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