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Sight from today’s dog walk. Click for high-res photo

Sight from today’s dog walk.

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PHOTO: a recent example of the many subway photographs Blake Eskin has shot and posted using Instagram. ——————— Of all the many many people, including me, who have photographed strangers on subways and trains, I thought of Eskin when I reached this passage today in the novel Rules of Civility: Though taken more than twenty-five years earlier, the photographs had never been shown publicly. Evans apparently had some sort of concern for his subjects’ privacy. This may sound strange (or even a little self-important) when you consider that he had photographed them in such a public place. But seeing their faces lined along on the wall, you could understand Evans’s reluctance. For, in fact, the pictures captured a certain naked humanity. Lost in thought, masked by the anonymity of their commute, unaware of the camera that was trained so directly upon them, many of these subjects had unknowingly allowed their inner selves to be seen. … It happens to all of us. It’s just a question of how many stops it takes. Two for some. Three for others. Sixty-eighth Street. Fifty-ninth. Fifty-first. Grand Central. What a relief it was, those few minutes with our guard let down and our gaze inexact, finding the one true solace that human isolation allows. Click for high-res photo

PHOTO: a recent example of the many subway photographs Blake Eskin has shot and posted using Instagram.

———————

Of all the many many people, including me, who have photographed strangers on subways and trains, I thought of Eskin when I reached this passage today in the novel Rules of Civility:

Though taken more than twenty-five years earlier, the photographs had never been shown publicly. Evans apparently had some sort of concern for his subjects’ privacy. This may sound strange (or even a little self-important) when you consider that he had photographed them in such a public place. But seeing their faces lined along on the wall, you could understand Evans’s reluctance. For, in fact, the pictures captured a certain naked humanity. Lost in thought, masked by the anonymity of their commute, unaware of the camera that was trained so directly upon them, many of these subjects had unknowingly allowed their inner selves to be seen.

… It happens to all of us. It’s just a question of how many stops it takes. Two for some. Three for others. Sixty-eighth Street. Fifty-ninth. Fifty-first. Grand Central. What a relief it was, those few minutes with our guard let down and our gaze inexact, finding the one true solace that human isolation allows.

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Sights from this afternoon’s run with Lulu the dog.

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frozen raspberry thawing in our kitchen sink right now

Time to quote Rilke again:

If your everyday life seems to lack material, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to summon up its riches, for there is no lack for him who creates and no poor, trivial place.

Sightings of great literature in cheap paperback format make me unreasonably happy. I love colored endpapers and a two-color foil-stamped cover as much as the next guy. But I hate the thought that a one-size-fits-all price would ever prevent someone from buying a book they’d love. Only yesterday I couldn’t get myself to hand over 22 bucks for Wislawa Szymborska’s 96-page Here. Offer me a paperback. Offer me motel-room-Bible-grade paper stock and a binding I’ll need to mend with duct tape midway through the first read. I won’t come crying when a few pages rip. The photo above is from today. I found this copy of Pale Fire on a nonprofit’s 25-cents-a-book cart. I talked it up. I declaimed “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure of the windowpane” to an audience made up of one third-grader, one fourth-grader, and one fellow dad. The dad shelled out his 25 cents and bought the book, which will only encourage my grating evangelism. Click for high-res photo

Sightings of great literature in cheap paperback format make me unreasonably happy. I love colored endpapers and a two-color foil-stamped cover as much as the next guy. But I hate the thought that a one-size-fits-all price would ever prevent someone from buying a book they’d love.

Only yesterday I couldn’t get myself to hand over 22 bucks for Wislawa Szymborska’s 96-page Here. Offer me a paperback. Offer me motel-room-Bible-grade paper stock and a binding I’ll need to mend with duct tape midway through the first read. I won’t come crying when a few pages rip.

The photo above is from today. I found this copy of Pale Fire on a nonprofit’s 25-cents-a-book cart. I talked it up. I declaimed “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure of the windowpane” to an audience made up of one third-grader, one fourth-grader, and one fellow dad. The dad shelled out his 25 cents and bought the book, which will only encourage my grating evangelism.

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A belatedly posted sight from my Saturday afternoon run with Lulu, our fast, young dog. Click for high-res photo

A belatedly posted sight from my Saturday afternoon run with Lulu, our fast, young dog.

THE LIGHT INSIDE THIS MORNING

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Last night, I started Rilke’s Letters To A Young Poet and found words that rhyme with the spirit that’s guided my photography for the last seven years or so:

If your everyday life seems to lack material, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to summon up its riches, for there is no lack for him who creates and no poor, trivial place.