secretly the gods read blogs…

well, i must have bitched and moaned loudly enough in that last entry that i got the attention of someone somewhere, and my record breaking voice/phone silence has been broken. long story short, someone i’ve connected with on the internet felt interested (and comfortable) enough to get on the phone with a stranger. a really beautiful, and talented (photographer) lady that lives in South Carolina, that i’ve met through the tumblr blog system got me talking the other night (for 3 hours!). she did most of the talking, heheh, but it was sweet all the same. it’s not a love-connection by any means, which is nice too. no pressure. the really cool thing though? she loves to send text messages and she is the first person i’ve known in all the years that i’ve owned cam-phones that enjoys sending photographs back and forth!!!  you can check out her tumblr blog here: InnocentHeathen She doesn’t really show her own photography here, but just samplings of the type of art/photography that she finds appealing. I have a tumblr blog too that shows samplings of my tastes/interests in art/photography: Darko is Dorko. (oops, there IS one other good, good, best friend that sends me phone-cam pics; Miss Vicki – LOVE you doll!)

i have another new friend too. a young woman that lives in the midwest that has expressed a huge interest and personal sense of identity with my Cemetery Girl photography. she and i have only been communicating via emails/online chatting, but she is offering me insights into deeper understandings of the character i have created for my novel. last summer, after she commented on some of my Cemetery Girl photographs, and she told me that she was a poet i gave her an open invitation to take her hand at writing poems inspired by my photographs, and that if she produced a large enough body of work, that i would jointly publish a book with her. well, just two weeks ago she informed me that she had a collection of dozens of poems written about many different models from my collection. dozens is an understatement though. she is still feeding the poems to me, but we are in the process of putting together the first book now of this combined blending of poetry and photography, and i think it is really fantastic looking. stay tuned for more news on this later.

this woman, her name is Grace, has also rekindled my interest/awareness of the spiritual research i was doing in my local cemetery, Alamo Cemetery, and reminded me of how key visits to this cemetery are to being in touch with the essential energy that embodies the new novel that i am writing. i had grown distant from Alamo Cemetery over the past year and had stopped making regular visits to it. the last time i made a visit to it this past summer, i’m not sure if i talked about what happened here or not. it might have been in July during one of our summer heat waves. i was coming home from the Grayceon concert in San Francisco, yes, that was exactly when it was. so it was about 2am. i had stopped at the Safeway in Alamo to buy some votive candles to take to the cemetery. a practice that i had done so many times over the preceding years, but had not done in at least one year. i pulled my car up to the cemetery and parked where i normally did. the quiet that late on a Saturday night is heavy. plus, the stillness in the air after a day when the temperature was in the low 100’s really brought back a lot of memories. there was no moon that night so it was a little stealthy walking through the grounds. i lit a candle for Christa, one for Grant and then walked over to Tara’s grave and lit one for her. i had one more candle to take up to the top of the hill for Callie, but right after i lit Tara’s candle a police cruiser came speeding around the corner with it’s lights flashing. no siren though. i tried to peek as well as i could to see if it turned left onto the bridge or not, but couldn’t tell. if it took the bridge, it would have been going towards town. it didn’t though. it stopped in the dead end lane right next to where my car was parked.

in all the years that i had been coming here late at night, the police had never stopped before. and there were many, many nights when i could see police cars cruise on the side road past the cemetery. i can’t hide my car when i park it on the side road. it’s clearly visible, so i’m not sure why they never stopped any of those times before. here is what i thought though. i was not in the cemetery more than 5-8 minutes before this cruiser arrived. so my suspicion was that a neighbor must have seen me and called the police department. there was no reason to panic or try to hide. i was not doing anything wrong and i had not been drinking so i walked back down the hill and out the gate and called out to him so he knew i was “surrendering”, heheh. i had already taken my drivers license out of my wallet and held it out for him to take as i neared him. i told him exactly what i was doing, “lighting candles for some friends”. he asked, “why are you doing it in the middle of the night?” i balked a little bit here and said that it was a hot night and that i couldn’t get to sleep. didn’t mention that i was on my way home from a concert in the city.

he shone his flashlight up into the cemetery and said, “so those are the candles you lit, that i’m seeing there? they are not going to start fires, are they?” i told him that they wouldn’t. that they were in glass containers and were safe. he then asked, “are you done?” this threw me. i wasn’t done. i had one more candle to light for Callie, but i was thrown off kilter by the whole experience of being “caught” that i said, “yes, i’m done.” and i got into my car and drove off ahead of him back towards town. this experience, after the lengthy period of time that i had been away made even more hesitant about coming back more. despite the fact that once i was back “in” the cemetery that balmy, quiet night, it felt so familiar and i could swear that a vibration shot through me of recognition and missing from my friends, that i wanted to start coming back. i told them that i was sorry for neglecting my attentions to them and that i would improve my behavior…

but now this new friend, she’s been looking at pictures of Alamo Cemetery, of models that i’ve shot there and she has read my book and knows my stories about there, she is inspiring me to start up my work again there. and so be it, i’ve been there three days in a row this week! this is such a fantastic time of year in the cemetery. many people decorate graves with Christmas ornaments, poinsettias or pine-wreaths but many, many grave sites go unattended and are forgotten. this pains me and reminds me of why i’ve spent so much time there in the past. i’ve still been a little uncomfortable on the visits this week, but it’s getting easier. if i go back tomorrow i’ll go for a longer stay. take my good camera and get some new, fresh photographs.

so the secret gods have brought me two new spirits to commune with as a holiday gift; Grace and Angel(a)… appropriate, eh?