Further Along

From the 305 Van Brunt Show
Vanishing points imply ruler drawn straight lines, and the imposition of abstract architectural overlay on the scene. I love how picture battles against that imposition. The arterial canopies of the trees  and the calligraphic tire tracks, meander in counter valence to the formal edges of the buildings, the decorative park gate, the curb, and the ghost border where the snow ends and the road begins. All points are vanishing points—but more so in the snow.

and miles to go...

This picture was taken last February. I remember the ride pretty well. Snow had been on the ground pretty much the entire year up until that point. Riding around in it was no big deal. This ride was pure honkytonk piano run (think "Hot Potato" by The Kinks — also Don't Honk, $350 Penalty).

I gave this photo kind of a misleading title by taking a line from Robert Frost's most anthologized poem, "Stopping By The Woods On a Snowy Evening." But where that poem is a paean to stubborn solitude, there's hardly any solitude in this picture. Yes, it's the only photo in the show that does not have another human being in it, but I am the eye. I am the human in it. And with that eye, am happy to see the presence of others etched in the snow in front of me and to be able to recognize something entirely other and wild in those tracks. It's comforting to know that humanity doesn't naturally tend towards the straight lines of artifice  — that we wobble a bit along our way. Yeah. I think this photo has more in common with Douglas Rothschilds poem "Further Along" than Frost's — especially in the final lines.

What next Manhattan?
i will not be here again
for a long time — there
are only twelve more shopping
days till X-Mass & i

don't even know for whom
i'm buying these things.
It's the flashing lights &
the seeminglessness of
purpose that attracts me.

Christmas Trees — Fire
Engines —Police Cars or
Emergency Vehicles —it's
all the same: Someone
needs help. Someone else

is coming. What more
could any of us ask
beyond this static re-
assurance? i grumble,
walk South, watch the

River rise, & think of
"the beuté of hem nat
susteyene," as the tide
chews away at the reed-
covered Pier. So much

of what we resemble
reassembles us.