CROSSING OVER

Me and Page the dog, went for a quick walk, as I had planned to “walk the bridge” between mainland Sarasota and Bird Key. On our quick walk before she would be crated for a few hours, we walked past the back lanai of an apartment facing the green grass. The couple living there has three dogs. He works endlessly to massage and paint his old Firebird. She mysteriously arrives and disappears each day. Both they and their three dogs get very noisy when Page and I walk by. First the dogs bark and then the couple yells, “Hey, hey, hey!” I know that the couple is yelling to quiet the dogs when we walk past, but yesterday I heard it all at the same time. They all barked and yelled as we walked by. All of them equal, all of them simultaneous, all of them loud as we passed and quiet when we were gone. I chuckled to myself as my view once again got distorted to not hear their yelling in response to the barking, but just a bunch of animals on the lanai making noise at the same time, just because Page and I were there.

If Page ever did bark, I think I would tell her to quiet down in a whisper, rather than add to the barking volume.

I share this little anecdote as my ordinary walk across the bridge, took several similar twists of perspective.

I arrived at the bridge at a parking lot where the bridge walkers depart from and saw these tree trunks by the water. It seems I’ve developed a new gear in my heart. It feels a picture’s attraction, very distant from what my mind’s words can describe, analyze and rationally critique. It’s happening more and more to me. I feel an attraction to a view of something for no particular reason. I’m taking more and more of these irrational photos just because I’m drawn to them.

The folks around here call it walking the bridge. A long steep arc that connects too pieces of land. The bay exhaled its hot breath as I crossed the bridge. A powerful gust of warm wind masked the intense shine, as the sun was just thinking about setting.

Long views of converging lines destined for their vanishing point ahead. I trotted in 93 degrees with a heavy black camera. The sweaty walking me disappeared as the images performed, each shouting, “look at me, look at me!”

This bird passes overhead and I shot her. I remember the stripes of her wings and wondered if she was an osprey or a hawk. I didn’t remember that she was shitting. Then I thought to myself, “there’s something you don’t see everyday.” It ends up on your windshield or on your shoulder if you’re lucky. What a mighty string of bird shit she produced, as she flew. “How odd…” I thought.

Another common arrangement they have around here are bridges looking down on other bridges. I grabbed this view, because of that weird gut feeling again. Something about the zig-zag lines and all the people and birds posing I suspect.

Suddenly a sea-gull jumped on the head of a Pelican. “Look at me, look at me!” she yelled.

I saw this as the equivalent of the three monkeys. You know the one, “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” I call this “bird standing, bird floating and bird flying.”

Then I grabbed this one. At first I thought it was just another dumb bird picture. But something about the crashing waves and the sparkling white water said something different to me.

Again, the violation of the scene with disappearing curved perspectives slashed with violent inclines. Just something unknown yummy wanting me to catch it.

Just then, another bird flew overhead. At first I thought, “Jesus, not another dumb bird.” But then, when I looked closer, I saw the prehistoric bone structure of her wings. Bone and feathers and somehow these birds are born knowing how to fly. What are we born knowing?

It was time to head back to the car. I had crossed the bridge and returned on the other side. I popped up on the other side of the bridge just in time to catch a child running away from her mother. I did nothing but shoot her. Was she a stolen or missing child? Was she just pissed at her mom? Maybe all was well and she just felt like running. Maybe someday, this young girl will be an Olympic athlete. Or maybe life will deal her too many unfair cards and depression will fuel her appetite and she will grow to be an obese woman, barely able to walk much less run.

Just then, a motor boat passed underneath the bridge. At first I caught the boat, but then I decided I liked the frosty wave of its wake much better. Have you ever thought about that? Forgetting the boat and focusing on the wave? It not being us who cause something to happen but putting the emphasis on all the events that happen after we leave? What we leave in our wake impacts people, places and things that aggregate to other people’s wakes. We frost each other all the time, with white puffy foam that disrupts, tips over all that floats around us, and with time, it all settles and turns back into calm water.

Naturally as I got to the bottom of the bridge, another tree called out to me. Or it did “knot” call to me. What the hell was that cocoanut looking crisscrossed weave doing in the middle of the palm tree trunk? My chest ached to take the shot.

Then I got in the car and drove home. While on one of the major roads heading north, I was stopped at a red light. My camera was on the passenger seat. As I waited for the light to turn green, this unfortunate woman popped into my view. I grabbed the camera and shot a few through the windshield, as the light turned green and I drove away. “Was she sneezing? Did she have an itch? That’s certainly a nice dress she has on. Why doesn’t she put her sun glasses on her face? I never noticed that tire store before.”

I wonder how other people think. Do they just see what they see? Or do they ever consider the possibility that what they look at or what they hear is something different from what they think it is?

ASHES TO ASHES

In Sarasota, there is an extraordinary homeless population. Who needs shelter when it’s sunny and 75 all the time? I like to wander. I like to cast off possessions and know that who I am is not what I own, where I live or what I do. As I hunt for images unexpected, to provoke stories untold, curious things happen.

I walked past this guy above and thought him to be just another street guy, with no intention of shooting him. A woman walking on the street in my vicinity,  saw me looking at him as I walked past without taking a picture. She whispered to me, so as to not wake him, “get him from the other side and be sure to get his cigarette.”

It’s so validating about the not invisible barrier that separates us. She was a complete stranger in the same place I was, who chose to enter my wander. So on her push, I went back to the guy and shot him as he slept. I was sure to get a good shot of his luxurious nap and the symbol of a smoke-filled private moment with himself. The wealthiest man in the world, needing nothing, sprawled out on the sidewalk, napping, smoking, modeling.

I’m sure if he shared, he would have an extraordinary story to tell. How did he get here? Where was he from? What brought him to the sidewalk; that particular sidewalk and that specific storefront? Maybe someday, I will wake these guys and interview them in exchange for a few bucks and a permission granted photo shoot.

I hopped back in the car and went from impoverished street person to the yachts docked at the marina. Boat after boat. Ship after ship. Also countless stories to hear about how success and wealth was found. The story behind why each vessel is named what she is.

Despite the affluence at this destination, inventive trash receptacles and mindless ashtrays can be made out of virtually anything. Cigarettes held in palms one moment, are dashed out in the trunk of a perfectly available palm tree.

At another time and another place, there are these things sticking out of the front of office buildings.This is more of an urban phenomena, where cast metal split pipes sticking out of the fronts of tall buildings, become seats, coffee tables and also ash trays. Is it me or do you also see the irony of a fire protection device being transformed into an ash tray?

Most people don’t know what they are and are not motivated to research them and find the answer. They’re called Auto Sprinkler Connections and they exist to augment the sprinkler system in an office building by providing the fire department a place for them to hook up their hose. Oddly, they have come to be treated like decorative elements in the front of buildings, much like jewelry that adorns. Naturally, they have become targets of theft as warped inventive master minds plan the removal of the caps to sell as scrap. Unless I’m misunderstanding my research, these pipes are dry till a number of temperature sensitive sprinklers go off in a building that will also send water to these pipes for the firefighters.

On newer buildings that have not yet been vandalized, when the sun hits them just right, they become sparkly attractions for my photo capture, for no reason in particular.

That’s it for today. No big philosophical message, just draining the camera of stray shots grabbed last Sunday in order to make room for more nonsense this Saturday or Sunday. I wonder where I’ll be and what I’ll find this Memorial Day Weekend.

ON WHAT MATTERS

Every day is the same here. Dark green fertile thick rows of trees blocking the powerful bright rays of sunshine busting through the forests, like headlights on high beam. Nature’s thermostat locked on seventy-five degrees with a balmy breeze carrying the scent of orchids. Squirrels chattering it up from the tops of palm trees, those same palm trees that make that relaxing shake sound from their long floppy rubbing leaves. The softest rocking reclining chair cushions me, the most beautiful quiet instrumentals, pour out of my immaculate sound system and fill the air like a sexy whisper. I’m one of those that live in this bubble of gratitude; the simple void of chaos.

Both my daughters will be having glorious weddings in the next few months. Both engaged to extraordinary men, complete and without complaint. All my siblings, both my parents and I, will attend both monumental occasions, as if it was supposed to be that way from the very beginning. All of us healthy, alive and present.

Last night, my brother and I went out for a drink, to celebrate his birthday. We entered the bar and found a table that seemed empty. There was a glass on the table, still wet from the condensation, chilled from who ever downed the beer quickly and left it dripping on the napkin. We sat at the table and moments later, a gentleman came up to the table, grabbed a waitress, whispered in her ear as he looked over at our table. We surmised that we had innocently stolen his table, that he was not quite done with, and in an effort to soothe and resolve, we asked the man to join us. This was how we met Fred.

If Paul Newman was still alive, he would be Fred’s twin brother. Three manly men sitting around a tiny cocktail table. My brother and I, containing our respective stresses of the day and our new friend Fred, the holder of court at sixty-eight years old. I shared some stories of silliness from my playful world of dogs, advertising and the fight to keep my belly from exploding from too much pizza and carrot cake. My brother told tales of parenthood and raising his four daughters and patrolling the hallways at night with a Louisville Slugger to keep the boys away. Then Fred chimed in.

He took us through his survival of  Viet Nam in the late 60s. We learned of the three or four times he almost died from getting shot up. We learned about all the men that were under his command, that had died in the jungles. It goes without saying, that these brave men that fought for us, would no longer have the opportunity to see their children get married. He shared with us how he’s never without a gun and all the times he had to draw his weapon. We heard about how his daughter was touched inappropriately by an uncle and the damage Fred wrought on almost every bone in the uncles body. Fred knew how to kill or just maim. Fred broke the uncles elbows and wrists as fitting punishment to inappropriately touching his daughter. He finished the beating by smashing the uncles genitals with his boot. If it were me that had heard about this with mine, I don’t know if I would have been as delicate and sensitive as Fred was.

Fred continued as he shared his bout with Cancer and how drugs made him obese and how the radiation stripped him of every hair on his body. We learned of his divorces, his children’s battles and the ascent of his real estate empire. Fred had it all and lost it all several times. Fred’s message to us was that material possessions are worthless and the only thing in life that really matters is time spent with loved ones. Being together with one’s family, trumps the spoils gained by any victory. Then it was time for Fred to relieve himself of all the beer we had consumed, so we parted ways. Inside, I had to stop and realize how lucky I am, to not be in a life or death situation; just the battle of will, over consuming another piece of carrot cake.

This morning I read a story. It was the winning story from NPR’s Three Minute Fiction Competition that I had entered. I didn’t win, but I had written about a father’s words to his daughter getting married. The winning story was about a sick child who would never get married. A little boy who was dying at five years old and his mother who helped him imagine a life he would never have. I read how this parent and child imagined together, his graduation from high school, that really would never happen. I read about how they imagined together his graduation from college, his chance meeting of the girl of his dreams and usual stresses that would come from planning their eventual wedding; all of it a fantasy to pass the time. The mother and dying child continued their life together that would never be, as they discussed the boy’s own parenthood, and his fears that his own child might be sick the way he was. A story about life’s most profound joys never realized.

Once I stopped crying, I decided to write this blog entry. People ask me all the time how I feel about my daughters getting married in the next few months. I never really knew what to say as it all seemed pretty obvious, natural and inevitable to me. But sometimes the best way to appreciate a thing, is to think about those who never even had a chance to be in the vicinity of such joy. It’s not their fault, it’s not like they did something wrong. Their life  either taken by war or disease or any number of unpredictable tragic tolls that can change the course of a dynasty in an instant. Some of us live in this fragile bubble of the present with full knowledge of what it’s like to lose everything that matters, in the blink of an eye.

At this moment I don’t know if I could feel any luckier or more grateful for all the good that is to come to me now.

FISH TALES

Last night, me and Dad went out for a quick bite of Sushi. It’s kind of cool living up the street from my parents. They call me to catch the early bird specials and I drop by with Page the dog, to have breakfast with them.

Sometimes when we go out for Sushi, they ask me to order for them or in this case with Dad, “…do me a favor, and just don’t order too much. You always order enough to feed an army!” they say to me. It’s just hard to determine how much Sushi to order. I heard one time that 13 pieces is the average amount to comfortably fit in a stomach. That is about two average rolls, for you aficionados out there.

Last night, Dad and I split 4 pieces of Tuna, 4 pieces of Salmon, 4 pieces of Eel and one 8 piece spicy Tuna roll. Nothing huge on the binge scale. One order or two pieces of Tuna or Salmon Sushi cost $4.95. That’s a little palm load of sticky rice, a schemer of Wasabi and roughly an ounce of Sushi Grade, Ahi Tuna. Two pieces would be two ounces of Tuna.

The retail price of fresh, never frozen, Ahi Tuna today, is about $25 – $30 per pound. Sixteen ounces in a pound makes the cost of one ounce of Sushi, < $1.87. Add the rice and it cost the restaurant somewhere under $2.00 per piece. If the slices are thinner than an ounce or the restaurant gets the fish for less, then obviously the cost of each piece is less. So now I don’t feel that ripped off I suppose. Two pieces of tuna sushi for $4.95 seems reasonable. One piece at $4.95 starts to get a bit stiff. Not as stiff though as the $20 piece of sushi that was just a California Roll, that I had one time, at the Hotel Okura in Japan.

That one piece of Sushi was so good. The perfect size, the perfect shape, the perfect temperature and with a sprig of mint rolled in with the cucumber, crab and wasabi, it was near perfect. There were many notable memories from that trip to Japan, but the one most tell-able was how I met Steven Jobs also at that hotel.

I’m not exactly sure about how the magic stuff happens. About six years prior to my visit to Japan, I’m sitting at a neighbor’s house one Thanksgiving afternoon. My neighbor was eager to have me meet his daughter. She was pretty and interesting and after the usual how-do-you-do’s, she shared that she was Steven Job’s wife’s personal assistant. I love hearing stories like this, because they are virtually impossible to prove. Like nobody would believe that I was at the Emmy Awards one time and George Clooney tried to steal the girl I brought with me. Amazingly, she was not the star struck type and ended up staying with me instead of running off with him. But this too is true, and a story for another time.

Anyway, so she tells me she is Steven Job’s wife’s personal assistant. I gave her the benefit of the doubt and in my magical mind, I just said to myself, if I ever run into Steve Jobs, I’ll have to ask him about this. Sometimes I think it’s a bit scary when those stray thoughts actually manifest.

So there I am, in the basement of the Hotel Okura, six or so, years later, eating an American breakfast, with a bunch of guys from GE, that I was traveling with. The guy I’m with says, “you’ll never believe who just walked in. It’s Steven Jobs!”  So I say without thinking, “… Oh yeah? I gotta ask him something.” So I get up and go over to him and put out my hand and say. “Hi Steve, I’m Barry, and I’m sorry to interrupt your breakfast. But I met a woman a few years back who claimed to be your wife’s personal assistant. I lost track of her and if you would, could you say hello to her for me?” He made an exception and shook my hand, being the germaphobe that he was, and indeed, did verify that the neighbor’s daughter I had met years earlier, was his wife’s personal assistant and said he would say hi for me.

This kind of thing happens a lot to me. One time I was watching the movie Total Recall with Arnold Schwarzenegger, for the umpteenth time,  and I was taken by his fantasy girl, “demur and sleazy.” She was such a good actress. I said to myself, that if I ever ran into her, I would tell her how great she was. I learned that her name was Rachel Ticotin and had seen her in a bunch of movies since that one and she is always so great. Does that make me insane? Bi-polar? Manic? Delusions of grandeur? I just don’t think about it really. A few years after I made that little suggestion into my magic mind, I ran into her and her husband on the streets of Manhattan. I of course went up to her as I promised myself I would. “Rachel, I really loved you in Total Recall and some others movies and I said to myself if I’d ever run into you, I’d tell you, and here you are!”  I didn’t even notice, standing next to her, her über famous husband, Peter Strauss. The funny thing is that when I lived in Manhattan I ran into this couple a second time at the boat house in Central Park during a Sunday brunch.

By now, if not sooner, you’re probably asking what the point of all this blabbing is. No real point I suppose, it’s just funny how things are attached and connected inside people’s brains.

Usually when I’m eating Sushi, I think about how the fish grew from tiny eggs, swam upstream, avoided getting eaten by bears, only to get caught by a fisherman, cut and served on the pad of rice as it enters my mouth. Now as I look back on last night, a bite of Sushi with my dad, is connected to my friend Steven Jobs who changed the world, a rejected George Clooney by my girlfriend and coincidental strolls on Manhattan streets with my buddies Peter and Rachel.

I wonder what other people are thinking as they have sushi or what they think about the day after.

HEAVEN INHALE

The anguish of the creative mind. It decides that today cannot belong to the functional works of traditional souls. Today, it decides it’s floating time and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. No pain, just a different kind of living today. One of drift and watch. One of talk and just be. No choice. I must surrender to it for it will not let me do anything else but channel what it wants to come through.

I head downtown to pick up a newspaper that had printed an article I had written about Evan Sinclair, the contemporary painter. The impulse in me craves chicken salad with pecans and apricots. In front of the Whole Foods Market, where I would satisfy my craving, I walk past a fountain and the rocks shout, “shoot me, shoot me.”

I get a reply to an earlier post. One of my brilliant writer friends says to write more pieces about art and artists. I thank the lord. I have a mission today. Off to the Ringling Museum to find artists to shoot and write about.

I get there and I’m told I could walk the grounds for free. All of a sudden I forget why I’m there as my passion for wandering takes full control and I just walk. I stop to snap another dumb bird. I figure there’s got to be something more interesting in Mable Ringling’s garden.

I find her rose garden eventually. I resist the temptation to shoot more dumb flowers but couldn’t help myself. I walked round and round in the maze of dizzying circles while smelling heaven, courtesy of these gorgeous blooms.

Is this some kind of joke I thought? Leading a color blind writer to a flower garden with a Ferrari of a camera he doesn’t even know how to drive? I relaxed and let the camera do the work. I looked for nice fluffy shapes. I tried to catch the ones that were not quite dead, but beyond just born. Just relax. Squeeze out the shot. Let the camera do the work.

Round and round I walked. Breathing in heaven. Dazzling my eyes with glorious bursts of punchy peach and randy reds. I thought I could actually feel the plants squeezing these buds out. I imagine it felt much like how it feels when we go to the bathroom. Only what these plants make smells a lot better.

I was able to get at the floral pops from different angles. I tried to get some from the back, some from the side, some from behind. It had just rained a mere sprinkling of a spritz. Just enough to get a drop on them here and there. I walked and inhaled deeply. Me the color blind shooter of botany, allergic to everything known to mankind, barely breathing deeply through the one whistling nostril that’s not blocked, by some miracle.

Apparently, this was what I was meant to do today. A lost day, by other standards. For me, it’s just another one of those days that was meant for something different, from what I had planned or what I thought I should be doing. It’s just not worth fighting.

I started thinking about what Mrs. Ringling must have been thinking when she decided to create this garden filled with these miraculous flowers. How she conceived of the idea of walking around in dizzying concentric circles, while breathing deeply the intoxicating fragrances, as she viewed the dripping wet colors born from thorn. I imagine, to her, it was a lot like getting high.

I wondered how God, nature or the aliens designed these things. I mean really. Could anything this beautiful be unintentional? The way the leaves alternate and curl. The translucent petals revealing their veins. The puffy soft velvet skin of them? Please. How can this be the luck of the draw from random selection?

It made me just want to stand there and stare at them. Looking at their red frosted tips. Like a long clawed woman, just back from the nail place. “Make mine white with red tips.” It was just overwhelming how the little trickles of water just sat and waited for me. Even the sun went away in order to not wash out the shots.

Then a lizard climbed out from under the bushes and saw me, got all scared and decided to try to scare me back, by puffing out its throat like a big ole not quite ripe yet strawberry. Just to put him in scale, I think he was about two inches long.

Then I started to get tired and wanted to head home. I walked past this Banyan tree that was so prehistoric that I had to shoot it. I didn’t know how I’d express it here, but the roots of this thing are just confounding. It kind of looks like vines had fallen from branches at one time, that eventually hardened and rooted and became new tree trunks. Those vine, trunks grew and sprouted more vines that fell from branches and so on and so on.

I don’t know how one justifies a day like today. I’d still like to find some deeper more emotional things to shoot. But natures glory is always a calm meditation when the world is pulling us in a million directions. Sometimes it’s good to just stop and smell the roses.

HOMELESS INC.

We used to call it, “The Vacation Fund”, but it was just all my left over change, splayed out on the counter top, day after day, collected in an empty illy coffee can.

As I prepared my incredibly heavy change can, to take to the supermarket, to pour into the machine that turns it into a cash receipt for 10%, I thought about this guy I see almost every morning. I thought about how grateful I was to have a full change jar and a car to drive to the supermarket, so I can pour my metal into that big green criminal machine in exchange for the receipt that I can cash in for whatever. I thought about the days when I had no car, lived under the stairs in a tenement building and traveled with the poor and homeless by bus.

As I drove and thought about this homeless guy, I wondered what he was up to in the evening as I only saw him in the morning. Sometimes he’d be standing there on the median by the stop light, eating an Egg Mc Muffin, that some driver obviously gave him, or maybe not so obviously. I wondered if he had a name and where he was from and if he had any siblings, any pets and what was the story of his life that led him to this corner?

I wondered things most folks don’t wonder. Like when we get the Readers Digest/Publishers Clearing House Contest in our mail boxes, that says we may have won a million dollars. And we feel like that envelope that looks hand addressed was just sent to us, when in reality, was sent out to millions of people, designed to look like you were the only one who got it. Similarly, I wonder if each of these homeless folks are designed by someone, to look like they are lost and alone, tugging at our heart-strings, but are really mass-produced and presented to us for someone’s profit.

I wondered about the back story about this homeless guy. Did he pick that corner? Did he write that sign? Did someone tell him to hang that cross out over his shirt to gain religious sympathy? Did someone instruct him on how to hold the sign? Or is there an underworld of organizers that send out this army of homeless people. Maybe they are sophisticated and organized and the homeless bosses tell these folks where to stand in exchange for a percentage of what they collect?

As I drove into the supermarket, I passed another one/homeless girl, standing by a stop sign, aiming at all the folks leaving the supermarket parking lot. I thought it odd how I was thinking about the homeless guy, as I was in process to cash in my change jar, and there was another one. I drove past her, only half thinking about the oddness of it all. But when I got into the store with my jar… there was another sign on the machine. That sign said that the machine was out-of-order! I took it as “a sign” to reverse the order of things and get back out there and snap some pictures of this homeless gal. It would be good for me, as I get to chart this story, and good for her, as I planned to slip her a few bucks. Good for everyone! I drove back to the end of the parking lot close to where she was standing, opened my trunk, unzipped my camera bag, switched lenses and placed the machine gun around my neck. I thought I was justified in stealing her image as I was gonna pay her. Meantime, my entrepreneurial design brain wouldn’t shut up.“Who wrote that freak’n gorgeous sign?” I thought. “So perfectly written in all caps. So perfectly cut and printed and positioned, with a brand new, juicy black marker! If she made this sign, at least she could be a sign maker, or work in a frame shop and cut cardboard. Efficiently crafted and copy directed, two words, designed to get your sympathy and your money. Such brevity and efficiency of language. She could even be a copy writer. Are there graphic standards for how to phrase these signs? Size requirements? Directions for readability to put dark letters on a light background? If so, she is certainly qualified as a graphic designer.”

“Who told her to stand there, by the Stop Sign, with her fingers at six o’clock and three o’clock so the drivers had to stop so they could read her sign unblocked by her hands? Who was the stylist on the shoot, who dressed her, who pinned back her hair, or the director, who told her not to smile? Who told her that at that time was the busiest time at the supermarket and the most cars would be coming and going? Who told her how long to stand there?”

I wondered all these questions. First of all, if there was a secret organization who managed all the homeless folks and paid them to stand and sign, how much did they get and how much do the sign standers get. Is there an inventory of signs? Do the homeless ones pick out the signs they like or are they “assigned?” Because, if there isn’t this kind of organization driving those that can’t or won’t drive themselves, then these folks are choosing to do this and making these decisions on their own. They are saying, “I’d rather stand on this corner, next to this stop sign, and make at least $10-$20 bucks an hour, than work at McDonald’s or the Gap or what ever.” If they are mentally handicapped, that’s one thing, if they are not blessed with the gifts of a good physical appearance, that’s another thing. But if they are healthy, fully functioning, with looks and brains, then who’s the dummy here?

After I grabbed all these shots, I went up to her and gave her $5. She did not smile and say thank you, nor did she give me a receipt so I could deduct the contribution on my taxes. She just took the money, slipped it into her pocket,  looked away and continued working. Obviously a hard worker! I studied her long neck and high cheekbones and little nose. I looked at her pretty hay colored hair and marvelous collarbone. I’m sure she could find employment in a million different places. But giving her the benefit of the doubt, I’m guessing she has no home, which means no shower to wash in or no phone to receive a call that may be a job offer. No closet to hang her clothes, no tooth-brush and no bed to sleep in. Perhaps it’s a self-esteem thing and she feels she is doing the best she can.

As I’m writing this, I’m thinking, maybe I should  have been more generous and given her my whole change jar. What would she have done with the five pounds of change? Would she just keep my fancy coffee jar on the ground by her shoes? Would she empty it and try to fill her pockets with my quarters?

Maybe she’d tell me that management told her she should only accepts paper money.

MAKE A WISH

This morning, I was in a restaurant waiting to pick up food for a take out breakfast, to bring over to my parents house in celebration of Mothers Day. An eager waitress came up to me, not knowing I was already taken care of and waiting for take out, she asked the cosmic question, “What do you want?” I kidded around with her and asked if she could make me seventeen again.

I remember my one and only wish when I was that young. It was always for just one thing. There was no room in my mind for deep thoughts and the idea of being in the middle of life’s timeline was unimaginable. The hunt and peck of youth is so different than the release and remember of old. One weekend when I was a young boy, I participated in a youth group retreat, in an effort to fulfill mine and every boy’s fantasy; I got a cathartic life lesson instead. The boys and girls were put into teams to play a game and work together, to perform a variety of experiments to raise self-awareness.

We were put in groups of three. One of us was forced to wear a blindfold, temporarily losing the gift of sight, helpless and dependent but able to speak. The second of us wore a mask on the mouth, thereby losing the ability to speak, unable to ask for help but able to see. The third of us had their hands bound behind him, he could speak and see but unable to grasp, touch or feed himself. The three of us were forced to take care of each other, as together we were complete. I never forgot that event and I try not to take any of my gifts for granted.

Yesterday, my immediate family was close to complete, at a dual birthday party. Together a young niece celebrated with an elder grandmother. I had the camera on my eye all evening, so I watched a little harder than usual. I searched for the unseen and listened for the unspoken. I disappeared in the crowd of family, fluttering around the house like a spirit who had passed, grateful to be apart of life again.

I heard the dogs, though they could not speak. They asked me to let them out for a bio break. As I stood in the garage watching them play and squat out on the lawn, I looked over and noticed a shovel leaning against the fence. I wondered how long it had been there and who had used it for what. Whose hands were on the shovel and what were they digging? I thought it was a picture for a story untold.

I collected images all evening. I patiently waited for the moments when I could capture the most candid joy.

Eventually it came time for the birthday cake. A strange duality assembled side by side. The eagerness of youth, wanting for everything, with unlimited time stretched out before her. At her side was the wisdom of the ages in the eyes of a grandmother, wanting for nothing, grateful for all, with a lifetime of precious moments behind her. Together they celebrated their births and stepped forward into the future; both prepared to make new memories.

When it comes time to blow out your next candle, what will you wish for?