Random

Years ago, when I was taking a psychology class, I remember how the mood of the class became electrified toward the end of the semester when we would be studying abnormal psychology. It's all fine and good, this mood suggested, to study how the mind works and what makes people tick, but studying the diseases of the mind was getting down to brass tacs. But studying seratonin uptake inhibitors and hypochondria can only go so far in explaining the human psyche. And what does that have to do with pictures? Isn't something that steps a little outside of ordinary infinitely more interesting?

What Sounds Look Like

It occurs to me that a camera works very differently from your eyes. A camera records, but your eyes share all sorts of sensory real estate with all of your other senses. When thinking about some of my favorite (or least favorite) sounds, I have to parcel out whether some are sounds, or smells, or sights, or some combination thereof. Do I like the sound of a plane taking off, or the feeling of it? When I hear a lawn mower, is it the sound or the smell that I enjoy? Coffee brewing? None of this is ultimately important unless you're trying to think what sounds look like. Or whether they are even sounds to begin with. This must be the stuff that sound technicians on film sets obsess about, and when you see a movie, it's all these sensory experiences working together to tell a story. Horses breathing, a crackling fire, a cup being filled with hot coffee at the counter of a diner, dishes being washed by hand in a sink, a door creaking on its hinges ... they all nestle in the cradle of your ear and make you remember. Or at least think that you do.

She Likes Rot.

I'm always a bit nervous when someone starts a sentence with, "I was thinking about you the other day when I saw ... ," and inevitably follows some description of a scene of decay or disorder. Okay, I'm secretly flattered.

We pretty much live in the backyard during the summer. So every year we go a little crazy with plants and flowers. I tried to exercise a little restraint this year, retire a few terracotta pots, and avoid the jungle of heirloom tomatoes we had in years past. One year I planted purple perilla in pots on the fronts steps, and I have been pulling perilla from the pavers ever since. Last year, the lime green potato vines threatened to take over the patio, so I've decided to stick to purple instead. Doesn't it seem you have to learn things the hard way with plants?

City and Colour - The Girl

Happy Friday, folks! This song is three years old, but it never loses its charm. Don't you agree?
I just wonder, what's he doing in our neighborhood ravine?

Random

Today, my friend Kathleen shared this quote. "The most important parts of life are found in small truths, easily missed - the world within is the root of the one without - and the search for meaning is more about the search than the meaning." Jesh De Rox, Experiential Photographer

And then she shared this link. Which helped me immensely, because I've been all over the place lately. I feel like I delete as many pictures as a take these days. So take these little random shots for what they are worth, a search for order.

Layers

I love layers, adding them on, peeling them away, making them almost indiscernable. Here I've combined two pictures into one. I wonder how far I can push it.

I ran across Wallace Stevens' The Idea of Order at Key West, and something new about it hits me every time.
It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there was never a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

My movements were restricted to the house and backyard today because a nasty bug has taken up residence in my chest. That aside, I like inspecting the little worlds that exist outside, even on a gray rainy day.

I've been reading a James Merrill poem that works for me this week, which I will paraphrase for you;
May you shine back always,
From what you see, from others. So welcome, friend.
Welcome to earth, time, others; to
Those cool darks, of sense, of language,
Each at once a thread and maze.

a hundred visions and revisions

Okay, so only four. The title is a line from T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, which I've been reading and rereading a lot lately. I'm working on pictures that are merely okay, and trying to make them into something quite different. And yes, I'm a little hooked on infrared and inversion today. While talking to a friend recently, he said, "You can never have too much glow." No, indeed.