photogrammatical

We’d just pulled into Babylon after a long trip from the Iranian border. Our platoon would be occupying some empty buildings near a small man-made lake for a few weeks. Everyone was backing their vehicles in so we could pull the radios inside, but there was a small palm tree in the way of mine. I jumped out and grabbed the ax. With my first swing I caught one of the low fronds with my left hand. It went straight through the base of my fingernail like a staple gun. It hurt like hell, and my hand was shaking, but the vehicles still had to get parked and everyone was tired and pissed off. So I cut down that tree, and spent the next two months trying to dig that frond out of my hand.

I couldn’t go to the docs for something that small, I’d never hear the end of it. So I just put up with the irritation, but as the nail grew it was dragging the frond with it, and it hurt a lot. I put sanitizer on it often to try to stave off infection, but that didn’t work. I wore gloves to hide the swelling. I knew it was becoming a problem and if I went to see the docs at that point I might even get sent to the Army hospital for antibiotics. I couldn’t let that happen. I’d seen some guys get sent back to Kuwait against their will for seemingly minor injuries. I would have rather died.

So one night I got good and drunk, left the boys playing spades, and climbed into the back of my vehicle. I washed my hands as best I could with hand sanitizer and heated my knife up with a lighter. I slid the blade in quickly under the nail until it separated. It hurt A LOT.

I squeezed hard and the frond came out immediately. I was shaking from the pain, and I remember feeling relieved that it had come out on the first try, because I wasn’t sure I could squeeze like that again. I put more sanitizer on my hand and instantly regretted that decision, but I knew if it was going to heal properly I’d have to keep it as clean as possible.

I was surprised and a little impressed by the size of the frond, more than a quarter inch. I’d carried it with me through so much it didn’t seem right to just discard it. So I taped it into my journal, a little souvenir from my summer vacation.

When you talk about injuries sustained in war, a thing like that is not even worth mentioning. But it was something small that I carried with me for too long, a painful irritation that never let up until I dealt with it the hard way. Sometimes there are things like that in life. This one got taped into a little book I keep in my desk drawer.

I have a desk drawer where I keep Iraq. All the negatives, all the test prints, my ragged journal stuffed with wallet pictures and dinars. When I first got home I’d pored over the images, disappointed with most of them. I don’t know exactly what I wanted them to be, but I’d felt they largely fell short. I made a small edit at the time of about 20 or so that I’d show to people, and the rest just got tucked away. As time passed I didn’t want to look at them, I’d made my selections. I didn’t feel much like reading my journal either, not for years.

A few months ago I decided it was time. I sat alone in my room and read my journal from start to finish, I spread all those prints out on the floor. I’ll admit it was hard for me, reading my own words sparked a kind of total recall. The images brought sounds and smells and absolutely overwhelming emotions. Looking back, I’d been so young. Young in a way that you don’t get back.

But it’s all a personal history now. I’d left most of the war on the plane, and tried hard to bring back only pictures. Pictures that upon later inspection offer a view into what I’d seen at the time and felt a need to photograph. It wasn’t digital then, and I’d had a limited number of frames to remember by.

I’ve begun revisiting those images I’d been ignoring. I remember where I was for each one, and many of them coincide with stories in my journal. I have mixed feelings about sharing some of that work. The photographs are often snapshots, made by a young man who didn’t fully understand his light meter. Some of them were with a disposable camera. I know now where I went wrong technically. I know now how I could have made them better. Like a schoolyard fight lost, I’d give anything to relive it as who I would become.

But six years later, I see now where my own history was a part of our history, and I think that’s a story worth sharing.

I’ll start with a new gallery on my site, SPACES.

I got the call today. Frank the Fish is dead. At nearly five years old he was the final survivor of the Fishbowl Gang, a motley crew of feeder fish I’d bought in the fall of 2004.

It was the first assignment in a photo class I was taking. Photograph one object 36 different ways. 36, of course, because everyone was still shooting film then. So I went to Walmart, spent under $10 and walked out with a large fishbowl containing five goldfish.

Tara and I were still newly dating. She dutifully held the fishbowl in the passenger seat as I tried unsuccessfully not to slosh the water onto her jeans. We drove all over town looking for places where the light seemed just right. At a park, at a bustop, in the center divider on a busy street. It took several hours, but I was happy with the results.

At the end of the day I suggested that we give the fish to the first kid we saw on the street, or else set them free in a local pond, but Tara would hear none of it. She’d named the two largest fish Frank and Fatty and she was determined to keep them for what we assumed was their short lifespan.

The three smaller fish did die almost immediately, and Fatty passed after several months. But Frank was a fighter. As the years passed his fins grew impossibly long like an old man’s whiskers, and he took to spending his days just sitting on the bottom, watching us.

Several times I mentioned that we could buy Frank a larger tank, perhaps a couple of friends, but Tara seemed to think that Frank was staying alive out of pure spite for his circumstance and that spending any additional money on him might be issuing him a death sentence.

And so Frank lived on in that same bowl, the regal lord of Tara’s parents’ kitchen. Always watching, only bothering to swim at meal times or when his possible demise had come into question.

But alas, old Frank’s number had finally come up.

Tara called this afternoon and said,

“Bad news, I just got to Mom’s house and Frank is dead.”

“Are you sure he’s not just resting?”, I said.

“Sorry honey.”

That was it. The undignified end of what was a remarkably long life for a lowly Walmart feeder fish who rose to prominence in the lives of a lucky few.

Frank will lay in state until tonight, when I can give him a proper burial.

Goodnight sweet prince.

Mark Smuts and I have been friends since we were 15. We went to high school together, we worked in a restaurant together, he took me to a bar at midnight on my 21st birthday.

When I was in Infantry School, Mark would get calls at 1am on Saturdays and he’d drive down to Camp Pendleton to pick me up.

The day I came back from the war it was just Mark and my girlfriend at the time who were there to take me home.

He’s a hell of a guy, and a hell of a friend.

Happy 29th Birthday Smuts.

Too bad you grew up to look like “The Commish“!

He takes his drinks tall and cool, and likes his women warm and willing.

He dances like a boxer, and boxes like a dancer.

He can’t help you move this weekend…

He’s growing his beard.

He is: The Most Leisurely Man in the World.

This upcoming Saturday is my brother Colin’s 3rd Annual “Keep the Fire” pool party. A nautical themed tribute to 70s era smooth music or “Yacht Rock“. Loggins and Messina, Hall and Oates, The Doobie Brothers, pretty much everybody that Michael Jackson wiped out of our childhood memories.

Once a year he sends our parents away for the weekend and turns their backyard into the smoking deck on the Love Boat. Party props include fake mustaches, captain’s hats, bubble pipes, and white deck shoes. Before each party we have taken a series of ridiculous “promotional photos” of Colin that are later made into various flyers and email invitations. Now in it’s third incarnation, KTF has taken on a life of it’s own. Every year his planning gets more and more absurd, it wouldn’t surprise me if Colin tried to rent a yacht next year. Just a few days ago he called me wondering whether our parent’s sprinkler system could withstand having a small sailboat parked on the lawn… “for effect”.

A big thanks to Pragna, my “exotic hand model”, and to my assistants Wes and Tommy aka “Blaze and Blue“. Wes was secure enough to stand in front of the many on-lookers from the Newport American Legion and repeatedly pour water down another man’s chest, all while Tommy stood behind me holding lenses and ridiculing him.