August 26, 2005

• The shaman I married and the Old Fart I’m married to now…

  Greyfox has gotten a lot of comment on his “new” profile pic.  His baby sister
  called it a masterpiece worthy of display in an art museum, or
  something like that.  After some of his friends from “the dox”
  (online forum where he’s a mod) saw it on his Xanga site, Greyfox
  started a thread asking them to rate the picture.  He says about
  seventy percent say it is “great” or “awesome”.  It is my favorite
  picture of him.

  

  This is a scan of a shot I captured on film about fifteen years ago on
  a windy day at City of Rocks State Park near Silver City, New
  Mexico.   It is unposed and I was very lucky to get it. 
  When he knows or even suspects that a camera is trained on him, he
  poses.  If he had known what his hair was doing in that wind, he’d
  probably have been holding it down.

  Greyfox says that old picture doesn’t look like him, that he never
  looked like that.  Yeah, right, the camera was lying. 
  There’s more white in his beard now, he seldom lets his hair get that
  long any more, and that old black t-shirt no longer fits, but it’s him.

  I
  had been getting weary of seeing the cellphone pose that was his
  profile pic for months, so I sneaked into his “look and feel” and
  switched it for my fave.  With all the attention it’s gotten him,
  I don’t think Greyfox minds.  I think that for my next magical
  trick, I may put up the one of him sitting on a rock in my garden,
  scratching his balls… or maybe the one of him passed out drunk on his
  cot with Muffin glaring at the camera from her perch on his
  chest.  But no, he has specifically forbidden me to post that
  shot.  Maybe the one of him naked and drunk on top of the car in
  our driveway….  OMG, don’t tell him I’m having such thoughts.

  But seriously, he’s a beautiful man.  I recognized an inner beauty
  in him even while he was pickled and poisoned and with his disordered
  personality in full expression.  He wrote a sonnet for me,
  fercrissake, before we even met!  Last night, he read to me a new
  poem he’d written, about his addiction recovery and other people’s
  relapses.  Because I entered some of his earlier poetry in a local
  public radio poetry contest (without his knowledge), he is expecting to be interviewed next
  week, not just about his poetry, but an in-depth feature on his
  life.  The reporter’s attention was caught by the poetry and he
  has been lurking at ArmsMerchant‘s
  Xanga site.  Now he wants to spend an afternoon with him, hanging
  around the stand talking about the Old Fart and Felony Flats.
  
   

  • 3:13 pm
  • 12 Comments