Lighthouse

Boston Harbor. 2009.

Flying in at dawn. I love how solid the water looks, how long the lighthouse's shadow is. I love seeing dawn from high up, as if by being in the sky, you're part of the sun's family, an equal. Like you're somehow responsible for all those below you.

Sitting (with tile)

Gorilla Cafe, Berkeley. 2008.

Winter Patterns

Big Bear, CA. 2008.

Headwaters

Warner Center, L.A. 2008.

This is where the LA River starts. Calabasas Arroyo on the left merges with the recently-joined Bell and Dayton Creeks, on the right. At this point, at least one map I've studied starts using the name Los Angeles River. The river continues east through the southern San Fernando Valley, wraps around Griffith and Elysian Parks, skirts downtown, then heads south to the port.

There are grand plans in the works for rehabilitating and de-channelizing this river. Currently, it is mostly ignored, other than for fire truck drills in its dry concrete basin. Livestock live next to the channel in some of the poorer areas. A bike path follows it from Long Beach north to Vernon, where it quits suddenly and without comment or direction.

In the picture above, there are about four inches of water flowing over that flat sheet of concrete--just enough for a duck to paddle in. This seemed like more than the usual for late May, but that's just a guess. I'm eager to see what the river becomes.

Blurry Start

Pomona, CA. 2009.

Somehow seems appropriate that this isn't in focus. It probably matches their memories of that day: in motion, soft edges, beautiful but unclear. Good energy.

This was the last photo I took that day, before I surrendered to being in the experience and not the person behind the camera. As much as I love taking pictures, I'm sometimes saddened to realize that I was busier recording an event than watching it. I don't want all my memories to be of the pictures I took.

This wedding was perfect, and I'm glad I can recall every well-thought detail.

From Above

Somewhere, North America. 2008.

Somewhere between the Rockies and my transfer in Chicago, I realized it was beautiful out and started taking pictures. I have others with more urban landscapes, but this one has the most sky. If you squint, you can just make out the curve of the earth. Or maybe it just looks that way because the corners are darker. God, I love flying.

Green Monster

Long Beach. 2007.

Taking the ferry out to Catalina. Great views of the new bridge over the port.

Blanketed in Light

Chico. 2009.

Visiting a friends' friends, who make up the musical group Ma Muse, which I've listened to a lot recently. So calmly positive. I love how bright everything is when it's been raining, and is still cloudy. Light from every direction. Trees, wrapped in blankets of light.

Oh, Seattle

Seattle Public Library. 2006.

Wires Again

Deakin Street, Berkeley. 2009.

Have I mentioned that I like wires? Their tangle and weave? The way they divide the sky into fractions and parcels and vast swaths of blue, peach, lavender, orange, seashell pink?

I do. I like the connectedness they state, the interdependency; I even, on occasion, like the buzz that falls down from their tight perches.

But I also think they're ugly and should be put underground, at least within cities. They are a remnant of loosely structured municipalities and unincorporated land, of a time that doesn't exist anymore, at least not here. We don't have room to be unorganized anymore.

Her Shoes

Boston. 2005.

July. Warm even with air conditioning. Languid air drifting through large buildings; green sprouting, straining outward; moisture in the lungs and on the skin. Sleeping with the window open, with no blankets on; a sheet, maybe. Dressing in clean, cool clothes.

I miss the varied certainties of Boston. The red brick, the modern architecture. The large, protected open spaces surrounded by sweating, crowded streets. Polluted, accessible water ways. Heat-white skies in summer.

I miss this moment, when a woman I barely knew lay still for me, while I photographed her hand, her calves. Her shoes.

Bones

The Farm, Santa Rosa, CA. 2009.

I don't have anything to say about this pile of bones, so instead, here's a poem for Raciel.

Pick up you, little girl.
There's the slats of the bed, falling down.
They need righting.
Lay you down on the dark floor
And reach under your slumbering place
To your dust-covered toys,
Your infant clothes saved for wistfulness only.
Pick up you, little girl,
And reach through that rust metal frame.
Latch on to that floating timber,
That pine support for your dreams.

Djifere

Djifere, Senegal. 2006.

A fishing village on the very tip of a fast-eroding sand bar, close to the Gambian border. The beach was littered with shells.

Sharon and I had charted our own fishing boat. First we went to the mangroves, where our guides caught about six small fish and I saw a jackal running out of the water, then we motored out to a small, shifting sandbar island. They cooked the fish and made us strong black mint tea, which we drank sweet, in small glass cups.

Ithaca

Ithaca, NY. May 2009.

Went out for my friend's graduation from Landscape Architecture school. It was cool but lovely, with rich greens all around.

This pedestrian bridge crosses over one of the famous gorges. The view from the middle was two narrow walls of hard, sheered stone, with feathery trees coating their tops.

Fallen Perfection

65th Street, Berkeley. Spring, 2009.

After a good rain, just like today. Colors are jumping and the light comes in clean and sharp.

Pure white against detailed brown. Fall comes in December, here.

Earlier, I stood on the water just south of the Bay Bridge, looking east from San Francisco. A light wind made the water heave; waves bounded to shore and then bounced back from the wall, blind wet energy. I watched a sea lion surface for air at short intervals, slowly making its way from one pier to the next. I watched cars on the bridge, driving into the city.

Snowy Fence

Boston. 2009.

I went to visit my friend Lydia in Boston last January. Turned out my cousin lived just a mile away, so I walked over for brunch, the morning after a big snow. Beautiful walk, beautiful snow. It was still and calm but only because snow collects and holds sounds. If I looked around, there was actually quite a bit of activity. But still, it seemed so quiet.

I stopped at a bakery on the way home and took pictures of their bread.

Getting Lost

Lost Coast. 2008.

Clearly I'm in love with the Lost Coast.

Bear

Camp. 2009.

Bear Dog: you are my favorite ever.

Views from the Lost Coast

The Lost Coast, Northern California. 2008.

Two pictures this time. I couldn't resist. Somehow the forest in deep fog and the wind swept, chilly beaches are all part of the same feeling. Of entering a truly lost, undisturbed world. Even talking to other people, seeing cars, buying food--nothing could alter the sensation of being an insignificant visitor to something large and solid and unconcerned. As if my entire three day trip was missed because the land blinked.

I find myself thinking about that trip a lot, now that it's fall again. Winter, I should say. The penetrating cold seeping into your flesh. The deep, beautiful gloom. The water-rich sounds. Trickle; rush; suck; drink; slide; wear; pound; fall; coat; sweep; crash. Clouds and streams and saturated dirt and the ocean, always the ocean. Like the out-of-range buzz of a t.v. in another room. You know it's there, you sense it, without knowing how. It's there, reaching out with greedy palms to scrape at the land, gluttonous for more. Eating its way toward you.

Lofts + Retail

East LA (the gentrified part, not the scary part). 2009.

Sitting outside in the sun, supposedly doing work for a group meeting. Really just shooting the shit, boasting about how much work we all have, feeling the sun on our faces, slowly getting too hot.

Ran into someone I knew from Boston. We talked for a few minutes, caught up. I love it when the world feels like a small place.

(I miss LA.)

Sasha on a Walk

Tilden Park. 2007.

Went for a walk with Sasha, Zoe and Liam. We went up the hill across Jewel Lake from the Little Farm. I hadn't been on those trails since childhood, when we took walks every weekend, as a family.

It must have been late summer; I remember looking for blackberries afterward. It was warm, we talked, everything was brown and green. I love the light on Sasha's neck, her beautiful curly hair; her earrings. It was as if nature had been designed as the perfect backdrop for her.

Red Rock Walls and an Early Bedtime

Zion. 2009.

God do I want to be back there. To wake up to cold morning air that I know will heat up around me as I hike steeply up hill. To feel so in tune with my body--yoga when I'm stiff, food when I'm hungry, early bedtimes and waking up with the dawn. I've never thought things out less. My first impulse always turned out right. I found balance, joy, fulfillment and startling clarity everywhere I went.

I knew myself best when their wasn't anyone else there to describe it to. When existence was all there was.

Looking East

Kelso Dunes, Mojave Desert. 2oo9.

I think I picked this one more because I want to be back there then because it's a great photo. For some reason I feel like the clouds are really in motion, that they're booking it across the sky, flying south for the winter. The sand dunes were just these two small mountains of sand in the middle of a plain, with clumps of hard rocky mountains scattered around to the south, the east, the north. The west slowly rolled its way oceanward with yellowed hillocks that eventually crescendoed into heavy brown cliffs, off near the top of the horizon. They looked dark even in the feathery morning sun.

At the top, a bee hovered one foot above the highest point of the dune, buzzing its confusion at my presence before zigging off. When I got to the bottom, after leaping my way down the singing dunes, I poured a cup of sand out of each boot. Then I did yoga in my underwear, in the empty desert.