In a blink of an eye a month has passed

There were plans to post for my one year anniversary, which occurred last January 20th. Yet before one new it, the month of January had passed in a block of an eye. Though I did write and posted, a few days later decided to withdraw it back to a draft and save it for another time. In the meantime, my mind was preoccupied with a road trip I would like to take in April.

So out came the camera and tripod, some props and I then cleared off the dinning room table, as I use it for my table top photography, especially since it receive northern light.

When we arrived in New York from Europe, my father drove us in a deep burgundy colored Chevrolet across the US. One of the roads we took, was highway Route 66 before finally arriving in Los Angeles.

I still have faint memories of our trip through New Mexico and Arizona, a land that captured my imagination and had me falling in love with American Indian culture. Since the fifties were the hay days of western culture movies, I always was routing for the Indians, even though they ended up usually dead, for ‘a good Indian is a dead Indian,’ was the expression of the day.

Even though Route 66 is no longer what it was in 1959, due to being replaced with an alternative route, I cannot help but feel drawn to the area. In part because of the distinctive fifties Americana Road architecture now, mostly decaying, succumbing to time and nature.

Then there are the old western movies by director Henry Ford, which featured wide open desolate plains, where mountains raise up from the red earth, reaching for the sky, where one feels close to ones god. The kind of landscape captured by American Impressionist Edgar Paynes.

It is here I wish to photograph, as well as paint my impressions of the land and what remains of the architecture and its people.

For now this road trip is only a dream, a wish that may have to wait another year, but then I have waited a long time since my last road trip, which was through Ireland and I was twenty-five.

Thank you for your visit

E.A.

Marilyn Monroe, beauty, sexiness and brains

With the recent release of ‘my week with MARILYN,’ I began contemplating the concept of beauty, femininity and how much this has changed over the last forty or so years, when women began burning their bras to make a statement about women’s liberation. 

Though Marilyn’s beauty and blatant sexuality came out into the open, she was not the first, but her impact was like a title wave that blanketed the nation, and was felt internationally. Even to this day, she still has a viable effect among people of both sexes and imitators emulating Marilyn’s mystic. 

Marilynn Monroe

Marilyn’s beauty certainly was radiant but she had a rival, one who personified a darker side of sexuality. Bettie Page, a risqué and often fetishistic model, who with her provocativeness distinctive bangs, made sexiness seem fun and tantalizing. She was also featured in Playboy, as Playmate, January 1955 and though her career only lasted seven years and yet Bettie Page is still the most recognizable icon of the fifties, beside Marilyn.

Bettie Page and the HBO 2006 movie poster

Betty Grable in her white one piece swimsuit and 

Rita Hayward’s famous pose in a black negligee

When America entered into the World War II in 1941, it also marked the beginning of the golden age of pin-up’s that lasted mid-through the fifties before declining. One of the most memorable photographs was Rita Hayward’s famous pose in a black negligee, which quickly made a big hit among the US service men stationed in Europe. However, in first place was Betty Grable, with her white one piece swimsuit and high heels.

There were also illustration of women, who, while smiling, revealed a little intimate apparel in a range of clothing-challenged situations. These were drawings or paintings by artists like Gil Elvgren, Alberto Vargas, and Zoe Mozert, the only female artist in a male dominated field, showing us what the ideal of feminism is.

Mona by Gil Elvgren

Though as a teen I was exposed to these pin-up’s at repair garages or gas stations, my fascination with pin-up’s came about in the form of ‘bomber art’ found on the noses of Boeing B-17 bombers and other US military airplanes, because I was an airplane buff and at one point wanted to be a pilot. Apart from the pin-up nose illustrations, the crew chose to name the art, which in turn, their aircraft was referred to during radio transmissions. Names like Temptations, Devil’s Darling, Irish Lassie, Texas Doll, Upstairs Maid, and Carolina Moon.

In my impressionable early teen years, during the hippie era, rug induced wild times and free love—a movement carving out a new direction of social thinking and lifestyle—my concept of sexuality began taking shape. As the years passed and other influences began taking hold, I started gravitating to the music and film noir of the forties, when women were women and men, men.

It was a time when both sexes understood their rolls and though I have no problem with woman’s emancipation or equality between the sexes, I feel what it means to be truly feminine is lost today. That one confuses femininity with showing a lot of skin and dressing coquettish, rather than stylish.

Beauty, sexiness and brains—some of my favorite icons

Femininity and sexiness is first a state of mind, one that comes from within the person. It is then adorned through clothing and accessories, like jewelry, perfume and above all, with attitude and personality. 

When you dress in intimate apparel and clothing to please your mate or lover, you are betraying yourself and what you present is nothing more than a facade. However, if you first dress to please yourself, you will feel good, your confidence level is up. In the end, you will project a radiance that in turn ultimately nurtures your inner sexiness and you will feel feminine.

Obviously there is nothing wrong with dressing for your mate or lover, but be aware that you must come first before you can think of anyone else. For in this lies the secrete to being feminine and sexy.

A scene from Billy Wilder’s Some Like it Hot

In this photograph, Marilyn is natural and truly herself

Thank you for your visit

E.A.

Family Secrets

Memories are the ghosts of our past, 

like fugitives they hide from the day, 

only to haunt us at night

when the mind betrays our reality,

altering the history as we have come to know it.

It is we who choose what to remember and what to forget

separating pain from the pleasurable,

gathering the hurt like the fields harvest

and carefully add them to the box, then close the lid.

Yet the pain does not lessen with time,

not until one has learned to forgive

and even then it does not disappear completely,

for the scars have been carved too deep.

Memories are fragile

and are easily lost when not tended to,

though a photograph can capture a moment,

aiding in recalling the past,

it can also uncover, exposing the darkness to light

that others might see, even years later.

Missing pieces of broken emptiness

Neglected, it's beauty fades and character takes hold of the presence.

No place to hide

All I ask is that you look and contemplate the many meanings.

The remains of irreconcilable differences

Listen to the silence . . .

     for they do have voices.

“Mom, please not the closet,” a child cried

Memories are hard to erase, for they are what we have become and we cannot be denied our identity.

An empty heart

For me the kitchen is where one finds the heart of a home. Neglected and without love, it is nothing more than a room within a house. A house to be considered a home, it most provide a place of safety and nurtured tenderness.

With memories striped bare, stolen innocence still cannot forget

You can empty a room and remove all traces of a former life and identity, yet the memories still remain.

Paint cannot hide the wounds

Pealing away the many layers that have hidden the cruelty not only exposes the ugly secret. it also begins the healing process for the victim.

Leave through many doors to find yourself

By walking through a door and entering a room, we are confined and confronted by the  walls, by the space within and the impressions of others. 

To regain out identity, to discover our full potential and shed the abuse we have suffered, we must leave by many doors.

Lost and found

The series ‘Family Secrets’ comes to a close with ‘Lost and Found,’ but for many people from an abusive childhood, the pain never ends.

In the last few weeks I have relived many memories, gut wrenching and painful at times. The abuse suffered ends with me! It is a promise I made to my dear and lovely children, Armont and Ariana. They will never have to experience the pain and memories of the kind of verbal and mental abuse, or the physical beatings and sexual abuse I endured at the hands of my perpetrator; my mother.

The healing process for any abused person takes a lifetime.

Self portrait with shattered mirror

The only way we can eradicate this evil is to first say to ourselves: “We are not at fault.” All too often we think we are to blame for these conditions, but it is not so. Remember, no love is worth suffering pain and abuse. There is help and you must seek it.

‘Self portrait with shattered mirror’ came about by chance. I had returned to the empty club house, deciding to photograph the hallway, using the mirror in the ladies room. As I was setting up the shot, I looked into the mirror and decided to photograph myself instead.

Postscript

Between April 25 and May 30, 2005, I posted ten photographs at an art community website, Renderosity. It was during this time that I went public for the first time, sharing my childhood memories of abuse and openly confronting my inner demons.

The process of healing has taken twenty-six years, when at the age of thirty-five, I realized that I had not been the problem.

Even though I am doing better today, the wounds and scares still remain, at least I proved stronger and so was able to break the cycle, for my children are now grown adults and were never experienced abuse. However I am sorry that my wife was exposed to my pain these  many years.

What helped my recovery process was that not only coming to terms with what had happened to me, but that seven to eight years ago, I was finally able to forgive my mother and so release the anger that I had harbored against her, which by then had eaten away my spirit like a slow moving illness.

Thank you for your visit

E.A.

Confronting ones challenges

Sooner or later one must confront ones challenges and since this blog after all is anonymous, there is no reason not to, especially after another nail was hammered into the coffin of sadness, drowning under the weight of metal in a lake of tears.

After attended my wife’s relative wedding this last Saturday, I had some time to reflect one the commitments one makes to each other and what is an acceptable price to pay before challenging any of the vows agreed up years later. For one enters into marriage with ignorance and blind faith, since love is an abstract concept with many different interpretations few agree upon.

Pointing the finger and placing all the blame upon ones spouse is not something I am going to do, marriage after all is a work in progress and each one of us no doubt will have something to say about the other that bothers them. However when one partner decides they no longer wish to have any physical relations with them, then what? Since this decision did not occur overnight, a little background information is needed. 

The years in which we tried having children, the sex was wonderful but after the second and last child was born, there was a time of abstinence to which I agreed before we resumed physical relations. They were far in between, no more than five times and no less than twice a year for the next decade and a half. It was more like a drought but I made due, feeling like a vehicle kept going by fumes alone, especially since also lacking was any emotionally physical closeness of the non-sexual kind. It seems she does not require hugs, cuddling, holding or touching that brings two people closer over the years. One could say she is completely self-sufficient individual, whereas I am not.

I have a need to feel alive, a need to know I am wanted and desired. Allowed to express my sexual urges and reciprocate my partners needs, all that which allows me to be a complete person. For the physical exchange between two persons is the very reason for getting up each morning.

Unfortunately I injured myself in an industrial accident in 2002 and had surgery in 2003, followed by a recovery period of more than four years, during which I was diagnosed with cancer. A few months later my wife began her menopause period and she decided not to undergo a hormone treatment as this can cause breast cancer, a decision I fully supported.

A year later I had a heart attack and the next month, January of 2006, I under went a triple by-pass open heart surgery. The recovery went as expected including a few years of serious depression, including the failure of one of the grafts eighteen months later, I survived and for what if only to be denied one of the reasons for living.

Yet as these passing months turned into years, during which I sought some physical connection with her, only to be rebuffed. So now I am raising the question, do I have a right to seek physical closeness  and sexual gratification elsewhere? Let’s keep in mind that I also have been warned by her that if I do, there would be consequences and I would be kicked out of the house. It is as though I am being kept a prisoner while she is having her cake and eating it to.

I cannot just turn off having any emotional and physical needs and to do without them. I am too alive and enjoy life and though my creating art has helped me through some of the rough bumps, I personally cannot continue life without ever experiencing the pleasures of the flesh—why should I be forced to?

So upon our return from the wedding, where we both had a good time, I wanted to fool-around, express my affections and yes, possible even masturbate in order to release any pressures. Unfortunately all this was met with a negative response that was more like ‘disgusting’ or ‘give me a break,’ rather than sharing some tenderness even thought there would be no sexual intercourse. She chose to read her book and I reluctantly went to sleep.

My art has sustained me, permitted me to continue but it does not feed the needs of the flesh or the longings of a gentle feminine touch caressing my skin. I cannot continue to live this way or meet my day of judgement without living once again.

With my cards now exposed, I declare I am open to receiving another woman’s affections which would be equally reciprocated, searching for an affair of the heart, an affair of the flesh.

Thank you for your visit

E.A.