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Wednesday, July 30, 2003
So I scanned in the Polas, and they look okay. When I started doing all this, it was kind of comforting. Now I don't know: at times like these, it's hard to keep a clear grasp on what it means to document something. SCSI is lying on the open ironing board next to the computer; Dorothy is asleep on the cat shelf on the window. Two days ago, Esmeralda was there. Now she's not; and she'll never be again.
Bazin says somewhere that one of the reasons photographs are so compelling is that they are sort of like death-masks. A key feature of the death-mask is that there was once a body here, against which this form was made, and the reality of that contact, decades after the fact, makes some kind of connection between us and the actual world of that body. For all the ability to trick up photography that digital media have given us, at the heart of the photograph is the sense that there was this light, which bounced off the person being photographed, and into the camera, where it caused a chemical reaction that produced this image. I think that's part of what drove me to do all the scanning, a sense of some kind of contact. Part of me wishes I made more: more photographs, more reality, a denser texture of remembrance. But the heft and warmth and noise of SCSI, who has now jumped insistently into my lap, reminds me that in the end, images are just images.
posted by jeev |
12:54 PM |
 
I spent most of the morning digging through old photographs, trying to find good ones of Esmeralda. There aren't many - once I moved up here, she became shy, and on those occasions when there were cats and cameras and the general hilarity that often accompanies same, she was reposing elsewhere. I have some Polaroids from LA that I'm going to try to scan in, but my experience is that Polas don't do that well on my scanner. But I did find this picture, her sitting atop the filing cabinet in my office that served, along with an old Moon Pie box in the interior of a kitchen cabinet, as her favorite spot. I'd come in and sit down to work and she'd look at me and pretty soon I'd get up and go around and pet her and she'd preen and purr.
The ratty blue blanket was a key element of the perch: every so often I'd fold it up neatly and place it on top and then she'd dig and nose and rearrange it to suit her. Some days she'd make a pocket and crawl happily inside. Eventually the blanket would fall off, and I'd retrieve it, and fold it up, and the game would begin again.
posted by jeev |
10:56 AM |
Tuesday, July 29, 2003
I have five cats, the eldest a brother and sister, Fred and Esmeralda. Esmeralda hasn't been feeling well for a while - we thought it was thyroid problems - her T4 levels were elevated. But medication didn't help, and last week she just stopped eating. This morning an x-ray revealed spots in her lungs - she has cancer and there really isn't anything they can do about it. I still remember with absolute clarity the moment I first saw her - stretching elegantly toward me in her cage at the West Los Angeles pound. That was 13 years ago. In ten minutes, a friend will come and take me to the vet's so I can say good-bye. It's just her time, I guess. I really, really wish I'd had a few more years. I know this is going to break me up. But despite the fact that she's been very brave and stoic, she's not comfortable. So I'll let her go, with my love. She has been a sweet, sweet cat.
posted by jeev |
12:55 PM |
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