My Sweet Jellybean,

I think I’m going to use you on my website. Just your name. And just “My Sweet Jellybean.” You’ll become like this mysterious character. Don’t worry though, I won’t ever identify you.

I’m working some stuff out.

Presumably time is infinite. And presumably space is infinite. And while people are probably not infinite, it’s all the same thing so long as we’re around. This means, it’s always the right time and the right place for somebody.

As far as all empirical evidence shows, I’ve never been in the right place at the right time. Now to be as fair as I can muster, I’ve never been in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time either. I’m still alive. I’m reasonably healthy. I got mugged and stabbed, once. I think it was six stitches. I told people thirty. Sympathy is negotiable and pity is very marketable.

The mathematical solution to my right place at the right time predicament is either to extend my time, and I’m not so interested in immortality - what would I do? - or extend my places. My solution, then, is this forum.

I imagine my life as a character. Like in those Family Circus cartoons with the maps. There’s me. And there’s MyLuckyBreak. I’ve been chasing MyLuckyBreak all of my life. We’ve never crossed paths. Or rather we cross paths all the time like DNA strands but not at the Right Time. I’m going down the elevator and he’s coming up the stairs. I get off the subway and he’s getting on. We’ve been at the same parties. But I talk up all the wrong people. He passes me when I tie my shoelaces.

The biggest reason I’m going to do what I’m about to do is this: If I don’t do it - as so often in my life I come up with an idea and then don’t do it - some git will no doubt do it within months and that person will derive all the glory and success. I know that sounds like a bad reason to do something. But it’s a serious motivator. So many people have done what I could have done what I would have done and what, like most people, I should have done but didn’t. Idea people are a waste. A person with fewer ideas but more action makes out a lot nicer. Here’s where I do instead of conceive for a change. I conceive a lot. You know me, all of my children are stillborn.

Sometimes it takes a crisis. I heard Anthony Burgess wrote Clockwork Orange because he thought he was going to die. Turns out he didn’t die but then he had a great book. This might not be true but I want to believe that it is so please don’t correct me.

I saw a guy in the newspaper tonight that takes pictures just like I take. Except he’s in the paper. Not just pictures like I take, there are three pictures which are virtually identical to pictures I have taken. There was even one of C. which must have been taken on the same day I took C’s portrait as well. Has anything ever just gotten under your skin so bad? Yes, of course it has. That was my crisis.

Now it’s not as bad as thinking I’m going to die. But tonight that insult was the blade on the long end of injury. I said to you recently, torture is measured by nothing so much as longevity. I’m tired of chasing and missing MyLuckyBreak. The effort has been long and as far as I can measure wasted. Like a well-endowed monk.

Now, I’m going to solicit MyLuckyBreak. I’m going to call MyLuckyBreak to come to me. As soon as I can figure out what the hell a blog is, I’m going to make one. I know I’m on the late end of trendy but that’s alright.

I’m not going to leave my house. No. I don’t mean I’m not going to leave my house until I have my blog ready. I’m not going to leave my house until MyLuckyBreak returns my call.

I’m going to take pictures from my balcony. I’m going to take pictures of my dog. I’m going to take pictures of any still life I can find around the house. I’m going to take a picture of my camera. I’m going to paint that photograph. I’m going to photograph that painting. It will be a picture of a painting of a picture of a camera. Maybe that’s shit. I don’t care. It’s shit I haven’t seen. The only excuse for art is that it’s completely useless. The only excuse for shit is that it’s brand new.

No. That’s not right. Brand new counts for shit too. It’s not brand new that counts. It’s marketing. I’m going to be a marketing guerilla.

My Plan: I’m not going to leave my house. I’m going to take pictures. I’m going to take pictures of my dog, my paintings, my bathtub, whatever is under my kitchen sink, my stuffed animals, my bric a brac, silverware, belly button lint, whatever I can get my hands on. I’m going to create a blog. Because, as I understand it, I can, and because a blog will solve my Right Place predicament. I’m going to publish one picture per day. I still haven’t decided on an Archive. I like the idea of my day being fleeting. Maybe I won’t keep an Archive. Just a picture a day. Some other enterprising person can document and keep my images.

Is anybody surprised that support groups for Agoraphobics don’t work?

I’m going to market myself. I’m going to write letters to Fuji and Canon and Kodak and anybody else I can think of. I’m going to publish those letters on my website. I want them to send me stuff.

How will I measure MyLuckyBreak? I will get press. It’s nuts enough for press. People love a nut. I will get free stuff. I will get a Canon camera. I will get special lenses. I will get light stands and those things people carry around to reflect sunlight just the right way. I will get models soliciting me. I will get a gallery exhibit.

I will get advertising. And I won’t apologize for selling crap. This common notion that everybody is a schill is very annoying. Now it’s true, I’m tired of Darth Vader pushing Verizon and I don’t think there’s anything I don’t need that the Sutherlands aren’t hawking, but that’s a matter of personal opinion. I would sell out. Nobody has offered. Michaelangelo, DaVinci, they had sponsors, or patrons anyway. There are no more DeMedici’s. Pepsi has replaced the DeMedici’s. When banks sponsor showings of Robin Hood - that parable of stealing from the rich to give to the poor - it’s clear we’ve all sold out. I will get on Ellen. Gosh, she’s funny. If I had a talk show, I would dance too.

Now, of course, MyLuckyBreak doesn’t have to be all of that. But people tell you it’s good to make your goals explicit. What people? My high school counselor, for one. He said life was my buffet but that I had no direction. He was dull as old toast but he was right, of course. It also turns out that I hate buffets. All those people. All that balancing stuff. Communal food with strangers. Yuck.

As for my self-imposed exile, I will have to extend one caveat. I have to walk Murphy [my dog]. She shouldn’t suffer from my misanthropy. I’m going to have to still take her for a walk. But I won’t talk to people. People suck. But that’s it. Otherwise, from this moment, I’m staying home and documenting my habitat.

Pictures from Exile.

I need a name. What would you call me? You know, besides nuts? That’s not very catchy and it’s been taken.

SS

Creativity unbounded is not really creativity. Why you could create and recreate and hypercreate exactly everything and a hurly-burly of everything is as useful as a whole lot of nothing. Binding creativity has a much better outcome. Tying the hands of the artist is like tying the hands of Houdini. The fun, the trick, is watching him get out.

I want to avoid calling myself an artist. That's a confine I don't want to impose on myself. I don't deny the word for humility's sake. Humility has limited service. It's just a reasonably useless word.

I have imposed a constraint on my art. Or rather, let's call it a project. Of morality, Rousseau (the philosopher, not the customs officer cum painter), says it is best to fence ourselves in. Absolute freedom is like a little bird with really big wings. It doesn't fly. I have fenced myself in. But I am not alarmed. I am eager to find out what I will do with my own limitations.

My intention is to Chronicle the Ordinary. To create an archive of my habitation. These are the chronicles of the ordinary, the minutiae of my life. And I hope that the altogether effect will be stronger than any individual word or image. I am looking forward to the alchemy of the whole thing, -- here's an art college word --,the gestalt of the collection.

Creation is working within a system, defining that system, then challenging it and rising within it.

Regarding the minutiae of everyday life, I was forced to read Albert Camus' L'Etranger (or Outsider in English) in high school. I had to read the English book first for the meat and the flavor. I read the French, or tried my best to pretend to, under duress. But there was an idea in it that I remember. Or two ideas. The first was that it's unacceptable for men not to cry at their mother's funeral. And the second, and much more interesting, was an idea he expressed about death. That death, or something akin to heaven, was the infinite sensory memory of all that a person experienced in his life. I got the idea of a sort of hyper-memory. Not just the things you remember remembering. But the record of everything. The fiber of your carpet, each fiber. Grass under your feet. Each blade. The smell of Spring's resurrected earth. The pitch and timber and infinite sound of a chirping bird so that your memory wraps itself around, invades, passes through everything. So that even the discorporated memory of even an infant unlucky in life could pass through everything infinitely. It's the most reasonable idea of life after death I have heard.

Perhaps, to some degree, I am trying to capture that idea in my regular living life, even still constrained by my body. That in itself is an entirely illogical motivation but it is not the only motivation I have.

SS

Yes, jellybean, I know what you mean.

But it's like I was saying. It's creativity within a self-imposed confine. I'm archiving the habitat. And after I do all of the predictable stuff, I'm looking forward to how I'll resolve the problem of a limited space with limited things. But I will and I can't wait. It's like solving a puzzle. And I can't wait to test my resources.

No. I'm not sure people will care. But that's alright. I'm still committed to my experiment.

And, well, I may cheat a little. I still have to walk Murphy. I might take my camera on my walks.

Sure it's compulsive and agoraphobic but it will also be a scrapbook of my exile and I can't wait to see what I do. And if I'm the only one. That's alright.

I once saw an art exhibit that was all photographic still life and it was gorgeous. I'll work it out.

SS

The story so far.

I was tired of seeing everybody get their lucky break. Now I know we live in a culture of instant gratification and instant fame and just-add-TV celebrities and I know that there are a lot people out there still struggling, still paying their dues, but that doesn’t stop me, rationality has never stopped me, from feeling like I’ve missed my Lucky Break many times.

It could just be me, yes, that I don’t deserve the Lucky Break I think I should get. But I entertain this thought like I mind the lint in my belly button. Very sporadically, and usually to more detriment than good.

Yes. The story so far. I’m staging a sit in. I’m not leaving my apartment except to walk my dog, Murphy. Meanwhile, I will continue to make some money doing my freelance database stuff. It’s mindless, trivial, and meaningless. I’m going to post a photo daily, or as nearly as daily as I can manage, of my habitat. Yes, well, true, the habitat of a shut-in could be quite squalid but that is not my intent. Any squalor will be accidental.

Why? Why not. Everybody has a blog. I want to get me some. I also want attention. Funny that a recluse should seek attention. But I also get fixated on my own ideas and my idea was this: archive my habitat as thoroughly as I can. Not just objects. Objects are not terribly interesting. And you already know what objects looks like. Thoughts in pictures. Ideas. Moods. Textures. Patterns.

I actually started this project weeks before I went live. I’m writing this just a few days after I’ve gone live, actually. At first, I tried to create a weblog from scratch. That’s typical. I inevitably, inexorably, do things the hard way. I spent more than a week trying to create this site from scratch, before the smallest amount of scratching upturned such useful worms as B2 and Moveable Type.

Yes. My sweet jellybean is a real person. She has graciously granted me permission to use my side of our dialogue. I do not include her side for a couple of reasons. In part because this is my project and my story, but primarily because I want to respect her privacy. Our culture harasses and exploits the witness. We’re all witnesses.

I have declared my intent already but I will summarize here. The base of my intent is the experiment itself. I want to archive my habitat. Memories are encoded in physical spaces. Of course memory is also most easily unlocked by smell and taste but there aren’t tools I know of for recording that so I will use my camera. I also want to discipline myself to write and to take pictures. A public forum is the best way to be in the right place at the right time. I want attention. I want sponsorship. I want to be on Ellen. I want new cameras.

SS

My sweet jellybean,

Well, that makes a month. No my life hasn’t changed significantly for the better or the worse. I didn’t expect any cataclysmic changes this quickly. The processes that cause a downpour, a bolt of lightning, a volcano, an earthquake are equally slow and complex. Climaxes don’t happen in the beginning. Although Shakespeare did put them in the middle, in Act 3, rather than later on as they are today.

Not for the worse. I mean, let’s face it: I was almost already a hermit. Very little has changed. I remain grateful for Murphy. It’s important to put on clean clothes and go out into the light of day once in a while.

And besides that, I have at least a modicum of focus and discipline. And I’m loving the discipline. If my former high school teachers could all see me now, actually voluntarily maintaining a diary rather than filling my pages with apocalyptic doodles and nonsense to fill the page. Or perhaps, after all, I haven’t changed all that much. For the most part, we are who we are by the time were 20. The rest is editing.

I’ve covered quite a bit of ground in 31 days. I figured out Moveable Type. No, I’m no master. But I learned enough to make this almost work. I’ve had a few passersby, as with an old but quaint downtown shop, pass by and look in the window. And while almost everybody loves an audience, that’s not nearly my primary objective. I love the discipline, as I said. I like the potential of this madcap project and, something I hadn’t really entertained before – I’m looking forward to the archive, to having this compulsive record of my life, years from now. Yes, I have always said posterity is overrated. Time and condition will make hypocrites of even the most earnest of men.

No, I haven’t got a new camera yet. And yes, I’m still intending to solicit or woo camera companies. But not yet. I want a firm identity and presence before I get to that. Soon. Everybody could benefit from a sponsor.

And of course, I’m very pleased that a Google search for “my sweet jellybean” brings you up second or third. I’m happy that you’re flattered. I think that’s nifty.

I admit I’m a little concerned that I had a stockpile of things I wanted to write, things waiting for me to pick them and write them like jars on an apothecary’s shelf waiting to be drunk or popped, things I needed to get off my chest if only for purely selfish reasons. And now that I’ve written many of them I’m a bit concerned, having written things off of my chest, from which other part of my body I might be writing from next. No matter.

Does that mean that all of this is still apocalyptic doodling and nonsense? No matter. I’m still having fun.

SS

Or Summer Solipsism

Perhaps I’m too much like my fruit. Things that sit still rot. Maybe this is me sitting still. I am Silas’ brain not moving. I am Silas’ clogged heart. I am Silas’ stopped up soul. And perhaps this revolution, this cataclysm is just more passive-aggressiveness. And maybe I am not doing anything more than hiding. Hiding from joy, hiding from living, hiding from risk, yes. But anything worthwhile risks something. What am I risking here?

But then I remind myself. I haven’t changed much. For the most part, my life remains the same. But it’s the details, it’s the little things that catch you. Like cutting your own hair. Like eating only whatever you’ve ordered from the grocery store. Like having to wait on a craving. Like, now that it’s summer, not going over to friend’s houses. There are not so many friends or friends’ houses. A few, sure. But most of my friends are in relationships. Most of my friends have babies. They talk about weddings they have to go to, showers, and parties, and commitments to their partner’s families and they all complain and envy my freedom. Funny, that.

I have become the ultimate witness. I remember that bit from Biloxi Blues. The writer, Matthew Broderick, was shamed for being only a witness. I don’t want to live only as a witness. What epitaph for a witness? “He came. He saw.” I am Silas’ dead canceled eyes.

It was Canada Day yesterday. I had nearly missed it. I had nearly forgotten. When I took Murphy out, there were more people, much more people, than normal. Why are there so many people around, I wondered? I see a flag. I see some revelers and it dawns on me only slowly. It’s a holiday. Wow. That’s messed up.

A turtle when startled will retract into his shell. Startled well enough and long enough, a turtle will starve in his shell. A caterpillar makes a cocoon in anticipation of a chrysalis (I’m impressed I spelled that word correctly on the first go, but never mind). Is this my chrysalis or shall my soul starve and die?

I haven’t set a deadline on this project. I haven’t yet done nearly all of the things I intend to do, either. With this project and with this life. I am Silas’ solipsistic — again, first try, bully for me — brain talking to itself.

SS

One man, not quite an agoraphobe, who nearly doesn’t leave his house, only to walk his dog. One dog. The dog’s name is Murphy. The man’s name is Silas. It turns out that it has happened again. Only this one I couldn’t have really done anything about. I have just heard about this company that produces books and art and toys and their entire marketing scheme, as near as I can deduce, is looking for a man named Silas. I don’t think I’m that Silas. I don’t see how they could have heard of me. However, their Silas sounds a lot like me. They even have desktop wallpaper (in the ‘Silas’ section) which is only the name Silas and doggy paws. I had to stop looking at their website. It was freaking me out on an existential level. It was as if I had discovered, while I had thought I was a real-life person, I was actually a marketing character, born not of a mother, but from an ad exec meeting. Or as if you were in a bar in a retirement community in Miami and met this odd looking albino pensioner with messy hair who introduced himself as Fido Dido.

Still, since they can’t find Silas, I suppose — since I know exactly where I am — that I am not that Silas. You can learn about this company, which has some really cool stuff at www.silasandmaria.com.

One man. One dog. One mission. As I said, I am not quite agoraphobic. Yes, I prefer my home to almost anywhere, but I won’t resort to adopting genuine neurotic conditions, at least not yet. My mission is this: To become famous, to become rich, to get a gallery exhibition, to get a book contract, to get corporate sponsorship, to get on the Ellen show. So I’m not leaving my house, except for the Murphy walks, until one of those things happens. Yes, I know that’s extreme. I was tired of seeing people around me succeed. And, I’m doing something I love. And if I’ve learned anything from celebrity TV if you do what you love and you keep doing what you love even if it makes you a crazy person, you will succeed. And I’m saying this now: I’m doing what I love and I’m going to continue to do what I love and if I don’t, after all, succeed, I will never listen to advice from people on celebrity TV and I will either become an accountant or find new and creative ways to sue corporations.

And this is where we stand. It’s been not quite 6 months. 163 days to be exact. I’m not much more famous and barely richer. I have sold exactly one print. If you want one, check out my Order page. I haven’t had a gallery show yet. I haven’t got sponsorship from Fuji or Kodak or Canon but I still try. I haven’t been on daytime TV yet. But I’ve got 163 journal entries. I’ve got 163 images. And, three days ago, I doubled my gear. I’m not just using my Fuji FinePix 40i anymore. With a serious and most humble nod of indebtedness and gratitude to Bob, I now have a Rollei 35 and it has a lot of buttons and controls and it’s one of those old cameras that take, yes, film, and I can’t wait to start playing.

It’s been a lot of work taking images of only stuff in my apartment – with a few exceptions on my Murphy walks. It’s becoming quite challenging. But nothing inspires creativity like a challenge.

Perhaps, yes, I’ve been slumping a little recently. But I’m taking this occasion to redouble my commitment to this project. It’s nearly all I have. And, as I’ve said before, it seems to me – and just ask Cal Ripken – that nothing in life is rewarded so much as perseverance. Yes, there may be a handful of geniuses and prodigies – there was that elephant a few years ago that painted and now there’s a three year old girl who sells paintings for hundreds of thousands of dollars – and there may be some lackluster people with great smiles, great asses, and great marketing, but if you’ve got little else, all you have to hold onto is perseverance. And typically, I give up everything too soon.

Meanwhile, I drink too much coffee, smoke too many cigarettes, take too many baths, clean my house too compulsively, and, yes, still miss my sweetest jellybean.

SS

An exile can always be called a crackpot. He does it, or at least in this case, he has done it, to himself. The exile of the other variety is the banished scoundrel who has, one presumes, brought it on himself.

Suppose I were two people, or at least of two minds. Suppose I had multiple personalities. Suppose the criminal me has captured, has caught and bound and taken hostage the social me. Let’s continue to suppose then that, rather than Silas the Exile, we have the kidnapper Silas, and the hostage Silas. Then what shall my ransom be?

Imagine this in newspaper fonts cut out and glued onto the screen:

I will release Silas under the following circumstance. You will give me the money for a Nikon D70. When I have received enough money, I will take a picture of Silas’s face in the light of day and then I will turn him over.

Yes, that’s all lovely to suppose. That way I turn my deadline over to you. I wait for the dollars to come in on Paypal. When I have enough — about $1500 Cdn + taxes —, I will get dressed, fix my ragged hair, go downtown, go into a store, buy the camera. And on some street in the light of day where I haven’t really allowed my hostage to travel, I will take my own picture, I will reveal myself, and this hostage-taking will end.

Of course my timing is bad. Like the death of Jerry Orbach or the engagement of our favorite Canadians, David and Jamie. If you had a dollar you didn’t want you should probably send it to the Tsunami relief.

But suppose you have two dollars you didn’t want.

SS

“All I got was a bag of rocks.”
- Charlie Brown

No Birdie, I haven’t found MyLuckyBreak; or rather MyLuckyBreak hasn’t found me. Not really.

Your question urged me to re-read my Mission. It was a splendid mission. It was full of pith and vinegar. It was strategic.

I don’t use “my Sweet Jellybean” anymore. The truth is she left my life before I started this project. That was my Great Big Secret. About this time last year, she extricated herself from my life. Um, maybe a week and a year ago. And I started off this project holding on to the idea of her. But she was already a ghost when I started. And this was, along with everything else, a love letter to a ghost. At least it started that way. I know she’s been told about SnappedShots. As far as I know she’s never read it. She didn’t want to be my muse when we were together. I’m convinced she wouldn’t want to be memorialized.

So I had it sorted out that my solution to the Right Place and Right Time problem was this project. But it didn’t work to the extent that I had hoped when I wrote out my Mission.

Oh, I did write letters to camera companies, Birdie. Canon. Kodak. Nikon. Fuji. Every picture here was taken with a seriously outmoded and outdone Fuji FinePix40i. Now I thought that would be great publicity for the Fuji people who are hardly competitive in the digital photography market. I wrote a letter telling them that that’s the way they should feel and I sent it to as many execs at Fuji that I could find. But it didn’t work. Fuji didn’t respond.

I interviewed myself a couple of months ago and sent that interview to blogging and lifestyle and arts magazines and even, brazenly, some dailies. But my bait was unbitten. My worm was not taken.

So, no, Birdie. I have not been gifted with free stuff. I did not recover my sweet jellybean. But I couldn’t have seduced her back with the thing that pushed her away. That was very much a mistake.

I did stay home. I did exile myself. I did take pictures of my dog, my kitchen sink, my stuffed animals, my bric a brac, silverware. I did not, so much as I can recall, take pictures of my paintings or my belly button lint.

So, if MyLuckyBreak is press or free stuff or light stands or solicitous models or a gallery exhibit or sponsorship, then no, MyLuckyBreak did not come.

But, Birdie, I’m also convinced that it has not been an unqualified failure either. I have readers and that is satisfying. And I have fine people like you stopping by to tell me it made them laugh or it made them happy or it made them think or that I had said something in a way that they had always wanted to say. And I’ve even had a fan buy a print. And I’ve even had a marriage proposal (OK it was the same person, but never mind that).

And it’s more than attention. And it was about attention, wasn’t it? But it was more than attention. It was always more than attention. I exorcised, or at least I mostly exorcised, my sweet jellybean. And I needed to do that. And I have, I hope, a sometimes charming, sometimes funny, sometimes preposterous, occasionally awful, almost always maniacal record, hmm, snapshot, of a year of my life.

And perhaps I didn’t get free stuff, perhaps I didn’t get sponsorship, perhaps I didn’t get the clamor of press, perhaps I didn’t dance on Ellen, but I will always have that.

Yes, Birdie, I fared better than Charlie Brown. Thank you.

SS