michael kleinfeld

There is an uncontrollable mist that tries to swirl past my lips
Often it claws up my throat up through my fingertips
To swan dive in my conversant’s parted fleshy mouth
To mold jelly like into their body cavity and brain
When unplacated with dedication, desire, or alteration
Anxious armies of ants make my heart race, mind burn, feet fly, eyes pop
Another time period wants out
But just rumbles in my belly and head instead

Another deep breath, another lung full of water.

Two days ago I had breakfast with a very old friend who I never get to see but who I consider quite important to me. I finished putting together my first ruff, ruff edit of my documentary about Pascagoula, Mississippi, and I had a small adventure on my way home.

Instead of going home to my empty house after working in the lab, I decide to stop by this “guy’s” house I have come to know. “He” is actually a really good kid at heart, I believe, and I kind of feel like I should look out for him like an older brother. “He” is local. Real local. “He” definitely is a person my dad would disapprove of if you know what I mean.

“He” comes from hard people who are usually hard up. “He” is un-educated. “He” surrounds “himself” with the lesser off of south-east Ohio society, who don’t have the money to solve even one of their own problems. Because money does solve a lot of this life’s problems.

Most of the time the people who hang out there are smoking pot, drinking, or who knows what. It’s actually a very interesting watering hole. Because that’s what it is. A watering. Hole.

I have been hanging out there recently because (here is why I am writing this in my photography journal) I am working on a story for next quarter’s photo story class. I am not sure exactly what it is yet, but I have a general feeling. One thing I have always wanted to explore is the world of addiction and the psychology of the people whose life is so sandblasted by such a need. This place is kind of a jumping off spot.

Soooooooooo…….anyway. I stop by there on my way home from the lab. As soon as I am out of my car door “he” is outside, “his” shirt off, sweat from hair to jeans…and a busted nose and some other red stains of blood about “his” arms and torso.

Apparently, “his” neighbor beat “him” up for getting the front of the building wet while washing “his” bike. Extreme in most situations, but considering the amount of alcohol that gets consumed around there, it’s not implausible. Also, and totally apparently, the cops came and handled the situation and tried to find this neighbor, and then left.

@#* this, and *!@!! that, about what “he” was going to do to “his” neighbor the next time “he” sees him, and well, I asked “him” if the police gave “him” the option of pressing charges. I also suggested that letting the police handle it would be better than taking care of it by “himself”. No point in ruining your future or getting hurt because someone else has issues. I thought this good advice. I even gave “him” a ride to the police station to file a police report. I once got the shit kicked out of me real bad, so I know how it feels.

Flash forward a half an hour later to back at “his” apartment. Someone I have never met before stops by. Starts telling us all his problems. How he got arrested last night and he doesn’t have money to pay the rent, and that his friend is an alcoholic and checked him in to this place and that.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that he stopped by because he was around when the fight happened.

And I also forgot to mention that I asked “him” if he started the fight in any way before I volunteered my assistance in getting “him” to the police station. Of course, no was “his” response.

Anyway, “he” and his girlfriend are grilling this stranger about what he saw and what he told the police. Something is mentioned about a knife. He says nothing, and then goes on telling this roll about his woes.

Things are still pretty tense. “He” continually goes into tangents about the fight and what is going to happen, and how “he” is going to press charges, and that the guy better be careful, and what “he” is going to tell the prosecutor.

More compulsive than angry, but “he” is definitely ampted. Here is where things get raw dog. Another stranger walks in. This guy is the Christopher Lloyd character from taxi; mean though, with long hair, and a touch of Vietnam vet in him. He speaks as if he has been on a blizz for two days. He wears a grin on his face like someone who is about to bear bad news and enjoy it. “Hey man,” what happened?

Long story short, Christopher Lloyd’s regrettable twin tells “him” that “his” neighbor is at the clinic with a knife wound. He asks “him” what happened with that same grin, but doesn’t accuse anybody of anything. He just prods they way people like him do.

The guy I am visiting of course does what anyone you know would do. “He” picks up my cup of water, (that’s right, water) and sends it violently to the floor. Something clicked over in his brain. It was visible despite the projectile. I start to reassess my first impression, or rather, a long standing chain of occurrences start to make sense. I see where this is heading fast. Things are starting to get ugly. I excuse myself and yullah.

Well it turns out, because I stopped by again later, that no one was stabbed and that the guy was actually in the hospital getting his hand in a cast because he shattered it on this kid’s head.

What I keep rolling over in my head is this: Did I leave at the right time, or is that when I should have stayed? OK, I did not even have my camera with me, but I think this question is applicable to when I do have one. I guess you can never know when something bad is going to happen. But I know you always learn from experience. That is what I am chalking this one up to.

Yeah, do it dirty and fast. I wish this were going to be an entry about sex.

Unfortunately, however, “dirty and fast” refers to the mantra of a particular newspaper’s video department where a friend of mine works. Personally I thought with this “new” breed of online video, that at least one aspect of the news business was going to get video right. I thought we were saying: “finally we can show TV how good video can be”, and more importantly, I thought we were going to help move journalism back into a place in our society where it is respected and embraced. But be prepared; brace yourself for it, because if we are lucky, we will get a sack full of “dirty and fast”. Maybe the sex analogy is more apropos than I thought, because apparently were getting fucked.

A couple people asked me about my blog and why I put personal information in it. Well, for those two people, i.e. 50% of the people who read this, this is why…because it is obvious that people don’t trust journalists. It is something about the industry and what it has become, and the attitudes of the people who work in the business that has created a disconnect with the people we are supposed to be serving.

David Leeson has suggested that maybe a way to reconnect is by publishing as much about yourself as you do other people. Because with a blog you are a publisher. One of the ways that I try and connect with the people I photograph, so that they can trust me and let me into their lives, is by opening up to them. So why not apply that to readers/viewers also? In fact, on my recent trip to Mississippi, I encouraged the people I was photographing to go to my blog and read about who I am and what I am all about. It was awesome.

It is an awesome thing when people “get it,” and “get” what you are trying to do. Some how, by reading my blog, they “got it” faster. They understood and trusted me I think because they no longer felt judged, like I was examining them with the camera, capturing their flaws, because I already shared my own ideas, flaws, and life with them.

Well, depending on a lot of things, maybe sex and video do have a lot in common, and maybe it is more about trust, and less about being fast and dirty, or dirty and fast.

I am not sure I have the answer to everything anymore. Ha. For instance, I have lived with anxieties for as far back as I can remember. Real anxieties. I can remember leaving bars/parties/large gatherings panic-stricken with anxiety, and everyone thinking, where the fuck did Mike go? I can remember sitting in front of the TV for hours as a little kid because it made my anxiety go away, or at least easier to deal with. I know how it feels to stare aimlessly at the ceiling not able to sleep at night with the weight of the whole world peeling back the lids of my eyeballs. Then poof. It’s gone.

A strange calmness settled in over me several days ago. I think it had everything to do with my trip to Mississippi. A very smart person down there said to me: “Happiness is something some people never feel, and being blessed is something you can’t help but feel. It all depends on acceptance.” Hum. What does that mean? Now don’t go thinking I have been reborn, or found god. I still think he/she is dead. But I have settled into a strange feeling of acceptance, and it feels really good. Personally, I think it’s just that I’m learning to use my heart instead of my brain.

It is however a feeling I can’t explain. I have always just assumed my issues were chemical. Can the brain just change its functions over night to correct any flaws it has had since inception? I don’t know. I am weary of that notion for the same reason I am weary of doctors.

Sidebar: Have you ever been someplace where the air contains a unique energy? Like there are more souls per sq inch there than in other places. I am not talking about it being a particularly nice day out, and you were in a good mood. I am talking about a place that every time you go there, you sense a change in energy? You can push your hands out and feel positiveness, maybe the opposite of anxiety? Maybe it resembles love a little, because your heart beats faster when you are in it’s presence. This is the hard part to explain. Ok, you know when you are a little kid, and you swear there is a monster under your bed? You can feel it breath. Its presence makes you scared. It’s a manifestation of your personal fear in negative energy right? You might even say it’s an exercise in how to deal with fear. Well, what about the opposite. I think I had a life lesson in dealing with goodness. Accepting goodness, and letting go of the opposite. That is what my trip to Mississippi was for me. And that changed me.

So now I have to explain. Man I knew this was going to take a while, sorry. Like I said in my last entry, I went down to Mississippi to work on a documentary about the state of things two years after Hurricane Katrina. Well, things pretty much suck down there. People are not getting the help they need to rebuild their homes, and for the most part, life has not resumed to normal. Normalcy down there resembles coping. People down there are coping. Eighty thousand people in Mississippi are still not living in their homes. Not to mention all the emotional trauma that people are living with, which is considerable but to personal to get into. I would say the people along the gulf coast are living in a state of post war mentality. Here is the point though; there is this strange positive feeling in the air down there. Its like an omen that you have to be able to see, but it’s there. And it’s that positive energy that has been a turning point for me. For me, that positive energy is a result of two things. One, the amount of suffering that occurred in one place, and two, the amount of goodness that over powered it.

What do I mean? Well, the only help that people are getting in south Miss is from volunteers from all over the country. They come down in buses and vans, sometimes cars, to help rebuild homes. To rebuild dreams and lives. Sometimes it is only to rebuild a home for an old person to die in. But that person can then die with respect and dignity. Other times they are getting families back on their feet, or helping married couples save their marriage. All and all though, they are helping people get out of the hell they are living in by being succumbed to FEMA trailers for two years. These trailers are horrible. I could write about them forever. But I will leave it at they are horrible. These volunteers come down, and they are of all ages (13 to 84 if I recall correctly), and they bring with them smiles and hope and decentcy and humanity. These people come down there and rebuild homes, lives, and sometimes happiness and hope. I think it is they who have brought with them this karmic energy that is changing that part of the earth, and it is evident in the people whom they are helping.

Imagine losing everything. Imagine you have lived through an apocalyptic event, and you can’t get over it because your life won’t unhinge from that event for two years. Well, forget that, because it’s impossible. You had to be there it seems to grasp it. Just know that what the people along the gulf have gone through and continue to go through is a total nightmare. It’s the biggest, badest, meanest fucking monster there ever was, and it’s not under the bed, it’s in their face! So how is it that so many of these people feel so blessed? I don’t know. I have been trying to figure that out since I got there. And at the root of that question is where I found my peace of mind, because if they are blessed, there is no reason I should not be living in a state of bliss.

Pascagoula, Mississippi.

A day and a half ago I drove the 14 hours from Athens, Ohio to Pascagoula, Mississippi in one stint. Over night. My mind was hazy and I was visibly physically tired by the time I arrived at hot noon. I hadn’t shaved in days. I smelled. But my appearance was not really an indication of what my trip was like, more a representation of me, right now, and how I felt. One day later and I have changed. I am in Pascagoula. Mississippi.

Am I on pilgrimage? Well, kind of, but not really. I am working on a documentary project in conjunction with a TCOM class from OU. Our goal is to open people’s consciences again to the needs of this area, and to some of the aftershocks still reverberating through many of the Gulf communities. The focus of my work will be with a group called 100 houses in 100 days. They take care of the people hardest hit and deepest in need. They are picking up the ball which the state, local and federal governments have dropped. Many of the people who are having their homes rebuilt are older and have disabilities. No one is paying attention to them except 100 Homes and an army of good-hearted volunteers. I will be focusing on the people who are moving into these homes and where they are living now, and the volunteers and their effects on the rehabilitation process. These are some of the pictures I took today and last night. Much more to come, with more about the process and experience. AH, I can’t seem to post pictures today, maybe wordpress is down. I will try again soon.

arch angels are amoung us
oversized atoms that whisper by us
on our descent from Mt. side, stream, river, ocean and then benevolence
they graze us, slow bullet
and they connect us to hope
and as a person with a brain you have the human gift
to process and evaluate,
rise up
and open your heart