Photo: Molotov Man, an Ecstasy of Influence -- SEO Series No. 3

Appropriating Joy Garnett, Susan Meiselas, and
Jonathan Lethem with your photo search (1)

Photo: Molotov Man and an exploding ecstasy of contextual influence and perhaps today a photo
framing my page will savor your search and, downloaded to your ambitious hard drive, live a new,
ecstatic life of influence. But I doubt it. My photo: perhaps you will appropriate my photo,
use the photo for a holiday photo card, increase your or my influence anxiety while my holiday-
photo-card appropriated photo dances upon family occasion. My photo. You appropriate a photo,
my photo, I appropriate your search for a photo to give you my photo. Originality and appropriations
are as one. You want a holiday photo card, digital photo printing, or just photo printing or just a
digital photo. I want you to see snippets of other writers’ texts in this work, an action my teachers
would have called plagiarism. Visual, sound, and text collage, explosively central to a series of
movements in the 20th century. Collage, the art form of the twentieth century, never mind the digital
search of the 21st. See: my photo, its life, its use—even as a holiday stock photo card. This picture,
this moment I saw, appropriated, manipulated, selected an angle for and lighting and perspective for
and framed, this photo framing a picture of my sensibility, placed here to attract your attention, to
appropriate your search. Enframing Heidegger’s technological orientation toward the task
he identified: to find ways to resituate ourselves vis-à-vis object, things pulled into relief against
the ground of their functionality. Appropriating your photo, nude photo, holiday photo card search
pulling out from the ground of the search engine an optimized photo album poem against the ground
of naked-picture backs. Central to my work, respect the individuality of the people who search
for photographs. If I find my photo later, disguised as a Britney Spears picture or sex picture,
a tattoo picture to capture your ink-mind word-splattered photo-appropriation imagination,
creating found photo art from my photo, so what? I am a photographer. Perhaps my name could
ride with the photo, for a while, this obscure and unknown photographer offering a small gift:
the appropriation of your search for image, for photo, for photographer, for Britney Spears picture,
for photo print, for sex picture, for PhotoShop, for a Jennifer Lopez picture, for a funny picture,
for a Joumana Kidd picture (who is Jouman Kidd?), a tattoo picture. Ah. A tattoo picture I have.
What joy, this practice of decontextualizing searches in my own hope as a photographer to
contextualize the photographer’s photography, an image of self: there is no denying in this digital
age that images are increasingly dislocated and far more easily decontextualized. Technology allows
us. As a photographer photography is my grasping at the world, a shout of my consciousness, a
demand for a picture framing me. The photo album is my mind. My ego. My self. I don’t have a
Saddam Hussein picture to offer you, no free sex pic here, although death and sex are on my mind. It
is a poetry of witness photo, this picture frame, the photographer’s photography, influenced by
ecstasy. My mind poem witness to an adult picture photographer, not the free sex pic, sex picture frame Yahoo!
Photo graphic kind, a graph of body, mind and creation and eye and experience and
against interpretation, appropriated to appropriate your photographer photography photo search so
that, for a moment, you might see as or what I see. Even though you won’t. Because you are
searching for a photo, not my photo, a photo you will take out into the world or view privately alone,
hands busy not looking, on keyboard or body. I cannot appropriate your eyes, hands, desire,
your perspective always outside my picture frame. You searchers of photos look for the photo, private or public,
the photo in your mind: the holiday photo card, the Saddam Hussein picture,
Saddam Hussein being executed, saving the most promising images in folders on your computer,
a photo album mirror reflects your eyes, your mind, and you forget where you found the photo.
Assembling each photo you find based on aesthetic, psychological, cultural, social, religious
criteria more than that, on your emotional attachment to their narratives as self-constructed,
into your photo-album self, the mirror of culture, the constructed dance of influence, past,
present, philosophy of digital photo printing a newly released Adobe PhotoShop self, photo
printing picture, the public-persona photo album. The private-alone-at-night photo album seeks
Britney spears pictures, a Lindsay Lohan photo, an adult picture in the picture frame of lonely
bodies. An Aishwarya Rai picture highlights the diversity of the search as you seek a free porn pic,
the sex photo you want to create in your Adobe Photo Shop mind of a photo: a Beyonce picture,
a sexy picture, you in it with whomever, a Shakira picture, a porn picture with Britney Spears,
car, Paris Hilton picture you in the nudist photo, part of the celebrity photo, the digital photo,
the passport photo that takes you to the porn sex nudist pantyless Britney excited photo of
your cultural and personal despair, alone in the Elisha Cuthbert photo. No porn picture when
spent, you return to looking for the holiday card photo you sought to appropriate before
the dance of loneliness left you looking for a Victoria Beckham picture, your superiority
sought the execution of Saddam Hussein picture, your free nude pic reminded you that
you need a haircut, and quickly you appropriate a picture of hair style that will end
your loneliness you are sure, or a dog picture, so cute, to cleanse your inappropriate
searching for a Shilpa Shetty picture. (Who is Shilpa Shetty? Why do you want that
picture?) I know that you want a Britney Spears pantyless photo uncensored, a
pussy pic to go with the dog picture, but not that kind of pussy cat picture. Despite
this, I appropriate your search. I am not a wedding photographer, but perhaps
you will hire me to take a baby picture. I have no Paris Hilton private photo, but
no photo in this digital world remains private long. I have no free nude pic, no
sex photo, no sex pictures, no 2006 Miss World Photo. This poem anxiously appropriates
your searches for photo, for photograph, for photography, for photographer. This
poem steals words and language from writers and searchers for photo. This
poem is a photo gallery of the digital cultural mind searching, searching, seeking,
not hiding, not finding. This digital picture frame strings Joumana Kidd photo gay
pic with Cameron Diaz picture with Britney Spears photo with Ivanka (Ivana?) Trump
picture with xxx pic and girl pic and naked picture, nude photo, sex photo, right
after naked picture comes horse picture, perhaps adolescent girls sublimating photos.
The seekers look for a flower picture, a free gay pic, a Ciara picture. They look
for Miss USA photo, b h photos (what are b h photos?), herpes pictures, and then a
Serena Williams hot photo. From our space we want a satellite photo, stock photo
of earth or moon or where we live; we want stock photos to appropriate in our
digital art world, a cat picture, an animal picture. I’ve got those, cat pictures, a
dog picture, animal pictures. Not sex pictures, nor am I hanging Saddam Hussein pictures
on my living room wall. I’ve stolen your searches for this poem. But you were not searching
for this poem. Who has a dragon picture? Today, we all have a MySpace picture.
A senior picture. A developing photo fetish for photo fetishes. A two-dimensional representation
of culture, an appropriation. A Jessica Simpson picture and a Serena Williams picture,
sandwiched between them: your photo shop tutorial. Beyonce Knowles’ picture hangs next to a
dragon picture on Saddam Hussein’s hanging-wall photo album of hell. At least some
of us would like to see an angel picture. Or a dragon picture. Or simply to find the photo
for our photo-album selves that would be the holiday photo card photo of our
persona, imago, projected appropriation of cultural masks of self, of whom we could and might
well be. I’ve stolen your searches, plagiarized your phrases, put together this pastiche
with my feeble scribbling, contextualizing sensibility, picture-framing, selecting,
digital photo making something of a lot of nothing, words that might bring you to me.
You may well appropriate my photos. But if you have found this poem, I may well have
appropriated your search for photos, your quest for a free sex picture. Your desire to see
for my desire to be seen. A new project having to do with the human in extremis. Will you
include a credit line? In this swirl of appropriated search, creative agitprop and commentary,
several questions come to the fore. Does the author—whose mission is to provide a public with—
control the content of the readers’ mind? Searchers of photo, did you find what you’re looking for?


—Michael Deqel
(nee Dickel)
©2007 All Rights Reserved to the Exact Text (but appropriate freely)


(1) See “Portfolio” and “Criticism” in Harper’s Magazine 314:1881, Feb. 2007, 53-72; also “Reviews,” “The Devoted,” by Robert Boyers, 87-92--some text in this poem has been appropriated from Garneet, Meiselas, and Letham (the first references), and an homage / allusion to Susan Sontag influenced by Boyers (the second reference). If you appropriate parts of my work, I’d appreciate a similar line of influence credit. If you want the whole thing, please ask.

Israel Images — SEO Series

Israel Kamakawiwoole sings from the speakers here in Jerusalem, his Hawai’an poetry,
love poems, free love poems to my ears, weaving through Israel. It’s Israel, a new breed,
multi-cultural historical Israel, who could make a map of Israel with Israel Kamakawiwoole,
with Israel news no song, no poem most of the time, no love poem for those who cry out,
america call I infidel Israel Jihad. Now renounced, terror they war why do they war oh
America call I infidel. Israel. Jihad. And the other side, the Israel Palestine side, the Israel travel
map to questions so complex that from Beirut to Jerusalem, Iran to Israel, Syria to Israel

what is Israel travel? A love poem for Israel a love poem for Palestine an Israel image, so many
Israel images, Israel maps torn asunder and taped back together, the Jerusalem Bible singing to
Iz, Israel Kamakawiwoole, singing his Hawai’an poetry, his love poetry, his mystic music into
the tapestry while I wonder on my Israel tour, in this Israel weather, who in Israel power state united
can be state or states of disillusion meant in the Jerusalem hotel for Israel sex, God and liberty
for all? I’ve got the Jerusalem vibration, the Israel tour, the Palestinian Israel dance of thundering

rhetoric and bombs and rockets and it all leads to Israel war, Eichmann in Jerusalem, a confusion
of fever and doubtful conclusions amidst corruption sealed into the history of Israel one more time.

zeek

Hey. Two of my digital images just published in the march issue of Zeek Magazine www.zeek.net/703fiction/. Check it out.

Not exactly love poems, but certainly lovely photographs :)

Support artists, support artists' venues.

Search Engine Optimization Love Poem

This is my poet's poem to optimize your search engine, my love poem to draw you into
my web of intrigue, my friendship poem to invite you to read my myspace. Quote my
poet's poem, my myspace poem quote. My poem, my love poem, my friendship poem.

This is my best love poem to the world, my free love poem—a poet free to love the world.
Romance this poem, this love romantic poem to the world of searchers, seekers, optimizers
racing engines through the sleek myspace poem quote, my poem to you, my love poem

My romance poem, my best love poem to the seeker of poets. This may be a funny poem,
but it is not a Valentine poem. It is a love poem, poetry for you to read, poems to dance
on the head of your pins and needles as you search, engine, optimize my site, poetry

for you to read, free love poetry, free love poems here for you to read to copy to send
a friendship poem or a funny poem, not really a sad poem. This poem, this search-engine
optimized poet poem is not a birthday poem, not a death poem, not an inspirational poem,

not a child poem, not a sad love poem, not, in the end, a short love poem, but a poem, a
love poem, a friendship poem, an invite-you-to-myspace poem, quote my poem, love my
poet's poem. Is this a romantic poem? I am the poet but I don't know—I am this poet, this

I love you poem, this slipping kid of a poem falling from my grasp, not a kid's poem.
This poem could be a birthday poem, happy birthday to you, oh seeker of birthday poem,
of birthday poet blowing candles out as fireworks in deep velvet romance poems.

This is most definitely not a Maya Angelou poem, not a funeral poem, not a death poem
as I've said, though many have died. Will this be a famous poem? It is not now
a famous poem nor am I a famous poet but a writer of poems, a writer of poets, a love poem

to poets who want to be found on the poetry search of poems, lives of poets, love poems
dancing with death poems, laughing at sad poems as they sit with sister poems recalling
best friend poems. So many short love poems, so many I love you poems, birthday poems

celebrating at the punch bowl, romantic poems optimizing love poems, sex poems
sneaking out back, away from the chaperones. This is a family poem, a mother poem,
a brother poem, a sister poem. This is a love poem, a life poem, not yet a famous poem.

Let's have a wedding poem! My birthday's the same as Langston Hughes' poem. I'm not
Langston Hughes, he wrote many a famous poem. But I love a good Langston Hughes poem,
a Maya Angelou poem, a Robert Frost poem, a famous poet poem. I laugh at Shel Sylverstein

poems, funny poems, broken heart poems (in my sick not-very-famous poet poem way).
Oh, give me a good code myspace poem quote! A baby poem! A baby shower poem!
Before the baby poem, the baby shower poem. A teen love poem could lead to a baby poem,

even a baby shower poem. A teen poem could lead to a famous poet, a famous poem, a
famous poet poem. Give me a black ghetto love poem, not a broken heart poem. Black
ghetto love poems, romantic poems, sex poems, famous poets all famous poems party

at the liberating grace of the poet, the poem, the celebration, the birthday poem in its
birthday suit, naked in the sex poem, the love poem, the kid poem growing up from the
baby poem, the love poem, the teen poem, the teen love poem that could not raise the

kid poem. This is my thank you poem to you seekers of famous poets and famous poems,
you seeker of free poems, of love poems, of free love poems. This is my thank you poem
to famous poets, to Langston Hughes poems, to Maya Angelou poems, to Robert Frost poems

to Shel Silverstein, thank you g-d for Shel Silverstein poems. This is no missing-you poem, no
anniversary poem, but it is a Winter poem, a winter poem full of Edgar Allen Poe Poems,
cold, dark and shivery love poem quotes missing from the winter poem quote love poem

to mislead you to sympathy poem. This is a myspace poem, not a Christian poem, mom poem
mother poem to be more formal, family poem, love poem, famous poet poem, none of those.
It could be our friendship poem, oh seeker of poet and poem, search engine optimized to

lead to our love poem. Not my best love poem, not my best love. Poems of the romantic heart
tend to be death poems. This most definitely is not a short poem. It is a sister poem to the
wedding poem I always meant to write. The baby poem comes after k-i-s-s-i-n-g love poem.

I love the free poem. The free tree poem. The free love poem. The free black ghetto love
poem. I love the sex poem, not a famous poem, but a love poem with a good sex poem could
lead to a marriage poem, and there we are with the baby shower poem and the baby poem,

and the next thing you know it's the famous funeral poem. That's a family poem. A love
poem. A search-engine optimized not so very famous poet famous poem. Over 1.1 million
times a month, it is estimated, you seekers search for poems. Over one million times for love

poems. Love poems. You seeker of poems want love poems, romantic poems, Robert Frost
poems, Maya Angelou Poems, Edgar Allen Poe poems, Langston Hughes poems, and yes,
Shel Silverstein poems. You want short poems, funeral poems, death poems, and sad poems,

to be sure. But you want poems. Poems. More poems. Poets you don't want so much. Poems,
you want. You seek the family poem. The mother poem. The mom poem, the sister poem, the
free poem. (Couldn't you once pay a not-so-famous poet for a not-yet-famous poem?)

Two-hundred thousand seekers want a friendship poem. As many want myspace poems
(myspace poem quotes, code myspace poem quotes). Who wants free love poems? The same
people who want sex poems? Who wants all of those love poems, over a million seeking

love poems. For all you seekers of poets, of poems, of famous poets and famous poems,
this is one poet's love poem to you. Seek, optimize, search, rev your engines and love,
love, freely love your poems and their poets. Poems. Love poems. Poems. So many poems.

—Michael Deqel
(nee Dickel)
©2007 All Rights Reserved

All in a rush created more work to do...

So, last week I had a few problems with my computer. When I fixed them--a piece of software was tagged as open when it wasn't, and the CD would hang up waiting for it to close, causing all sorts of issues. Anyway, when I fixed the problem, singular, as it turned out, I thought I should back-up my photos. My writing I regularly back-up on a pocket drive, but the photos require a larger external hard drive as I have over 15,000 of them, each from 1-2 mb, not to mention digital artwork that can approach a gig in photoshop format. Before doing the back-up, though, I thought I'd go through and reduce duplication--some files I made a smaller version of to email, some existed in a couple of folders as I used them for different projects, etc.

And I was in a hurry. So I was going through it all very quickly. And using keyboard strokes as well. And not paying as close attention as I should. Did I mention I was in a hurry? So a few keystrokes and inadvertently I had put the whole pictures folder into the trash, not just a file. Not noticing this and impatient, I emptied the trash. All the photos. Gone.

Well, not all. I did have a back-up. And Aviva has some on CD. But I had not backed up for way too long, and most of my photos since June 1 of 2006 were gone.

The secret to restoring trashed files is to do nothing with the computer until you get the software for "un-erasing" those files. Anything else one does, even opening other software, likely writes some new (if temporary and invisible) file on the hard drive. That new file might (or might not) cover over the erased file.

In Minnesota, I would have known where to go to get the software I needed. I couldn't download it from the web, b/c that ran the risk of covering what I wanted to uncover, er, recover. Here I had to call people I knew, who gave me the numbers of people I didn't know and computer stores that carried what I needed. And then I had to wait a day or two for someone to come out (yes, come out) to try to recover, b/c in the end I couldn't find a place to buy the software. He installed on my external hard drive (that I was going to back-up the photos on, so not where the photos were erased from) software that I was able to activate (read: buy) online after I first used it to locate the files. I had to buy it before I could save the files.

And now, that hurry I was in? Well, I have hours of work to do to go through all of the recovered photo files and rename them, re-import them to my photo software, and re-organize them in that software. Fortunately, with the back-ups and with the CDs Aviva had, well, I only probably have a few thousand photos to find... in the something like 33,000 files (including thumbnails and duplicates) found by the software. I have skimmed through enough to see that many of the lost photos are there, including the latest import from my camera.

I guess I'll keep busy for a while. Little doubt about that. But I am grateful that I have the files again. And yes, I will back things up... once I get them organized again...

Blog Catalog, Quick Register Links

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New posting on Jerusalem Imagined, Recalled, & Revisited

I wrote some of my thoughts about the "talks" between Rice, Abbas, and Olmert at blog.myspace.com/mhdpoet

Winter flowers and blowing crows...

Outside the fourth floor window of my drafty sublet an Israeli crow sits on the tv antenna of a neighboring rooftop, hanging on in a wind that pushes it to fly, its brown and black feathers ruffle in the strong air. Below, an almond tree flowers. Or perhaps the tree is a plum, they are all called almond, the flowering trees. This tree peaks out from a narrow walkway of larger green trees that makes its way down my view from the window here down to industrial Talpyot, a commercial and shopping area downhill from my apartment building. Across the way, hills rise West and South of the City Center. Clouds skim low across them, but blue sky also shows. The past few days have been off and on rain, last shabat mostly rain.

Aviva and I drove down to the northern Negev to view flowering koloniot (anemones), iris, narcissus, and many yellow, some orange, a few pink and a couple of blue flowers, all of the names of which I don't know. Even on a cloudy, rainy day, seeing the greens of the rolling hills and the flowers dotting meadows delighted. The bright red koloniot bobbing over bright green grasses with yellow flowers weaving below particularly struck me as something for an impressionistic painter.

Here, these are not spring flowers. These are winter flowers. In Minnesota, winter flowers with ice, snow, temperatures double-digit below zero (f). In Israel the rains bring green grasses and trees, brightly colored flowers. So it will be, I hope, with my emigration from Minnesota to Israel--that what is cold and ice within me will blossom into green meadows dotted with lovely colored flowers.

Here in Jerusalem, age 52

I turned 52 all of this week: Sunday on the Hebrew calendar, Tuesday in celebration with Aviva, today on the secular calendar. And here I am, starting my life over in Jerusalem. I've spent the past couple of weeks since arriving mixing a tiyul (hike, trip) or three in with bureaucratic office visits, starting a bank account, setting up health insurance, sub-letting an apartment (I move in tomorrow) and acquainting myself with the job market. And here I am, living in Jerusalem, officially Oleh Chadash (new immigrant).

Today, besides turning 52 in the Gregorian or Julian world (I can never remember which is the secular calendar), the first issue of why vandalism? came out online. It has a prose poem and digital arwork of mine. Also, Gary Lundy has two poems in this premiere issue. We have been friends for many years, in fact, he is my best friend, fellow poet, fellow traveller in the adventures of human living. I'm very excited that we have finally landed not only in the same journal, but the very same issue. Check it out: whyvandalism.kiwibeak.com/issues.html.

(The picture with this is a blue heron on a fishery pond just north of Dor beach, which is on the Mediterranean between Caesarea and Haifa.)

On My Way

I'm sitting at the gate for El Al, here at O'Hare Airport in Chicago. In less than an hour, boarding begins. Then a stop in Toronto on the way to Jerusalem. Here's my latest Aliyah blog post: blog.myspace.com/index.cfm