Yesterday was the first official day of summer for me. If you look up "signs of summer" on the internet, you find people who tell about birds feeding their young, sudden proliferation of blooms in a garden, temperatures that soar from 70 degrees to 95 degrees over night, and the change of how the earth smells--spring carries a damply-cool scent; while summer is marked by a dry-rose-gardenia aroma. At our house, the beginning of summer is determined by the first day that someone goes swimming in the pool.
All of Florida's short winter, the pool is a frosty 68-to-70 degrees. By the time that summer hits, the pool has only warmed by 8 or 9 degrees--still too cold for Brent or Nathan to even think of jumping in. And, to tell the truth, it is still too frigid for me to consider swimming laps. However, once summer is here, after a few hours of working in the yard, I am so hot that the cold sluice of wet water--layering me above and below in layers of frosty relief--becomes a delicious hunger. It is as if the sweat peels away as I dive in--starting at my fingertips, running up my arms to my face, roiling over my stomach and back, finally pinching off at the ends of my toes. A being that was hot and prickly with exhaustion and dust is reborn: I climb out of the pool as if I had just emerged from a long, musty hibernation. It is the first experience of summer that allows me to imagine something of what a butterfly feels as it breaks open from its cocoon--unfolding wings that will carry its now-nearly-weightless body aloft on currents of invisible air.
I am suppose to be at the photography lab tonight. Tuesday evenings and from 9 to 9 on Friday are all the hours of access I have to be in a lab where I can print from my black and white negatives. Brent has indulged me in the space and costs of developing my film here at home. It is tedious work--a process that requires precise temperatures and measured intervals of change. I do it at night, while I am watching a movie with Brent, so it isn't really something that I mind. After the immediate result of digital photography, though, I GREATLY dislike having to wait to see if any of my pictures turned out as I wanted them to. Shortly after the start of the semester I began to research what a good, used enlarger would cost. I quickly realized that (first) I do not even LIKE any of the black and white prints I have developed (some of which dislike is borne of the fact that I have not [l]earned the patience to perfect this very difficult art) and (second) it would take extensive study for me to determine what a "good, used enlarger" would be. I will be done with the semester in just four weeks, so I have made an executive-type decision to try to make it to as many lab hours as I can and then return full-time to the digital photos that I love working with. ANYWAY . . . that means that I should be at the college right now, elbow-deep in stop bath and fixer. I am too restless inside through. I worked for three hours this morning getting a final, good print of an "architectural detail"--one of our final assignments. One of the buildings I photographed had columns in the front. I laid on my back and took pictures of the tops of the columns and the detailed ceiling above them. I already have finished (to my satisfaction and the approval of my instructor) the "detail and light" and "architecture" (translate: photograph of a cool building) assignments. Earlier today I finished setting up the background for the latest assignment: an abstract self-portrait.
We are to turn . . .
At this moment my 21 year-old son is poking my arm and singing "Whoo-hoo! Do the hokey-pokey! Whoo-hoo! Whoo-hoo!" I imagine this strange slip from his normal, sedate demeanor to be caused by the successful completion of his homework and a 93% grade on a Chemistry quiz today.
. . . in a photograph that expresses who we are--but doesn't really look like us. It is an effort to get us to think beyond the obvious--made more difficult by the fact that since we are THE OBJECT or the photo, we must be creative in finding a way to--at the same time--be the PHOTOGRAPHER OF THAT OBJECT. Not a problem if you have an especially long self-timer or a remote depressor.
We shall see, I suppose.
It is getting dark outside. It is time to get Nate to do another load of dishes and for me to put in a load of laundry. It is time for Brent to begin to think about coming home. Too late for yard work. Too cold for a swim in the pool. Just right for picking out a movie to watch and waiting for Brent to come home to cuddle with me on the couch.
There are three new families of marsh hens at the lake. Yesterday Nathan and I saw chicks from all three families, but I didn't have my camera. Today as I got near the nests, I heard the pair calling to each other to warn that danger (me) was coming. I could see the chicks moving the grasses around, but couldn't get a clear glimpse of them. I did see, though, this pair of parents who called to one another. The mother checked on the babies and then came to meet her companion. They groomed each other carefully, tenderly. After a minute or so, they then separated--the mother returning to the nest and the father continuing to call warning "Wheewhoot!" until he saw that I had moved away. Cool. Maybe they'll show off their chicks while I'm there tomorrow.