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Only Black and White?
A week and a half ago, I traded in my Leica M (Typ 262, as Leica numbered things for a couple of years, but don’t seem to any longer) and a largish pile of money for a Leica M Monochrom (Typ 246–yes, that’s 16 less). The Monochrom shoots only black and white pictures. Everyone’s reaction… — read more
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Thoughts From a Retreat
Permanence is the death we all long for–stasis, quiescence, no more irritation or excitation. This is, according to Freud, thanatos, the reality principle, or “death drive,” that lies beyond eros, beyond the pleasure principle, or “sex drive.” It’s tempting to oppose the drive for sex as a drive for life and creation against the drive… — read more
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Big Day Tomorrow
Tomorrow is May Day, an occasion that’s never meant a thing to me. But this year, tomorrow is the May 1 General Strike, a Day Without the 99%, centered in New York, as much as anything manifested by Occupy Wall Street could ever be centered anywhere, and I’ve come to see such actions in a… — read more
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Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There
I completed a week-long meditation retreat in August, and I would like to assure you all that everyone and everything is basically good. Or to put it in more traditionally Buddhist terms, Buddha nature is all we are and all we experience. Admittedly, my reasoning to this conclusion is more inductive than deductive, but I… — read more
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Again About the X100?
With the help of a kind soul in Alaska, I managed to buy a new Fujifilm Finepix X100 from a camera shop in Canada. I’ve had it for about seven weeks, I’ve taken more than 1,600 pictures with it, and I now feel compelled to add to the sea of ill-informed, strongly-held opinions swamping photography… — read more
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In Lieu of a Picture of the Week
To the scores (small handful? one?) of you who rush here every Sunday to see what photographic miracle I’ve managed to wrest from my surroundings each week, I regret to report that there will be no such wonder this week. It seems that Thursday night’s upgrade of Mac OS X led to Friday morning’s difficulty… — read more
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Remembering Barbara Belle Cumming Burrell
I am used to quiet people in my family, but my grandmother was quiet in a different way. Where the others’ silence often seemed to seethe with menace, her calm was an expression of great equanimity. Where theirs should not be disturbed, hers could not be disturbed. Where theirs was imposed upon us, hers was… — read more
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Over Nauset Bay
The first thing to know is that the scene is laid out before us objectively. Like a panoramic still life, it’s there for us to contemplate at our ease. The second, contradictory thing to know is that we are wholly embedded in the scene. We are there, in and of that peace, and nowhere else.… — read more
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But the Emperor’s New Clothes Keep Me Warm
I just noticed that I’ve been taking Lexapro for a year. I would have guessed it was half that. (Where does the time go? Last night, I also realized that as of this past September, I’ve been living with my wife for a third of my life.) A couple of weeks ago, I checked in… — read more
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A Good Year?
It seems that the summary judgment of 2009 is that it was wholly unsatisfactory, and there are many reasons to agree. And yet this was a very good year for me personally. I say that not to gloat, and I don’t believe that this makes up for the considerable misfortune that has befallen so many… — read more
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