Turkey Vultures and Delusions

Posted on February 15, 2006 in Neighborhood Photography Reflections

I found the place. The place where I — stopped. Stopped posting photographs because I just didn’t — I’m not sure. The last set of five images depicted various odd local flora and a turkey vulture who I met on a ridge overlooking Whiting Ranch’s eastern watershed. Just before this came several pictures of Sleepy Hollow, a seasonal arroyo filled with oak trees and a vernal pool. The earth was dry. Yet I found flowers and lucious red lemonade berries. Mostly pit, lemonade berries are, but you can just lick the thin skin and get a pleasureable wallop that honors the name.

As I go, I atone. I cut weak pictures. I tell you my sins. Offering pictures on the web is an informal sort of group therapy, interrupted now and then by an asshole who comes to just tear you down. Does the shot impress anyone? Have I reached another heart, another soul? Do they see what I see or the photograph a blank devoid of meaning, like the sound of an electric fan? Angels sing in the music of the fans when you suffer from delusions. Are my photos delusional? Is the beauty I saw through the camera not there?

What surprises me is that I still see loveliness arrayed in the pixels of my photo scans. Here and there, I banged a shot out of the gallery because it did not meet my criteria. Others attract my eye still. And I ask if I went blind in June?

My therapist says that bipolars have the hardest time of any of his patients because we never know where we are. The floor beneath us could crumble or, worse, the firmament suck us up into a cozy mania and then drop us. This is why I worry about the part my photos play in my life.

That turkey vulture that I met on the ridge behind the stable and above the eastern watershed: I miss him. First my heart, then a depression and a mania took him away. Every time the wind blows, he is gone.

I am slowing down my uploads to one month at a time for the next few days so I don’t flood people. The next batch of photos will include shots taken at the 2002 Day of the Dead Celebration in Los Angeles.