All Roads Lead to Love

Today is the day I throw out the garbage. Today is the day I stop using the words good and evil. Today is the day. In our micro community the trash is picked up once a week. There are a dozen apartments that share the same bins. Last week when the buckets were good and empty a family moved out and filled every container to the top with the stuff they no longer needed. In the meantime our coffee grounds and carrot pulp had to live happily in compostable bags on our front porch. We accumlated seven sacks in total. Early this morning a big truck gloriously emptied all the hampers. We were a clean slate once again. As I lugged our watermelon rinds to their final resting place I heard the birds sing and I paused to muse my feelings. As far back as I can remember there have always been perishable feelings in the world. Nothing lasts forever. And each day is filled with a bounty of love and hate feels, good and evil feels, yin and yangs. It is hard for me to articulate these polarities because I believe we are all one big ball of feels. And sometimes what makes me happy makes you sad and vice versa and so on and so forth. The birds don't really care. They sing either way. As I walk back up the stairs to the bounty of our home I am grateful for this reckoning. It looks like rain is on the horizon. Maybe I'll take a picture. I do not know the feelings of another. But I know what is in front of me. It is the energy of everything wrapped up together.

It has always been this way.

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Ways of Seeing

Why did I start taking pictures? Pretty much to document family and vacations. My first few cameras were essentially scrapbook facilitators. I love a good keepsake. But by the time I started college I became less interested in the camera as a tool of remembrance. It was the Vivitar 35ES that changed things. The Vivitar was a gift from my dad. It was the second camera he gave to me. We bonded through picture taking. Me and Pops. And boy did that Vivitar make me feel legit. I lugged that baby around from class to class. I had no idea what I was doing at UCSD. I was a biology major, then drama and finally visual arts simply because my roommate at the time, James, got me a concessions job at the Ken Cinema. He worked there too. Films were cool. James was cool. And during our six years of living together in San Diego and Los Angeles, James introduced me to all kinds of art, literature, music and food. James taught me about friendship and cinema as well. Moving images, still images, we were fascinated by every frame. And that's when my relationship to the camera changed. The Vivitar became my first paint brush. I am a deep observer. Patient. Cerebral. A huge fan of pattern recognition. The world was abundant with grace and strange. And the Vivitar faithfully captured my POV. One of the books that reminds me of James is John Berger's Ways of Seeing. James was a visual arts major as well. I started reading Berger when I had the Vivitar. He was the perfect complement to all the Hitchcock and Truffaut films we saw at the Ken. As John Berger would say, "Seeing comes before words."

James, John and the Vivitar—each introduced me to the world of my inner and outer compositions.

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The Track and the Choo Choo

Lately I've been feeling nostalgic. I'm totally happy I have nostalgia. Grateful I've lived to accumulate these recollects. Oh, I must mention I recently moved my desk. I look out the back porch now. The fresh view has something to do with me floating in time. At least two or three things are always in motion when I daydream. Most of the flow comes from the steady parade of Chevy's and Ford's along Commerce Street. Just beyond, the graceful James River slinks easily in a SE direction. And then there are the walkers down 12th searching for bargain antiques or tequila shooters. But my favorite flow by far is the slow passing train. The pace of the freight syncs perfectly to Ahmad Jamal's “Poinciana.” Smooth. I think about my life. Sometimes thoughts are about what is happening now. And then I scan an old photo and my mind wanders. Downstream. Today the skies are misty blue so I muse in black and white. The day I went to Santa Anita with my friends. I loved the track thanks to Uncle Tom who traditionally took the family to Santa Anita the day after Christmas. It was everything. Beer, sunshine, handicapping, people watching, science, drama. The perfect social scene. So I look out the window inspired by movement. Flow. I am a visual artist, a gambler, a drunk.

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