Hi reader,
Today, I am thinking of a quote from the movie, The Fellowship of The Rings.
As Gandalf looks down on Frodo, having just barely made it into the mountain of Moria, he offers this wisdom from beyond the realm of hobbit understanding,
“Even the very wise can not see all ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end…”
My, oh my, how Gandalf is hitting right now in this cultural and political moment! Somehow, in the past week, some bright future has made itself known in the seeming darkness of our times. Only now, because of such a night of our nation’s soul, it seems, do we have a golden opportunity to shine—to be the first in our democratic history to elect a black woman as President. Has the shape of such explosive light actually been dark, dampened, and hiding all along? As Gandalf reminds us, perhaps it has. Anyway, I am planning on creating a literal weekly ritual, prayer, and altar for Kamala until election day; I suggest we all do, for democracy's sake.
Light was also on my mind in other ways, as I went a little crazy with my Polaroid camera this week. I wanted to understand its sensitivity and relationship to natural light. After using my phone as my camera for so many years, where every snapshot is a throwaway or a chance to pick photos apart and then re-do, with Polaroid film, it really becomes an exercise in impulse control, which was a challenge.
So, I present to you some (spooky) Slow Pictures #2,3,4,5. I took these photos around 11 a.m on Thursday when the humidity had finally broken, and the sky was overcast. It felt like Fall was whispering from her coming arrival a mere nine weeks away.
As I walked along a local greenway, I kept finding natural doorways created by young, bent-over trees and crawling vines. My imagination was piqued; who lives in there?—Immediately, I thought of fairies, elves, night-crawling species, phosphorescent bodies, the supernatural, Gandalf, oh, and maybe some deer—all trampling through forest portals into the unknown. The photos came out way darker than I hoped for, but if you look closely, there is a semblance of some shape. Some wonder. Some light.1
Til next time, my fellow hobbits,
Nellen
Did you know, at least for this camera, that shaking the film after it comes out is not a thing? After taking the photo, you actually have to shelter it from light so it can have a chance to develop in the dark. So it seems this photo process needs both dark and light to produce it’s whole, messy, colorful creation.