For my friends. I have no words. Just know I am with you during this time.
“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge – myth is more potent than history – dreams are more powerful than facts – hope always triumphs over experience – laughter is the cure for grief – love is stronger than death” – Robert Fulghum
JRR Tolkien told us “It’s a dangerous business going out your front door.”
If that’s the case, I was thrown off the cliff this morning when I bitched that my internet was down, and all the things I should be doing wasn’t going to get down. “Pick a new word” she responded, and I knew right away she was right. What the hell was I doing inside on a beautiful summer’s day in NYC anyway? I went to the study, grabbed the can & drew the word.
Doors.
Something about a door always sparks a curiosity in me. When those hinges creak open, what’s on the other side? Who has the key to that door in their pocket? I get insane desire to peep through the keyhole, spy the world that exists on the other side.
Doesn’t everyone want to look inside a medicine cabinet when in someone else’s bathroom?
In the end though, strange doors are still magical and mystical, but could never to compare the greatest door of all… you’re own.
What makes a person take a photo? Since the invention of the camera, people have been choosing what moments to immortalize on film, or in my day and age, in a million pixels. Sometimes its an easy choice, a birthday, a wedding, Johnny coming home from the war, a moment we want to remember every single detail of, no matter how minute, so we press the shutter and save it for eternity.
Maybe it’s our way of beating the system. It’s our attempt to stop our kids from growing. Its our way from keeping our loved ones alive. It’s the only way possible to stop the sun from setting on that magical day we’re having.
But what if there is no birthday cake or bride and groom or happy child running through the daises? What if it’s just a field of wildflowers? Or a tricycle? Or swing set next to a tree? Then what makes a person take a photo?
I was asked this question, and I had no answer. Instead I went back to taking photos of that swing set, because I had this nagging feeling something was there, but for the life of me, I had no idea what. So I kept shooting thinking maybe I’d find it.
I was lucky enough to escape the city for a day with friends to a country home which was only 3 hours away from my front door but felt as if it was on the opposite side of the earth. My cell phone didn’t have signal, there was no internet connection, and to be honest, I didn’t miss either. We spent the morning working replacing the beams under the house, crawling around in the muck and the mud, and finished filthy but proud of our work. The massive amount of grass was mowed after the tractor was fixed twice. I built a bonfire, flashing back to my years in Boy Scouts, and I’m bursting with pride that it went up with one match. I fed the fire to a tremendous blaze, and as noticed by my friends, I raised the tempature of the entire Catskill Mountains by nine degrees for the night. My real goal, however was the get it big enough to be seen from space.
Despite all the technology that was left behind, my shiny Nikon D90 seemed grossly out of place. Even so, I gripped it tight as I strolled through the grass and woods. Through my lens, I saw more than the grass and the woods, something harder to describe. The country house I was brought to was a special place, just an ordinary house to most, but to my friends and their family, it was home filled with memories of laughter, love, all those moments that make life worth living. I felt an odd pressure as I shot, a challenge to capture that spirit, and maybe that’s why I took so many photos of the swing set, maybe that’s what I was seeing.
Or maybe it was just shadows on a rock that caught my eye. I really don’t know. But as long as I have friends who love me enough to take me up to their magical country home to try to capture it’s spirit, and – dare I say it – fans who want to see the results, I’ll keep shooting.
I wonder what a road feels like.
A road is the thing that takes us from point A to point B and back again. It speeds by under the tires of our big fuel guzzling SUVs without even a glimmer of appreciation. Sure, perhaps we’ll glance out the windows at the trees whizzing by, ooh and ahh at the houses and scenic views, but mostly they go unnoticed.
Today I left the house with a new word in my pocket. Its a word that should have been so simple that I could have completed it by the time I reached the corner, but something wasn’t there today, I couldn’t see anything through my lens, no matter how far I walked, especially when it came to seeing that word. I walked farther along until I came to a pretty busy road that runs through a park, one of the biggest roads in Queens. It gets pretty wooded, the two lane black top snaking through a forest which most of the area would look like if not for the work of man.
The word I had come to look for had already slipped so far from my mind that I could barely even remember it. I carried my camera in my hand listening to the whizzing cars rush past me. In between them, the silence of the woods returned only to be shattered within seconds by another passing car. As I walked, I became aware of the road. My eyes drifted along and I began to notice not only the road, and as I said, how ignored and unloved it was, but even worse what was left along side of it. Trash littered the curb, things tossed out a car window, discarded by the owner.
We live in a society being eaten alive by our own garbage. I don’t want to interject my own feelings on global warming or how we’re beating our planet to a horrid death, so I’ll just leave it as saying I was appalled by the litter around me.
I looked at all the trash around me, I looked at it through the lens of my camera, and when I was done, I did something I never do when shooting, I destroyed what I found. Using a plastic bag I found at my feet, I cleaned it up. I picked up the trash laying along the road, stuck it in the bag, and threw it all in the garbage can supplied by the nice people who run the park
My life is in a bad place right now, I have little control of my fate, I’m desperately looking for break, praying for a way to get back on my feat, with very little that I can actually take control of. But this… this I was able to fix… so I did.
Yes, I know it will be back tomorrow, and no I wasn’t able to get all of it, but the bits that I did not only made me feel good, but made that stretch of road that much nicer to look at … if someone else would ever decide to slow down and appreciate it.
Oh … and I left the toilet… it was too big to carry.
I drew a vital word for my family from the can. History. Spend more than five minutes with my father sometime and you’ll know why. He loves the stuff. I don’t think “buff” is a strong enough word for his addiction to it, even though he was called that in book once. Hey, how many other people do you know with a historical marker on their home? Ok, it’s not a real one, but then again, that in it’s self is the perfect marriage between my fathers passion for history and pension for humor.
Growing up history wasn’t really a subject in school, rather a way of life. While most the kids in school left that and other studies in school for the summer, we saw out fair share of civil war battlefields, forts, museums and every other farm house that somehow shaped the nation that my folks could think of. For their anniversary a few years back, my siblings and I were photographed on top of a cannon, a playful reminder of our vacations.
My dad is to this day the smartest man I ever met, and can do all the smart guy stuff, name all the presidents, list the states and their capitols, and tell you who did what, where and why in almost any town you’re driving through at the moment. He loves sharing his knowledge, which has its interesting moments, but unwittingly he shared much more than that with me, the love of history.
My love of history isn’t a love of dates, facts and figures, although I can rattle off dates, places and set lists of more than quite a few Grateful Dead shows. Living history is what amazes me, the fact that these facts and figures are actually people, who lived actual lives and did actual things. And for me, the amazing part of this kind of history is that is never ends. We’re living some one’s history right this moment. Our whole lives are just that, history.
Today I had to discuss a piece of my history that I really didn’t want to, but I did because I know the strange relationship between history and the future. How what happens in the past, can affect the decisions and our choices in the future. How will we ever fully appreciate our future until we can fully appreciate our history?
So what do I photograph to capture the work history? Some have called my parents house “a musueum” so sure I could drag out my dad’s Civil War rifles or the books upon books he has about the subject, but instead I choose the things that make up the history we are living. The first letter Bob ever sent me, which I always kept. The bottle caps in the bowl on my coffee table. The cook book my mother has had for years. Some of my grandmother’s photographs she kept in a little album.
This is the history I love, the history I would love to live over again.
… Goes one of my favorite Max Creek songs… and it’s the first thing I thought of when my hand went into the coffee can this afternoon.
For those who don’t know about the coffee can – or forgot about it, like I tried to – it’s a little game I’ve created for myself. A while back I wrote a gagillion words on tiny slips of paper and stuffed them into a coffee can, which I promised myself that I’d raid the can every few days and shoot whatever the paper said. Like most promises I break, I followed for awhile, but then tapered off, hoping no one would notice. Great idea, except for this one bone head friend who brings it up to me every time we see each other. (Thanks Chuck. Now you know why I never invite you to afternoon tea anymore.)
So this afternoon, before I brought the boys home to their mom for mother’s day, the can caught my eye and opened it.
Colors.
What? Colors? I hate these words. Who the hell thought of them?
Oh right…
So I went about my day with the word tucked back in the dark recesses of my mind. As I walked through Home Depot – I promised my mom I’d fix some stuff around the house today – I pretended I was bouncing around ideas, but it really more like tossing a rubber ball against a wall in an empty room. As the hollow echo of the ball bouncing from floor to ceiling ran through my skull, I passed the paint aisle and all it’s samples laid out, and I walked right past them.
Colors… what a sucky word.
it wasn’t until after the chores, after diner, after I had pretty much given up for the day that I saw the flowers sitting on my dining room table. I really am an idiot sometimes.
I grabbed them, and found my colors. Colors more beautiful than any can from Home Depot could ever make.
And yes Chuck, I’ll try to get another word real soon…
Spring is our yearly second chance.
We die through the winter, everything becomes cold and bleak, and even a fresh white blanket of snow eventually turns to a ugly gray eyesore piled up on the curbs of New York City. The wind chills you through to the bones, and I at least, make my way through the streets muttering “There is no reason for weather like this…” and usually a profanity or two.
But soon, the winds die down, the sun peaks from behind the clouds a little longer each day, and you’re not so pissed that you forgot your gloves at home. Winter has left us, and spring has arrived.
Every year around this time I watch the ground. Yes, contrary to what some people think, there are actually patches of ground here in New York City. I’ve always had a piece of it right outside my back door, well, my parent’s back door. Its a small section of property that we here in Queens call “The Yard”. My parents have always taken pride in their yard, it’s a mix of a quiet place to eat BBQ – or actually any meal cooked in this household between June and September when it’s not raining – and a small slice of nature that my parents tend to, consisting of a few flowers, some tomatoes plants and lots of ivy. There’s also a cherry tree that my brother Mike somehow picked up, I don’t remember the story, and remnants of the old magnolia tree that I spent countless hours playing on in my youth.
In my mind, it’s the most beautiful yard in the world.
It’s also the yard that I’ve watched the winters of my life fade away, and the springs sneak in before the summer heat.
What a perfect place to go with my new camera, right? Only one catch, of course, I hate taking pictures of flowers.
I told this once to someone I love once. They bore me, I said, not moving, giving you all the time in the world to frame it, switch lenses, get closer, work on that really nice shot. She said to me, that I should look at it as a thing all photographers need to do, and every really good shot of a flower as one step closer to never having to take a photo of a flower again.
So hopefully these will get me closer to that goal. And if not, I’m not too worried, because no matter how hot the summer gets, and how cold and nasty the winter winds blow, I know all I have to do is wait for spring to return home, and I’ll get another chance.
… and that will probably be the funniest thing I write all day.
See, St John’s cemetery is anything but new, and it’s definitely not new to me in any way, shape or form. My Great-Grandfather, Otto, was a night watchman there. When Otto, his wife Marie, and my grandparents, passed on, they were all buried there. The first school I attended was across the street from it and for the better part of 8 years I spent more time staring at it through the windows than I did the blackboard. The church I grew up was attached to the school and it was the first thing you’d see walking out of the doors on a Sunday morning. My parents bought a house, and raised a family, on a street that ended looking at it. I spent four years of high school standing at a bus stop right in front of the same cemetery.
And yet… I guess I never really saw it until today.
I took my camera and left my wonderful new apartment, all finished and clean and warm, and headed out the door in search of something. I haven’t used my camera for much more than simply documenting my construction for the past month, and I was itching to find something out there. My feet turned towards St Johns and I thought a cemetery would be good way to get back into the swing of things, even if it was just boring old St John’s.
I thought of Otto as I walked along the paths. I wondered what he saw when he was there. I wondered if he ever got the chance the see the long shadows cast on the ground that I was seeing. Did he find the same tiny hints that spring is rapidly on it’s way that I did? Did smell the cool “still a lion” March air?
All this things I found, and this boring old cemetery provided me with some shots I am happy with. Whats old is new again and all that…
All my roads have bends
There’s no clear-cut beginnings;
And so far no dead-ends.
Thats what the great poet, songwriter and humanitarian, Harry Chapin tells us.
I could say that I’ve moved back to my old neighborhood as if it was a great change, but the truth is I could have hit my old neighborhood with a rock from where I lived last month. Not only have I moved back to my old neighborhood, or my old block but I moved into the very same house I was born and raised in.
My family’s home is a two family house, with an apartment upstairs. I’m moving up there, my own place, a place for me to hopefully jump start my stalled life.
Long story short – and not one I care to rehash anyway – the apartment was not ready to be lived in as planned. Quite a lot of work needed to be done and in the meantime I crashed downstairs on my parent’s living room couch. I’ve been working up there as much as I could and more, teaching myself skills I doubted I could ever do.
I was thrown down another well, but this one I’ve been clawing out of. The whole experience has left me with a renewed sense of optimism, maybe this isn’t the only well I can get out of.
I’ve been using my hands for so much lately that they haven’t had much time to be around my camera, but when they have been, it’s been seeing what’s around me, my tools, the miles and miles of electrical tape I feel like I’ve used, the screws I spilled on the floor and my youngest son who kept popping in to see what all the excitement was about.
I know the pause in my blogging has violated my New Years resolution, but I do have work to do. I’m painting today.
I haven’t done all the work myself – there have been a few hands in the mix, and I’ve got to thank them. Mike, who thankfully (for me, bad timing for him) came back into my life just in the nick of time. Dennis, my partner in crime. Moose who can do anything, and pretty much has. Chuck who helped me move into storage, and will help me move out – even though he doesn’t know it yet. Jenn who among everything else helped my frazzled mother pick out the colors, and Steve who re-did all my molding. The Mailman for 24hr phone support. I can’t tell you how happy I was when he called last night and the first thing he said was “Looking good man!!”
And Mom and Dad for being the best Mom and Dad ever put on this earth. I don’t know how I could ever begin to repay them, but when I win the lotto, they’re going back to Europe.
Finally, Renee Brussaard and my brother, my best friend, and my rock, Jack for kicking me in the ass and telling me that there’s nothing I couldn’t do. I can never thank them enough for inspiring me.
Be back when the paints drying.
I’ve always wanted to crawl through an abandoned building. I’ve secretly wished I lived near old run down farmhouses, I’ve dreamed of the photos I could take there.
For personal reasons, I’d rather not say anything about where these are from, it’s still too painful.
My father just sang Monty Python’s “Keep On Looking On The Bright Side Of Life” to me, so I think I’m gonna try that for awhile, he usually isn’t wrong about these things.
