1 tsp olive oil
1/4 c cooking sherry
1/2 onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced (very small)
1/2 c chopped red bell pepper
4 c fresh or canned plum tomatos
1 c vegetable broth
1/2 c orzo
1 - 1 1/2 tbsp dried basil - start with 1 tbsp and go to taste
1/2 tsp of pepper

1. Heat deep skillet or pot to high-medium heat
2. Add oil, allow to warm to shimmer
3. add onion, garlic, bell pepper, sherry
4. Sautee till very soft
5. Add tomatoes & broth bring to boil
6. simmer for 7 mins (not boil, simmer!)
7. add orzo and simmer 10-13 more mins till orzo is soft.
8. mix in basil and pepper to taste.

fuckin serve it up!

notes:

1. don’t over do the red pepper.
2. the smaller the cut of onion and garlic the better.
3. maybe even crushed garlic rather than minced.
4. basil is the kick!

wilted.:© 2004-2008 i.m. ruzz (all rights reserved)

stop and look around. anywhere is as good as anywhere for this. really. theres too much and we can’t catalogue it all anyways. the best we can hope for is context somehow. fitting jagged edge of thought into jagged edge of memory, into jagged edge of imagination. we can’t keep up to the deluge of information, or imagery so don’t even try. just stop. look around and get your carving eye out.

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
When i grabbed this book–more of a novella than a novel, really–on the word of my highly regarded and well read friend brad I was unsure of it. It seemed to me, having glanced at it to be overly gimmicky and it was unlikely the story would mature in less than 200 pages to be about anything more than the cleverness of the author.

Because of this it sat on my shelf for several months after I picked it up and I passed over it numerous times when fetching my next book. Which, as it turns out is a shame.

Yes the book’s author is outstandingly clever. Yes he is an original thinker and explored this reverse flow of time thing in ways you might not immediately imagine when thinking of it yourself and yes, its all a bit much in the first.

having said all that then, I found i really grew to like the mind and thoughts of the lead character. I liked watching him learn and grow and try to establish reason in an entirely unreasonable situation. And, in some ways i identified with his earnest but malformed ideas on life and the reasons for things.

it seems often that we are missing some key bit of information that would make all the difference in any number of situations and the sad joke is that absent this information, like some sex in the city, fruity drink swilling modern woman waiting for a text message that should have already come we persist in making up narratives to explain the curious and language for the ineffable.

And like the lead character of this book who has it all wrong but keeps on trying, adding any new (however bizarre) information to his theory of everything, we stumble on trying to make the best of it.

Some of us are savy to the joke and some of us aren’t but in the end we all try to make sense, and find comfort in the day to day goings on, which bleed into the larger patterns of our lives and because we are all prone to this meaningless act, and because we all so often fail, we can surprisingly find much in common with the disembodied consciousness of a Nazi doctor speeding through life in reverse.

remember too that in reverse its the cut that heals the wound and mends the wounded.

View all my reviews.

she sits on the edges of beds.:© 2004-2008 i.m. ruzz (all rights reserved)

remind me to tell you about Lars and the Real Girl and don’t let me talk around what’s been going on in my mind. hold me to this. use force if you have to.

it’s all coming apart.

meanwhile, tasha stars in this sultry, dark, black and white which oozes. its rich in texture and emotion. there are still so many shots hiding in my archives i’ve just never got to.

and the wombs go:© 2004-2008 i.m. ruzz (all rights reserved)

thrum.

I once posted some images from this set but not these two. She’s so cute it hurts a bit, and her charm for the camera continues. I saw her on father’s day and while I didn’t take any pictures, she still lights up whatever space she is in.

we’re remarkable, us humans.

I tried to explain to god that
at least this ends the discussion about
remodelling the place
and now maybe the rector can get some sleep.

I’m still waiting for a reply.

© 2001 i.m. ruzz

He is human. He lives. He exists, though not comfortably, in this world as we all do. He is not wise, nor stupid. He is not famous, nor unknown. He claims many things, as you will read over time, it is for you to decide their truth and merit. He once deflowered a Queen (a mere princess at the time). He once bashed baby seals for their pelts, he once gave advice to the Dali Lama. He once wrote poetry and sang popular folk songs in cafe’s across Paris. He has done all the things you dream of doing and many you wouldn’t ever own up to. He is the shadow and the light. He is everything one man could be by virtue of his anonymity. He is dreams and nightmares, scribbled love songs and tales of rape and murder. He is the prettiest flower in your garden and the bile that creeps from your sewers. He is free. He is real, he is fake. He is the indefinable, the unthinkable and the obsession that brings you back for more. He is me, he is you, he is a little part of everyone. He is the struggle between good and evil in each of us. He is the fancy that makes us giggle and the heartache that makes us cry. He is what each of us would be if we could be free to be ourselves.

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Having just pushed through the deep lakes of thought Bly makes us dwell in, and having exhausted a lot of energy traveling miles and miles of metaphor I feel short of power to describe this book.

I can say that I am, and few would disagree, the least among you to be found in a drum circle, or even drinking starbuck’s. Which is not to say that I am better, only more stubborn about these things. And now further admitting my manhood is not at all comfortable with the idea of needing a “men’s movement” and winces at the very thought.

Now, having admitted both above to for your consideration I wish to say only that this book is not what I thought it would be, and I am deeply grateful for that.

It is not a manifesto, or a self help instructional, nor commentary passing as self-aggrandizement. It is not an attack (backhanded or otherwise) at women–though I can understand why some modern thinking mothers may feel it is–in fact I felt too often he wasted repeated qualifying line after qualifying line for the sole sake of comforting his women readers, soon to be attackers.

in any case, despite his verbosity he has a genuine richness of mind and spirit and perhaps his real gift is to free men to think in myth again. Perhaps in time the true value of this meandering philosophical work will be revealed as stealing back some wonder and mysticism in an age of reason.

humans love metaphors because most things that mean anything are not so tame as to fit into a single word. Witness the blandness of the word love, or hate, or orgasm when compared to the complexity and depth of the actual thing. And the metaphor is often the closest an author can get to the real thing in written form, and in many ways its the closest some of us can come to painful parts of ourselves. Through this perhaps Bly has found a language for self interaction that free’s us from the clinician lurking within us.

Gone are terms like Self Esteem or Ego or confidence and in come the king, and the warriors who protect them and perhaps we find we still have some fight left in us. Perhaps, freed from science we can use imagination to bridge an otherwise uncrossable divide between where we are and where we need to be.

Bly hands us this and I think it is on us resist its complexity, and our desire to consume it. It’s on us to allow it to sink in and become part of our vocabulary for visualizing the world, and ourselves.

View all my reviews.

stay.:© 2004-2008 i.m. ruzz (all rights reserved)

I look at kara and her cupie doll cuteness and hidden sexuality and puzzle over how much great stuff she’s given me over the years. Marvelous. You should all be so lucky to work with someone like her.

I did consider taking this shot into PS and cleaning up some of the “problems” with it. Like that annoying piece of white near her bangs, or the loose hairs { from her wig! } that have fallen on her chest, or even to smooth out the skin which has gone rough from increasing the shadow detail so greatly.

This is one of those shots which could become a classic magazine style-iconic image. Refined, clean and perfect.

I guess I don’t have it in me. She’s ridiculously beautiful without fixing her in photoshop. For being 4-5 hours into a shoot she is perfect.

There’s been accusations over on my flickr stream that the sole purpose of my comments there is to blow hot air up my ass. I say thank you. my ass frequently gets very cold and all the hot air warms it in unexpected and delightful ways.

i put your puckering to good use to fuel further works.

felate me if you can. You will find an explosion of creativity follows.

seriously though. I appreciate the kind words, and sometimes even the criticisms, but they don’t matter much. I mean come on, there were people cheering bush at his inauguration. There were people hooting and hollering at lynchings and executions.

sometimes the approval of the crowds isn’t much of a measure of anything.

and, lets remember too that i’m a small fish in what’s become a large pond over there on flickr. Kara, the subject of this picture frequently gets hundreds of favorites for every picture she posts while I–what with my constant upheaval and unfocused works–have only had one image into the 200s.

ironically it was ‘Rampart’, a photo of Kara.

I shot this image near the end of our shoot. I was tired, she was running low on poses and ideas and had retreated to the couch. I think she was loaded on red wine and I was hopped up on pain killers. See, drugs and booze can make pretty things outside of accident art.

I had begun to explain one thing and let myself wander into another.. well. let that be a lesson to you.

don’t tie your shoelaces together, or make friends with pretty girls.

I had a great night the night we made this. And I think if life could feel like that more I wouldn’t have this river of anger pouring through my gut. I wouldn’t seeth like i do.

sometimes you just need to just let it suck and figure out a better way next time.