So, I take off yesterday afternoon with a specific intent: I want to buy spinach dip. I arrive at the store and as has happened to all of us, I pick up a few things I had no intention of buying. I work my way through the crowded store, place myself in the self service checkout area, pay for my items, load the car up, and take off for home. Im driving south on Central Avenue when a bolt of immaculate thought strikes me. I forgot the spinach dip. I dont feel like going back. Im not all that fond of shopping in the first place. But, hey. Theres a gas station just a few blocks from the house, and I wonder if it has spinach dip? So I start thinking about the price of gas at this particular station and how it jumped up overnight late Friday night, just before the Labor Day holiday. None of the other gas stations raised their prices by 14 cents. What gives this owner the right to raise his prices, the greedy bastard! So I decide I dont want to stop at that gas station. In fact, Im NEVER going to purchase ANYTHING from that gas station ever again. Thatll teach em. Then I look out the windshield at the sky. Ever since Ive started taking pictures with my still, rather new camera, Ive been paying attention to the sky in ways I never gave much thought to beforehand. And the sky, overcast all day, is clearing. I see a procession of white, fluffy cumulus clouds off in the distance, marching along the horizon. Its like Clouds On Parade. I glance at the time and its a quarter past 6 and suddenly, Im antsy. Im not going to make it home in time. In the time it will take for me to walk to the Picture-Perfect Panoramic Landscape area, the lighting will be gone. If Ive learned anything in the few short months Ive been out taking pictures, it is this: the best lighting doesnt last very long. Period. There is a very limited window of opportunity and Im driving along 25th Street in front of the high school, doubting that I will have enough time. Dreamline, by Rush, begins playing as I pull to a stop at the traffic light at 25th and Home. I reach over and turn up the volume. Hes got a road map of Jupiter, a radar fix on the stars, all along the highway... The song gives me hope. I can make it in time. I get home, unload the groceries, grab my camera and spare battery and head out toward Noblitt Park. The clouds are stoned. Immaculate. I walk faster. Jim Morrison has joined me. I walk to the edge of Noblitt Park and climb up the embankment to the railroad tracks. Out here in the perimeter, the forest is dark and cool. Out here, thousands of cicadas play their songs of late summer. I cross the Flatrock and come out into the open. Running parallel to the railroad tracks is a line of telephone poles. They are old. Time and insects are slowly devouring them. Their glass insulators are gone, as are the wires that once connected one to the other and fed the world with news. An exquisite nostalgic moment takes hold of me and I stand in the open, on the tracks, lost in a foreign time. I took pictures of the dropping sun, the colors surrounding me in a constant state of change. Back in May, I would have paid no attention to the variations whatsoever. I woke up this morning thinking of spinach dip.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 16:09:06 +0000
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