2009-11-17
Beach 4, Kalaloch, November 2009
I’ve been struggling with this project, or at least this current incarnation of it. No matter how much I enjoy being at the coast, it’s not satisfying the way it once was, and I can feel a progressively thinner-veiled scoffing at my own work with each new post I make. Like some gaunt chainsmoking Art-hag is sitting atop a shoulder and offering withering opinions on everything I do. The polite version is Pretty, but not terribly interesting. I need to re-engage my interest; or rather to look much deeper for it, in places I never considered before.
Eudora Welty bemoaned something she called the Isle of Capri novel- those detective or romance novels with idyllic if wildly superficial settings where it is always elegant and balmy and there are no alleys or restrooms (to paraphrase). I don’t know if restrooms are what my project is missing but I do know that my world lately is all front and no back; and as such I haven’t really provided a full or fair picture of these places at all. Which kinda sucks, frankly.
2009-11-15
Spruce at dusk, Kalaloch, November 2009
just busted my last beehive safelight trying to do aerobics between negative scans. I busted the other ones during my last health craze 6 months ago. I know middle age is pathetic but does it have to keep repeating itself?
2009-11-13
Striations and runoff stream, Kalaloch, November 2009
Driving through Forks WA is getting embarrassing. Dozens of ‘Twilight’ shops here now. Might make it tricky to film any sequels here, with t-shirts of the main character hanging in every shop front. Still, I couldn’t resist buying some new underwear. Squeal. :p
2009-11-12
Mussel Field, Strait of Juan de Fuca, October 2009
but I’m deluding myself that maybe I’m up for a day at the beach. I’ve had a rough 6 weeks, 4 of it fighting off one bug or another. Maybe my reason has simmered too long in the vapors but I just need one of those powder blue unitard jumpers they stuff kids into, to seal myself off from the elements, rogue waves and gull crap. One of those suits that looks like it carries a Type I Coast Guard rating. OK, just the fever rambling. Barney, can you drive now?
2009-10-30
Ko kwal al woot, Rosario Beach, October 2009
I went east for the first time in a while, back over to the mainland- Bellingham specifically. I’ve been struggling with some sort of virus, so it was maybe unwise to stand in the wind and icy rain taking this shot, but I’d had a restless day of ferries and long slow caravans of traffic, the gathering weather turning the drive over Deception Pass into a sort of funeral cortege.
Rosario Beach is a short and welcome detour off 20, even though in the chute of Rosario Strait the wind was extreme. I found a meager lee in shadow of Bowman Hill and Deception Island and opened the lens and just let the wind and light mix it up. I like movement and blur in trees, and the low-fi anxiety of flying debris, and here I especially like that there is deception in the still statue, the only defined thing in the frame, as if legend can ever truly hold the day. And it doesn’t hurt that even the fish looks upside down.
2009-10-24
Alders, Lake Crescent, April 2009
With a little room to work the alders do nice things- around lake fronts especially. The boughs have these sort of aching leaning gestures that hold the wind so well. And the tracings of the limbs are brought a little lower each spring by the winter’s snowfall and rain, finally exploding in a million emerald medallions as the leaves open up and tantalize the rising lake. All is lit from within, and it’s a thorough and grand contagion.
My black and white version is a little lacking. I guess it holds my memory of it well enough; it’s transitional enough anyway, as the local slides into another monochrome winter. Whether that memory is accurate is beside the point. Even if my impressions are proved wrong, at least I get to be surprised all over again next spring.
2009-09-11
Beach 4, August 2009
Since I quit watching TV I’m prone to some offthewall free associations as the withdrawals compete with general nostalgia for my off-hour attentions. The late seventies, in particular, when I was first and at long last finally able to stay up as late as I wanted. The main point of staying up late as I saw it at the time was, of course, TV. Late night horror, adult humor, etc- all the great forbidden stuff. Nothing breeds interest like restriction. There seemed to be so much promise bound up in this new freedom and those that would follow- made the richer and more alluring and exotic due to the fact that I didn’t understand most of what I saw.
In any case, it’s always startling how much reflexive associations can color a moment- in this instance the thought of Don Novello as Father Guido Sarducci on Saturday Night Live even as I was composing the shot. It seemed such a preemptive satire of the shot I was about to take that I almost didn’t bother. Was I heckling myself, or was it just a ricochet of a long-overdue punchline?
I still don’t understand most of what I see and respond to but in the end I’m usually glad I took the shot. I suppose I rely on this to a degree to protect my interests or even mask any lack of coherent intent, but oh well: ‘Some are easy to find, some are hard. … Here’s a little clue for you. Most of the Popes have red faces…’*
It’s amazing to me all the interest in the Pope last couple weeks. I think it’s because of John Paul’s visit, personally, but, you know, whatever the reason, people are buyin’ these posters that show all of the Popes and people want to know what their names are, what their real names are, when they was livin’, when they died, all that stuff. And, going along with this Papal mania, I’ve kind of designed a contest about the Popes. It’s called “Find the Popes in the Pizza” … All two hundred and fifty-four Popes, they’re in here. … And, what we’re gonna do in about one minute, we’re gonna put a close-up of this on your screen and, you at home, all you have to do is get some, like, wax paper, any kind of paper you can see through and paste it to your screen — or tape it, whatever you want — and all you gotta do is get a pencil and draw a circle around every place you see a picture of a Pope.
Well, I think what I’m gonna do for the prize, whoever wins — you know, finds the most Popes — they’ll get to have a button that I designed myself. I noticed on the tour, the best selling button was this.It says, “I Got a Peek at the Pope” … And I designed a button that I think even more people can relate to. It says, “I saw the Pope on TV” … This is what you win. And now, I think, we’re about ready. So while you’re looking at the pizza for thirty seconds, I’m gonna play a cut from Pius XII’s album. … Here is Pius XII singing “On the Sunny Side of the Street” … And now find the Pope in the pizza. Good luck to you. All two hundred and fifty-four.
-Don Novello, SNL 10/13/79 *
2009-09-04
 Beach 1, August 2009
This forest dazzles so it’s difficult to get around to the task of taking a picture of it. Almost comically grim, the lean defoliated interior crowds its own shadows, the trees almost tripping over another in one-upmanship, and the path demarks the contortions as events that are gradual and sudden all at once. Each distinct view naturally insists on its counterpart or sequence, and back again to itself, so you can get stuck in the loop of the path, stuporously touring the infinite detail well into the gloom.
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