The melencholy feel of this window beckoned me to  add my shadow to the mix, visually cathartic and representative of this journey.

Some images come fully formed to the mind’s eye, powerful affirmations of ideas and visions bubbling to the surface.

I picked up Melanie, my 5 day travelling companion at the St. John’s airport on Sunday July 2nd at about 1:30. We took a brief  tour in the Enterprise of downtown St. John’s, parked and had a great late lunch at the the Fifth Ticket restaurant. We were headed for Bellevue Beach when something went horribly wrong and lots of coolant steam poured out of the heater vents and hood. That’s pic #1. We were towed to a garage only 5 minutes away, closed of course on a holiday weekend. (CAA came to the rescue, I sgned up two days before leaving Coe Hill, likely saved me bucket loads on the tow!) Undeterred, Mel and I hung out in the garage parking lot eating food from a gas station and drinking lots of wine…. from Sunday evening until Tuesday morning! If you’re going to break down, I recommend an RV, it’s still fun! The overflow jug was broken, pic #2, and we needed a new fan belt, I epoxyed the jug and on went a new belt, away we went at about 1:00 pm. 10 kilometres up the highway it happened again, towed back to the garage by their own truck, the heater core blown. Likely the cause of the first smoke show. Pic #3, getting used to this highway, I Photoshopped out the rain…..kidding. While sitting in the garage parking lot under repair, the air pump pulley seizes and burns a different belt off, smoke show #3. We bypassed the heater core, don’t need one of those in summer right? You do in Newfoundland, 7 degrees overnight, damp and a high of 11 during the day, cold breeze blowing through the front of the van like an open window, Mel has a comforter on her legs, I have a fleece wraped around and we were both cold. Don’t need an air pump apparently so off we went finally, for good, at maybe 5:00 on Tuesday afternoon. When I find that Murphy person…….

There is magnificent pleasure in seeing, sometimes, in the affirmation of the photograph it feels like love.

Am I destined to sit always at the surface, what of the cold, dark deeps that hold me here?

Once, I saw my future in a lounge by the sea, so distant I didn’t know it was me. Must I be this lonely just to be?

I saw my future in a lounge by the sea.

The rope is broken, I am lost.

The remains of a time when U boats roamed the waters around North Sydney NS. A sobering reminder of the reach that conflict can have.

The wounds we carry cut to the core. We go through life with scar tissue forming in the dark. And what of it? The language of pain is unintelligible to the brain, but the heart knows from whence it came.  

So the last post was supposed to address the notion of practice, of making images even when things seem difficult or pointless. The truth is, as an artist it’s important to practice what I do, and in this context I mean practice as in keep thinking and seeing, composing and watching the light. When I get out the way of myself I find that while I was practicing I was also working,  I can trust the skills I’ve developed from a life of seeing. Maybe the key has always been to practice, forget what I’ve always thought of as the goal, a finished photograph, instead, find the truth of the image in the latency of the process, trust that all of the necessary parts are already there from the years of practice.