what we endure, of lines of light and lifted sorrow

To start writing was to cease to be a curious listener, an addressee, and to become instead the horizon point of the family line, the destination for the many-eyed, many-decked ship of family history.”—Maria Stepanova, In Memory of Memory”

Song 1

Give not over thy soul to sorrow; and afflict not thyself in thy own counsel. Gladness of heart is the life of man and the joyfulness of man is length of days.”

– Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus 21.

“If I keep a green bough in my heart, the singing bird will come.”

– Chinese Proverb

Last night as I was walking to dinner, I thought of this morning, 20 years ago.

Every beautiful September sky returns me to the morning of September 11, 2001. Every time I look up, among the flags of blue and the banners of white cumulus, I think of that day. Every time I look up at towering man-made construction, I see their beauty and their vulnerability. I think endlessly of that day. It shall remain that way for the walk of my life.

That morning was breathtaking. An inspired hopeful morning, with blue streaming across the Eastern seaboard. Only later would we, an entire nation and world, would we lose our intrinsic hope, earnestness and innocence. At least for a while.

I remember later, when the buildings fell amid a crush of chaos and crumbling commotion, my heart and head lost, trying to understand. I was 36 years old.

For the remainder of the day, I spent stunned, watching and thinking and processing history, from the theatre of our lives, collide and stretch before me. It felt both surreal and inevitable. As a child in Asia, during the Vietnam War, and later as a young reader I. America, I’d hunger force History, to participate in it by hat day it was impossible. Both unreal and prosaic, simultaneously.

Throughout the day I watch the 2nd building fall, after watching the first fall on television at work. I sat in near silence with my father watching cnn, and later when the second tower fell, calling frankly friends and family in nyc, emailing a friends mother in Ukraine as she panicked uncontrollably, as her son worked in the North tower. Word sped faster than our thoughts. The world was stunned, collective shock and fear and individual meaning vaporizing.

My friend Yevgeni, was a photographer in NY who worked as a stock trader. we had met on a Russian photographer website and then later more on Lightstalkers. Later, we drank together in my andvtalk abiut film, cinema, photography, Platonov and her mother’s cooking. The stuffed ingredients of friendship.

By 2:00 pm, the entire day oiling awayand later over the following days, many of us were focused on Yevgeni and the search fir him, just as much of New York was in search of list loved ones.

He was never found.

He was among the 2,606 killed that day, including 343 of the nyfd and 71 nypd

Numbers

But I lost a friend that day and my own youth.

I knew 3 others who died. And later I became friends with my dear friend Marc Davidson whose father died on that morning as well. A father, husband, son and grandfather.

8 years later, Marc had his remarkable photo essay on his father published in BURN magazine. Artifacts

He asked me to write the essay accompanying his photographs. . It was one of the most difficult things I have ever had to write. Consumed for weeks I didn’t know what to write or how to write it. Then one late night, I was reading John Berger’s And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos. I wrote the essay in a single sitting with a bottle of wine.

Partially about my friends remarkable project, partially about my own grief over Yevgeni’s death, partially a reexamination of myself and the world, it seemed as I had poured 7 years of thinking into the writing. Long and rambling, it was meant to honour that day and the lives lost. I do not know if it did that.

Have we learned anything 20 years later? It feels as if we’ve grown worse, having learned very little.

We grow old, we grow old, our hearts corners are worn rolled.

Have I learned anything, even now when so many of my students were not even born before 2001 and many do not even know what the numbers 9/11 stand for. Many have no idea and more importantly don’t even seem to care. This moment, that can not be encapsulated in Twitter or Instagram. What do THEY think of now as so many of. Y students don’t even seem to focus on Covid, let alone the acts of 20 years ago or a war spread over nations and continents. Have I grown weary. I come from a nation that elected a faithless President in 2016 and again now under the leadership of a nation recalcitrant in its stubbornness.

We grow old.

As for my students, is not their fault

I often feel it is our fault, my generation and the generation before me, that we continued a war for 20 years that has cost millions of lives, millions. Process that. Mother’s still bury their daughters and sons every day, civilian and military. Every god damn day, without surcease. Without end.

Is this the way to honour?

It so often feels to me that man, men, and often older men, take into their destructive minds, a simple lesson: exterminate eliminate excavate.

Are we not better, more loving and faithful?

On most days, I believe we are. I must believe this. On other days, I feel we’ve lost, forever, the sight and scent of those green boughs amid the clutter of our lives. FB, Twitter, IG, politics, hatred, ignorance, fear above life.

Can we not see this.

I for one am no longer interested nor can I abide by their thinking. The blindness on inscrutable ignorance. People divide over power and belief, over science and voodoo, over land and hegemony. Enough.

The world is filled with enough attendant grief.

Will we ever see the green bough again.

Alas, spring shall return.

I look at these beautiful September skies, as I do every year, renewed. The light demands it. The air demands it. Our children and parents demand it my son demands it. The dead demand it, the dead in nyc, the dead in Pennsylvania, the dead in Washington, the dead in Afghanistan , the dead in Iraq, the dead in Syria and now the world over, all connected to a time and a principle long ago and almost certainly forgotten.

But for me, this day will always be the day Evgeni died and his father screamed out in terror and grief. And I will never forget that, not ever. How many mothers the world over continue to bury their families. How have we lost sight of this.

My dear friend, the remarkable writer and photographer Jon Anderson, would have shared my grief and outrage. He was a man of depth and courage and probity. Alas, he is not here to write about that day. He died of a lung disease and complications, like many others, from the asbestos from the rumble of the towers as he had raced their from uptown to photograph and spent much of the next week photographing. A mother horrific subtraction and consequence. He left behind a teen daughter and wife.

I miss Jon immensely.

May I go the remainder of my life with the same love filled heart as both of their lives contained, in the way I try to conduct my own life, one already having been spared a few times.

May we all live in honour of All the lives the world over lost in the shadow of the dire momentum of unreason. May we abide love and forgiveness and not enmity or disgrace.

May we allow others to live and to live and to be, continuing.

This is not such a difficult choice or act

With love. With grace. Renewed.

Alas Spring shall return and renew as it does eternally.

However, shall we?

I promise you this : I will.

With love and hope, again. It is my duty

What is your?

Song 2

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.—Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet.

Last night I had a dream

Of when I was in the hospital for 5 weeks in 2019 and walked away from death. And again, 10 months ago, I walked away (or crawled) from a coma and death. Two times in less than 18 months.

Last night I dreamed I was talking to bob, both times, and telling him everything would be fine that there was so much living yet to do. In my dream, the unconscious Bob awoke and looked straight into the eyes of the dreaming Bob and said: I know and he held my hand. I awoke at 5:00 am this morning in tears and happiness.

I’m here to tell you this simple truth: if you can read this, you are alive. Fail never to embrace the entirety of this. You are winged even when you’ve forgotten that. Recall that to yourself each and everyday. More than flowers, bloom.

We recite ourselves to life. Remember that in your moments of grief or uncertainty

Song 3

Try to learn to let what is unfair teach you.”-david foster wallace

"True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care—with no one there to see or cheer. This is the world.”-david foster wallace

We often spoke about David Foster Wallace: one of my heroes.....

I learned alot, over the years, from my dear friend Jeffrey George Hladun

He was a towering (literally and figuratively) friend, to whom luminous is not an exaggeration.....

Yesterday, I was told that Jeff recently and suddenly died.....a thunderbolt to each of us who knew, respected, adored and loved Jeff....he was many things to many people, to his family and friends, to photographers and non-photographers alike....

Jeff was a real and true mensch....a rare one.....

I first met Jeff through our shared writing at BURN MAGAZINE . Both of us, photographers, wrote ridiculously long and drunkenly constructed comments about the work there, both lovers of the magazine and photography....both drunken on the art form...

Eventually, we met in person and talk and drank (hours) and smoked (hours)....later, I had Jeff over to my house (for late night drinks and talks)....and we went to Photo/Portfolio reviews that I often did with Brett Gundlock and Johan Hallberg Campbell and Don Webber for Boreal Collective.....

We also drank with the Magnum Crew when they would come up for their annual stuff for CONTACT Photography Festival ......AND I often showed Jeff the photo projects I was working on....or my book...or my poems...

He had a brilliant eye for detail and language and composition. In fact, I almost never trust others to look at my photographs or poems while Im working on them....but with Jeff I always did....

He and I just spoke via messages a few months ago about what we were doing....when I left the hospital in 2019, he wrote me a long and thoughtful and beautiful letter ...

.i re-read it this morning

I can't believe his beautiful and generous and powerful voice is silenced...and that the sky is dampened...

but these are simply the particulars of the Jeff I knew for more than 13 years.....they do not convey the person he was:

a lifter of lives and skies and hearts...

god damn, mother fucking unfairness of life to take him from us so soon....

and yet, there he was this morning as I walked to school to teach: the vermillion morning sun slipping over the buildings, the sound of the teens practicing tennis at 6:30 am next to my building, the black dogs greeting one another with their yelp and smiling tails and the new gets renewed...

that is jeff: a magician of renewal and life

one of the kindest and smartest and most loving men i have ever met...

i hold your voice in my heart forever....

i love you and miss you Jeff

There go we in this world, impossible if not for people like you, light carrier and essential- born jewel....

That question at the Center of my life and is the centre of my art: my poetry and my photography: how and what to make of suffering, loss and our grief for catastrophe has knobbed at me my entire life, as it has now all of us.

What is the solution?……

To survive, to live, to love, to make and to go on, we must go on.

Jeff, your ascension is our ladder, let us remain as courageous, as you were...

May these words honour his luminous and incandescent presence, always.

with love,

Song 4: redux et return

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”—Martin Luther King Jr.,

Last night I learned my dear friend Jeffrey George Hladun Had died. In shock this morning, I walked to school where I would teach a lesson on fables.

I taught my students The Lion and The Mouse

I took these pictures in honour of Jeff while walking this morning

His light was everywhere this morning.

Song 5:

Autumn, Blue as October Breath

The spine of the sky swagging over cloud and tail, your undoing

reminded fractures that shadow burn scorched grown

The unevening of the tilted land or after, the curtain of blackened grass, remains

a person lit afire in the greening dust and gold-flecked soil,

Once a body print left marking the ground

This unending algebra, the grammar of lost teeth and nibbled none bone

blackening the earth underneath

Is this what the earth has come to?

Is it the sky!s fault or our telling of yells.

Make it rise, you

If nothing else, what then?

Gobbling and sea-green, you.

Song Last: dream branch

Reminding of the shadow burn scorched grown of or after a person lit on fire, the body print left marking the ground and blackening the earth underneath: our digital crawling world, scattering