A blog about photography & transformative art
A walk around the block—we tend to think of it as a numbing experience. It's just a walk around the block. It's the same block with the same cars and the same people and the very same smells and sights and sounds. Like some swinging pocket watch of a stage hypnotist, the sameness lulls us to sleep. We walk and mutter to ourselves that we need a change, we need a vacation.
There is nothing more optimistic than the new morning. The air is refreshed, the earth renewed. When one is traveling, a morning walk alone in a foreign land is best part of any day. Winter mornings are particularly precious; the sun low and stingy, red and gold light cascading into deep shadows of cobalt blue. Morning, and all is possible. Briskness alerts us—the new world is ours.
Normally I like to go to Muir Beach very early in the morning, long before the summer crowds start to fill up the small beach. Muir Beach is best experienced alone, save a few turkey vultures, oyster catchers, seagulls, or pelicans. I like the sand when it's freshly combed by the surf and before myriad footsteps and paw prints muss it all up. Yet, sometimes I arrive late and the party has started without me. On those occasions, the beach is full, the day's story already unfolding.
Like a cluttered attic, sometimes my head gets stuffed. I've tried every time-management method there is. I've written lists, kept journals, made Gantt charts, flowed flow charts, and checked checklists. My brain still hurts. Sometimes it feels like pinballs are rattling around up there, bouncing off the padding of the inside wall of my skull. "Do this, do that. The world will end if you don’t…” Thoughts. I've become a human doing instead of a human being. That's why I like to watch grass grow.
Along my daily walk I stop. There is this wall in the park where people practice their tennis. I stare into my shadow. I squint to try to see what is there. It looks like me. I can always tell my shadow from others. My shadow has a certain hunch. "Posture!" I admonish myself. It doesn't matter. My shadow always has that peculiar look.
Hiking has taught me that the sense of being lost is among the most disorienting and disturbing there is. I can be a thousand miles from my house, but, as long as the trail is known, I feel grounded and at home. It is the path that is important; the sense of direction and purpose. Home, therefore, can be most anywhere. It is a state of being and connection, not an address.
Several years ago, while studying for my MFA, I realized that photographic images from my past possessed enormous power. Looking through old family albums were like mystical journeys into the unknown. All these souls staring back at me—some I knew, many I didn't. I did the arithmetic. Most were gone now, their once bright and hopeful eyes now just a memory. The old photo albums became a habit. The more I looked, the more I felt. How could tiny snapshots hold such power?
Due to a death in the family, there will be no posts on La Macchina Fotografica for the remainder of this week. We'll be back sometime during the week of July 20th.
In the middle of an art fair I looked up. Atop a canvas tent a plain banner fluttered in a foggy breeze. Below was the spectacle of event. Artists, patrons, food vendors and children mingled amongst artifacts of the creative spirit. Yet, above it all was the homely banner. Boring and ordinary, it captivated me.
Last night at about 9:00 PM the air changed. The breeze shifted in an instant. The cool ocean air washed over the house and drifted through the open windows. It is that way with the fog here in Northern California. It is like a fickle lover that evaporates and abandons you on a whim, only to return on its own terms in due course.
