This year is going by a little too quickly, but I fear that the rest of my years will be painfully similar, until it is my life that has gone by too quickly. I felt like I was running out of time ten years ago. Now, I am this, doing this. I’ve spent most my life investigating this… trying to define this… but now I am just being this, whatever that is.
Tenshin Roshi, in his dharma talks, usually begins with the living koan of what is happening now in people’s practice, and opens the floor to questions and concerns before beginning to speak about anything; I have said nothing. In fact, in the multitude of hours I’ve spent working with Tenshin, I haven’t really said much at all, and I have not participated in Dokusan much, basically because the times I did I was given the cliche Zen responses; I didn't really expect much more than that, and I haven’t really been at the Zen center that long; I guess in my head I’ve been studying this my whole life, so I feel like I am further along than most will give me credit for, but in reality, I haven’t been studying what they want me to study, and they don’t know me from Adam…or…Shakyamuni….I guess?
I’ve had a minor beef with Tenshin’s teaching, and that is in his throwing around the term cogito ergo sum. I had hoped to finally get up the courage to mention it in the last dharma talk I attended, but we were surrounded by college students on a retreat at the Zen center who wouldn’t really be able to rationally participate in the conversation, but Tenshin did ironically bring up the concept in the talk anyway. My beef is thus: he is very adamant about philosophy having nothing to do with Zen; under that precept, he presents cogito ergo sum as the best that “they” have come up with.
My argument is that philosophy is really nothing more than eloquently stating the obvious to a people who are too stupid to understand or see it, which is painfully similar to Zen: it doesn’t get much more obvious than “this.” I do understand that there is plenty of philosophy out there that is pretty wacky, but at the end of the day it is all basically common sense. I also found that I have a hard time separating western and eastern philosophy, which is likely due to the fact that the only western philosophy I’ve really read are the ancients (Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, et cetera), and those texts are very eastern as they are yet to be tainted by the religions that have destroyed the world. Also, I have a problem with cogito ergo sum being presented as “the best that they have come up with.”
It’s not, it’s just what some egocentric asshole said in an egocentric society four hundred years ago, and while we have gotten even more egocentric, there are far more beautiful concepts that have been written by western philosophy since, even by Descartes: doing a little research into the writer I am yet to read, tying him solely to cogito ergo sum is like continuing to say that Darwin said we came from monkeys, when he never fucking said that. Anyway, all of that was really just a cliff note to what I really wanted to ask: how he felt about esse est percipi, which I already know his Zen answer will be: “if I am not perceived, am I not?”
Again, it is a no brainer concept, but my interest is a bit deeper than that: not in that “being” is the goal, but how we are perceived as being; id est, if I am a genuinely happy person, with an optimistic outlook on life, and everyone around me perceives me as a negative asshole, will I forever be a negative asshole, even though that’s not who I am?; or, if I go to work and am made to feel useless and expendable, then I go home to a relationship and am made to feel useless and expendable, how do I not identify with being useless and expendable? It all seems silly writing it down, but I am currently knee deep in more drama involving something I am perceived as being but am not, so it is even more relevant than ever. When someone thinks you’re a negative asshole, that’s one thing; when someone thinks you’re a threat to underage girls and “sick,” that’s a whole other thing altogether.
A couple weekends ago, on the morning I was hell bent on raising my voice to Tenshin, I came home from the Zen center to find that someone had left a comment on my old blog, that I abandoned a year ago to officially start this new life. It started with “You are so full of shit” and ended with “you are sick,” with some manipulating naive, young girls in there somewhere. The post, which hardly warranted any attack, much less the evolution painfully obvious in the blog itself, which is why I left it live, as embarrassing as it is: here. I refuse to hide any of this shit. Fun. Then I went to log into my Facebook, only to find that a post from a year ago had been reported as inappropriate; three day ban. I figured it was the same person blindly attacking me, but good luck explaining that to Facebook. I sat out my three day ban and went on like nothing happened.
This last Saturday I woke up to another reported photo, from January of 2015; seven day ban. Fuck off and die. These aren’t inappropriate posts, mind you, but external links to my blog, which I didn’t get to chose the thumbnail for. That’s a whole other argument that I am yet to get a rational answer for. The seven day ban was accompanied by my Facebook page having been reported as fraudulent. Well shit; game over; even though there wasn’t ever a game. I was asked to send Facebook a copy of my identification to prove that my name was Sven Ellirand. Obviously I don’t have that, because my name isn’t Sven Ellirand, just like 99.9% of the art models out there don’t use their real name, but Sven Ellirand means something and is important to me and my story, so I would like to hold on to it. I did the next best thing: I sent them a photo of my DL, and an explanation of who Sven was, not in anyway expecting a positive outcome, because, well, nothing about Facebook and their rules and conditions have been the least bit accommodating to anyone who has had to deal with them.
I woke up to a message saying, “thank you Sven for confirming your identity.” What? I am still in the midst of an undeserving seven day ban that they will do nothing about, but my faith in Facebook’s absurdity is a little bit more than it was before. Thank you Mack and Abby (if those are your real names) for such a swift resolution on the identity bit. Now if you would only recognize that some crazy bitch who was attacking someone I shot a year ago created multiple fake profiles to attack us is the sole reason I spanned a 3 and 7 day ban in the course of a week for things I posted over a year ago, all would be right with the universe.
I did seriously consider scrapping everything and starting over…again. Fucking again. My life. Is it my life? or is it for everyone else to interpret and control? I’ve got some mountains to climb.
The model front this year has made me want to lay down in the street. I contacted a model in LA, which I hate to do: LA warrants a different kind of attitude that I’m not a fan of working with (prove me wrong). Case in point: she mentioned only being ok with shooting in studio, or with expressed, written consent to shoot on property, because she had a negative experience with authorities whilst shooting in a canyon in Malibu (durp).
I presented Joshua Tree, a southwest creative mecca, where I have had zero negative experience with authorities in 25+ years of shooting. She was in. On my next day off I went out to scout a location, which involved most of my only day off. I sent her photos of the spot and explained how much drive time it actually consisted of, as the spot, from the south entrance, was about 45 minutes into the park, and I was sure to let her know that I could only afford to pay her for two hours, because I live in poverty, people! She responded with “what park is this?” Then she told me that was an awful long way to drive for $200. Attitude. Then a beautiful traveling model announced my (kind of) area was on her route, so I hit her up to shoot, letting her know that Sunday was my only day off. We locked in a Sunday (Easter). I drove to LA (two hours away) to scout some locations in case she couldn’t find more money out in the desert. That turned into her asking if I could shoot Friday or Saturday in Palm Springs. Well, no, because I can only shoot on Sundays, and I already put in the time, energy, and money to scout locations.
Then it turned into me giving her and her significant other a ride to Monterey, shooting on the way; yes, that sounds like a lot of fun and is basically what I've wanted to do for a while anyway, but I can't afford to drive for days so it'll be cramped. I planned out a route; burned some cds so they would have some peaceful music; and I took a deep breath, knowing that I would be driving more than fourteen hours for a little, maybe, shooting. Within an hour of my scheduled time to go to sleep the day before, so that I could get up at 2am to leave LA at 5am, I got an “oh by the way” message… “I meant to call you, it’s just been a busy day”……….. neverfuckingmind. *sigh*
On Easter morning I got in my car and drove to Pirate’s Cove, near SLO, by my self, and sat on the nude beach, by my self, mostly because I do what I say I'm going to do, even if no one else wants to go with me. The soul I was searching for, I fear, is long dead. I have a beautiful human being in my life, two of them, three of them, and while the two year old and fetus are far from "modeling" age (if such a thing exists), I have a beautiful life, and I love it. I am still tortured by the thought of accomplishing something on the terms that I define, but I’ve got plenty of beauty here. I am still tortured by who I used to be (kind of), but I am at the point now where I am so past it, I have zero fucks to give.
Breathe.
Ultimately, all of this is my story, and it will be written and read. Whether people want to be a part of it or not is up to them. All I can do is laugh it all off and keep going....... keep dealing with 'this' ........... even if I have to sometimes shoot boring landscapes without beautiful souls in them.
I honestly don't even know what to write anymore. To say that "a lot has happened..." since my last post is redundant. "A lot" is always happening, especially when you're not posting everyday, or every week, or even every month. There are a number of things that I've been wanting to write about for a while, but things have been lining up less and less. What I've really wanted to write about is body issues and beauty, because it is what I am perpetually dealing with. I say I want to write about it, but I have been writing about it for years; I just haven't constructed anything eloquent enough to use as an official post on my "official" website... that gets a dozen hits a week, compared to my tumblr's 200+, even though I post little to nothing to my Tumblr. Have I been harping on that? I feel like I've been harping. "Harping." I'm going to post some pics to my Tumblr just to make myself feel worse. Take that.
Last week we had a Sunday off together, so we headed to a spot in the world that supposedly had a lot of ghost towns. This particular spot was one which I have driven by dozens of times, a la hwy 395. I guess it could be defined as one of those spots that I put a pin in whilst speeding toward Carson City, Nevada, courting the second wife a decade+ ago. I often feel like I need to catch people up on my life's storyline, then I have to remind myself that no one cares. Oh well. It happened, so, deal with it, professionally. *Insert smiley face* 0_0. The first spot we hit was right on the road, surreally on the road, but locked off from access by a vehicle that isn't lifted or smaller and off-roady. Cricket, the Sube, got us close enough on a terrifyingly torn up dirt road (terrifyingly torn up for a Subaru [I miss my Jeep]). Have I been harping on how much I miss my Jeep?
The spot itself was less ghost town than I imagined. The half destroyed architecture may have been old? I don't really know. It looked more like a modern ghetto mining town that was abandoned than a hundred year old community that was abandoned. Aside from the obvious architectural anomalies, it was on posted private property (yes, we technically trespassed, which I hate), and the property itself was torn the fuck up, with "mines" dug all the fuck over the place. From a distance you can really tell the toll of the mining, evident in what seemed like thousands of little man made hills from excavated earth. There were a lot of antique looking mining structures, but something tells me that most of the holes in the ground are more modern than "abandoned" from the 1800s, similar to the Joshua Tree mines, lined with modern equipment amongst rusted out antique vehicle skeletons. It sells as an historical aspect of the wonderful world of "gold mining," but the reality is that people are still digging; people are still hoping to strike it rich, the easy way, which is insanely dangerous.
I really don't know where I'm going with this post. I wasn't really planning on writing anything, but I did want to post some photos with a little update, and I no longer have an internet connection at home, so I am at work, using the now precious internet connection. My phone also stopped working yesterday, leaving me completely locked out of the world outside of my little tiny living space and my little tiny family. Not all that bad, really, except I got the crazy drive to post something after leaving the Zen center yesterday, and my brief little tail end of a sesshin, in which I had what could be defined as an epiphany regarding, you guessed it, beauty and body image, but was lost forever because I couldn't get to my journal in time. The thought was something different, I think, but I'll have to settle to what I've been harping on for six or so years. Yes, more harping.
I guess I should address the title of this post. It has nothing to do with where I went while writing, so, I don't really know what it means anymore. There is the obvious life reference, which swiftly changes when you take on a family (growing family [nudge, nudge]). I work six days a week and am left with little to no creative venture. There are a precious few days off, in which we try to accomplish something. I don't get to the Zen center anymore, which was my staple of last year. I constantly feel like something is missing, but everything is simply what it is. I was asked to attend sesshin this last weekend, for a greater cause, but the truth is I missed it out there. The sits were rewarding, even though daylight savings made sure that by Sunday I was fucking exhausted, having to abandon plans to scout the Santa Monica mountains, then my phone stopped working, then I locked my keys in the car; wine; whine; sleep; work; write; repeat and fade.
While I have been writing about body image, sporadically, for a while, I began constructing something official back in December, whilst fighting a severer than normal depression and frustration that was going completely unnoticed because, harping, no one gives a shit. The argument was much simpler than "attitude is more important than attribute," but basically states the same thing: you will never be more beautiful than you are right now. This is a very broad statement, but at its base is absolute truth, in relation to what I am applying it to. This was all spurred by dealing with what I would describe as a beautiful human being, and girl, which I was attempting to shoot, but little actually got accomplished because she didn't like her current state; a state which I simply saw as beautiful. The argument stated that what I saw as beautiful was destroyed by the negativity and self hatred of the person involved: she didn't like how she looked because she didn't look how she used to look, but failed to realize that she would look back on how she looks now and wonder why she didn't love herself and truly appreciate how beautiful (aesthetically) she was. Actually writing that down makes me realize that it is a bit more complicated than I thought going into this paragraph; this paragraph that I hadn't planned on writing.
My rambling was inspired by specific events that were happening at the moment, but only elaborated on how I've felt pretty much my entire life. I see beauty in people, and want to capture the beauty that I see, but they are stuck on the list of things that they've created to fog that beauty. Id est, I'm too fat, too skinny, too ugly, too...whatever society or childhood conditioning has mind fucked people into obsessing over, most of which is absolutely stupid and useless. This has driven me absolutely insane, and it seems as though everytime I find someone who is so genuinely beautiful that I want to capture them, they end up hating themselves enough, right now, to completely destroy the beauty that I find. How do you employ a muse that hates themselves? I am not even necessarily talking about this girl, or that girl; it is a reoccuring fucking theme that can only be defined as human. Souls in modern society are not allowed to like themselves. They are constantly comparing and judging every fucking little fucking thing. Here I fucking am fucking harping.
Breathe.
I honestly have no idea if anything I write makes any sense anymore. One of these days I will be able to structure everything in a way that makes sense, instead of these accidental rants. Part of me has completely let go of the storyline, much less accomplishing anything significant with my life. What was I really accomplishing? I keep shooting, for whatever reason, but look at most of my work and think, "what am I doing?" I am completely obsessed with accomplishing something, but most, if not all, of my work is accompanied by a resounding, "what am I accomplishing?" I talk about people's obessions ruining the beauty that I see, but am still overwhelmingly consumed by my own obsession, placing extraordinary expecations on an ordinary life.
This particular day of shooting was accompanied by her coming to terms with the fact that she is just "rounder" now, which drives me to have that look on my face that says "are you fucking kidding me?" The absurdity of it all is overwhelming. I just see a beautiful human being. If you don't see that then stop looking, and I guess that also applies to the individuals involved. lol. I am simply capturing the beauty that I find in the world, whether the world likes it or not. What I really wish I had on this shoot was someone to shoot me shooting, so the world could see that in most of these images I was holding a two year old. That's a story. No one ever captures me, unless it is the rare occasion that I laid the camera down and someone grabbed it.
At the end of the day, I am stuck between being grateful that I have people in my life who have no idea how beautiful they are, and being frustrated with having people in my life who have no idea how beautiful they are. I wish people would just trust me when I told them that there was something there, whether they saw it or not, or whether or not I could even describe it. Just be you, really; that's the lesson: you are beautiful, so be you, right now. It doesn't get anymore beautiful than that.
She's pregnant (again, right?), only this time we've not only heard a heartbeat, but we've seen the little bugger kick its little legs and arms, so...
...yet another paradigm shift.
Aaaaaand my battery is dying, so I guess I'll wrap this ramble up. Any horrific grammatical errors will be corrected eventually.
I imagine that this has to happen eventually. It has been dragging for reasons obvious to me, but ones that I can't really share with you. All obvious things; obvious things that we have to hide behind a pretty sheet of normalcy in order to "fit" into things the way we are supposed to. This has been a difficult transition for me. As anyone who knows me can tell from my last blog, one that documented over five years of my evolution, I do not pull punches, and I sure as fuck do not candy coat anything. It would not have been possible to so successfully log a journey without documenting everything, especially the ugly stuff. I don't get the luxury of ugly stuff anymore, as much as I find beauty in it, and a strange joy in writing about it, like my own little Gonzo-esqu interpretation of the absurdities that exist in this perpetually surreal landscape. I have been absent. I dare not. Besides, I'm no Thompson. That was a stupid reference. That would require opportunities. I'm still a nobody, stuck in a little mountain town. I have been writing openly for the better part of a decade to an audience that is comparable to one that might gather around a mediocre street musician on a side road in Hollywood: most nod their approval or scrunch their face in disgust, then move on; while a few might genuinely appreciate it, at the end of the day there is barely enough change in the hat to buy a pack of cigarettes.
lAvaNyamaya came about earlier this year while I was flailing to let go of the old creative process (and girl), and start over with something new. She (the last new girl) had asked me what "Beauty" was in sanskrit, apparently thinking I was far more intelligent than what she discovered I was later. I did a little research and found 201 words for beauty or involving beauty, which were mostly loosely translated, and I am sure entirely relative to use and structure within the language itself, which I assume exists in other languages, but I don't really know because I DON'T SPEAK SANSKRIT. I live in Southern California and have worked in kitchens for the last six years and I have zero grasp on Spanish. I have always noted words that I would find in ancient and Zen literature and tried to remember them, but that rarely goes well. With that, I also have a small library of phrases in my mind from other languages that I found in strange places, but they usually go misunderstood, like immer etwas (always something)[Bukowski] and che male fortuna (that bad luck)[Hemingway], or the ever elusive aufgeben (give up)[my dad]. The latter isn't even German, but "high" German, if that's even a thing.......Amish... it's fucking Amish. The point in this language detour is that I've always been obsessed with more beautiful languages, but have never had the motivation to sit my ass down and learn them, or, god forbid, go to school and study them. Regardless, even walking away from Bukowski and Hemingway novels, little language quirks are usually the things I remember.
Amongst the clusterfuck of translations for beauty I found lAvaNyamaya, which translates to "consisting entirely of beauty"... maybe. There is a very good chance that it is relative, again, to context, like it actually might be referring to having a nice shit or something; I don't really know. So, gauging by what I wanted the word and translation to be, and what I wanted my life to be a year or so ago, I held on to it and created it as a place to transition to. Life then proceeded to happen. Promises dwindled into conditions. Dreams slowly deflated into realities. The magic turned to mundane. Nothing different really happened than what happens in every relationship: it's just life. One thing that has been severely missing from my life is writing about the day to day. In trying to become more "professional," my posts became more like little, isolated and separated events, which were also complained about for not being candy coated enough.
She complains that I don't talk enough about my emotions, like every woman (or emotionally verbose) ever, but this was my outlet; this was my place where I could really just vomit out everything I was feeling and going through, and if the girl (the last girl) cared enough to read it, maybe she would understand (insert blank face). The obvious problem here is that it's not just me anymore, it's "us"..... mostly it's us. So, I can no longer write as I, unless I basically throw her under the emotional bus, which is fine for my private journals, in my frustration, but isn't fair at all on a public platform, even if no one is reading it. That feels strange to say, but that has been my conundrum for the past six or so months.
I've been tip-toeing around potential fights and trying not to piss anyone off, but wanting desperately to continue my own literary journey, and really write about the shit that is life, which makes life consist of beauty. I need to find some sort of way to vent without making anyone involved sound like anything less than humans being, because that's what's going on. I'm not being victimized by some silly little girl's negligence; I am no longer a victim to the system, while I remain a victim to a very few, sad, ignorant minds; I am living my life with someone; I am still shooting, and want to shoot, but am navigating judgement; even in doing things the "right" way, I am not doing things like that anymore; I am desperate to write, but fighting with my Zen understanding from 2015 that I am basically useless; I am usefully useless. I'm sure there is a balance in there somewhere.
Lavanyamaya (I have no idea why the A and N are capitalized, because, that's right, I don't speak fucking sanskrit), consisting entirely of beauty, has become a beautiful little irony in my life. Everything is beautiful, even if it means staying up all night explaining the same thing over and over to someone who doesn't seem to hear it, or dodging dishes because you may or may not have been "cold" when you got home. It's all beautiful, and it's all absurdly hilarious. It is life. Life is ridiculous.
How's that for a random, odd collection of photopraphs?
As the years go by, we always say certain things, cute little things, like "this year is going to be different," or "better," but the reality is always the same: it's just another year. We gauge our years by what happened, or what we accomplished, or things that went wrong, but I have begun to level off and realize that all the things that we give worth to are simply things... things that happen to everyone, always. A year ago I was fresh off of shooting Keira Grant and Katja Gee, having counted my pennies to drive my Jeep up to SLO for the opportunity. The trip itself was something significant, heading out into the world by myself, without that girl that was always there, watching the sunrise over the bay in Santa Cruz with some long lost friends, then arriving late to shoot in a makeshift location because of the rainy cold of San Luis Obispo. I wasn't happy about not shooting in nature, or the crammed shoot because they had somewhere to be after patiently waiting for me, but........... I was happy; strangely optimistic.
I went back to my shitty job in the shitty desert with a smile. Then, a year ago tomorrow, while driving up to my little mountain town to act as projectionist for our little film festival, I found myself upside down in my Jeep, my life flipped by a Ford Focus on one of the top ten most dangerous highways in the United States. Strangely enough, in an ultimate twist of fate, I can walk to the theatre to work the same festival tomorrow; which I guess would also be a twist of luck. In yet another twist of fate, when this festival started seven years ago, I was working for the same person I'm working for now, but at a different restaurant. I had to take a week off from work to do the festival, and when I returned my name was no longer on the schedule. That, I thought, was the end of that relationship. While working yesterday before having to take a week off, I glanced at the schedule and noticed that my name was missing. I had a little panic attack.
The year itself has been all over the place. I was finally coming to terms with the fact the the girl wasn't coming back from AZ, after waiting for over a year in the ass end of the California desert by myself, then I got a random message from this new girl in January, saying she wanted to shoot. That turned into this. She wasn't just a girl interested in modelling, and my life took a drastic shift in a different direction.
By the end of the restaurant season in the desert, I was living back in my little mountain town, we were road tripping up PCH, and she was pregnant. By the end of the summer I was a regular at the Zen Center that I grew up with but didn't realize it, I was back in the old boss' amazing new kitchen, and I was comfortably the "Baba" of a two year old. These are all things I've written about in the old blog, or here, but, really, contemplating this last year.......everything is really crazy.
It was a beautiful year. It was a beautifully tumultuous year.
She is now officially interested in modelling. We spent Christmas in AZ with her parents, and she worked with her first photographer that wasn't me. "Scotty" was great. It was a positive expereince for her, but she has since dealt with the typical "let's shoot" then backing out at the last minute from photographers so it has gotten a little discouraging.
On Christmas day we stopped to shoot a little while trying to make it back to the Zen Center for Christmas dinner. I'm getting better at shooting around a two year old, and the two year old is getting more patient with our shooting.
For New Years we headed out to the trash can known as the Salton Sea. We found a nice little abandoned structure that hasn't been demolished yet, but it was right on the side of the road and just up the street from a fire station that I didn't notice until later. While we were shooting, a fireman jogged by. He waved.
My focus at the "sea" itself was what I remembered when visiting as a child: dead fish; dead fish everywhere. I can't help but wonder how fish keep getting in there. lol. I've never been out there when the weather was bearable. Usually it's about 115 degrees, so, no people. on this occasion there were a bunch of people. Not just "people," but people with cameras... expensive cameras and fancy lenses, shooting....... boring shit; they were all shooting boring shit.
I was shooting her, and this.
My life.
I love it.
I haven't written as much, or shot as much, as I would've liked to, but everything is turning out beautiful. That was all I ever really wanted.
