Wet

Stuck inside last week.... Not really, but not wanting to go outside much during the days and nights of wetness, I enjoyed my cave-like experience... listening to the rain... shooting photos through the windows and skylight....staying dry.

Tree Porn

Yes, this is sophomoric, I know. It was just one of those weeks... I'll leave it up to your imagination....just don't jump to obvious conclusions....errr, well, maybe. sort of.



On the afternoon of the week in question I was heading off to a poetry reading on UNC campus. Parking is a nightmare experience, so after checking out some church parking lots, and deciding not to jam my head worrying about getting towed, I opted for an available place a long distance away, but a nice walk. The area I walked through is the historic district here in Chapel Hill. As it implies, there are wonderful restored homes replete with large old trees of various varieties....most of which I have no idea of identity. This little stand of trees will go unclassified (probably better, considering their public indecency.)

Collard Greens

Growing up in Pennsylvania, collard greens were not something I knew about. Life went on...I lived in other places...discovered greens somewhere along the way, but didn't go out of my way to find or eat them. Moving down here to Chapel Hill from LA about 8 years ago, Southern cooking started creeping into my diet.
Actually, after surviving the shock of my first splayed out pig in that big cooker at a pig-pickin' party, I became a pulled pork slut.
As a point of perspective, I've been buying my greens - collards, turnip and mustard - at a supermarket or farmer's markets bundled in tidy bunches, or loose, small leaves to stuff in plastic bags to take home.
Today when I saw the homemade sign saying "collards for sale" by the side of the back road I was driving, I turned into the driveway along the garden of greens growing there. No one was around outside, so I knocked on the back door I saw was ajar. The lady you see in the photo came out and asked how much I wanted, and did I want to pick my own....I said it's just for me, so not too much, when she wanted to know how many people in the family, and she could get it for me, thanks. She then explained that the collards freeze well, so I should get a full portion for my $3 a bunch....Ok then. Out into the field she went, knife in hand. While she was looking around over there I pulled the camera out of my handbag figuring I'd so some shots while she picked me some greens....next thing I realize, she's got that huge plant draped over her arm, and is heading back with it intact. She was a bit hesitant to let me take a photograph when I asked, due to the fact her hair was all up under a scarf because she's going to Greensboro tomorrow and had to wash it today...but she agreed without me having to push too hard...she liked when I said I'd bring a print by.
When you bring a plant that size into a kitchen, you can really appreciate the size to which those collards grew.... elegant, vibrant, tactile, green elephant ear size leaves flopped onto the counter as I separated them. I ate many of the smaller inside leaves then and there, raw... fairly bursting with life energy from just being brought from the soil they just left, minutes ago. What a rush!
Btw, I usually don't combine color with black and white; I think it looks tacky, but I shut off one layer while working on the image and saw that I could selectively erase the black and white filter I had added, so I did....I think it accentuates my experience out there today.

Mostly San Francisco

Laytonville, CA
Sebastopol
San Francisco





Anyone following my posts for awhile know that I went to Pennsylvania this summer for a few weeks to do night photos in locations from my past. Since I returned to NC, where I now live, something shifted in my consciousness, sort of curtailing my obsessive shooting style, leaving me with more time on my hands, fewer images in my computer....not that I don't agree with the need to cut back the time behind a camera lens and get a life, but I found it kinda strange that about a month ago, I seemed called from within to San Francisco...another location that I lived for 6 years, back awhile ago.
My reason for making the trip was actually for another reason: to do a particular initiation with a spiritual master from India, on the weekend, up on a mountain top in Laytonville, 3+ miles north of SF. Figuring I was already all the way out there, I planned to stay with friends in the city for the following week.

Although the photographs I've chosen to show don't all have specific connections to the past experiences of living there, the trip did take me back into my past again. Specifically, the apple orchard...I stopped in Sebastopol to visit friends on the way back down to the city, and got lost....pulled into that orchard to call for directions again and spent time shooting photos. The next day, as I was leaving he said, "By the way, that orchard you went into was the same one we all picked apples in for the apple juice we bottled and sold at the farmers market"....being location and directionally challanged, plus many years later on top of that, it was quite a shock to have been deposited squarely into my past, with camera in tow. A few days later, standing infront of an apartment I lived in on Potrero hill, on a whim I knocked on the door, only to have the tenant open the door and invite me in to look around when I told her about visiting previous homes I've lived in. I shot a few frames inside, however it was daytime, and it doesn't count for my night series.

So, another part of my past came forward for scrutiny and enjoyment. I'm not sure what any of this means, if anything, but it was fun hanging out there, exploring places photographically I knew from before and others that were new.