In Honor of the Photo Gods

Not leaving the local landscape and routine for about 3 months got to me last week, so I arranged a visit with friends who live in Maryland. The first 2 hours on the road was exhilarating.. feeling the freedom in freeway. Just north of Richmond, VA, everything changed...2 small accidents within a mile of each other slowed traffic to about four miles an hour for too long....then the chaos theory as it pertains to traffic patterns kicked in, and my fantasy plan of breezing along like the dudes on route 66 of yore, were dashed. Deciding to take a momentary break to gas up, pee, and perhaps grab a sandwich,  I chose an exit that boasted a Subway shop. Well, the sandwich place wasn't exactly where the sign near the gas station indicated it was, so, faced with a huge expanse of asphalt and what looked like a truck stop down at the end, I took off in that direction. What I found was the gem of the day. There, in a little grove of trees was a tiny white chapel, replete with pointy tall steeple. Off to the side front a bunch of motorcycles were parked. Looked good to me. Not wanting to disrespect the two scruffy bikers standing around made me decide  not to immediately start shooting photos that included their bikes. Wonderfully, as soon as I planted myself squarely in front of the chapel, the one guy suggested that perhaps I might like to include the bikes in my photo!! "Wow, good idea." I offered in my innocent lady voice. Score. But the best part was yet to show itself...it happened that when I went over to the side where the bikes were - the guy  over there had on a vest with his club's name on the back-----Twisted Souls. It couldn't get much better than that. Except that it did...the first shot didn't show the steeple very well, so I asked him to come over to where I took this shot.

It is with great respect and love I bow to those laughing photo gods who occasionally offer up to us mere photo-image-hunting-mortals the magical combination of  time and space co-incidence that produce a perfect situation to aim a camera.

Los Angeles - Deep Muck Cultural Concerns

Tearing scabs off the cultural landscape
reveals bloody layers of previously picked
and poked layers of man-made icons,
celebrity bandages, and billboard gauze
barely covering the oozing yellow infection
of our self-inflicted wounds.

Forever recycling endless pretty impostors
not truly believing the lines written for them,
A hint of understanding lurks too deeply behind the surface
of dissassociated denial
to take anything at face value.
The face has been cosmetically altered
anyway,
sabatoging the wisdom of age from celebrating
anything remotely substantial.

Irony splashs shiny glossy over
neo-reality, post-realism, nilism and hip-hop.
A new paint job hurriedly washes the slick
oily walls of current ideas,
leaving barely a moment of fresh, if not quiet,
rectangles of silence, before a new multiplicity of
one sheets, TV sweeps, .coms, or yet unpublished
graffitti take fleeting residence.

Poets move words around each other
searching for new turns and embraces
to end
the pain of separation.
Few can describe the eternity of their recurrent
anguish.

Artists rehash history, reinvent conceptual redundancy
then beat themselves to death for not communicating
their deepest struggle for transformation and ascension .


How many can break thru barriers of their own forgotten making
into realms of the invisible, unspeakable fullness?
Some actions take the courage of outrage
Some, the strength of a whisper
Whatever the form, faith is the master.

Some true mad souls keep reaching
Thru the quicksands of culture.
Not clinging to the seeking,
they struggle.
Not clinging to the struggle,
they seek.

- Ellen Giamportone
1999

More Trash

A couple of months ago I did some macro shots of flower petals when they fell from the vase they were in. The post of those images are somewhere in the archives entitled "Flower Trash." Since then, occasionally a combination of dead flowers, bits of vegetable or fruit debris cross paths in the kitchen before their disposal, coalescing into a flash of visual rapture. At that point, life as it was moving on stops, the Canon G10 is grabbed and the choreography begins....Perhaps this kind of information is damning to the perception I am at all sane, but I'm beyond caring at this point in my life....and no, I don't live with a bunch of cats.