Originally Posted Sunday, October 5, 2014
This morning is gorgeous. The air is cool, the sky clear, the sunrise a robin's egg blue, the music beautiful, soft and soulful, the coffee plentiful. There seems potential for something good. There is life out there in the streets. Sure, my home is a wonderful refuge from it with it's antiques and gimcracks and textured fabrics and sunlight through the shutters, but it is definitely a refuge, a perfect spot for reflection and meditation. But a person needs something on which to reflect, and that something is "out there." I have avoided "out there" for too long now. I've made my "realities" out of studio encounters. Oh, don't get me wrong, I have loved it, and there are plenty of stories there. But yesterday I went downtown with a friend to shop some galleries, to see if they might be places for my pictures. Not so much luck on that account, I am afraid to report, but the foray into the world was fun.
Here are some photographs by a guy who goes into the world to make his pictures. I am envious of his photographs. I am envious. If you have never approached strangers and asked them if you can take their photographs, you can't imagine. It is really weird and stressful fun. Every time. But once you get into the groove, once you lose yourself in it, it becomes increasingly easier. Until the day is done. Then you collapse into a heap and wonder how you did it. And you won't believe you can ever do it again. The next time, you think you've lost your juju, that people will hate you and hit you and call the police. And then. . . .
I was sitting at a table in a health food store's restaurant yesterday trying to make myself well by drinking double shots of wheat grass juice and eating healthy, nutritious things. The table I was facing had a man and a woman sitting across from one another. They were in the sort of conversation that had them looking around, eyes darting, to see if anyone was listening. Oh. . . of course I was. It is fun to listen to other people's conversations. They haven't enough of an idea how fascinating they are. I would love to have photographed them. The man was old, older than I, but healthy enough, thin with an interesting lined face, unkempt white hair poking out from under his cap, weathered hands. He had worked for a living, perhaps a carpenter. His hands illustrated what he said moving emphatically, beautifully. He had an artist's hands. The woman was in her fifties, I would say, with pale, serene eyes. Her face was clear, without deep lines of any kind, in a manner that suggested a simpleness of thought or life. She was dressed in bargain clothing that was out of style, denim that had some sort of lace trim, etc.
"Did you believe in Santee Clause when you were a kid," the man queried.
The woman's eyes darted a bit before she said, "I guess I did when I was young."
They were talking about religion, I knew. She had that look. I heard them talking about the board of some church and the decisions they were to make. The health food place was run by Seventh Day Adventist and had been around forever. It was not of the hipster kind. The man seemed a bit of the old cracker type though, as I said, he had a bit of the artist in his movements.
The woman got up and left the table, but her drink and plate were still there. I wondered if she was trying to change the subject or if she had left of the sudden. The man sat as if in thought. After a bit, the woman returned to the table, smiling. She asked the time.
"I have to go over to Mabel's apartment this afternoon. She buys all these things on sale at the thrift and dollar stores. Her whole apartment is filled with these things. You can't walk through her apartment because of them. It is like a store in there. She is going to get evicted if she doesn't get them out by this weekend. I told her I would help her. Do you want any of it?"
She leaned in toward him and said a pitying voice, "She's a little. . . off. . . I think." She said this with an implied "poor soul" intonation.
The man seemed not to be too interested in this. He obviously had an agenda and steered the conversation back to make believe figures. Maybe she was trying to convert him or bring him into the church. I couldn't tell and hadn't a clue where the conversation was going .
"What proof do you have that God exists?" he asked.
Her eyes went soft. "First off, God has given his word."
"Where'd you learn that?" he asked.
"It's in the Bible," she said as if she were a scientist saying Q.E.D.
"That's just what you've been taught," he said. "That isn't proof."
Such conversations are tiring, of course, unless you are watching two characters play it out. It is not a conversation worth having, but it is had in one form or another a billion times a day in every land in every religion. All I could think about was what it would be like to photograph them this way.
I've got to. It is scary and easier to stay home with the sunlight and the textures and the coffee and the music. But I can't. I just can't. I have to get out of the studio and work.
But not today. Today is for brunch in the open air with friends. It is for dinner on the deck with my mother. It is for walking and getting well. The other. . . oh, it can wait.
Sure. Sure.
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