Sometimes, if you want to catch a shadow, you must become a shadow

A couple of days ago, I was about to go walking, but was most distressed to discover that I had forgot to charge the battery to my G10 pocket camera. So, instead, I grabbed my big, heavy, 1Ds 3 and set out to walk and to carry the damn thing.

Here I am, headed down Brockton, in the direction toward where Dan lives. Dan is a veteran who has suffered some bad injuries to his back and neck. At least half the time when I walk this way, I find him outside his apartment, smoking a cigarette and exercising his cats.

So I stop and we talk, about many things.

There have been times that the light has fallen on him in a most beautiful way and I have wanted to photograph him, but he is perhaps the most painfully camera shy man that I have ever met, so I haven't.

I contemplated the problem as I walked, wondering how I might finally photograph him - if he was out. I had not seen him since before I left for the Slope in June and I was a little worried.

He had suffered a heart attack last spring, so there was just no telling.

But on this day, he was out, smoking his cigarette. His cats were hanging out in the nearby shadows. He said he had not seen me for so long that he had grown worried. "There's just no telling, you know," he emphasized.

So I told him about the latest accident, how Margie had fallen and injured her knee, broken her femur.

That reminded him of an experience he had in the Army. He described it as having taken place in a pit, where he had to wrestle a big man. He called him a "mullet," or something like that. He was a lot bigger then Dan, and heavier too, but Dan had to wrestle him anyway.

"Look," the mullet told him. "I don't want to hurt you, so why don't you just go down easy and the match will be over."

But Dan wasn't going to do that. He was in it to win and if he couldn't then he was going to go down wrestling.

So the mullet wrapped his arms around him and bent him in half and tore the ligaments in one knee. "It hurt like hell," he said, "so I can sympathize with your wife." 

He was out of commission for awhile and the Army tried to discharge him on the grounds that he was no longer physically fit, but he fought the discharge and won.

"Is your shadow as camera shy as you are?" I asked, after he finished the story.

"No," he answered. "My shadow is not camera shy at all."

So I photographed our shadows doing what we do - mine, gripping a shadow camera, his, smoking a shadow cigarette.

And then I photographed the cat, Varmit. I was surprised that Varmit let me get so close. He didn't use to be like that. Varmit used to spook easily.

"I got him neutered," Dan explained. "He's not so shy anymore."

One day before I left for the Slope, I had come by and had found Dan feeling pretty bad. Varmit had peed on his couch. The cat had never done such a thing before.

And now he was neutered.

Varmit.

Today, I did not walk but rode my bike. I had intended to ride it every day that I stayed home following my last trip, but when I got home the tire was flat and I was too lazy and distracted to patch it and so I just kept walking.

Saturday, to my big surprise, Caleb patched it for me. Sunday, I headed out to take a ride, but my bike was gone. Jacob had taken it to go buy some pickles for Lavina.

But today I rode it.

And later, I felt better than I had felt in a long time, but right now I feel pretty exhausted again. Yet, for a few hours in the middle of the afternoon, I felt bright and alert in a way that I hadn't felt in a mighty long time and I know it was because I had ridden the bike. 

It was a short ride, five, maybe six miles, but it did me good.

Later, I took a coffee break and came home the long way. I had to stop behind this school bus, which was okay with me because I needed to get a picture that shows that the poor kids of Wasilla are back in school now. I was especially pleased that the dog showed up to meet the boy.

The lady whose face is hidden by the stop sign stood there and talked to the bus driver for a very long time, long after all the kids had crossed the road.

But all the while, the red lights kept flashing and the stop sign protruded outward, so I had to just sit there until their conversation ended.

I didn't mind too much, because it gave me something to write about in this blog. Were it not for the fact that I keep this blog, I suspect that I would have been pretty irritated.

I'll bet there were some irritated kids inside that school bus.

Comments

[Standtall-The Activist]

the shadow pictures look so unique