Seattle Viaduct
Author: devtank
Being There
I never lived in this apartment, apart from one month in 2015 where I came back to Ireland with the intention of trying to get to know him again and to remind myself of who he was and where I came from.
Dublin, My father had fallen about 6 months previously and damaged some bones. He was checked on by a friend who determined quite rightly, that he was in trouble. Between my Sister and my oldest brother, John, and their friends that were still living in Ireland, helped get him situated in a new place.
In the meantime, he had been hospitalized and then sent to ‘Our Lady’s Manor’ which is a care home administered by an order of nuns. This is literally moments after I saw him for the first time in 3 years. I was gutted when I saw him, so physically diminished, yet bright and coherent despite the crumbling infrastructure.
Dublin,. My oldest brother, John, dealing with immediate arrangements for Dad, a Taxi, and his job back in the UK.
Waiting by the elevator at Our lady’s Manor care home. My thoughts during this time were to apply the same psychology through my camera that would help determine the best images to get in the moment. As I was looking at my father, I could see his demeanour, indicating that he wasn’t really sure about what was going on in that moment. The following image carries on this psychology and is manifested on my brother, as he amply reflects my own thoughts in that moment.
Waiting by the elevator at Our lady’s Manor care home. My thoughts during this time were to apply the same psychology through my camera that would help determine the best images to get in the moment. As I was looking at my father, my brother, John, came to my focus attention. This is hard for all of us.
Dublin,. In the tiny elevator at Our lady’s Manor care home.
It became clear that it was very difficult for me to figure out which emotion was calling me the most. I made the picture to solidify the moment.
I remember my dad talking about a film that he said was profound; “Being There” with Peter Sellers. The sentiment of this film is reflected in these images.
Dublin,. This is my brother, John, saying goodbye for now to our dad. Me giving him that hug, would look just the same as this, and it would be the following day. The last time I would talk with him.
Dublin,. A view, one that I’d seen many times before, but from another point.
My father spilt most of his life into this area, everyone knew him, he was a hand, act or part in this area for 88 years.
I remember my dad talking about a film that he said was profound; “Being There” with Peter Sellers. The sentiment of this film is reflected in these images.
I have vague memories of being a child holding his big warm hand, and he would turn back to me like this, and say something.
Dublin,. I literally got off the plane got in a taxi and came straight out to see him at the Manor. The trip back to my friend’s house where I was staying, was a real-time tableaux of images from the window of the train, segments of my past life in Ireland, chunks of memory, good and bad times, little vignettes of thought and memory synchronized and dispatched with the rhythm of the tracks.
Dublin,. A view, one that I’d seen many times before, but from another point.
My father spilt most of his life into this area, everyone knew him, he was a hand, act or part in this area for 88 years.
Dublin,. A view, one that I’d seen many times before, but from another point.
My father spilt most of his life into this area, everyone knew him, he was a hand, act or part in this area for 88 years.
I remember once my dad talking about a film that he said was profound; “Being There” with Peter Sellers. The sentiment of this film is reflected in these images.
The last look.
I had a deadline, my part in a charade. I got one day with my father.
The window frame tells me that I have no control, I include it in the frame, to convey a sense of constraint. Other things going on outside the window, are reinforcements on this concept.
VIOLENCE
20180627
VIOLENCE
Puzzling and unexpected.
Two boys. Brothers. Formative years.
Horseplay in the waiting room, I’m not paying attention.
I heard a sound. I don’t know what it was.
My mind does.
That puzzle piece is a root trigger. Deep and legacy.
A localized, cool breeze forms over thoracic. Cold. Instant.
Muscles ripple.
Lockdown.
Pain.
Waiting for the event. Waiting for the ambush. Waiting for the violence.
V is for violence. It is purple on my right and navy on my left.
2017-11-24
I’ve been using the internet since 1991. I’m not the generation that built it, but I am the generation that took it from obscurity to fruition.
In 2014 I cut back on my use of social media, primarily because I felt that the very fabric of the internet was starting to ‘guide’ me in a direction, whatever that direction was I didn’t know, but I didn’t like it. I actually really don’t come here that often now. I create and stock, or post, I contribute but don’t partake, I have too many other things on my mind to pay attention.
Twitter, to me, was always a bullshit platform, I still think it is. In the beginning, it was people talking about what they were doing at that moment, just rubbish, typing to be heard. Now, it’s that and more of it in cumulative voluminous chorus of pure unmitigated liquid shit.
Anyone who thinks Twitter is a powerful news media platform is off their rocker, simply and plainly, we are not journalists.
Pick a minstrel, and they will play to, or for their audience. You put a hundred people in a room and the dynamics will form eponymous groups
The first thing you learn in a conflict zone is there is no truth, that goes out well before boots hit the ground or even the first fist is raised, let alone bullets or Molotov’s. Truth was shoved out the door before the show even started.
Regionalized information delivery is 100% against what the internet was raised to be.
Proper news information delivery is journalism, and that comes with context, perspective and contrast; two or more sides of a situation delivered within the parameters of context and with ethics, backstory and overview. Yes the journalist is skewed, intrinsically, but the journalist is the brightest computer fueled by conviction, compassion, empathy and had human experience, which as yet, has not been emulated by machine, but is in danger of being swallowed by the tsunami of white noise, grey noise, black noise, brown noise, noise, or, as Navy personnel call interference, which all comes with agenda and skew.
What is real? Where is the middle ground?
Where are we?
Remember who you are.
Who are you?
Apple
Happy to see a class action lawsuit against Apple for its recent beligerance towards their iPhone customers.
Oh it so irritates me when those Mac Geniuses tell you that there’s nothing wrong.
I had a serious problem with my IPhone 4, and had to have the battery replaced by an semi-authorized service centre when I was in India. Later, back in the U.S. a Genius told me that they wouldn’t touch my phone now because it hasn’t been serviced at an Apple store. Explaining my situation, the guy didn’t seem to give a toss, and so a conversation with his supervisor who told me point blank, that their batteries never degrade, prompting me to ask if they had somehow found the secret to miniaturized perpetual motion.
I ended taking apple to the small claims court and won the right to the repair cost and the BS of dealing with people who are under pressure from higher ups to fob off anyone with pesky questions. Needless to say the phone died a few weeks afterwards because mysteriously a capacitor was weakened during the battery replacement. None of which is provable and so Samsung got a new customer until the iPhone 6 came out.
IOS 11 definitely made my 6+ dredge slow, but it was already getting slow before the update, taking 8 minuets too hard reboot. I would have preferred if they could have given us the possibility of rolling back to an older OS version, while keeping the security updates. I don’t see how that is not possible.
Smooth E’s
Sometimes I do this. In the summer I do it more.
I have terrible teeth, from a combination of reasons, and also I have dentist phobia, so I have an immersion blender that chews for me. This way, my diet is radically better.
I think, if I had better teeth, I probably wouldn’t eat half the things I put into the cauldron.
I like food but have little food imagination, and tend to make what I grew up with, or a minor variation on that. I will put all kinds of things into the jar, sometimes it’s more experimental than others.
Today, it’s Arigula, Carrots, Celery, Satsuma’s, Strawberries, Kiwi & Banana, and I add about two soup spoons of diluted plain or Vanilla yogurt to make it a bit more natural like Mountain Dew.
It’s dense, and has to be consumed slowly, about 10-15minutes, but I feel better for 36-48 hours the days I make these vs not.
The blender was $40 at Target. It has two speeds, start with the slow speed and add a shot of water until it’s a fluid pulp, then add more water (which makes it easier for the blender), and blend until it’s a thick liquid, voila a smooth e, aka great sustenance & hydration in one go.
ICR
IMPRACTICAL
COGNITIVE
RESPONSE
or, subjective writing on objective subjectivity, and the art of internal forgiveness and cognitive art™.
I hate long texts, they intimidate me, please press the Forgiven button here to skip to the end.
The proper way to be is to maintain a Practical Cognitive Response during adverse conditions. However, as I’m learning, objectively, about myself, I tend to naturally lean towards the impractical.
Impractical Cognitive Response is brought to you today by way of complex post traumatic stress disorder, intermittent self awareness and the lack thereof.
I have problems with processing behaviours of other people, specifically holding them to a standard of behavior, -which I believe, has mellowed over time, but for all intents and purposes, is impractical, as it has a tendency to get dinged frequently, causing cumulative internal negative cognitive response.
I have identified that I now have some expectations, something I believed I was immune to until recently. My expectations are, basically, as I’m still figuring them out with the professionals, based on a set of parameters which, I hate to admit it; manners & politeness. I hate it because I remember as a child, how that thinking and behavior was banged into me by others who weren’t practitioners of their beliefs. I hated the humiliation that came with that protocol training. I have vague memories of prefabricated buildings with eggshell blue walls and the burned underside of piano keys.
However, here I am, with these expectations, now as an adult. Those vague memories don’t make much sense but have something to do with early humiliation, loneliness, ostracization and arithmetic.
Im also learning about boundaries. Im learning how not just to have them, but how to internally justify them to myself, which is is fundamental stuff, the most basic sense of self and integrity, which I obviously didn’t have as a child. Learning these things is like going through puberty part deux. Some of us are born with these necessities instilled from the get-go, some of us spend our childhoods in survival mode, which lays waste to everything else of lesser importance, all of that shit comes back in adulthood and by that time, there are standard societal expectations of you, which are unbearable because you are still doing remedial studies that you missed out on earlier.
With age, the brain hardens, and the learning isn’t easy, and it comes with radical change, and the broaching of safety zones; I have to feel safe to make any moves.
These terms help. Clinical language about one’s self, and what that self is, from a semi outside perspective: audience of one- myself. Otherwise known as objectivity, but that word I reserve for others, or art, or critical thinking; things I actually like. That’s not to say that I don’t like myself, I do, mostly, for reasons I’ll get to later, or maybe never. Maybe I’ll keep that stuff to myself and be happy with it, or just not discuss it for other reasons I don’t want to consider now, because I have something more pressing to do.
My method of communicating with myself is like negotiation. The closest thinking I can think of, in literary terms, is that of Samuel Beckett, or Louis Ferdinand Celine, though these are merely similarities, and not necessarily the minutiae of my cognizance.
Negotiation, because in order for me to get a thing out, I feel like I have to substantiate it, reinforce it, and I do that by a mixture of anecdote, example, and literary fact. I use this as foundation building material, but ultimately, I think, this looks like hedonistic digression. Maybe it is, but I like to think of it as cognitive art™, so I embrace it.
Again, audience of one.
I record my therapy sessions. I have been using these recordings as fodder for learning new audio editing programs, learning how to make podcasts and learning how to formulate dialogue for radio and the short span of attention syndrome. I say umm and ahh a lot. So much so, that I can now visually identify them in a wave file. I am 90% correct when I don’t listen to the audio and make cuts. Thankfully these are non-destructive programs..
There is value in the pause. Gaps in dialogue that are filled with the whirring cogs of thought and structure. They give me clarity upon listening, which shows me both my internal process and an external struggle. Objectively, they present a sense of genuineness, subjectively, I know what they are; shuffling paragraphs and chapters of explanations and foundational texts into position like an psychological air traffic controller, shifting pieces to fit within the allotted timeframe that the space of therapy provides.
I think thats enough for now, I’m actually satisfied I was able to get this out, insofar as out can be.
