Wisconsin Photo Blogger
A couple of years ago, I stopped just merely living in my environment and I started actually seeing it. Being a collector by nature, I started compulsively capturing the back-drops that I passed by and through daily while on my way to... somewhere else. Turns out, I was surrounded by lakes and kettles and hills carved out by glaciers (the Kettle Moraine of South East Wisconsin). I absolutely fell in love with this landscape. There are still some working family farms here, and a lot of remnants of a rural way of life that's mostly gone now. The winters are brutal here but the spring, summer and fall are rich green and lush glorious.
I don't claim to know all that much about trees or geology and my camera is far from state of the art... but I put a lot of time, effort, and heart into capturing the natural, the rusty, the weathered surfaces of Wisconsin's countryside.
I'd like to share some of these Images with the readers of this site on a (semi-) regular basis.
In early spring the Sandhill Cranes return from their winter retreats. How they find their way back to the same territory every year just amazes me.
Summer. It's green and teaming with life. Allenton Marsh, Washington County, Wisconsin.
I love the patina of age. A look that's only acquired, earned really. Cedarburg, Wisconsin.
Not the most well groomed, but they had a wild charm about them that I loved.
Early fall color. The perfect palette of green, yellow, red. Soon to be followed by browns and grays for a seemingly endless winter. Richfield, Wisconsin.
I have no clue how that bottle ended up there? (And that sign was not so effective). Washington County, Wisconsin.
A full moon on one of the coldest nights of the year (-15º). Hartford, Wisconsin.
The long winter breaks and open water flows again on the Bark River, Merton, Wisconsin.
Body political
This body-of-mine is political.
This body has been falling apart since 2005.
This body-of-mine remains immensely strong.
This body-of-mine remains & a beautiful 'chose'.
It is necessary to understand that the first experience of the body, for the poor, is political. By the neglect attached to it. By the force used against it.
For the poor, the body comes first, consciousness after, & it is the body which orders that consciousness.
Often, very often this means that the instinctual knowledge possessed by the poor is not only acute but has profound depth, the exact contrary qualities of the elites whose memory is either selective or nonexistent - in the elites that over time develops into malignancy.
What is learnt, very quickly by those who are oppressed, who are in struggle, that the body is a site of resistance, sometimes the final, I am very proud to have as friends, blanketmen/hunger strikers, Dixie Elliott, Sam Millar, Anthony McIntyre & Tommy McKearney who by being exemplary revealed an essential element of struggle.
It is said that the monster Thatcher, hated the word alienation because it was 'marxist' what the hunger strikers taught us was not metaphysical but material, we are indissolubly associated to each other & ourselves, that the victory of capital is disassociation until it becomes delirium, but that the victory over capital is the connectedness of all things, this knowledge is precious & terrible knowledge but it can only come at the cost of great risk, of the most intense struggle.
I am always in the debt of the blanketmen hungerstrikers, not as icons, but as human beings who revealed the actual constituents of our being, that a fool like Heidegger could only pretend to understand. Dixie understands in his skin.
In chronic sickness, that knowledge is not abstract but fundamental & in a very fundamental way i allow my chronic illnesses to understand i am both more cunning & more noble than they are.
I write repeatedly that my poetry all my life has been a polyphony because it is a result of my profound listening to others, always, so.
In a sense it is their poems. I instinct them, I write them, I direct them but if the voices of the other was not there, they would be empty. They are not. They are seething with the brothers & sisters of struggle.
In chronic sickness, you are living the fact that your body is the last site of resistance, you do not want to be too fascinated by it but you want to pay the most acute attention to it. You cannot be promiscuous about the layers of problems, you need to be precise, you need to have a sense of proportion & a way of discerning why is.
The most immediate problems to deal with, to struggle with & finally as a poet, you must allow the body permission to speak. asked in interviews if there is something automatic in the writing, nothing could be further from my practice, nothing is automatic, everything is thought & though & felt & felt & though & felt over & over again in a precise almost premeditated way.
In a life a death struggle, especially where you have communities & individuals depending on you, you need to be very very precise, very very premeditated, so you can prepare both your body & the community from attacks against them.
In prison, you become very hypersensible because your life depends on it, you act precisely, you listen precisely you become both cunning & noble.
Mostly you develop the most powerful connection between intimacy & distance, sometimes simultaneously, what I have learnt in that discipline has been shared in every atelier.
It is not metaphysical, it is material, it is consciousness class consciousness, if you will.
The elites do not know who they are from one moment to the other,
Class consciousness requires you to know who you are in each breath.
There is no mystification either with my work or with my relation to others but there is an intense mystery borne of consciousness & the polyphonies of that consciousness.
For Billy Che, who remembers everything
shadow to night
introducing
shadow to night
now
night knows
silhouettes
shiver
shake
shriek
form
from
bowels
of beast
bellowing
ten thousand
broken bells
smashed
against skulls
& skin
pebbles
perish
infallible
shadow inclines
bird’s wing
what of wing
regard
waters widen
sister beloved sister
night
color of night
fractures
fortification
fear
kiss fissure
fission
fears
weight of wing
what of wing
beat
skull
balls fall
bloodied
bellow
below
below
vigil
vipers
take
on body
earth so
cold
so cold
rock so
secret
divisions
horses howl
out to beloved
sister
listen
to
trampling
feet
flatten
flesh
subtractions
squalid
after
after
apparitions arrive
recall
contour of cave
draw
dead
on panel perhaps
genesis
grotesque
pathetic
pity
pity
souvenance
crows come
to collect
substance
of
souls
eyes
blood
water
come crow
carry water
to valley
down below
surrounded
starve
men
last
first
running
savage
sea
final
figure
on fingers
before
face
worn
down
to bone
divined
here in hell
horizon
turn back
to sea
illumination
immolates
crowds
chasing
one another
& animals
blades
spades
crashing
crushing
cutting
noise
not nature
noise
nausea
know
premeditated
pandemonium
discord
degraded
into
din
wind
wounded by breath
seconds
centuries
congregate with creatures
coming
for
beast
time
into time
trembling
trepidation
foreboding
frightening figures
come
to comprehend completely
terrified
trembling
shrill speaking
regard
shriek seismic
flinch
fight
regard
shudder
thrust
through silhouette
in sleep
dreams detonate
mine
within mound
carrion
carry away
with wing
upon wing
representation
of rats
& reptiles
devour morsel
by morsel
listening
to blood’s
memory
immerse
in intestines
from first
sound
sense
last of first
slither
through fissures
time triggered
fall
fable
concoction
stars
& suns
held
hostage
horizon
hears
howl
night
into
night
Crow
dead remember
flame
ash
dream
bird’s dreaming
forest
fears dead
remembering
wash
water
with tear'
s ferocity
you forgot
souvenir
of shadow’s
sorrow
wearing
robe of ash
hanging
from
horse
throat
full
of blood
spraying into sea
think
of throne
sword
book
being bracelet
burning
tumor
talisman
crows catch
angels
annihilate
numbers
without
names
absolute
being
one
or other
night now
so
fatigued
fatigued
so fatigued
shadows
encircle
hour
horse’s
hour
clouds carry
tumult
of hours
hours
absolute
horse’s
hours
sea strikes
bird
& being
hell’s
hymn
stones
suffocate shadow’s
silence
sleep
sense
less
less
dream
absence of birds
come
crow
come
crow
sing
assume time
monochrome © Susan Wald
assume
time
torn
from torso
weep
when i am
gone
air
liquid
gas
remember
origin
grasping grids
call
cadaver
walk
sing
song
spit words
wear
burning coat
season
breathing
time
march
on
matter
temple
broken belongings
idols crumbling
work
wait
civilization cold
so
cold so cold
cold as earth
cold earth
clay
clay creatures
come
cold
colder
ice
insulates
call
out to créatures
cold so cold
whisper
under breath
sense sea
change
ground
grinds
granite
against
granite
cold so cold
got to garden
grasp ghoul
wail with whole
heart
beat
drum of Dead
long
dark days
left
behind
number
follow
scattered scrolls
photographs
& diaries
entries
& omissions
too close
to past
relinquished
walking
inland
not so
not so
far
machine
waiting
beyond
walk
along river
watch
hear sirens
singing
landscape
lost
history
touch cities swept
away
ghosts
gather
seams
of skin
slit
sky
to
sea
left
lost