A blog about photography & transformative art
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My memory mellows with years. Edges lose their sharpness. Perspective changes. Try going back to your old grammar school or high school and see if the halls are the same as you remember. I'll bet they're much smaller than is the expanse of your memory. Memories are like that. They either become bigger than life or they hide themselves in the recesses of our psyche—as if they were bad kids smoking in the school bathrooms.
I see them every week, which is more often than I see my best friends. The patrons at the farmer's market pass me as if I were a ghost. I wonder if they recognize me too, or if I'm invisible. Italians believe that you never age at the table and, therefore, you should stay there as long as possible. If that is indeed true, then that law of nature must extend to the market—at least a *good* market.
A bucolic path filled with the scent of jasmine—the old rail path is dotted with mothers and their strollers. A leaf blower in the distance says its time for the neighbors to keep up appearances and pick up debris. We wouldn't want to seem unseemly in this little spot of paradise. What would the neighbors think? It's another day in suburbia, the morning working its way into midday.
"I wonder who he is," I said to myself as I walked along the flood canals. A worker with a bright-orange vest stood atop the large apparatus that keeps the bay out of our neighborhood. Brief encounters mystify me. So many people come and go throughout a brief life. We never get to know ourselves let alone the myriad passers-by that cross our path. "I wonder who he is," I said again. This time I reminded myself not to talk aloud in public, a bad habit that has gotten worse as of late.
There are two kinds of walks. The first is purposeful. One gets out of bed and says, "I'm going for a walk!" This proclamation is followed by the planning of a route. The more obsessive might pull out a map and, perhaps, write out an itinerary. Some might even program a GPS device. This kind of walk is more work than walk but it does have is proponents. And it does have its advantages.
Creativity is like a fickle lover. Just when you think you have it figured out you realize you know nothing about it at all. It's like waking up to an empty bed after a night of passion. Creativity comes and goes according to its own agenda. We are nothing more than conduits. The best we can do is show up for it. We certainly cannot control it.
Driving south of Tucson my cluttered mind opened up to the bone-dry sky. The friable earth had swirled into the heavens and tinted them into a dusty azure that was surprisingly pleasant. Other than the earth's tiny particles, there was nothing up there but the sun and an old cargo plane that was circling overhead. My brain was emptying out with each mile south of civilization—swirling around with the dust and plane. But soon, the cargo plane got tired of its antics and landed. Then there was nothing.
A sense of place—the only way to discover it is to walk at dawn. One must make discoveries on one's own terms. I must be alone when walking a path for the first time. There is nothing quite like waking in a new place for the first time and getting out to see it as does the sun upon a fresh day.
Shoulders hunched, I walk through the park. In these parts, March and April are tempestuous months. And they most always bring storminess into life itself. I once got fired from my job in the month of March, something I always remember when the weather gets mercurial. Spring winds usher forth change, most all of it good. But sometimes it takes time to see the good and the wisdom of the universe. Once May rolls around a persistent sun basks the bones and still, quiet air prevails. The trick is to appreciate March and April for what they are. I look from the path and into the park's edge.
I feel his shadow before I actually see it. Like a light summer cloud that blocks the sun for just a moment, our shadows converge into one. Turkey vulture and I look at one another. I could swear he knows that I have a camera—He circles me for a pose. I click furiously, suddenly being blinded by the sun as his graceful wingspan moves aside and reveals the furious, burning ball of light. Then he moves back in position again to shade me. And the sun disappears behind him.
