
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.
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.
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.