A lens too small

I took a walk this afternoon with my camera, intending to take pictures of Seattle in the spring, but in looking through what I found, it was all flowers.  I guess this is spring too, but it feels like they could be anywhere.  That isn’t how I feel about Seattle, but every time I wanted to take a picture I could only see the ugly bits that would appear in the frame- the telephone lines and the cars and the things that remind us we’re in a city.  I want to take a picture of downtown from the hill I walk down to the bus, but the glittering buildings look flat in pictures and the water of the lakes doesn’t shimmer in quite the right way. 

There is something so limiting about photography.  I think one of the reasons I tend to go towards abstract macro-lens images is because I don’t feel wide angle shots are ever wide enough.  I want the cold air, the shifting light, the clouds scudding across the horizon; all of it in a picture.  I want the contrast of spring-bright leaves catching sunlight against the grey about-to-rain sky, but I end up with one or the other most often.  

So believe me, this is a beautiful place.  Come visit and I will show you the things I see, but you’ll have to trust me.  Photography just isn’t doing it these days.

getting work done

getting work done, originally uploaded by ducksRfriends.

Today was a perfect spring day. Warm enough to spend as much time possible outside… lots of walking around to get errands done. I got some work done on one of the documentaries I’m chipping away at, sitting outside by my garden. I’ve got some baby tomatoes coming in! I need to stake the plant, but I think I have some time before it starts getting weighed down. The rain this past week has been treating my plants very well. The mint and basil are thriving. No sign of the cucumbers yet, but soon, hopefully soon.
A new coffee shop opened up down the street. Really good mocha, and soon it will sell take-out beer, over 500 varieties. The place has a lot of potential, and I think it will be great to sit out and drink some coffee with a good book. Maybe they’ll even have the awesome Ø beer from Norway….

bird in the city

bird in the city, originally uploaded by ducksRfriends.

I looked up from my work station this afternoon to see a huge bird sitting atop the tree across the street. It was silhouetted against the buildings and the clash of nature and the city was rather striking. Of course, by the time I grabbed my camera, the bird moved away from its perch and fluttered around in the main body of the tree. Still interesting, but not quite the image I was going for. I plan to keep my eye out for the bird in the upcoming days… hopefully with the rain forecast, I’ll get another grey day to catch the bird in all its moodiness.

spring April 25

spring April 25, originally uploaded by ducksRfriends.

Its a beautiful day outside. Sunny, warm, slightly breezy. And yet I sit inside staring out the window, trying to get work done…. Perhaps that is a bit of an exaggeration. Actually I’m listening to the people enjoying the day down on the street. Yelling that sounds like fights, but breaks into laughter. Older men grumbling. Young children cheeping, racketing down the street with skateboards, perhaps a bike or two. I feel like the street has a whole other life I don’t ever see, tucked away in my house. And yet here I stay, trying to concentrate on my work…..

Slow Approach

This morning the sky was grey, the wind cold.  I walked to the store and back and felt under-bundled, winter caught beneath my jacket.  I curled up to read and ignored what was happening outside.  

Of course, the sun returns when I forget to check.  I should be used to the shifting skies, but it still takes me by surprise.  It isn’t quite warm enough to read outside, but I can sit by the window and see the sun on the trees.  The cold is begrudgingly fading, and I hope that spring comes in full force soon.

I’m not sure what the warm weather will bring, but that’s the fun of spring.  Plants sprout up and blossoms bloom and the unexpected emerges.  So here’s to the unexpected, to the warmth, to all things spring-like and new!

Double Rainbow

April 3 2009 Philadelphia, originally uploaded by ducksRfriends.

Anytime it starts raining with the sun shining, I look for rainbows. This was a perfect rainbow recipe. It was around 6 or so, the sun just getting ready to start setting. Light small rain drops, falling from a very discernible cloud. Since it was raining, I didn’t want to have my camera out for too long, I’ve already ruined one with water. But I managed to get a quick shot of the double rainbow. It got even better, the second got brighter. A full arc on both. The clouds were fantastic the whole afternoon. I might have to ride through the rain a lot this season, but spring is lovely.

What the Space Contains

Seattle is full of changes.  I woke up early this morning and took a bus out to Bellvue.  It was grey, but dry, when I left.  Glancing out of the window during my interview the skies were pouring buckets.  By the time I was finished only residual water blew around in the gusty air.  As I waited at the bus stop it began to hail.  When I got into the U District it was sunny and scrubbed clean.

I like that Seattle seems a place of fresh starts.  The rain comes and the winds blow and everything is washed clean.  Crossing over the lake today I watched the water; one side relatively calm, the other choppy and white-tipped waves.  There is probably a very good and sound scientific reason for this, something about the bridge and the air currents, but it seems fitting even without knowing how the disparity is caused.  Of course one side is violent, the other barely ruffled.  This place is nothing if not bi-polar.  It makes me think of something Nicelle told me– LA is a place people go when they’ve run out of options.  LA snags them before they reach the ocean.  It’s a last-chance place; make it here or you won’t make it.  Seattle doesn’t have the desperation of LA, but for me it feels similar.  I don’t feel as destitute as I would have in LA, surrounded by opulence and poverty, shimmering neon lights and broken glass, smog and jacaranda blossoms.  And I don’t feel hopeless here, but there there is something about the edge that seems similar.  One place is close to Mexico, one is close to Canada, and both are pushed far to the West Coast.  Seattle seems the safer place by far, and I am carving my niche here, slowly.  

A friend said it usually takes him at least two years to establish himself in a city.  When I groaned and begged him to take it back he did, but it’d been said and I suspect it’s truthful.  It will take a while.  There isn’t a way to skip past this, but already I’m getting better at figuring out what bus routes get me back and I’m getting comfortable walking into places on my own.  I’d love to be sharing this place with someone, but I think it’s a good thing I’m not.  It is so easy to triangulate my self-perception against those around me.  It’s one of the comments I received most about my thesis: this is a story about a narrator who isn’t actually there.  Everyone else is, but there is just a space where the body of the speaker actually resides.  An emptiness. 

I’m working on figuring out that what that space contains.  It isn’t a negative or empty place.  It’s just uncertain.  It was missing from my work because I didn’t know.  I still don’t, but I’m working on it. 

the air warms

I went out to check the mail box (still empty) and as I walked up the steps I saw it: the first crocus of spring.

I love the flesh of crocus flowers.  Pale as throats.  The stems seem ready to blend in with snow, should it fall.  The petals bruise easily, and when plucked they don’t last long.  Yet they push through and bloom before other flowers are ready. The first delicate signs of spring and warmer weather.  They persist.   

  After much searching, I found two more flowers- another small crocus and a periwinkle, curled into itself.  All shades of blue and purple, against the bleached out green left from autumn, not quite returned for spring.  

I’ve felt more bleached than brilliant lately, and I can account for this in several ways.  But flowers are returning, and the air feels full of possibility some evenings, when the wind hasn’t quite kicked in and the skies were clouded enough to stave off the chill that comes with expansive blue.

So full of promise.