I sit outside in the fading light after a day at the factory with the feral cat, a male cardinal, a glass of scotch and a bad belly. The feral cat stays around after eating much longer than usual. She preens herself on the deck or in the mulch, ignoring my overtures of friendship but enjoying, I think, the safety I seem more and more to her to provide. I don't want a pet, but everything desires safety if not love. In youth, I distrusted safety, of course. It was a bourgeois concept. There is no safety, I would say, only the illusion and entrapment, remembering the old fable of the wolf and the dog. But I am safety for the feral cat and she looks all the better for it.
The whiskey is merely to counter the bad belly. It is not a terrible belly, but it is a bad belly that is actively uncertain. The whiskey settles it for which I am grateful. There is a utility in liquor for sure. I don't usually have my first whiskey this early, but tonight I do out of necessity. As it settles the stomach, it dulls the senses. The sun is sinking. It is dark.
I took all of these color slide images in one afternoon walking around a part of town fairly alien to me. I must have been on fire. I remember getting them back from the lab thinking that they were really something. I was becoming a star at the university then, but I was soon to leave and return to a normal, working existence. I would strive and struggle, and for a long time, photography was left behind. These were in many ways the end of the beginning of what might have been a photographic dream. But that story is familiar beyond fascination.
No comments:
Post a Comment