Four studies of the young writer, Shoshana; tulip for an ill lady

Truly, I must keep it brief today, so I begin with:

Study of the young writer, Shoshana, # 3472: The young writer hands a pen to a customer so that he can sign his credit card in order to pay for his coffee.

Study of the young writer, Shoshana, # 2743: The young writer pours cream into a cup in preparation to make my Americano.

Study of the young writer, Shoshana, # 4732: Shoshana in black and white.

Study of the young writer, Shoshana, # 4273: The young writer works her way through a crowd of gold miners as they study gold mining equipment online via a laptop computer.

Through the Metro window study, #8222: Carmen, who just had a birthday, learns that my Margie is ill and feeling terrible. Carmen gives me a red tulip and tiny white flower to take to her.

Margie with her tulip and tiny white flower after putting them in a vase with water.

View images as slide show

For seven years, she refused to date him when he would show up at the motel; now they have been married seven years; a temple blessing; contemplating, part 2, on hold

As you can see, I wound up at Family Restaurant again this morning, but for a different reason. Jobe has been vomiting again, so Margie left at about 8:30 this morning to drive into town so that she could babysit him. I figured that it might be my only chance to ride in a car today, so I had her drop me off at Family on her way. I took this image after breakfast, as I was beginning my walk home, maybe a bit less than four miles. It was a bit after 9:00 AM. This may look dark for 9:00 AM to some of you, but for us, it is amazing to see how quickly the light is coming back.

As I walked along Lucille Street a raven would come flying by, always headed south, directly over the road, every few minutes. They all looked pretty intent to reach their destinations. I figured that these were ravens who nest out in the hills near the foot of the Talkeetna Mountains, but make their living in downtown Wasilla, primarily off the food that people discard - the ravens that I see at Taco Bell, Carl's Jr., McDonald's and such.

It was morning, and these ravens were going to work.

It was garbage pick-up day in our neighborhood.

As I did not have a car and had already walked four miles, I figured that I would just skip my Metro coffee break and listen to the news in my office while I edited pictures. But about 3:30, I was overcome by a strong desire to get out of the office, so I took off on foot for Metro Cafe. It was snowing now. 

Here I am, walking down Lucille Street, toward Metro. Look how heavy the traffic is! Yet, it is too early for people to be coming home from work. Why are all these folks driving down Lucille?

I arrived at Metro a little before 4:30, closing time being 5:00. Carmen invited me to look at her wedding album. They got married seven years ago, when she was 38, Scott 48. It was his third, her first. She met him when she was working at the Best Western Motel on Spenard in Anchorage. He would sometimes come and check in for the night on his way to and from the Arctic Slope oil fields and each time he did, he would ask her out. 

Each time, she would say no. He would tell her that one day they would marry, she would be his wife and would have his babies. She would say, "no!" This went on for seven years. Finally, she agreed to go to a movie with him, just to put an end to all the nonsense and get him out of her life. Anyway, she was Catholic and he was not.

That one date led to the marriage. It could not take place in the Catholic church, but "God knew what he was doing when he brought us together," Carmen says.

Scott has completed all of his cancer treatment and has finally gone back to work on the Slope, where temperatures have been running in the -50 range, with -75 and even -95 windchills. Carmen says he is finding the cold a bit hard to take, given the aftereffects of his radiation and chemo treatments.

I hear that it is warming up now - into the -30's and -20's.

This is Ryder, who came to Metro Cafe with his mom, Buffy, and his Aunt Danielle. Ryder drank hot chocolate and, except for me, was the last customer to leave.

I had planned to walk home, but Nola offered me a ride. I decided that seven miles was enough to have walked today. I got into the car. Nola brushed the new snow off the window.

Nola drinks a bottle of water as she drives me home.

 Okay - Part 2 of Contemplating the future of this blog will just have to wait until tomorrow. This post is long enough already.

And this one from India:

Inside one of the temples at Pattadakal - blessings are offered.

View images as slides

Margie and I drop in to Metro Cafe - she drives on to Anchorage, I walk home; boy takes precarious seat overlooking the temple and the sea

Jacob and Lavina had something to do Monday night, so they called and asked if Margie could come in to babysit and stay for the night.

This meant that I would be without a car. So we agreed that Margie and I would leave together at coffee break time, we would stop at Metro Cafe, go inside, enjoy a cup and cinnamon roll together and then she would drive on to Anchorage and I would walk back home.

So here is Elizabeth, seen not through the window from the outside, but from the inside, preparing our coffees.

And here is Elizabeth serving one of those coffees. As you can tell by the punch card lying on the counter, the coffees this day still came courtesy of the generous reader in North Carolina. Even with a card, I still lay down cash for the tip.

In past posts, I have lamented about the ironic fact that when we were young and she possessed all of her exceptionally exquisite youthful, beauty, Margie would almost always refuse to let me photograph her. Most of the exceptions involved the kids also being in the picture. 

As I have pointed out, Now that we have grandkids, she has somewhat relaxed about it - especially if the grandkids are in the pictures. No grandkids were with us at Metro, but she did tolerate a photo. As you can see, "tolerate" is the exact right word.

And then my eye got distracted and my lens pulled away from her beautiful face by this four-wheeling guy and his dog, as they whizzed by. The dog is kind of hard to see, but if you look close, maybe you can find it. If you can't see it here and it is important enough to you, you can try again in slide show view.

It's really not all that important and I won't feel bad if you don't.

Inside the Metro Cafe, Carmen study, #13,496: Carmen poses with Margie and me

Were I to take the most direct route home, I would need to walk about two-and-half miles. That route follows two busy roads - Lucille and Seldon streets. I did not want to walk along busy roads al the way home. I wanted solitude. So I chose a route that would add about one mile, but in which I could find more solitude.

Even that route started out on a busy road, Spruce Street, which is where I walk right here.

Two ravens flew over as I walked down Spruce Street.

In 2002 or 2003, not long after I had made the leap from film to digital cameras, I managed to purchase a bulky, professional, Canon 1D camera body that shot an 11 mp image - the highest resolution available at the time - for just under $8,000. Funny - that I could manage such a purchase then, but now that I am more established and better known than ever, it would be impossible.

One morning, as I waited for my next flight during a stopover in Boise, Idaho, a gentleman who was then about the age I am now took note of my camera. He was impressed, his face full of smiles.

"I'll bet that digital photography is great for you," he gushed. "You can make your pictures better than ever - like, if you take a picture and there are powerlines in it, you can take them out."

"I wouldn't do that," I answered. "If there are powerlines there, they are there. They are part of the scene. I won't take them out. That would be a violation of my journalistic ethics."

This really angered and offended him. He became so indignant that his face turned red and his nose damn near popped off. His voice turned sharp, rasp and sputtery.

I tried to tell him that it did not matter to me what he did with his, that I did not apply my ethics to him, but that I was a photojournalist and a documentarian and that it would undermine my credibility if I started removing powerlines, just because I could. If I were doing ads or a different kind of art that is not documentary, an art in which the literal does not matter, then what the hell, it would be okay.

He did not buy this. He felt personally insulted and let me know it.

I imagine that he probably has a digital camera now - assuming that he still lives and is healthy enough to take pictures.

Perhaps he now takes the powerlines out of his pictures. If so, I'll bet that each time he does, he thinks of me and gets to feeling all indignant all over again.

But really, I do not care what he or anyone else does. I will not judge them for it.

As for me, the powerlines are simply just part of the picture.

Life has powerlines.

I continued on. A jet passed in the distance. I got a call from a friend, in tears, to tell me that her aunt had just died. I spoke what words of comfort to her that I could.

I walked on in solitude. As darkness slowly deepened, I passed beneath a street lamp and it cast my shadow before me. If it appears that there is a spirit accompanying me, then I must note that it is only a scuff on the trail left by someone who gunned their snowmachine right here and spun the track as they drove over this spot.

Yet, this does not mean that a spirit could not have been walking with me, or perhaps gliding along beside me. If the thought should frighten anyone, let me assure you, that spirit would have been a good one. Troubled, perhaps, but good. Simply, fundamentally, purely - good.

I don't know about spirits - if they truly exist or if they are just a creation of the human mind, a fiction, a survival mechanism to help us bear that which does not seem to be bearable. Yet, if spirits do not exist, then why do I so often seem to feel a spiritual presence? In something so simple, perhaps, as a sudden, unexpected, solitary, gust of wind in my face, at just the right moment?

And this one from India

A youth took a somewhat precarious seat overlooking the Mamallapuram temple grounds and the Bay of Bengal and then asked me to take his picture.

So I did.

View images as slides

Two months later: the slow emergence from darkness; the moment she became Muse

Once again, after having slept for just a few broken hours, I found myself awake and unable to sleep further. I quietly got up, punched the remote to start the car so that it could warm up, dressed, quietly slipped out of the bedroom without disturbing Margie, came to this computer, checked emails and then drove to Family Restaurant to eat an early morning breakfast in solitude.

It is now two months to the day since Muse and soul friend Soundarya chose to follow her husband Anil into the "thereafter," whatever the "thereafter" might be.

I put "thereafter" in quotation marks because Anil once used this word in an email to me to describe how long the journey that he would take with Soundarya as her husband would last - "life and thereafter."

Today is also the first day since November 18 that the sun will completely rise above the horizon in Barrow. A few days ago, I began to read reports from Facebook friends there that the top arch of the sun had been spotted peeking over the drifted tundra, but today is the first day that it will arise in its entirety.

I wish that I could be there to witness it.

Early in this process, I resigned myself to also living with an inner darkness for all the time that the Barrow sun would remain below the horizon. I most certainly have.

Now the sun is coming back.

What I always remember about the winters that I spent completely or mostly in Barrow is how, after the sun would come back, that was when the really deep, bitter, brutal, cold would set in.

I don't know. In my mind, I had imagined myself writing many things about all this in this post, but now that I am sitting here, I don't feel like it. I find that once again my eyes are moist and I feel a trickle on my cheek and I don't want to say or write anything.

I don't know why I am. To write in all circumstance is just who I am, I guess.

I feel so tired. So very, very, tired.

And I am not getting anything done. Except this blog. It is the only thing that I am getting done.

In many ways, this blog has helped me to get through, but I have found myself incapable of doing my work. I open it up and I try, but I just stare at the computer and get nothing done. For some reason, I can always blog, but I can't work.

I have accomplished almost nothing since I last returned from Barrow.

No, that's not true. Besides this blog, I also have a novel that I am working on. I started it quite awhile back, made some progress, stuck it aside, picked it up later, made a little more progress, stuck it aside again.

In the fall, I picked it up again and resolved that this time, I would stay with it, if even for as few as 15 minutes a day, until it is done. I figured that might take ten years - if I live and have a mind for ten more years.

Then, when Anil and then Sandy died, I quit working on it altogether.

But I picked it back up again a couple of weeks ago and I have worked on it every day since.

I set out to do 15 or 30 minutes but often wind up going anywhere from one to three hours. So I am making progress there.

But of course, that puts no money in my bank account.

Amazingly, thanks to the donate button that I have put up on the side bar, this blog does put a little money into my bank account. Nowhere near enough to live on or to allow me to become a full-time blogger, but enough to give me hope that such a thing might actually be possible.

If I could increase my regular readership 100 fold and have support come in at the same level percentage wise that it has been coming in, I could do this blog full time. Then, I could really create something here. Right now, it is just a whisper of what I envision it to become.

Surely, for every individual who does come here on a regular basis there must be 100 more who would if they could somehow be brought into it?

See, all I want to do now for the rest of my life is to work on my books, this blog and the electronic magazine that I plan to add to it.

I suppose that I have rambled like this before and this all sounds redundant. But its true. And that is how the rest of my life should be spent.

This picture, by the way, is me driving back home after breakfast - although I suspect most of you have probably surmised that already.

There are two other things that have helped me get through the darkness so far. One, my family. I don't talk about it much to them, but just to have kids and grandkids swing by now and then, to come around, to go out and get coffee, to carry a spatula everywhere, to look with adoring baby eyes into my eyes and to feel the often sad but sweet spirit of my wife who has endured through this insane, risky, always insecure, forever teetering on financial destruction, life-stye that living with me these past 37 years has subjected her to.

And there is Soundarya's family, which is also my family. Her brother, Ganesh, my nephew - he credits me for introducing him to the fact that he is a photographer. He is a natural and has the potential to be great. In our communications, although she is always there, we do not talk about Sandy much, but rather about pictures, and about what we are going to do in her memory, namely to take a long hike in the Brooks Range.

Then there is her sister, Sujitha - Suji - my niece, who has appeared in this blog, who loves Jobe and Kalib and who leaves a comment or two here now and then. In so many ways it is she, who has been hurt so very, very deeply, more deeply than I can even hint at here, who has helped me to the deepest degree, just in the communications that we share back in forth.

While it may be difficult for some to understand this deep, platonic, relationship that I share with her sister, still, now, even in her death as I did in her life, Sujitha does understand and she lends comfort that could only be lent by one who understands and is hurt and grieving to the maximum degree herself.

The maximum degree. Yet, she helps me. I am happy that little Jobe, in particular, helps her. And from 9000 miles away.

It looks like Suji and Manu's wedding will happen late next month. I wish that I could be there, but I see no way.

There is also Kavitha, or Cawitha, Soundarya's cousin. I met her only one time and that was at Sandy and Anil's wedding. We do not exchange emails all the time, but every now and then and, except for those that came with announcements of death, I always enjoy receiving them. Kavitha is a trekker. She treks in the Himalayas, she treks about southern India, she treks into dark caves.

She plans to come on the Brooks Range hike.

I hope the rest of us can keep up with her.

One thing worries me a little bit about this hike. My Indian relatives are all vegetarians. We can carry a certain amount of dried food, maybe even enough to get us through with some fairlly significant weight loss, which will be good for me, but I would kind of like to supplement our diet with at least a few fish and maybe some ptarmigan. If there are enough of us to eat it all, maybe even a caribou. But I can't feed fish, ptarmigan and caribou to vegetarians!

We will have to carry a gun or two, both for protection and as a survival mechanism, should it come to that.

I think we will figure it all out, though.

Last night, I dreamed that we had just left on this hike. We were very unprepared. Margie had packed my pack and I did not even know what was in it.

When I opened it up, I found a suit, white shirt, tie and a pair of shiny, black, shoes.

The above image, by the way, is Metro Cafe as I drive by on my way home from breakfast.

There is a folder within my pictures folder labeled, "Ravens for Sandy." It has many photos in it, many that I sent her and others that I did not, but that I placed in the folder to hold until the day that I would.

And all these ravens that continually appear here, I still photograph them for Sandy. I no longer put them in that folder, but only here, in my daily blog folders, but still I photograph them for her.

I photographed this one yesterday, as I walked to Metro to get my afternoon coffee. Both Kalib and Jobe had fallen ill, could not go to daycare and so Margie had gone to town to babysit them. I was left without a car and so I walked.

I am a little surprised to realize that I took no pictures while I was at Metro.

I don't know how that happened. I had my camera. It just never occurred to me to take a picture while I was there. 

And this was one of those rare times when I was on the inside, at a table, slowly devouring a hot cinnamon roll as I sipped and savored the coffee - not on the outside, looking in through the drive-through window. Maybe I am beginning to lose it.

Hey - just a couple of weeks ago, it would have been completely dark at the time that I took this picture.

So the light is coming back. It feels kind of strange - as it always does when the light first manifests itself in the new year. We have had plenty of cool weather in the sub-zeros here in Wasilla, but we have yet to experience any true, deep, cold this year like we can get in this neighborhood this time of year.

I guess we had better brace ourselves. It ought to be coming any time now.

The moment she became Muse

Although I have been running this little series of India pictures in memory of her, I have not been including pictures of Sandy herself.

Today, I make what I believe will be my one exception, because I did not explain this muse thing quite well enough. I did explain how, after my first trip to India, I began to photograph the world that I live and work in here in Alaska with the goal of producing images that could explain it to a young woman in India and thus she was my muse.

But this is the moment - the very moment - she became Muse.

In the early 1990's, at the request of Melanie and Lisa, whenever I would travel, I began to photograph cats wherever I could find them. If I went to a new community, village, city, state or country, I would always seek out a cat and photograph it for my daughters.

So, when my sister's daughter Khena and Vivek planned their wedding and it became clear that I was going to go to India, I immediately began to imagine the cats that I might find to photograph there.

But Khena told me that in all her travels with Vivek in India, she had not seen a single cat. She did not believe that it was common there for people to keep cats the way they do here. Vivek could think of no cats, either. When I got off the plane and met his parents, they did not know about any cats.

And then, after the wedding feast where two soul friends from who knows how far back recognized each other, Sandy invited me to walk and so we walked.

We talked of other things and did not speak of cats.

Then all of a sudden she squealed with delight. She had spotted a cat - this one. She hurried over to the fence. She did not know the lady but asked her to hand her the kitten and let her hold it for awhile. The lady picked up the kitten and lifted it over the top of the fence. I raised my camera.

Hence, Soundarya! Muse!

May her memory live forever.

View images as slides

It warms up and snows, Carmen and Shoshana, Heaven-bound Christian goes nuckin' futs, dog challenges me to game of chicken; I go bananas

I don't mind cold - in fact, I like cold (although I hate to be cold). But I was getting fed up with this weather: temperatures consistently below zero F - lately most often double digits below, but no real snow on the ground - only ice, crust and frozen earth. I was just getting tired of it.

I wanted some fresh, new, snow to cover it all up but no snow had fallen for weeks. Maybe a month or more. It's been a long time. Down south, I see lots of reports of heavy snow, but up here in the north we have a dearth of it.

And we wouldn't get any more until the temperature warmed up a bit. It never snows when it is cold.

And then... the temperature warmed up to ten degrees above zero - plenty warm enough to snow. And so it began to snow. It wasn't much of a snow, really. Just a dusting.

The ravens enjoyed it, though. Ravens always enjoy the weather, no matter what it is. Or so it seems. I've really never asked a raven about it, but whenever I see ravens, they always look like they are having fun.

I see them in all kinds of weather.

Always having fun.

Ravens enjoy life.

That's why I enjoy ravens so much.

Eagles may be more grand and spectacular, but ravens - they're the smart, clever, mischievous, happy ones.

And the Mahoney horses - they were enjoying the dusting of snow.

And then it turned into slightly more than a dusting. By morning, a few inches had accumulated. Margie took the car, and left me on foot to walk. That other car? That belongs to Caleb. It hasn't really run or gone anywhere in a couple of years or so.

Every now and then, he starts it up just to see if he can still start it up, but it has some problems. Some day, he says, he will sell it.

At 4:00 PM, I stopped at Metro Cafe. The temperature had now warmed up to 18 degrees F. Carmen and Shoshana were marveling over the warm weather and talking about how, when such temperatures first strike right after summer, they come to the window, open it and freeze, then shut it as quickly as they can. Now, 18 degrees feels warm to them. They don't even bother to close the window.

Then Carmen began to tease Shoshana about her new boyfriend. That's what she's doing here. She's teasing Shoshana. When I get a chance to blog the party they invited me to last weekend, I will introduce her boyfriend.

He is very lucky and at the party I told him so.

As Carmen teased Shoshana, I looked in my mirror and saw two of the girls who live just a short distance up the road coming for their afternoon smoothies.

As the girls drew near, Carmen continued to tease Shoshana.

Then the girls were in Metro Cafe. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but, just like that, the oldest and Carmen began to compare their finger nails.

At first, I tried to focus on Carmen's, which were bright red. I didn't realize it at the time, but I missed the focus a bit.

Still, you get the idea.

Then I tried to focus on the girl's nails, which were sort of a fluorescent lemon-lime. I didn't realize it at the time, but I missed the focus by quite a bit. Still, you get the idea.

I would have stayed longer, tried a few more shots and made sure I got the focus, but I was in the drive-through line and I did not want to make anyone coming in line behind me wait until I had my focus perfect, so I drove away with blurry images.

Some photographers aim for perfection. Me, I just want to get the idea down and to tell a story, even if imperfectly.

I hadn't gone far before I found myself stopped at a red light, right behind this car. This should all be quite legible in slide show view, but just in case anyone is having trouble reading everything at this small size, I will interpret the three signs as I understand them, beginning with the fish at lower left. The name, "Jesus" is written in the fish. This tells me that the owner of the car is a Christian.

The license tells me that the owner is "heaven bound."

And the little bumper sticker in the window tells me that the owner is going "nuckin' futs."

This one puzzles me a bit. I have never heard of either of these words, "nuckin'" or "futs."

What does this mean?

Please, someone, tell me!

I start to wander how the Mahoney horses are doing today, so I point the car in their direction. Along the way, I see many exciting and wonderful sights. Here is one of those wonderful and exciting sights.

"How you doing, Mahoney horses?" I shout out the window.

"We're doing good, Bill. How about you?" they neigh in return.

"Could be doing better," I shout back. "But I'm surviving. Don't know how or why, but I am."

"Good," the horses neigh back. "It's better to survive than not to survive."

These horses are wise.

And yet, the time always comes when each one of us, horse and human alike, does no longer survive.

Make of this contradiction what you will.

Next, I come upon a little dog, standing in the road, facing me as I drive towards it. I wonder what the dog intends to do? I slow to a modest speed.

As if I was going fast to begin with.

Why!? The dog comes charging straight at me! The dog wants to play chicken! Foolish canine! Can it not see that I am driving a hunk of steel and it is just a fragile little skin packet of bones, flesh, blood and fur?

I will win this game of chicken, easy.

But I don't win. I chicken out and brake to a complete stop.

The dog stops, too. I would call this a tie.

The dog disagrees. The dog calls this a clear win for the dog.

I'm going nuckin' futs!

Whatever that means. I don't know. I have no idea. But I'm pretty sure that it describes me right now.

And this one from India:

See the hands on this side of the bananas? They belong to my nephew, Vijay Dixit, brother of Vivek who is husband to my sister's daughter Khena and first cousin to Soundarya, which in India makes him kind of like her brother.

One afternoon, Vijay treated Melanie and I to a feast of bananas - including bananas of varieties that we never see here in the US, let alone in Alaska.

For over a year-and-a-half now, Vijay has been waiting for me to post a picture sequence on that feast.

At the beginning of this week, I told him that I would post it for certain this week.

Each day, I thought that I would do it the next day, but then the next day there would be too many images in my regular, current, series for me to post the banana series, as to do so properly I must use several images.

Today, once again, my regular post came in with too many images. I don't know why. It just happens that way. Tomorrow is the last day of the week, so I decided I would post the bananas then. Then, this morning, it occurred to me that tomorrow is a doubly significant day and I must post something else.

So I decided I would wait until Sunday - but Sunday is next week.

So, in order to somewhat keep my promise to Vijay and get at least some banana material up this week, I now post this picture of Vijay in a Chennai fruit store, looking for just the right bananas to stuff into Melanie and me. 

I promise, Vijay - I will keep Sunday's Alaska material light - maybe just one image, perhaps two, no more than three, and I will post the full banana experience that you treated us to.

View images as slides