self-portrait

tag: self-portrait

Mifune

place: New Hope, Pennsylvania

John Hopkins 28::June::1998 22:22 → permalink

Kathleen sees a samurai-helmet-like aura exploding from me head while I do some yoga on the grass of her backyard next to the Delaware River, not so far from where Washington made his legendary crossing. she banishes or outlines it with a sage smudge-stick. I am aware, but feel bad later, when making a joke at dinner that this helmet is related to my desire to play Toshiro Mifune in a Kurosawa flick — the one I recall so vividly, The Hidden Fortress, I believe, where Mifune is galloping bareback, sword upraised with the two-handed hilt gripped directly and unwavering in front of his right shoulder. I am stressed about the Shaman situation. I am not able, in the time available, to unwind enough to engage the psychic energies that I have available, except. I am able to ponder that I have had a previous incarnation within the geographic confines of Scandinavia. a quick reduction tells me that, yes, indeed, I could have been a Viking. or a simple inhabitant with business to finish in the Northlands. takin’ care of business now. pacing pacing pacing that land, beginning to know it better in a distributive and global sense than the locals. strange (I say to myself). a word I use often to describe events of the external world. but it is a nice time, and Loki appreciates it all. he continues to theorize about the Lightning Woman, and the Rain Man, and the Cloud Woman from the huge bed in the bright white master suite with the balcony overlooking the river. the four of us (Anthony, Kathleen, Courtney, and I) throw him up and down in a blanket immediately before he and I get in the car to drive to Lawren’s place in Alexandria.

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languages

place: en route Helsinki, Finland - Hamburg - Kiel, Germany

John Hopkins 01::June::1998 23:36 → permalink

alien nation. night train really isn’t. leaving the flat at 1745 by taxi. leaving Tornio by bus at 1810. leaving Kemi at 2000, trudging in Light to the South, but noticeable dimming within the roaring grinding cabin, high whine of air movers, both the two bunks too slim for two, but two forced to be in one because of need. needs of fate, needs of whatever. I do not know, needs of time, beautiful in sleep, beautiful upon waking, stretching away, and the shyness that for me is an inscrutable hidden in language and culture difference and herself. her silence given to searching for words, and that thing I know well of Babylon — the excretory hubris to attain God after the language leaves. maybe this can never become anything other than what it is. and for that I am thankful, for it to be what it is in the moment of when it is enough. the word romantic surfaces, but this is only a poor shake of letters not touching on the actuality. romantic movements are gritty-eyed, skin-burnishing events. hallucinogenic Light flashing through the trees when the shades are opened in the morning, well, at the 0500 hour because sleep is not possible for me. last car in the train. yeah, the language difference, something I am too familiar with, and the limits of expression. can we substitute one form of expression purely for another? the example being the susseration of skin-to-skin, a touch-language (this has been thought of for years: and acted upon more than once), instead of this ancient way of going that would never be now — constructs of letters making sound, making sense and dissonance. the shaping and imprinting, wanting to remember the feeling (do we ever have memories of feeling?) hand moves back and forth, pressing the body-wall of Other, never knowing what it is to be. the conflict of sensory feeding and sensory survival and sensory overload and sensory subjugation and sensory purpose. goodbye is goodbye when the first meeting is only days in the past. saying goodbye is unspeakable. the way one looks at the Other. the eye as receptor (not transmitter like history gazing on itself) nor ear as receptor, only a transmitter of attention. The body and the voice as transmitter (touch, the receiver and transmitter.) Light emissions. (voices move) through the containing ether. shaping the words to trace an outline of being on the vacated space of that body once known or thought to be known or thought to be anticipated (memory of loss. and loss of memory.) anticipating that I would. or just anticipating what it was. shoulder, arm, wrist, finger. ring.

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self portrait with Sanna in the Kemi-Helsinki express

place: en route Kemi, Lapin lääni - Helsinki, Finland

John Hopkins 31::May::1998 23:48 → permalink

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self portrait with makkara

place: near Kemi, Lapin lääni, Finland

John Hopkins 15::May::1998 12:21 → permalink

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self portrait, Laboe Marine-Ehrenmal

place: Laboe, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

John Hopkins 08::April::1998 16:01 → permalink

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self portrait, Artpool

place: Artpool Gallery, Budapest, Hungary

John Hopkins 17::March::1998 19:10 → permalink

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rgb

John Hopkins 21::December::1997 12:38 → permalink

two sketches from the Center of the Universe…

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going around, coming around

place: Akureyri, Iceland

John Hopkins 29::April::1997 20:47 → permalink

At lunch today, MB comes home and we go together down to some official state office here and finalize our divorce which has been simmering (well, hardly) in a separation for almost two years. The disjunction of the union was as quick and as easy as the official union way back in the summer 1992 with our friend Nick visiting from Colorado as the witness in the city courtroom. (the glum looks: I with 1st degree burns on both my legs from a crazy accident falling into super-heated mud in a thermal area, hiking on the first day Nick arrived, and MB at 7 months pregnant. not auspicious for a start.)

the marriage really only lasted a few years, these last two we have been legally separated. Loki is the most critical force operational between us, but whatever, it is remarkable the coolness both of us (don’t) show during the proceedings. We are cool people, I guess, after what MB characterizes as a bad marriage. Her second. My first. At any rate, I guess it frees us both up for the future, whatever that might bring. After that, Loki and I walk around town where I visit the GilFelag, an arts/culture organization who put a call out for exhibition proposal — I wanted to talk to them about doing an exhibition of laser prints later in the summer. We also paid a visit to Lara Stefansdóttir, a colleague that I met at the Icelandic Educational Network (ismennt) an Internet activist who is now consulting with the University of Akureyri.

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mind is

place: Savannah, Georgia

John Hopkins 21::October::1996 22:34 → permalink

The next morning. Slow. With some warmth. Sunday in Georgia. The party last night downstairs limited sleep. Morning. Chilly with the dampness of the seaside pine groves. The river. Winter. Late October. Bet it gets really cold here by February. The exhibition last night was by one Bernie Casey, a painter. Work titles ran like Strong as a Tree, Missing Thumb, and Land Stories . Stories that openly the Land can tell. History speaks with a partial tongue.

A mind is … A heart does … A hand can … Education is …

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self-portrait

place: Storm King, New York

John Hopkins 16::July::1996 21:51 → permalink

head up to Storm King sculpture park with Randy and Amy, great weather and a good break from the deep-lab printing regimen. necessary. else exhaustion sets in. or maybe it has already. did we play frisbee? we must have, it was a perfect place for it!

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self-portrait

place: Akureyri, Iceland

John Hopkins 18::June::1996 21:51 → permalink

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self-portrait on the Summer Solstice

place: Selatangar, Árnessýsla, Iceland

John Hopkins 20::June::1995 12:00 → permalink

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self-portrait on Trafalgar Square

place: London, England

John Hopkins 11::April::1995 14:34 → permalink

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self-portrait enroute

place: en route Vantaa - Helsinki, Finland

John Hopkins 02::April::1995 23:37 → permalink

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self-portrait on Tjörnin

place: Tjörnin, Reykjavík, Iceland

John Hopkins 02::February::1995 12:25 → permalink

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self-portrait with Jón, piloting the Arnarberg

place: Eyjafjörður, Eyjafjarðarsýsla, Iceland

John Hopkins 03::August::1994 13:10 → permalink

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self-portrait on Skjaldbreiður

place: Skjaldbreiður, Árnessýsla, Iceland

John Hopkins 22::January::1994 13:13 → permalink

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self-portrait at the Aquarium

place: Bergen, Norway

John Hopkins 20::September::1993 18:20 → permalink

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self-portrait, under the glacier

place: Sólheimajökull, Vestur-Skaftafellssýsla, Iceland

John Hopkins 25::August::1993 18:02 → permalink

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self-portrait with Loki

place: Morsárdalur, Vestur-Skaftafellssýsla, Iceland

John Hopkins 09::July::1993 15:02 → permalink

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self-portrait on Gígjökull

place: Gígjökull, Rangárvallasýsla, Iceland

John Hopkins 20::February::1993 12:32 → permalink

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self-portrait with sunLight, summer Solstice on the Arctic Circle

place: Hrísey, Eyjafjarðarsýsla, Iceland

John Hopkins 21::June::1992 23:55 → permalink

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self-portrait after civil wedding with Nick (witness) and Magga

place: Reykjavík, Iceland

John Hopkins 10::June::1992 13:14 → permalink

I had extensive second-degree burns on my ankles with painful edema in my legs after falling into a mud-fumarole area where the ground just collapsed under me a few days ago. I had to hike out seven km. to get back to the car — mostly walking in the cold river to staunch the pain. Got married during MB’s lunch break, Nick didn’t know he was going to be witness. No happy looks from the newlyweds. A portent?

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