Watson Lake, Prescott – a study of textures and lines
I woke at 4:00 am, drove for two hours, and still arrived an hour or so after sunrise…considered doing the entire shoot in black and white…settled for color, though, as I could change the treatment later…changed the frame to more of a wide angle, similar to that of a large-screened television in format…found that I was disturbed by the breadth and mass of the sky in the viewfinder, actually felt off kilter, but I knew the setting would help for the more panoramic shots that would come later and didn’t want to keep fiddling with the camera…so I changed my point of view and came home with this….
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More to follow….
last saturday
After I trimmed the overgrown rose bush last evening, I had planned to cut the grass this morning. I had already mowed the front yard, but still needed to do the much larger back yard…for the last time. The weather forecast said it was going to be partly cloudy today, so I was looking forward to completing the chores in a bit of a cooler morning.
Well…it is much cooler…and the lawn-mower is still in the garage…where it needs to be when the late-spring rains come visiting in northern Utah. I have been to the store already and completed my weekly shopping…everything is in the cupboards…the dogs’ food bowl is refilled and they have already consumed their snacks and are sleeping somewhere in the house…as is the rest of the family.
It’s been more than a couple of years since I’ve made pancakes in a pan on the stove…I am more in the habit of using an electric griddle…or of making waffles with a waffle-iron…but the griddle and waffle-iron are in boxes already, packed and prepared for the upcoming move to Phoenix…so it was the frying pan and pancake mix this morning…soft and sad music from Stephan Moccio playing on Pandora…the sound of falling rain coming in through the open windows and back door…and warm cinnamon and nutmeg wafting up from the stove-top….
During my pancake preparations, it dawned on me that this is my last Saturday in Utah…we will be packed and driving away next Friday morning and next Saturday will find us unpacking and living in Arizona again. The words “last Saturday” reminded me of a folder of photos I have in my files that is titled, “First Saturday,” the photographic journal that I created on my very first Saturday living here in Utah…September 11, 2010. Below is one of the images from that outing…looking up into Bells Canyon from the southern edge of the lower reservoir. You might remember some of my later photos from hiking in the area, as I found myself in that location probably close to two dozen times over the past almost four years. Well…I guess you could say this is where it all started….
Well, crap…I just hit the Publish button when I meant to hit the Preview button…so maybe you’re looking at this post in it’s incomplete stage…or maybe…I don’t know…anyway. I’ll continue like nothing happened….
So…some final images from my last Saturday here in Utah…the cloud covered mountains…fresh pancakes that turned-out ok after I burned the first set…snow-boots on the floor by the back-door that will likely never see snow again…and the paddle from an Arizona wind-chime, with a cloudy Twin Peaks in the background, that will soon be returning to Arizona….
faces on the wall….
The man sat in the dark and thought of the pictures on the wall and the eyes that looked out from their frozen images of faces and whatnot in the chemicals that held them in such places from their making until they left in some manner or other, moved to another wall, moved to another house, passed among the things that leave when he would leave on that unknown date and then. The eyes that could bore through their selved-images into the eyes of the man who sat in the chair with heavy lids and pondered those things as night wound into itself and him and the sounds of day’s passing had become the creaking and yawning of the presence of its neighbor and twin, the one who exists on the other side of the thoughts of himself.
Picture frames glowing or reflecting the light that sneaks in through the windows from the posted light in the yard, that one thing that illuminates the darkened corners where what was present in the day has crawled into itself and themselves and exist only in shadow form or memory, but not sight, as they are hidden in the black and gray of their shadowed selves. Those eyes accuse and remember in their fixed gazes and the man stares at the blank middles of the frames at what he knows is there but cannot see for the passed and past day and the dark inside the four edges covers but doesn’t hide the faces he knows. Night doesn’t cover his heart and his wandering soul and it doesn’t relieve the ghosts that walk in his mind and in the fibers of the carpet and lay like a film inside the paint and wooded textures of stair railings and benches, those things that capture sounds and emotions as they are fleeing in their shouted births and deaths of echoes and remain.
Hollowed eyes and grins and thoughts and cheekbones and lips that lie in a stuck rictus, like painted and dead clowns and he doesn’t know who is inside, who is behind those portals of life and then, and he turns away and closes his eyes and hears the ringing in his ears as the cat talks not walks down the hall and a hidden beam somewhere in the wall creaks or sighs as the house wonders at the man in the chair in the dark, wonders at his thoughts and sitting there while others sleep and dream and think of nothing in the passing of the stars and moon in their circuits as the heater kicks on and whines through the vents and blows in its blowing and warmth of breath and stops with a shudder and how, as the man’s foot twitches as sleep tries to pull him deeper into the chair as his heart beats and beats and his eyes open at the cat’s passing and scratching on and of the one corner of the rug that has its frayed spot and spot as the eyes on the walls sleep in their openness and hide their thoughts in front of him as he looks away and remembers a younger self that fled a smile in furrowed brows and pursed lips of anger and rot, his eyes scorned and shaken and cast away and aside and down and away from any who would look.
He remembered the thick hand that smacked his mouth when his eyes were closed and thought the Divine was blind as the prayer was stuck in the swirl of ceiling paint as the black eyes bored into the smaller one’s eyes as his mouth throbbed and his heart ached and his mom sat at arm’s length away as her man’s hand smacked her child’s mouth and she kept her eyes closed as the sound echoed in her ears and she squeezed her eyes closed as she smelled the dinner cooling on the table in front of them and wondered how the paint could keep the prayer inside the ceiling as it rolled about and thinned against the summer air and finally withered and faded and was gone in the tears that rolled down his cheeks as hate breathes by itself in blank picture frames and white rocks cast along the way, tripping the travelers who dare not watch where they are walking, who are blind to the path and stumble in the dark footsteps that lumber ahead of them.
This is a Favorite Re-post from February, 2010.
Scott's Place...Images and Words 