I stumbled upon this scene of a burning truck seat several years ago at a dump in the Canadian Arctic, outside a small village, far north of tree line. I stopped to watch the orange ball of fire and black smoke and took a few photos.
The image seemed appropriate for Dreaming Man, especially since it appeared at 4 AM, on a hot steamy early morning, rain coming down, a cloud forming in this apartment, leaving a damp film on the walls. The birds are already chirping.
In fact, this is a present tense situation after waking up with tense burning eyes, tossing and turning on hot damp sheets. I immediately opened Finnegans Wake, which never fails to lift the spirits. It made me smile right away to read the following line:
"it's life that's all chokered by that batch of grim rushers" page 291. This was in a passage including a mention of a "foist edition" publication "utterly exhausted before publication, indiapepper edition shortly", which concludes "there is no use for your pastripreaching for to cheeseit either..." 291.
Funny this passage jumped from the book of dreaming scripture... I spent two hours working on a food shoot the previous afternoon, a set up of stale bread, five-day old tomato paste drying out in a pot in the fridge, a rotten pear and expired cream cheese, all on a torn, leather wallet, literally bursting with a rotten parsnip. To wake up at 4 AM, burning in damp heat, to find a photograph taken several years ago in the arctic of a burning chair at a dump in the middle of nowhere and then to read about the no need to pastry preach or cheese it either, all against a backdrop of grim reapers, the old dance of death reference, choking or checker pattern of life. I can imagine the first edition, with the marbled page, the decorative plates at the beginning of the book, India-pepper pattern, mostly likely a leather bound book.
Anyway, you'll have to read it for yourself, if you're "decontaminated enough to look discarnate..." 291.
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