less multiple sclerosis, please!

this is an art-o-mat machine, one of 60 or so that are installed around the country (this one at SPACE in portland, maine). this is project where artists contribute cigarette pack sized creations, which are sold thru these machines. a very cool idea, and one i plan to get involved with. i’ve got in mind a small booklet of tiny stories and photographs. my son ben turned me on to the idea, which comes at a perfect time for me.

i seem to be at a point where i am less identifying myself as a person with ms, and thinking more about myself as an artist. “artist” used to mean “photographer,” but i’ve been thinking a lot lately about using photography as part of what i do, and how to do it, and also quite a bit about how to get whatever it is i end up doing out into the world. they say periods of depression can be very creative, and i think that is very true.

i don’t really know where i’m going, or what i will find, but the urge to create, produce, and to expose myself (keeping my clothes on!) to the world is very strong these days. part of the creative process will be finding a venue or venues to present my work (again, whatever it ends up being). this art-o-mat project is a great inspiration to combine the tiny “sudden fiction” stories i write with some of my photographs, which are in their own way sudden, being (if you don’t mind me getting all arty) the collection of light from a 60th of a second, an affirmation of a tiny moment. that moment becomes, by way of the photograph, an entirely new object.

anywho, i sit here in my tiny cube at work, pecking away, and will start using the few moments between calls to write some more of my tiny stories. perhaps i’ll start posting them here, or perhaps i’ll create another blog for that purpose.

my mother in law is visiting, and i don’t know if it is funny or sad that our first conversation when she arrived yesterday was about our health issues, and how similar they are. unusual sleep patterns, medications, symptoms, it seems after so many years she and i have something in common.