My new T magazine has landed
reclamation in Murfreesboro, NC
welcome back
writing retreat at Porches
If there’s pleasure in action, there’s peace in stillness. Today (March 21, 2023) was beautiful here in Norwood perched on the second floor of Porches as the sun sinks. Mid 60s. Bliss, this is.
Car in the snow.
Sunrise outside Onley
My good friend
Gideon Lewin at the closing of his show of intriguing and beautiful photographs in Barcelona. (Masterfully curated by his partner Joanna Mastroianni). Gideon worked for Richard Avedon - the gifted fashion and portrait photographer - for 15 years starting 1960. What a time he witnessed and worked.
I met Gideon when I hired him to do a shoot for our Paris fashion client Votre Nom in the late nineties. He had opened up his own studio by then. He knew me as an art director. And I never told him I was a photographer. I was more than happy to listen to his stories. We talked for hours when we first met, the day before the shoot. And we did several shoots together.
And we’ve remained friends. I’d visit the studio when in New York. He wrote a forwarding statement for my retrospective book PROOF several years ago, and he ended his own book about the Avedon years with a photograph I shot of him jumping on the steps outside Avedon’s exhibit at the Met.
He was and has remained graceful and gracious, and quietly aware.
We caught up on the phone in early September and he told me of his show that opened in July in Spain. I’ll be going back for the closing the first of October he said. A few days later - maybe I should go I thought. I got a plane ticket and sent Gideon a note - see you for the closing.
I’ve had enough regrets. Go. Do. Thanks for the friendship. It was a beautiful show.
Hotel Villa Emilia
BARCELONA
LOOK AROUND, she said after Javier put two more drinks of unknown origin on the stand-up table that was now our only support. Sure enough the tiny bar was a sea of locals navigated by a symphony of tall dark men moving effortlessly with small plates and aperitifs, each Spaniard more beautiful than the next. It was as if all was slow motion and cinematic. And then suddenly but without hurry, looking over the lip of her glass taking in the room she said as if to no one - though I knew the target - you are an appendage that I don’t feel is necessary for the completion of this journey.
Kara
She had always wanted to tell him. From the very first day, when it was rainy out and the streets glistened and they spent hours talking just around the corner in the bar a block from her apartment. But she couldn’t or she didn’t. Never seemed right. And from that moment, there was guilt that gave way to silent resignation.
And the more days that passed, the more she decided to believe that maybe this really was in the past. It was how she argued her way to detente and silenced the voices. Still she knew it would be short lived and they would be back.
the doctor, a diva and a dog
Is everything about loss this year, I wondered pedaling my fancy bike down the seaside road on the shore this past Saturday afternoon. It was grey and unseasonably warm for December and I was still anguished over Henry’s death three days earlier. Henry, the most beautiful yellow lab in the world, was 14, a ripe old age for a lab I’m told. His hips were giving out and it was harder and harder to get up and about. We knew there were pain issues, and his medications and treatments had gradually increased these past few years, but he was no complainer. In the mornings, when he was back with mom from Crozet, he’d come to the studio door and bark once to let me know he was present and ready for attention. If the petting didn’t last long enough, he’d gently paw for more. He did this on his last day. No dog was kinder or more obedient. Early on we realized we didn’t need a leash to walk him to the beach. He’d stop at the busy Atlantic Ave and not think of crossing until permission was granted.
I had the hardest time saying yes to the decision to phone the vet and arrange the house call. Rationally it made sense but I wasn’t ready. I would never be. Wednesday was a lovely blue sky day. Walker and Henry and I walked over to the beach one last time as we’d done a million times. But in my heart of hearts it was depressing. I felt like Judas. Henry was slower but sprinted a bit across the open sand down to the water. Don’t do that I thought. Please don’t do that. Please don’t show me you have some good life left. Walker knelt, one arm around Henry’s neck, the other taking selfies. Let’s just not walk back, I thought. Let’s stay here until the vet has come and gone. Surely they’ve had people change there mind. Surely.
But we walked back. Slowly. Sadly. And three days later I’m still processing as if this is a procedure with some good finish line.
Is everything about loss this year? I know better but certainly it’s a year unlike any I’ve lived through. Covid, the election and civil unrest have ruled the day though there have been bright spots. My 91-year-old mother got covid, was hospitalized and near death before miraculously recovering. Unfortunately, not everyone’s been so lucky. More than 200,000 have died in this country and how we do business has changed forever. We wear masks everywhere. We don’t hug. And we often don’t recognize people we know. We are isolated. We’ve had loved ones die and we’ve seen businesses fail. Now the holidays are upon us.
So when I ask the question about loss, I’m quick and determined to remind myself that mine is a fortunate life. That I have much to be thankful about, even when the clouds are thick.
Two other deaths this year left me saddened and grateful, and I wanted to be sure to focus on the grateful on this Saturday rolling over the shore. I met Dr. Hirji Adenwalla while traveling in India for Smile Train around 2000. He worked at the Jubilee Mission hospital for over 50 years and lived in a lovely simple home on the grounds of the hospital, within earshot of the wards where mothers sung songs to sleep their babies. I was just passing through, but after less than 24 hours in Trissur I determined to return and a year later spent two weeks with Dr. A and his sweet wife Gulnar. He loved his work and the families he cared for, and seemed to carry compassion as though it were some sweet fragrance to be easily waved around. He would quote the words of great writers as we walked the hallways of the hospital, me often just trying to keep up. He made me hopeful and in his presence I was reminded of many blessings. A year or so after my trip, he came to New York to receive a humanitarian award and in his remarks said:
“The lessons that we learn from human misery are to love, to never forget your own insignificance, and to never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest place, to pursue beauty to it’s lair, and to never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength never power, to try to understand, to never forget and to never, never look away.”
Of all the places I have traveled, all the people I have met, I marvel that the world turned in such away that we collided.
Back at home, four weeks ago, I learned my good friend Craig Embrey died. He lived alone in DC. A housekeeper found him on his bathroom floor, and I hated that he had no one around that might have changed this outcome. Too soon, too tragic. Much of what I learned about style and design I learned in our years of friendship. He was a kind friend and sometimes a difficult human. His mother committed suicide on Christmas Day in the 70s and he carried his talent like a tumultuous demon on his shoulder, sure of his pedigree though short on the filters of polite society. At our many Christmas evening cocktail parties where his cologne always announced his arrival, he’d invariably leave in a huff over something after numerous vodkas. We’d all be momentarily wounded, then days would pass and we could not remember why the storm or cared not to. The diva went with the designer. He always claimed that the Christmas season was depressing but invariably showered his friends with unique and generous presents - from paper whites to antique vases, candles and books. Always interesting and personal. And always fancy treats for the dogs. His own decorations were certainly at odds with any notion of not liking Christmas.
His style really was impeccable. He could mix antiques with modern minimalist pieces and his rooms were both comfortable and stunningly right. His were spaces you liked being in. He loved good lighting, and anything less was an affront to his senses. He would adjust light levels and move things around whenever he came over. And it of course would be better.
He was certainly more work than Dr. A and Henry, but no less important. These were friendships that were each unique and special, gifted and gone. And as I get more air, I’ll mourn less and celebrate more. As it should be, I’m sure.
Moon Flower
Route 66
“Do you have any idea?” she asked, pausing and waiting for the quiet to sink in. “Do you know what it’s like to have a wound that doesn’t heal?” This - whatever this was - he was not expecting. To her credit, it was all she said. She held still for what must have seemed like forever, then slid out of the booth - the naugahyde shiny and full of the color leather could only hope for - and she was instantly on her feet and moving, and then gone. Somewhere down the mother road. It was then he noticed his glass was empty.
subway, new york
Wigwam Village, off Route 66
“They were driving through greater waste down here, through fewer and even more insignificant towns. There was water under everything. Even where a screen of jungle had been left to stand, splashes could be heard from under the trees. In the vast open, sometimes boats moved inch by inch through what appeared endless meadows of rubbery flowers.
Her eyes overcome with brightness and size, she felt a panic rise, as sudden as nausea. Just how far below questions and answers, concealment and revelation, they were running now—that was still a new question, with a power of its own, waiting. How dear—how costly—could this ride be?”
From “No Place for You, My Love” a story by Eudora Welty
the four babushkas, st. petersburg, russia
the collected, waiting
I’ve shot a lot of dried flowers lately, up on the shore, me and them in isolation. Flowers to go with the bugs and other old things. Unlike people, there is little drama in these subjects, no feigned shyness. But they offer little collaboration, make no suggestions, just sit and wait - daring me to make something happen, applying their own inanimate pressure.
roses, saved and dried, 2016.
I could jokingly say that I shoot a lot of dead things because I’m slow to get around to stuff, but that’s not totally true. I shoot all the time. So it may just take a while for whatever to appeal to me. And there is pressure in shooting something in it’s full glory prime. You know that time is short lived, so you better get on it, figure it out. You beg your minds eye to focus. Come on, you plead. So I’m often still thinking. Mulling and mulling as whatever flower or creature withers onward, unaware of being watched.
Then, more often than not, the right day comes around
and the light is good and that something has aged and dried
into shapes and surfaces, textures and shadows.
And there it is.
More interesting in death, than lovely in life.
A beautiful chaos of new clothes, none the Emperor’s.
Lisa and the doc
Some years back I talked my good friend Lisa Bacon into meeting me in India to do a story on Dr. Hirji Adenwalla for CNN Traveller Magazine. He was a dear man and loved by all who knew him. Here is her story….
LIP SERVICE by Lisa Antonelli Bacon
On a sweltering Wednesday evening in March, rickshaws clatter through the front gates of Jubilee Mission Hospital to discharge passengers and pick up more. Villagers and visitors mill noisily about. Some have come for medical attention. Others have received it and are in the process of leaving. Over honking horns and loud chatter, the wails and cries of children blend into a cacophony that echoes in the crowded courtyard.
For nearly half a century, Dr. Hirji Adenwalla has gone to sleep each night and awakened each day to the same sounds. Since 1960, he and his wife Gurnal have lived in a small cottage on the hospital grounds in Trichur, a town of 275,000 in Kerala, southern India. As head of the hospital’s Charles Pinto Centre for Cleft Lip and Palate, Adenwalla has changed the lives of thousands of children with birth deformities that, in countries such as India, all too often doom a child to a life of poverty and isolation.
When the Adenwallas came here in 1960, medical professionals were rare in rural southern India. Since opening in 1952, Jubilee Mission Hospital had provided a tiny beacon of hope. The small medical outpost had served a poverty-lashed, largely uneducated population. A skeletal medical staff took care of everything from snakebites to starvation, and if the patient could not pay, they didn’t have to.
Times have changed. Now the place is well on its way to becoming a modern megaplex, with a 1,500-bed hospital, a medical school, and specialty and even subspecialty departments to care for all the needs of a population suffering from the illnesses and injuries of the 21st century. Jubilee’s mission mandate continues.
But growth and modernisation require financial belt-tightening and, whether the business is hospitals or hotels, free services suffer in the squeeze. The hospital now relies primarily on donations to cover the costs of the free treatment it provides.
Since setting up the centre, Adenwalla and his two staff surgeons have repaired the faces of over 8,000 children at no cost to the patients’ families. Although money is scarce, he believes the mission will survive. “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of,” he says.
On a steamy night on the eve of the monsoon season, Adenwalla begins his evening rounds to examine the little faces he has repaired. The sun has disappeared, but people still pace around the moonlit complex. Many are parents of tiny patients who have travelled hundreds of kilometres to come here but who cannot afford a hotel room while they wait for their children to recuperate. After a full day of surgery, 73-year-old Adenwalla spryly climbs the two flights up a dark, crowded stairwell to the children’s surgical ward.
Women in saris share single beds with their babies. One mother lies beneath a bed with her small child, comfortable in the knowledge that her baby will not fall out of bed if she dozes off. Some of the women are mothers; others are grandmothers. All seem awed by their surroundings. They fan themselves and their children in the 40-degree C heat as two overhead fans struggle to stir the thick, humid air over 32 beds.
Using a household torch, Adenwalla looks into the mouth of tomorrow’s patient, a nine-month-old girl with loose dark curls. The gaping hole where the roof of the mouth should be means she cannot eat properly, a dysfunction that inevitably leads to malnutrition.
In more developed countries, cleft palate surgery is almost a routine procedure done soon after birth. In India, it is an expensive proposition costing 10,000 rupees ($220) for each of the two to four operations required for each repair. In a country where 350 million people still live on less than $1 a day, many Indian children go into adult life with gruesome facial distortion, deafness and speech disorders.
“They are complete misfits in a society which is not conditioned to treat such people with sympathy,” says Adenwalla. He adds that the risk or occurrence of this deformity can lead to abortion and even infanticide in certain parts of India. And because of their isolation and disconnection from society, those who survive into adulthood are frequently at the root of violence and criminal acts in their communities.
“Communication,” says the doctor, “a basic need for all mankind, becomes hesitant. Lack of communication leads to severe retardation of mental growth and the general process of learning, which is so important for a child. What you are left with is a sad caricature of a human being.”
Early the next morning, before the heat has enveloped the compound, Adenwalla drapes a sterile green smock over his tennis shorts and polo shirt before scrubbing up at a large sink that looks more like a horse trough with taps. In the operating room, cooled by a single air-conditioning window unit, he perches on a gingham-covered black stool at the head of the operating table. The antiquated seven-lamp fixture overhead is so old it looks like a UFO. Thankfully for Jubilee, it could be argued, when Adenwalla wrote to the German manufacturer for replacement parts, the company sent them free of charge. “Nobody uses these things any more, so they had the things lying around.”
On the table, all that is visible is a tiny mouth and nose, surrounded by a green cloth. Four people lean over a sterile area not much larger than a plum. Forty years ago, the scene was much different. Then the hospital had a total of four nurses and one surgeon. Gurnal, a young bride of 20, was Adenwalla’s only surgical assistant.
After some clipping and slicing, the child’s nose and mouth have disappeared, replaced by what looks like a smashed tomato. With the eyes of a hawk and the hands of a harpist, Adenwalla reconstructs a new face, one that will be as pretty as it is functional. As he knots off the final stitches at the end of the three-hour surgery, he hums Harry Belafonte’s Jamaican Farewell.
It has been a good day. The futures of six more children have been radically improved. And a representative from SmileTrain, a New York-based charitable organisation that has paid for approximately 2,000 surgeries at Jubilee to date, has brought a gift: a cheque for $45,000 that will pay for a much-needed headlamp and some naso-endoscopes, to replace the flashlight and tongue depressors staff have been using to examine and diagnose their tiny patients.
Still humming, the doctor heads for his cottage for dinner. Before he reaches the courtyard, a small, thin man approaches him with a piece of paper. It is a bill for 900 rupees. SmileTrain paid for his child’s surgery, but the ward was full so, afterwards, the child was settled in a three-bed curtained cubicle. The coveted cubicle costs 60 rupees (less than $2) a day. But the man, who says he makes 130 rupees a day, cannot afford it.
In the past, department heads were allowed to wipe a bill clear if someone could not pay, but that practice has been suspended. Instead, Adenwalla gives a portion of his salary to an office assistant who puts it in a fund. “It’s small, but when someone needs it to pay a bill, something is there,” he says.
For now, the doctor seeks out an administrator to clear up the matter, but none can be found. “Under no circumstances are we going to bill this man,” he tells the discharge nurse. "If this has to be paid, I will pay for it. Not this man.”
When the morning sun reaches the top of the nearby Nilgiri mountains, a mist rolls over the gentle rows of tea bushes that swaddle their slopes, obscuring the world beneath. At the weekend, Adenwalla walks here each morning and again at night. His walks are long and relaxing, designed to keep him in shape after a coronary led to a bypass operation 10 years ago.
A group of villagers stands by the roadside, staring down the mountain at a quartet of immense bison that have meandered into the tea bushes and are working their way back down the mountainside. A villager was gored near the same spot a few years ago, and although the details are lost in a torrent of rapid-fire Tamil, the gist of the conversation is that, while it may be a lucky treat to spot a bison, it is one to be enjoyed from a distance.
As the bison amble off, the villagers erupt in gleeful chatter. Walking stick in hand, the doctor heads back to Meher, the Adenwallas’ home near the former British hill station of Coonoor. It is five hours’ drive and worlds away from Trichur and Jubilee.
Back at the house, a comfortable bungalow situated on the mountainside overlooking the town, the doctor reflects. “My father didn’t want me to take up medicine. He told me, ‘Your maths is bad, your physics is poor. Your science is miserable. Take up law. Or be a writer.’ But boys idolise their fathers.” His father was, of course, a doctor.
In his small study, surrounded by family photos and books about Winston Churchill, Napoleon Bonaparte, and the Indian spiritual leader Meher Baba, after whom the house is named, the doctor is philosophical about the future of his mission. With sadness, he foresees the day he will no longer perform delicate facial surgeries. Later this year, he says, he will reduce his surgery schedule to three weeks a month. Next year, he will reduce it again, to two weeks a month. “I plan to retire gently,” he says.
But he worries. As the business of medicine advances into the 21st century, the mission aspect has not kept pace in many parts of the world, including here in India.
“When I came to Jubilee, I saw an aura about the place,” he recalls. “People who should’ve died didn’t. People who were terribly sick recovered. All the prayers!” To some extent, in the shift from mercy to advanced medicine, the doctor has lost heart. “People holding on are fighting a losing battle. I used to worry about everything around me. Now I take care of my patients. I have to have tunnel vision.”