Driving Dissolve...

Yesterday I set sail northward along Interstate 95, a solo work-related voyage...Washington DC to Philadelphia, and back--approximately 280 miles. I dislike this drive and recall previous expeditions... apparitions of troopers and toll bandits, truckers and trussels...littered along the see-way.

Usually, I insulate myself form the asphalt with layers of playlists...revving the iPod through the car stereo. This trip was different. Infused by a bit of post-structuralist imagination, I was inspired to repel the monotony. After reconnecting with Jean Baudrillard and his description of America, I reveled in his assessment: "Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated." Driving the fine line was an adventure. I brought the camera in an effort to abate the amnesia and document (re)discoveries...obliterating the mundane.

If you want to slide into the passenger's seat...click here.

Reciprocal Refractions...

Yesterday, another day in the labyrinth of the concrete, was ordinary. When the time came, I saddled up for my afternoon caffeine safari. This routine requires walking past the U.S. Government Printing Office. The one-city-block building is an architectural relic...the agency's nomenclature even betrays its status as an endangered species imperiled by the digital age. As I strode through the maze, an orange-yellow taxi whizzed past. Minutes later and with an unsweetened double espresso in hand, I retraced my steps.

Hours later, at home, I heard the kids scream. "Papa! You HAVE to come see this." I turned another page of my novel. "PAPA! Bring your camera!" They all ran outside with their cameras. I followed with my own. The resulting encounter was a welcome disorientation within the labyrinth of the abstract. We stared. We took photographs. The neighbors joined in.... (Click on the rainbow to search for the leprechauns.)

Recent Randomness...

If you wish to impose your own order, click here.

Juggling in the Rain...

Spring's soccer season has ceased. The boys' team played their last match a few days ago, and it drizzled on and off the pitch, while a young lady practiced her juggling skills...in pink Crocs nonetheless. Her longest streak was forty-plus volleys...all on her right foot. I suggested she may want a challenge and juggle whilst holding an umbrella. She smirked, and after seizing the umbrella began counting the volleys anew.

(You can slow down the sphere by clicking here.)

Dithers for Dad...

Dysphoric Dendrochronology

My zestiness is temporarily truncated...by the 41st impression. 41 concentric circles...a hypnotic geometry etched in my vascular cambium...Spirograph doodle chronograph...involuted clockwork...marking time. My mood is enhanced by a recent spell of thunderstorms. These tempests harvested quite a few trees in the area...their final pose, an unceremonious uprooting along the asphalt canals and concrete tributaries. My branches creek, days after our weekly soccer game, another timepiece...cartilaginous hourglass movement. But please, do not misinterpret my humor...it is not bitterness. I am merely cloy with the abundance of nostalgic fruit. (Me empalagué al contemplar el recorrido.)

Many of the fruits were running around this weekend as we celebrated a few birthdays and Father's day. If you prefer to pick your own...click here.

Depilation Denizens...

Her adolescent geography is constantly shifting. The latest contour we encountered was the deprecation of the hirsute...a recent fad among her fickle pre-teen posse. We cosseted her compulsion, and documented her foray into muliebrity...with light-hearted sobriety.

You can home in on the hijinks by clicking here.

Rudimentary Rules, or...On Photographic Imp-Propriety...

Today we drove a bit too far for a piano recital. (Ari was performing, while his sister frolicked in Pennsylvania with her girl scout troop.) The new recital hall had better illumination, and smaller dimensions. Some of the advanced students made the Steinway sing. Some of their parents made their digital cameras click, chirp, whirl, blink, and snap during the performances.

During such a moment this afternoon, one parent's point-and-shoot pocket camera emitted a disquieting barrage of mechanical burps and electronic flatulence as his son caressed an aria form the keys. My eyes darted around the room to asses the wave of presumptive dissent. Nothing. Instead the parent added an encore of Velcro squawks as he holstered. A minute later, he ripped Velcro and drew again. I watched from a few feet away, amazed as not one person in the audience interfered with the father-son duet de dissonance. Sontag came to mind. I bit my lip in an attempt to recapture the Steinway's serenade.

After arriving back home, I flipped through the pages of On Photography (1978). Skimming the pages, I re-read...to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude...Photographs objectify: they turn an event or a person into something that can be possessed. Sontag, in typical eloquence, reminds the reader that photography is also aggression...a form of pixillated piracy.

But, that particular parent was not so much swashbuckling saboteur as perhaps a tunnel-visioned trophy hunter...brimming with pride as he scrolled through his coffer of pixels...surveying the images seized in mid-song...broadcasting his self-absorption in morse code...beep-beep beep-beep. I was able to steal a peak at one of the digitized doubloons. After all that cacophony, the camera managed to seize, an icon of banality.... The anguish of the moment was amplified by the inability of the parent's photograph to ensnare an emblem of the enchanting melodies.

Yet, as I bring attention to this afternoon's fallow-centric photography incident...that act of subterfuge, whether intentional or inadvertent, resonates. The impulse to posses a moment is intoxicating, and seductive. Some are seduced by pride in their progeny, some by an intangible aesthetic, others by greed, still others by a sense of entitlement. I am hoping that you enjoy this new blog, the pictures and the captions. However, if my impulse to possess a moment is rendered into a visual equivalent of mechanical burps and such...let me know.