my chair trying to synthesize purpose and happiness in what i ended up with. For now that’s this…
There will always be people with less and their efforts to fulfill their needs in desperation can’t be judged by those who aren’t desperate. And sometimes a bottle of champagne is more than just a bottle of champagne.
If you are traveling to foreign countries with close to zero language skills, no back up plans and limited finances, you are probably idealistic to a fault and have to accept with a smile any manifestations of those faults.
The people around us mean everything. In their absence we learn and relearn this but the hope is that we don’t have to lose or damage those relationships to realize we value them.
Cats are tough enough and are likely guided by whatever forces govern this universe into people’s lives to provide comfort when they need it. Unless you are Hampton Mills, an allergic sissy. Then they are not so good.
There will always be people in true need whose cries for “the human thing” go unanswered. But there too will always be rare countries, groups and people like my friend Bill Holston working to create refuge for those in true need to find the freedom and opportunity that we often take for granted.
And finally the whole just going for it idea. I would rather be sitting here knowing it didn’t quite pan out than sitting here wondering if it might have. Certainty isn’t necessary to be free but it doesn’t hurt much either.
That’s all i got. I thought i’d never stop typing. Happy to be home though and happy to know a little more. Hope i take these new and old ideas and do something good with them. Holler at yall later on now. -
The Next Generation and Duty
w/ Lidia Maksymowicz
Krakow, Poland
March 2013
Lydia was one of the few children transported to Auschwitz that survived initial death selections and lived to see liberation. She was only 3 years old when she arrived and was immediately taken from her mother. Her memories of that time are few and almost like clips from movies, you could say, but still specific and she has been a registered and credible Witness of the Shoah for many years. Her survival can almost be attributed to her near misfortune, that of being selected by Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous Angel Of Death. Lydia was one of the many confirmed children that he conducted human experiments on. In this period she lived amongst other children in a barrack that had holes in the ceiling and provided little shelter through winters that saw temperatures reach 20 below. There was a Block Warden or “Mother” to look after them and keep them counted but she wouldn’t touch the children or care for them as they were filthy and infested with lice, vermin and waves of typhus. She said the children taught each other how to survive and helped each other where they could, despite the fact that most of them had slipped into a sort of catatonic state due to trauma, starvation and a life stripped of any normalcy. I’m skipping a lot as there is so much within this story to share but now isn’t the time. As days pass and Lydia’s interview is transcribed and then translated word for word in English, i will share more of it. But this… this i cant shake and in some way by telling it i want to be free of for a moment.
When liberation came, Lydia, then nearly 5 and having lost her parents in Auschwitz, was adopted by a Polish family that lived there in the town of Oświęcim/Auschwitz. She grew up in the shadow of the camp’s ruins and i can only imagine what that was like. She told me that after about a year or so she began to learn how to play with other children again and to go outside and do the things that had been forgotten in her year in a half in camp. It was clear though that in many ways that she was different. Lydia said that she would often get the other children to play a game called Concentration Camp with her, wherein they would have selections and some would go to the gas and some would be selected for labor and so on. She remembers hearing the adults who looked on saying, “See, just how easy it is to train the next generation of murderers?” These imprints also carried over to her family life and ability to have personal relationships. I asked her if she was able to grow close to her adopted mother and family and she said that sadly she was never truly able to feel as close to them as she would have liked, nor later in life, her husband and son. Her ability to receive and give love was forever altered by this year and a half of trauma, terror and lack of nurturing that are essential to a young child’s development.
Some redemption in her situation may lie in the fact that while she was emotionally and psychologically different, especially where human relationships were concerned, she still showed up for the people in her life and continues to. Even where the feel good, deep seated feelings aren’t always prevalent, her understanding of duty and being committed to a person is still sufficient for her to take part in these relationships. As much as she can she helps people, is convinced that we aren’t alive just to be alone and feels that it is important that we leave something behind for others once we are gone. Her having these active beliefs despite the forces that could hold her back if she allowed them to… that is huge. It is proof that we just might be able to rise above our predispositions as well. She wants us to know that.
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One last thought. Over the course of our two visits i did watch her transform from being somewhat guarded and distant to being able to engage and do so warmly. Our last visit contained a good deal of laughter and ease. So there is a visible love there for sure, even if it still only comes from her sense of duty. -
Come To Me, A Love Poem
w/ Erica Leon
Los Angeles, Ca.
February 2013
When Erica was 16 and living in pre-World War II Hungary, she met Bob and fell in love with him. They were together for a year or two and then Bob and his family fled Hungary for America as tensions rose in Europe. They would write each other letters, some 20 to 30 pages long as they did their best to stay in touch, hoping eventually that Erica would join Bob in America. He even went so far as to propose to her on a gramophone disk which he sent to Erica’s mother. Hearing all of this reminded me what it was to burn for someone that way and reminded me that even 92 year old’s were once teenagers. Young and and bold overcome with love. Always believing even when the odds aren’t favorable. As the war escalated, passage to the west became impossible and correspondence did as well. The letters stopped eventually, the dream of being together slipped away and it was 53 years until Erica and Bob spoke or heard of each other again.
After some time, Erica fell in love again. At this point, the war had arrived. Shortly after getting together, this young man was drafted and sent to the front in Russia. There, he starved and froze to death. After experiencing heartbreak again, Erica decided she was no longer willing to risk the pain of loss again. Eventually though, and at a perhaps inopportune time, she found someone again. A Hungarian soldier who was in hiding at the Red Cross Hospital in Budapest, along with Erica. Aside from brief captures on more than one occasion, they both avoided the ghettos and the concentration camps. They married in March of 1944 and both lived to see the liberation of Hungary and the Jewish from Nazi Germany. They lived together for 40 years before he passed away.
Four years after he died, two of Erica’s friends were at a New Years Eve party in Los Angeles and they came across Bob. The woman asked him if he remembered “a girl called Erica.” Bob later said that in that moment it was as if the sun came out and was shining on him again. He got her information in Hungary and wrote her. Included in this first letter was a poem whose refrain said, “Come to me. Come to me.” And so it began that after 53 years of silence and separation, Bob and Erica came together again. One or two visits later, they were married in a retirement home chapel in Los Angeles, the same chapel where this portrait of her was taken. The day… Valentine’s Day 1990.
From there, she resettled with him in LA and they spent 15 years together, before he passed. Bob had become an art teacher and was also a painter himself. She sat in on one of his classes and though she had never held a brush or even dabbled with art, she quickly found herself to be a natural at painting. She has since created hundreds of colorful works and sketches, of particular interest are the narrative black and white series she uses to tell her Holocaust survival story. When she shares her story publicly, she uses the paintings as guideposts and visual accompaniment.
Where the story gets even more interesting is where the letters are concerned. Like most others, Erica lost everything in the war, including all of her family, save her mother. Everything… but a stack of letters. In this stack were those that she and Bob had written to each other back in the late 30’s. After they reunited, she showed them to him but at that point his Hungarian was mostly forgotten and he couldn’t read them. After a few years together though he picked the language up again. One day he went through the letters and found something strange.
All those years before, back when they were teenagers separated by an ocean, Bob had written her a letter and in it he recounted a dream he had about their wedding. In it, they got married but Erica wasn’t wearing a formal wedding dress and all of the attendees at the wedding were elderly. Also, in the dream there was some confusion about how Erica would sign her name on the marriage certificate. She wasn’t sure what last name to put. Bob had this dream in the late 30’s. And all those years later, life played out just as the dream did, with them getting married in a simple ceremony at a retirement home, surrounded by old folks. And their wedding day saw Erica, hesitant to enter into a new marriage using the name of her last husband and unsure what name to sign on the license, just like in the dream with a letter to prove it’s existence. She told me this and then looked right at me and said, “How can you explain this?”
I can’t explain it, but i can appreciate it. Some of you have been fortunate enough to find what you want and need where love is concerned, and gratitude should surely be yours. Enjoy it while it lasts. And some of you who have yet to, even as you find yourself in your 20’s, 40’s and 60’s, listening to the clock tick and wondering what life has for you… patience can be yours. There may be something and someone waiting for you down the road, even as far ahead as your twilight years. As Erica says in the last line of her book, “We just have to wait and see.”
To hear this story in Erica’s words follow this link.
http://cowbird.com/story/61447/Come_To_MeA_Love_Poem/
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Casper
Dallas, Tx.
January 2013
He still has the face of a boy. In about a year though, that will be gone and his appearance will match his words, deeds and the inner environment that those arise from. His situation is so textbook that it’s almost not real to me. But it is. The fractured home he comes from is real. The cops he’s on the run from and jail time he’s facing are real. The weed he blazes while we walk through his neighborhood on our visits is real. And the near certain destruction he’s headed for… it’s real too.
I go and see him when i can here lately. I want to think that we will know each other for a long time and i will have a chance to help him at some point. And maybe i will. For now we just walk and talk about what it’s like for him to be 15 and for me to be 32. After he gets high he usually plays a beat on his phone and raps over it. And when he gets real faded he talks me into freestyling with him. One or two times i almost dropped it pretty good. Good enough that he keeps letting me come back. If there is a story to be told here though, it wont be found in my words just yet, but in his. Here are a few of them at the link below. Something you should listen to, if you don’t mind the discomfort of feeling helpless in the face of another’s troubles. Knowing these things exist doesn’t make life any worse, but can maybe make it a little better… somehow.
I hope that’s true.
Audio… http://cowbird.com/story/59934/Casper_The_One_That_You_Cant_See/ -
Skate Rental
Dallas, Tx.
January 2013 -
Casper
Dallas, Tx.
January 2012
Been getting to know this youngster lately. Gathering his story bits at a time, going walking around the neighborhood he stays in and documenting what life is like for him at this raw and pivotal point in his life. The stakes are high, the struggle is very alive and i look forward to sharing fragments of what i’ve found with some of yall real soon like. In the meantime, the lightest and best part of the whole deal is when he pulls out his phone, plays a beat by ZRO and starts flowing. After he goes though, he makes me take a stab at it. A couple times i dropped it pretty damn hard but the others times, not so much. Complete story with audio coming soon to a http://cowbird.com/dylan near you. -
Popcorn Buddies
Dallas, Tx.
January 2013 -
Relaying, With Chief Horace Brooks
Plano, Tx.
January 2013
I met Chief last Sunday, the morning of what would be the last day of his life here. He left just a few hours later. I really never met him at all though. I just stood on sacred ground with he and his family for a few moments as he was winding down and taking his final breaths. I watched his wife Harumi of 50+ years, who he met overseas during the war, as she held his hand and whispered things to him and did what she had to do. I watched his grandson and my special friend Andrew Tolentino do the same and was gifted with a few fragments of his story. There was also an audio device that was on the hospital bed next to him, playing back an interview he had given a year or two before. We listened to his voice from days past, full of vitality and humor, as we watched his body slowly surrendering to our common and inevitable fate. It was powerful and almost surreal to experience one person in two very different phases of existence at the same moment. Andrew told me that he was playing the audio so that even in his unconscious state Chief might hear his own voice and know that his words wouldn’t soon be forgotten.
His obituary said this… “as anybody who knew him can attest, his stories, his narrative, his legacy will live on through his bloodline and beyond.” And i remembered again that this is precisely why we tell stories. To experience the meaning that comes from knowing that our existence at times had the power to change the existence of another, hopefully for the better. And so our lives and the things that matter to us will be remembered by those who would hear. What an honor for someone to promise you on your deathbed that your story won’t be slipping out of existence just because your body has run out of breath.
To hear the audio from the above moments as well as a few one liners about life as Chief understood it you can go here.
http://cowbird.com/story/59265/Relaying/ -
Hey, Bulldog
Manhattan, Ny.
June 2011 -
Cary Holton And Her Hair
Dallas, Tx.
January 2013
When i talked to Cary two nights ago to figure out where and when we would meet when she was in town, she said she didnt think i would sound as country as i do. It was only then that i realized that we had never actually spoken on the phone. Weird. We’ve exchanged emails and airport texts over the last few years but had never heard eachother’s voices. The internet is strange like that. You can follow someone’s thoughts, work and life from the safety and seclusion of your screen without ever meeting them. In cases like this, our ability to keep pace digitally is a great thing.
Cary is an amazing photographer whose distinct way of capturing people and lifestyle stands out and is easily identified as being her work. I was looking at something she shot a few days ago and realized i had been approaching a situation all wrong for a while. She taught me that from all the way in Oklahoma just by being her and sharing her work. Very cool. Anyone can be a teacher at any time if they just allow their gifts and processes to be visible.
The other best part is this. We had coffee for a rushed hour at the Stoneleigh and at the end decided to shoot each other right quick. When she reached into her bag for her 50mm lens, it was gone. Apparently she left it at the Perot Museum the night before while on a job. The panic and frustration registered on her face and was there for about 10 seconds and then she just picked up her camera and kept shooting. That’s the stuff. Having also experienced loss of tangibles this year, i was floored to see her immediate and instinctual return to the process. The details always get sorted out later so why miss out on the now? This is something im regularly learning and forgetting and relearning.
Anyway, you can see her beautiful work here and if you ever need portraits of yourself, your tribe or your cause, you can bet the farm on her. Just look at her website damnit.
http://caryannephotography.com/ -
Casper
Dallas, Tx.
January 2013 -
TonyBoy Curtis and Kelsey Steinwender
Dallas, Tx.
January 2013 -
Signs, Silence and Separation
Manhattan, Ny.
October 2011
Thankful today and every day for Dr. King and all who have chosen to speak up and counter strongholds of broken beliefs, ignorance and mass spiritual sickness. Overcoming the illusion of separation is still the greatest task we face collectively and individually, and like the astronauts usually say, once you look at this planet from up afar, it’s clear that we are all surely in this together. Glad some people have and will continue to speak up.
Let’s remember too though that speaking out against injustice and screaming our views from digital rooftops and being unwilling to listen and learn from the guy on the next rooftop are really two different things. In these situations we are often more concerned with being heard than we are with listening. Most of the time we would rather be right than take the time to be kind. It’s great we have made so much progress where race is concerned in this country. But the separation still exists and we see it everyday. The anger and even near hatred we feel when our brother loves his guns and we don’t. When our brother is against taxes and we are for them. We all feel it rise up in our chest. It’s a natural human response. And we all do different things with it. But let’s be clear, its still keeping us sick individually, nationally and globally, this whole not being able to see beyond ourselves. The good news is that there is a higher path. Dr. King talked about it and civilly fought for it. We can practice these principles today by being willing to listen to the people next to us who think, look and talk differently than we do. We might actually even be able to learn something. I double dog dare you to try.
Happy Birthday, Dr. King. You had moves for miles. -
Herb And The Ladies Of Muhammad Mosque #48
South Dallas, Tx.
January 2013 -
Hannah, Delia & Amanda Rainey
Mountain House, Tx.
January 2013
Dadgum i missed the show last night but these gals from Missouri blessed me with a kitchen song about fear today at Evan’s. Made my cheeks hurt it was so good. Give them a listen and let them take you somewhere when you get a chance. Im halfway dreaming and three quarters of the way to middle America right now about it.
http://dubbnubb.bandcamp.com/album/sunrise-sleepy-eyed
