Tates / Tudor / The Tudors c.1997

Ack! Two Young Taters, 1997.

Tater is, without NO doubt, a better friend than me. Also: person. She is cleaner, a better cook, a better instruction follower, a better writer, more domestic, a better learner, more responsible, smarter, more decent, more organized, more respectful, more logical and level-headed, and more trust-worthy...than me. We shared one identity between the two of us for about 10 years somewhere in there...this scared people. They didn't know how to sit back and appreciate, or get in between, or even communicate with or around us...so it goes...There is nothing she doesn't know about me. I would sometimes feel like that was too much...and when I felt like this, like I was 'sharing' too much (unpressed) I would recoil in a violent, resentful way that I thought was subtle...this happened every 8 or 9 months...and she would sense it. and we would fight. and i would never know what the actual issue was. and she would be patient. and then pack me a sandwich for work like i was her fucking baby! annnnnnnnnnnd she calls them like she sees them...in truth she is the keeper of everything tragic gross embarassing ugly vulnerable painful that has transpired in my life. no story she doesn't know or even moment or a feeling that maybe lasted 24 hours, nothing that she doesn't remember...there is nothing she doesn't know about me. or you, for that matter...she could probably write my story for me...in fact, maybe she already has..we spent most of jr. high and high school on the telephone with each other, making fun of people, creating and nurturing our own language, weeding out assholes and always coming back to our party of two, getting good grades, loving our mothers, trying to learn how to grow, and raiding 99 cent stores along desolate stretches of the central valley...i will never be homeless as long as this motherfucking human bean is alive. whoever she marries should expect a very old borja to move in if i have not found something as worthy and wonderful as her.

for the record, she has a beautiful backside...just one of her many assets...the most important of course being her ability to sustain love for her best friend, an often bipolar stretch of desert never completely at rest...right, there's another one..she is also more humble, and i talk about myself all the time.

Baby Girl

I met Sarah C Garelle when she was 7. I was 7, too. She was a beast. Slamming doors. Like oil / water with her father. Tears. Screams. Drama. Competitive. Intelligent. Passionate. Envious. Peaches and Cream. In 4th grade she played Juliet in the Shakespeare play...she wore a glorious white dress with gold trim...her hair was long and copper and she delivered her lines with an expertise incongruous with her age...she never flubbed her lines. She was not shy. She shone. She developed a small crush on the kid who played Romeo...(obviously)...but unfortunately, life did not imitate art and while she read into her lines, he was a lame 10 year old (sorry) who said the words 'love' and 'juliet' like he was saying cup, chair, or bus...d-r-a-b...

Anyway---there is more to say about Sarah, endless endless anecdotes. But I have to skip the years 1990-2008 to just say that baby girl delivered a baby boy this week...in the water, without meds..."i deserve a medal, i think...." she says...yes baby girl, you and 52% of the population from the beginning of time until the end of the universe! But this is how us only children think...we. are. special...and we consider ourselves only children even though we spent every summer and every day and many years in the same bed and room and house and soccer field and pool and car and bathroom and sleeping bag...under the stars on a deck in modesto, california, when it was too hot to sleep inside...we tick like sisters, though...no nuance missed no reference unchecked no memory not shared...right now our lives are as different as...hmm, as she and i...only now am i realizing it might have been a much lonelier childhood without her...we gave each other license to be young, honest, off-the-cuff, lewd, mean, loving. highs and lows, but mostly joy, like motherhood.

mather graham steele, b. july 14th 2009.

Now Lemme Take A Trip Down Memory Lane (RIP Henry Allingham)

...because nothing is permanent...especially not the summers in san fernando, cali... ESPECIALLY especially not a family's happiness especially not a nucleus especially not a party that you wish would last and last and last forever especially not the thrill of the chase or the possibility of something yet-to-be-attained...none of that lasts...again i marvel at the proof of time and the photo and the testament and in time it all feels heavier...for those of you who don't feel the gravity of moments while they're happening, but anyway... mostly i pick this photo because of how pop is standing exactly like his pop, from the tilt of his head to the bend and sit in his right leg and hip...copy cats, copy cats, we're all copy copy cats...

Wiggy Woman (2 of 2)

Mission Street, San Pancho...I don't remember what Miss Thing and I discussed at this bus stop...I think this was 2005...Of all the people I've passed on foot on Mission Street day after day after month after year, I only saw Wiggy Woman one time... Sometimes I let people pass me by or willingly pass them by, but most of the time I hate myself for a few minutes after the fact...Sometimes it's a lazy thing, sometimes I'm on the goddamn phone, or am carrying too many bags, of fucking dance clothes with shoes hanging off the bag straps...I hear photographers travel light, aside from the camera(s)...(Frank Fournier has worn the same pragmatic outfit since 1975, guaranteed...)...I'm tired of being a bag lady... (in the proverbial sense, too)...I wanna be weightless in the streets again and am trying to negotiate that with this altered (improved?) self that has just emerged from the ICP...Did nothing change? Is it possible I'm more confused? Hmm. Heady...Anyway, what this release means is that I've re-realized there are still faces for the taking out there! There's this entire uneaten Apple I'm about to worm through...and sometimes that's the thing with patience + photography...the biggest commitment one could make really...knowing that the return isn't tomorrow PER SE, it's at the very end, the culmination, the group, the context, you --- on a continuum...but you keep going back...and that's refreshing / exciting / motivating...tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...like Mikey writes...for everyone there's that one thing that keeps them comin' on back / just one thing keeps me comin' on back / on back...

or at least, there really should be...else the whole shit just passes you by.

The Groom With Roses On His Dome

For Terry Malloy...

...on the waterfront, on my way to Staten Island.

El Cocinero / El Marinero / El Escritor / El Juez

Baby Boy on the Boat! We didn't really see what we were riding over...we kind of just talked the whole way and didn't realize we had reached Staten Island to Manhattan and back...same when we came to the end of college...or the end of our phone calls...or our hang outs and dinner...too fast so quick...and I imagine, the end...it will have been a succession of laughs and conversation and tragedies but mostly love...so it goes with JJ