Feet at the State Fair

State Fair Elegy:
Heading north on Nelson Street
kneecap to kneecap with strangers.
Bathed in their corndog breath
your eyes glazed and twitching
seeking something stationary and calm -
look up to the sky ride. Pods of glass
in primary colors glide like geese
going south for winter.

My feet in the BWCA

We went up north for a few days to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wildnerness. It's hardly a wilderness any more, what with all the day-trippers and hordes of scout troops and visitors from far and near, and the motorboats on some of the lakes, and the moose vanishing due to global climate change, and the satellites that pass by overhead, and the gps and cell phones. But, you know, it's still beautiful and all. It's just not wilderness any more, and maybe never was, unless you count the BWCA that lives in your romantic heart.

My feet at Canterbury Downs

My feet at Canterbury Downs. Not much more to say.

My feet in Times Square

The symbolic heart of New York City, Times Square is the intersection of Broadway with West 7th Street. It is also in the heart of the theater district and a classic tourist destination. On my first visit, I stayed in a tiny hotel/closet just two blocks from this area. The SuperShuttle from the airport made it from JFK to midtown Manhattan in 45 minutes. Also on board was a college kid from West Virginia, up for a day to see the Mountaineers play in the Big East basketball championship game; an hour later, still a half mile from Madison Square Garden, the kid got off and walked. Half an hour after that, I was dropped off at my hotel. The next morning I wandered, dazed, over streets I'd only seen on TV and movies. New York, being the most filmed city in the world, seemed a semi-familiar dreamscape, a return to a hometown I'd never been to. I started taking pictures of my feet as a way to prove there was a way to photograph New York in a way that I hadn't already seen. This is one result.

West Virginia lost to Syracuse, 68-59.

My Feet in front of Nighthawks

This picture was taken at the Art Institute of Chicago, in front of Nighthawks, Edward Hopper's iconic painting. You can see in the clinical composition of Nighthawks that Hopper is fascinated by light and architecture as much if not more than by people; it's partly the love he shows for the empty streets and complex shapes of objects in light and shadow that makes the people in the painting seem so lonely and displaced. It's not hard to imagine that he ended up painting sunlight in empty rooms.

Hopper painted Nighthawks in 1942, as American involvement in World War II was ramping up for three more years of terror and death. Yet Nighthawks is a meditative, calm painting, untouched by war; unless it is the absence of people, especially young men, which haunts the darkness behind the four people in the scene.

Feet in San Francisco

I'm joined by special guest feet for this picture. Thanks, Akasha!

We're back, safe and sound, but once again Frontier airlines has let us down. The first leg of our flight was delayed long enough that we couldn't make the connecting flight to Minneapolis, so we were forced to spend the night in Denver. And by Denver, I mean some face- and soul-less corporate park in the Denver vicinity. And, by spend the night, I mean kill six hours, from ten p.m. till 4:00 am, which is more of an extended layover, about half of which was shuttle rides over dark freeways. By the time we got home we were travel zombies lurching from room to room seeking food and rest. Still, a lovely trip.

My feet at the sea

More serious postings to follow...