PHL@Night

Laura and I drove to the Schuylkill near the Art Museum so that we could walk the dog tonight. I did a little running while we were there.

On the way back, I took a few pics with our cheap (it was literally given to me for free 3 or 4 years ago) HP Digital camera.

We always like that the pics and movies from this camera always come out a little grainy - you can even see it in the blurriness of a lot of what I'll be posting. Altogether, picture taking while driving at night is more of an exercise in drawing with light than it is in composition or perspective. I hope you enjoy them at least half as much as I did taking them while waving a camera around (if you do, you can check out more by clicking here)...

New Year...

It is 2:33AM.

I am baking bread.

It is the new year.

The night is more still than what I'm used to. Probably because it is now 2:34AM.

There is an occasional car that drives down one of the main streets. For some reason...none of the mufflers here seem to work too well.

At midnight, there were fireworks. I was mixing dough.

It is in the stillness that I can hear the clock ticking. My heart is beating. There is a low hum coming from the fan that Laura turns on to produce white noise when we're asleep.

And still...an occasional car.

Have I ever talked to you about my idea of the relative nature of time? I've talked to Laura a lot about it. This minute now is the fastest minute I've ever experienced, but it's not the fastest minute I'll ever experience within the breadth of all of time.

More importantly... does the shortness of this minute matter any more or less than the span of the minutes preceding or following this point in time?

In terms of time...no.

In terms of substance? Maybe.

I look at our Christmas tree. It's been up for nearly a month. This is something I've thought about for a while now, but just haven't found the time to write it out (until I decided to finish making bread at 2:43AM). That is, this Christmas tree is carrying the weight of sadness from the past. There are relics and ghosts who call out only to find themselves locked behind glass or lamps or plastic or yarn. They show the burden of years and bear memories whose depths are more than may be measured.

2010. Bread.