On the corner of midnight and forever...

On the corner of midnight and forever,
with a useless phone,
a drunk is singing up the alley,
“baby, won’t you please come home”

decaying street is littered,
a thousand empty dreams,
sweeper comes along each morning,
bulging at the seams

old cat goes a- slinking,
on a well-worn trail,
ears all drooped and fraying,
missing patches on his tail

Bukowski feels right here,
‘bout as right as rain,
time to shuffle on,
get up on that train,

head on back to the truth,
to the ugly little town,
where no one seems to notice
all the sickness going round,

spin their webs a-plenty,
gossamer in flight,
snare the wounded soldiers,
staggering through the night

O sing your song, old alley-man,
I’ll be lonely this whole damn fall,
the coyotes are so far away now,
I can barely hear their call

and when I wake next spring,
a-ringing in my ears,
no one will hear my soft little sighs,
no one will see my tears

yes, this night is home,
to all the lonely beasts,
who room the streets and howl,
from a Pyrrhic inner heat

old Rome had its share,
we think we invented the tune,
wolves have been a-hunting,
forever ‘neath this moon

but let me stand a moment,
in this wan, mercurial light,
it’s still all so beautiful,
let me see it right

we are the dance

Life is a delicate balance. Always, something is ascendent at the expense of something else. These soils - wrought from the bodies of ancient microscopic sea-creatures, fertilized by ages and ages of the frothing biology of microbes, plants, insects, birds, mammals - these soils give rise to wondrous tress. Trees that seem to writhe with life. To some, in tortured, contorted poses. To me - in the embodiment of a type of dance. And when one comes to pass, the grand accumulation of all the materials gained over a lifetime will pass again on to the soils, to feed the mammals, birds, insects, plants, microbes, and of course - future trees. With care, one could imagine the long, long ages passing before your eyes, seasons upon seasons whizzing by, trees growing up towards the sky then falling and returning to earth, over and over again, the seemingly random pattern of life ever repeating, with each instance unique in all of time, an electric dance pausing for a moment, heroically, against all odds, stark against a deep blue sky.

the uplands

Just over 11,000 ft up in 'Patriarch'. It's hard to put into words, this grove. People come streaming by, some pause briefly to take a picture then go; others wander reverently where raised voices seem out of place. Some try to explain it all to those who will listen, telling the story as a stranger might at a wake, how some of these trees have stood since the time of Christ - all told with an earnest tone. But who can say what the cold winter's chill feels like after the ever-too-brief summer sun? Who can fathom the long quiet, the raging storms? We wander briefly amidst the old ones, whose thoughts are much too long and slow for us to hear. We are mere ephemera, a passing shadow to those that remain when we leave.

So, I have finally finished my book:
Lost and Found: Confessions of a Bay Area Vagabond.
It took longer than I thought, mostly because of the writing, which became a labour of love. It is interesting to have to write, which like any artistic task, can loom large and seem impossible. Now, this book is hardly War and Peace, but the act of creation is often about getting out of your own way, breaking past your pre-conceptions of who or what you 'are' or what you can be. I am ever self-limiting, reminding myself of my 'limitations' at every step, bringing to mind past behaviors, and their seemingly hard truths about who I am - all of which is just a bunch of hooey. Life is what you make it, and the Self, an illusion of convenience, crafted to get one off the hook for being in the moment, a fallback position. So, go forth and create, make mistakes, slip off the rails a bit, draw outside the lines, find a new room in your mind's house.

point of view

Each of us sees the world from where we stand. 'Tis a singular point of view, from which high perch we survey and measure all that passes before us. That we cannot always see over the hill, to the far country of an other's view is but the nature of our existence. Thus, I extend you the courtesy of my doubts, and hope for the same. We each inherit the same rights as another. We walk beneath the same sun, breathe the same air - we are siblings beyond documents. We share a small but precious rock, wheeling through the abyss of space, with no roof overhead. We want this blink of time to have some meaning beyond ourselves, thus we create. We fear that it does not, thus we war. We are but the drops from which waves are made. Tossed by tide and winds we pass - all together - through the moments of life. It is a testimony to the imagination that one can think of us as separate.

Photo: Sun Worshipper, ©2010 Timothy A. Sandstrom

At some point, we each get to ask - what do I photograph? and why? What is it that draws me out of my shell, focuses my attention, draws me in? This is, thankfully, quite variable and dynamic, and thus we are presented with an ever expanding horizon of what interests us at a given time.

What in the past was ignored as merely a decaying garden implement can later excite in a myriad of ways: metaphorically, geometrically, etc. Most of which are, frankly, quite boring to anyone else on the planet :) Occasionally though - and seemingly against the odds - interests cross, magically resulting in an epiphany shared and wowie-zowie your photo gets 'explored' on flickr, or makes the cover of a photo magazine, or you sell a print.

And so, the question is, should we chase the shared moments - Steiglitz's equivalents if you will - or allow them to bubble up from the world around us...?

Is the prize more rewarding than the seeking?

Photo: Staff of Life, ©2010 Timothy A. Sandstrom

An author I greatly admire, Pema Chodron talks about the need to "move gently toward what scares us".  In life, I find this to be sage advice, for I often find my own preconceptions scarier than the realities I presume they portray. Street photography is a unique way of interacting with the world, and I highly admire some of it's adherents such as Andre Kertesz, Walker Evans, Gary Winogrand, and of course Cartier-Bresson. Alas, I am very 'wet behind the ears', as the saying goes, a neophyte. I struggle with the method, how to be discrete without being 'furtive' or deceptive. How to approach, how to build rapport? It is worrisome to attempt, difficult to achieve anything, far from my 'comfort zone', and the fear is that I am wasting my time. Thus, I move, gently toward what, well, makes me uncomfortable :)

Photo: Walkabout, ©2010 Timothy A. Sandstrom