in motion

 

Dear Passengers,

I take a lot of these blurry photos out of the car- there are reflections of the inside, and smeary roads, bright halos, all kinds of un-photogenic artifacts.  I get a real thrill taking crappy photos, because, well, you know, I was kind of raised by a pack of shutterbug snobs, and boy! did those folks hate an an out of focus shot!  Whooee!  Like it was a cardinal sin.  I don't usually send you any of them, because it is hard to step out of the known and into the 'that isn't any good.'  By the known here, I mean the tenets of 'good' photography these vociferous wolves raised me to believe in, and by 'isn't any good' I mean all of, everything in the world that ever was or could be that doesn't fit into the tenets.  It's a lot, come to think of it, all the pictures with the heads cut off, the ones with crooked horizons, the poorly exposed, the low contrasted, the out of focused.  Maybe this is something you want to address yourself, all the dogma of what is good in photography.  Maybe you want to grab that camera and take a snapshot of your feet, or a picture of a tree while you wave your camera.  It might feel good to you, too.

prickly unlearning

 

Dear Hillside,

I keep seeing you, at this time of year, separating into patches of color; the flaxen hair, yes, and the gray green of star thistle, the brighter yellow and green of mustard.  It interferes, this patchiness with my enjoyment of your form;  my stupid, sluggish artist eyes want less surface 'the better to see you with, my dear; the better to eat you with, my dear.'  But, that is all such simplistic simplifying; the kind I want to turn down in the great soundboard of my mind.  Trying to see essentials has trained me to annoyance with small details and difference, and what a pity!  

Please let me try again, to see and love the prickly, invasive patches, the discrete surfaces, and the larger form they dwell upon.  I want you, like you are, with all the prickles and snagging bitter sharpnesses.  Why would I learn to love only smooth undifferentiated expanses?

SW