I couldn’t write a word in the last two weeks. I don’t know why or what was in the way; it just seemed so “useless and all” (Bob Dylan). I have struggled with disconnection my entire life: daydreaming, wandering in classrooms where I was meant to be paying attention, drugs and alcohol and an often conscious desire for a hard straight shot of oblivion, no ice no water.

On May 1 of this year I was fifteen years clean and sober.

During those years I have written as I always meant to, with some success. I found entirely by accident that I had an inclination for photo journalism. It became my life passion in the form of building a career as an ultra-endurance event photographer.

Several years ago I ran into an undiagnosed A-fib situation which resolved itself in a stroke, followed by two more events and a bout of congestive heart failure (scary shit that). Aside from the obvious challenges involved in aging, combined with a little bit of bad luck or timing, as the case may be, my ability to keep shooting the events that allowed me to make a living, and to be me, disappeared. My used-to-be caught up with me as a silent daily lament. I was a “good old wagon but Daddy, I done broke down,” an old song says.

So now what? I HAVE TO WRITE!! is an enormous amount of pressure on a compromised system. So I began to go to the gym and rebuild. Every now and then I take my camera and shoot what’s around me; the images that follow are what I have seen with a camera in my hands. The other day I shot a local race event. These daily non-race images are markers of recovery, small celebrations of being present, doing what it is that I can do with what I got – I think.

What do you think?

Image Credit

Photos by Michael Lebowitz. All rights reserved.

Love Song #87

I love you, I said, but it is not enough.
Around the next corner the darkness will embrace me. The night will
sing like Eurydice,
to Ulysees’ sailors.
I will drown looking for paradise
on the way home.

When my dick gets hard.
All the pain in the history of the world
Won’t make it right.
Not on this slag heap,
not this night.

I don’t want to need you ever again,
I found love once, at a turning
where slept the slouching beast.

There is something out there.
It is more than nothing.
It has come to matter to me. 

Image Credit

Photos by Michael Lebowitz. All rights reserved.

It has been more than two years since I have been able to wake up out of a restful sleep, grab my camera pack and head out the door with purpose. Such is the aftermath of several strokes and a round of cardiomyopathy, the latter of which damn near did me in. Seriously. The result has been, not in any specific order, a general gratitude for each new day; a rage-inducing inability to type quickly (or slowly) with any accuracy; a variety of med-induced incapacities (read adventures), digestive and otherwise; severe back pain from one of the early strokes (a fall recovery that accompanied said event caused some longterm disk damage); and a whole inventory of newly minted whining and complaints. IN other words, one morning, I woke up OLD and broken. But after all is said and done, I’m doin’ fine, and like the poet said, “Don’t ya think twice, it’s alright.”

Nowadays I am often restricted to shooting what I see out of my back window or my front door. This particular day has some great light changes in it. And since I can no longer chase the shots (read runners) that appeal to me and for which I used to get paid, I have gone back to basics: natural light, in the world as I am in it. I have made my studio the world outside my door as I can see it, and I wait for the shots to come to me. Very freakin’ ZEN, no? But what else is a guy to do, especially if he hates flash and arranged shots (I started out in this passion late in my life; I found my inner photojournalist too late to be a combat/social photographer but just in time to become a decent sports shooter, all natural light and unscripted action). I love telling stories with the images I make, the ones that find me. Here are several, both colour and black and white, of a morning in my life not too long ago.

After all the whining and losing are done, and the relentless, useless calculations of loss finished with, all that is left is the doing. I said that. 

Poto Credit

Photos by Michael Lebowitz. All rights reserved.

The morning has moved from a muted Art Pepper “Over The Rainbow” to Van Morrison’s “Tupelo Honey.” It’s always a good sign when I find my way back to Van Morrison; he has been with me for a very long time. “You can take all the tea in China and put it in a great big brown bag for me” seems a remarkable way to talk about feeling fine about who you are and who you are with. Even so, I realized that the hard thing for me about my getting up very early and finding my way into the old music is that memory can be complicated, dangerous, if only because it can be full of feelings of loss and regret that take on weight, pulling me back into the memory of what was, and is, both now compromised and not soon to return, if ever. Going back there is not an option; keeping it real and healthy means staying here, and being present with nonspecific fear and drift of another day with too much pain and not enough physical outlet and/or peace of mind. I canceled another shoot this morning.

It is time for breakfast and a trip to the gym, where I will do some aerobic exercise on a machine and listen to a Van Morrison playlist on Pandora. My back will hurt for a while and then I will get into the rhythm of it. Somewhere in there will be a recognition that I am doing this thing and not sitting at home in pain like I did for the past year. That unlike many folks who have gone through my sequence of physical ailments, I am alive and well and irrationally irritated with my perceived failings; to the degree that I am succeeding in rebuilding a life that works for me, the irritation is useful if somewhat indulgent. The “I Used-to-was” phrase has been mostly replaced with the more accurate and ultimately more useful “I am.” 

Image Credit

Photos by Michael Lebowitz. All rights reserved.

Remember when depressed was just another word for being sad or maybe blue? And, sometimes, after you got to be a teenager, if you were blue you could get into a conversation about having the Blues. Whatever they were. It made one seem more real and perhaps a bit worldly. And it was a useful way to seem both intense and possibly desirable to the opposite sex. It could lead to getting laid, so to speak.

As you got older, there was existential angst to be had, Schadenfreude to be aware of, not to mention Weltscmerz, in a diverse universe of Weltanschaung to contend with, and like that. All to be avoided or wallowed in as the case may be. The Blues were much simpler than all that heavy traffic. They could be about having lost your girlfriend, having gotten drunk, having gotten into a fight. Maybe about having gotten drunk, gotten into a fight and losing your girlfriend in one lost weekend. Or maybe last Thursday. And, maybe you were standing in the kitchen with a knife in your hand and a chicken staring back at you from the cutting board. Maybe then you realized there were at least four things you can do with a knife and a chicken and an empty pot and all of them are the Blues. A whole mess of that stuff could be a good country tune as well. That’s what being sad was.

These days, all of that stuff falls under the heading of mileage, at least it does for me. It’s easier that way. And more useful as shorthand, hence Tarmac Meditations. My place for relaxing and paying attention, all the while being in touch with the slip-slide of my days. And the whimsy of the passing parade. Not sad by any means but certainly filled with feelings and the sense that there is still shit to do and my time is both at hand and slipping away at one and the same time. All of this mileage may be just another reminder for me to be getting back to work, lacing up and lighting out by doing what there is to do with what I’ve got. I’m betting my life on it. And I’m all in. As if had any choice in the matter.

There, I feel a whole lot better. 

Image Credits

Photos by Michael Lebowitz. All rights reserved.