Are my hands on an invisible steering wheel? Is this one of those secret Martial arts tricks I claim to know? Am I ready to fight or offering myslef for arrest? Or is this (really) a pose I struck to pretend I didn't want to be photographed, whenin truth, I was damn proud of everything that was growing in my life. Looking back, I understand why folks saw resource around me. Looking back, I understand I was a creative force that stirred angles/curves of thought that shifted otherfolks towards a richness. Sometimes you have to lose yourself in order to see yourself reflected ...in order to understand what to reclaim. Not dead yet. Not dead yet. the grace of living real, sometimes affords the chance to see with new eyes and to know that source of flow still awaits within. Some folks burn the past. I call them burners. A lot of hype swirls around us about "letting go" . I preached that myslef for years.It sure sounded good. Reality for me, I am an archivist among other things. Those aptitude tests I took for entering the military (oh boy, I was sure anxious to die in Vietnam to prove I was a man! I sure snapped out of that) suggested that I was a strong candidate for Journalism School, ready to help run a radio staion or magazine or film documentary segment on the front lines.... But I shuddered at the idea od "journalist" since it seemed so beneath being an "Artist" . Low and Behold,years later, through my archiving and documentation and (yes) radio interviews/tv shows I notice I am doing something damn close to what the military said they wanted me to volunteer to do. I wonder. If I hadn't shunned the title of journalist way back then, I might be a commentator on CNN or somewhere by now. God knows I have walked in and out of some spaces/places that match what journalists do. I also enjoy the potential beauty from being non-partisan and trying to showcase overviews that give the people a view and they can then choose later what it all means... beyond all this, I was raised a patirot, but not a blind one... Have youever wondered what could have/would have happened if you had actually joined up and participated? Would the owrld be a better place if I had done that rather than define myslef as artist-musicmaker-poet-archivist??? I think about this alot. Youcan tell, from this photo that I wasn't afraid of a fight... even though I had the martial arts training, I learned the wisdom of running. Even if you win, you end up in a bad place, most of the time... if not a hospital regretting that you culd have "pulled apunch" rather that take those few extra shots when your opponent was down for the count. My biggest criticism of the folks who fought wars and came back to become police officers (in all the various forms) is that they shoot folks in the heart, when they could just as easily shoot them in the knees.... I was smart enough to know that if I had entered a legal battlefield, i'd a liked the emergency of it too much. So, in a sense , this photo reveals that I am current with that dilemna at age 25.... I am here, wondering if I can be as harmless as the song I wrote back then entitled "harmless". yes.yes.yes.