DATELINE: NEW YORK CITY, Still here doing my duties. Our photo walk and meetup are complete. Today I will shift to my status as attendee, both with AIPAD and the city itself. Journal entry.
The Osprey hovers over downtown, circling slowly, waiting for prey that may or may not ever come. Vigilante. Circular and vascular with bulging parts and blades and buffering radars and technology unknown to the world. Top notch, high tech, all powerful. The airborne security detail for one man who represents one world, the most powerful we know, according to some and denied by others. And somewhere near midtown or uptown or downtown or underground is another man, also protected, bristling with details and distraction. Blue suits and red ties and flag buttons and hairspray. Face paint and white, soulless eyes. Two men in a power struggle for more power, for history, and the preservation of the entire idea of what this place represents. Our history and future, hovering like the Osprey above. Womp, womp, womp, the rotor wash buffets the promenade. Down below it’s business as usual. Thumb swipes, selfies and shopping bags.
A familiar name on the wall of the memorial, etched by machine or hand or worker who came to these distance shores for promise and hope. Nearly three thousands etches and letters and rows and columns and squares and imaginary rectangles where the structures used to live. White arms up and over the bustle below. Shuffle in, shuffle out. “This is my first time here,” she says. “I’ve always found a way to stay away, until today.” Moisture building on the edges of her eyes. Hands clasped together, slowly squeezing and then letting go.
Letting go. Is that what is happening. Letting go? A run through the television channels in the hotel. Nearly sixty options for letting go. Letting go of reality. Letting go of each other. Letting go of real for the sugary mix of artificial faces and gestures and six hundred dollar suits to cover stories of poverty and despair. Hair and makeup, catering. “We’ll be right back.”
Blue collars in orange heading for the green of uptown. The flick of ash and paper and filter and nicotine arcs out over the bike lane. Sparking and spiking as it skids across. The red faced owner exhaling through bloodshot eyes and puffy cheeks but with a smile of familiarity and love. The left to right tilt of shoulders. Companions, friends, anchored in pattern and struggle. Hands extended. “Nice to meet you, come on in.” The rotary door squeaking then blowing out the hot to keep out the cold. “Come right this way.”
Comments 6
Dan, you’re wasting your time and talent with photography and its relations. Do the pen thing. Full time.
Because there’s SO much money in writing
Author
I’ve heard it’s a road paved with gold. Or maybe it was bones.
Author
Anytime I think I’m a decent writer I find someone who is and it resets my levels.
It’s paved with both gold and bones, much like everything else worth doing. There is always somebody better than the metaphorical you. If that was enough to poison the well, there would be but one writer left writing.
Photography was no different back in the day, but that day passed quite some time ago, and now it’s a fond memory for some, and as Dan has remarked in the past, today’s rainbow arches over the gallery crowd; you can make your own calls over what you see come out of that pot of gold. In the end, you have to live with yourself. Sinatra nailed the old man’s glance back over the shoulder with My Way. Eventually, you can’t avoid it any longer and have to face yourself and ask whether you did the right things at the tight time. There is no sterner judge than that mean old sonofabitch in the mirror.
Author
I’m too busy to do much else than post journal notes, but that’s okay with me.