Tag: Photography

I want moonlight

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Blue-melancholy

Everywhere you look these days you see something on how to be happy — how to manifest abundance, desires and success, find your bliss. […]

Whatever happened to experiencing the grace of melancholy, which requires reflection: a sort of mental steeping, like tea? What if all this cheerful advice only makes you feel inadequate? What if you were born morose?

Melancholy, distinguished from grief, is not caused by events, like losing your job, the passing of beloved pets, your miscarriages or health problems. Nor does it vanish when you receive excellent news, like a big film star optioning your novel, or being invited to an all-expenses-paid trip to Venice for the Biennale.

Melancholy is more … ephemeral.

It visits you like a mist, a vapor, a fog. It is generally uninvited. And as some people are born into royalty, wealth and prestige, others inherit a disposition for sadness. […]

Should melancholy descend, you may as well welcome it, wear your finest lounging outfit; give it your finest fainting couch or chaise to lounge in, or that hammock stretched between two elm trees. Let it settle in.

[…]

I want moonlight.

~ Laren Stover, A Case For Melancholy

Credits: Photo via Sweet Senderipity

Lift it. Lift it way up.

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jellyfish-blue

My mood suddenly lifted.
The day was crisp and bright,
the atmosphere quivering with life,
like the translucent strands of a rare aquatic species
with long, flowing tentacles,
lappets flowing vertically from a jellyfish’s bell.
Would that human energy could materialize in such a way.
I imagine such strands waving horizontally
from the edges of my black coat.

~ Patti Smith, M Train

Notes:

Riding Metro North. It’s that time…

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train

6:38 am. 36° F.
November 9th. First day of overcoat weather.

I snag one of the last seats on the aisle.
Iron Man is full, standing room only.
And it’s Iron Man, not Iron Woman, or Iron Person.
Nothing graceful about a single, 145,000 pound train car.
No curves. No nuance.
A muscle car. A Beast.
Clacking steel on steel.
The wind gust from a passing train slams the air pocket in the bi-folding doors.

It’s Monday morning. Silence.
Commuter Code: No Exceptions. All cars are quiet cars. No Talking. NO TALKING.
Newspapers? None in sight.
Trees saved.  Whispers of flicking fingers on digital. The new order.

I’m a Dyson DC65 Animal Upright Vacuum Cleaner, sucking up and digesting two morning papers, unread blog posts, two chapters of Colum McCann’s Thirteen Ways of Looking and onto morning meeting preparation. Mr. Pro-duct-tivity.  A good night sleep + all body parts functioning + who-knows-what = This Machine is Rollin’.

Metro North pulls into Grand Central.
I bolt out with the herd stampeding for the exits.
I’m humming Luther Van Dross’ Ain’t No Stopping Us Now.  We’re on the move…we’re in the groove. Don’t you let nothing, nothing stand in your way… Continue reading “Riding Metro North. It’s that time…” →

Judgment Day

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Six photographers.
1 man.

Each photographer is asked to photograph “Michael”.

Each photographer is shared a unique perspective on Michael.

One is told that Michael is a self-made millionaire.
Another, is told Michael has saved someone’s life.
Another, is told Michael is a commercial fisherman.
Another, is told that Michael is a Psychic.
Another, is told that Michael is an ex-inmate.
Another, is told that Michael is a former alcoholic.

Watch the outcome…

Riding the 7 Train. And the Moscow Metro.

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Moscow-subway

I’m gripping the rubber handrail of the escalator that is creeping down, way down, into the bowels of the NYC subway system at 42nd and Grand Central, the second busiest station in the city. This, a ride down the shaft of a deep, underground coal mine. Black dust, airless and layered with noxious fumes. This, a visible symbol of America’s decay, its infrastructure crumbling.

There is no welcome mat out for the timid, or, for any bics: the acrophobics, the claustrophobics or the mysophobics. The incline is steep. The crowd thick and wary. The noise deafening. Even the Earth shivers from fright under Gotham when the trains rumble by.  Here, here. The richest city in the richest country in the world, and here we are. The Suits. The Homeless. The Helpless. The Pick-Pockets. The Cons. The Certifiable. And the Artists, the canaries in this coal mine – their instrument cases open, serenading the masses with Bach or Mendelssohn, a thin stream of light amid this train wreck (no pun intended).  Add the pungent stench of urine and this here is a petri dish of trouble.  Grade? A Dump.

I’m waiting for my cross-town train and the mind drifts back, way back.  Continue reading “Riding the 7 Train. And the Moscow Metro.” →