Proud Boys

I hoofed it downtown yesterday to photograph the Proud Boys rally + Antifa counter-protest and got caught on the far-right side of the police barricade for three hours. So, when in Rome...

Women's March on Portland

Images from the Women's March on Portland | January 21, 2017 

Nothing Is Simple These Days

Nothing is simple these days.

I went downtown with Syd tonight to watch our fellow citizens demonstrate their civic right to peacefully protest something they fear. I watched the vast majority fight tooth and nail to keep things positive. They reprimanded the masked protestor who tried to light the garbage can on fire. They chased away the hothead who throw a projectile at the police. But all it takes is ten bad seeds per thousand to shift the meaning of it all. The organizers tried to keep it peaceful, but peaceful isn't the reality right now.

No, nothing is simple these days.

When Donald Closed His Eyes

When Donald shut the door to the presidential suite on the 44th floor, he breathed in deep and closed his eyes. He thought of the litter of agents in suits and dark glasses, who stood guard at every possible entry and exit to the hotel, the elevator, and the 44th floor, who were pledged to protect him in all things, who existed to extend and prolong his existence. And he thought of the growing crowd beyond the barricade down the street, his name pouring from their lips, protesters and advocates alike. And opening his eyes, Donald smiled.

As Donald teetered on the southwestern edge of his king-sized bed, he shook free his right leg, then his left, from the confines of his Brioni suit pants, and thought of the 47,341 adoring faces that had looked on and shouted their loyalties while he sermonized to them from three makeshift pulpits at three separate hangers in three different cities over the course of ten hours earlier that day.

When Donald stepped into the bathroom, he paused at the pair of gilt, pear-shaped rococo mirrors and stared at his naked, recently-tanned body, at his slightly protruding belly, his carefully coiffed hair, and his creased, septuagenarian skin. He refreshed his Twitter feed, just in time to see his latest tweet inch past 25K likes and 12K shares, placed his Samsung Galaxy tenderly on the calacatta marble counter, and disappeared into the warm steam of the walk-in shower.

After Donald had slipped into his silk pajamas and laid down on his plush, king-sized, pillow top mattress, he dimmed the overhead lights, refreshed his feed (26.5K likes, 16K shares), and flipped on the 65-inch television screen, which clung to the wall ten feet from the foot of his bed and now cast a soft blue glow over the room. As his eyes grew heavy, Donald watched himself shake hands in Reno, lead chants in Henderson, and disembark from his plane in Vegas, energetic and triumphant. As he skipped from channel to channel, he watched as the pundits discussed the hands that Donald vigorously shook in Reno, the raucous chants that Donald led in Henderson, and the suggestive swagger with which Donald disembarked his plane in Vegas. Having nestled comfortably under the eiderdown comforter, Donald tweeted, refreshed his feed three times, placed his phone on the pillow beside him, and closed his eyes.

—

Donald opens his eyes aboard a big and beautiful plane with endless isles and and endless rows of empty seats, flying through the billowing clouds, above a tall and dark and ancient mountain. Now suddenly the plane bursts through the clouds upon a majestic, golden plain! And below, an endless sea of men and women, cheering and misty-eyed, rapt and awed, rolling and rejoicing!

As the masses part, the plane touches down and is instantly enveloped by the multitudes! Donald exits the plane, energetic, smiling, magnanimous, and triumphant. He is lifted onto the shoulders of the crowd, a messiah riding high atop the heaving throng, and passed for countless miles as the crowd swells and shouts, every man, every woman straining just to touch his suit, his hand, his hair, to claim him, to know him fully, as they wish to be fully known by him. And Donald shouts and giggles and exhorts and salutes, until at last he is set down at the base of a big and beautiful wall, stretching as far as can be seen toward both horizons, towering up to the heavens. And with a gracious smile, Donald approaches the wall, as a piece of bright, beautiful, red ribbon descends from on high, flapping softly in the warm breeze. 

And from the crowd appears a woman of unrivaled beauty, her nude body draped with superlative ribbons and white flowers. She places in Donald’s hands a big and beautiful pair of golden scissors. And he kisses her on the lips and dismisses her.

And the multitudes grow silent in awe and anticipation.

And Donald raises the big and beautiful scissors and opens the gleaming blades around the ribbon, like a lion’s jaws around its tamer’s head. He stops, turns his head, and stares magnanimously into the countless faces overflowing with gratitude, admiration, and love. So much love! And with a great and mighty movement of his arms he snaps the scissors with every ounce of strength in his body. And blade strikes ribbon.

—

 When Donald awoke, he was alone and sweating in his king-sized bed in the presidential suite on the 44th floor. He stared first at the flickering blue light on the ceiling above his king-sized bed as he felt his heart beating wildly in his chest, and then at the muted TV and the latest poll numbers. He checked the time. He’d been asleep for all of two hours.  There was work to do.

Donald rolled over and stared at the Samsung Galaxy glowing softly on the pillow beside him. He picked it up, refreshed his feed (new post: 12K likes, 3K shares), and started typing, his fingers rapidly pecking, lashing out, time and again, at the glowing, listless screen. 

But There is Life

In my last chat with my grandmother, a couple months before she passed away, we were talking about my father’s passing, my family, and the nature of grief. She said, “Human empathy begins when you experience death, when you understand, as you get older, that everyone you meet is grieving in some way”. As I mentioned in a previous post, it was one of those statements that gave words to a feeling that I had felt since I was child, but hadn’t been able to find the right combination of words to express. And last week, when I flew out to Hudson, CO, for her burial and memorial, I thought a lot about that old feeling and her words.

I watched as my uncles and aunts all experienced a second formative loss in under two years. I felt a gnawing, relentless sense that another part of my father’s story, and consequently my family’s story, had vanished and was now irretrievable. And I watched, at the burial ceremony, as my cousins’ children, ranging from under a year to just shy of eight years old, watched the expressions of their parents and grandparents, listened to the hymns, and took in, for the first time, one of life’s inevitable and highly codified traditions. They were silent and perplexed and unknowing. They seemed to mimic the rolling waves of somberness, laughter, sorrow, and joy. And as I watched them, my grandmother’s words were on my mind.

After the ceremony, we returned to my uncle and aunt’s stunning 20-acre property, sitting on the wind-swept Colorado plains at the foot of the Rockies. The adults drank coffee, swapped stories, socialized and prepared, each in their own way, for the coming day’s memorial service at my grandmother’s church in Denver. And the kids ran carefree and wild, with boundless energy. They had seen a glimpse of grief through the foggy glass of childhood, but were now fully liberated by an insatiable lust for the most primitive joys of life: laughter, self-expression, community, exercise, and family.

---

The last year and a half have been hard, overwhelmingly so at times, for my family and I. I just miss my dad so much. There’s at least one or two times a day where I see or hear something that makes me reach for my phone to shoot a text or share an article with him. I look at Sydney and my brother, regularly, and realize how vastly and permanently the landscape of my life could change in the beating of a heart. I’ve laid in bed, half-awake, my mind spinning with the words of C.S. Lewis: “No one ever told me that grief so felt like fear”.  And I’ve fought the urge to bury myself alive in one of the truths that lies at the heart of my grandmother’s words: that everyone is grieving and, when they’re not, you can bet your bottom dollar that grief is waiting just around the bend. There is pain, there is sorrow, there is grief, and there is suffering in this world. It is in the air we breathe. It is all around us, all of the time, as good as we are at ignoring it, at repressing it, and shutting it out. It is as undeniable as it eternal. And despite the comfort of our friends, family, and loved ones, we live alone unto ourselves, solitary witnesses to our own vast, swirling, infinitely complex inner lives.

But that is only part of the truth that undergirds her words, and to deny it, to get lost in it would be to deny the fullness and validity of life. There is a deep and earnest beauty imbedded in the very heart of this world, in this grief, and in this mutual understanding of loss that binds us and that defines just what it means to be human. We are fellow sailors, bound together by love and loss, sailing on a ship that whips through space at 19 miles per second. We are here and we are alive. And it is now and that is enough.

There will be grief, but there will beauty. There will be loss, but there will be love. There will be suffering, but there will be joy. There will be death, but there is life.

March for Bernie

Photos from the grassroots-organized "March for Bernie" event held at Pioneer Square in downtown Portland, OR on Jan. 23, 2016...

Shayna + Cypress

I first shot with Shayna (@theavalanches_) a few months back. A short time later, I was shooting her galactic, Bowie-esque marching band, Love Bomb Go-Go, during their pre-WNBR and snagged a random shot of an adorable little dude with waist-length blonde riding on a man's shoulders through the crowd, watching the performance. It was instantly one of my the favorite images I've made this year. When I posted the photo a few days later, Shayna texted me a few moments later. The boy in the photo was her son. 

This past week I finally got a chance to meet the little energetic adventurer that is Cypress Walker and witness the beauty of that mother-son bond between Shayna and her boy.  We chased Cypress' energetic tornado through Cathedral Park and made some images in the process. Here are some of those images...

David Joseph Harr

I met David Joseph Harr while doing some pinhole photography downtown this evening. He walked up with his guitar in tow, asked about the strange wooden box on the tripod ("Does it make video?"), played me an original song, and chatted with me for 20 minutes or so.

He knows he shouldn't be drinking and he's tried to stop, he said, but he does it anyway. He lost 11 guitars in 2014, mostly because he stashed them in alleys or up in trees when he was blackout drunk, and couldn'tremember where he put them when he woke up in the morning. This past week, he hitchhiked from San Jose to Sacramento, from Sacramento to Grant's Pass, and then, finally, from Grant's Pass to Portland.

He got in late last night (the car that picked him up bought him food and gave him some cash), got "wasted" and woke up without his guitar, yet again, without any recollection of where he'd stashed it. An hour later, a police officer stopped him, asked his name, and then returned his guitar to him. The universe is lining up for him these days, David said.

When I asked David if it was ok if I took a portrait of him with my f100, he insisted that I take a couple different shots with different poses ("Does this one take video?"), as long as I promised to email him the scans. I made a couple images, then David played me another song (this time a cover), shook my hand, and walked off into the soft blue evening light with his guitar, at least for now, in tow.

What a Naked Roller Skater and a Bigot Have to Teach Us

I watched as the protestors stood at the edge of Colonel Summers Park, the starting point for Portland's version of the World Naked Bike Ride, megaphones to their mouths, spewing hate, and I wanted to feel disbelief.  I mean, it always borders on the surreal when you come across humans so utterly consumed, so driven, so warped by hate, but it's become a common occurrence to come across this sort of thing at most large public gatherings, even in Portland. I was there when the Westboro Baptist Church showed up at the Rose Garden for a Blazer's game this past winter, and saw their children, no more than ten years old, wearing "God Hates Fags" t-shirts. When I was a student at University of Florida, it wasn't uncommon on campus to run into a bigot with a banner brandishing homophobic slurs and promising damnation. These fanatics may be societal outliers, but they're around with alarming frequency.

And the crowd at Colonel Summers seemed to know how to deal with the protestors at first.  They took it in stride, with mockery and heckling and laughter. And then the pride flag came out. 

And the protestors stomped and stood on that damp flag, that recent symbol of a large victory in a long and bloody and still-raging battle for basic legal equality for the LBGT community. And the tone of crowd changed instantly. Where the hate had been cartoonish and predictable before, it was now direct and unbelievably cruel and ugly. The heckling turned to shouting. The crowd pressed toward the protestors. The protestors smiled and laughed and incited and spit out more and more hate.  This was what they had been waiting for the whole evening. A woman with "Ride bikes/Plant trees" painted on her bare back made an attempt to snatch the flag away, but had it wrestled away from her by the lead protestor. The crowd had retreated a bit and security had been called in, when an unclothed man on roller skates broke rank and headed straight for the back of the protestor with the flag.

They both hit the ground and security jumped in quickly, but somehow, in the midst of the melee, the man on skates emerged from the brawl holding the flag and yelling triumphantly, and skated off into the safety of the celebrating crowd. The protestors and security tried to follow, but were instantly walled off by the onlookers. The entirety of the occurrence was chill-inducing, beautiful and frightening.  And confusing in a lot of ways for a lot of people.

I posted the image to Facebook a few hours after the event (it was later removed for violating Facebook's nudity restrictions), and instantly the arguments began raging in the thread beneath it. Some heaped praise on the man who captured the flag. Some scolded him for allowing himself to be foolishly bated into violence by the bigots. Some found rationally-questionable ways to tie this event into a larger narrative on patriotism, nudity, flag sanctity, and the moral decay of a once-great nation. A lot of people were talking, but very few were attempting to have even a mildly productive dialogue about the ethical complexities of such an incident.

There are no easy answers, and in events like this, even the right questions can be hard to identify. Almost everyone agrees that protestors who use hate-riddled rhetoric and provocative tactics are reprehensible. But when, if ever, is it permissible to insert physical force into the mix, even if against an opponent who champions bigotry and  tramples symbols of freedom and equality? My entire life I've considered myself a proponent of non-violent protest (but I was also born a heterosexual, white male in a middle class family, so things have been pretty predictably easy for me as far as basic societal freedoms and rights thus far in my life), but when I saw the man on roller skates emerge from the scuffle with the flag, I instinctively felt a sense of pride and justice. And over the past couple of days, I've been grappling with just what that dichotomy means to me ethically. 

The existence and moral rightness of gay rights in this country are now a simple and beautiful truth. But how we choose to move forward as a nation, how we choose to deal with and eventually phase out such intolerant and hateful bigotry, requires an intelligent, open dialogue between all of us. And it's high time we started that dialogue.