After Hours in Times Square

Here I try to capture the simultaneous harsh and dreamy feel that comes from staying out way too late. I remember as a child coming home from trips with my parents late late at night. Too tired to stay awake. Too close to home to try to sleep. I'd just patiently drift through soothing darkness until my wonderings and reverie would be punctuated by bright lights flooding the car. Neon signs. Vehicle lights. Street lamps.

Dreamy and harsh, both.

Of course here the photo suggests that more than fatigue alone is at work here in contributing to that dreamy hazy swimming feel.

pig and waterfall and two questions

Dead pig head with dead pig eyeballs.

pretty little waterfall.

okay. so what ya got here is a photo of a pig head that i took in Chinatown, NYC. And below it is a picture of a little waterfall street sculpture here at home. i turned the photo into a negative and kind of lightened it up and amplified contours and whatnot. so here's my question. Photo number one is representational and a little harsh to look at. Photo number two is almost perfectly abstract but serene and lovely (to my eyes). Which leads me to these questions: 1. Which of the two is a better photo? 2. Which one comes closer to approaching art? (No, I'm not pretentious enough to think either is art. But one may be closer than the other.) discuss.

the original waterfall picture is below. it was a nighttime shot.

from the other side

field on fire

painful to look at. and yet...

the dude's a stud. so sue me.

see? studly pose number one.

and studly pose number two. look at him. a stud.

okay, so he didn't like my photo tyranny. again, sue me. and, no, that's not a "we're number one" sign.

Dad

No photo captures a person in all their complexity, and this photo certainly falls far short, too. But it does capture a few of his leading characteristics: Independence. His existential courage; his willingness to look at truth into the face. His love of nature and the big vista. His readiness to go his own path. His desire to take it all in. His steadiness.

He's a good man, and I love him. I cannot ask for a better father.

Taken two or three years ago in the winter outside of Manhattan, KS.

the little stain glass window

A friend's mother-in-law passed away, and his wife inherited this little stain glass window which measures roughly six inches by nine inches. As you can see, it hangs from a small chain, and I suppose its purpose is to decorate a window. She, in turn, gave it to me as a lovely gift, and I took it out one evening and had a friend (another friend) hold it in front of one of those uberbright floodlights that lights up a building. I positioned the camera so that the stain glass window blocked any direct light of the floodlight from hitting the lens. The result is something that looks decidedly phony but in fact is a true representation of what the camera captured.

This is not one of my favorite photos because it's too static, too stain glass-windowy.

"Stainglass" or "stainedglass" or "stain-glass" or, my preference, "stained-glass" window feel better than "stain glass"?

self-portrait

natural grooves and violent cuts

beauty of black

This one comes close.

Almost, but not quite. What I want (as if you couldn't tell from my gazillion pictures) is to reveal concealed forms while keeping them concealed. In fact, while keeping them almost entirely concealed. To capture the feeling of seeing something out of the corner of one's eye. Or a reflected flash in a window. Or sights in the dark before your eyes have adjusted. Or a shell in the ocean just visible between two waves. I'm looking for the emergent, something more suggestive to mind than to the eye but yet still satisfying to the eye. (Or at least to mine, and that's enough for me.) That's why I love "parts." Eyeballs. Hands. (And eyeballs.) Those parts suggest more than what they are, and yet in a way they become the whole of the photo.

It turns out I like taking photos. Of eyeballs.

dear love of mine, hold on.

"Man springs out of nothing, crosses time, and disappears forever in the bosom of God; he is seen but for a moment, wandering on the verge of the two abysses, and there he is lost."--Alexis deTocqueville.

And for this, some natural consolations: love, friendship, pleasure, beauty, and play.

And the consolations of our pursuits: of truth, accomplishment, self-improvement, shalom, and making oneself useful to others.

The spiritual consolations: faith, hope, and, for some, self-abnegation.

Above all, the consolation of distraction.

overlapping flowers

we need some color and cheer in here. well, color if not cheer.

trouble in tranquility

winter night photo

Little bit of an update: 1. a friend (jonbon) who's spending the night has told me that he received a bag and zucchini and squash this summer. I asked him what he did with it, and he said, "umm...well, it kind of rotted."

Hmm....I'm shocked.

2. On four separate occasions this summer, sweet and very dear (and very elderly) neighbors have given us bags of tomatoes. They did not grow the tomatoes. Other generous souls gave them even more tomatoes, and they were just passing what they could not eat on to us and to others. Here's what we did with the tomatoes. One bag we ate entirely because my tomato-intensive in-laws ate them at every turn, but for the other bags we ate just one tomato and the rest returned to the tomato vine in the sky.

It's all just a shame, really. Just the all of it.

This has nothing to do with the picture. And right now I should go because my friend (jonbon) is sitting on the couch next to me talking to my wife. Here I am sitting with a laptop (a new luxury), and what kind of friend am I being? A terrible one. And yet....stories of tomatoes must be told when they must be told.

vanishing

how it ends

Prepare to spiral down.
And down.
And down.

I present you these songs only a few at a time (for your sake) and in no particular order of decreasing or increasing intensity of sorrow. I should confess that I'm not going to share the dozen or so songs I find the saddest. That nearly defeats the purpose of me creating a list, but there's still plenty of sad out there to share. (So we got that going for us.) Even on an erstwhile semi-anonymous but now probably completely transparent blog, shameless confessional vulnerability has its limits. Some of these songs are old, some are new. Several of them are just average as songs (or worse), but they all punch me in the gut--even the Janet Jackson schlocky song.

1. How it ends. Devotchka

2. Days go by. Dirty Vegas (acoustic version)

3. Beautiful Boy. John Lennon. (Meant to be cheery, I know, but it's heartbreakingly sad to me. "Out on the ocean sailing away/I can hardly wait/To see you to come of age/But I guess we'll both just have to be patient." When John Lennon died, I was in 6th or 7th grade, and he was my hero. Hearing about his death was one of those moments of clarity when I understood viscerally that, okay, things on this side of the divide will be cosmically unfair. I was so sad, and being a boy and all, I was ashamed of myself for crying when I heard the news. In terms of emotional impact, his death was one of the top twenty-five or so most important events in my life.) Other Lennon or Beatles songs: "Watching the Wheels Go 'Round" and "Yesterday" and "Eleanor Rigby."

4. Samson. Regina Spektor

5. Sweet dreams. Patsy Cline

6. Long long time. Linda Rondstadt

7. Hide and Seek. Imogen Heap

8. Breathe me. Sia

9. Never fall in love again. Janet Jackson

10. Skyline Pigeon. Elton John

11. I can't make you love me. Bonnie Raitt

12. Baby--Lost and Found

13. Drowning Man--Darden Smith

14. Lost Cause--Beck.

15. No Woman, No Cry. Bob Marley

16. Quelqu'un m'a dit. Carla Bruni

17. Mother. John Lennon

18. Waiting for my Real Life to Begin--Colin Hay

19. Death Cab songs: I will Follow You into the Dark; Title and Registration.

20. Requiem for my Mother--Durutti Column

21. Song for a Deckhand's Daughter--James McMurtry

22. The "rainbow" songs: "Connection" and "Somewhere over the.." Yes, the Rainbow Connection (Sarah McLachlan) is just terribly sad. Heartbreakingly so. Go ahead and laugh. But you know it's true. Admit it.

23. Now and then there's a fool such as I--lots of artists

24. U2--One.

25. First Day of my life. Bright eyes

26. And as far as music alone goes, the "requiem" section (only) of Radiohead's "Paranoid Android" is....well, devastating. I also find "Subterranean Homesick Alien" and "Exit Music" quite cry-worthy.

27. If you could read my mind. Gordon Lightfoot. True, incredibly schlocky, but it's one of the very few "story songs" that I buy into.

28. Finlandia--Indigo Girls

29. More than this. Roxy Music

30. House of the Rising Sun. Patty Ann Smith version.

31. Afterglow. INXS

32. Rod Stewart--Forever Young. Broken Arrow. Also (I confess with great shame) that I find Alphaville's Forever Young to be tender and touching as well.

33. Why Does My Heart feel so bad? Moby

34. By Willie Nelson. Virtually too many to mention. "Getting over you." "Your Memory Won't Die in my grave." "Angel flying too close to the ground". "Home Motel". "Loving her was easier than anything I'll ever do again."

35. Paul Simon--Another Galaxy. American Tune.

36. Please, please, please let me get what i want this time. The Smiths.

37. Nomad. Geoffrey Oryema

38. Girl in the War--Josh Ritter

39. There are scores of songs I find shattering but I'm can't pinpoint why. Just the feel of them. To give a few examples: U2's Stuck in a moment. Bush's Glycerine. Nirvana's All Apologies. The Beatles' ending medley on Abbey Road, Side Two. Otherside by R.H.C.P. Romeo and Juliet by Lou Reed. "It's My life" by Bon Jovi--just it's desparation.

40. And several of the songs already mentioned by you, the dear readers.

gotta go to bed.
to weep.

---

Okay, it's morning now. So I looked over this list, and four things come to mind. 1. Okay, so that wasn't just a "few at a time." I got a little carried away. My apologies. 2. Man, I find a lot of songs to be sad. 3. I should have said up front, that I'm more of a music guy than a lyric guy. 4. This list makes me look like a saturated sponge, ready to weep as soon as the needle touches any record. And yet I'm not really a cry-at-the-movies kind of guy (with exceptions, of course), so go figure.

Weirder still, I never cry at funerals.

Yes, I do.

girl at the center of the ripples

More sad songs, please. Oh, I need them. Don't make me break out my own. That could go on post after post after post. Spare yourself and send more suggestions in.

it begins

Taken in Shenandoah National Park. I stood on a lovely field covering a high point in the park. Quickly emerging on the horizon was a dramatic storm. Lightning began to strike in the near distance and the few hikers in the area started to double-time it back to the road. I took a couple of shots of the storm but I was terribly disappointed in how little contrast between cloud and sky they showed. When I converted one of them to this color scheme, the drama of the scene as I experienced it emerged--though perhaps overstated here in the apocalyptic blood red tones.

Eyeball and hands

This is my 500th post. What cold be more appropriate?

Note: keep submitting sad songs. (see a couple of posts below. if we hit a critical mass of contributions--say, seventeen thousand or maybe seven songs--i'll post them up front.)

closed in black and white