Fuck It I'm 50

It has been blowing like hell out there. And today felt better.

I am using half of a “Get out of jail free card” and posting images shot either yesterday or Wednesday, and offering some of my work in progress from today’s grant writing session as part of this blog.

Thanks to my dear friends who have sent messages of hope to both Lee and me. I will talk to you all soon, especially you Virginia. I feel very loved, and Lee, if you read this, I hope you do too.

Lee and I have not talked since midday Thursday and it feels wrong.

Oddly when I sat down to start editing a selects reel of my dead Mama footage for the doc I am trying to raise funds for the first clip I loaded was Lee, painting the back porch of my deceased mother’s house and talking in metaphor about the paint being the skin of the house, and without a thick coat, the house would rot and die. Watching the footage I knew why I was drawn to him, loved him, love his insides and outsides, and know why we are not together now. Did I already mention his parting words at the top of the steps Thanksgiving morning? “(we are)…soul mates who don’t get along”.

And here I am again in my empty three flat building. With the winds blowing and a shit load of work to do to pull off getting this next grant in.

BTW-big decisions today that I ran by Cynthia who is coming out soon to build the fort, moat, arc, skyscraper and hummer for social change and modest personal success with me in the next few weeks. More on all that soon.

But I need to get back to grant writing, so I leave with posting some of the text I wrote for the documentary I am pushing to the forefront; more on other projects, including Saltwater, later….

Brief Description of Project (No more than 150 words). *

An Unexamined Life, a feature length documentary, asks the unanswerable question, “What is the meaning of our lives?” With this existential question at the core we go on a journey through my mother’s life and death and her life long battle with depression and mental illness.

While this film looks squarely at how contemporary culture deals with our mental health crisis, we explore the questions that hover at the edge of our consciousness: What is the meaning of life? Is an unexamined life worth living?

Diagnosed with terminal cancer at 62 my mother gave me permission to document her illness and death. I have been shooting my complex mother since 1984, and continue to document the world without her.

This film is about being with dying, mothers and daughters, loss and grieving, compassion and caretaking, depression and mental illness and the human quest to find meaning in our lives.