DUCKtoday

You had a life to live forward to and then the guy dies. Wasn’t tough enough before him; now you got to move on alone. People keep records and tell stories. You got dignity and pain. Sometimes they cancel out, leaving you who knows where. But everyday you got to take your beauty into the street with your head hung high and smile.

And, sometimes, you have to maintain the mystery!

David said the night would be full of fun. What he does for fun, who knows? But, though his life had different reference points than mine, his goals seem the same. If it ain’t fun, why do it? Me. I did many things I didn’t think were fun to go along or get along. He didn’t. Or, if he did, he said, at some time, enough.

This David follows a different path. Always looks unsure of where he is or where he is going. Aimless. Wandering. Sits. Stares. Rocks.

Hard to tell how he found his seat. Not sure if he came for a chess game. Doesn’t look like a comfortable place to snooze.

John Anctil can light any scene. He has a shop filled with lamps and things to hold them. He founded Fast Lights in Turners Falls MA, a company that brings lights wherever they are needed.

Hello.

Some days you do and some days you don’t. Cannot predict what the shoots entail or how you feel about them or yourself when you finish. Different subjects create different emotions and require different skills. One in a studio. One on the street. One in a store.

Hard to make friends in a new place. You got to have a job and a place and some commitment to something. Me. I go to school. This distinction earns you so little, unless you spend a ton of money. Even then, people say that you are leaving, leaving behind dollars to use their territory to learn and then, like the proverbial NY comment about not letting the door hit you on the way out, say goodby. Not me. I made friends at the local barber shop, thank you Walker Evans.

So, I go to hang out and talk to the guys. No betta place to talk to the guys than a barber shop. You don’t have to be on any social level. You can be as judgmental as you want, withinreason, so long as it ain’t personal. and, you got to be able to either tell stories or laugh at the stories told by others. A quotable quip, for sure, makes it. But it really better be good.

I was trying a case in the Southern District. Judge Miner, whom I knew from New York Law School, the local law school on Worth and Church from which we both were graduated, somehow found himself in the public elevator with me, one of his clerks, and a very out of control pro se litigant. The guy didn’t know Judge Miner’s lofty position in the building. He was ranting about one injustice after another, focusing his anger on the system and judges in particular. Judge Miner turned to me and said, “Mr. Duckman, you represent them and then I listen to them.” A very human judge.