Life is like this, sometimes. Even when considered with the most dispassionate, analytical eye, one must admit that a certain degree of chaos—of entropy—is endemic. Things may make sense locally, for awhile, but the big picture is (and may always be) a mess. How can we live with this? There is only one way: we…
Tag Archive: pavement
Window Glow
One reason that people don’t see much of the world’s beauty is that a lot of it is indirect. It’s not something you notice by looking directly, head on, at an object. It’s not the object itself, it’s the effect of the object (its shadow or light, its color or weight or the shape it…
Keeping Time
My Month of Sunrises practice is giving me some new experiences in the perception of time. Days—especially the hours before noon—seem really loooooong to me now. Furthermore, I’m hungry all the time, a development for which I have no good explanation. I completely misinterpreted the effect that the end of Daylight Savings Time would have:…
Light, Three Kinds
I’m glad my bathroom has a window. It’s one of those things that you don’t really notice if you don’t have, but come to appreciate very much if you do. I was having a shower and happened to glance out the window. Despite having lived here for nearly 19 years, I saw something in the…
G.C.
When I first moved to my neighborhood, the local five-and-dime G.C. Murphy & Co. had already fallen on hard times. It had balkanized into a village of smaller individual stores: a watch repairman, a tailor, a rug salesman, and so on. The merchandise was pretty low-rent. But, it was a place of business, and sometimes…
Before & After
Life is filled with transitions, watersheds, fulcrums in time where things change. Some of them are obvious, momentous, and publicly recognized. Some we seek out, others seek us out, but in either case we know them when we see them in our own lives and in others’. We have elaborate rituals for those events. There…
Signature (Red)
I’m not sure what the purpose of this marking was, originally. If it was for municipal maintenance of some kind, it’s unusual in that it was made by a fluid drip rather than the usual spray paint. I don’t think it was urban tagging of any kind. So: is the image posted here mine, half-mine,…
Scattering
It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that I was the only person who thought this scattering of fallen flowers was beautiful. It would, I confess, make me a little sad. A Year Ago: Porter’s Piano I came across this beauty in a lounge area above the Park Avenue entrance to the Waldorf-Astoria… [read more]
Shadow Border
Those of you who’ve been following along with me know that there are certain thematic subjects that recur. Shadows on pavement is definitely one of them (for example). In this case, I loved the way that man-made decoration and organic plant life combined to create an appealing whole. My approach to photography is primarily editorial…
Rain Chain
We are who we are. Life experiences can change us, we can learn, and Buddhistically speaking, there’s no real, continuous self at all, and yet—we are who we are. I could have made this picture today; the weather is miserably cold and gray and rainy again. But I didn’t. This photograph is nearly ten years…