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One From the Alexandrian Streets
This was my neighborhood during one summer’s sabbatical by the Mediterranean Sea. In our image you may see streetlamps, heaps of sand, and a wagon whose tailgate seems decorated by children making crayon sketches of melons, bananas, and vegetables too crude and faded to interpret. Above and to our right, abstract art twenty feet tall […]
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On Losing That First Love
“Never give all the heart …. He that made this knows all the cost, For he gave all his heart and lost.” William Butler Yeats I remember the warmth she gave To reciprocal talk on humid nights, Our bodies jointly radiant, listening To raindrops chime on stained glass. In satin yellow light Water-beads cast shadows […]
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Appreciating Catherine’s Greatness
Busker: One who entertains on the street or another public venue expecting compensation through voluntary donations. Synonyms: Street Performer, Trouper. She was born Catherine Flaherty — in high school a competitive swimmer, later training to expert-level in acrobatics. She is now Cate Great, a world-traveling freelance circus entertainer. We see our subject performing on a […]
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Racing Thoroughbreds Is Perilous Business
I took this photograph minutes prior to a stakes race at Keeneland Racecourse in Kentucky, USA. In that instant, I was not fully conscious of the tense mental engagement permeating the scene. Nobody smiles, not one bit of levity emerges, and no chitchat passes among participants. Even the track official in the extreme right foreground […]
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Witnessing Primal Screams
A smallish woman lets out a king-size Yelp! Is she signaling to someone? Acting out a private psychological drama? Or do we see up-welling of genuinely improvised emotion? Her eyes bulge, and figuring from the posture of her left hand, she fears that during this violent quaking of her body she will lose […]
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It’s Hard To Escape This Guy
Feeling Lost In A Forest Of Symbols If you are like me, you sometimes feel lost in what seems an endless forest — infested and overgrown with imagery and symbolic forms — where no pure light and nothing tangible may penetrate. For instance, it seems every time I turn around I see this fictional character […]