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.
Lately I have been inspired by the long-exposure photos of Alexey Titarenko. I think his “City of Shadows” is beautiful and haunting. To be sure, some of my fascination comes from my fascination with 1990s St. Petersburg. Nonetheless, I find the images lovely. So I thought I would try some long or, in this case, multiple exposures
Urban #230911.
The local café is convenient and has reasonable coffee, so I am practicing there. I like the look, but need to find a better location. I should head into the city one night. Maybe if we get snow this winter. I have some places in mind that will, I hope, look good.
I stop here every year for gas, tacos, and supplies. I often spend a night in town. When I do, it’s always a burger and slice of pie at Ray’s. This time I spent a few hours wandering around town. I passed two older women sitting in their yard, with a friendly but yappy little dog. I chatted with them while I played with the dog. I wandered past abandoned houses, closed hotels, and a nice, modern school, well-tended lawns and weed-strewn dirt lots, a well-stocked market, and an aspirational train stop. Back on Broadway, I kept hoping somebody would come by with a ball so we could play. Alas, nobody ever did. Probably just as well since I doubt the beer at Frank’s Pizza is ice cold, and I’m lousy at basketball.
Urban #230611.
One day this will all change. Many of the old buildings will be razed to make way for soulless new ones if the Holiday Inn at the far end of town is any clue. When that happens, I will be particularly glad I spent time documenting the town before it was destroyed.
I wonder if Frank’s will still be here when I visit next year.
I don’t know quite how to begin. These ideas are just beginning to take shape. Maybe I can start simply, by describing what concerns me, what seems, at least to me, to be a problem.
The other day, while stopped at a traffic light, the two people in the car next to me were both consumed by their phones; behind them on the corner a pedestrian stared at his phone as he leaned on the light pole waiting for a walk signal. This morning as I stood third in line to order coffee, the person in front of me hunched over her phone. The woman behind me at the market, having loaded her groceries onto the belt, pulled out her phone while I paid my bill. When I look around, such scenes repeat themselves everywhere — we don’t dare spend a single moment in idleness. I worry we have lost something important by filling every instance with an endless source of distractions.
Urban #230510.2.
Neil Gaimon is reported to have said: “Ideas come from daydreaming. They come from drifting. So if you want to get a good idea for a book, you have to let yourself get so bored that your mind has nothing better to do than tell itself a story.” Gaimon’s point applies to more than writing books. Daydreaming, drifting, boredom are the source of and essential for creativity. In idleness we become bricoleurs, collecting fragments of the world around us that we arrange into something new.
Urban #230510.3.
Most of the things we create will seem, at first glance, of little value, but upon reflection we might begin to appreciate both the process of creating them and, now and then, the things themselves. Each item will, after all, be something we have made, something we have added to the universe, proof that we have been here. Each will reflect us at a particular moment. Photographs, for example. Through a process of selection and exclusion, each one is an assembly of pieces from the world around me. Each reflects ideas and anxieties, joys and sorrows of a particular moment and a particular place. Each also offers a seed for later reflection, a chance to try to recover what concerned me at the time or opportunity to tell myself a story about what happened to the scene afterwards.
Urban #230510.4.
Bricolage is the process of assembling the fragments of your surroundings into something new — Gaimon’s comment about telling yourself a story. It’s what the bricoleur does, it’s what the author and the creator do. It takes practice to fit pieces together, to grasp how different shards can be combined into a harmonious whole. Idleness, boredom, drifting — these are the times we practice assembling those shards into something coherent and new. If we deny ourselves those idle moments we deny ourselves the chance to have ideas. When we outsource those ideas to algorithms and other people (who are, typically aping something they have seen on their phones), we lose the ability to think and create for ourselves.
Urban #230510.5.
The world is a fascinating place, if we just take the time to look around, if we lose ourselves in doing nothing. Idleness is, it seems, essential to creation.
I wonder how much of the vogue for photographs to express some deeper meaning relates to Szarkowski’s mirror-window dichotomy? It seems to me there is a strong preference of late for a rather blunt or simplistic version of the mirror side of the dichotomy, echoed in the oft repeated disdain for “merely aesthetic” or “calendar” photos (I’ve mused about this before). Photographs that hint at the inner, psychological states of the photographer garner praise and elicit awe (usually phrased something like, “I don’t really get it, but …” or “I don’t really like it, but …”). Somewhat paradoxically, those same photos are rarely considered pretty. How often have I heard a person compliment a photograph but then say they wouldn’t hang it on their wall.
Urban #181230.2
I need to go read Szarkowski’s Mirrors and Windows. American Photography since 1960 and see how in 1978 he characterized the distinction. I suspect most photography falls somewhere between the two. It is, again I suspect, less a dichotomy and more a spectrum. I don’t make photographs that reveal or hint at or otherwise broadcast my inner states of being, at least not in a blunt or crude way. But the camera always points both ways, is always a mirror and a window, and so all my photographs necessarily emerge from my psychological space. So while the “calendar” photos I take are, I hope, “merely aesthetically” pleasing, they also do more than merely look pretty on a wall.
