George feels safest and most ease in his darkroom, where he is the master and can shut the world out. His life has changed this week, it makes me wary sometimes for him. George has his own way of looking at the world at his world, and we are bonded now, we are friends in a new and different way. I don’t want to ever feel responsible for him, nor would he ever want that, and yet he is navigating some very new terrain and I want to help guide him when I can.

George now can publish his book and he has some decisions to make, decisions he has not had to make in many years, if ever.  His Kickstarter project has been funded and he received more money from an anonymous donor yesterday. He is as happy and excited ad I have ever seen him. And unnerved as well.

I am encouraging him to buy a new computer, which he desperately needs, as the equipment he has can barely manage e-mail, let alone his blog and the photo editing and managing he wants and needs so badly to do.  For a photographer, bandwidth matters, so does computer power. It is the only thing I have ever pressured him to do or will pressure him to do – I have seen how much he struggles to navigate the Internet and the great pain and anxiety he suffered as we tried to piece the Kickstarter project together on his ancient machinery, I’m not sure it even was a computer.

Kickstarter has shown George that he can sell his photography – people are interested in it. His work need not be lost or forgotten.  But he has never bought a new or expensive piece of equipment or technology in his life. He has wired his own house,  built his own big screen TV out of thrown away electronics, patched together a Frankenstein computer from gifts and spare parts and believes he is not entitled to spend a lot of money on anything for himself. His TV, speakers, old cameras and lenses were almost put together from discarded and junked parts or gifts from friends.

George has lived by his own rules in his own mind and space. It is going to be different now, he knows it and we are talking a lot about how to deal with it.

“You never want to go over the top,” he told me this morning, he said he found a computer for a couple of hundred dollars that he could connect to a neighbor’s WI-Fi. We had a long talk about this when I figured out he was looking at a child’s digital tablet, a toy for games and texting. “I don’t know that I need to spend thousands of dollars on this,” he said. He said he didn’t want to bother me by asking my advice.

George has navigated the world as well as I have, and for longer and in the face of greater odds. But I feel I have to win this particular struggle, because it is, in many ways, a struggle for George’s soul. Every morning, he apologizes to me for calling me and taking me time, he feels he is entitled to nothing. I love talking to George, I told him I call him as much as he calls me, and that is the truth.  I  have identified a few computers that are inexpensive and also talked to him about my Apple technology, which is expensive but which has permitted me to manage my blog, photos and writing reliably and effectively. (It would be a big leap for George to buy an Apple device, but I want him to know about Apple.)

There are a number of different routes George can take, I urged him to take his time, go to Saratoga Springs with Donna today, browse at Best Buy and look at a number of different computers and see which one seems the best for him.

He has to figure this out for himself – we don’t need any advice, thanks – and I told him I believed that this time, he might have to spend more money than he has spent on any single thing in many years (his car has 300,000 miles on it and was bought used.) George can figure it out for himself, he is one of the smartest people I know, but I’ve decided to meddle a bit on this one issue. You are worth this, George, I told him, you are entitled to it, you are not being arrogant overstepping your bounds by buying a new computer to help you bring your work back into the light,   you are just going back into the light yourself.

Computers were a luxury a few years ago, now, I said they are the lifeline creative people have with the world. We are talking again this afternoon, after he takes his ride to Saratoga. New turf for both of us, dreams are tricky things to live with.