Previously a tree stood on either side of this bench. Modest trees. Occasionally somebody would sit on the bench and look out over the park. I don’t recall when, but one day I noticed that one of the trees was gone. Just a small stump remained. Sometime later, the second tree was cut down. Nobody sits on the bench these days.
Urban #25031418.
Now flanked by two stumps, the bench slowly decays. Weather takes its toll on the wood and metal. It seems tired. Before long it will fall into ruin, another victim of neglect. Perhaps somebody will remove the broken slats and rusted metal. Then only the small, easily missed plaque will remain, stuck in the ground marking a small stump: “In memory of William B. …”
Date: 25 January 2025 Time: 4:34 pm Location: Metal Bench on Preston Field Knoll
suv rolls stop sign, doesn’t speed off but continues casually to next stop sign. seems to be in no hurry. brake lights flash, then it rolls that next sign too.
crows, three, land in a tree.
nobody in park. crows make a racket. squirrel digs in the snow.
woman with curly-haired dog enters far side of park, passes merry-go-round, continues clockwise around path past tennis court, walks between playground equipment and swings, crosses basketball court, leaves park.
nobody to be seen.
sound of bus in distance.
nondescript suburban noise.
school bus stops at stop sign. chains gangle as it slows and again as it speeds away. only a few kids still on bus.
car door slams shut.
sound of bells (fake) at haverford school. it is 4:45 pm.
jeep parks by stop sign. young woman gets out, carries bag to house on corner, enters.
nondescript suburban noise.
wm. henderson heating van turns at stop sign, drives up street.
three cars in a row slow at stop sign.
crow flies overhead.
gray car pulls into drive. person gets out, goes to passenger side, carries bags of groceries (?) into house.
woman jogs along sidewalk.
postal truck stops as stop sign, turns right.
squirrel hops through snow, stops, digs, continues hopping.
woman with large black dog crosses street, walks along path to corner of park, crosses street again, walks away from park.
two boys cut across field.
group of runners (from haverford college?) talk loudly as they run down street.
wm. henderson heating van (same one?) drives down street, turns at stop sign.
black car hardly slows at stop sign. hardly slows at next one.
blue subaru stops in front of house. man gets out. carrying nothing, he goes into house.
more crows land in a tree. caw loudly.
school bus driving other direction, stops at stop sign. but for the driver, it is empty.
I was out walking to clear my head, or to find peace, or to have a break from the chaos around me. I had a lot on my mind and, well, as they say solvitur ambulando.
He was in the hospital. Had been for three weeks. He was not doing well, refusing either to get worse or better. The options for tomorrow were bad and bad. Prioritizing his health denied his freedom and autonomy. Respecting his wishes ensured an agonizing end, for everybody, and put others at risk. There was no good solution, just versions of bad. All made worse by an inversion of traditional roles. I needed to grab my camera and go for a walk. The afternoon made manifest the murkiness of my own thoughts.
Landscape #241230.
I walked for miles that afternoon. By the time I arrived back at the house, I had decided on a way forward. Lurking somewhere in the recesses of my mind, however, was the fear that this would go all wrong. The fog obscured both the landscape that afternoon and the particular contours of my fear. Now four months later, the fog has cleared, revealing my fears.
Unless you had a darkroom and some motivation, film made it inconvenient to use aspect ratio as a creative option. Film came in standard sizes. If you thought a particular scene looked best in a square format, you reached for your 6×6 camera that shot square negatives. If the next scene leant itself to a panorama, you had to dig out the XPan or the 6×17 Shen Hao. Maybe you saw a scene that would look amazing on 1.31×1 ratio. Now you need a 110 Instamatic. Sure, you could shoot any scene on any ratio film and crop once you saw the enlargements, but then you would have wasted all that silver. And you had to find a place that would print enlargements that didn’t fall into one of the typical formats.
When shooting film, physical and commercial constraints discouraged (and still discourage) thinking about aspect ratio as part of the creative process.
Digital files, editing software, and photo printers lower the barrier to using different aspect ratios. Now it is easy to pick any aspect ratio that helps realize some creative vision. Sure, you might be “throwing away all those pixels,” but who cares? Pixels are cheap. Paper is relatively inexpensive and easy to trim. You can do more than crop to “isolate the subject.” Now it is easy to use different aspect ratios to achieve different goals.
Urban #250417.0.Urban #250417.1.
I love having the option to pick any aspect ratio, from square to extremely rectangular. I walk around and can think in particular ways about how to create a photograph from a portion of a scene. I use aspect ratio to create the photographs I want to see.
Walking along N. 44th street, for example, I saw three different scenes that seemed, to me, to lend themselves to an extremely narrow aspect ratio. A column of windows on the side of a hotel and five exterior landings at another hotel are perhaps obvious. The hallway of lights reflected in a mirror was, perhaps, a little less so.
Urban #250417.2.
In any event, the tyranny of aspect ratio is over.
When I reach the ridge, I see the scattering of utility poles. Their diminutive size, their construction, and the material all contribute to a sense of old. They bring power to a handful of houses, now owned by wealthy people who want to pretend they are also important. Signs all over the place screaming “Private Property” and “Do Not Enter” and “Private Road.” All five of the guys from that ’60s electrical band would be angry.
Urban #250222.
These hills and trails and firebreaks used to be open to the public, though not many people bothered to come up here. They weren’t maintained, weren’t sanitized. I don’t know if that was the draw, but it added to the attraction. You wandered up into these mountains because they differed from the paved streets below. And you wandered, following this game trail or that path, or climbed up that firebreak.
City planning and isolationist residents have tried to funnel people onto a single main trail. The traffic is destroying the trail (thanks in large part to mountain bike riders who insist on cutting the trails and dragging their rear tire down the steep sections). Before long the entire distance will be little more than a graded dirt road.
Urban #240105.
I sit up here in the evening and enjoy the quiet. The past was not better than the present, just different. It’s hard to imagine that one day somebody will look back longingly at this present and see it as the past. Will that person here the incessant “ding ding ding” of the bell on a mountain bike as it and rider careen down the trail?
I had just finish breakfast at Kelcy’s and looked to avoid the day’s tasks. So I walked along Tehachapi Blvd. Just a couple of blocks, the downtown section. It has a dated feel. Not like the retro-revival main streets in so many upscale cities — Tehachapi doesn’t have the wealth to support or the culture to put up with retro-revival. No. Tehachapi is more honest with itself and visitors.
Urban #250207.0.
I have long found the signs along here interesting. I have taken countless pictures of “The Burger Spot,” its simple, faded design often stands out against the blue sky. The burgers and fries are tasty. Today, I enjoyed the person standing outside the liquor store, having just exited carrying the morning’s beverage.
Urban #250207.2.
Kelcy’s is all the rage in the summer months, when “hikers” fill the booths and take up much of the counter space. Tehachapi used to be a significant stop on the railroad, as the local museum will tell you. Today, trains slow as they pass through town but don’t stop. Hikers, however, seem to fill the town, telling stories of their adventures along the PCT. They seem more devoted to talking about hiking than about hiking.
Urban #250207.3.
Businesses that don’t cater to the hikers passing through have a tougher time of it. This building has been an auto parts store, a secondhand shop, and an arts center. I suspect it won’t be long before the arts center becomes something else.
I had planned to walk from gate A5 to B16, about half a mile in PHX. However, my flight arrived at A5 scant moments before they closed the boarding door at B16. A frantic dash through the airport merely got me to the customer assistance counter a few minutes quicker than walking would have. Rebooked on a flight the next morning, I was going to be spending the night in the hotel version of tofu: soft, beige, tasteless, forgettable.
Urban #250417.0.
I don’t find Phoenix particularly pleasant. Too much sprawl. But I can enjoy spending an evening anywhere. And so N. 44th Street it was. Lots of cars, nondescript office buildings, more tofu hotels, empty lots, and gas stations. I passed some guy out for a late-night run, a guy sitting on a plastic bucket panhandling, and some teenagers in a parking lot. And lots and lots of cars.
Urban #250417.1.
It wasn’t a pretty walk, by any stretch of the imagination, but I enjoyed it. Why were there so many people driving and where were they going? Who thought an escape room would do well here? Why do you convert a gas station into a spa? And it’s hard to take seriously the Pat Tillman Middle School’s commitment to excellence and achievement when half their sign is burnt out.
Urban #250417.2.
I’m not sure I’m better for having seen N. 44th Street, and never need to see it again. But it was more fun than sitting in a bland hotel room.
I had an hour to waste, so I walked around the block, a bunch of times. I looked in the various windows as I circled Castle Green. I had crashed a wedding there once, years ago. I was promptly thrown out. The old women talking in the sitting room looked disapprovingly at me as if they recognized me as the wedding crasher. The woman arranging wedding dresses stood out starkly in her no-nonsense all black outfit moving amongst the elegant white and ivory dresses. One time around she had left her soda can in the window, a garish splash of color. By my next pass, it was gone.
The violin shop caught my attention — I hadn’t expected to see a violin repair shop. Each time I passed the windows I noticed something else. I was fascinated by the evidence of craftsmanship — the tools, the disheveled workbench, the repurposed shampoo.
Urban #250228.1.
One time I passed and saw the man working. I watched for a few minutes, a master at his trade. I wonder how much work he has these days. His shop was packed with instruments, if that means anything.
Urban #250228.2
My afternoon with Castle Green will surely become a zine.
The trains pass slowly through town. I could probably run alongside and climb on. I wonder where I would end up. Years ago, when a freight line still ran through the local town, I did climb on. Hours later it stopped outside some dusty town. I got off and went in search of a phone. Today I resisted the urge to go for a ride. Instead, I watched and imagined where this train loaded with freight was headed.
Urban #250207.1.
Flatcar after flatcar each carrying two combat vehicles. Hundreds of them rumbled slowly by. Millions of dollars of sophisticated military equipment. And yet, how banal: a “packing list” duck-taped to each one, as if they are nothing more than typical Amazon packages.
Urban #250207.2.
I wonder if there’s a return shipping label inside too?
One day I saw an oil painting of corner in some quotidian street corner in an unnamed (and unremarkable) Dutch town. I was struck by the vivid blue sky and the bold orange and red of the buildings. Two figures stood at the corner. Corners, I thought.
Urban #250109.
What can I do with corners? There are remarkably few corners in suburbia, and fewer people walking — one of the many features/flaws of suburbia. If I were more creative, I would find some way to make the Land Rovers and Teslas interesting subjects. But I’m not. So into the city I went in search of interesting corners.
Urban #250201.1.
Chilly winter days, bright blue sky, pedestrians bundled up to stay warm. Just what I was looking for.
