FURTHER AFIELD: Halloween Greetings from NYC

A large bat soared over my head as I walked by a residence on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. I looked up and smiled – Halloween decorations weren’t what I expected to see in the staid, expensive neighborhood. But the street was full of kids, something I didn’t remember seeing years ago, when I lived nearby. It was refreshing to see something so lighthearted in front of the meticulously maintained building.

We had just come from a remarkable exhibit of Aboriginal Australian bark painting at the Asia Society. Bark painting? Yes, and I’ll post photos from the show soon. The Asia Society describes the exhibit as “a watershed moment in global art history.” Eight decades of sacred paintings from one region are displayed, many of them close to human-sized. For us, the works brought up questions about where art gets shown and how context can radically change the way an artwork is understood. But that was just one thought among many that whirred through my brain. This work emerges from deep connections to the place where it is made, connections that have united spirit with land for thousands of years. How a connection to place can be expressed through art is a subject I’ve been interested in for years. Authenticity is another quality the show addresses – indigenous elders conceived the idea of exhibiting their art and worked alongside museum curators. The catalog is written in Yolngu Matha, the language of the people from Arnhem Land in northern Australia, and English. We experienced the exhibit as a real immersion and spent more than three hours at the museum.

But that’s just one piece of a big, rather exhausting puzzle of visits with family and friends, walks in parks, gardens, and beaches, endless hours in cars and trains, and really good food. Yesterday we flew back to Seattle and made our way north to our quiet refuge. We left the highway early and took the the back way home through lovely green and umber fields. Moody, leaden skies stretched from horizon to horizon, letting loose brief barrages of raindrops every now and then. It was a jarring contrast to New York, where a drought brought beautiful, clear blue skies every day and the crunch of leaves underfoot. This is why travel is so interesting – the usual routines and familiar places are replaced with new ones, bringing to light a host of assumptions you didn’t even know you had. I apologize for being absent from the blogging world lately. I scheduled posts that I finished before we left home to be published while I was traveling. I made time to reply to comments but that was all. Now it’s time to catch up! Very slowly. Thank you for your patience.

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LOCAL WALKS: In Movement and Stillness

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I walk, I pause. The eyes dart, the eyes rest. The camera moves, the camera is still.

These photographs were made within the bounds of Deception Pass State Park. One is from Christmas Day last year, one from last March, one from July, and the rest were made within the last month, as fall finds its path into the landscape.

I like the painterly effect that happens with intentional camera movement. It’s hard to predict what you’re going to get and many images get deleted. But there are almost always appealing surprises. I’ve learned that some scenes adapt better to this technique than others. Lots of contrast or lots of color help. If the exposure is too bright with a slower shutter speed, I compensate by dialing back the EV. Subtle scenes don’t usually work well.

You can easily see that #1, 2, 7, 8, 9, and 14 were done using intentional camera movement with a shutter speed of .5 or .8 seconds. Sometimes I swing the camera in gentle arcs and press the shutter repeatedly, or I might hold it down so it fires multiple times. I check the screen to get an idea of the exposure, light, and composition, but when I get home the images always look different. I sort through them and begin working on one that stands out. Each image responds differently to changes in contrast, exposure, color and other tools.

I like the freedom of discovering what emerges from the camera after using intentional camera movement. But I wouldn’t want to spend all my time making photos with intentional camera movement. The clarity of still photography appeals to me, too. There are so many ways to see!

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THE CURTAIN

After a phone call

A filmy white curtain hangs at the window,

symbol of virtue, calm,

even protection.

But

it’s stained, stained with the dark aftermath

of a phone call –

a friend’s cancer diagnosis.

Stained another time by the midnight jolt of

“Get to the hospital, we’re operating on him now,

no other choice.”

Stained once by the terror of a reaching hand

half-seen as it floated down into the murk

of a wide, seemingly benign river.

The river sullied with desperation, the

sleep broken apart, the quiet afternoon

upended.

The curtain stained.

We prefer a clean white curtain,

a serene river, a deep sleep,

a calm afternoon.

But the curtain

stained

again and again.

The stain fades,

cancer becomes familiar,

the operation a success

or not, the river

smooth and still, the curtain

a pure white field,

affording the respite

of hopeful light.

***

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LOCAL WALKS: September Songs

My last post was a story about an elephant seal that I stumbled upon one June afternoon and eventually got to know exceedingly well. With only a few photographs, the text-heavy post was a departure for me. It’s time to get back to the images now and it would make sense to focus on Alaska – after all, it’s been a month since we got home from Anchorage. We spent several days on the Kenai Peninsula so I began to put together a post about “Alaska’s Playground.” But as I wrote about the peninsula and what we did there, I got bogged down in a frustrating tangle of words, words, words. Worse yet, I wasn’t happy with the photos. This post was not working! I dug in and stayed with it anyway. I can be very stubborn. Then one afternoon I became aware that my grumbling, gloomy, negative feelings about the post were threatening to spoil the whole day. I needed to get away from it!

So I went into town for an espresso macchiato, the tonic that cures many ills. In my post about the elephant seal I wrote about the beach that’s been my refuge for years. The used bookstore and café in town is another well-worn dot on the map of my wanderings. But as nice as it is, I think there are times when I stay there longer than I should. A familiar “voice in my head” says it would be better to spend 15 minutes at the café, then go outside for a walk. During the week I was struggling with that Alaska post I would burrow into a book or newspaper for a good hour instead of getting outside. Then it would be too late to go for a walk. I’ll just go home now, I would think. And you can guess where that led – right to guilt. Between the guilt about not getting outdoors and the lack of progress on the post, my mood festered like a smelly, old bag of garbage.

But one day the caffeine did its job, or maybe it was the sugar (yum, a slice of pear & walnut bundt cake!). Moods are mysterious, aren’t they? If you give a grouchy mood a little space but don’t indulge it, the mood might actually transform itself. It’s a fine balance – give the bad feelings too much room and they take over, push them away and they pop up again. But give that negativity just the right amount of acknowledgement and it often evaporates before you know it.

Feeling better, I decided to go for a leisurely walk in the forest. I had my camera because even if I don’t expect to go use it, it’s almost always in the daypack. That day I chose a forest around a quiet lake for my walk. By the time I parked and stepped onto Trail 107 it was close to 5:00. Time for the light to ignite random branches and tree trunks in the distance.

The forest was dim save for isolated scraps of color; towering trees enclosed me in quiet. No wonder people often compare forests to cathedrals. A pale glow emanating from between the fir trees announced the lake’s proximity. Almost tripping down the last downhill stretch, I came to a stop at the bottom. Who wouldn’t? Spread out flat as a mirror, the water was uncannily still. Only a raven’s croak and the nasal chatter of nuthatches broke the silence. I wasn’t anywhere else on earth but right there, there with the round ripples of the fish picking at the lake’s surface, the sun-brightened leaves hanging over its edge, and the black shadows.

3. Trees grow tall, they fall, and maybe they float.

On the way out of the forest I thought about what was going on with my moods and the post I was laboring over. Having gotten some distance from itself, my brain felt refreshed. I could see what I needed to do: listen to the images. Let them show the way. In fact, the pictures that had been hovering in the back of my mind were not of Alaska, they were recent images from my habitual haunts and refuges. A whole legion of them was lined up at home – small, bright squares marching across the screen, one after the other. They wanted out.

So here’s a sample of those bright little squares from the screen. You could call it a September song, complete with solos, duets, and trios.