Machine Eye

23/365

I've always struggled with creativity. Imagination, exposing my created thoughts to the world, on paper, in words, with ink and pixels. I worried what was right when there was no wrong. 

 I still do. 

Writing snuck up on me; it tricked me into creativity.  I took a journalism class. I was into sports.  I'd go to a game, record some quotes. I'd write about what I saw and what others said. The puzzle pieces were there, I just had flip them all over, find the four corners, put together the edges and fill in the rest. It was like Mad Libs except needn't know the difference between a verb and an adverb. That's what editors were for. 

So I learned to write. Without being creative. And with shitty grammar. 

But then I started to read: Hunter S. Thompson, Edward Abbey, Rick Ridgeway, John Krakauer, Peter Matthiessen. And listening to better music: Bob Dylan, ,Johnny Cash, Modest Mouse. True, embellished, about themselves, others, total bullshit, from the heart. Honesty full of lies. With creativity they could blur it all together. 

I wanted to paint my own pictures, but writing is a tough art to practice. The delete key is evil. If Van Gogh had an eraser...

So here I am. Taking photos has become the game and the picture is the score. 

I wanted to shoot something different today, not another picture of Espresso watching the sunrise over the bus from the barn drinking coffee from a sweet mug with my grandmother. 

A lady bug walked along my skylight.  I took a picture. 

That was too easy. Time for a walk. 

Out of my apartment, past the barn and beyond the bus, outside the box and into the field. Knee deep in snow. My camera in hand but taking no pictures. Into the North Yarmouth public works lot. Rusty snowplows, piles of sand and snow, rusted drainage pipes and road signs. A black bird. Click. Just a black bird. 

Swirling spin drifts of snow, numb stung hands still gripping my camera. At the end of the plowed road sat a lone piece of machinery, a sand conveyer belt of sorts, its paint peeling back and chipping away. A beastly little piece of industrial rust and steel. And a big circular mirror. The eye of the machine. 

"Imagination is more important than knowledge.." Albert Einstein