Childhood-Story:

1945 Frankie's Accident

I'm playing in the backyard.

Frank is 5, takes my bike and rides off around the corner.

People are yelling and hollering.

We run down the block to find him lying in the street.

All our neighbors are there.

My father screams at me , "Go home Billy. Go home. Get out of here."

Two weeks later Frank comes out of the coma.

I teach him how to walk and talk again.

I don't remember the father being there.

I hear:
... she has a 2 year old biting, biting, biting
the shit out of his big sister ...

Childhood-Story:
1938-2010
I stop wetting my bed the day he leaves for sure.
He has another family and a daughter.I am "estranged" from my father real early.Why else do I block, put-out-of-my-mind
and find stored way beyond everyday retrieving
the fact that my half sister Sarah is murdered.

BECKETT:

" ... after long vain reckonings the head falls back among the data."

from "Mercier and Camier"

Childhood-Story:

1944 Turf stuff

We chase a kid who bikes into our neighborhood.

He's riding frantically fast - hit by a car at the corner - broken leg.

I meet him later in the year, by accident, and apologize.

I hear:
Stand back, Sweetie. I can't see the ...

Childhood-Story:"The fickle finger of fate
The moving finger writes
And having writ moves on"Our wee boy band of jr high friends
starts saying this to each other in 1950
when life deals us a perceived shit blow.

+- 2009, college and care.
I'm suffering from "Early Onset Parsimony", see:
"Contagious ! The Common Man's College Loan & Health Care Syndromes, Etc !"
Not covered by this criminal nation's non systems for citizen care.
Puke at will !

I watch:
OK. Right here. Now, spin to your left.
There. Now, step back. Good.
Now, sit down next to this beautiful person.
(Smiling - Laughter)

The Sickened:
We think and feel about it more and less.U.S.A. Citizens' Health Care Is SiCKO!
Obama - Doctor Fresh Air - a chance to get better ?!
BUT! Our consciousness, will, power. to move beyond
corporate fascism to Single Payer and Civilization ?! Sad !
Lucky! Our family has a real costly health plan for: babies, hernias,
new hip, colonoscopies, hamartoma, melanoma and on it will go.
We think and feel more and less - about class and money
and luck and entitlement - about empathy.There are people working to change this.
There are also people who say they are not naive.
They tell us this is how it is and was everywhere and forever.
Looking at my images after photo hunting and gathering I know
stuff is always close by; health - housing - sex - war - greed -
injustice and on it goes .....
Good luck to all of us, Bill

Backyard-Visitors:
Friends, Hummingbirds, Chickadees, Titmice, Nuthatches, Sparrows, Finches, Towhees, Woodpeckers, (an occasional Peckerwood) , Doves, Crows (Moses says they're Ravens), Flycatchers, a Jay, Squirrels, Raccoon families - we have 4 feeders, 2 baths, 9 trees: Princess 'Bush', Weeping River Wattle, Himalayan Birch, Strawberry Tree, Norfolk Pine, Japanese Coral Bark Maple, Canary Island Pine, Brazilian Pepper, Roscoe Maple, half a Bottle Brush, bamboo, vines, Edie succulents, all Nancy's succulents-plants-flowers . +

I hear:
... sex ? Are you sure they live like that ?
Maybe most people do ...

I hear:
First of all, Sylvia from Milvia says, 'Hi'.

Childhood-Story:
1949-50 two, six week summers at Silver Pines Camp, 30 miles east of Redding
First summer I don't pay much attention to the Silver Belt Buckle competition.
We collect points for every kind of 'sporting' event over the summer.
We fish, swim, shoot, horse, clean, and big-points! = find an Indian Arrowhead.
Second summer,
I know I can win it if I find an arrowhead in the final days - our totals are posted.
There's a small small lake half a mile over the hill. I get permission to hike over.
Lost Lake is 100 yards long rock-stone shore the length - other side, banks.
I .hands-n-knees. back-n-forth . for three hot-dry hours.
This feeling of "I'm-gonna-find-it" has been with me since '38. I know it well.
Just have to keep on Truckin'.
Hour number four I find my no-doubt Indian Arrowhead.
Two and a half inches, brown-gray, shallow-notched-sculpted to it's point.
Two times I lie face down and cry out loud at my camp:
..Alone in the woods, stick-leader-fly-cool-mossy-creekside. my first fish.
..Alone in the rocks and stones with the Arrowhead.

Walked and hunted for three hours today
Not one single picture taken
This has happened before
Like two days ago
It's always exercise

I hear:
... She's ballin' him right now ...

I hear:
... four years ago I woulda gone back and burned the house down.
Not anymore.

APPROPRIATION- a Buddy !
I know people who Wikipedia:
appropriation

I hear:
Please don't touch. He is our friend.

Every time I go out to photograph
I tell myself, .I ought to be able to find possible pictures in any and every 'environment' I pass through, damn it !
What's wrong, Billy Boy ?!
Nothin’.
I just can't will myself to find a picture.
Something grabs me - I grab it !