None of My Talk

I went "photographing" yesterday.  Got out late again.  Hot.  Sticky.  The beastly camera heavy.  I didn't know where I was going or what I was looking for other than "4 shots."  Trying to get my bearings, I decided to stop at McDonalds.  No shit--I've developed a taste and have lost most of my once considerable will.  I got a Quarter Pounder w/ Cheese and a Coke.  Mother of God it was good.  Best of all, I felt no guilt.  I just enjoyed it.  

It was a good start to the afternoon, I thought.  The burger would carry me through the day.  

I drove.  

Blah, blah, blah.  

Ended up in Gotham.  Saw people on a side street.  "C'mon you sissy.  Park the effing car."  I turned down the next street, circled the block, and found a fifteen minute loading zone.  

Thump, thump, thump.   

A big woofer was pumping bass out of a bar across the street.  I paused.  Gotham is very much a Chocolate City on Sundays.  "What're ya doing, White Boy," I thought I heard someone say.  Fuck it. I pulled the beast from the passenger's side, took a meter reading, slipped in a film holder, and waited.  I framed up what I thought would be a nice shot across the street against a sunlit wall.  Suddenly, the street was empty.  It was hot.  Some people came from the opposite direction.  A small line of people waiting to get in, the door open.  

"Thump, thump, thump."  

I waited.  Finally a group of people walked by the wall, but all willy nilly and catawonky, not really photographable.  

I waited some more.  I got bored, turned my camera to a different and totally uninspiring scened and took a pic.  I turned the film holder around and framed up something even less inspiring.  Neither of them will mean anything.  I was wasting film.  

Got back in the car and drove.  I went west of Gotham, past the basketball arena and further past the soccer stadium.  Nothing going on.  I turned down "iffy" streets where it might look like I was trying to score--sex or drugs.  Hot.  Men without shirts.  Stares.  I turn a corner.  I see a building that interests me.  It was painted in a pale green long ago, old paint faded and streaked.  No windows.  An ancient red ATM machine out front.  The barred front door opens and a tall, thin, shirtless young fellow walks out holding a bag.  It is a store of some kind--the kind without a sign.  The kid looks my way.  I drive on.  

I go down the street that was once lined with homeless people, tents, cardboard boxes. . . encampments of all kind.  It is gone now.  The state passed a law making it illegal.  Vacant lots, though, are full of people standing around in groups.  A truck with a cross on it is parked in one lot.  A crowd of men stand around it praying.  For some reason, this startles me.  

I turn back onto a main artery and drive by more things I would wish to photograph.  I come to the old Feed Store where you can buy big metal horse troughs, rabbits, and chickens.  There is a giant rooster statue standing outside.  I pull into the lot.  Sure.  My punk ass ain't afraid of no giant rooster.  I laugh.  This sure isn't the way to get famous.  

Yea, yea. . . whatever.  I pull out the beast, take a meter reading, load the film holder. . . the shot doesn't look interesting at all.  But just like the other photos I'd taken this day. . . . 

As I'm walking back to the car, a girl watering the potted plants behind a fence calls to me.  I tell her I just took a photo of the giant chicken.  

"Rooster, I mean."  Maybe.  Fuck if I know.  

"That's an historic statue," she says.  

"Really?"  But I don't ask why.  

"Is that a camera?"

"Yea. . . weird, huh?  I'll show you.  Let me take your picture."

"Really?  Sure."

I am lazy, I guess.  I frame her up through the fence.  I'm not lazy.  I'm nervous.  I futzed with dials and cranks and meters while she watches me.  I try to focus but for some reason, I can't really see.  Again. . . whatever.  I hit the shutter button.  

"I'll send you the photo if it turns out."

"Oh, that'd be great.  I'm the media manager here.  I do all the social media for the store."

She types her number into my phone.  

"OK," I say.  It might take me a couple of days."

"Alright.  No problem."  

I am sweating like a drunk when I get back into the car."

"That one will suck."  

But I had four photos.  I drove back in the direction of home, through Gotham and past the giant Farmer's Market in the park.  There were good photos everywhere.  

I drove on.  I wanted a giant mimosa at the cafe.  

"Hi," said the usual Sunday girl behind the counter.  "You want to see something cool?"

"Of course I want to see something cool."

She whipped out her phone, scrolled a minute, and showed me a picture of a bolo tie with a silver clasp.

"Did you make the silver clasp and set the stone, too?"

"Yes. . . I'm a goldsmith.  I worked about twenty hours on this.  It's my first bolo."

People lined up behind me, but she was being chatty.  

"We're opening up a shop on the Boulevard."

We?  I didn't ask.  

"You know the Simmons place?"

"Yea."

"We're moving in there."

Simmons is a jewelry store that has been in the village forever.  At least it was here as long as I've been.  

"Oh. . . I knew the Simmons girl a long time ago."

There's a story there I can't tell.  She was from a family with money, a pretty girl with a small mouth that the family had surgically fixed.  Doctors broke her jaw, moved it forward.  She got braces.  In the end, she was even prettier.  I probably shouldn't tell that, either, but that is not the part of which I was speaking.  

"Do you know the other big jewelry store on the Boulevard?" I asked.  

"Yes." 

"That's my ex-wife's place."

The counter girl's eyes pop really wide.  

"What?!?  That's your ex-wife?!?!?"

Oh, shit. . . I never tell people that, but we were talking jewelry.  I was wondering if I had stepped into something.  I put my finger to my mouth.  

"Uh. . . let's keep that on the DL, O.K?  Anyway, my ex-girlfriend is a jeweler to the stars.  They carry some of her line in there."

I said her name.  The counter girl knew it.  She's giving me the old Amos and Andy eyes now.  Fuck.  Why'd I tell her this, I wondered?  

"When I finish up, I'll show you something cool," I said.  

I've been feeling pretty good lately.  I was in the garage a couple days ago loading film in the dark tent, and I decided to open some of the drawers in the big print file that I never look into.  Drawer after drawer after drawer, I saw prints I'd forgotten, big things.  Two drawers had alternative process stuff, prints on delicate Japanese fiber papers, giant transfers, encaustic works.  God, I used to be productive.  My heart was really racing.  

"It was easy when I had the studio," I consoled myself miserably.  

It made me sad, but it picked me up a bit, too.  I really did do some very nice work.  Could I do it again?

I was sitting at a table facing a group of four girls.  They were loud and chatty and very catty about other girls they knew.  One with her back to me was scrolling through pictures on her phone.  They were all of girls posing in outfits.  My heart sunk a little.  They were really good.  There were hundreds of them.  Girls.  They do that.  They decorate their walls, make collages, work with color.  Their visual acuity stuns me.  What chance do I stand?  These girls have a billion times more talent than I.  

"She's not really ugly," one of the girls says, "but why does she dress like that?"

"I know, right?  She could be so pretty."

"I mean, she's not ugly."

The table ruptures in laughter.  I think "Mean Girls," though I've never seen the movie.  I'm certain, though, they are playing roles.  They have the vocal inflections going on.  They give me arthritis.  

On my way out, the counter girl is busy, so I don't bother her.  As I walk out the door, I hear, "So long.  See you later."

I catch myself reflected in the mirror above the coffee prep counter.  

"That's your ex?!?!"

I guess.  

It is Sunday night.  Dinner with mother--except when I called her earlier, she wasn't certain about that, so I hadn't planned anything.  I call her to see what's up.  She's still not sure.  I tell her I have some raviolis I'll bring over.  She has broccoli.  It will be a simple meal.  O.K.  

I take the film holders and the developing tank to the garage.  I come back, mix the chemicals, put on some music, and get to work.  Four pieces of film.  Four bad photos, I'm pretty sure.  It sure takes a lot of time to make four bad pictures, I think, but I feel fuller these past few days than I have for a long while.  It's a stupid thing, but it makes me feel productive.  I haven't napped for days.  

As I stand at the sink processing the film, I think about the photos I take, and I realize that I am in love with everything I shoot.  Yes, that's it.  I take photos of things I love.  It is a love affair.  I'd not thought of it this way before, but yes. . . it is romance.  I don't make pretty pictures necessarily.  I like odd photos.  Even for the people I photograph in the street I feel an attraction.  I look at the photos years later and remember the moment.  Yup.  It doesn't matter if it is people or the trees in the photo at the top of the page.  It is something I loved.  

I pull the photos from the tank.  The exposures look good.  I hang them to dry and pack up for my mother's.  When I get home and the film is dry, I will scan them.  

The feed store girl--shit!!!  I missed focus.  The things one foot behind her are all sharp.  It is a shame, I think.  That lens is soooo cool and yet, because of the shallow depth of field, soooo hard to focus.  

Late at night, as I'm getting ready for bed, I decide to send the photos with an apologetic note of embarrassment.  I feel like a dope.  

"But I told you I'd send them, so. . . here they are.  I am coming back to photograph the chicken/rooster.  Let me know and I'll try to get you into focus, too."

I'll try four more today.  Hours of photography for four pictures.  Remember when you were in school, in English class, and you had timed writings--an hour to write a five hundred word essay?  Yea.  This blog doesn't just happen.  I spend a lot of time on stupid shit.  

That I love, though.  I'm a romantic.  I'm a lover of people and of things.  

"Nobody can love like you do," a girl once told me after she left me.  

Yea, yea, yea.  

"None of my talk ever seems to get me anywhere."