infrared concordances...

Recently, I attended an Army retirement ceremony at Fort Myers.  The 3rd US Infantry Regiment, better known as the Old Guard is the elite drill and ceremony unit at Arlington Cemetery.  (Parades and other rituals of symmetry still hold my attention.)  I stare at the coordinated movement and the changing formations, and the world seems to dissolve away...much like each soldier's individuality at that same moment.

As my dissolutions were punctuated with harmonies, I learned that the elite infantry regiment also includes a musical component, the US Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps.  They too marched, but instead of rifles with bayonets...they played their 10-hole fifes, their handmade rope-tensioned drums and their single-valve bugles.  The wigged musicians treated our ears to 18th Century tunes, and for a short while...

I wondered if all conflict could be settled with melodies and marching.

demographic clichés...

The other day, we received the US Census form and I filled it out.

After mailing it, we all had a good laugh at ourselves realizing that we had become a bit too prosaic in our make-up:  a family with one girl, one boy and one dog.

I wonder what their families will look like....

I wonder if their kids will also underdress on a chilly Spring afternoon and ask to borrow a parent's jacket.

Rigor Frostis

Friday night, almost a week ago someone rolled a few snowballs together in the park, and conjured him up...three frosty spheres sprinkled with round pine seeds and skewered with two frail limbs triumphantly ushering the first blizzard of a doubleheader.

Six days after the snowman appeared, he died. This is what was left of him today, as I walked through the three feet of snow in the park.

He didn't melt, but seems to have keeled over. His body mass, those powdery lumps created an outline of a corpse. I didn't think much of the snowman the day I met him. He was only a few hours old, and seemed a natural part of the landscape. But today...somehow the gruesome lumps, their unnatural arrangement--a mass of snow prostrate, limbs torn from his torso, conjured a disorienting sense of pity.

I wondered why, in death, the snowman seemed to have been so full of life.

...equus ex machina

I have walked by this carousel many times. On a recent November evening, it still lay in the shadows of the Smithsonian Castle, a herd of suspenseful restraint.

I don't know why, but I enjoy carousels out of context...without music, and without riders, off-season.

Standing next to them, you can almost hear the motionless gallop.

black walnut reign...

Every Autumn it rains black walnuts, and this is what they look like after the squirrels have had their fill. (You can see the incisor marks if you look carefully at the shell.)  And every Autumn I take my chances walking out of the house. This season I have not had a black walnut land on my head. Last year, the tree got me twice. In its full paratrooper outfit, a black walnut resembles a green baseball...regulation size.

When the nutty artillery falls fifty feet, it does leave an impression. Every year I think of paying someone to cut down this huge tree, and then I change my mind. If the walnuts disappeared, our driveway would probably look much cleaner.

Every year, I somehow manage to let the tree have its fun. Maybe next year I will dust off my old baseball glove, and sit under the tree.

so the kids want a dog...

I miss Sasha. This is a photograph I took approximately a year ago. I was just sitting on the deck having a beer at night and he decided to keep me company. He was a stubborn cat with a penchant for expressing his opinion. Most of the time he talked, sometimes he pounced at ankles. (He really had a thing for women's ankles...a freaky feline fetish of sorts.)

We adopted him. His previous owner was a French economist. She had rescued him from the streets of Cambodia as a kitten. He was a tough street cat, and had the scars to prove it. Sadly, he died this summer. I wasn't there to see it happen. Our neighbors called me at work, and said that he had been hit by a car. I rushed to meet them at the vet's. Thirty minutes after that phone call, they put him to sleep as I held him one last time. 

I don't know how he would have reacted to all this talk about a dog. The kids want a dog. They will walk it. Promises. They will train it. Promises. They will clean up after it. More promises. (I can already smell those empty promises.) Don't get me wrong, I really like dogs. It is their neediness that worries me. It is their lack of independence that complicates matters. Picking up after two kids is not fun. A third kid on a leash with a tail is my midlife nightmare.

The kids really want a dog. But how do I tell them that I really want another cat?

the allure of the colorless image...

Black and white photographs aren't really black and white. They are rather a geography of grayscales, often more densely populated by moods and textures than their chromatic alter-egos.

Lately, I have been drawn to the colorless versions, perhaps because I still see them as a novelty. Color can impress, but it can also desensitize and distract.  Black and white photographs reveal a boundless landscape of derivative tones. 

Looking at them reminds me of that magical moment in elementary school when a math teacher points at a number line and tells the students that the space between two whole numbers is filled with an infinite number of fractions.

U2 | 360

September 29, 2009 was the first time I saw them in concert, and it was a long time coming.  More than twenty years ago my friend Rob introduced me to vinyl versions of "Boy" and "October."  I remember him singing aloud, mouthing the words to "I Will Follow."  He raved about the Irish band.

 

It did take me a few years to match Rob's enthusiasm.  The Joshua Tree did it.  My college roommate Matt played the album over and over (and over).

 

A few nights ago when I stood there listening to the Edge's riffs, I felt a surge or memories...comforting ruptures in time.  I enjoyed them.  I savored them as indicia of aging, even though they made me feel awkwardly youthful.

 

And one last point, I actually enjoyed Bono's sermonizing.  Why shouldn't he shake us to the core, with his music, and his anecdotal images from other places?  Why shouldn't we be reminded that people in Iran want a more democratic society?  Why shouldn't we be reminded that an elected leader has been held under house arrest for twenty years in Burma?  It was an incredible display of artistry and emotion, and humanity.

A Praying Mantis Moment...

A few days ago the kids found him in the park and brought him into the house. He flew in clumsy spirals, eventually settling atop a bamboo houseplant near a green lamp shade. It groomed its antennae. Then I came in closer and stared at close range. Twelve centimeters of exo-skeletal bravado stood its ground challenging me with its serrated forelegs, tilting its head side to side. It could have easily flown away, but it glared back at me. I stood there, twelve times its size...puzzled, wondering about its neural network.

I imagined ancient Chinese monks humbled by its bravery and prowess, studying its fighting style to create their own. I was impressed by this "bad boy" from the insect world. The way he tilted his head, he seemed to analyze my size and shape. The way he tilted his head made me tilt my own and wonder how so much gallantry resided in such a trivial torso of light green and yellow.

I could have stared at him for hours. But. I stopped starring at him for fear that we'd trade places. (I blinked, as I remembered Julio Cortazar's short story about the Axolotl.) After a brief set of photographs, I carried him back outside...wondering how much he'd remember about this brief encounter.

refugee cycles...

Saturday morning, Ari and I decided to get far away from the asphalt. We made a trip upstream to Fletcher's Boathouse on the Potomac and glided around the river for a while. We enjoyed the sensation of coasting along the surface and the syncopated rhythms of alternating paddle strokes...the calm and the quiet.

We saw a few ducks. They ignored us.

We saw a snake. It hid from us.

We marveled at this huge tree trunk in the river.

I don't know why the experience is so soothing, but gliding over the river and brushing up against nature restored a much needed sense of tranquility. Having spent much of my childhood near the water, I find it a comforting refuge. (I even prefer real snakes to human ones. I smile when I see ducks preening, but frown at human variations of such displays.) In the end, I do realize that I'm intruding for a moment, creating ripples along the river. The irony that I was driven here by other intrusions such as asphalt, traffic congestions, crowded subway stations, and over-scheduled weekdays escapes me. Or so I pretend. I wonder where the snakes and the ducks go when they've had enough of the kayakers?

columns and spirals, continuity and endpoints...

The Currituck Lighthouse was built in 1875...an imposing column that conceals a sleek spiral staircase. Both geometries survived the past and have a new role as cultural attraction, separate forms thriving in a tourist afterlife.

...

 

An hour before visiting the lighthouse, I had spotted this dragonfly at rest and marveled at its slender linear design. After taking this photograph, I spotted another dragonfly frantically struggling, contorted into a spiral...ensnared by a spider's web, similar forms...different geometries.  Here the column and spiral were separate only in time.  After taking this other photograph, I wondered how long the trapped geometry would last...

 

acephalous redress...

I have yet to encounter a person that can loose his or her head (figuratively, that is) and remain poised, elegant, and calm. These mannequins are a lesson in civility, and should be required props at every politician's town hall meeting on the proposed health care legislation. Media footage of outbursts and indignations, some feigned, many purchased, and others channeled repercussions of misinformation, or misanthropic harmonies...make me sad.

Voice your opinion...sure, but spare us the apoplectic hysteria and the meanness. It may be too ironic that the recent uproar shadowing Government's involvement in health care reform has produced such crisp and contrasting radiographs. These transparent films are the thin veneer separating civilization and barbarism, and it saddens me. Viral rage should be the best argument for health care reform.

[The photographs presented with this post were taken at this year's Artomatic exhibit in Washington DC.]