A blog by Bill Hess

Running Dog Publications

P.O. Box 872383 Wasilla, Alaska 99687

 

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Wasilla

Wasilla is the place where I have lived for the past 29 years - sort of. The house in which my wife and I raised our family sits here, but I have made my rather odd career as a different sort of photojournalist by continually wandering off to other places to photograph people and gather information, which I have then put together in various publications that have served the Alaska Native Eskimo, Indian and Aleut communities.

Although I did not have a great of free time to devote to this rather strange community, named after a Tanaina Athabascan Indian chief who knew Wasilla in the way that I so impossibly long to, I have still documented it regularly over the past quarter-century plus. In the early days, my Wasilla photographs focused mostly upon my children and the events they participated in - baseball, football, figure skating, hockey, frog catching, fire cracker detonation, Fourth of July parade - that sort of thing. 

In 2002, I purchased my first digital camera and then, whenever I was home, I began to photograph Wasilla upon a daily basis, but not in a conventional way. These were grab shots - whatever caught my eye as I took my many long walks or drove through the town, shooting through the car window at people and scenes that appeared and disappeared before I could even focus and compose in the traditional photographic way.

Thus, the Wasilla portion of this blog will be devoted both to the images that I take as I wander about and those that I have taken in the past. Despite the odd, random, nature of the images, I believe they communicate something powerful about this town that I have never seen expressed anywhere else. 

Wasilla is a sprawling community that has been slapped down hodge-podge upon what was so recently wilderness of the most exquisite beauty. In its design, it is deliberately anti-zoned, anti-planned. In the building of Wasilla, the desire to make a buck has trumped aesthetics and all other considerations. This town, built in the midst of exquisite beauty, has largely become an unsightly, unattractive, mess of urban sprawl. Largely because of this, it often seems to me that Wasilla is a community with no sense of community, a town devoid of town soul.

Yet - Wasilla is my home and if I am lucky it will be until I grow old and die. Despite its horrific failings, it is still made of the stuff of any small city: people; moms and dads, grammas and grampas, teens, children, churches, bars, professionals, laborers, soldiers, missionaries, artists, athletes, geniuses, do-gooders, hoodlums, the wealthy, the homeless, the rational and logical, the slightly insane and the wholly insane - and, yes, as is now obvious to the whole world, politicians, too.

So perhaps, if one were to search hard enough, it might just be possible to find a sense of community here, and a town soul. So, using my skills as a photojournalist and a writer, I hope to do just that. If this place has a sense of community, I will find it. If there is a town soul to Wasilla, I will document it. I won't compete with the newspapers. Hell no! But as time and income allow, it will be fun to wander into the places where the folks described above gather, and then put what I find on this blog.

 

by 300...

Anywhere within a 300 mile radius of Wasilla. This encompasses perhaps the most wild, dramatic, gorgeous, beautiful section of land and sea to be found in any comparable space anywhere on Earth. I can never explore it all, but I will do the best that I can, and will here share what I find and experience with you.  

and then some...

Anywhere else in the world that I happen to get to, such as Point Lay, Alaska; Missoula, Montana; Serenki, Chukotka, Russia; or Bangalore, India. Perhaps even Lagos, Nigeria. I have both a desire and scheme to get me there. It is a long shot. We shall see if I succeed.

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Friday
Nov112011

I dream a strange dream of noise and silence

The closing credits to the movie, Rum Diary, with Johnny Depp, based on the work of Hunter S Thompson, photographed with my iPhone just before Margie and I left the theatre.

Today I had one of the strangest dreams ever. It began close to noon and lasted until about 2:30 pm, although it was interrupted three, maybe four times, by phone calls, but after each call it resumed.

I am trying to remember what time I got up this morning, but it is unclear to me. Was it 7:00? 8:00? 9:00? It was somewhere in that stretch. There was a piece of work that I had to do first thing so I did it, but the whole time I had the feeling that my density was increasing, that I was becoming heavier and heavier and pretty soon my weight would crush the chair beneath me and I would fall to the floor, then through the floor, then into the earth and I would not stop falling until I reached the molten core.

That is the feeling of pure exhaustion, sleepiness, sleep denied.

I had to sleep, so I left my desk, left my office, walked through the near corner of the garage into the living room and then lay down on the couch. It is kind of funny - if I am in my bed, I cannot lie on my back at all. It just aggravates my shingles too much and leaves me no hope of sleep. There is only one position that I can lie on in bed and that is on my right side, tilted towards the front.

The shingles start on the left side of my back, pretty close to my spine, wrap around through my left armpit and across my chest in an ugly, dark-red, mottled, blistered band that seems to range between three and four inches in width and then stops right on my sternum.

I cannot lie on my left side at all. So I hold that one position on my right side, all through the night. I do not sleep through the night, but only in brief periods - but that's good, because before I started taking the drugs I couldn't really sleep at all.

Oddly enough, I can lie on my back on the couch. I think it has something to do with the pillows that I put beneath me and how they position me. It still hurts my back to lie like that, but I can handle it.

So that is what I did. I lay down on the couch and closed my eyes. The cats, Jim and Chicago, happily came to join me. Both wanted to step all over my chest until they could find just the right spot to curl up and nap with me, but I refused to let them. I kept picking them up and pushing them down to my legs. Finally, they got the idea. One settled down on my thighs, the other in the gap between my calves.

Then I closed my eyes, fell asleep almost instantly and began to dream. Margie had the TV on - tuned to the news channels. Even as I slept and dreamed, I could hear and was cognisant of every word and sentence that came from the TV. I followed the conversation, but as I did, in my dream I was in the midst of a big crowd in a warm and sunny place and there were green trees and flowers and stores. It was not Alaska. Maybe it was in the tropics somewhere - but it looked American, so maybe not. Florida? Arizona? Puerto Rico? People were talking, people were waving their arms - others were driving cars and motorcycles; airplanes kept flying by, low to the ground, so low that I could see the faces of the pilots.

Dogs ran past, barking.

Many more things were happening.

All this - the conversation, the shouts, the pumping of pistons, the spinning of props, the barking of dogs was taking place in complete silence. I could hear no voices, no engines, no props roaring, no dogs barking. The activity before me was furious and mouths were flapping - in silence, making no sound whatsoever.

Picture a lady with curly red hair tied back with a checkered kerchief, standing two feet away from me, looking right at me, the motion of her mouth, lips and teeth telling me that she was talking loudly but not a sound came from her.

As her jaws worked, what I heard was Rick Perry, saying "oops!" I could hear, understand and follow everything that was coming from the TV. Perry, Herman Cain, Romney, the recent horrors at Penn State and a whole lot of serious nonsence being debated by left-wingers and right-wingers, with a moderate or two thrown in for the heck of it.

And then the phone would ring and I would want to ignore it but there were critical matters pending, so I would take the phone and someone would say I should donate money here and someone else asked for John and I told him he had the wrong number, there is no John here and he said are you sure and then someone called wanting to use some of my pictures in something - and each time I fell back to sleep at practically the moment I put the phone down. The dream resumed as if it had never stopped and once again I was perfectly following the dialogue from the TV as the cats napped happily upon my legs.

Then a call came about a completely unexpected matter that absolutely had to be dealt with immediately and so I disrupted the cats, staggered into my office to my computer, talking on the phone, trying to grasp the pertinent details and then I opened the appropriate software and began to type and calculate but kept making mistakes and a task which should have taken maybe ten minutes at most took me about half-an-hour.

Had that not happened, I think perhaps I would have lay on the couch dreaming a silent dream as I followed everything that was actually happening around me for another two, three, four, six, ten, hours or so.

Maybe it was the Vicodin. 

This is what pushed me into a state of such exhaustion and stress that I wound up getting shingles. Not by itself, mind you. It has been a long chain of events beginning in early summer or maybe late spring, perhaps even winter or earlier, including the completion of the Kivgiq Uiñiq that so closely preceded this one, including my almost sleepless eight or nine days in New York, death here and there, and a few other events that I will not bother to detail, but in the end it was the 12, 16, 20, 30, 40 hour days that I repeatedly put in over the past couple of weeks in order to finish this thing.

But you know what? If you moved me back two weeks in time but kept the memory of these shingles and how painful they are alive and vivid in my mind and then said, "You are stressing yourself too much. Go ahead, push it aside for awhile. Because if you don't you are going to get shingles and you are going to think for awhile that you are at death's door and then even when you find out you are not going to die you will still have to bear this miserable pain of shingles for at least two weeks, maybe more. Push it aside and rest." I would not push it aside. I would do just what I did, even knowing the pain that was coming.

That is what I would have done and I would be suffering just as badly now as I am, but not as badly as I would be were it not for Vicodin.

This is just a proof copy. It is at the printers and will be there for awhile so it is not yet available to be read. But it's coming.

It's got some huge flaws in it.

It is a work of love.

Love is the only way I know how to work. It is good to get money when it comes, and it may not come again for quite awhile now, but money has never motivated me.

Love, and love only. That is my motivation.

To those who do not understand I cannot explain it. To those who do, I need not explain.

I am going to go to bed now. At 4:00 AM, I can take another Vicodin.

Don't worry. I will not become another Dr. House.

 

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Reader Comments (11)

doesn't sound like a pleasant dream...i wish you speedy recovery .

November 11, 2011 | Unregistered Commentertwain12

No explaining.. gentle hugs..

November 11, 2011 | Unregistered Commentereva

It is used cynically and made more famous by your most notorious resident, but by god, you have a servant's heart.

May your spate of pain ease and lessen with each day.

And good luck on the book. Congratulations. This is exciting!

November 11, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterMostly Alaskan

Those drugs can do that. I have a list of things I refuse to take. Valium tops the list, it gives me nightmares like nothing else. Nothing relaxing about it, lol.
Hope you feel better soon!!

November 11, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterMikey

;-)

November 11, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterCyndy E

like you, bill, i work all the time, esp. now that i'm getting my magazine in order. wanna finish by 10 pm tonite so i can watch the great choreographer bill. t. smith on pbs. also like you, i wrote about some delirious dreams, not by me, for i rarely dream, but by mark mccain, lucas's son. on the rifleman. when i'm in bed i always take phone off hook, i don't care who i'm expecting. blissful; uninterrupted sleep is too important. hope you catch up tonite!!!

November 11, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterRuth Deming

anyone can SEE the love in your work.

November 11, 2011 | Unregistered Commenterdahli22

Love,love and only love...hmmm...and you might need some ouzo now...

WE LOVE YOU FROSTFROG....BILL you are stronger than we think!
I am sending the best energy
THANK YOU ...

your book ,your vision...our inspiration

whatever u need, Wasilla people and I...we are next to YOU

November 11, 2011 | Unregistered Commentera civilian-mass audience

I went to bed tonight, fell soundly asleep, and began to dream. But I was seeing double. And I was sound asleep and wondering how on earth I could have double vision in my dream. I woke up startled, and my first conscious thought was, "It's that picture on Bill's blog..." I couldn't even figure out why I thought that, until I clicked on your blog and saw your first picture.

November 11, 2011 | Unregistered Commenterdebby

Twain - in some ways it was unpleasant, but it was also pleasant - just to be asleep.

Eva - hugs received and they help. I love the picture of the white dog against the dark earth. Excellent.

Mostly Alaskan - thank you. "Book" is both the right and wrong word. UIñiq is a magazine that I make and so is not as refined as a book should be, but it does some book-like attributes to it.

MIkey - I hope so, too. I especially hope I feel better by November 21, when Margie and I will board a plane and get in your city, Phoenix, very late at night. I really don't want to have this then.

Cindy - :)

Ruth - You probably saw that, after a day spent mostly napping, I slept for 12 hours last night. I would not call myself caught up, though. It will take awhile longer yet. Haven't seen the Rifleman in at least four decades. I hope you finished your magazine. Mine is a bear to finish. It can look completely, yet still be days away from completion.

dahli - thank you. I hope so.

Civi - I don't know about the people of Wasilla - but I do know about you. You always make me feel better. And little Vissaria - she does, too. What a talent!

Debby - Good grief! My dream becomes your dream? Sounds like something out of a nightmare.

November 13, 2011 | Registered CommenterWasilla, Alaska, by 300

Bill,
I really hope you'll feel better soon. I feel really bad for what you're going through and I pray this is the worst you'll ever see once it's behind you.
I've had a few... events around, some not that wonderful, but as a result, I'm way behind on your blog (and other things...) and trying to catch up. Me, who'd mumble each day I wouldn't see a new post from you, I'M BEHIND! And so I hope that in your most recent blog I'll find out that by now you'd be feeling much better.
P.S. Don't ever go to sleep with the TV on, it WILL crawl into your dreams and make you more tired than before you laid down... And Fox, on top of everything, too? What were you thinking??? :))

Your conservative fan from Ohio :D

November 22, 2011 | Unregistered Commenterllili marginean

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