La Macchina Fotografica

Suburbia. It feels like a dream in which a towering mountain of wet wool buries my sorry soul deep within it. In that dream I poke my head out of the suffocating mass of animal fur. I am nearly decapitated by a black SUV as it rushes past me. Some crazed woman is taking her child to piano lessons…and she’s running late. Welcome to my suburban postcard from hell.

Deep within this mass of conformity there are pockets of resistance. Yesterday, emphatically not in a dream, I meandered around downtown San Rafael. I stopped in my tracks and blinked. No, I really was awake.

“Curious about…pole dancing?” asked the little handmade sign in the shop window.

Not only was there a book on the art of pole dancing, there were several intriguing outfits of the garter-belt variety. Feeling warm in my overcoat, I looked around to see if anyone was watching me. I stared at the window and deeply into my imagination. A daytime dream emerged. This one has me in a crosswalk. Suddenly one of those SUV mothers ran me over and then got out of her black, suburban-warfare tank. She was dressed in a pole dancing outfit and asked me, “Curious about…pole dancing?” I blinked and shook off the daymare.

Suburban living has its challenges.

Meetings—business meetings, that is—drive me crazy. Every one of them feels like slow death. I’ve never been to one that brings out the best in anyone, especially the best in me. I was a manager at 25, a vice president at 29, and a burnout at 40. Meetings, even today, at the age of 54, bring back the whole sordid tale.

With the prospect, on my mind, of a large meeting tomorrow (around a large table) I went for a walk. A long walk for a large meeting. Mist tickled the back of my neck and shortened the projected lifespan of my camera. My posture hasn’t been that good lately. I tried to, as my father would say, straighten up.

The first photo on a walk is always the hardest. It’s like starting up a car with bad spark plugs. A certain amount of black smoke is emitted. Click. Then it starts to flow. I enter a different dimension. So, I try to click my first click as soon as I can.

Once I started making images the sensation of rain on my neck disappeared. I turned my attention to the overflow pond in the park. The reflections had a gloomy quality that, at the moment, resonated with me. I pointed my camera at them. Suddenly, into my viewfinder flew a squawking bird! Singing a song of utter freedom and rebellion he soared into my image field—as if he were waiting all morning for my arrival.

By the time I looked up from my camera he was gone. With him went my angst. With him went my dread. I smiled with the realization that the impending meeting now meant nothing to me. How could a blasted meeting compare with a visitation from a spirit? I walked on with spring in my step and straight posture for four miles.

Sometimes a meeting is just a meeting.

It was raining peacefully on Sunday morning. The streets were washed clean by a storm that had hit the day before. The road shimmered in the weak light, twinkling with each drop from the sky. On a tempestuous Friday before the storm, I’d been hit between the eyes by a hurtful comment from a friend. It left me reeling. Sunday’s gray drizzle seemed appropriate.

Despite the rain and the winter season I went early to the farmer’s market. I was thinking of a baguette. And maybe a wedge of cheese. I wanted to talk to the chili man. And ask the asparagus guy when spring would arrive. I needed the farmers just then. So, I bundled up and went to the market.

This time of year it’s easy to park at the farmer’s market. The fair-weather marketers are long gone, waiting now for their tomatoes and sweet corn and warm summer breezes. Rain doesn’t help bring in the crowd but it does enhance a quiet market day for a man with a bruised soul.

Alone with my baskets I pulled up my collar. I was still grumbling to myself about Friday. But, some Swiss chard caught my eye. Pulling out two dollars for a nice bunch of it, I overheard a conversation at the next stand.

“How is the most lovely jewel of the universe today?” a man with a European accent asked a smiling woman. The woman had been alone at her booth. Before the man with the accent arrived she hadn’t been smiling. I looked at the young woman who had just sold me the chard and we both laughed. One comment brought three smiles—the best market deal of the day. With a spark of renewal I went to see the chili man.

“I want you to know that I sent some of your chili sauce to my friend in Chicago. He said it was the best he’d ever tasted,” I said to him.

“Well, of course!” the chili man replied. He is nothing if not self-assured of his chili-sauce prowess. “I just made some new mash. Try this.”

Down the way, the asparagus man had nothing but potatoes. “The asparagus will be here in about four weeks,” he pronounced. The first day of spring had now been declared. “Are you getting any good pictures today?”

The egg couple saw me coming from their mountain of egg cartons. They had a dozen, extra-large, brown, organic eggs waiting for me. Just the kind I like.

“I had to get my eggs at Safeway last week,” I said. They both groaned. “They were watery. Stale,” I added.

“We have you spoiled,” the man of the couple said, looking up from his stack of a billion eggs. “See you next week.”

The young woman who usually sells me my baguette wasn’t there. I got one anyway from a girl I’d never met. Then I got a small salami from the French charcuterie guy and asked for his advice on sausages. At that point I realized that my basket was overflowing and I needed to stop.

On the way out there was another man with an overflowing basket. Like me, he’d bought his baguette. After making a photo of him I realized that we are all the same. Every one of us can be made just a little happier with a baguette in our basket and a trip to farmer’s market.

Suddenly my day gets jumbled with facts. I stare at my computer screen and the screen talks back. Wanting the last word, I start a conversation. This is a bad idea. The computer code that is my fledgling web site starts swimming around the room. It’s time for fresh air. I go to the park and see my tree.

I haven’t photographed the tree for a month or so. It’s been even longer since I’ve written about it. As I walk down the street, on my way to the park, I see the guy who never smiles as he parks his car. He gets out and rushes up his driveway—disappears into the fog. I look at my reflection as I turn the corner. I realize that I’m starting to look like him. Could there now be two guys who never smile, both living on the same block? The thought depresses me.

The fog is brisk. It wipes the computer code out of my brain. And clouds the lens of my camera. I realize this when I reach the park and then the eucalyptus tree. I wipe the lens with an expensive microfiber cloth. It has a logo of the camera store where I bought it, something that annoys me. I figure if the camera store wants it logo on the damn thing I should get it for free. And again I’m not smiling.

The smooth glass of the lens takes away my angst. I’ve always adored lenses, could look into them for hours. I like cameras a lot, but truly love lenses. They are a purer manifestation of the photographic experience. Round and round, I clean the lens until it sparkles and look up at the tree and breathe. I realize that the tree is beautiful in the fog. I click the shutter a dozen times before the lens starts to fog up again.

Every time I see this tree it is different. I am different. The air is different. As I think this I realize that I’m grinning. First I grin at the tree. Then I grin as I suddenly realize that there is still, thankfully, only one guy on our block who never smiles.

Daylight Saving Time plays tricks come October. The mornings are dark long beyond when my body clock says “Morning!”. My brain tells me to get up. My eyes say something different. I don’t like to move clocks forward and backward. It feels like I’m trying to cheat the cosmos or mold it into some kind of seasonal convenience. It never works. October mornings are dark forever.

I woke up the other morning and it was even darker than normal. “Fog!” I said to myself and sprung out of bed. I am energized by weather, especially gloominess. I grabbed my camera and went down to the park, knowing that the low-hanging fog would soon burn off like cotton candy on a tongue.

The sun poked through the mist. I had less time than I thought. Exposure is tricky when shooting into the misty sun. I fumbled with the stupid camera controls, missing the blunt simplicity of my long-lost Nikon F—a camera that mysteriously disappeared many years ago. I spun my thumb and index finger, and click, click, click.

New cameras have these crappy little spin wheels and buttons that never seem intuitive. It’s a simple reciprocal relationship between aperture and shutter. But, modern cameras seem to think I need five thousand pieces of data in order to get a photo. Buttons, metadata, presets. I don’t need 90% of what the camera thinks I do. If I push all the buttons will it make my photos better? I don’t have that many fingers!

I ignore everything and bracket the shots. “Maybe if I hang the manual around my neck…” I say to myself and the imaginary camera engineer that I complain to all the time. Suddenly I realize that it isn’t about the camera at all. The light is stunning and it’s disappearing right before me. I grab at the fog and try to make it last. “One more photo!” I plead to it. But the sun burns through it all and I need my sunglasses by the time I click my last click.

I went back home in the low October light, hoping I got the photo. The golden sun erased the moment, but there it was again, appearing on my studio computer. The miracle of digital photography gave me instant feedback. The manual bracketing did the job and hit the sweet spot of exposure.

Now, if only they would do something about those buttons and spin wheels…

The confluence of major life events has had my head spinning with a special kind of disorientation. It is hard to keep track of where I’ve been, where I’m going, and exactly where I am. Contemporary life does not allow us to feel the passing of loved ones, nor appreciate aging and illness. More likely, it merely forces us into task-based activity.

Banks, lawyers, doctors, creditors, insurance agents, advisors, and accountants. Oh my. I dream about them and not in a good way. When someone dies, gets sick, or infirm, it activates an entire industry, like switching on an silent-and-ready, gigantic machine. Those of us left in mere mortal state navigate through the morass, unable to deal with the actuality of loss. There are too many forms to fill.

While sifting through old documents I stumbled across some old photos. People smiling on the beach. Tiny, they revealed their era in the bathing costumes of the day. My eyes now miserably inefficient for close-up work (too many press sheets and contact prints) I strained for a better look. Amidst the mountain of a life’s mail were these miniscule reminders vacations and outings, smiles and salt air.

The photos waited silently in their envelope. Then, in a flash, the light of day found them. Decaying slower than we humans, they are the milestones of a journey, crumbling yet still there. As the mountain of mail got shredded, the photos remained on a table; survivors.

The blur of a life is captured in these tiny gems. When a life is condensed into memories and photos it all seems so fleeting. A blink. So, in looking for a blog photo, I chose a scene in Parma, Italy where pedestrians rush by me. There we were, in one space at one time, yet there was nothing to grasp onto, just the golden light of cold winter day.

Head stuff swimming around in the skull—if I don’t get out and move, my brain moves around inside itself. Kinetic energy. I’ve been on the phone too much, blabbing with far-away voices. Recorded voices, technical-support voices, customer-service voices. My brain goes round and round, trying to grasp the post-modern world. It isn’t working.

All of a sudden I wake up in the morning and can’t stand another day of it. I hit the trail. The Headlands call me. Two days before a nasty little heat wave made everyone cranky. Or was it just me? Then, in came the fog. I felt it in the middle of the night. In my dream I made my plans for the morning.

The Marin Headlands fog is my antidote for telephone voices. Two miles and I was up in the clouds. Wet. Cold. My camera dripped with fogginess. I leaned into the fog wind. I tied my hat to my chin. The cold opaqueness made all the head chatter go away. Condensation dripped from my hat into my eyes. I could barely see, I could barely walk. I was home.

Hot-house tomatoes come to market early in spring. This is too early for a tomato. Tomatoes herald the beginning of summer—real summer, not some fabrication designed to hurry along a year before its time. Hot-house tomatoes remind me of Christmas decorations that show up before Thanksgiving. Sadly, too many patrons of the farmer’s market succumb to the temptation. “Look!” they say. “Tomatoes!!!!!” And they go buy the mealy, half-green half-real approximations of the real thing.

But then, one day, one does see the real thing. Real, vine-ripened, grown-in-dirt-outside-where-they-were-meant-to-be-grown tomatoes show up at the market. There is a reverence to picking out the perfect tomato. It is different than stuffing one’s bag with string beans or broccoli. The tomato is so seductive, so anticipatory, and its color is the most beautiful of reds.

Tomatoes can be photographed and painted forever and they remain the most perfect of still-life subjects (with apologies to Edward Weston and his peppers). Just writing about them compels me to buy some, put them on a table and shine a light onto them. But, it is only late June and I am still wary. Why rush it? There is nothing worse than buying what looks like the perfect tomato and then having it taste like cotton. I’d rather stick with brussels sprouts a few weeks longer.

“There always seems to be something right around the corner in your paintings,” my watercolor teacher used to tell me. “What is it that you are trying to find there?” she’d ask, looking over her glasses.

It’s not that I’m looking for anything. I swear it. I think things are looking for me. Life glides along, like an outdoor motor boat on a smooth lake. I think you can see ahead. It’s cruising time. Then, somehow I go around the bend, as if I were on auto pilot. Into the shadow. Something grabs me and some ancient feeling hits. It’s as old as dirt. I’m back in the muck, rolling around in some unholy slop.

The Tibetan Buddhists call it shenpa. It’s something that grabs you, gives you a lump in your throat, tightens the jaw. It’s old stuff that brings out the darkness. Or takes us into it. Maybe my teacher was right, maybe I’m leaning into it, trying to find the uncomfortableness that is flat against the wall, just around the corner.

Today’s photo was made in Venice, the city that invented graffiti. And the ghetto. An achingly beautiful place, I find it fascinating that there are such angry writings on the wall. What comes out at night in La Serenissima, the Most Serene City? Even paradise has the boogyman. I was on a most serene, morning walk there a few years back when, around the bend, there it was—a most frightening face. Just when you think it’s safe to go out…

Living in suburbia is a sweet experience with the metallic aftertaste of Aspartame. I stand in my own shadow as steel SUVs shuttle the neighborhood children to and fro. The agendas of modern mothers leave me in their dust. Lessons. Little League. School. After School. 3:00 PM in this town is the Wild West.

I walk through it, mostly looking down. At my feet. Very little makes me want to look up, except to see the three trees.

There are these three palm trees that I always look at on my daily walks. They stand tall among the tract houses that were once the wetlands of our bay. They are the silent sentinels of this bucolic town, a trinity of some strange mystery. Palms are not native plants around here but neither am I. An aging Jersey Boy, I walk the flatlands of the village always with sunglasses and hat (to cover my now hairless head). People pass with dogs and smart phones. Or dogs and iPods. Or just dogs.

I’m a cat person. No dog. I can see the palm trees from most anywhere along the walk. Their orientation to me changes, first in front of me, then to the side. Now behind and to the left. On stormy days they sway like the old newsreels of a Florida hurricane. They seem forever in slow motion. I ponder if they feel like aliens, wondering to themselves why they aren’t on a Canary Island. The SUVs with tinted glass zoom by them, emitting cell-phone radio waves. Are there SUVs on the Canary Islands?

The trees give me pleasure. From season to season, year to year, there are there, just for me. They are the Eiffel Tower of the town. I like things that are consistent and silent. The palms are arranged in a cinematic way, a peaceful, little drama in the suburban town I call home.