Winter Solstice 2007

The year is coming to an end with the normal angst and stress of the season. Inspirational movies and television specials are the order of the day. Each year I remember that our holiday at this time of year was first observed thousands of years ago long before Christ was born most likely when the first primates walked upright and noticed the changing of the seasons. And I recall that this, the winter solstice is the marker that many of man’s religions observe by different names and with different traditions. As Wikipedia observes:

The Winter Solstice, also known as Midwinter, occurs around December 21 or 22 each year in the Northern hemisphere, and June 20 or 21 in the Southern Hemisphere. It occurs on the shortest day or longest night of the year, sometimes said to mark the beginning of a hemisphere’s astronomical winter. The word solstice derives from Latin, Winter Solstice meaning Sun set still in winter. Worldwide, interpretation of the event varies from culture to culture, but most hold a recognition of rebirth, involving festivals, gatherings, rituals or other celebrations. Many cultures celebrate or celebrated a holiday near the winter solstice; examples of these include Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Years, Pongal, Yalda and many other festivals of light.

Our planet moves through space the days change getting longer until December 21 or 22 depending upon your geographical position on earth and then moving away from winter, the days becoming shorter until the summer solstice when the whole pattern repeats. My mood like that of many other humans I have found at this time is manifest with anxiety and trepidation. “The light” folks always say when I complain about this phenomena. I don’t know why or if it is the declining light but this is always a difficult time for me.

Cultural Themes it seems run according to the seasons and the religious events of the society.  It is no surprise that this year, Christmas season there is even a movie being vigorously hyped called “ATONEMENT.”

I plan to explore this theme myself in the coming weeks.  New Years 2008 will represent a new direction.  The below is from Wikipedia”

The atonement is a doctrine found within both Christianity and Judaism. It describes how sin can be forgiven by God. In Judaism, Atonement is said to be the process of forgiving or pardoning a transgression. This was originally accomplished through rituals performed by a High PriestYom Kippur (Day of Atonement). In Christian theology the atonement refers to the forgiving or pardoning of sin through the crucifixion of Jesus Christ which made possible the reconciliation between God and creation. Within Christianity there are numerous technical theories for how such atonement might work, including the ransom theory, the Abelardian theory, and the Anselmian satisfaction theory.

Images and Words: Copyright: John Michael Shklov. Kapaa, 2007

Copyright: John Michael Shklov. Kapaa, 2005

The Final Lesson

She was the last student in class, that day, the last day of my 18 year string of years teaching photography and art classes at Island Community College. When she bent over to pick up her belongings, I noticed her not unattractive figure. Mary Smith was the usual type of older student, yet another artist probably with an unspoken agenda to somehow use photography in their work. Mary showed me photographs of her work, dark, “European-like,” were my unspoken observations.

A familiar jealous stab when she told of her marketing success made her a little more interesting. What did she know that I had missed? Why had commercial success eluded me so long? I was teaching others for a living rather than doing my art for my living as Mary apparently had managed to pull off. And with a small smile she offered me a room to stay in her villa in Rome.

The system wide cutbacks affected the 55% of the teaching staff that were unentitled part timers. It saved the State a lot of money but put a lot of precariously perched instructors and lecturers in an even a more precarious state. I was one of those poor folks. To make matters even worse, my wife of 26 years chose this time to ask for a divorce and demand cancellation of our marriage contract and a division of our assets. I was trying to save my house, trying without success to assume a big mortgage on my own without a job. I felt on this last day of class pretty sorry for myself. Earlier at the beginning of class, Mary asked me if I would give her a ride to her car after class. I eagerly agreed, secretly hoping it would lead to something more intimate.

My desk was cleaned out, my personal belongings gone. I left my keys on the counter and 18 years of memories flooded my mind. I remembered my little family spent the terrifying hours of a recent hurricane safely protected and huddled behind the darkroom’s concrete walls. The heavy steel clad door slammed shut. Locked. I checked. I felt sorry for myself. My life was changing and I didn’t know how it was going to be, “downstream” as they say.

Mary sat beside me, an attractive but aging hippy chick alone with me in my small Nissan pickup. I could smell her strong body odor and also a faint smell of her period. Strangely I thought the overall smell reminded me of tomato paste, somewhat ripe, but not entirely repulsive, with a compelling element to it. Mary looked at me curiously and spoke with a note of caution as I tried to guess her intentions. We drove carefully in the pounding rain. “Do you remember Ivan” she said?

Ivan was a big, thick, smiling, Russian looking youth who had taken my evening photography class a few years earlier. The first impression he gave one was of his ethnicity. I thought how he was aptly named since he just looked so much like a Russian. His features although not unpleasant, were rough hewn and overly large. His smile and attitude were attractive. He was at once loud and quiet. This quality in particular seemed to give clue to his Russian schizophrenia. After I met him I discovered Ivan was the son of an old acquaintance, Paul Chekov. Ever since he had been my English instructor in college, his father and I had never really hit it off. I remembered that there had been rumors of an affair with a student before he left teaching.

Ivan’s father Paul was a trust fund baby from New York. His family, already well known in Russian Émigré circles became wealthy as Paul’s father’s success in the New York world of Architecture translated into money. Paul brought a good measure of that wealth to Honolulu and bought a business and made good real estate investments.

I remembered that Ivan had hit on every female in the class, even the older ladies. After a month or so, he settled in a mutually exclusive and steamy relationship with a voluptuous young Japanese girl who had a public weakness for colorful lacy and flashy peek a boo underwear. Truly, I’ve forgotten her name now. Let’s call her Helen. I lost contact with both Ivan and Helen after the semester was over. Now here was someone who knew Ivan. “I was his mother” Mary said. “Was?” I replied, suddenly caught up in her drama.

We sat by the side of the road in a little cul de sac while the rain kept up a steady drone. Mary started to tell me a story. She explained that Ivan was dead. He had taken his own life. She began by asking me what Ivan had told me about his brother. Did I remember that Ivan and his brother Peter were twins? Had Ivan told me about his brother’s trial and incarceration? I remembered vaguely that he had said something about a trial. Murder. His brother had received a life sentence on the mainland for a murder that he had committed in a rage of self defense he insisted.

Mary told me that the arrogant and vigorous Paul, the father of these once fortunate and healthy, smiling, good looking twin boys, collapsed in court with a massive heart attack when Ivan’s brother was convicted of first degree murder and put in prison for life. Paul retired in his new wheel chair to a sad seclusion at his ranch in Oregon. Without a tear Mary continued her story as my unease grew she explained she took my class to be spiritually near her now dead son. The nexus of his death she thought began in my class where he met Helen. Together before and after class they explored the deep sexual bonding of youth that expanded to more mundane concerns when Helen became pregnant. Anticipating a child and perhaps the intimacies of marriage, they moved to the big city of Honolulu from our outer island. Ivan left the reclusive artists mountain safety of his mother’s Kokee retreat and fled eagerly to a new urban adventure.

How things turned sour between Ivan and Helen was unclear. Mary felt Helen never was truly with child, but instead a manipulative pretender. Ivan took a final leap off a 22 story building after neighbors reported a loud and cantankerous argument with Helen.

Mary told me that at first she wanted to understand and see if anything in the class had contributed to his demise. I shivered inside as she told me these things. I knew now how she had been looking at me. I wondered if my obvious lust for Helen and her frilly under things had silently urged on Ivan’s youthfully competitive energies. No doubt I thought.

I hoped she couldn’t see my heart. By her perhaps unconscious design Mary had made certain I too shared his death. How should I act? What should I say? I remember that my personal problems seemed immediately much less pressing in the face her despair. Her only children of her youthful love marriage, one dead in a stupid suicide, his DNA cast to the pavement in a useless gesture, the other in prison for life. Slowly time passed. We talked and talked. It kept raining.

Eventually Mary got out of my truck and into her own. I had her phone number from the class list, but when I called her Kokee studio she never answered my messages. I guess I reminded her too much of bad memories.

The preceding story is fictional. Any resemblance to circumstances, persons living or dead is unintended and entirely coincidental.
Images and Words: Copyright: John Michael Shklov. Kapaa, 2007

THE MAD DOG

a story and illustration by John Shklov

Three years after the dog bit me, my friend “portagee Bob,” told me a story that made my hair stand on end. By the time I heard the news, the incident had long passed from my mind and the scars from the dog bite on my leg that had been bright red were now fading and not too visible. When he told me what had happened to the dog I was very interested. Like a lot of things in life it was because I was trying to do a good deed that I put myself in the path of that disgruntled animal in the first place. At the time, I owned and operated an ART gallery and one of my artists, a rather senior fellow, was without a phone and I wanted to set up an appointment with a potential buyer who wanted to “meet” the artist. It was definitely above and beyond the call of duty since no extra commissions would come to me as a result of the visit.

But, Joel Hadley was a good old boy, his life always woman and art centered, still even now in his old age, a second retirement, he was staying with an ex stripper and sex worker, Ethel, and her various literally snotty kids, in an old quonset hut out in the boonies. There was no physical intimacy between them as far as I know but she did have her hand in his pockets through his social security and disability payments. As these things often go she too was on the public dole herself through her own disability reimbursements a result of a violent and traumatic automobile accident. The signs and scars of this catastrophic auto accident plagued Ethel Festian for quite a while and 4 or 5 years later, the day her dog bit me she was still not a particularly healthy or attractive woman. Often when I saw her I noticed she seemed dirty, her clothes always crumpled and soiled. In person, when I saw her, I always thought the same thing, that she was wearing dirty underwear. I had several phone conversations with Ethel previously and on this, my first visit to her home, I saw her in the doorway the moment before the dog set his fangs into my meaty lower leg muscle and pulled back as my leg was going forward.

The dog bit me, just as Ethel partially opened the ratty screen door and peeked out, her eyes met mine briefly and I knew in that instant that she hated me for some reason I couldn’t at that moment comprehend. The dog bite took only a moment and I knew I would be spending my precious time, the rest of the sunny afternoon at the hospital emergency services getting my leg stitched up. The dogs tooth had painfully penetrated to the bone and I needed several shots but only six stitches. Because it was a weekend the hospital would charge more and I had no health insurance, no money and it would cost quite a bit. I was immensely angry.

My encounter with Ethel’s evil eye and my good intentions on Joel’s behalf and the dog bite all became jumbled up an intense desire in my mind to somehow strike back at Ethel and her dog. Only a few miles away, at my friends house further back in the tropical boonies, I could borrow a 22 pistol that I thought I would go and get and come back and shoot her dog. Dead. Instead, I sucked it up, put on a brave face and made as if I believed Ethel’s sympathetic words and crocodile protestations. She asked that I forward the doctors bill which I did which she of course ignored. At the time she told me how unusual it was for the big German Shepard to act so aggressively. Other folks in the neighborhood told me later that the dog in fact was pretty aggressive. She took my message for the absent Joel and I went to the hospital.

Well, in the end, I figured I couldn’t take a gun to Ethel’s dog or to Ethel or I would end up incarcerated. I had some experience with jails and prisons and I didn’t want to be locked up but I was still angry, and I wanted revenge, and thought I could work it out of my system by ritually killing the dog in my mind.

So that’s what I did. Every night as I lay down to sleep. I made a picture of the dog in my mind and led it down the country lane, past the banana patch, up the little hillock and into the advancing traffic where I saw it in my mind’s eye, he would be killed by a speeding car. I told no one. I was dedicated and serious. I reviewed my evil little scenario regularly every night for about two months. Then as suddenly as it manifested,my anger and intensity was diminished and gone. I forgot the dog, my scar healed, I forgot Ethel and I saw Joel less and less. The whole incident faded. I didn’t betray my thoughts and emotion and because this is a small island and people talk, I didn’t tell anyone the preceding story.

A fews years later over a few beers, “portagee Bob” who lived down the little lane from Ethel, told me that shortly after my biting incident, the dog had taken uncharacteristically to wandering off in the evening, away from home. This new behavior he said was unusual and the dog became increasingly disoriented. Finally, Bob said, a couple of months after the biting incident, the dog wandered out on the highway one evening and was killed by a speeding car.

The preceding story is fictional. Any resemblance to circumstances, persons living or dead is unintended and entirely coincidental.
Images and Words: Copyright: John Michael Shklov. Kapaa, 2007

Images and Words: Copyright: John Michael Shklov. Kapaa, 2007

The Dead Dog

Even though the mother Kalena was a Rottweiler mix, the puppies all were born looking exactly like the father, a good looking, blond colored American Staffordshire Terrier, (commonly known as a Pit bull) with a sweet disposition . This was Kalena’s last litter; the last before the Vet tied her tubes so she couldn’t have anymore pups. As far as dog litters go it was a not particularly large, with one female and 3 male, all blond colored little replica of the father, Sandy.

My house had a large yard with a dirt road that led to the gate for the electronically fenced back yard. The little mountain road where I lived then wound further around the bottom contours of the mountain and received a goodly measure of daily rain and moisture. In my front yard the dirt road regularly formed pools of water that no matter I did to fill them in, even a tried and true mixture of sand and mud seemed never to harden but washed away leaving a big pool in the road the puppies mistook for their playpen with water.

The litter grew and as a few months passed, the largest male was especially playful and adventurous and enjoyed the pool in the driveway more than the others. He liked to play with the reflections in the water and watched carefully when a car passed over, splashing the water and exposing the mud. He recklessly dashed in and out under the slow moving cars.

As I turned into or out of the yard and passed over the puddle I was careful to remember Sandy Junior. as I was by now calling him. Sometimes he just sat there daring me to pass, moving only at the last moment as I slowly pushed my Ford Ranger through the puddle over the dirt trail to the backyard. All the other puppies seemed to instinctively know that this was a dangerous situation and scattered and cleared far away as the cars or trucks passed over the road. But not Sandy Jr.

One day this bad habit conspired with my inattention and I ran over the playful puppy with my rear tire.. He dashed in between the front and back tires and as I ran over him I felt the truck go over him, a little but perceptible bump, then back on the road. I immediately got out of the truck and ran to the back, looking for the Puppy. Sure enough, blood coming out of it’s mouth, spinning in a circle as if only one leg was working, flapping like a fish out of water right in the middle of the puddle was the little blond puppy. I was distraught and at a loss as to what to do. Can I make it better I thought? The answer came back in a flash. Use Magic water.

Along with regular medicine, and visualizations, “Magic” water was one of the healing techniques that I employed as I raised 4 children when they got sick. The rituals and blessing words I varied to suit the circumstance, but the water was from the tap, imbued by my words and supplications with magical powers to heal and make whole. Generally I used this when the kids were sick and I figured that if the Magick water didn’t help at least it kept them hydrated and that was good. My kids seemed to pass through the period of childhood illness with normal health issues and in some cases, the magic water seemed to do the trick.

At the time I figured that if magic water was good enough for my children it was good enough for the dogs and maybe it might work and at least ease his pain as he passed away. With a towel from my truck, as gently as I could I picked up the dying dog, which was bleeding from the mouth and anus and shivered uncontrollably. I put the dog down in the power spot for dogs, the spot right in front of the front door on the doormat. He shivered and coughed and settled in to a fitful slack bodied posture taking big tortured breaths and spattering blood on the towel as he breathed out. I thought he was a goner for sure.

I took one of my favorite bowls from the kitchen and filled it with water and I took it outside to the lawn and my power spot where I usually sat to watch the full moon and knelt in front of it. I made up a powerful blessing describing the dog as a playful and energetic spirit that deserved another shot at life, I placated and supplicated the unseen Gods and the spirit of the universe to please imbue this water with healing power and I gave it some of my own mana, my good wishes and my energy. After what I figured was a serious and reasonable time spent blessing the water I took it over to where Sandy Jr. lay. By this time he was pretty far-gone, breathing irregularly on his side still and glassy-eyed. At first, I dripped a few drops on his lips that fell helplessly on the towel making little pink spots on the towel where the red blood was. I then had the idea that I could use a small medicine dropper to put in his mouth, down his throat and that way he could get a full dose of magic water. That is what I did and I gently patted him until he fell into a fitful sleep.

The next morning I was surprised to find the puppy still alive and drinking the water by himself. Over the next two days Sandy Jr. miraculously got better. By the third day he had resumed his place at the first in the chow line as well as at the swimming hole in the front yard. I knew he would be more careful of cars and trucks now. Dogs usually are aware enough to avoid those places that gave them pain in the past. I was astounded that the magic had worked so well as I was convinced he would have died without any intervention. This was a clearly a special dog that might live forever.

Life went on as usual. Things were normal. Three or four weeks passed and the family went to school and work. One bright and sunny afternoon after a morning rain as I came around the corner and onto the dirt road I noticed the puppies scatter as I hit the first puddle. I looked for Sandy Junior, and thought, good he’s learned his lesson and is hiding, then out of the corner of my eye I saw Sandy Junior as he dashed in between the tires, between the front and back tires and as I ran over him I felt the truck go over him, a little but perceptible bump, then back on the road. I immediately got out of the truck and ran to the back, looking for the Puppy.

Sure enough, blood coming out of it’s mouth, spinning in a circle as if only one leg was working, flapping like a fish out of water right in the middle of the puddle was the little blond puppy.

The preceding story is fictional. Any resemblance to circumstances, persons living or dead is unintended and entirely coincidental.
Images and Words: Copyright: John Michael Shklov. Kapaa, 2007

Images and Words: Copyright: John Michael Shklov. Kapaa, 2007