77

So it has become my habit, when we stay at my mom's house, that I cruise for photo opportunities by driving the old back roads between the homeplace and Westminster, the nearest town. Since the early days of this project I have thus been passing a mysterious cinder block chimney, standing alone and utterly out of context among rural fields, smothered in leafy vines. I hadn't stopped before; making an intriguing image of such a severe and specific scene would require being there at the right time of day, in the right light and the right weather, and that never seemed to happen. Those planets finally aligned today when I happened to be passing by on my way home from the YMCA. The vines have turned scarlet and I thought the late afternoon sun would limn these with rich golden light, softening the severe lines of the smokestack. Instead, clouds suddenly blocked the sky and the scene became dramatic and dark. Instead of the tonal study in bright, saturated autumn colors there was this black monolith against a swirling gray sky. I was nonplussed -- this was not at all what I was after, I felt like the light had fled from me.

Then had to laugh. I realized the shift in mood wasn't loss of light, just simply a change in light. The light is still there, still all around -- just coming from a slightly different place. Darkness, it seems, could very well be in the eye of the beholder.

Like the man said, once in awhile you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.

76 - Up, up and away

Today was totally stressful. I have this funky biodiesel Jeep Grand Wagoneer that I adore but, like other intriguing entities to which I have in the past misguidedly hitched my existential star, it is unreliable. Twice now I have poured time, work and money into making this relationship work, getting the jeep all fixed up and roadworthy, intending to make this truck my daily driver. My brave companion of the road.

Both times I warmed up slowly, getting acquainted by taking small trips near home, and when doing so it bore the boys and me stylishly and effectively. I began to trust. To believe. But once I was ready to seriously invest in the relationship, take it to the next level, really commit, dammit, well -- both times it took me far from home and then just...died. Twice now it has repaid my financial and (not inconsiderable) emotional investment by leaving me stranded. Literally. And this latest time, well. It was sort of more than I could handle gracefully. Life has been good recently, I am grateful for the quiet upswing in our circumstances. But it's startling and distressing to see how little reserve I've been able to rebuild, how quickly and easily knocked back into crisis and despair I seem to be.

Enter my best friend Heather who showed up to sit with me in my interminable wait for the tow truck driver. What a way to spend your Saturday night, right? She then took me out for hamburgers and french fries and pie and in general fluffed me up and smoothed me down and patted me back into something resembling human form instead of a quivering mass of stress and failure.

So we were on our way to dinner after several hours of Heather calming me down and listening patiently to me obsess and complain during the above-mentioned tow truck waiting period. We were both starving and happily anticipating dinner at Baugher's, a long-time favorite country restaurant for both of us. As we cruised into Westminster I spied an automobile dealership that had vast strings of balloons flying above its car lot, curling away into the evening autumn sky. Knowing I'd already rested heavily upon Heather's good graces this day, I asked humbly if she would mind turning the car around to take me back so I could take some photos. Heather very patiently asked if it had to be now, rather than after dinner, and I said very quietly that by the time we were done eating dinner it would be dark and the opportunity lost. To H's vast credit she did not sigh, at least not out loud, and she took the next U-turn and delivered me to the balloon place.

The chance to make some pictures, to reclaim a positive and generative part of myself after a draining day, was indescribably wonderful. Like hitting the reset button on my life and my sense of self, flipping the switch from failure to fruitful. And I really loved the images that resulted. Up, up and away.

Today's image gratefully dedicated to Heather Joslyn: stalwart, confidante, utter ally.

75

A round-trip drive from our happy new home on the Gunpowder river to Jack's school to Cole's school and then back home again requires crossing either the Gunpowder or one of its major tributaries a total of eight times. September has been an incredibly rainy month, and today featured prolonged heavy downpours falling onto an already completely soaked landscape. The rain had nowhere to go and so roads quickly flooded. We were fended off of several routes home by police cars parked across the intersection, telling us to go another way. The one east-west route remaining open was simply jammed with vehicles who, like the rain, had nowhere else to go. A long story but it ended up being four hours in the saddle for me, almost two hours for the guys. This signpost for route 1 a beacon of hope -- we'd almost made it to a road that could take us to another road that could take us home. Eventually.

74

An evening walk along this incredibly clear stream, full of smooth rounded multicolor stones, and me trying to find some way to photograph them without my own shadow appearing as a reflection in the water. Trying, and failing so many times it became pretty funny -- making pictures of everything but the stones, because I couldn't find a shadowed spot where the water surface allowed a view below, rather than reflecting what was above. The harder I tried, the fewer stones appeared in the frame, and it was quite amusing after awhile. At least to me. But then I don't get out much and spend a lot of time either alone or with my children, whose senses of humor run to using the word "butt" whenever possible, so possibly my standards of humor are pretty low.

Sometimes you get the stones, sometimes you get the sky.

73

OK, so no hay windrows or converging lines in the landscape at Citypaper's Best of Baltimore 2011 party last night. Just the usual crappy techno music and cheap rail liquor, which makes it sound like a good time was not had. When indeed it was.

I was struck by how many people come to this party to pose (as my best friend Heather wryly commented about a young'un writhing enthusiastically on the dance floor, clad in a plaid flannel shirt and glittery tiara: "You don't much see that look outside the Best Of party"). So there were costumes, at the one extreme, and much more subtle posturing everywhere else. Which is why I really liked this image, where the man's face is completely whited out by the dance floor spotlights. Last night it wasn't who you are, it was what you look like.

(Confidential to bowling shirt Bud: um, sorry. I'm not usually that obnoxious, particularly when I haven't even commenced the evening's alcohol intake. Though I do prefer to think of it as "refreshingly direct").

72: the path, taken

So maybe this ongoing theme of pathways is getting tedious for you, the viewer, but for me it seems to have a pretty firm grip on my vision. Yesterday's image was that temporary path imposed on a field by windrows of drying hay, and today's entire image bank turns out to be variations on the pathway motif. I was gathering mushrooms in a city park and, in between recording shots of the species I found, made photos for this project in three very different situations. Looking at them back home now I realize they are all variations on the same visual theme: "found" lines in the landscape, dividing, leading...somewhere. Away. I'm learning that for me, making these pathway images, there has to be a place at the edge of the frame suggesting direction, yet not specifying destination -- open possibility. Horizon. Woods.

(I love the wooden posts or pilings in the upper right of the first image. Barely peeking up beyond the crest of the hill -- someplace to head toward, to wonder about. For this same reason, the third image, water channeling between rocks, ultimately doesn't work for me, too anonymous. It doesn't inspire me to wonder where it's going).

71

Does anything smell sweeter than newly-mown hay, drying in the afternoon sun?