DARIN HAYTON

Category: Musings

  • He’s Still Alone

    He’s Still Alone

    Staring at his phone while leaning on a pillar, he swipes up as he reads. Maybe it’s an email from a colleague, or a text from a friend, or his favorite site that passes itself off as news. In any case, his phone has his undivided attention. He never glances up, never looks around, never seems to notice that he is alone on the platform. The world doesn’t impinge on his experience.

    I wonder if he is reading about how much the world has changed, about how the pandemic has changed the way we live and work. Perhaps he was reading at that moment how public transportation across the country is suffering from a decline in ridership, nobody commuting to and from work these days. I wonder what brings him out this evening, standing here on the platform, flicking his thumb along his phone and waiting for the train out of the city.

    A lone commuter waits for the train.

    I suspect in some important ways his life hasn’t changed. He was probably alone even when the platform was filled with other commuters. Each of them likewise alone, lost in the virtual worlds they hold in their hands. Eleanor Rigbys.

  • Stairway to …

    Stairway to …

    Stairways lure you to climb them, to see what might be stashed or hidden at the top (or the bottom). The brave explorer climbs slowly, stairs creaking under the weight of each footstep, hoping to find something, anything. Stairways also frighten. The threat of some monster lurking in the attic (or the basement).

    A stairway in the former Bell Telephone building leads to ….
  • Never Again

    Never Again

    Behind some pine trees, in the corner of the park, stands a swing set. The old, heavy-duty kind. All galvanized pipes, chain, and hard rubber that will probably survive armageddon. This swing set happens to be for toddlers, the seats those horribly uncomfortable baskets designed by somebody who can’t recall the abrasions and pain these caused. Nobody uses this swing set any longer. Or any of the metal playground equipment. It has all been replaced by garish plastic single-unit contraptions that come in hideously bright colors and are, no doubt, thought to be safer. These new playground sets are placed prominently in the park, where the stand out like sore thumbs and are regularly surrounded by young parents tending to their children who are “playing” on them.

    But how much has today’s “playing” changed from the days of see-saws and merry-go-rounds, tall slides, rings and bars, and swings? How much has safety from ever looming injury altered how and when kids “play”? Sure, we think today’s playground sets are less likely to scald your hands in the summer or freeze your skin off in the winter. Sure, we think today’s plastic slides might seem more forgiving than the metal ones of years ago. But at what cost? Today’s playground sets with all their built in “learning” activities don’t require the same creativity and resourcefulness, particularly when the parents are lurking about constantly telling their kids how to play. How much easier is it for kids to just conform to the parameters of “playing” the designers of playground sets and the parents lay out for them? And how will a kid ever learn that no, no matter how hard you try, you can’t swing all the way around the top bar in a circle?

    Will any kid use this swing again?

    But maybe we’ve consigned that form of play, a form founded in profound boredom and limited options, to the obscure corners of the park, behind some trees where few people will see it.

  • Stairs

    Stairs

    Wandering through town the other day I walked by a building I’ve passed a hundred times. The most interesting aspect of the building was the astrology and tarot card reader that had a shop there for a couple years. With that gone, I scarcely give the building a second look. For some reason, I paused, wandered around the side, and looked around. There, above me was a set of stairs, an emergency escape of some sort, nearly black against a uniform gray sky.

    How often does somebody climb or descend this set of stairs?

    I should pause more often, loiter around the buildings I have dismissed as uninteresting. Who knows what I might see.

  • Just arrows

    Just arrows

    In so many ways life hasn’t yet returned to normal. The trains and rail stations are still empty. So I wonder, why did somebody feel the need to place a new sticker on the ground indicating which way to go? How many commuters pass this spot on any given day?

    More arrows than people.

  • Look closely

    Look closely

    Linger for a moment to look closely at the shell in the display case. It has been there, the label claims, for more than a century. The curator who first selected it for display along with how many of the other workers who have tended to it over the years are now dead. Yet the shell continues to sit there, silently beckoning to occasional museum visitor. How many stop to appreciate its form?

    Just a shell.

    Perhaps only those who might also stop in a portico to admire the form of a staircase.

  • Look up

    Look up

    Carrying around a camera gives me license to look at things most of us walk past without noticing. The camera seems to give me permission to linger, to observe, to look around and behind, to look down and up. One rainy afternoon we took shelter in a portico. There in the shadows I noticed stairs leading up. I walked over and pushed gently on the ornate wrought-iron gate. It didn’t yield. Standing there in the middle, looking up, I wondered what I might find were I able to get past that gate.

    Where do these stairs lead, I still wonder.

    On second thought: maybe the camera doesn’t give me permission to linger. Maybe I’m just a lingerer and an observer, and I use a camera to justify to myself if not to others my fascination with the world around me.

  • Look down

    Look down

    I tend to spend the fall looking up at the trees to see the autumn colors. I particularly like the early fall as the leaves form a sort of autumnal spectrum of colors, ranging from deep burgundy in the upper most branches of a tree through flaming reds and oranges, to yellows, and on to greens in the lowest branches. The maples put on a particularly lovely display.

    But I also look down for the remnants of those autumnal spectra. The other morning after a gentle drizzle, two leaves lay on some paving stones not far from the maple where they had until recently hung.

    A pair of leaves lay on the ground, the rain having loosed them from nearby maple tree.
  • Yellows in November

    Yellows in November

    The arid forests of the Southwest are beautiful in the fall. Against backdrops of blue-gray junipers and piñons the vibrant yellows stand out. Cottonwoods are the iconic fall tree, and for good reason.

    Another cottonwood offers an impressive display of fall color in the Southwest.

    But look past the cottonwoods and you’ll see explosions of color everywhere.

    Fall colors in the Southwest are magical.

    Hikes and walks through these forests present chaotic scenes, often without a clear subject. In this way, they offer less popular photographic compositions—given the current vogue for dominate subjects—but call to mind the sometimes messy and busy compositions of people like Eliot Porter.

    A tree that will never again drop a leaf.

    Even when a single subject dominates the frame, you can’t escape the chaos that surrounds it.

    Fall color high above the desert in the Southwest.

    There’s a freedom to photographing the Southwest, a freedom that evokes the mythology of these wild and untamed lands, and the adventures they encourage.

    (These photos were taken during a trip to the Southwest one November not long ago.)

  • Falling and Fallen

    Falling and Fallen

    Autumn is here, bringing with it the drizzle of falling leaves and the carpet of those already fallen. Greens, yellows, reds, and browns, sometimes crowded together, sometimes by themselves. I wonder if they get lonely?

    Do leaves ever miss their branches or get lonely?