Posts in Category: Scholars & Rogues
To Michele on our 20th anniversary
After 20 years
I don’t have it
in me anymore
to not love you
more than my life
more than mankind
more than any life
but yours.
You have saved me
so many times
from myself
I’m pretty sure
you hold the mortgage
on my soul.
If I believed in souls.
If I did
you would be one,
an immense, timeless
born-before-god-and-sin
holy, anti-entropy soul.
And I love you
more than
any version of god
anyone ever invented
and sold by the pound
to the poor, needy,
and helpless.
You are better than all of that, ever.
You are beyond that
in my uneasy mind,
a mind troubled by
literally every fucking thing
but you.
I want to hold on to you
to love you
and have you
near me
for 100 years more.
Alive, I mean.
I know you knew that.
There’s no sin
in the simplicity
of hoping for
an impossible wish.
I already got one: you.
And I want
another 100 years of you,
because the 20
we’ve been married
just doesn’t
seem like enough.
(In California in 1991, 2005, and 2019. See my other work here and here.)
How we get to the snacks
So, the coronavirus, yeah. How are you holding up? It’s crazy out there, right? Not like ‘violence in the streets’ crazy, not yet, but nutty enough. I really hope you’ve got enough savings and food and family support and job security to get though this as painlessly as possible.
I’ve been going out every day, mostly just to my local grocery store a few blocks from my house to get Dr Pepper and cigarettes. And I started a little project photographing people wearing masks, at food stores and elsewhere, to protect themselves from viral infection. It’s not a world-changing project, but it’s something to keep me occupied while we’re all mostly stuck at home all day.
So I hope you enjoy the photos here, and the growing number of photographs I’m compiling here. Thanks for having a look.
At a Grocery Outlet in San Francisco
Waiting in line outside a Nijiya Market in San Francisco
At Midtown Market here in Brisbane, California
(San Francisco and Brisbane, California, March, 2020. See my other work here and here.)
Convenience
I’ve shopped in a lot of 7-11s in my life.
Maybe you have too.
I only started photographing people I’d encounter at 7-11 a few years ago. I was a public school substitute teacher in 2016 and 2017, and I used to stop by whatever store was on my way to work for a Dr Pepper and some kind of donut for breakfast.
I’m not a school teacher any longer, but I still treasure my 7-11 adventures. See more of the people I met at the convenience store here. I hope you enjoy them.
(Photographed in South San Francisco, California in September and November, 2016 and in May, 2017. See my other work here and here.)
On New Year’s Eve, 2019
On New Year’s Eve
I always get weird.
I think about my failures,
for there’ve been more of those
than successes.
I think about my wife,
her gentle, enduring beauty,
and about my life
and how it’s going to unfold
in the next 20 or 30 years.
If I have that long.
I’m closer to death now
than I ever have been before.
So are you.
You know that, right?
Every little day
closer to the big sleep.
And when mine comes
I hope you’ll be at the party,
a big party,
for I will have raged against dying.
Raged hard, obstinate, and fiercely.
Hell, I’m fighting death now.
I mean, aren’t we all?
I’m fighting it all the time.
Because it’s going to be 2020 in about 12 hours,
and, you know, I have shit to do.
(Brisbane, California, November and December, 2019. See my other work here and here.)
Christmas Eve, 2019
The blade runner time
didn’t start this year,
no flying cars,
but we have more artificial people than ever.
Many of them are running our supposed country,
for example.
So I’m sitting here, smoking,
waiting for the demons and imps,
the ones I usually hold at bay,
to come beating down
the walls of my mind
and demand their Christmas presents.
The bastards, they think
because they have a place in my head
they’ve earned a place in my head.
They think
it’s all about me,
but it’s all about them,
and how I’m going to try again
this year
to evict them by drowning them in eggnog.
(Brisbane, California, November and December, 2019. See my other work here and here.)
Let’s skip life
It’s how we practice flying…
Some people
are able
to just
skip through life
and look good
doing it…
(Brisbane, California, April 2019. See my other work here and here.)
My week of shooting, 28 April 2019
Codename: McDonald’s Hamburger Eyes
Because I live about two miles south of the San Francisco city and county line, my photographic work continues to evolve and to benefit from the rich cultural, religious, and ethnic diversity of this area. It also benefits from living with two loveably-insane cats…
- This week I got a big boost professionally from Hamburger Eyes, a highly-regarded Los Angeles photo magazine that has just published some of my cat photographs in its latest issue. The photos are from my ongoing “Kitty Noir” photo series about my cats Kuroneko and Mikadzuki, which you can see here.
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Thursday I stopped into a Daly City McDonald’s for a snack, and congratulated myself for deciding at the last second to walk inside instead using the drive-thru…
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As I left that McDonald’s, this woman asked me for a light and some change. I gave her both, and felt a kind of peace and comfort while standing in front of her. Visually she reminded me of CCH Pounder.
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On Friday “Avengers: Endgame” opened nationwide at a theater near you, but I’m sure you knew that. Huge American movies like this follow us everywhere. They watch us as much as we watch them. This photo is also on Flickr.
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Saturday in Brisbane I encountered a Sikh and his family. And I think once you’ve photographed a suburban Sikh dad who’s wearing coordinated shades of pink, you’ve reached some kind of visual pinnacle. He is also on Flickr.
That’s it for now. Until next time see my other work here and here.
Remember: people and the world are more beautiful, odd, and interesting than you think, you just have to stop and look long enough to notice.
My week of shooting, Easter Sunday 2019
“It’s easy to be a holy man on the top of a mountain”…
Tuesday I was in this pre-apocalyptic part of San Francisco right next to the 101 freeway that’s a mixture of big box retailers, warehouses, fast food joints, and a few liquor stores. Homelessness abounds in that part of town, so I wasn’t oblivious when this frail, gentle old man wheeled his shopping cart up to me and asked for spare change.
I gave him a few $1 bills and took a few photos of him, with his permission, during our transaction. And although he didn’t say “What would Jesus do?” while we briefly spoke, I keep looking at my photograph of him and thinking that the question and his image would fit together perfectly.
And for me the answer is I don’t know what Jesus would have done, but I know what I would’ve done if I wasn’t too broke myself to do it…
This photograph is also on Flickr. And please have a look at my other work here and here.
Remember: people and the world are more beautiful, odd, and interesting than you think, you just have to stop and look long enough to notice.
My week of shooting, 7 April 2019
Be your happy self, peoples…
If you’ve seen this column before, you know what it’s about. If you haven’t, you’ll figure it out quickly. So I’m just going to get right to it because life as it unfolds is often patently obvious in its meaning and intent…
- Sunday, March 31st, my wife and I went to Alemany Flea Market in San Francisco, where I encountered a young man with a box on his head (it was really sunny) and a young woman in a foam rubber wig (she was really stylish)…
- Later on Sunday I went to a wake at the Brisbane Eagles hall for a local Brisbane character I’d known for decades. See other images from the wake here and here…
- Monday was my 19th wedding anniversary. To celebrate, my wife and I drove down to Alice’s Restaurant in Woodside, California for lunch. Like the song for which it is named, the restaurant is very overrated, but they have a nice kitty there…
- Tuesday I drove into San Francisco to meet a friend for lunch. On the way I photographed this young homeless man at the Octavia Street off-ramp after giving him all the change I had in my pocket…
- I was in San Francisco again on Friday to pick up a dear friend at St. Mary’s Medical Center. This hospital attendant wheelchaired my friend down to the passenger loading zone, where I had literally half a second to get this shot…
That’s it for now. Until next time see my other work here and here.
Remember: people and the world are more beautiful, odd, and interesting than you think, you just have to stop and look long enough to notice.
My week of shooting, 24 March 2019
Codename: Homeless Dancing Albinism
Photographically speaking, I had a great week. It was full of the brief but enriching encounters with people that drive home to me why I’m a photojournalist. Even in the most mundane places, and my life right now encompasses a LOT of mundane places, I observe instances of friendliness, open-heartedness, and joy that keep me hopeful that all of us just might be okay if we don’t burn it all down…
- On St. Patrick’s Day, an affable homeless man and the dollar bill I’d just given him at a freeway off-ramp in San Francisco…
- Tuesday at my local grocery store I was on line with a lady and her dog, so I did what I do and photographed them both…
- On Friday while having a quick bite at Costco I shared a table with this little girl with albinism and her mother…
- Later on Friday I stopped by the Brisbane Eagle’s hall for a memorial to a guy I barely knew. But the dancing was good, and this kid owned the dance floor…
- On Saturday it was a nosh at McDonald’s, and an encounter with this cool teenager who smiled despite the new braces on his teeth…
That’s it for this week. Until next seek see my other work here and here.
Remember: people and the world are more beautiful, odd, and interesting than you think, you just have to stop and look long enough to notice.