Stu Jenks: Fezziwig Photography, Music, and Writing

"The Goddess Kali at Cold Harbor Battlefield" (c) 2008

"The Goddess Kali at Cold Harbor Battlefield, Virginia" (c) 2007, 2008 Stu Jenks

    When I fly to The River, I land in Richmond, the Capital of the Confederacy. I rent a car or a truck and take a short cut through the thick woods to hook up with Route 360, avoiding the Interstate completely. Along the way, I skirt the Malvern Hill and Cold Harbor National Battlefields. And these days when I'm returning to Richmond International after a visit to the Rappahannock, I stop at Cold Harbor and pay my respects. What were mostly open fields in June of 1864 are now hardwoods and pines growing up from the old eroding earthworks. But the Park Service did leave the largest field of battle tree-free. So unlike most small Civil War battlefields, it still looks close to how it was 140 years ago.
    First time I came here in the 1990's, I cried hard, as much for my dying father as for the ghosts of the Union dead. Today, I just stopped and made a couple of cell phone calls, finished my Diet Coke and took a few time-travel shots of a hundred-year-old poplar tree. It's overcast today with a sprinkling of rain. It's a damp cold that seeps into the bones. A nice change from the desert cold I'm used to but I'm happy that I don't live here anymore, for a good number of reasons, not just the cold or the mosquitoes. I haven't called The South home for over twenty years. But I know the speech. I understand the people. Yet my heart resides atop a Mesquite-covered hill north of Tucson.
    But no matter where my heart lives, I am a Son of Virginia nonetheless. I have a burial plot of my own, that I may or may not use, at St. Mary's Whitechapel in Lively, Virginia, and I am happy that I have the option to eternally rest in the Old Dominion (even though my guess is my friends will take my ashes to Owl's Head instead.) I love Collard greens, Krispy Kreme donuts and Camel cigarettes and I relate well to people who pray. And I have a hard time with hardcore Yankees from New York City who think they are smarter than me, just because they were born above the Mason-Dixon line. And when someone mentions the name of Robert E. Lee, I instinctively nod my head and lower my eyes.
    I am a Son of Virginia and here at Cold Harbor, for just a few days in 1864, we were victorious. Not that Slavery or State Rights were just causes. It's just nice to remember a moment when Virginia won.

[For my information about the Battle of Cold Harbor, go to the Wikipedia link at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cold_Harbor. It's a good and accurate site.]

 

"Rappahannock River Prayer Stick" (c) 2008

"Rappahannock River Prayer Stick" (c) 2008 Stu Jenks

[Batik Fabric, Crab Pot Buoy, and Eye Bolts: 7'10" x 21" x 5"]

Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks: Chapter Fourteen: "That Everything of God"

Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks:

Chapter Fourteen: "That Everything of God" (c) 2001, 2008

 

    Haze on the Rappahannock just before dawn.

    A pinhole camera shot of the pier.

    A ghost image of me.

    The ghost of my father.

 

    Leaving tomorrow for Tucson.

    A last day at The River.

    Sitting on that same step as on the night he died.

    Still feeling him around.

    Thinking, that maybe what all the holy men and women say is true:

    That separation is an illusion

    That there is no difference between this world and the next, except for the point of view.

    That the ego's judgments create a wall that only exists in my mind.

    That the River flows, with and without my judging it.

    That Dad is here and not here and still here.

    That I'm here and not here and still here.

    That a part of a full spiritual life is knowing that being in this physical world is only a fraction of the complete reality.

    That by standing on this pier, I'm on the pier and I'm everywhere in the universe at the same time.

    That Love and Acceptance is in all of the worlds, in all of the universe.

    And that Love is the only thing that matters.

    And that it is in Everything.

    That my Dad is part of That Everything now,

    That he was always part of That Everything of God.

    And so am I.

 

Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks: Chapter Thirteen: “The Pier Spiral, Richmond County, Virginia”

Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks:

Chapter Thirteen: “The Pier Spiral, Richmond County, Virginia”
© 1999, 2001, 2008

    Damn.
    The last thing I wanted to do was get into a fight with my Mom. Words like 'Stop being such a god damned martyr!' and 'Quit trying to control how Dad is dying, will you?' flew out of my mouth.
    Bottom Line: Mom is just scared. She's not the asshole. I'm the asshole.
    While I was yelling at Mom, Pamela was in with Dad, quietly singing to him.
    Now, the fight is over. Pamela’s on the front porch swing. Mom’s at the kitchen sink, crying. I feel like shit.
    I go into see Dad who hasn't been awake since yesterday.
    "Dad, I'm sorry," I say to the unconscious man, "I'm trying to get along with your wife but it is hard. I'm trying. Really, I am. Again, I'm so sorry, Dad."
    I go out to the kitchen.
    "Mom, I'm sorry."
    "Just leave me alone, OK?" she says through her tears.
    I touch her shoulder. She cowers away. I remove my hand and take a step back.
    "I'm really sorry, Mom."
    She doesn't say anything. She just turns and walks away.
    I can't feel any guiltier for yelling at Mom. I've been keeping my powder dry for the last month, ever since I arrived to be with Dad as he dies, to be part of this odd makeshift hospice group of my mother, my sister and I. But the keg finally blew tonight.
    I go out on the porch and talk with Pamela for a while. She suggests I yell at her instead. I know she’s trying to help. It doesn’t
    A couple of hours pass.
    It's quiet at the River house now. Mom has gone into the bedroom to lay beside her husband. I'm back out with my sister on the front porch. We're just talking small talk now, smoking cigarettes.
    Then Mary comes out to the porch.
    "He's gone" she says, "It was so beautiful. He just stopped breathing. So quiet. So peaceful."
    "Are you sure?" I say.    
    [My first thought is pure selfishness. ‘Oh, Dad, not tonight. Don't die tonight. Not after I've had a big fight with your wife.' Now who is trying to control how Dad dies?]
    We all go into the bedroom. Not much different than other times, but it appears Dad isn't breathing at all. I place my hand under his nose and feel some air coming out.
    "Mom, I think he's still breathing"
    "He's gone," she says.
    I bend down closer to him and realize that his skin is beginning to change color. I ask for a mirror and put it under his nose. Nothing. He's getting whiter. I then know he’s dead.
    "Remember Stu, what you said? That we need to open the window to let the soul out?" Mary says.
    "I'll do it" says Pamela.
    I said this Window/Soul thing over a dozen years ago. It was just a bit of conversation. I think I was reading about Navajo Spirituality at the time. I don't really think Dad's soul will get trapped in this house, but I say nothing as Pamela opens one of the windows. Then I open a window just so they think I'm being compliant. I'm really in shock right now. Dad's dead. My Dad is dead.
    Mom then says it's time to dress Stuart. I've been dreading this moment since the day Mom told me that she wanted Pamela and I to help her dress Stuart in his favorite shirt and kakei pants after he dies. I thought it would be difficult to manhandle the old man, both physically and emotionally. But after being such a jerk tonight, I'm going to go along with whatever Mom says.
    Pamela is at Dad's head. Mary and I are on either side. We take off his nightshirt and make him naked. We grab his pants and pull them on him. We have to pull hard to get them to his waist.
    And at that moment, it all feels completely right. We are performing a ritual that has been done for centuries: The dressing of a dead loved one for his passage to the other side.       
    Pamela holds Stuart's head and we pull him up into a sitting position and put on his favorite plaid Dockers shirt, the one with the turquoise checks. We gently lay him back down. Mom buckles his belt. I'm standing next to Dad holding his hand. It’s cold and slack. A lifeless hand, but still my Daddy's hand. Mom leaves the room to call the minister, the nurse and the undertakers. Pamela stays a bit longer, then she leaves too.       
    Then it’s just Dad and I.
    I whisper to his body.
    "I'm so sorry Dad about getting into a fight with Mom. I'm so so sorry. If I could go back in time....." I trail off. I can't talk through my tears.
    Scott, the priest at St. Mary's Whitechapel is the first to arrive. The nurse and her husband are next. The undertakers have to come from Richmond so It'll be an hour plus before they get here. It's after midnight now. Dad died a little after 11. Everyone except me is on the screened-in porch making small talk. I was there for a minute or two but it felt a little disrespectful somehow. I kept thinking 'My father is dead in the other room and we're talking about the weather?' I seem to be going back into Dad's bedroom a lot, holding his hand, watching him change color from red to pink to white. I can't help but wonder if he's really dead. It's hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that Dad is truly gone. I hold his cold hand again. The undertakers will soon be here. I'll only have a few more opportunities to touch my father.
    I want to hold his hand forever.
    I'm in the kitchen getting a soda when the nurse comes up and says:
    "Stu, are you planning on being in the room when they take your Dad out on a stretcher?"
    "I might," I say.
    "I would really suggest you not be there for that. All you'll remember is seeing him put into the bag. That memory will overshadow all the rest. You may want to go upstairs or go outside when they do that."
Pamela walks in on the conversation and is getting the gist.
    "I'll go up stairs," she says.
    "I'm going to the pier," I say.
    The next hour is so weird. More small talk on the porch, but I can't hang there. I drift back to the bedroom to hold Dad's hand, then outside to have a smoke, to back to his bedside. At one point, the nurse's husband comes up and talks with me. I don't have a clue what he said.
    Finally at around 1:30 a.m., a black hearse comes up the drive and two men enter our kitchen. One is a very skinny man, in a huge black suit, that fits him like a tent. Next to him is large fat man with a small black suit, that fits him like a child's hand-me-down that’s two sizes too small. Wait a minute. They seem to have on the exact same size black jacket, the one-size-fits-all-undertaker's-jacket. When did I enter a David Lynch movie? When will the midget appear? Is Dali going to walk through that door?    
    The skinny man holds his hands together in that earnest sort of way. The fat one just stands there. They talk with the nurse and Mom for a bit and then go outside to the hearse to get the stretcher. I take this as my time to exit stage right, for the pier. I grab the cordless phone as I leave the house.
    Out on the pier, I call Annie to tell her that Dad's dead. I already talked with her earlier about the big fight with Mom. Annie's trying to help me not feel so guilty about it all. God bless her, but her words give me little comfort.
    "I feel so guilty about the fight," I say, "I wish Dad had died tomorrow instead"
    "I know, Sweetie." she says.
    Ironic that I have been so critical of Mom for wanting Dad to die on her schedule, and now, on the pier, that's exactly what I'm wishing I could do. Have Dad die a day after I'd been a jerk, so I can feel better.
    I talk with Annie a bit more, saying I'll call her tomorrow. I also asked her if she would call Len and Virginia (My mother's sister and brother-in-law in Tucson). That would be great, I add. And check on plane tickets for you and Len to come to the funeral.
    "You are coming, aren't you?" I ask.   
    "Of course," She says.
    "I really need you, honey."
    I'm back up at the house now. The undertakers are gone. So are the nurse and her husband. Scott the priest is still here. Pamela is nowhere to be seen. I tell Mom I'm going back to the pier. So glad that Scott is here. Mary loves Scott. She seems OK too, considering she’s lost the love of her life.
    I walk the couple-hundred-feet again to the pier, this time with my Dad's old Marine Corps blanket and the phone again. I call Michael, and tell him about Dad's dying. He's great as ever. We talk for a half hour and then I hang up and put the phone down.
    I've barely noticed the weather these past few hours but I sure do now. The wind has really picked up. Must be a storm in the Bay or a front moving in. The river is choppy. The wind howls.
    I then begin to talk to my Dad. The wind swallows my words but that's alright. I'm sitting on a step at the far end of the pier, looking out into the dark Rappahannock River.
    "Dad, I'm so sorry," I say to the wind.
    "I'm really sorry about yelling at Mom. Please forgive me. Please forgive me. Please." I just keep crying harder. I don't speak for a while. I just cry.
    Then I feel a presence. I don't trust it at first, but then I know it's him. I swear. It's Stuart.
    He then sits down beside me on the steps of the pier and put his arm around me. I could feel the light pressure of his hand on my shoulder. And I swear to God I hear him speak.
    "I forgive you, son."
    "You do?"
    "I do."
    "I'm sorry."
    "I know."
    "I love you, Dad."
    "Me too, honey," he says.
    I just sit there at the end of the pier with my Dad for a long time. I'm wrapped up in an old blanket. I feel his weight against my shoulder. I cry a lot. He doesn't say much more than he already has. I feel his love. I hope he feels mine.
 

Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks: Chapter Twelve: "Grass, Graves and Fire: St. Mary's Whitechapel Episcopal Church, Lively, Virginia"

Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks: Chapter Twelve:

"Grass, Graves and Fire: St. Mary's Whitechapel Episcopal Church, Lively, Virginia" © 2000, 2008

    Dad's cancer has shrunk but hasn't gone away. After almost two years of awful chemotherapy, we are pretty much where we started: that Dad has a bad lymphoma and he's probably going to die.
    I was up in New York City for a few days shooting and attending a friend's wedding. [Major emotional highlights were the Klezmer band at Craig and Barbara's reception; the delightful and generous devotees at the Hare Krishna Bed and Breakfast in the Lower East Side; and the many Monet haystacks at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.] I've just come down to Virginia for a brief visit with the folks, before flying back to Arizona.
    It's good and not-so-good to see Dad. I always experience some sort of internal emotional bugaboo when I'm hanging around my mother and father. All of us Jenks' are judgmental (this is good, that is bad, blah, blah, blah) but my mother and father have it down to an art form. Dad's mockingly sarcastic laughter at my going to their church tonight to shoot is just one example. Mom's subtle shaming sighs of disapproval are another. God love 'em, or to Hell with 'em. See what I mean? I inherited the virus too.
    Within twenty minutes, I’ve parked my rental truck in a gravel parking lot of their church.
    My parents' church, St. Mary's Whitechapel Episcopal Church, is just down the road near the little town of Lively, Virginia. Lively is actually just a crossroads, with a drug store, a post office, and a bar called 'The Corner' that serves pretty good shrimp and really great hamburgers. The church is a few miles south of Lively at an even smaller crossroads. The church is the only thing at the corner of routes 201 and 354. It's a very small chapel that has been there since 1669. It thrived during Colonial Times, was vacant and abandoned for fifty years during Antidisestablishmentarian Times (when the Church of England was shunned by most new Americans after the Revolutionary War), was reborn in the 19th century, and is now an historic financially well-endowed little church in the middle of nowhere in Virginia.   
    There's no moon tonight but there’s plenty of good light shining in the graveyard that comes from a strong streetlight near the back of the church. The church’s sexton has apparently cut the grass today. What a delightful surprise. Large amounts of cut grass are scattered all around. I guess he didn't have a grass catcher. My good fortune. I walk around the cemetery looking for just the right stone, just the right light and find the stone and the light pretty quick. The smell of the grass is strong and pungent. We just don't have grass like this in Tucson.   
    I make a circle of cut grass on a tombstone. I look and find the angle, set up my Rollei, and practice making circles with my Zippo. I get the hang of it after a few minutes. I stop and take in the space: The ancient Oak trees that surround me; the graves of wealthy Colonial Virginia planters; the monuments of  a  movie star or two. 
    I think I know what I'm going to do. I open the shutter and enter the frame and begin to paint a flame circle above the grass. Cicadas sing loudly from the surrounding woods. I close the Zippo, and then go for a walk in the cemetery. This is going to have to be a long exposure. Probably a half hour or more. It's a strong streetlight but it give off less light that you think.
    Up the hill, I visit the four plots for the Jenks Family. No markers or graves yet. Two huge Oak trees grow just north of the plots. I won't mind having my ashes here some day. I walk some more. I walk to my rental truck to check the time. Fifteen minutes have gone by. I throw in a Peter Gabriel CD and light a smoke. After 25 minutes, I get out of the car, and return the grass circle. I close the shutter and repeat the process all over again. I paint a flame circle, walk about the graves, think about my Dad, and think about Death. Sometimes I don't think about anything at all.
    I didn't think about Death much until my Dad got sick, but I sure do now. I believe in some sort of Soul Survival, be it heaven or just a part of a big ocean of souls. I don't know, but I'm not scared of that. Actually looking forward to it, in some small way. Ok, maybe a little anxious but not bad. But I'm in my mid-40's, still thinking that my death is a good thirty years away. But being around Dad, who seems to be getting sicker and sicker, seems to be dying more than living, and this taking-for-granted-that-I'll-surely-live-a-long-time is leaving me a bit each day. When they found his cancer, it was no bigger than a pencil point. They cut it out, but it came right back, even larger. So they cut it out again, and that just made it mad and it spread like a weed. To his lymph nodes. To his lungs. All over. Now it's filled most of his left lung, all in a year or two. And if he hadn't taken the Agent Orange Chemo, he would have been dead months ago.
    It could happen to me, to you, to anyone. Cancer, that is. And Death is surely going to come to all us someday.
    But again, it's not Death or Heaven that I'm scared of. It's living an unfulfilled life, here on Planet Earth, of wasting the time I have, of not risking greater happiness or larger service to others, of not fully loving those who I love and not fully receiving the love they give, of not forgiving myself when I truly fall short of the mark, of not applauding myself when I get it right. That's what really terrifies me, that at perhaps age 77, I'll look back at my life with deep regret, knowing I should have eaten more ice cream, should have forgiven that friend, should have loved the imperfect Stu just a little bit more.
    Then again, I could die tonight, by accidentally hitting a deer with my truck on the way back to The River House, and avoid this imaginary-unhappy-old-me all together.
    Nah. That won't happen.
    I guess I'm going to have to eat more butter pecan, forgive Rocco, and love Stu more.
    Damn.

Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks: Chapter Eleven: “Casper the Friendly Ghost"

Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks:

Chapter Eleven: “Casper the Friendly Ghost" © 2003, 2008


    The canyon smells of dark musk and wet sand. It rained yesterday which is uncommon for the Sonoran Desert in the springtime. Usually we’re without rain until July. This thick rich scent is three months early, but neither I nor the Palo Verde trees are complaining.
    I’m rock-hopping up this anonymous canyon at the base of Mount Lemmon. The Full Moon's large and bright. I need no flashlight. There is no trail. It doesn't matter. I’m just wending my way up through the large granite boulders that sit in the trickling creek.
    I find the angle pretty quickly. I've come with an idea but then again, maybe, I'll try something else. I have my Zippo, my Pentax and a 28 mm lens, for my idea is to create a wide angle flame spiral. But wait a minute. There's a small puddle of standing water in a depression on this boulder. Hmm. I do a practice drawing or two off to the right. This'll work.
    I set up the angle and the shot, and focus on a spot on the boulder. Then, with my index finger, I dip into the puddle of water and begin to draw a water spiral on the rock. It takes many passes back and forth from the puddle, but a wet spiral slowly appears. I return to the Pentax and look through the viewfinder. Yea, boy. I then open the shutter, draw a flame spiral and wait ten minutes before closing the shutter. I then notice something that I didn't expect. Over the ten minutes of exposure time, the water spiral has almost completely evaporated, leaving barely any wetness at all on the rock. I just stare as the spiral disappears. I close the shutter at the end of ten.
    I redraw the water spiral, open the shutter, do another Zippo pass, and step out of the frame for another ten minutes. Cars pass far below on the Mount Lemmon highway, cold air rushes down the high mountain wash, and the water spiral fades away. I don't have to be Buddha to recognize how this vanishing water spiral shows me that Life is temporal. That nothing is permanent. That everything changes.
    An old lesson that can't be taught enough, to this Middle-Aged, Middle-Class American White Boy.
    It's the Wednesday before Easter. I'm aware of a Christian energy, a Holy Ghost, that's moving through this time of year. Yet this water spiral evaporating right before my eyes truly resonates far more with me than any image of a suffering Christ or thoughts of his final dinner of bread and wine among friends. This water spiral is my own personal Holy Ghost.
   The Holy Ghost was always a cool thing to me as a kid. The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost. Amen. I didn't trust God the Father all that much. My own Dad was a distant man who rarely praised me and often seemed to look at me with silent scorn. It was hard to wrap my arms around an image of a Loving God the Father, with a Dad like mine. Also, I didn't know about the Son, Jesus. He seemed a little weird to me, getting himself crucified and what was up with the drinking his blood on Sunday. Ick, I thought as a child. But the Holy Ghost? Now that I could get behind as a six year old. Mysterious and a little scary but I always had a feeling that the Holy Ghost was on my side. A wispy piece of God that was everywhere. A part of God that liked me personally. Sort of like Casper the Friendly Ghost but bigger.
    I can still get behind Casper. I feel him here tonight with my Zippo, and the little water spiral that keeps disappearing, and the musky green smell in the creek, and the cold mountain air that comes from above.
    After a bit, I pack up and rock hop back down to my truck. When I reach the road, I look back up the canyon and thank it for the good night and for the little bit of magic that it gave me. And also for the little lesson that everything changes, and that nothing stays the same.
    A little lesson, perhaps, from Casper the Friendly Ghost.

Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks: Chapter Ten: “Altar of Repose, Maundy Thursday, Tucson, Arizona”

Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks:

Chapter Ten: “Altar of Repose, Maundy Thursday, Tucson, Arizona” © 2000, 2008

    The Altar has been stripped. The crosses in the sanctuary are all draped in black cloth. The choir chairs are now stored in a closet somewhere. The church is dark. It's 2:00 a.m. on Good Friday and it's my watch. The woman I relieved has just left. My camera and tripod are in a pew, and I'm standing in a side chapel at the back of Grace St. Paul's Episcopal Church. I have an hour to pray and shoot. Better get to it.
    I was here earlier tonight for the Maundy Thursday service. Some Christians live for Easter, or for Christmas. I live for Maundy Thursday, the most meditative service in the Episcopal liturgy. We arrived in the evening and heard the story of the Last Supper, of how Jesus told his disciples that they should love everyone, serve many, and be humble to all. The story goes that after bread and wine, Jesus washes the feet of his followers. Symbolically, the congregation of Grace St. Paul's washed each other's feet. Back in the day, the priest used to wash all of the feet of the parishioners, he being Christ, we being the disciples. I preferred the old way. Now, first I'm Jesus, then I'm a disciple, and we now only wash one foot per person, which seems just down right silly to me. Both feet or none at all, I say. But I'm just an artist, a mystic, an odd duck, who comes to the church of my birth infrequently. I really shouldn't criticize them. The Washing of One Foot is about as experiential as most Episcopalians get. They are doing the best they can, but sometimes I do wish that I had been born Black Southern Baptist. Now those folk know how to raise the roof for Christ.
    Sometimes I think the reason I like Maundy Thursday so much is simply because of an experience I had as a child. Mom took me to the Maundy Thursday service at Zion Episcopal Church in Upstate New York in the early 1960's. I guess I was around seven. After the foot washing and the communion and the stripping of the altar, they turned off all the lights, and then they rolled in this cannon. Yes, a cannon like the one they shoot off at football games when the home team scores a touchdown. Well, they rolled in a this cannon, pointed it right up the center isle, and shot it off. KA-BOOM. As a seven year old, I thought that was the neatest thing. Usually I had to be quiet in church, but that night they are shooting off fireworks. Neat-O.
    No cannons at Grace St. Paul's tonight. Strong incense but no cannon. Pity.
    Tonight, after we had delivered the host to the Altar of Repose in the side chapel, we were instructed to leave the church silently. No coffee hour. No shaking of the priest's hand. Just go thoughtfully and quietly to your car and go home.
    But for the hard core among the faithful, there is the Watch of Gethsemane.
    As soon as tonight’s service ends, someone will be praying in the side chapel until Noon on Good Friday. This is the Watch of Gethsemane, the pulling-an-all-nighter-for-Christ.
    On the night prior to being arrested, Jesus went to a Garden at Gethsemane to pray and he asked his disciples to come and pray with him. They came to the garden but they soon feel asleep. This made Christ mad. Then the Romans came, the boys woke up, ears are flying off of people, ears are being miraculously reattached back onto people, Jesus is dragged away by the Romans, and Christ had one hell of a bad day on Friday. You know the story. But before the Romans came, Christ prayed and really wished his disciples had stayed awake. So, today, modern Anglicans, stay awake too. Well, sort of. At least some of use lose a little sleep on the night before Good Friday.
    I'm here at two in the morning for a number of reasons:
    1)   I love being in the church alone, late at night and this is the only time I have the chance to do that.
    2)   I like praying and meditating in general. (I pray all the time.)
    And 3)   I’ve got a photograph in mind.
    I turn from the large sanctuary and enter the tiny side chapel. It's so beautiful, with many white candles lit all around and white lace meticulously hung on all the windows and walls. A one-person kneeler is positioned in front of the small altar that holds the bread and the wine, the Host. I close my eyes, then open them, then close them again. I can see it in my mind’s eye. I know what to do.
    I go and get my Rollei and tripod and set them up and compose the shot. Focus 2/3 back. Set the f-stop to 5.6. Get out the Zippo. There is a ton of light here. Half a minute exposure time tops. I open the Zippo and go to work. I flick the flint. I make a spiral. I snap the Zippo shut with a loud clack. I repeat the process. Once, twice, six more times. Time becomes timeless as it does sometimes when I'm shooting. Not always, but it is tonight. I take a deep breathe and close my eyes after the seventh exposure.
    "You have a shot," says The Small Voice Within.
    I pray the voice is right.
    I'll take it on faith.
    I open my eyes
    I still have to pray and experience the wondrous dark of the church before the next Watcher arrives at three. I quickly pack up the Rollei and the tripod and place them to a pew, outside of the side chapel. I slowly walk around the sanctuary. Down the center aisle. Up by the pipe organ. Around the main altar. Back down a side aisle. I breathe it in again and again.
    I return to the side chapel and the Altar of Repose. It’s got to be close to an hour now. Time to do a formal prayer. I kneel on the single kneeler, close my eyes, lazily clasp my hands, and pray.
    I pray for my ancestors. I pray for my mother and father. My sister, too. I pray for Annie and all the past women in my life. I pray for the recovering addicts and alcoholics, newcomers and old-timers alike. I pray for friends, near and far. I pray for the healing of strangers and the healing of loved ones. I pray for healing for myself. I pray for the best possible outcome for everyone. I pray with words. I pray with no words at all.
    My eyes open after a time and I see the Altar of Repose above me, with its crystal white light and its sheer white lace. I smile.
    "And God," I say quietly aloud, "Thanks for guiding my hand and my mind tonight, so I didn't catch the lace on fire." I chuckle. “That would be a bad thing.”
    I then hear a soft knock on the outside door to the church.
    Must be the three o'clock shift.

Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks: Chapter Eight: “Grace St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Tucson, Arizona: Labyrinth Walk”

Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks:

Chapter Eight: “Grace St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Tucson, Arizona: Labyrinth Walk”
© 1997, 2008

    The Sexton was nice enough to put up an extension ladder. I climbed onto the roof of the Parish Hall, that overlooks the maze. The Sun’s going down fast. Gordon and Judy, the two priests at Grace St. Paul's, have OK'd my shooting the Thursday Evening Labyrinth Walk. The parishioners have just arrived, about ten in all. From the roof, I tell the walkers that I'm going to shoot their meditation this evening.
    "And don't worry if you're shy and don't like your picture taken," I say. "I'm using real long shutter speeds so everyone will be a blur. That OK?"
    "Sure that's fine," one woman says, with others nodding their approval. But one woman walks to the side.
    "Really, you can walk the Labyrinth. No one will know who you are." I say.
    She doesn’t say anything but she doesn’t return to the circle until much later.
    Judy, the facilitator of the Walk, explains to the congregation how this works.
    "One by one, we'll enter the labyrinth and begin to walk," she says. "You can have a prayer or a question in your mind or you can just empty your mind. You can walk it fast or slow. There is no right or wrong way. I would just suggest that you stay as much in the moment as you can. Just be in the Labyrinth. And when you reach the center, stop for as long as you like, and then walk back out. And don't worry about bumping into each other or passing each other in the Labyrinth. It's really easy to pass and it’s OK to touch each other."
    Some people chuckle.
    "Also, I suggest you walk silently. All right, let's start."
    Judy presses play on a nearby boom box and Gregorian Chants come from its small speakers. One at a time, the participants enter the labyrinth.

    A little history about the Church and I:
    I was born and raised in the Episcopal Church. Baptized, confirmed, the whole nine yards. My mother Mary is what I affectionately call a member of the Episcopal Mafia: A member of the Standing Committee of the Diocese of Virginia, music director and a vestry woman at her parish in Lively, Virginia, and active in the Church since she was a child. Dad was Senior Warden for a time and designed the Memorial Garden at his home church of St. Mary's Whitechapel. He rarely goes to church in his retirement years. He doesn’t believe in God, much less Jesus, but he is still a cradle to grave Episcopalian. My sister is a member of the choir at St. Mark's Episcopal in Raleigh, North Carolina, but by her own admission, she is only going to church to ‘cover my bets just in case there’s a heaven.’
    I rarely go to church. Christmas. Maundy Thursday. Maybe Good Friday. Not Easter. Funerals, yes. Weddings, when they happen. That's about it. I'm not a Christian. I don't believe in the Risen Christ, and I believe that they basically fucked up the faith after the Nicene Convention in the third century AD, when they took out the Gospels of Thomas and Mary Magdalene, and minimized the Sacredness of Women in the Church. Plus I believe in Reincarnation, the validity of all of the world's religions and the sanctity of the mystic's individual journey to God. Some would say that shouldn't exclude me from attending Grace St. Paul's, a very progressive, liberal, reconciliation church, but it does. In my own mind, not the minds of the congregation or the clergy, but in my mind.
    When I do, on those rare occasions, attend a service at Grace St. Paul's, I add and take out words from the liturgy so I don't feel like a hypocrite. You'll often hear me say ‘Through Jesus Christ and others’ instead of ‘Through Jesus Christ our Lord’ and when the congregation is reading the Nicene Creed, there are whole sections in which I stand silent and mute.
    But my roots, both ancestral and personal, are in the Anglican/Episcopal church and to deny that would be, for me, like a Jew who doesn't go to temple, denying that he is a Jew at all. And I do like the ceremony of Holy Communion, a good non-shaming sermon from the pulpit, and strong loud music from a big pipe organ. I go to midnight service on Christmas Eve, primarily to sing "Silent Night", and at the outside chance, to sing "In the Bleak Midwinter." And even though I don't go to Easter services, I can easily hum the refrains from "Hail Thee, Festival Day" and "Jesus Christ is Risen Today."
    The Church is in my DNA and in my muscle memory whether I like it or not. And I believe it's important to honor the spiritual practices of my ancestors, living and dead, regardless if I practice them myself.
    And even though I don’t believe that Jesus was the only Son of God, I do believe in a number of his teachings, most important in my mind: That we as human beings have a moral obligation to help those who are poor in body, mind and spirit; that God is Love and Love is God; that God is a mysteriously magical healing energy, and that He loves me, no matter what.
    He loves me when I’m sober. He loved me when I was a drunk. He loves me when I eat too much. He loves me when I eat my vegetables. He loves me when I give a kind word to a friend. He loves me when I’m a judgmental asshole.
    And that one of my jobs while I’m on the planet is to try and love myself a fraction as much as He loves me. And by doing so, I’ll hopefully love others a whole lot more, than if I was trying to do it alone.

        The Labyrinth is full of people, perhaps a dozen now. Some are solemnly looking down as they walk. Others are joyously swinging their arms around the corners of the maze. A couple are sitting outside of the circle. Me? I'm on the roof mumbling about how I'm losing the last bit of sunlight. My exposures are up to 5 seconds now but it's not the blurs I mind. I want them. I just need some light for a good negative. I'm a little flustered. I relax and take a breath. Breathe, Stu, breathe. I see my friend Beth make a sweeping move around a sharp corner of the labyrinth. I open and close the shutter. Nice. I watch the changing composition of people below in the ground glass of my twin lens reflex. I wait, and then shoot again. Wait and then again.
    After a few more minutes I'm done shooting, yet the parishioners are still walking the maze. I climb down the ladder and walk toward the entrance of the Labyrinth. I take a breath. I wonder 'Did I get the shot?' I clear my head of that worry as best as I can and enter the maze, slowly passing someone who is coming out. I follow the path. I look at my feet as I walk. I take one of the hairpin curves a little fast, and allow my arms to swing wide as I regain my balance. I smile. And for a few moments, I'm grateful to be a member of this Episcopalian Tribe.

"The Mustang High Grass Spiral" (c) 2008

"The Mustang High Grass Spiral, Mustang Mountains, Arizona" (c) 2008 Stu Jenks

       MLK Night. I walked in the tall grass at sunset, playing a poor version of "We Shall Overcome", but I didn't judge myself too harshly for the finger faults. Neither would have Dr. King. I had carved the dirt spiral in the ant-flat a hour earlier. I came back, packed up the mando and set up the shots. First shots, not so good. I then moved the camera and shoot directly into the rising Full Moon with a bit of dusk-light still left in the sky. Never had done that before but I kind of liked what I saw and what I shot. Waited another hour and then shot some flame spirals but they didn't make the grade. Wasn't a flame spiral night. Frankly, I may not use the Zippo again. Felt like I was taking a big step backwards.

       Then this morning, I thought about the portable battery-powered Christmas lights I carry in my 30D bag, and wondered what a slow dance with them around this spiral in the high grass would look like. It looks awfully good in my mind's eye. I do a little test dance in my kitchen with my Christmas-Lights-On-A-String. Looks good here. The Mustangs Mountain are an hour and a half away. Hmm. I hope the storm that's coming up from Mexico takes its time.

       The Mexican clouds did roll in, but it didn't really matter. The shot I got the night before was just fine. I did shoot with the Christmas lights but it was clunky and ill-timed. And this afternoon ended up being about Forgiveness and not about Photography.

       While hiking today, up a canyon that was new to me, I started speaking to God. I do that sometimes. It helps me release feelings and gain insights. Old saying: If I live only with my feelings and have no spirituality, I'm ruled by my emotions and I have no perspective. If I live through Spirit alone, without feeling my emotions, I'm stuck, arrogant, and in denial. But when I live in that middle place between God and Passion, I have them both, and I feel balanced, centered, generous and hopeful. That's what happened today in that side canyon. I expressed forgiveness to a musician friend who inexplicably axed me from his life a few years back. I felt forgiveness for a long ago lover, who was sweet and kind, but who wasn't in love with me even though I wish she had been. And I gave myself a break, letting go of some judgments about my mismanagement of money, about my inability to age gracefully, and about some of my shortcomings when dealing with family. When I got to the dirt spiral just before sunset, I realized that what I needed from the Mustangs had already been given to me. No photographs were needed. Again, I did shoot some nocturnal images, but it wasn't the night for circles of Christmas lights over a dirt spiral. It was a day about letting go and forgiveness. But I did play "Cut The Tent" on my mandolin in the stunning purple dusk, and I did call a friend on my new cellphone to tell her how beautiful it was in the Mustangs. And I did leave smiling with a cloud-fuzzy Full Moon rising in the eastern sky. 

"The God of Love (Confounding)" (c) 2007

"The God of Love (Confounding), Off Wyoming Route 34" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

[For Catalina]

"Stu's New Mexican Fun Facts" (c) 2007

"Stu's New Mexican Fun Facts" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

[Images: "Doubting Thomas, St. Francis Cathedral, Santa Fe, New Mexico" & "Plastic Medicine Wheel, Carrizozo, New Mexico"]

1)        Went to Taos. Well, drove through Taos really. Stopped at The Pueblo briefly and paid money for admission and for each of my two cameras that I brought into the village. White people gawking at Red people. Was bizarre to say the least. Took a couple shots of the old graveyard and split. While driving out of Taos, I listened to National Public Radio. They were having their semi-annual fund-raising campaign. (Had actually been listening to the fund-raising on NPR for my whole trip, through Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota, Montana, and Colorado. Wyoming had the best music. Montana had the most pleasant DJs. Nebraska had the kindest voices. Made sense.) I noticed something different, here in Taos, from the other stations I heard thus far. Lots of dead air. Then giggling afterwards. Then people talking and they didn’t make much sense. Hmmm. I think they need to put down the spleef in Taos, or monitor their medication a bit more closely.

2)        Had a plan to see the Sante Fe Plaza and visit St. Francis Cathedral again. It had been twenty years since I was last in Sante Fe. Back in the day, you could see the Cathedral from a distance and get your bearing quite easily. Not now. Luxury hotels, taller or as tall as the church, surrounded the Plaza. I had to actually ask someone where the Cathedral was. Had a delightful time inside of St. Francis, though. I prayed, I shot, I just look around, I prayed some more. Hadn’t changed much in twenty years and still felt like the sanctuary that it is. I thought of sticking around for dinner in Santa Fe but I didn’t. I wasn’t wearing the right clothes for a nice meal there, nor did I feel like I belonged. Saw a huge smiling bronze pig out front of a fancy gallery. Grinning, from jowl to jowl. The North Carolinian in me just sees that as a silly way to spend money.

3)        Went to a 12 Step meeting in a bad part of Albuquerque, just at sunset. Good people, bad neighborhood. Felt like I’d been to church twice that day.   

4)        Spent the night in an anonymous motel in Socorro. Had good coffee the next morning at a café just off the town square. Every town in America has a café now, that has good coffee, fresh baked goods and a friendly staff. And they ain't Starbucks. Gives me hope for America.

5)        Drove by the Trinity Atomic Bomb Site. Again, didn’t really drive by it for I quickly realized I wasn’t supposed to be on that government road and hastily turned around, but it was just over that hill. Just being close still gave me the willies. The world changed forever over there, on July 16th, 1945 at 5:29 in the morning.            

6)        Midmorning, I went hiking into the Valley of Fire, a place of recent lava flows, only 1000 years old or so. Didn’t hike far. Just a ways in, played the mandolin for a while and took in the sharp blackness that is the Malpais. The wind blew cool and the acoustics were flat in a pleasant way.

7)        Just south of Carrizozo, I saw some amazing clouds that looked like huge jellyfish flying in the sky. I took their picture but it didn’t translate at all. Sometimes you just have to be there. While walking along the road looking at those clouds, I found an old hubcap among the sage. The paint had peeled away from much of it, yet the cheap chrome still adhered to the center of the plastic wheel. I took a picture, then picked up the hubcap. I saw an object I could make with this wheel and with a few bits of colorful cloth. I dusted it off and took it back to the truck. (It now leans against a leg of my small dining room table. All cleaned up and waiting for the time I tie some cotton to it, but right now I just like looking at it on the floor as I leave my kitchen. Maybe after the New Year, I’ll fiddle with it.)

"First Sunday of Advent" (c) 2007

"First Sunday of Advent" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

[Image: "St. Francis Cathedral, Sante Fe, New Mexico" (c) 2007]

"Devils Tower National Monument, Bear's Lodge, Wyoming" (c) 2007

"Devils Tower National Monument, Bear's Lodge, Wyoming" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

        Bing, bing, bing.....bing, bing. A musical hint I so badly want to send to friends back home via my cell phone, when I first saw this majestic peak in front of me yesterday. But alas, I haven't had cell phone coverage since Colorado.
        Hint: In a movie, I'm carving a mountain out of mashed potatoes. I'm Richard Dreyfuss. Where am I?

        25 years ago, I kept on driving on my way to the Pacific Ocean and didn't stop here. I regretted that for years. Today, I hadn't planned on stopping but I asked myself this simple question when I was a
couple of hours away. Question: When will I be within a hundred miles of Devils Tower again? Answer: Who the hell knows. I'm so glad I stopped. I haven't been disappointed in the least, in my twenty-four hours at this holy and funny spot.

        Stu's Fun Facts:

1)      Devils Tower was the United States' first National Monument (Yellowstone was the first National Park). Teddy Roosevelt made it a Monument in 1906, for he didn't want this unusual igneous intrusion to be harmed or abused.

2)      The Monument is quite tiny by National Park standards (Yellowstone and The Grand Canyon are huge in comparison.) Just the Tower, the land below it, and parts of the Belle Fourche River are inside of the Monument boundaries.

3)      Devils Tower rises 1267 feet above the surround land. Straight up.

4)      The Monument contains a very large Prairie Dog town. Sweet Jesus Christ, they are the funniest, most mesmerizing creatures I have ever seen in the Wild. I promised my friend Annie that I will take her there someday simply for the Prairie Dogs, (which she can get easy access to from the modest but beautiful campground that sits on the banks of the Belle Fourche.) Annie loves baby creatures, little wild
animals. This place would be a Mecca for her.

5)      Devils Tower is a holy peak for the surrounding tribes: Cheyenne, Lakota, Arapaho, Shoshone, Kiowa and others. Everyone of these tribes call the mountain, Bear's Lodge, or Bear's Tipi, or Bear's House or variations of that (even though one tribe does call it 'Penis Mountain".) But an ignorant arrogant smart-assed white guy showed up back in the day, and said that an Indian told him that the peak was
called "Bad God's Tower", so he called it "Devils Tower" and it stuck. No one, but him, had ever called it that before. The park system is thinking of changing the name to Bear's Lodge National Monument after being petitioned by the neighboring tribes. I'm on the tribe's side in this one. I don't think the French would like it too much of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was called Black Magic Woman Church because a Nazi called it that in World War Two.

6)      Also, numerous Indians are a bit pissed off that so many people climb Devils Tower. A couple thousand people a year do. A compromise has been reached by the Park Service. Even though they can't mandated that no one climb during the month of June (A heavily ceremonial month for many of the tribes) they have asked that people not climb the Tower during that time and they have gotten 90% voluntary compliance. (Separation of Church and State prohibits the Service from doing anymore than asking.) High marks to those who agree to stay off the mountain at least one month a year. Brief aside: It did bamboozle me when I saw the lamps of flashlights of those bivouacking on the sheer
face of the Tower, the night I spent there. Brief flash of light in the dark at 1000 feet above the ground. Very bizarre.

7)      Some say that Sweet Medicine, the Cheyenne Hero, was buried at Bear's Lodge.

8)      The Crows come to Devils Tower to worship and fast. They built small stone "dream houses" as part of the vision quests, structures that are as long and as wide as a man. A worshiper would recline in his or her structure, head to the east as part of his vision quest (Crows I understand are matriarchal, so I bet women vision quest too.)

9)     I had a couple of pretty powerful experiences with the Tower and its tall Grasses, its moist Sage, and its very big Day and Night Sky. I'm going to keep mum about them, but I hope you enjoy the images I took.

10)     Lastly, odd as it might sound, the Prairie Dog town is worth the trip alone. Praying to God And To-All-There-Is, is all well and good, but laughing out loud at the antics of the Dogs is just as heaven-sent.

"All Souls' Through The Eyes Of Others (c) 2007

"All Souls' Through The Eyes Of Others" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks , Tom Willett, Jeff Smith, Cathy Spann, Leigh Anne DelRay, Karen A. Dombrowski-Sobel and Dominic Arizona Bonuccelli.

[More images from the All Souls' Procession. Photos by great photographers I know and love here in Tucson. I'll give line credit as we go. The top image is one of mine of the Balloon Girl rehearsing at dusk. Remember: Click on the images and they become much bigger.]

[The above two images were taken by the great local photographer Jeff Smith, i.e Jefe]

[This shot from the 6th Avenue underpass was taken by man-about-town Tom Willett]

[The next two images of Stu with the Pipers, and of an elderly woman with Death, were taken by the ever-fetching Karen A. Dombrowski-Sobel]

[These images of Hoops and Poi come from the passionate and big hearted Leigh Anne DelRay]

[These amazing images were taken by the polite man with the kind face, Dominic Arizona Bonuccelli]

[The photos of the Beasts of Burden, the Procession of the Urn, and of the Healthy War Man were made by the lovely and talented woman with the infectious laugh, Cathy Spann]

[And last but not least, a few more images by yours truly]

"The All Souls' Procession" or "Do We Really Need More Cameras In The World?" © 2007

"The All Souls' Procession" or "Do We Really Need More Cameras In The World?" © 2007 Stu Jenks

 

 

            Like how ingesting hallucinogens makes boring things interesting but conversely, how Acid tends to destroy the magic of a naturally ecstatic experience, so was having a camera with me at the All Souls' Procession like smoking a joint in church. I got a few images that I like but I took 300. (And unfortunately I had an operator/camera problem, when, at some point, I knocked my viewfinder focuser, so when I thought I was manually focusing things sharp I was actually manually focusing things soft.) And after seeing the clusterfuck of other photographers and videographers, both professional and amateur in and around the Procession, it made me want to do as The Firesign Theatre instructed me to do 30 years ago, which was to 'cut off the soles of my shoes, climb a tree and learn to play the flute.' Or at least retreat to my studio and play my mandolin for nights on end.