A blog about photography & transformative art
Almost to a person, if you ask an East-Coast transplant who now lives west of the Mississippi what he or she misses the most, the answer will be: the change of the seasons. More pointedly, most everyone longs for fall foliage, something that is seen in California, but is sort of like setting off a firecracker after watching fireworks.
I've written here before about Edward Steichen's shadblow tree, a small tree outside the window of his home in West Redding, Connecticut. Steichen, tired of the rigors of fashion photography and museum administration (he was the director of the Department of Photography at MOMA), found inspiration in this small tree and photographed it exclusively for six years. Steichen found great meaning in the seemingly insignificant tree. To him it represented the changing and cyclical nature of life.
If you are regular reader of this blog, you know that my buddies and I hike Grand Canyon every year. The trip is generally exhausting and to help us forget the pain which is shooting through every fiber of our bodies we tend to resort to an endless loop of repeating banter. To the casual observer it is mindless, silly, and incomprehensible nonsense. But, to three stooges from New Jersey, who have known one another for some 45 years, it all, scarily, makes perfect sense.
The sunrise was shrouded in a thick blanket of low fog. I took one look out the window and decided a hot pot of coffee was a better idea than an excursion down to the park. The alarm had been accidentally set to go off at 2:30 AM and I still felt the crankiness from an unexpected wake-up. The cats were also agitated and they demanded that I rise early. They wanted proper attention. Coffee was a much better concept than exercise.
I had to rise at 4:00 AM this morning, earlier than is my habit. The morning light is lazy this time of year, not getting around to lighting our neighborhood until after 7:00. As I write this the trees outside my window are nothing but dark shadows looming over a dim sky. It is a time of day that brings out the optimist in me. The world awakens to all possibilities.
It's been a rough couple of months for almost everyone I know. It's in the air. The elections seem to be sucking us all into the shadow. Deep in the shadow we find the opportunists, who like to stir things up at exactly this time, every four years. *There's money in them thar stirrings.* Ratings. Fame. Attention. I suspect attention is the most important motivator for the loud-mouthed pundits and politicians. "Look at me. I'm here. I matter!" Sadly, a fool attains attention more easily than a sage. It's just the way things are.
oThis blog had been down for a few days. The old server was getting cranky and it was time to upgrade. I'd been putting it off for months. Now I know why I waited so long. Once I pulled the plug and pointed the universe (Internet) towards the new server, my web site, email, and blog all broke. My heart sank.
Four days ago we moved our blog to a new, larger, and more secure server. When we did, the entire blog broke. Since then we have been working hard to get back online. Last night the blog was resurrected but the photos still aren't linking and uploading properly. This is not good when one is trying to write a photo blog. In any case, we hope to back to 100% by this evening. We apologize for the delay.
During my morning walks I almost always notice something different with the roads. The evidence is there. There have been gremlins during the night. They leave artifacts of their secret expeditions on our neighborhood streets. Sometimes I see strange spray-painted symbols. Other times it's newly painted stripes. Lovely leaves or flower petals are often scattered everywhere. Gremlins.
Today my joints hurt. Presidential elections release a certain kind of energy in this country. A crack opens in the collective psyche. Like crude oil, negative energy oozes out of it, fowling the land with sticky residue. This year seems more intense than most. The world economy is in crisis, America is in crisis, most people I know are in crisis.
