Life's Persistent Questions

Last night we got out of rehearsal about five minutes too late to catch the 9 pm ferry, so my 17-year-old co-actor and I were "stuck" sitting in the ferry line for an hour, waiting for the 10:05 departure.

Luc had a book to read for school, so he grabbed the pillow I keep in the car, put his seat all the way back and settled in for an hour of reading. But I had already finished the book I had brought, so I decided to take a walk with my camera.

It was late, and the light was fading fast. I got a few shots of the ferry we had missed as it headed off into the sunset, and took a picture of that statue of the old captain feeding the birds outside of Ivars. There was a very intriguing-looking violinist playing outside the Olde Curiosity Shoppe, with two bulldogs seated on a blanket behind him, but it didn't seem right to take his picture without dropping some change into his violin case, and I had brought no money with me, so I headed back to the car.

In the car I began just fiddling with the camera -- a little Canon point-n-shoot I keep around for random photos -- and I discovered how much fun it can be to play with light. Like the violinist down the street, I began improvising: I'd focus on something with strong color and light, press the shutter and move the camera, allowing it to record whatever it saw. Every so often I would stop and review the images, deleting any that didn't appeal -- and trying, as always, to assess what it is that appeals or does not.

Because for almost any image I shoot I can imagine SOME photographer SOMEwhere saying, "Yes, that's IT!!!" It's not that they're all great; it's more that I've noticed over the years that a) what other photographers choose to exhibit may just as easily be an image I've shot and thrown away -- or if I shot it, I WOULD throw it away! And b) people's tastes are very different, and it seems like for everything there is there is someone who will love it.

...which, for some reason, reminds me of the time when I was pregnant with my second child and confided in tears to my husband that I loved our first child so intensely that I couldn't imagine I would have enough love left to give the new baby.

My husband, who is very wise about such things, just laughed. "I'm sure there'll be enough to go around," he said, and of course he was right -- love seems to be an infinite resource: the more you give, the more there is to give.

So, anyway, this morning I loaded all those playing-with-light images onto my computer, planning to write this blog about one that I could only shoot by very carefully focusing on something else, because there was a windshield in the way and the camera kept getting distracted by the patterns of light on the windshield.

That could have made a great blog topic -- and maybe I'll write on it tomorrow. But when I saw this image I decided to post it instead. Because it reminds me of the introduction they always do on Prairie Home Companion to the Guy Noir skits:

"A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets. But on the 12th Floor of the Acme Building, one man is still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions: Guy Noir, Private eye."

That's me, shooting away in the dark, still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions -- and that's my camera: my private eye. And that's the title of this image: Life's Persistent Questions.