In Evidence
Friday. Thunderstorms last night. Lightening. Exciting stuff and had I not been buried in the womb of a Lion's Inn motel room watching Once Upon A Time in the West on my company's laptop (occasionally reaching over to pet Ms. Emmy, forgetting she was back at the apartment in Oakland, half awaking during the night to subconsciously move my body as if there were a cat sleeping beside me who didn't need to be rolled by an old guy who weighed more than she did by a couple of factors of ten) had I not been thus entertained I would have crawled out of bed and shot a picture. Doesn't sound so bad, though, does it? “I weigh more than my cat by a factor of ten”. Doesn't sound so bad: eight pound cat, eighty pound me. Eighty pound me would be dead (but thin, my readers, thin) and two times a factor of ten me would be 160, alive and kicking, but with a sore butt every time I sat on a chair without a cushion. Life on the road, here in Oregon.
Since I'd driven ten hours Thursday, stopping for one or two photographs, not stopping for one or two photographs because I'd passed the opportunity to pull off the road just as I recognized them, I decided - this being my pattern: get in the car and drive drive drive for the last whatever number of times I've said I was going to take a leisurely drive up the coast to shoot pictures - I decided I don't really like taking leisurely drives up or down the coast to shoot pictures. It's taken me long enough to recognize this.
We'll see about photographing the people at automobile and motorcycle races in the next month. Laguna Seca is coming up in the middle of August and I have friends who are racing Harley Davidsons at Sears Point weekend after next. Will I get some good pictures? Will I find satisfaction and enlightenment cruising the pits, shooting grease monkeys and women in leather? One hopes but who knows until you've tried? Life is like that. It's dull and predictable and you know what it's about until wham, life shows you (for the umpteenth time) who's in charge and what's on the schedule. You think you'll kick back and have that second glass of wine when the alligators you flushed down the sewer in your youth crawl out of their hiding places looking for payback and dinner in your dotage.
Arrived around noon like a package on a conveyor belt, Oakland reality has become Portland reality on the way to Seattle, not an alligator in evidence.
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