Echoes in a Hollow Space

I finally got my nice, new Epson V300 scanner set up. The pathetic part is that it's been sitting in my hall waiting to be hooked up since the end of September. Various reasons prevented this, not the least being an extreme lack of space. At any rate, I made a place for it this week and made it happen.

I wanted a really good stand alone scanner because I have an enormous collection of print photographs and negatives. I plan to slowly but surely scan those so I can preserve them, then put them into long term storage and get them out of the way. (See above about lack of space.)

I've started that process. I imagine some of the images will show up here. They'll definitely show up on Flickr.

Some of you may remember this "from the notebooks" entry I made back in December '08. In it I discussed a epiphanic moment I had on top of Glastonbury Tor. I also discussed a photograph I'd taken at the time, a picture I hadn't seen it years (because it was stored I knew not where), but one that meant a lot to me. I remembered it as being almost as good as the moment it sought to capture.

Of course, it wasn't. I found it recently. It isn't a bad picture, but memory had made it so much more than it was, pouring in the emotions I felt at the time, the vision I experienced that day, into the paper and emulsion of the physical thing. No thing could ever compare, not really. I suppose that's the point of any photo: it captures a moment in order to spark a memory—but photos are rarely as good as what the human eye and human heart capture.

Lesson learned. Again.

( The photograph in question. )

All right, I decided to stop sitting here like a quivering lump of blancmange and come up with Ten Things I've Done That Others Might Not Have. Once I squeezed the brain a few times like a wet sponge, a few drops came out.

Prepare to snooze.

1. I rode in a gondola at nine o'clock at night through the canals of Venice, Italy and in the Grand Canal because the guy I was with thought "they ripped you off earlier in the day or evening." It was definitely not romantic in the pitch dark with rats scurrying along the not-so-far-away edges of canal and those dark looming buildings and the brackish water lap-lap-lapping against them. And riding in a tiny boat in a very large Grand Canal (open water) with big boats all around in pitch black dark is not something I recommend, either.

2. I drove around the West Country of England on my own for eight days, nothing booked in advance, just finding rooms as I arrived in a city through the Tourist Information or asking around. That was enormous fun. I got to be completely selfish about what I saw and did. No one to discuss it with, though.

3. When I was a kid I saw the original Cinemascope version of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Most amazing movie experience ever. Years later when I saw the 70mm version I couldn't figure why it was so disappointing, why the scenes I remember so vividly as looming off the screen at me seemed so flat and dull. Later, when I briefly flirted with film school and heard a lecture on the subject, I understood. (Growing up in L.A., one is almost required to at least flirt with the film industry.)

4. Climbed to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, Mexico.

5. Had a long conversation in a book store with Gary Busey about Thomas Jefferson who we both happened to be researching at the time. I wanted to write about him, Gary wanted to play him. I believe Nick Nolte got that part, but I could be mistaken.

6. Worked at the La Brea Tarpits one summer between high school and college in the microfossil lab and cataloging department. Handled real live prehistoric bones. Very fascinating stuff.

7. Met Henry Kissinger. Okay, okay, so I didn't really meet him, but I was in the same room with him. He was wearing some sort of Man Tan, and I could hear him droning on in that voice, and I couldn't keep a straight face. I had to leave the room so as not to embarrass myself.

8. Went to a fancy schmancy benefit Hollywood premiere for a hospital charity (I was invited by my candy striper friends as a guest) for an execrable B movie which I later saw lampooned on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Saw many celebrities and wound up sharing a bathroom cubicle with Carol Burnett. No, not at the same time. I was waiting in line and when the cubicle door opened and she looked out, the gob-smacked amazement on my face had her biting her lower lip so as not to laugh.

9. At the age of four or five I was on a horse who got spooked by lightning and broke away from my father, who was leading her. She took off in a blind panic headed for the busy four lane highway near the stables with me hanging on for dear life. Fortunately, my heroic mother managed to jump in front of her, wave her off the from the highway entrance and back towards the stables, and stop her panic. I don't remember being scared. I think maybe I wanted her to do it again.

10. I got to spend the better part of an hour alone in a megalithic burial chamber (West Kennet Long Barrow near Avebury). It was a rainy day and I had to climb a steepish hill through pastures to get to it and there wasn't anybody else around. When I'd finished and was on the way down, a German couple was just coming up. Being up there alone for so long was very mystical; being down in the ground in a stone-lined vault, very navel-of-the-world-like. The endorphins released in the climb up the hill may have had something to do with that, but it was an amazing experience and I felt part of some vast continuum. Since so much of my genetic material comes from the British Isles, I guess that's hardly surprising. It was one of those hinge moments, where you walk into an experience and the world shifts a little and although you're leaving by the same path, you realize it's headed in a slightly different direction. After that trip (the one where I was alone for 8 days) I made big changes in my life, so maybe I did leave that barrow in a slightly different direction.

ZZZZzzzzzzzzz.