Lucius Bod | Rogue Diary

Ginger and Spice

On my table lies the first draft of a story. You embrace me with the delicious aroma of your cooking and yell at me from the infamous kitchen of sarcasm, demanding of my kisses to taste like the stars, not cookie dough. Your words sound better than the morose drivel engraved on the page, and when I open my mouth, I feel moons and galaxies breezing into my mind. 

My gypsy had lain unconscious in the mirror for years until you came along. I used to feel as if my life’s mission was to watch an hourglass filled with dread and poison whilst sitting on a cinnamon-coloured chair, wearing clothes sheared to slices by my own poor judgement. When I finish my story you will know how everything changed in me the day you offered me a rabbit as a gift. 

The taste of pepper on my lips will always be part of my makeup, but I will follow you into a lifelong trance with your sweet-smelling skin on mine. I promise we will be together in New York soon, lover. 

© Text: Orlando Barahona
© Image: Philippe Leroyer/Flickr

 This work by Orlando Barahona is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 

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Tomorrow

Many American photographers I've met credit the work of Diane Arbus as their inspiration to pursue Photography. Their personal forays into fashion, fine art, landscapes and other specialties in turn inspire others to capture moments of beauty or the grotesque as she did. 

I considered the idea for years, and I still can't decide if I have a story interesting enough to tell others, or to use my life as a splendid compendium of experiences to help people find their way. Writing in my journal filled me with joy and pain as a boy. It still does.

After a wonderful afternoon I spent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art I walked aimlessly for a few blocks and on a whim decided to buy three photography books from a glitzy book store on Fifth Avenue. The work of three artists was now mine: Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills, Nan Goldin's The Ballad of Sexual Dependency and Diane Arbus’s An Aperture Monograph by her daughter Doon Arbus and Marvin Israel. 

Woman With Veil On Fifth Avenue, NYC, 1968 by Diane Arbus

 
I couldn't wait to go home to open them and experience what I felt during exhibitions presented at various galleries I visited, so I sat down on one of the store's sofas and allowed their visions to kidnap my mind. The mundane, the beautiful, the lost; humanity at its least and most self-aware, the diseased... involuntary tears of gratitude fell from my eyes onto my hands, but I saw hope clearly, marvellously shown by people who chose to live with their conditions and their looks, their challenges and joys. How shockingly beautiful to see, and all I felt from them; how moving they were to me!

A strong desire to leave took over, and I walked out into the streets, following every building with my mind, experiencing everything as I came across tourist shop owners serving their customers, delis and people looking at goods, and strangers crossing the streets. I felt naked under my clothes, and outside my flat I was one with the city for a moment.

It was only when I took the subway to the East Village that I felt myself again. A brief melancholy took me by surprise, and I thought of what I was at that moment: A man from a broken home, with a broken marriage, a past of opportunities lost and found; just a broken man with a dream and three photography books, going home at the end of the day. Tomorrow I will have another chance to win.

© Text: Orlando Barahona
© Image: The Estate of Diane Arbus | Diane Arbus, Woman with a Veil on 5th Avenue, NYC, 1968

 This work by Orlando Barahona is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

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