La Macchina Fotografica

Dragging myself out, I walk in a daze out into a cold fog and down to the park. Wiping the sleep from my eyes I veer off the path into the wet-sponge grass. My feet instantly get soaked, affirming my theory that once your feet are wet, the day is shot. It’s time to go back to bed. I feel the sogginess seep into my new, white socks. I look down at my old, sad sneakers, thinking to myself that they are past their prime. I feel like an alien on a planet of someone else’s choosing. I shrug it off—not enough coffee I suppose. Then I look up. Something is different.

I squint out into the cottony distance. The local traffic signal is glowing like a space ship. Emerald green. The glow is steady and I wait for it to turn red. It doesn’t. A minute seems like an endless mediation. It’s still green. The whole damn world is green. I wait. There are no cars, no birds, no sounds. Just green. Finally, a car creeps slowly forward. The cotton fog muffles its engine. Its only sign of life is the white vapor coming from the tailpipe. The car doesn’t stop. The light is still green.

I finally realize that the light won’t turn red until a car approaches the intersection from the side road that leads to my house. I give up waiting and go back to the paved path. A seagull squawks at me and wakes me from my trance. I look back and see that the light has finally turned crimson. A instant that seemed like forever had passed. Thinking, with gratitude, about a fleeting moment where the world was green, I forget about my wet feet. I walk three miles and prove that wet feet don’t always ruin a whole day. By the time I reach home the light turned green again and my feet were dry.

It all started last Christmas but I’d long forgotten about it. I’d forgotten that is, until last week when I started walking along the old rail path again. Lost in thought, about a quarter mile from home I saw it again and it made me laugh just like it did upon my first discovery.

All along the path are agave plants. My photographer’s eye is naturally attracted to their form which I find both musical and organic. Therefore I pretty much know where all the agave plants are along the trail. On my walk of a year ago I suddenly noticed that one agave was in a full bloom of the strangest kind. The plant seemed to have sprouted red berries along its spiked leaves. What? I had no idea that the agave bloomed in such way. I immediately started to photograph this rare occurrence. Looking closely at the photos later in the day I realized that someone had decorated the leaves with the berries of a nearby pyracantha bush. They’d stuck the berries onto the barbs of the agave leaves. The holiday joke was on me. Someone had dressed up the agave for Christmas.

I’d forgotten about the agave because I stopped taking my walks along the old rail path. Last week I rediscovered both the walks and the agave. Looking sad with only a few of last years withered berries still clung to it, I decided to redecorate the plant. Rather than add berries in random fashion as had been done before, I added a berry to each and every barb on one leaf. Maybe someone else would come along, feel inspired and then decorate another leaf. It might start an agave, communal experience. Maybe the whole plant would become studded in stunning red.

While applying the berries I heard someone behind me. Damn! I wanting this to be an anonymous caper. So I scurried off, feeling like a old leprechaun. Snickering to myself I wondered if the person would notice what I’d done. Would she add berries to the work of art? What would her dog think?

I walked my walk again today, hurrying along so that I could return to the agave. To my disappointment no one had added anything to it. In fact, it seemed that some clever bird had considered my decorations to be nothing more than a fancy, berry kabob and had eaten most of the ornaments that I’d so carefully added. I replenished the plant and, since no one was behind me on the path, I made some photos of my pyracantha caper.

I’ll visit it tomorrow to see if either a hungry bird or a fellow earth artist has come along.

I am a creature of habit. I will walk the same walk for months on end at mostly the same time, mostly every day. Then something knocks me off my routine and some new habit takes form. That habit replaces the daily walk until some other thing happens that ruins the new routine as well. Sometimes things come full circle and I find myself walking again, as is lately the case.

I enjoy walking along the flood-control canals near my home. At low tide the birds poke around the muck. At high tide the reflections in the water dance in the morning light. There’s always something to get my attention.

At low tide an old tire can be seen at the bottom of the canal. It’s been there for as long as I’ve walked the walk. Though it’s an ugly old thing, I’ve grown fond of it. It adds a geometric punctuation to the amorphous murk of the canal’s bottom. I sometimes forget that the tire is there and as I rediscover it I find it comforting.

Someday I suppose somebody will get in there and remove the tire. I remember digging out some tires from a tidal area in the bay a few years back as part of a coastal cleanup effort. Those tires didn’t have the appeal of this one. Neither did the thirty syringes I dug up that day. No, that was different. This tire seems homely and lonely and somehow a part of my daily walk. Sometimes the birds play in it. I imagine it collects food them.

I wonder what they’d think if the tire one day disappeared.

There is this Italian caffé and bakery near our home. I’m not much for pastry, Italian or otherwise, but come Christmas I always buy a panetone. It is my firm belief that the panetone at this bakery is the best outside of Italy. It’s not a traditional Milanese panatone as it is flecked with rich, dark chocolate. But the chocolate is used with good sense and I like it. Every year I look forward to eating it on Christmas morning. And I look forward to the ritual of going to the bakery and buying it.

This year I got sick the week before Christmas. It was a nasty head cold with remnants that I still feel as I write this. I’m fine now but last week I wanted to tear out my eyeballs, rip off my nose, and bury my head in a pail of sand. The worst of it was the sneezing fits that ended with cramps deep in those muscles that help you breathe. Stuck in self-pity, I lay on the couch for a week, buried in crumpled tissues. I was keenly aware that I was running out of time. It came down to two days before Christmas and I had no panetone.

At the last minute I finally felt well enough to leave the house and not infect the entire world with my head-filled misery. Still bleary-eyed and red-nosed, I went to get my panetone—hardly a Norman Rockwell, Christmas moment—though my nose did resemble St. Nick’s.

Getting out of my truck I looked at my miserable reflection. I seemed frozen in a perpetual pre-sneeze moment. The sneeze never came. I must have been feeling slightly better because I made a picture of myself. I figured I’d want to remember this moment when I felt better.

Usually I can smell the bakery before I actually see it. This time I smelled nothing as I walked in the door. My panetone seemed waiting for me, a singular monument atop the counter. The woman said it was still warm from the oven. I asked it was the kind with the chocolate shavings inside. She nodded.

By the time I got back to the truck my pre-sneeze face had relaxed. It would be a subdued Christmas, spent mostly on the couch with a cat or two and a box of tissues. But, on Christmas Eve I ate some chicken soup and on Christmas morning I had my panetone. I think I ate two giant slices. Maybe I had a third. The chicken soup didn’t do me much good but I do believe that the panetone finally cleared my head. Since then I’ve been fine.

Happy New Year to everyone!

The neighbor across the street has a plastic santa with a lightbulb inside it. I always know the holidays are here when it suddenly appears by her garage. I’ve never actually seen her put it out—I’ve come to believe that the incandescent santa arrives on its own. It’s a fickle santa. One year it decided not to show up at all and the neighborhood was much the poorer for it. So far, this year, I am still waiting. As I write this I look out the window and into the hazy day. The neighbor’s garage is sans santa.

Missing the jolly fellow, my mind wanders to Italy. The Italians have these big, plastic santas that promote 32 flavors of hot chocolate. Alas, they have no lightbulbs and therefore are not lit from within. But, they do come with Heineken umbrellas and a huge cup of frothing hot chocolate and that is worth something.

Several years ago we spent the holidays in Venice and I would pass the chocolate santa numerous times a day. I recognized him at first pass because he has a cousin santa in Parma that I’d seen earlier in the trip. The Parma chocolate santa was without umbrella but I wasn’t thrown by this variation. Once you meet a Italian chocolate santa you remember him.

32 gusti di Cioccolata. 32 flavors of chocolate! We live in a world of miracles and blessings. The chocolate santa reminded me of that every time I saw him. He was the very symbol of abundance and good flavor. Furthermore, he made me smile—as does the santa across the street who has not yet arrived this year.

I look out my window once more. He’s still not here. What is taking so long?

The entire weekend was a shroud of fog and rain, a lazy prelude to the looming holidays. It is hard to take a camera out in this weather, mostly because one would prefer a blanket and black cat to stay warm. But the mundane world is transformed into wonderland for those with the initiative to venture forth.

Eschewing the trappings of cozy house, I go out. The mist scrapes the hills, tingles my face, and hugs the ground of our little park. Formerly the tidal wetlands of our great bay, wetness is the park’s natural condition. This time of year it feels like a soggy kitchen sponge when walking on it. Soon there will be signs that tell us to keep off the grass until summer. I don’t find the grass to be pleasant at all. Once my feet are wet the day seems lost.

I often long for the faraway places of my imagination. Then a gentle storm comes in and makes my nearby world a place of mystery—my imagination is fulfilled. I have always been drawn towards weather’s magnet of energy, the wilder the better. But this particular gentle storm allows me to stand still in fog and rain and to simply look, as if I were seeing for the first time.

Soon, my feet get wet and the black cat and blanket prove irresistible. But, before I leave the soggy park, I find a sweet image of a row of saplings. I make an image.

“They’re here”

One hears it everywhere—the oddly ominous declaration that the holidays are upon us. So much rides on the opening of the season. It is important business for us to be cheerful and generous. It seems that the entire world puts its faith in Americans feeling good about the holidays. The American consumer has replaced Baby Jesus as the icon of Christmas. Like a global manger scene, the media and economists watch over consumer sentiment (spending) as if it were a precious child.

Everyone tries to catch the fever as we dress in green and red, velvet and glitter. The entire country gets wound up in a frenzy of adrenaline and ornament. If only we could stop ourselves long enough to enjoy any part of it. Soon comes January and the blank stares. The opening declaration has a closing bookend; “I can’t believe it’s all over.”

As an artist, it’s hard to capture images of the holidays that don’t succumb to cliché. The noise and tinsel and excess are glaringly assertive. With all the abundance, it is ironically difficult to find the sensitivity and peace that the season symbolizes.

It seems that expectations always get us in trouble. Today’s image is of empty wine glasses at a holiday party. They sit in anticipation of being filled with cheer. There they sit, like a lineup of maidens at a dance. We too, await to be filled (and fulfilled) as this season of lights ramps up and washes over us like a wave. Soon the party is over and the glasses are scattered and dirty—some half-full, others half-empty, a few broken. It’s rather how most of us feel come January 2nd.

There is a tree in the town park about which I often write. Tall and singular, it is an easy object of affection. Meanwhile, another tree, a tiny one in a clay pot, has been growing lemons outside our back door. This week it has given forth a basket of perfect Meyer lemons. Have I neglected this selfless little citrus?

I fear that I have. The other day its basket simply appeared on the kitchen table, the second significant winter still life in as many days. It turns out that my wife has been nurturing the tree all year, waiting for this moment. At this rate I’ll have a show’s worth of photographs in a month. Sometimes these things just happen.

Citrus trees buck the trend and bear fruit in winter, a minor miracle. My New Jersey upbringing conditioned me to thinking of fruit and color in summer and bare twigs in winter. I would read about citrus trees in grammar-school geography books during our long winters. In our land of apple, peach and cherry trees, citrus groves were as exotic as camels in the desert.

On our small radio in our small kitchen we’d hear the news reports after a run of Sinatra songs. Those reports, during winter cold snaps, included stories of worried, Florida citrus growers. We’d hear of smudge pots in the groves, burning all night to ward off frost. I think New Yorkers secretly liked knowing that it got cold in the Sunshine State, regardless of the price of orange juice.

“Children growing up in Florida have never seen snow!” my second-grade teacher proclaimed one day. This seemed impossible. So too was it impossible to think of trees growing fruit in winter, but that’s what geography books were for, dreaming of the faraway places where such things happened.

Staring into my bowl of lemons I come back from the winters of my youth—a rambling stream-of-consciousness evoked from an overflowing basket on the kitchen table. I look around and realize that I, myself, now live in an exotic land of winter fruit.

I stare at the bowl, give thanks to the little tree in the clay pot, set up my tripod and make a photograph.