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The Rules
In photography, focus is a kind of virtue. You figure this out on your own from the start.
In life, though, you ought to have a teacher… I always thought of ‘focus’ as another way to say ‘ah kid, you’re missing out on everything else.’ I wasn’t wrong, you see, but for a long time I missed the virtue bit. I missed that time is a series of questions w/essay answers. The only wrong answer is not to consider the question at all.
(&, of course, these rules can be broken.)
What Kind Of Man Am I?
Before last week, I hadn’t eaten even a trace of peanut in more than a decade. This week I’m walking around town w/a bag of them (shelled) stuffed overflowing from my coat pocket. Intensely fickle.
FREE DOWNLOAD HERE - a short book in pdf format
Roses are red, violets are blue
& Babe the Blue Ox is looking at you…
The Long Haul (part ii)
Beneath much of San Francisco’s financial district, especially the concrete flats that hug the waters of SoMa, sleep the ghostly refuse & poignant infill of the city past. The abandonded ships of golden-eyed 49ers are buried alongside the glorious rubble of the 1906 earthquake & fire. The skyscrapers stand here like solemn headstones.
I walk each weekday from a brick warehouse near water’s edge to a small apartment on top of a hill (at cloud’s edge) overlooking it all. The path climbs 338 feet from start to finish, about a mile as the crow flies. The grade is quite steep in the last half, enough to bring out the breath & map the alleyways of the lungs. I have been, in my own small way, a twisted Sisyphus while living here… only my rock is imaginary, my resolve voluntary. This is not unordinary.
What’s interesting is that, over the course of a single quick year, I’ve ascended a semi-metaphorical mountain of no less than 84,500 feet - more than twice the height of Mount Everest & well into the rarefied air of the stratosphere. I’ve also descended these same steps, equal to twice the depth of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific plus the average depth of the Atlantic ocean.
Such is a world we cannot fully see! This is infill. This is the long haul.
(photo by j.dannels)
Matea wrote:
In fifth-grade I won a regional essay contest. Everyone in the class was required to write on the topic of what you like about yourself. I couldn’t think of anything, and my sister wrote the winning essay for me.
Although she wouldn’t cop to it, my wife is some kind of mystic & genius. Serious.
We went to an early show today at the Roxie after a many-coursed breakfast of our own creation. The theater was largely empty… save for us & a few addled old hippies. But, onscreen, L.Cohen was still 35 & still full of song & poetry & his vast & sad, sad hope. We watched alongside 600,000 kids in 1970 & a contemporary smattering of pop-spilling, popcorn-eating boomers, who did not seem hopeful anymore.
PS (pointless sighting/statement). Seems like he borrowed his amplifier equipment from The Who, a great old band that played the same festival. The Who also played the Super Bowl recently. I think it’s worth noting that Roger Daltry still sings “hope I die before I get old” w/a straight face. By comparison, I think Cohen gives us a respectable map w/which to age honestly & gracefully as artists (or souls).
IN AN INFINITE UNIVERSE (look)
Saint Francis awaits Saint Valentine.
The Long Haul (part i)
My Flickr Pro account expires today. This is the photograph that, underexposed at exactly the right time on a lazy walk home from the office 2+ years ago, earned me the pro account. This terribly lucky picture nearly wasn’t taken at all. In November of 2007, I wrote:
One week ago, I met the creator of Flickr on the street outside a small grocery & deli near my apartment. He was sitting in a plastic lawn chair w/a laptop balanced on his knee, a steaming cup of tea to his right on a wire-mesh table.
I was walking home from my office on a Friday evening, the lip of a weekend, plodding up the congested hills of San Francisco taking photographs w/my new Holga. I saw him - laptop, tea steam & all - silhouetted against the sunset, which was then dipping its toes into the Pacific Ocean beyond the hills of Pacific Heights.
I didn’t know it was him. I wanted to take a photograph of the silhouette. He looked so busy, though, that I walked right past & turned the corner to my block. But! Halfway up the hill, I paused. I turned around & looked over the city which spills out like overflowing robes from that height. It was beautiful. I have difficulties letting such opportunities pass w/out seriously troubling my mind. So I cursed myself for being such a bother & went down the block to pester the silhouette, hoping I hadn’t missed the moment.
I hadn’t. He was there. The fading sun was still there. The city, there. Everything. I approached meekly. “Excuse me,” I said. “I hate so much to bother you. But you are absolutely silhouetted perfectly against that sunset there, & I already walked by once & I had to come back. Do you mind if I take your picture w/this toy camera? I’ll probably screw it up anyway. It’s new. It’s film, I don’t know what I’m doing.”
He nodded. “Um, sure.”
I snapped the plastic button & the film exposed & it was over. “Thank you so much,” I said & bumbled off. At least, I meant to leave.
“Hey,” he called. “Where do you upload your photos?”
“Flickr,” I said. “My website is sort of sleeping until I can get a new digital camera.”
“Oh? Yeah, I created Flickr.”
“Shut up.”
“No, really. My wife & I created Flickr in Vancouver a few years ago.”
He invited me to sit & showed me the backend of Flickr (which destroyed all remaining doubts in my mind… there are some rad things behind-the-scenes), telling me the story of its accidental origins from within a videogame company. Being an ex-journalist, I deeply appreciated such casual conversation on the street, knowing how often he must have to tell that story to newswriters all over the world.
We looked at my Flickr stream for a minute. I showed him the shot from when my old camera died, & he even ventured a theory as to why the picture decomposed as such… sensor stuffs. “I don’t know,” I said. “But that’s ok, I sort of love it.” He said it was definitely effed up.
In the end, I obviously did screw up this potentially lovely photograph. Of my entire first roll, this was the only one that didn’t turn out. Still I feel like I somehow didn’t miss anything.
True story.
PS. Maybe you noticed my new pro account? Stewart did that. Such a nice person! Thank you.
I cannot believe such a significant spell of time has passed since this day, since almost any single day of memory. Even the deepest pains look like gifts from far enough away, but this day was a gift from the very first moment.
(One thing I’m surprised I didn’t mention in the original caption was the surprising filters I saw on the backend of Flickr. Before he granted me the pro account, Stewart checked my account for a nazi-propaganda alert… Germany requested this feature, he said. Such is the world.)
OVERHEARD in SF
A peculiar phrase, “kill your tv” meant “upgrade to flatscreen” in 21st-century America.
(via cellphone camera!)
The ease of mystery is astounding.
Sticks & Stones
The fire alarm in the bedroom begins chirping after a morning shower. Funny that water vapor hits the very same spots as fire vapor, seeing as the two are such opposing elements. Anyway. I put down the coffee cup. I grab a hand towel on my way through the kitchen & use it to fan the nervous device - the alarm saying ‘hey I’m about to freak out man’ - until an acceptable level of peace is restored.
A few minutes later, I’m back in the living room w/the coffee when I hear the chirping return. Do you see where this is going? No, you do not.
Again, I put down the cup. Again, I grab the towel. Maybe I’m a cursing a bit more but, again, I fan the air while waiting for resolution. It doesn’t come. It doesn’t come because this time the fire alarm isn’t making a sound. “Chirp.” Startled, I trace the sound out the sliding glass doors to the fire escape, & a leafy stand of branches just beyond. There, looking hopeful & proud, I find the source: a small brown bird.
“Chirp.”
“Copycat,” I say. Then I notice the beautiful sky… thin clouds & early sun, where there lately had been many storms. In another room, my coffee gets cold. I’m late for work.
