…not much of a street, really…
…kind of just…
…an alley with a name…
I. A little girl sits on a bench, swings her legs and reads from her book of a thousand and one jokes. I glimpse, in that act, a young woman, and I am thrilled and deeply shaken at once. II. A look crosses a woman’s face, flashes for less than a moment, too fast to be more than barely seen. The girl that once was comes passing through a passing thought and is caught —only not caught— and gone before she is known for what she is or what she was, left with only the memory of an expression of memory passed beneath the surface. The little girl is gone. III. A little boy cries out from an old man’s face, the sad one, the lost one, the last one, beyond comprehension of a hard-won heart. The learned self-given healing —even that— is gone. Pain as can only be known to a child is carried on and on, a burden that one never wants to open. IV. A son is asked by his father —but it is the cry of the lost boy, ripped from somewhere deep in the old man’s throat— “Will you be my mommy?” How can a son answer this, when his father does the asking? Is this what it feels like to be born? To lose forever the warmth that is still (but now only) known from within? We find us both lost past longing and long past lost. Incomprehensible why this happens to any of us, this slap that is existence. A son is carried by his father for so many years that he is shocked to realize he is no longer being carried, surprised to find himself standing with his own legs under him. V. A little girl sits on a bench, swings her legs and reads her book of a thousand and one jokes. I glimpse, in that act, a young woman, and I am thrilled and deeply shaken at once.
(…an abecedarian…)
It was... …about this time that I decided to become the list, to see and feel what came next, to know from within the dead weight and heft of every single form that I could fathom, the grand scheme (if you will) of this healing human game that has played into (and out of) our history in countless ways for countless days, jogging our memory, not judging us exactly, but still keeping an eye on us from— lying just there—just inside the door, measuring and metering and giving nonce notices from the threshold, once in a while letting us pretend to be in control, (queer as that may seem) while still and stilly and quietly reassuring us about our lacks at the same time, and stretching us ever-so-gently, nursing us at the beginning and at the end, taking its time with us, not leading us directly to (never that!) but at least pointing us ever more towards understanding, placing things in our paths with the utmost veneration, teaching us the value and deep, deep roots of our wonder, opening and reopening us, encouraging us to not fixate on the x-y axis of every single thing around us, while still reminding us of the value of anchors, yearning for us still and always to always and still reach somehow beyond our zenith, and maybe—just maybe—helping us to get out there, somewhere just a little bit closer to it.
(a new kind of amalgamating project, the idea for which I’ve been toying with for a while,,,,as I came to realize the rather ridiculous glut of “bricky” images I have in my files)
(a few of these images may be repeats or re-workings of images that have appeared on this blog before)
Bricks…
They’re pretty much everywhere you look in this town…
…probably to rival grains of sand in the Ganges…
…so, yes…
…plenty more to come…
…when you cram a roll of 35mm film into a slightly less cheap, non-plastic (well, mostly)–but still Chinese–TLR (Twin Lens Reflex) camera that is also meant to only shoot 120 film….
…in this case expired Fuji Superia 100-speed color-negative print film…
…and in this case a Seagull 4A (I believe…well, it’s definitely a Seagul, I just can’t remember which model it is but regardless it is without a doubt a…) (a cheap Rolleiflex knockoff)…
…shot sometime around 2010-ish I think…
…couldn’t tell you when it expired…but let’s just say…a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far…..
…as I recall, I wasn’t really sure if any of these would even turn out since I kind of had to stand on the camera-back to get it to close and lock with that 35mm film canister crammed in there…
…I don’t recommend you trying this with any equipment that you actually care about (like a real Rolleiflex or say, Minolta Autocord)…
…But I DO recommend trying it!…
…much sharper images than what you get with a Holga…
…and you still get those nifty schprocket-holes…
…certainly no stellar photography here, but a fun experiment that I would love to do again someday…
(Highly recommend clicking on these for the slide-showy-thing for a closer look!)
(…well…except for the last one cuz it will actually get smaller in the slide-show-thingy…)