Impromptu

An impromptu photo-taking trip to an abandoned barn with A this afternoon. I am really going to miss that girl.

What the Camera Sees

from "Fontanelles"
Anne Michaels

The chemistry of looking;
to look until the river
swallows us, until the redness
of the stone fills our veins.
To look until we're
seen. But this is only longing.
We leave our heat shadows
in moss shocked with frost.
Even your camera
sees more; the detail you crave.
We strain to see even
what the camera sees,
what the eye can't; and this is as good
as a philosophy. An embrace
of failure, as if
just once, impossibly,
we'll catch the visible reflection
of what's invisible.
Our white breath in the dark.

How to photograph this,
the dark when one has said
too much. The dark of 
sudden feeling. Love's
darkness.


Here's where the new blog name comes from. It's no secret that I seriously love Anne Michaels' work. She's one of the authors I am dealing with in my thesis. If I take a PhD, she will be one of the authors I deal with in my dissertation. So, it seems appropriate to select a phrase from one of her poems to define this blog. The ache, the longing, contained in this passage are the perfect description of how I feel about photography.

Proud of Myself

I would just like to take a moment to brag about how much furniture I have assembled over the past few days. All of my stuff arrived on Friday night, and most of my furniture was from Ikea, so it was flat-packed and needed to be assembled. This seemed like a great idea. It takes up way less space that way and is less likely to be damaged in the move. Plus, when I planned this, my stuff was supposed to arrive when my parents and Sally were still here to help me. This didn't pan out, and come Friday night it was seeming like the worst plan in the world. Since then I have, all by myself, assembled a double bed, a dresser, a nightstand, a vanity table, two arm chairs, a bookcase, a desk, two stools, a kitchen table and two kitchen chairs. I actually have the beginnings of calluses on my palms and thumbs from all of this, but I feel so accomplished. Plus I am now basically a professional Ikea-furniture assembler. I could probably go into business. All the hard work has totally been worth it though. I pretty much hated the apartment when I arrived, but now at least I have real furniture, and real dishes, and actual knives. I was so excited the first morning I could use my toaster. And I am now in love with my little living room setup. It's so cute and happy and full of lamps. Seriously love it. So now I am almost done. I just have to organize my office supplies, organize my closet, and hang pictures. I am rather proud of myself.

The Places We Have Lived

Phantom Limbs
Anne Michaels

                "The face of the city changes more quickly, alas! than the mortal
                heart."
                                                     - CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

So much of the city
is our bodies. Places in us
old light still slants through to.
Places that no longer exist but are full of feeling,
like phantom limbs.

Even the city carries ruins in its heart.
Longs to be touched in places
only it remembers.

Through the yellow hooves
of the ginkgo, parchment light;
in that apartment where I first
touched your shoulders under your sweater,
that October afternoon you left keys
in the fridge, milk on the table.
The yard - our moonlight motel -
where we slept summer's hottest nights,
on grass so cold it felt wet.
Behind us, freight trains crossed the city,
a steel banner, a noisy wall.
Now the hollow diad
floats behind glass
in office towers also haunted
by our voices.

Few buildings, few lives
are built so well
even their ruins are beautiful.
But we loved the abandoned distillery:
stone floors cracking under empty vats,
wooden floors half rotted into dirt,
stairs leading nowhere, high rooms
run through with swords of dusty light.
A place the rain still loved, its silver paint
on rusted things that had stopped moving it seemed, for us.
Closed rooms open only to weather,
pungent with soot and molasses,
scent-stung. A place
where everything too big to take apart
had been left behind.


I'm moving across the country in three weeks. This is both exciting and terrifying. I'm excited because I'm headed to a province I dearly love and find exceptionally beautiful. I'm terrified because I am moving somewhere that I know no one and am leaving behind the people who are dearest to me in the world.

It's funny how places retain the people who inhabit them. How a location can bring back a flood of memories. How going somewhere can make you remember someone who is long gone or who you haven't thought about in a long time. We leave impressions on places it seems; sometimes they are visible and sometimes they are invisible. We literally leave our mark on places with buildings and possessions, the kinds of things that archeologist uncover, but we leave a less tangible mark on a place. And a place leaves a mark on us. It's such a strange thing to ponder, but it's something I think about often, and all the more often as I wrench myself out of the place I grew up in.