Get a copy of THE NEW DIGITAL AGE to find out why Eric Schmidt thinks HEALTHCARE is this generation’s PLASTICS.

Text: Jonee Nunes

Last night I was in the presence of  this tiny forceful woman at the United Nations, where she received a DVF Award that honors women who are using their resources, commitments and visibility to transform the lives of other women.  Dr. Sunitha Krishnan who was gang raped by 8 men at the age of 15 has rescued more than 5000 women to date.  One of her biggest challenges she says she faces is civil society and the culture of silence.  She’d like us to speak up, speak out and be more compassionate to victims of the sex slave trade.  What good is her work if we are not willing to take these women back into society?

Listen to Dr. Sunitha Krishnan here.

For more info on her work visit Prajwala.

James Baldwin

photo: Jason Jean at Citizencouture.com

I am glad you bid and got my portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat. I went to the opening last night but it was so crowded that I am going back later to see it again. It’s kind of sad he is not around to see the massive interest in his work.

I took the photo you have in 1983. He was then living in a loft on 101 Crosby Street just around the corner from Prince street. I took the photo at maybe 7 or 8 in the morning we had been up all night he was painting and I was hanging out listening to some music I had come over to take a portrait.

I did some close up photos of his face and then was gonna take some pics of him painting but for some reason I can’t remember I didn’t do that. Anyway he was leaving for Japan and wanted to take a bath before leaving, he had no shower. So I think it was his gift to me that he let me take pictures of him bathing. I mean very unique photos.

I took 12 photos and you have one of them. When he was done he packed his clothes everything in a big army duffel bag that closed from the top. He just stuffed everything in there without folding his suits, clothes mixed in with crayons color pencils pads of paper. And then got in a cab to the airport. I was late for work I was assisting Irving Penn at the time so I rushed off to work.

Anyway it’s just anecdotal but I though maybe nice for you to know.

My book Out To Lunch features all the photos if the session it’s a limited edition book published by Andrew Roth

You can check it out on

www.andrewroth.com/publications/ari-marcopoulos-out-to-lunch/

Have a good day apparently a huge storm is coming with lots of snow

Greetings

Ari

Sent from my iPhone

Photo of JMB by: Ari Marcopoulos

Collage of Jean-Michel and I bathing by yours truly

Just then a pip-i-rit spoke and I knew it was an announcement, because my grandmother had told me of the bird’s song.  She said if I listened closely I could know what it said.  Snow. Fly.  Snow.  Fly.  Snow Flying.  And the bird took flight.

I looked across the ridge and suddenly the mahoe trees lifted their dresses exposing their white petticoats:  My grandmother told me , when the mahoe trees start acting like jamets a hurricane will come.”

Papa Bois sneezed and the pollen blew.  Cinnamon snow and mahoe petticoats whirled all around the village.

I took my head tie from my waist and tightened it around my head and I began to run.  Mangoes were falling from the sky.  All the trees began to cry.  They wept all over me.  My dress became a handkerchief drenched in tears.  The coconut trees flung from side to side, moaned, trying to comprehend.  The soil now bearing the sorrow of the leaves’ tears sinking in the earths core pulled me down with it and I fell on my backside.  My hands planted in an earth filled with tribulation pushed me up.  I wiped them on my my white dress.  Blood and mud on white – once more I ran.  I reached a plateau with a guava patch.  Two little girls, one holding two banana leaves, covering her head and the head of the other little girl whom I suppose was her sister.  The other holding up her tattered skirt filled with guavas.

“What y’all doing dere?”

“We waiting for the rain to stop.”

“But it getting dark now you better go home or the devil will take you,” I said.

The sheltered girl released the tattered skirt and the banana leaves went soaring in the air.  Two little girls hand in hand scurried away.  Nine guavas left in soft footprints.

I decided to walk the rest of the way home.  My old poplin dress plastered on my body.  Blood on my dress, blood on my hands.  My head sopping wet.

Every house I passed by looked lonely.  Strangely it made me think of passion fruit.  Shut tight.  But within I knew there were souls bursting with force.  A colony of seeds within each home.  Little eyes flickering in candlelight.  Fingers playing with soot.  Shadowns in the ceilings, ghost stories in the air.  Maybe in another passion fruit the seeds were making more seeds.  Maybe two seeds were rubbing on each other while the rain glistened and sang outside its doors.  And in another passion fruit hung a barren sac.  Someone could be dying in there while the trees wept.  While my hands were bleeding and the coconut trees were moaning, while the sky rained mangoes, someone in that house, in that passionfruit may be defying gravity, defying the tribulations of earth and ascending heaven.  With these thoughts I walked home a little slower.  I had passed ten passion fruit on that vine, each potent.  Some with life, some with death.

Tomorrow when the sun comes up and the passion fruits opens their doors and the seeds spread out into a world with a penchant for sorrow, what happens to the one with the barren sac?

The one who sees mahoe jamets and cinnamon snow.  The one who wants one day to bear her own vine but is destined by fate to be the last in her line. To be unable to continue to sprout her own generation.  Who will she tell of mahoe petticoats and pip-i-reets?

Photos: my grand-mother and I in the hills of St.Lucia.