The Cove Island Park attendant (?) periodically sets off 1 or 2 fireworks in the early twilight hours for the handful of insomniacs and early risers (or for himself). After 1,866 consecutive (almost) days of snapping shots on my morning walks, I was finally able to catch one in flight. More shots from this mornings walk here.
The sun rises at 5:21 a.m, the earliest day/time of the year. I set my internal clock (each morning) 90 minutes ahead of Sunrise to catch twilight, that’s 3:45 a.m. Groan.
It’s been 1,865 consecutive (almost) days, and counting, on this morning walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a row.
One could say, same-old same-old track, ‘How about a change?’ A new track? Mix it up a little?
Yet, I’m grooved in this track, akin to deliberately steering within deep ruts of a muddy country road to keep forward momentum. Ocean Vuong: “It seemed the light wouldn’t change for a while. When he was younger Hai had wanted a bigger life. Instead he got the life that won’t let him go.“
There are days (among the 1,865 consecutive days) when you get out of the car, and tell yourself: “Self, there ain’t nothing here, you’re tired, snap a shot to prove you were here, drive back home and snuggle up to Wally.”
That day wasn’t today.
Park is empty. Birds have awakened. I pick up the pace, heartbeat quickening. I arrive at the shoreline at look out.
65° F, gentle breaths of wind from the north. A strip of golden light paints the horizon. Luna pops her head in and out between gaps in heavy cloud cover, splashing golden light on the ocean surface.
I could feel it today.
The Cove won’t let me go.
“How you can fall in love with the light.”
Ellen Meloy: Of all the things I wondered about on this land, I wondered the hardest about the seduction of certain geographies that feel like home — not by story or blood but merely by their forms and colors. How our perceptions are our only internal map of the world, how there are places that claim you and places that warn you away. How you can fall in love with the light.
DK Photo @ 4:09 am. June 13, 2025. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos from this morning’s walk here. A magnificent morning.
Unlike writing, which is a vocation mired with maybes, the camera, for all of its complex mechanisms, can only say yes. Photography is, for me, a medium of unanimous affirmation, the shutter creating a yes so total, so entire, nothing in its frame can be denied presence. Though the impulse to fire the shutter can be entangled with doubt, the act is swift and irreversible. Once the photo is made, the only way to turn back is to destroy it.
If, as the photographer Garry Winogrand has said, we take photographs to see how the world looks when photographed, I make pictures of my brother to see the parts in him I cannot see in real time, my eyes too myopic, fleeting or faulty. The photograph invites true study, the frame fixing the world in place so that myth and truth accrue within our gaze. In this way, the image offers more of a person than what was first attainable at first glance. The shutter goes from saying yes, yes, yes to more, more, more.
Photo of Strawberry Moon @ 4:19 am this morning @ Cove Island Park. See more pictures of the moon, the fog, the sunrise, egrets, herons, and an amazing TIME LAPSE VIDEO — all found here.
Easter Service. Bethany Church of Stamford. 6:30 a.m. 60° F, wind gusts up to 30 mph. April 20, 2025. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos from this mornings walk here and here.
— Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, “A Star,” tr. Hafiz Kheir with Mark Ford
Notes:
Twilight to Sunrise. Time Lapse Video. 5:00 am to 6:50 am, 110 minutes in 28 seconds. 33° F. April 10, 2025. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT
Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
