Playboy
Saturday, September 26, 2015
Christ said,
"I tell you that anyone who looks on a woman with lust has in his heart
already committed adultery." I've looked on a lot of women with lust.
I've committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God
recognizes I will do—and I have done it—and God forgives me for it. But that
doesn't mean that I condemn someone who not only looks on a woman with lust but
who leaves his wife and shacks up with somebody out of wedlock. Christ says,
don't consider yourself better than someone else because one guy screws a whole
bunch of women while the other guy is loyal to his wife. The guy who's loyal to
his wife ought not to be condescending or proud because of the relative degree
of sinfulness.
Jimmy Carter in November 1976 Playboy interview
Jimmy Carter is not a Roman Catholic but this blogger was
educated in a Roman Catholic boarding school high school in Austin, Texas. I
have some of that Jimmy Carter guilt built in. I must admit, before I go on
that at age 73 I still look at attractive women and undress them in my mind.
In 1954-55 I was living in Nueva Rosita, Coahuila,
Mexico. It was a mining town run by
American Smelting and Refining Company. My mother was the teacher for the
company’s children in a two-room school house. We lived in the American Hotel.
Engineer Juan Jaime (a handsome bachelor) had subscriptions to True Magazine,
Argosy, Esquire and Playboy. After reading them he would leave them in the
hotel magazine rack. It was in those magazines that I first got my first real
glimpses of unadorned female flesh. To do this I had to be sneaky and my
Catholic upbringing left me with lots of guilt.
Before we moved to Nueva Rosita we had lived in Mexico
City where this boy feasted his eyes on the cleavage (found in cheap Mexican
periodicals) of Brigitte Bardot. But thanks to Juan Jaime my exposure became
more thorough.
In later years, by the early 60s Playboy was banned in
Mexico so it was difficult to find it. Find it I did but not with
regularity.
In 1975 when my Rosemary and two daughters and I drove to
Vancouver, BC to stay in Canada I was suddenly able to become a member of
Book-of-the-Month Club (and immediately bought The Rise & Fall of the Third Reich) and buy not only Playboys but (yes!) Penthouse. By 1977
I was working as a freelancer for Vancouver Magazine. I was astounded to find
out that the Playboy cartoons of office Christmas parties were based on fact.
At Vancouver Magazine during these parties you had to be careful as to what office
door you might open. There was plenty of activity to be found on editors’
desks.
Then in the late 80s my writer friend Les Wiseman wrote
an article for the magazine on the Vancouver-based Playboy centerfold women. I
was given the dream assignment. But before then I had already photographed a red-haired Bunny who hailed from a Baltic country (her parents did).
By the 1990 I had taken enough photographs of unadorned
female flesh that I escalated my photography to an erotic direction. It was
then that I noticed that you had Helmut Newton (my hero) and the rest,
particularly the photographers for “those”
magazines in which the photographs of women were in bad taste simply because
they had no theme or purpose. Penthouse made those lower country areas very
pink and very shiny. For me it was a turn off.
I remember getting into arguments with my Argentine nephews
on the purpose (a stupid one in my eyes) of featuring women in bikinis to advertise
toothpaste. I had some of that Canadian realization on the evils of making
women objects and not persons. My nephews simply attacked my sexual proclivity.
Long before that I had stopped buying girly magazines. I
frequented the local strip parlours where I sipped soda water and made friends
with the dancers.
But when I found out in December 1998 that gold medal
skater Katarina Witt had posed for Playboy I immediately went to buy it. To my chagrin
Playboy was sold out. My
friend Robert Hijar who lived in Memphis sent me a copy. That was the last
issue of Playboy I ever saw. If you notice I have scanned it as I have kept the
magazine.
The news
that Playboy is no longer going to feature nudies pleases me to no end. Perhaps
they will now hire good photographers who will upgrade the idea of women with
not much on in some way as to not depersonalize them (and remove those silly
smiles they always had) and at the same time empower them so that they are
women as men should see them in this 21st Century.
And I
must admit that I never read a piece of fiction by Joyce Carol Oates in that
December 1998 Playboy. I plan to correct that shortly.
The
photographs shown here I took of a lovely school teacher. The pictures shown
here do not show bits but do show my early attempts (1977) to deal with the
problem of taking pictures of women while in some way dispelling all those
Catholic tendencies. I approached these photographs (to the best of my ability)
in the same way (or at least that is what I told myself and others) as a doctor
looks at undraped female patients.
Kodachrome
Friday, September 25, 2015
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| Kodachrome - Photograph Alex Waterhouse-Hayward |
Kodachrome - Paul Simon
When I think back
On all the crap I learned in high school
It's a wonder
I can think at all
And though my lack of education
Hasn't hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall
Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away
If you took all the girls I knew
When I was single
And brought them all together for one night
I know they'd never match
my sweet imagination
Everything looks worse in black and white
Kodachrome, etc.
Kodachrome - Simon & Garfunkel
Flickering Forward Into the Past
Thursday, September 24, 2015
More than ever before in my life, time is on my mind. My
Rosemary often says that all I do is to look back into the past. She goes
further and tells me, “You live in the past.”
I have a few small facts about her. I know that by the time
she was 16 and living in New Dublin, Ontario she was the smartest girl in class
(I believe she was bussed to Brockville as New Dublin had one church and one cemetery
and not much else.) Rosemary played the organ at church services. She left New
Dublin as soon as she could on a scholarship to Queens University. I know that
in 1967 she brought a class of students to Mexico City. I married her in
1968. I believe that somewhere in my
memory she mentioned one boyfriend.
She has a sister who was sent by their parents to check me
out and I wondered if they even knew that I ate with a fork and knife.
And I know not more than the above. My rosemary is private
about her past. She says she is not social.
Of my past Rosemary knows just about everything and every
day I load her up with more stuff. She does read this blog every once in a
while.
More than ever before in my life, time is on my mind.
After 30 years in a garden I see trees that I planted that
may have been two feet tall now some up to 50 feet. I have mature hostas that I
have not moved or split since I plunked them in the ground in the early 90s. I
look at some of them and instantly see the faces of American friends who gave
them to me or urged me to buy them at a long gone National Hosta Convention.
Some of these friends are dead.
When we first started growing roses the President of the
Vancouver Rose Society recommended a few plants. She then ordered them from
nurseries in England and back East. Some prospered some died. Our President’s
house in Southlands was sold and our President now has no memory of who she
might have been. For her time is now.
Going into my garden is a time machine. I can see where a
plant was and now that we are leaving the garden I am trying to find a place
for them in the scheme of things. I look at the trees that are too big to me
moved and I know they will precede my own final reckoning with time.
But in the middle of a sleepless night (I have been
getting many of these and Captain Beefheart's lyric from Ashtray Hearts comes to
mind, “Somebody’s had too much to think.”) I had a revelation about time. It
came about that I was reading Ian Rankin’s 2013 Saints of the Shadow Bible. My
VPL receipt on this large print novel (the only one they had!) serves as my
book marker.
I am reading a book that was delivered to the VPL on May
2014. Perhaps Rankin finished it in 2012. I took it out last week. As I read it
I turn pages. What I read yesterday (at one time my present) is now today’s
past. As I turn pages the instant I read a page it becomes a past, a receding
past. I can stop the recession by closing the book and telling myself I will
never finish it. While this may terminate my relation with Rebus, my own involvement
in time, like the pages of Saints of the Shadow Bible, flicker past toward and
ending unknown (at least right now). Erebus will of certainty be.
Thinking in my bed about tomorrow is not thinking about the
past, but the thought itself of that future, is now past. It may be an
unresolved or resolved future, but it is still in the past.
I cannot argue with my Rosemary and she may be right on her assertion that I live in the pas. But I often think of my
mentors, of my parents, of my mother’s voice, of my father’s smell of whiskey
and Player’s Navy Cuts. I think of the moment I first saw that blonde bombshell
in a mini-skirt (my Rosemary) and I know I have the power to turn my book
upside down and flicker the pages forward into a past that is as real as this
present that is no more as I place this period.
I have written the above, now Wednesday, October 15. Because I have a few holes in September and in the beginning of October I am madly filling in the gaps. So with this blog and a few more I have the ability to place my today blog into that past, the date you see above. Or I could have placed this blog for next year and if I had it far enough into a future I might self-publish it posthumously. Not bad for immutable time!
Nora Patrich - Pintora
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
My Mother's Red Shawl - El Rebozo Colorado
Nora Patrich - Pintora
UNA CANCIÓN
RECUERDO
QUE UNA VEZ ESCUCHE UNA CANCIÓN QUE DECÍA,
SOLO EL
AMOR CONSIGUE ENCENDER LO MUERTO…
SOLO EL
AMOR CONSIGE ILUMINAR EL BARRO…
Y ESE
RECUERDO HACE QUE ME PREGUNTE ¿CUÁN
FUERTE DEBE SER ESE AMOR PARA QUE MIS OJOS VUELVAN A ENCENDER LO MUERTO?, PARA
QUE ILUMINE EL BARRO Y ASI EN ESA BUSQUEDA PUEDA VOLVER A EMPEZAR…
COMENZAR
CON ESA LUZ PERDIDA, Y VUELTA A ENCONTRAR.
POR LAS
SOMBRAS ENCONTRADAS QUE LENTAMENTE A TRAVÉS DE LOS AÑOS VOLVIERON ATRÁS…
COMENZAR
POR EL COLOR QUE MI MEMORIA JAMÁS ME
DEJO OLVIDAR.
POR DONDE
VOLVER A EMPEZAR.
CIERRO LOS
OJOS DE FRENTE CARA AL SOL Y VEO EL ROJO
DE LA SANGRE ANIDADA EN MIS PÁRPADOS…
¡AH!… SI,
ROJO, ROJO…….. RECUERDO EL ROJO,
EL ROJO
VIDA, EL ROJO MUERTE, EL ROJO AMOR, PASIÓN, HORROR…
RENACER
¡AH!…
SI, DE ESTE MODO SABER QUE EN TUS OJOS
ESTÁN MIS ALAS Y EN MIS MANOS ESTÁ MI VIDA.
AHORA SÉ
QUE EN REALIDAD, NUNCA TUVE QUE VOLVER A EMPEZAR…
SOLO
CONTINÚO CON ESE PEDACITO DE LUZ Y EL
PEDACITO DE COLOR QUE SE NEGO ABANDONAR MIS OJOS…
LUZ, COLOR,
SOMBRAS QUE SON MI MÚSICA PARA QUE MIS PINCELES SIGAN DANZANDO SOBRE MIS TELAS
Y MIS PAPELES, TIZA,CARBÓN, GRAFITO AÚN EN MIS MANOS, ENTRE MIS DEDOS,.
SIGO
VOLANDO, VIAJANDO, CREANDO, SOÑANDO…
Keely Jade Dakin - Photojournalist & Treeplanter
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
My Mother's Red Shawl - El Rebozo Colorado
Keely Jade Dakin - Photojournalist & Treeplanter
Red Rebozo – the embracing warmth of a shawl from Mexico
- My Little Black Book – the power to travel beyond borders
The Mexican rebozo is warm under the cool plastic of my
Canadian passport.
One is a symbol and tool of the people of Mexico, telling
a tale of the mixed heritage of its people, both Spanish and indigenous. The
other, my little black book, is my ticket to freedom.
The rebozo is worn by women across the country, to
decorate and celebrate their womanhood, as well as to carry their burdens, from
food, to children, to guns across their backs. The rebozo is an article of
womanhood, grace and modesty, as well as a symbol of revolution, identity and
strength.
I am a traveller. I wander to the whistle of my whims.
Focused as a flame without hearth.
Since the age of 18 I have worn thin the rubber of my
wandering soles in a glutinous lust to explore places and people. Craving
experience, craving understanding, craving something.
As a Canadian I have been able to indulge this thirst. My
little black book with the crest of a foreign Queen, she grants me access with
her crown and jowly nod. With its black and white rendition of my features,
lips turned down in the regimented sombreness of post 9/11, I can enter almost
any nation.
Stowed in belt pouches, or knapsacks or contoured to the
cup of my bra, it has seen me past countless frowning U.S. Customs officers. It
has withstood monsoon down pours and the vile heat of the tropics, always
bringing me home to the cool, true north.
This little book is one of four I have held since I first
ventured beyond borders at the age of 11. They have been inked with stamps from
some threescore countries, including Nicaragua, Honduras, Colombia, Peru, Cuba,
Turkey, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, Bulgaria,
Germany, Switzerland, Mexico and Haiti.
The majority of countries welcomed me without even the
purchase of a visa.
This heady freedom is the result of ancestors who hopped
on a boat from the British Isles and landed near Boston, U of A, around the
time of the May Flower. Eventually the British Loyalists abandoned Uncle Sam
moved north to Nova Scotia. Finally my great grandparents made the journey west
from one coast the other with the dream of a ranch. I can also give thanks to a
Ukrainian grandfather, who was a veritable cad, but nonetheless came to Canada
and provided another quarter of my gene pool.
Over the handful of centuries that my ancestors have lived
in North America, I have no doubt that members of my blood raped and oppressed
First Nation people in their quest for a new life. Ever is the way of the
conquering populace.
All of these lives past conspired to grant me the
advantage of being born as a white woman in the second largest country in the
world, a country still rich with wild places and with a meagre population, at a
time when women vote and live as independent creatures. Because of this, I can
travel to most countries with nothing but a pocket full of dough and my little
black book.
I have friends, both in Canada — on shaky legal standing
— and in other countries, who do not hold a Queen’s booklet. Whether for
financial reasons or simply due the political standing of their nation of birth,
their feet are tethered.
Holding my passport while wearing this red rebozo seems
right to me because it reminds me of the obtuse lottery which is life. A
lottery of chance, based on politics, war, economics and who is the power of
the century.
I have many options and I am grateful, yet I also
recognize that it is not because I am in any way special. I am no more
deserving than those in born under any other flag, be it Mexico, Syria,
Colombia, Cuba, Haiti, Bosnia or Iran.
When will we respect that people in all countries should
experience freedom of movement? Freedom beyond borders. When will we value all
lives equally?
The cynic in me says never. You want to know which
Nation, which people will ride high and wild next round? Here, you can use my
dice.
Nicole Langdon Davies - Photographer
Juliana Soltis - Cellist - Nomad
Kyla Gardiner - Theatrical Lighting Director
Curtis Daily - Contrabassist
Bob Mercer –
Editor – Musician - Friend
Art Bergmann Singer-Songwriter- Guitarist
Homero Aridjis Poeta
Zippy Pinhead Musician
Caitlin Legault Art Model
Holly McRea Model - Poet - Creation Conduit.
Lisa Ha Model - Volunteer - Friend
Carmen Alatorre Diseñadora de vestuario
Roberto Baschetti Sociólogo, Investigador Histórico - Amigo
Jennifer Froese Youth Worker
Rachel Cairns Actor
Jennifer Landels Espadachina
Judith Currelly Pilot- Artist
Jim Erickson Set Decorator
Alexandra Hill Soprano
Georgina Elizabeth Isles Figure Model
Emma Middleton Actor
Mark Pryor Author/Lawyer/Assistant DA Travis County TX
Brother Edwin Charles Reggio, CSC Mentor & Teacher
Veronica Vex Burlesque Dancer
George McWhirter Poet
Raúl Guerrero Montemayor Padre-Compadre
Alexandra Waterhouse-Hayward Maestra
Shirley Gnome Singer/Provocateur
Yeva & Thoenn Glover Dancers/Choreographers
JJ Lee Writer
Jacqueline Model
Cathy Marsden Psychiatrist
André De Mondo Wanderer
Colin MacDonald Saxophonist/Composer
Nina Gouveia Yoga Instructor
Stacey Hutton Excercise Physiologist
Colleen Wheeler Actor
Sarah Rodgers Actor, Director,Mother
Tim Turner - Real Estate Agent
Kiera Hill Dancer
Johnna Wright & Sascha Director/Mother - Son/Dreamer
Decker & Nick Hunt Cat & 19th century amateur
George Bowering Poet
Celia Duthie Gallerist
Linda Lorenzo Mother
Katheryn Petersen Accordionist
Stefanie Denz Artist
Ivette Hernández Actress
Byron Chief-Moon Actor/Dancer
Colin Horricks Doctor
Ian Mulgrew Vancouver Sun Columnist
Jocelyn Morlock Composer
Corinne McConchie Librarian
Rachel Ditor Dramaturg
Patrick Reid Statesman, Flag Designer
Michael Varga CBC Cameraman
Bronwen Marsden Playwright/Actress/Director
David Baines Vancouver Sun Columnist
Alex Waterhouse-Hayward Photographer
Lauren Elizabeth Stewart Student
Sandrine Cassini Dancer/Choreographer
Meredith Kalaman Dancer/Choreographer
Juliya Kate Dominatrix
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