DayBooks: October 21, 1993 (Fri) 03:50 - Freeman Lake

The following pages are extracts from my written diary for the year 1974. I meant for it to be a part of the collection of Wood Nymph nudes of Joni Wiffen, covering the period with the first session through the last. For continuity, I decided to start with my leaving Kodak and joining an artist's cooperative. The last mention of Joni was in early December, so I decided to close out the year. Then I started reading for content, and the project changed.

The year 1974 was probably the most important in my life. The Arab oil embargo raised gasoline prices and people could only buy gas on certain days of the week, based on their license plate. I was living in an apartment two blocks from where I worked, with a grocery store on the corner that I passed twice a day, so the car sat for days in the parking lot. I had been working in the Research Labs at Eastman Kodak for three years, and didn't realize just how bad the economy was. In the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, I quit my job to start a portrait photography business.

But the most important thing about that year was that I met Chic, a woman who changed my life. I was getting out of a marriage that had been a disaster, and even though I got married again in 1983 (for five years), this woman still remains the best thing that ever happened to me.

Looking back at the 24 year old I was then (I'm 43 as I write this), I think that under other circumstances, I might have a son today who would be about that same age today. I'm glad I don't have to go through what my father must have experienced with me at that age. I don't like who I was, and don't think that I would have approved of a daughter getting involved with someone like I was.

So, this is a chronicle of a young man who tried to make his dreams real, only to watch them become a nightmare. More than that, it's the story of a relationship, from beginning to end. There was a song I grew up with that sums up my feelings about this work ...

"Let me tell you a story that is sad but true, About someone who just may remind you of you. Let me tell you a tale, let me help you to wake up and think ...Somebody buy me a drink!

It begins long ago on a happy day, With a fool who was loved and threw love away, Who exchanged a good home for a flop-house, a bar, and the clink ... Somebody buy me a drink!"

I'm fortunate that I didn't sink quite that low, but I was quite the fool ... that's the only word I can find that describes my behavior. I was as much a fool at love as I was at business. I failed at both.

From the age of 17, I had prepared myself to be a professional photographer. It was my major in college, and I had been saving money for years to open my own studio. I had the talent, but the timing was lousy ... people just were not buying pictures of themselves because they were waiting for hours in lines to buy gasoline that had tripled in price in just a few months.

Somehow, I failed to make the connection that if it costs three times as much to drive a truck the same distance, then the price of things like fruits and vegetables also had to increase. It cost more to get new cars from the factories to the show rooms, so those prices went up as well, and people stopped buying them because they could not even afford gas (if they could get it), so there were layoffs in the auto industry, which led to layoffs in the steel industry ... well, it's all pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain, but I guess I was just thinking with the wrong half.

The same failure to observe the world around me led to my ignoring a relationship that a lot of people would envy. But there was a silver lining in this cloud ... I failed, but at least I tried, which is something a lot of people never do. There is nothing wrong with dreaming, but there is a lot wrong with not trying to make them real. I just had a problem distinguishing what is really important in life, made a bad choice of priorities, and didn't recognize a Good Thing when it happened.

After 1974, I went back to college and learned a new career - computer science. I managed to achieve an international reputation in an obscure corner of the discipline over the next 15 years. Today I'm collecting twice as much on unemployment than I was earning when I started at Kodak in 1971, and I'm thinking about another career change.

This is the story of a year of my life, the best of times and the worst of times. These photographs, both studio sessions and candid snapshots, record people whose lives I touched, and who touched mine. Some of them are still a part of my life, while others are just faces whose names I can't remember. Lots of people are mentioned only by their first names, and I can't remember all of their last names, nor would I recognize some of them on the street today.

Take this at face value ... a confession of a mis-spent portion of a life ... things for which I shall no doubt suffer on Judgment Day. I'm both ashamed and proud of it. Maybe I didn't catch it, but at least I reached for the Brass Ring.

Maybe it will make a difference in your life to see what I did with mine - maybe it won't. Maybe it will keep you from being as much of a fool, or maybe you'll see yourself as less of one than you thought.

I was going to start with the first time I met Joni, the model for the Wood Nymph photographs. Then I decided that I had to start with the first time I met Chic, the woman who shared this year with me, because when she came into my life, she gave me the strength to try to make my dream real, she was my strength when I abandoned the dream, and she taught me to be strong when she left.

Last update: 28-Jun-96 by dennette@wiz-worx.com <Who is this "Dennette" person?>