I know that it is probably not readily apparent, but I do think carefully about what images, out of the thousands I have, to post here. I try to establish a rhythm and a flow and a kind of dialogue with the pictures. Sort of like Be Bop for the eyes as a way to deconstruct the travel photo album. It may not always make sense to the viewer, but it occasionally makes sense to the writer. This image was taken in Paris. Not, I agree, the usual image one might bring back from that City of Light. But, it's one of the ones I was attracted to. The light there is so clear it almost hurts. The sky on a late Spring Day in Paris is almost beyond color. It's more like a substance. The early morning light is soft and glows. Perfect for a picture of some street art spray painted on the side of a building that I saw on my way to get my morning coffee.

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Sunlight in the morning paints these every changing patterns on my kitchen wall. It's not even that easy to figure out how these abstract squiggles and pools of light happen. They just do. I've caught the cat looking at them, too. It's just a good way to start a Summer day.

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Growing day by day, unknown to him until it hit him between the eyes, as clear as could be, was a mold on the shed door, where it was always a little wet, that appeared in the form of his grandmother's face. She had been dead since 1985.

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And, they're off...

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Like a bird on the wire....

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Another aimless abstraction for your pleasure and bemusement.

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He wanted to believe that he didn't really have any parents. His parents had been killed in a terrible and unfortunate accident involving a small private plane and an asteroid. The plane has been vaporized, leaving not even the smallest particle behind. The grown ups he lived with, he pretended, were his guardians, not his parents, and someday he would be free of even them.

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For the weekend, a random occurrence of abstraction.

It can happen almost anywhere.

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Lee Friedlander is God! I just want to get that fact established as soon as possible. His photography is meta information about who we are, here in America. In my mind, he neatly follows a trail first blazed by Kertesz, another member of the humanist pantheon. Friedlander has a mega show at the Museum of Modern Art in NY and it sure would be great to make it up there to see it. If you go, let me know. We could compare notes.

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The old man came to the sea wall almost everyday. He came to listen to the roll of the surf and to look out on the North Sea. And to rest and breathe the air. He started coming after his wife died after a long battle with cancer. He had been born here in this village and had spent his whole life here. Things were different then, before the Americans started to come with their hairy legs and their beautiful white teeth. And their money. Things were changing fast here. In the last year the Bakery and a hardware store closed for lack of business. There was a huge new American style grocery store up the road in Ipswich. People went there to get bread and plumbing needs. Course, you needed use of a car to do that. He had no car. He had only the use of his feet. So he came here to the sea wall to watch the sea birds and the brave few who swam in the cold water. And to enjoy the energy of youth that was all around him.

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Hot Do indeed! It's almost July and the days are long, the twilight in the evenings are longer. The Hot Dos are about the same as they always were. I don't know who 1st invented the ability to eat on the street while standing up, but whoever they were, they had a clear idea of what the future would be. Of that I'm certain. Eating "on the go" is a national theme. Maybe even an International Theme. Come to think of it, this could be something that brings all of us Human Beans together. Living in Peace. Eating "on the go". Enjoying a Hot Do with all the fixins. What else do we have in common that is so satisfying? Pass the mustard, please.

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This is an image of a ghost. Or ghosts. An empty storefront has its windows covered with plastic. The windows seem to be almost haunted themselves. You're not meant to be able to look inside to see what is left behind. The lights are on, but there's nobody home. The sun is shining brightly in a cloudless sky. It is late afternoon and someone is walking by on their way to somewhere else. They cast a long and deeply dark shadow. In a moment, they are gone and it's just the haunted windows again.

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My son said: "You took a picture of a COKE MACHINE?" And I said: "Yes." Coke machines are like technological bushes. They are planted around to make the place look more inviting. The car parked next to it sort of balanced out the scene. Also, the colors work well together with the coke machine being the thing that draws the eye over there to the left. I often take pictures of Coke machines. Why not? In 100 years, someone might find this image and go: "Oh! Look. A Coke Machine. Remember those?"

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There is something so dispiriting about these apartments. I don't know what it is that creeps me out so much or even why I should feel this way. They are like a gulag. The architecture seems to me to be inhuman. The wall around the complex only adds to this feeling. The color of the outside walls, the emptiness, all of that only adds up for me to a feeling of being alienated and alone. Yet, inside those walls I am sure that you could find joy and happiness and contentment. Maybe it is only from the outside that it looks like jail. Maybe it is only the outside that is meant to push me away.

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I can remember, dimly, when getting there was half the fun. I don't think that's true anymore. Getting there is just about none of the fun. Getting there is now work. There's traffic and in the traffic there's accidents caused sometimes by people who think that they're already there. There are highways and byways, but they look pretty much the same. And there are big, big, big trucks things for the people who like to get away with it all. This is a road that connects two other roads in Historic College Park where there is a Historic Airport that, since 9/11, isn't really permitted to be an airport anymore. Terrorists, apparently, might find the lure of a Cessna two-seater to be an irresistible weapon of mass destruction, so the small, private planes can't fly here so much anymore. It's too bad, because watching one of those small planes take off or land is like watching a miracle happen every single time.

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A Californian Oak tree in the fog at Big Sur.

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Sunset at Pfeiffer Beach, my favorite spot in California.

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There are still places in America where School Spirit is an important part of a community's character. School sporting events are still a big deal and well attended on steamy summer evenings. Where a shiny trophy is something to admire. Where the school and the children weave an important part of the social fabric. Where gymnastics is still fun.

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Gosh, but this would make a great painting! It's got color and texture and a kind of casual chaos that I like about so many abstract paintings. The black is like a void. Like a total void. So that the yellow seems to float above it. If painting were this easy, everyone would be doing it.

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He started coming to the park after his partner died. It was something to do. In the warmer months, he liked to watch the people who passed through it on their way to one of the museums or galleries. They were usually followed by school age children wearing shorts and cloth bill caps with sports team names on them. There were only a few other regulars at the park, and although he didn't know much about them, he knew them all by name. In the winter fewer of them came to sit and talk, but he himself never missed a day. It was better than sitting in the apartment, alone, in the quiet that was never filled. Watching the dust settle. Hearing the sounds of distant neighbors. Thinking about the time he had alone.

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It's back to the Bay this weekend, where the land meets the water before it finds the sea.

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I guess you'd have to call this minimal, but I like it non-the-less.

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It's the light that makes the difference. Without the cone of light here, this picture wouldn't "work" for me. It would be too "real" somehow. Ordinary. But the light makes it strange enough to merit a second look.

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As a child she would have dreams about swimming pools. She would dream of herself as a life guard, sitting high above the churning water, watching children younger than her, but looking very much the way she looked, play Marco Polo or play catch with Nerf Balls. There would be a satisfaction of being up so high, closer to the sun, and farther away from the dangers of water. There would be a satisfaction of sitting there, in a hot chrome seat, wearing sun glasses, and squinting into the sky, alone, and at peace.

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The lights are on, but nobody's home. It seems curious that the street light should be on during the day. Even a cloudy day. But this one was. Thank God for fossil fuels! Otherwise we'd all be in the dark.

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It's just a tease. The object of your desire is on the other side. If you squint just a little and look left of center, it can be seen. It is within your reach. It can be yours for the asking.

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There is a tree at the bottom of the steps leading to the Chesapeake Bay that flowers in the late Spring. I don't know what kind of tree it is. The flowers perfume the air, which is much needed at times of low tide or heavy rains, when Pennsylvania "flushes" and all of their "stuff" ends up floating down the Bay. But, sitting under the flowering branches on a wet stone and watching the sail boats drift by, and watching the clouds float by, and listening to the sea birds as the morning becomes afternoon is a grand thing indeed.

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The arrangement and the color of the stones are never the same. The composition changes with each high tide and is revealed anew with every low one.

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A change of scenary: Pinnacles National Park in California sits astride a fault line. One part of the these rock formations in a little north of Solidad. The matching set is several hundred miles south of Solidad. The topography looked like nothing else in the area around Solidad. It was like a foreign body set down in the middle of the coastal range.

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Somehow it continues to grow out of the stones.

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Okay, so this is one that goes with the one that follows this one.

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We went to the Bay this weekend and this mysterious image got taken somewhere between here and there. It wasn't until I moved it from the memory card and was able to view it larger that I figured out what it was. It seemed organic somehow, like the face of a black denim mountain. So, I'm posting it.

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If you look closely, you can see the whole world reflected in this building. There are people walking, people eating, cars being driven to some other place, a world of activity that isn't seen directly, but rather reflected and distorted and somehow changed by the glass. Sort of like radio signals from someplace far, far away.

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