The Hourglass

Time. 300, 400, 500 years towering over a single plot of Earth no larger than a common back yard. All you've got is time. The days drop away like tiny grains of sand. But you don't feel it. All you feel is the wind in your tops and the cold winter rains. For most of your life there was birdsong and coyote chatter and little else save what the wind wrought in the nearby branches. But then there were voices and the sounds of machines, what iron and steel say to each other  when heated and fed the essence, the very blood of your own kin. You stand for ten, twenty lives of men and wind up the refined and fermented fuel sloshing around in the bowels of the very same machines that foul the air you breathe and kill off your kind with their noxious pollution. And there's nothing you can do about it. You have no voice of your own and no means of self-defense or escape. You can't build a rocket ship and settle somewhere else after the world dies. You can't wage your own revolution. You can't stop them from destroying the planet. All you can do is what you've always done - absorb sunlight and minerals and grow. Persevere. Keep stretching toward the sky. And hope they'll get it in time. You're a redwood, Sequoia sempervirens. The tallest living thing on the planet, and one of the oldest. And how do they honor you? They cut you down like so many blades of grass and fashion you into picnic tables and fence posts. They shred your skin to line flowerbeds and cut you into planks for the decks that adorn their own backyards. Sequoia. Your name means Sparrow but you are anything but small. It is from the Cherokee; another decimated and desecrated race,  driven from their lands on a thousand mile march called the trail of tears. Time. Who knows how much you have left? Surely not another 200 million years, for that's how long you've lived. You were the trees of the true Jurassic park, a trillion grains of sand ago.

o O o

Game Eye

The daybegan with a kingfisher. An auspicious start. Somehow I saw the bird perched ina willow tree above the Inverness estuary as I was driving past at forty milesan hour. My father always did tell me I had, what he called, a good 'game-eye'.

The BeltedKingfisher is a fine bird with the keen look of a hunter. It is one of myfavorite birds. He is fast, wary and, if you're a fish, deadly. I thought ofthe Fisher King from Arthurian legend, who, I learned later, was the sicklykeeper of the Hoy Grail who lived in an invisible castle. It is said that theHoly Grail was the chalice used by Joseph of Arimithea to catch the blood ofChrist.

"Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers ofmen", He said.

Strangely, Ihave been asking for Jesus. I have been yearning to connect with my innerChrist, because I have been trying to love better, to love stronger, to love more broadly. The Fisher King. The King Fisher.Was he the answer to my prayer?

I pulledover, turned the car around and pulled up beside the willow tree. But when Iopened my door, with camera in hand, the bird took flight and was gone. So Ihave no Kingfisher to show you. You'll have to take my word for it. But I knewthat the day was going to be special. I knew that there were messages waitingfor me, wherever I may roam. I drove on.

Ten milesdown the road I'm driving beside a rolling meadow pasture. I can see for a milein all directions. Suddenly, two shapes catch my attention to my left, a pairof animals moving quickly toward me. They are perhaps five hundred yards away,mere specs on the horizon. But I knew what they were instantly, instinctively. Coyotes. I believe they were a mated pairon the hunt. That was my sense of them. Coyotes are oblivious to the drone ofcars rolling past but when a car stops and a man gets out they take notice. Thesecond they saw me approach, camera in hand, they bolted like I had taken ashot at them with a gun. I managed to squeeze off one discernable shot justbefore they vanished into the trees at the far edge of the pasture. But theimage is so blurry that it's not worth reproducing here. Again, you'll have totrust me.

Wild coyotesare beautiful animals. Their coats are thick with browns and grays and tingedwith fox-red. I've seen them in certain light when they appear almostiridescent, like a fish. They have bright, keen eyes that any dog-lover willtell you is the mark of high intelligence, and when a coyote looks at you, Imean really looks at you, it's nothard to understand how it might have been when that first primitive man wasbeguiled by that first primitive canine. Dog chose man, not the other wayaround.

The coyoteis a Native American trickster animal, much like the raven; which I havewritten about before. He is the Fool, ever reminding us to laugh at ourselves,to not take life too seriously. The coyote is also a shape-shifter, atransformer. He is both wisdom and folly. He is a paradox, and thus a symbol ofbalance. My life, at that moment in time, was out of balance. I needed thecoyotes, so the coyotes presented themselves to me. Seek and ye shall find.

Onward. Igot out of bed that morning not knowing where I was going, not knowing what Iwas seeking, but I had faith that what I needed would be found. A few milesdown the road from where I left the coyotes I spied a small herd of deerfeeding in the meadow besides the parking area at Abbott's Lagoon. 

 

The deerpermitted me to photograph them. In this image they are alert and wary andlooking off to the east - the direction of the coyotes. At this point I beganto feel the exhilaration of the wild and the promise of the open road. Animalswere presenting themselves to me. The air was cool and crisp. I was alone. Itwas a stunning morning. And I was on the road. The road, I have learned, is thebearer of gifts. The road is a ribbon whose far end lies in promise and whosenear end is wrapped around your heart, and that ribbon will pull you to whereyou need to be; if you're open. I got back in my car and followed the road.

Onward.Another few miles and there to my left is a herd of Holstein cows feeding froma concrete trough. Cows are beautiful, intelligent beings. I am neverdisappointed when I interact with cows. When I spend time with cows Iunderstand why Hindus revere them. I understand why some people choose not toeat them. To be alone among a large herd of cows is a humbling, almost sacredexperience. Cow energy is its own unique force of feeling. I have found thatthey like it when you talk to them. 

 

Fifteenminutes with a cow pays off like an hour of expensive psychotherapy. Cows lowermy blood pressure. They calm me. And they pay attention. Dairy cows are thebest listeners in the animal kingdom, and for some reason that I cannotexplain, they flock to me like moths to a lantern. When I tell you that I couldhave spent all day with these cows I am not exaggerating. I have become a cowwhisperer.

There areTule Elk out here in this part of Point Reyes and I saw them too. They aremagnificent animals. They're like horses with great racks of antlers, and if Ihad a zoom lens I'd be showing them to you now, but I did not come out on thisday with a long lens. I wanted to get close to nature. So I sped on past theelk and parked my car above McClure's Beach and headed down the trail to theocean; which does for me what a good beer does for the drinking man - it makesme feel alive. But my dilemma, when I walk on beaches, is always the same.Which way do I go? I always look for something that beckons, some feature orobject that demands investigation, to help me decide. And I saw something faraway and to my left that piqued my curiosity. It was an object lying on thesand that had recently washed up on the beach. I couldn't tell what it was butit seemed to glow so I headed left, which was south, about three hundred yardsand what I found was a Styrofoam float from a fishing net. It was paintedtaxi-cab yellow and had some numbers carved into it and two words: Happy Days.

 

It is likelythat Happy Days is the name of the fishing vessel from which this float brokeloose. But that's not what was triggered in my mind in that moment. What cameto mind immediately was the television program Happy Days that had become such a cultural phenomenon in the'70's.  Happy Days rode the coattails of American Graffiti, which had been nominated for an Oscar a fewyears before. Both films happened to star Ron Howard. That film, and thetelevision series it spawned, were seminal influences for me. The second I readthe words on this float a song began to play in my head. One o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock rock. It was Bill Haileyand the Comets from the opening credits of the show; which I remember so wellgrowing up. I was just a boy then. The 1950's were to me what the 1980's are tomy own children now - a kooky, nostalgic netherworld so seemingly distant intime that it doesn't feel real. In the bleak, dark 70's we escaped backward toa time when the darkness seemed to be behind us for good. We had just confirmedourselves as the world's greatest nation, having stormed Mordor, dropped theRing into the fires of Mt. Doom and thus defeating the Dark Lord. But all wasnot well in Hobbiton.

The 60'staught us that the 50's was a masterful lie. The happiness of Happy Days was athickly applied veneer. It took the solvent known as Vietnam to expose us asnation of the blind. By the time we got through Nixon and the fall of Saigon wewere ready for another shot of whatever they were pouring from those malt shopfountains in 1954. My own life at the time of Happy Days was not happy. But Ifound little pockets of happiness in enough places to see me through. Timeswere hard for my family, but we had each other and were blessed with thingsmoney can't buy. To this day the 70's fills me with a kind of dread that ishard for me to explain. I absorbed every detail of the zeitgeist like somemini-black hole on legs. My heart had been broken, my faith had been severelydamaged and a poisonous resentment was already brewing in my little boy soul. Nothingcould escape the gravity of my collapsed star.

Yet, lightdid seep in. I had a mother who steered me to books and a father who steered meto nature. I was taught to find solace in stories and groves of trees. When Igo back to those places now, I reconnect to those things that make us allhuman. I reconnect to my spiritual self, and to the spirit that runs through usall, and all things.

I have beenblessed with a good game-eye. That means that I have the ability to discernshapes and patterns that are incongruous with their surroundings. A good game-eyesees through the deception of camouflage. A good game-eye sees also intooneself, and one's own little tricks of deception. The game is not always awild animal, the game is also the roles people play, the manipulations, thelies, the strategies of the ego to serve itself.

Just beyondthe Happy Days float that I found washed up on the beach is a narrow gap in therocks where one can peer beyond to the south. When I got to this spot I wastreated to something truly spectacular - the image of the sun rising up overthe ocean. All those animals, the kingfisher, the coyotes, the deer, the cowsand the elk, ushered me to this:

 

That day,which was last Sunday, was a good day to be living. And today is a good day tobe living, wherever we find ourselves. We are very lucky to be alive. SometimesI need to be reminded of how lucky I am. And that's where photography comes in.The camera is the dowser's wand of my soul. Thank you God. Thank you, Universe.Just think, it all began with a big pop.

o O o

The Digital Dowser's Wand

If aphotograph is a window then a camera is a window-making machine. Thephotographer goes around punching out rectangular holes in the world so that hemight peer through them again at a time and place of his choosing.

And through thesewindows he collects, he sees, notjust what is there framed within, but beyond them; revealing relationshipsbetween himself and his subjects that can be much more meaningful than the mereaesthetics of an image. A photograph can also function as an interpretivemedium that reflects elements of the photographer's subconscious. He does notalways choose for himself what to capture, or what to frame within his windows.Sometimes it is he who is captured.And sometimes his subject chooses him.

Carl Jungbelieved in something called synchronicity- a seemingly chance meeting of our inner awareness and external events that ismeaningful to the observer and cannot be explained by causality. Synchronicityis born out of the idea that everything is connected through a universalsubconscious that manifests itself through the uncanny association of ideas andevents that occur to us when we least expect it. These are the so-calledcoincidences that occasionally present themselves unexpectedly in our lives,causing us to stop and think, did this really just happen? What does this mean?Jung believed that synchronicity occurs when we need it to, that it is bornwithin our subconscious. The implications of this idea are astounding. Ourinner world is connected to our outer world and we are all connected to oneanother. Is art not proof of these connections? Does not the artist plumb thedepths of her subconscious to create a unit of meaning that is both relevant toherself and to others?

Photographyis the most accessible of art forms and though most people do not practicephotography as art it is, by its very accessibility and simplicity, the mostuniversal form of visual expression. But why do we take photographs? What isthe purpose of a photograph? I posit two answers to this question. We takepictures to record, or to reveal. Now, more than year after my plunge intophotography as a personal art form, I am coming to understand that I am moreinterested in the latter.

Photography,for me, is a medium through which I interpret the world and, more importantly,through which I interpret myself. I do not direct the camera; the cameradirects me. If I let it lead and turnoff my filters, if stop trying to control the camera and therefore the image -its output - I discover treasure troves of meaning. The camera is a dowser'swand. It seems to seek out that which is hidden. It leads me, if I let it, todiscoveries about the world and about myself that were previously obscured. Thecamera slows time, allowing me to see much more than I do during the normalcourse of my wanderings and observations. But it does not accomplish this inreal time. Only later, sometimes much later, do I see what the camera wants me to see.

I have noformal training as a photographer, just as I have no training as a writer. I amlargely self-taught. My writing and my photography have developed organicallyand I am thus prone to many failures as I grope in the dark for methods andmeanings. I am the furthest thing from an expert on these two subjects. Themastery that I seek is simply a mastery of myself.

I am notinterested in taking beautiful photographs. While composition, lighting andsubject matter are important, what I seek in a photograph is something that ishidden to me at the moment of its composition, and something that I cannot planfor or explain. Rarely do I go out to seek a specific subject. I generally letthe subject find me. I don't use a tripod, I don't plan or set up shotsbeforehand and I don't manipulate my subjects. I am interested in photographic serendipity- the accidental meeting of camera, light and subject to create an image withlayers of personal meaning. I don't take photographs to please other people. Itake photographs to please myself, and to learn myself. The purpose of myadventures with a camera are therefore more therapeutic and interpretive thanartistic.

Theexperience of photography, for me, begins with a body in motion - my body. Withmy camera in hand I dive into the ocean of the world and I swim. The camera isat once a golden key and a shield. The camera gives me permission to exploreand interact with living things outside of myself, and also those things wedon't normally label as living - rocks, rivers, architecture. My photographybegins with immersion in the dynamic world of light, form, shadow and allthings living and all things dead. Photography, for this photographer, meanssimmering in the soup of existence. I must be out there, and open to thoseineffable connections between spirit and earth, God and man, will-less,ego-less, humble, small, dangerously vulnerable and precariously perched sothat I may see beyond seeing and feel.Photography for me is just another for of feeling. It is my sixth sense.

But there isa whole other element to my photography that comes into play much later. Thephotographic experience, as I have come to understand it, occurs in the momentthe shutter opens AND in the moment far removed from that original event whenthe image is revealed to me after being baked in time.

Photography,like any other form of creative human expression, can be an instrument ofsynchronicity. A photograph can be a synchronic bridge. A photograph can revealmore about the photographer than its subject. It can be a sort of mirror;especially if it is taken subconsciously. My method is to take my camerasomeplace ostensibly interesting and then drift through that location in a sortof low-level fugue. In this way it is like automatic writing or what Jung calledactive imagination. I take photographs of *everything* that draws my attentionand then, later, ideas and meanings reveal themselves that I did not, couldnot, see in real time.

Time + chance + the lens of my understanding = a unit of meaning.

The meaningsI derive from my photographs are wholly unanticipated but entirely relevant tome in the very moment I make the connections.  In short, I have come to believe that my shutter will open ona subject in a moment that was waiting for me to capture and reveal it forreasons I can only understand much later.

Thephotograph that accompanies this piece is just such an image. Prior to mysitting down to write this, I had completely forgotten this photograph existed.I have not given it more than a passing glance sine I took it on January 17, 2010.I remember the outing clearly. I remember the day, but I didn't remember thephotograph - until now, when I was browsing through my Aperture library lookingfor an image that stood out from the rest.

I took thisphoto South of Market in San Francisco while waiting for my car windshield tobe replaced. On that day I photographed murals, buildings, cars and otherobjects that caught my attention. Toward the end of the outing I remember thatI was drawn to this pea-green building - the shadows and the light. When I sawmy silhouette pop up on the wall, I raised the camera and clicked. That wasall. I took no others in this location and continued on my way. Now why would Ichoose to take this photograph and why would I choose it for this piece?

Let's behonest, this is not an especially good photograph. The lighting is interesting,sure, and the colors are rich and the shadows compelling. But if I had spent alittle more time here, working various angles, maybe setting up on a tripod, Iwould probably, after taking dozens of shots, have gotten something more artsy,more pleasing to the eye in terms of balance and composition. The trick to goodphotography, they say, is to take lots of pictures in hopes that one or twowill be worthy of the portfolio. But that scattergun approach feels likecheating - cheating oneself. Because maybe the one frame you're meant to takeis that first one, the intuitive composition.

But otherthan those elements just mentioned, this image seems to have little going forit and no meaning. So why then is it special to me? Why was I drawn to it thenand why was I drawn to it again just now?

I happen tolike photographs in which I can see the photographer. I love silhouettes. Whilemost photographers strive to stay invisible there are times when the presenceof the' thief' enhances the image. It is sort of the visual version of writingin first person. The image, as framed in this unique moment of time, existsonly as a result of my being there. My shadow bears witness to my authorship,and we are in communion - light, and light-thief.  So this image has meaning, if for no other reason thenbecause I chose it. I framed it and captured it. Like DuChamp's Fountain, this image has significance simplybecause I say it does.

But there ismore going on here than my shadow. If I dig a little deeper I can see somethingeven more interesting. The most obvious is the street sign. Decatur Street.Who, or what, is Decatur? A simple Google search reveals that Decatur is a cityin the State if Illinois. It's most famous resident was Abraham Lincoln, whopracticed law there in 1830. Decatur is also a suburb of Atlanta in the Stateof Georgia. It's most famous resident was Mark David Chapman, the man whomurdered John Lennon. There is also a Decatur Texas and a Decatur Alabama. Allwere named after Stephen Decatur, one of America's first great naval heroes. StephenDecatur was the youngest man to ever attain the rank of Captain. At one time hecommanded the USS Constitution. His service-record during that era was rivaledonly by John Paul Jones. But Decatur's life was cut tragically short. He waskilled in a duel at the age of 41. His last words were "Oh Lord, I am adead man." Notice the Dead End sign below the Decatur Street sign.

Lincoln,Lennon, Decatur. All seemingly minor coincidences. But there's more. It turnsout I took this photograph on Martin Luther King Day which brings to mindanother senseless and unnecessary killing. There are other 'coincidences' too.The fact that my mother was born on Lincoln's birthday, that her mother wasborn just a day after Decatur's and that my father (then a New York Citypoliceman) was present as Mark David Chapman was arrested and booked for killingLennon.

Remember, Istopped here at this corner for just a moment because I was drawn to the color ofthe building and its shadows. I did not notice the sign. Also, as I mentionedearlier, I was here on this street corner only because I was getting thewindshield of my car replaced. A windshield is a transparent sheet of curvedglass designed to protect a driver, ostensibly from wind, but also from otherhazards of the road. It is itself a lens, a means of seeing, of viewing what isbefore us. At this time of my life, as 2010 became 2011, I was emerging fromone of the most difficult years I can remember. I was recently divorced andgrappling with a major life change. I was struggling with issues of self-esteemand direction. I was, at the time, distinctly trying to look at the world, andmyself, anew - I was in the midst of an inner windshield replacement.

If you lookat the image again, to the right and behind the signpost is the only vehiclewhose make and model are identifiable in this image. It is a silver ToyotaSienna - the exact same make and color of car I shared with my ex-wife that Iwound up giving up in our divorce settlement. I drove that car cross-countrytwice on two major moves - one back East and another back to California. It isa car that has great meaning for me in ways I cannot enumerate here. In thephotograph the car is facing the opposite direction, as if leaving. That partof my life is driving away.

Let's getback to Decatur. Upon reading Stephen Decatur's biography further, I discoveredthat he was a man of extraordinary accomplishments who overcame much adversity.As a child he suffered a serious illness that threatened his life, so upon theadvice of his physician he went to sea at a very young age and there herecovered and found his calling. The sea. I, too, was called by the sea at ayoung age, and though I did not become a midshipman at the age of 10 likeDecatur, I spent a good deal of my early formative years on the water in boatsand found there much solace and purpose. Decatur became a naval hero, designedand built ships and died defending his honor. He was the type of man that, as aboy, I had hoped to be - a man of purpose, determination and will. He achievedmuch in his short life, but in the end he died at the hands of his own ego. Ourwill can only carry us so far.

Over thepast few years I have come to believe that the will is an illusion. We donothing alone. It is not through obstinate self-determination that we discoverour true selves, or our true callings. It is through God, or, if that wordmakes you uncomfortable, through a will greater than our own. What that is,what you call it, how it works or why, is a mystery. But it is throughsurrender to that mystery that we discover freedom. That is the moral of Decatur'sstory as I understand it. His life, as glorious as it was, was a dead end. I nolonger wish to be that kind of man.

Art, initself, is a process of revelation. But it is a Rorschach revelation and it canreflect the observer as powerfully as it reflects the artist. Art is a mirror,and like a mirror it does not show us an image of ourselves exactly as theworld sees us. There is a reversal. We see ourselves askew. But it is via thedistortion that we see the truth, if we look for it. The truth of photography,for me, is not just what is visible on the surface of the image, but what liesin the psychic layers beneath. There is much beyond the image in window, as we,the window-makers, punch out the frames in the world we see. The meanings donot always have to be as literal and complex as those I found in the Decaturphotograph above. They can be subtle, drawing more from universal archetypicalthemes - the shared imagery of our dreams. Those are the images I hope toexplore further in my photography and in my never-ending journey to the center ofmyself.

o O o

The Nameless Ones

A camera is a window and through it a portion of the world waits to be discovered. But sometimes the world looks back. 

The photographer waits clandestine behind his memory trap, capturing faces, stealing souls. As innocent bystanders, we each get caught - a part of us is preserved someplace, in countless collections of vacation photos. We are rendered in our clothing, in our skin, in our trances. Our presences are recorded, our existences witnessed; unnamed. Hundreds and hundreds of stolen moments where we happen to be standing somewhere in front of that little window, in that little box that gathers lights and orders it precisely as it fell upon us. The energy that does not pass through us, the energy that is reflected back off of our bodies can be collected, kept, held fast. Long after we cease to exist as containers of energy, as physical vessels that reflect light, older reflections of ourselves will still remain somewhere, someplace. Our reflections will far outlive ourselves. Has not, then, some version of an eternal life of the body been realized? 

It is always jarring to discover the stranger who catches us back. We, who feel so safe behind the lens, so crafty, so sly, don't always get away with the theft. The child above is not only aware of the camera, she is defiant of it. You will not catch me unguarded, she says. I see you there, hiding behind that lens. If you're going to enter my space, I am going to enter yours.

I will never know her name. I will never know what she may have been thinking in this random slice of time. I will never know if she had a good day or a good life. But I will not forget her. She won't remember me, but for years to come as I peruse my images, as I go through my photographs, I will occasionally see her again. There's that little girl in the window of House of Nanking, I will think. I wonder what she's doing? That is one of the great miracles of photography. Two lives connect. Two energies share a moment of sync. Vincent and Sarah. Vincent and Molly. Vincent and Chloe. Does a name even matter? Names aren't only reference points for tiny bundles of light.

o O o

Hobo Nickels

My father would sometimes hold his hand overan open flame to show me, as he would often say, the power of a man's will. Helived in a boatyard, in a part of town where old sloops and schooners weretowed into the black shallows to rot. He would salvage what he could from thelisting hulks to employ in the construction of a vessel of his own design - acement-bottomed ketch he christened Eileento spite my mother for throwing him out after finding him with a woman of thatname. 

Helived in a shack beside the scaffold where the boat's hull sat cradled in anetwork of timbers that I would climb upon even though I was forbidden to touchanything without his express permission. He slept during daylight hours andworked by night, sometimes on the boat but more often than not driving achecker cab in Manhattan or Queens. He used to say that every man should have acrazy dream that he has no right to believe in, and the boat was his. I wastwelve years old then and he'd been dreaming that boat before I was born. 

He usedto hit me when he was drinking so I stayed away if I heard him ranting fromwithin but if he was singing or playing his mandolin I knew it was safe to goinside. He would suffer my presence with some anxiety however. His breathingwould quicken and sometimes his hands would shake, but I would tidy up theplace and pack his Meerschaum pipe, so he let me stay. My face reminded him ofsomething he'd rather not remember, for he rarely looked me in the eye unlesshe had some wisdom to impart and on such occasions he always addressed me asboy.

He heldhis hand over a candle that sat on a table surrounded by piles and piles ofcoins. Towers of nickels, dimes and quarters sat before him as well as several pilesof dollar bills. He stared at the money like it was a player in some game ofcards about to lay down a hand. Slowly, like some conjurer, he swept hissoot-stained palm over the candle flame allowing the fire to dance through hissplayed fingers

 

"Boy," hesaid, "the mind is the lord of the body. Pain is an illusion. Failure is aweakness. Submission is a betrayal of the self."

Then heswept the candle and all the money off the table in a single, violent stroke. Ahailstorm of coins peppered the far wall. Coins were spinning and wobbling onthe floor as paper money fluttered down around me like autumn leaves. 

"It'snot enough", he said. "Not even close". And he stormed out of the shack, bangingthe door so hard behind him that it sprung back open before creaking slowlyclosed on rusted hinges. I looked at the money on the floor. I thought it was afortune. Only later did I learn that it was all the money he had in the world.

I satthere on a milk crate watching the last of the spinning coins as it wobbled torest before my shoe. Something about it caught my eye. I bent over and picked itup. It was nickel, with a buffalo on one side and a grinning skull on theother. It was dated 1936 and it was tarnished and worn smooth and I held it inmy hand like it was the key to the whole puzzle.

e sttod at the

He stood at the foot of the scaffold lookingup at the unfinished boat. Her lines were as smooth and graceful as a swan'sand I thought I saw a tear in his eye. But it may have just been the light. Heturned then and he saw that I was holding something in my hand. I gave it tohim. He studied it for a moment, squinting like a jeweler and then he smiled. Idon't remember him ever smiling like that. 

"Theycall this a hobo nickel", he said. "Bindle-stiff folk art. Back in the Depressionthey used to make them to kill time, to express themselves. Man's creativeenergy shall not be tamed. Sitting in the back of some boxcar maybe, or somePodunk hoosegow"

He puthis hand on my shoulder then, and that was so foreign to me that it feltawkward and strange. He pressed the coin into my palm and looked up at theboat.

"She'sbeautiful isn't she?" He said. And I said that she was.

"You'dnever think she'd float let alone sail, but she'll go like the wind and nevercapsize in a storm", he said.

 

Then hestruck the hull of the boat with a closed fist. He punched it repeatedly and Icould hear the sound of his flesh and bone. But he didn't say a word. He heldhis broken hand out to me, to show me how a man's will worked, and it wasbloodied across the knuckles and hung there like something he picked out of thetrash.

 

"Take alast look Jim", he said. "She'll never sail, never float, never feel the wind".Then he walked away.

 

Theylocked him out of the boatyard after that and the next time I went there thescaffolding was torn down and the Eileenwas lying on her side with her hull stove in like she'd been washed up after ahurricane.  I only saw him a fewmore times after that. I don't know where he went or what ever happened to him.But I still have that hobo nickel. It reminds me of a man's will. The vanity ofthat. The waste. Dreams are dangerous, and sometimes deadly. My father taughtme that. Hobo nickels. By the ten thousands they made them, and every one ofthose was a dream too.

*

The Lost Particles

Water is the universal solvent. Over time there is no thing it does not break down, cut through, gouge, erode, destroy. The sea produced us and the sea will reclaim us. All things are merely collections of particles. All things are assemblies of smaller things. Water, which is also a collection of particles, is the great sculptor of the Earth and the great creator of us all. It is the higher power that influences so much of geology and nature that it would be easy to revere it as a god. The ocean, barely visible at the center of this photograph, has receded. It is low tide. Viewed as a cutaway diagram in some earth science textbook, we can see many layers oft hidden in this image and the actions of time, pressure and water at work. But this is not a geology primer. Water, erosion, plate-tectonics - you already know all this. The power of the ocean, the insignificance of man and the humbling scale of time. Been there. Utah, Arizona, there are far more dramatic examples than this. But this image is personal. This chasm is unique. You've seen the Narrows of Zion and the smooth red sandstone canyons of Colorado in so many photographs that such subjects and angles have become rote. This chasm is in California, on a remote beach that can only be accessed when the tide is dead low. I chose this image because it is arresting to me. When I see it among my photographs I am always struck by it. It feels to me alive somehow. I never grow tired of looking at it. It is visually interactive, almost flowing. There is a visceral quality to the textures that pleases the eye. The smooth packed sand that looks like a road or a river. The gnarled rock walls that I can only describe as frozen slag. The soft green carpets of ice plants above them. The hint of sea foam where the wave spills onto the beach. And then there is the light. Everything about this image draws the eye in toward the sea. Photographs can, with nothing more than shapes and lines and light, pull us out of one world and into another. They can offer us a safe and sane escape. Without numbing, without avoidance or isolation, photographs can, for a few moments, take us away. But unlike other mediums they will lay us gently back down where we belong. There is no hangover, no guilt, no shame. Perhaps the true definition of art is that we gain something from it. Art does not erode. Our particles are not stripped away leaving us smaller. The arts, and photography among them, puts some of those lost particles back.

o O o

© 2011, Serpent Box

The Great Guides of the Sky

A photograph can tell an accidental story. At the right place, at the right time, the lens may open to a scene such as this, where we see a raven flying before a crashing wave, while in the deep background a single-master under no sail seems to be heading out to sea. All three subjects are in a state of becoming. The raven is recently airborne. The wave has crested and is about to crash. The sailboat is heading off to find the wind. Man, animal and the forces of nature. A trio of powers, a duo of wind-harnessers, bound by happenstance and caught by the magic of the light-snare, the memory augmentation device, the supplemental eye-brain that augments our reality and holds it fast for further inspection. And what do we see? The graceless and disheveled corvine, its feathers a blotch of curves and hard lines, hardly aloft in mid-flap. It struggles against the wind. He is the protagonist of this almost surreal tableau. The story is about him. The camera tracks him. He is the first layer. The second layer is the wave, breaking in two directions at once, it seems almost a mirror image of itself. The sloop is barely visible but it is clear that it is heading away to the right,  leaning slightly toward the camera. Each is in motion and on a trajectory of its own, yet the trajectory of the camera happened to coincide with all three. Wave, wind and light. Three forms of energy in momentary harmony. That is what the camera does. It harmonizes. The photographer, maybe, brings them into tune. Everything about this image is an accident. Except of course, there are no accidents. The story here was written for one man in one moment and only through the lens of his experience will it make any sense at all. Follow the raven. That is the lesson. Always follow the raven. They are the great guides of the sky.

o O o

Super X

With a camera, we may keep everything that we find. Everything that we see becomes ours. The camera is the ultimate collector. We need not take physical possession of a thing in order to possess it. To keep its image is enough. Once it is captured it becomes part of us. We assimilate all that we see. The layers build up over time. Each image, coded on some neuron or collection of neurons. Collections of collections. Ours brains are swelling. Maybe taking photographs is a natural extension of what we're already programmed to do. Scan, search, isolate, focus, analyze, reflect. We take pictures all the time. We frame and pan and crop. All the time. Everything of value is noted, and sorted and stored. We're already a camera and light table. We have the eye and the mind. A photograph however is a special moment of synchronicity. It is a frozen interaction with the world. Each and every photograph has one thing in common. They all stop time. They capture it. A photograph is thunder in a bottle. It is the sound of an oncoming storm. Or, it is the echo of the thunder. A photograph is an echo. Do you see that heavily oxidized brass shell-casing above? That thing's been sitting in this little crevice of a rock for years. But that orange lichen has been there far longer. The two of them together make for a lovely pair of old crusted things. Of course the casing is artifact, the lichen, geofact. One was made by man, the other by nature, by God. The shell-casing is from some old starter's  pistol. We can see the sharp cut of the hammer strike at the bottom of the X. Perhaps some race began here long ago. Lank bodies crouching in the mist of Ring Mountain. The race is over, and the boy who won it has grown old and passed on and somewhere in an attic is a loving cup with his name engraved upon it, also of brass, also lying on its side and cast off long after its purpose was served. And most of the time this would be a very sad thing because nobody would ever remember that race or the boy who won it. Except there was a photograph and a mind to interpret it and that mind is yours. 

∞

The Time Machine

His eyes shine in the darkness like the glory of a wise man in the midst of a foolish crowd.  He illuminates the dark soul of the unbeliever. He hides for shame among the shadows, he has been exiled from the sky. He is called the Ghost Owl, for he is likened to the spirit world. He is called the cat with wings. But what does he mean to me? 

We shared a beach together, or rather, we shared a dune. First he flew above me, leading me to an open depression where I found him quietly preening. He suffered my proximity for an hour, turning his knowing gaze to me from time to time and occasionally opening his mouth. We sat together like this, with me quietly talking to him while he tended to the feathers on his legs. He was telling me something. He had a message to give. I could feel the presence of something far greater than myself, something ageless, timeless, immortal. And it occurred to me, sitting out here at Pt. Reyes, alone and in the wild, that I was in fact no longer a participant in the delusion of time. 

In nature and among the wilder things that grow, and go about in the world, there is no time. There are of course no clocks and there are no calendars and there is no context for what might be called a life. A lifespan. The life of the owl is now, in this moment, the exact same life of all the owls that came before it. It does nothing differently than it's grandfather one thousand times removed. It sits here in ageless grass upon ageless powdered stone following ageless instincts. It exists outside of time. It *is* a time machine. In this moment, removed from the world as I know it, away from those things I trust as sure and true, away from my iPhone and my car, *I* am also outside of time; for as long as I choose to be.

What the owl told me is that the world runs on its own. It follows its own rhythms and its own rules. It always has and it always will. It has been said that we are but temporary stewards of this planet, but that is giving us far too much credit and is far too kind a name for what we are to it. I learned, from the owl, that in the best case scenario all I know is the partial truth. About life, about nature, about *anything*. Being here, beside this owl was, perhaps, the first time I was truly living. I was living a life for the sake of living. It was an hour that wasn't an hour for there was no longer such a thing as an hour. 

Nature is a time machine that exists outside the framework of time. Yet it is like a clock itself, in that it runs continuously in linear rhythms. It flows. It tends to favor the circular. It tracks the age of things with visible symbols - cracks, lines, the fading of color, the brown and withered, the celebration of decay. We can see the visible proof of mortality in nature yet is nature truly mortal? Time is only relevant to the mortal. It is only the fear of death that necessitates the tracking of time at all. For the immortal there is no time worth measuring. There are only seasons. 

The owl, the night bird, has made itself visible in the light. He has made himself known. He demands my attention. Like the Holy Spirit whose light illuminates the soul of the unbeliever, the owl reminds me to believe and bids me to remember: there is no time when there is everlasting life. 

o O o

The Secret Door

There was forest. For as far as the eye could see there were trees, great trees, that stretched up higher than any building you'd ever seen. And the air was close around us and very humid. If I had been alone I'd have insisted that it was a dream but of course I wasn't alone, Mildred was there with me and she saw it too - the great fronds hanging low above us and the dense vegetation that seemed to shut us in. At first we did not notice the condition of the ground upon which we tread. We were completely overwhelmed. Like I said we were at Heathrow one moment and in this strange other-world the next. The ground gave way beneath our feet as if we'd stood upon a mattress, and there was an odor, a fecund and earthy reek, the way it smells sometimes in the potting shack where Mildred stores her bulbs. You see there was a certain door and it was marked Secret. We thought it was the frequent travelers' lounge. We're not frequent travelers as you can tell, but I'd heard of such places and thought we'd have a look. We meant no harm in it. It was really quite innocent. The secret door led into a dark corridor that seemed to descend to a level lower than the tarmac itself and soon we were in total darkness and we turned back around, or thought we did, only to emerge there, in that place, where nothing made sense. We looked at each other for a long while before someone spoke and it was Mildred who managed to get the first word out and all she could say was John. John. John. In a sort of helpless, childlike manner as if she had just smashed her mother's favorite vase. What could I tell her? I didn't know anything. My feet were sinking in the ground and I felt very vulnerable, very afraid, and I don't mind saying it. This was not a right forest, if a forest it was, and forget about the fact, the, the inarguable fact that we were at Heathrow only moments before. I am sure of it. I could lay out that morning in exhaustive detail. I remember it, dammit. I remember it. It doesn't matter now. Because we were lost. We were lost and the situation was very dangerous because I soon gathered that we were, relative to everything around us, very, very small. Like in the novel by Jonathan Swift. We had stepped into a different place, a different time. I don't know how. I don't know how it is possible but I know it as fact. I am a man of facts. I know what I see and I know what I know. I was there. There was a large forest and we were small in it. Ask Mildred, ask her. She'll tell you. I am sure of it all as I am of speaking to you right now.

o O o

The Ides of March are Come

A March fly clings to a cliff face at Sculptured Beach, Point Reyes. Swarms of them covered the stone wall that morning; in pursuit of warmth perhaps. The air was chill and the wind up. But this did not deter the March flies. They had urgent business to attend to. Spring is mating season and the newly pupated adults seemed anxious to get on with it. This young male, with his bulbous, hairy eyes, is a terrifying and beautiful life-form straight out of science-fiction. But he is not fiction. He is all science. Every component of his anatomy is an evolutionary marvel. And to think that a few hours before this photo was taken he was a soft-bodied, headless, legless worm is nothing short of astonishing. Flies undergo complete metamorphosis. Each stage of its life cycle is marked by a distinctly unique physical appearance from the last. Here, in it's final form, it is ready to perform its raison d'etre - passing on its genes to a new generation of flies. Entomologists call these types of insects holometabolous, where holo = total. Photographed here at 1:1, this fly was about an inch in length. So named for their appearance in Spring, the March Fly doesn't necessarily emerge in that month. It can make its appearance at any time after the thaw. Here, in Northern Marin County, on this fine May morning, the March Flies emerged to little fanfare. They came to this lonely stretch of beach unobserved by all but one. They live and die by the tens of thousands nearly uncelebrated and unloved. Nearly. This March Fly is celebrated. It is immortalized in cyberspace. And it is loved. Like a sunset or an oak tree it is a master work of singular beauty.  One great glass eye captures two greater still, though not of glass, composed of thousands  smaller. It is by processing many images that the fly perceives what it sees. 

o O o

Wooden Mummies and Iron Bones

In the gold rush ghost town of Bodie, California the hulk of a rusting roadster sits parked outside a long abandoned home. At almost 9000 feet of elevation the air in Bodie is extremely dry. Winter temperatures commonly plunge to 20 below zero and the snow pack averages between 15 and 20 feet - well above the eaves of the house. It is a harsh environment and it is remote. Yet miners flocked here.  Wages were high and the work steady. But Bodie was not a place where a man could strike it rich. Bodie was a company town and men were mere tools used to extract more than 100 million dollars in gold and silver from the ground below the eastern Sierras. Life here was not pleasant. The stamping mills that pounded rock into a fine powder ran twenty-four hours a day, six days a week and gold was extracted from the powdered quartz with mercury vapor and cyanide. The work was dangerous and, in the long run, deadly. But men will risk their lives for money and go to great lengths to extract great wealth from the ground. At the time, Bodie employed the most cutting edge technologies. No expense was spared to dig deeper, work faster, and increase yields. Huge tracts of natural resources were exhausted. Vast teams of mules and horses were broken. Thousands of men were driven mad and pushed beyond their physical limits. And all that is left now are skeletons. Skeletal homes, skeletal vehicles, skeletal tools. Everything made of flesh has gone or decomposed. What remains is only wood and iron. Washed by rain, frozen by ice, flattened by the weight of snow, baked by the sun and dried by the thin mountain air, everything is cracked, warped and sinking. Death is a visible, tangible force here. Corpses do not rot. The town where these people ate, slept, lived and died is a tomb filled with wooden mummies. One can feel the weight of suffering and despair. It is oppressive. Bodie is beyond spooky. It's horrifying. It is a dying testament to the awful power of greed. Gold, during the peak of Bodie's heyday, was $20 an ounce. Today it is over $1500. Gold is the ultimate currency. It always has been. Gold is power and, to some, gold is life. Gold is wealth and wealth is about staving off death. But gold is simply a mineral, a certain kind of rock with some interesting properties. Unlike the iron bones of Bodie, it never rusts. Humans will do inhuman things in pursuit of shiny rocks. We're not unlike crows, who are attracted to shiny things. It if glitters, we want it. Nothing glitters in Bodie anymore. Only the bits of glass from the broken windows and whiskey bottles that litter the ground. Bodie is old and weathered and dull. That's why it is so beautiful. Because old, weathered and dull is the truth.

o O o

The Sparrow & the Martin

Once built by man, never again devoid of him. It seems that we cannot leave even our relics alone. It is by some instinct that we must claim that which is abandoned. The pyramids, the Parthenon, Stonehenge. They stole the nose off the Sphinx and broke the arms off the Venus de Milo. There is no thing sacred. Kilroy will always be there. Just ask Holden Caulfield. There is nothing safe from vanity, ego, pride and the desire to be seen, to be heard. Men have painted words and symbols on walls for 30,000 years. We just can't stand blank space, or silence. That which is empty must be filled. I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. Men do this thing with markers and paint. It is primarily male, the adolescent male. The adolescent mind. I am here, I am here. I assert my existence. I assert my self-imposed identity  (that shall remain hidden and secret to all but myself). The irony of graffiti is that it is an aggressive act of anonymous self-proclamation. I demand to be heard - mysteriously. You *will* hear me (but never actually *know* me). One creates a false identity, a tag, a nom de spray, then applies it under cover of darkness and runs away. It must be quite an addiction this. To piss on a pole and have it remain for all to see and smell. Here, by the ocean, in the old gun emplacement, are dozens of fake names left by real people in a place designed to kill other real people now long abandoned and left to decay. The insecure have reclaimed that which was intended to secure. The coward has claimed the enclave of the brave. The walls, though mortar-proof are not idiot-proof. But who are the real idiots? The graffiti scrawlers? Or the men who built the gun emplacement only to have it become obsolete before it was even finished? Those who simply wish to be recognized as human, or those who seek to destroy humanity? Maybe the real geniuses are not the engineers who construct our towers and bridges but the kids who claim them. Like the Sparrow who steals the Martin's nest.

o O o

Building 231

Steel, iron, rivets and rust. That's about all that remains here in Building #231 at the old Hunter's Point Naval Yard. Scrap metal and ghosts. The air here is rank with the smells of mildew, diesel fumes and engine grease. And though it is as silent as a church now, you can almost still hear the shouts of men working, joking with one another,  the clang of iron chains and the endless rhythm of hammers. This cavernous structure was once a machine shop where naval vessels and submarines were repaired and maintained by dozens of men working round-the-clock shifts.

Now it is a cathedral of scrap iron and toxic waste. This is a superfund site, where lead and radioactive materials were routinely handled and carelessly disposed. But it is quiet now, and empty. Where row upon row of men once stood at machines there is now a vast empty slab of oil-stained concrete. Photographs cannot to justice to the enormity of the space. It is vast and lonely, but everywhere you look one is reminded that people spent a good portion of their lives here. This facility was built to serve machines, but it was inhabited by people. Mot of whom are dead now.

They were not mere men, they were members, they formed committees, they were part of groups. In this room, which the sign above the door says is the planning office,  ideas were conceived, drawn up and put into action. On the shop floor, in the images above, the plans were carried out by men with tools wielded by flesh-and-blood hands, not pneumatic robot arms. Building 231 was a place where things were built and fixed by men who were paid to use their bodies and minds to solve problems.

 

The human eye is perhaps the most sophisticated and complex marvel we possess. It is also the most vulnerable. The exposed soft tissue of the eye is subject to damage from flying bits of debris. A tiny speck of metal dust can blind us. Yet a floating mote of it can dazzle. The eye is the only sense organ that can perceive the passage of time, that can witness it. Time cannot be tasted, touched, smelled or heard. But the eye can see time passing. It can see light. And light is a clock.

Men worked here. Building 231 was filled with men, men who fixed ships so that we could stop fascism and imperialism and communism. There is always an ism to fight. We go to war against isms and build entire industries around them. And whenever we manage to defeat one ism we find a new ism to rally around and to justify both the mechanations and humanations of war. But all wars end, and old enemies surrender, only to be replace by new ones. And then men always come when they are called.

The Building 231's rot out and fall to rust but the men always come. Places like the Parthenon and the Coliseum crumble, but the men don't fade. They always come. Ambition draws them. Noble causes draw them. Money draws them, and promises of a better life. Structures of vast scale draw men. What is it about them that does? Is it the promise of being part of some cause greater than themselves?

Everywhere the eye turns in Building # 231 there is evidence of men. The objects they held in their hands. The brooms they pushed, the helmets they used to protect their heads, the shoes they wore. A ghost ship is so called because of the ghosts. Building 231 is full of them. Just go there. You can feel them. The air is thick with spirit. And you don't need a Quija board to find them. Or a camera.

o O o

The Absence of Cows

A lonely cow pasture, a water trough and a well-trodden crater filled with muddy water. This is West Marin and these rolling green hills feed the dairy cows that make our milk and cheeses. It's hard to imagine milk here, unless its of the chocolate variety but anyone who's spent time on a dairy farm knows that cows are dirty animals and mud is as much a part of their milieu as it is a for a pig. Marin is the dairy capitol of California and California produces the most dairy in the United States. Such sights are common all over Marin but you have to get out and look for them. But this is how it always is. It's not what you're looking for, it's the accidental discovery that yields the greatest reward. Which is why photography is the perfect metaphor for life. I park my car and walk, never really knowing where I'm going or what I will find. I trust that what I need will present itself, and it always does. I find great aesthetic pleasure in the arrangement of geometric shapes in this image. Circles, rectangles and curved lines. And I love the feeling of recent emptiness. I know that earlier the cows were here -many cows. I can see the impressions made by their hooves. And I can imagine them standing around the trough drinking, because I have watched this ritual before. So what I find so compelling about this image is not what it shows, but what it doesn't It's the negative that moves me. The absence of subject matter that the objects conjure. It's the emptiness that I am drawn to and the ghostly feeling the emptiness evokes.

o O o