The Assassin's Wages

The cat, a sleek calico with bold, drop-dead whiskers, purred and rubbed her head and body against the man’s legs as he sat at the kitchen table. Birdsong outside the window told her darkness would soon yield to daylight, but the man wasn’t very responsive; he groaned quietly, drank ice water and popped little round white things into his mouth. The cat sympathized up to a point, but she was hungry and that problem loomed much larger in her consciousness than whatever was troubling the man. Why, she wondered, couldn’t these human creatures -- preoccupied as they were with putting things in their own mouths all the time -- understand that cats like their meals on time, too? They’re too slow, too reluctant, or just plain too stupid, she concluded. She rubbed against his legs again, then stood to one side, stared at him and meowed a crescendoing meow that warned of diminishing patience. The man stood up heavily. The cat galloped toward the cellar stairs. Her food and water bowls were at the foot of the steps, but she paused at the top landing, to make sure her lord and master had gotten and retained the message she had been at such pains to convey. No such luck. With disgust she watched the man lurch out of the kitchen; she heard springs creak as he collapsed onto the living room sofa with a sigh and noisily broke wind. If only I could talk to this lout, she thought as she trotted into the living room. She thumped the floor with her paws and trod as heavily as she could; the technique for stalking a human being and getting him to feed you was entirely different from the technique for stalking a bird or a mouse for the same purpose. “Damn cat, I know you’re there,” the man mumbled. “Shut up and I’ll feed you in a minute.” She meowed and catapulted herself onto the man’s stomach. He grunted, belched and scratched a bit behind her ears; she purred until she vibrated. She walked over his chest and butted his chin twice with her forehead, then settled back on his chest and began kneading him with her front claws. She tugged and pulled at the fabric of his filthy sweatshirt, now and then digging into his flesh, which made him wince and pull her paws away. He’s got it bad this morning, she thought. It must have something to do with all that shouting and shoving he and the other human being were doing late into the night. The other human being -- the smaller one who yelled and shot at her with that damned water pistol whenever she clawed the furniture or climbed on the kitchen counter -- was still upstairs. Not yelling at the moment, though. But, hey, man, she meowed. Enough about you and your mate. What about me? You’re my meal ticket. Let’s get with the program. You think you feel lousy? How do you think I feel? I’m starving. “Okay, kitty,” the man said, hoisting himself from the couch. “Okay. Let’s get you your crunchies.” She bounded for the stairs and waited again at the top, watching as the man trundled across the shiny kitchen floor, turned on the basement light and started down the steps. This is it, she chirruped. Hallelujah. She dodged between the man’s legs, wanting nothing more than to keep him moving in the right direction. Without warning, she felt the impact of the man’s left foot against her left side, partially knocking the wind out of her. As she screeched, hissed and bristled with pain and indignation, the man cried out and pitched headlong down the steep, narrow staircase, thumped to the bottom and landed on his back, spread-eagled on the concrete basement floor. His eyes were open but he didn’t move. His head lay practically in her water bowl. She meowed a few times to remind the man of his mission, but he didn’t respond; he lay still. She marveled at the laziness of human beings -- resting, always resting. After all that commotion, too, she thought; first he kicks me, then he somersaults down the stairs, and now he decides to take another nap. All right, Mac. My patience with you is just about used up. Let’s make with the feeding, already. She meowed again, deep in her throat, long, loud and funereal, for emphasis. He didn’t move. She saw something coming out his ears and spreading in a pool on the floor. It was warm and tasted salty. She meowed and avoided it, rubbing insistently against his legs. “Now what the hell is your problem?” The cat heard a raspy, high-pitched angry human voice and footsteps. Someone was coming. Poised to leap to her vantage point in the overhead ventilation duct-work if necessary, she looked up the stairs. It was the other human being, the smaller one the man had been fighting with last night -- the one with the sharp tongue and the water pistol. The smaller human descended the cellar steps and looked down at the man. She prodded him with her toe, then reached down and touched his neck for a moment. “The stupid bastard’s dead,” the other human being said. She laughed. “Dead! God does answer prayers! “Good kitty. Good, good kitty. Oh, look. Your bowl’s empty. Let’s get you fed. Then we’ll call someone to come haul this sorry sack of shit out of here forever. Good kitty.” She stroked the cat’s forehead. She poured the dry cat food into the bowl, and the cat rubbed against her legs and purred.

The Camera as Time Machine

It was spring of 1969 -- April, if memory serves. I was serving as a junior officer aboard USS Suffolk County (LST-1173), a unit of Atlantic Fleet Amphibious Squadron Twelve, deployed in the Caribbean. Not a bad place to be serving in those days of raging hostilities in Southeast Asia. Above is a shot of our ship making a practice landing on Red Beach on the island of Vieques, just east of the main island of Puerto Rico. The picture appears tranquil enough, but the chaos that preceded it was the stuff of which Keystone Kops movies are made. Bringing a Suffolk County class tank landing ship inshore, rigging floating causeways, and connecting the whole works to the beach so vehicles can be offloaded is a task which requires the most exacting seamanship. Suffice it to say that our skipper was still learning the ropes in that department. But, we made it, as you see below. One way you can tell this was just a practice landing is by noticing all the people standing around as if they're waiting to buy hot dogs from a pushcart vendor in the park. If there'd been shooting going on, those guys would not be so exposed. As a caption for this picture, how about: "How many Marines does it take to land a tank on a beach?"

These photos are one reason I'm skeptical about digital photography. They were made with a film camera and reposed as negatives in a carton in my closet for over 40 years before I made them into prints. I doubt digital images would have lasted that long in such good condition before being brought to light.

A MOMENT IN THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM

IT'S INTERESTING what one can find while rummaging through boxes of old photos. Interesting and nostalgic beyond belief. So now, travel with me back to June 1964, to the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia, where some unbelievably lucky (although they probably didn't appreciate it at the time) young people were taking part in the upper-crust social life of the day. This was about two years before the youth revolution of the mid-'60s, and the debutante season was still a very big deal in some circles. It was a carefree time, in which we danced the night away and thought not a bit about what might be waiting for us around the corner.

Even though it seems a million years ago in another country -- and maybe a different dimension or a different planet -- I'm grateful to have been a part of it.

And, I wonder where those lovely lassies are now....

The Wonders of Digital Photography

A comment on digital photography, from a die-hard film photographer: “...it sucks, it's lame, it's stale, it's cheesy, it's evil, it's crap, it's like socialism, I couldn't be bothered anymore (shot digital for two years), it's boring, boring, boring, it's a farce, it killed the photography industry, it's NOT cheaper but looks so bloody cheap, it's generic, it's buying into some stupid upgrade cycle with you losing out in the end. Should I go on?”

When I was starting to take pictures as a more-or-less serious avocation many years ago, one of the most obnoxious types of people I encountered were the ones who spent more time talking about how much their equipment cost than they did making photographs. People with Hasselblads and Leicas and Nikons, etc. spent more time looking at their cameras than through them. In light of what I was shooting with at the time, you could say I suffered from a touch of Pentax envy.

I thought it was crap then; I think it's crap now.

But here we are in the D I G I T A L Age!! Now the morons sling around these things that look like trench mortars and babble away about megapixels and a mishmash of acronymic poop that no alphabet should be asked to support. The cameras themselves (if you can call them that) produce ... well ... pictures. But then the geniuses can shove all this stuff into their computers and manipulate the images into cheap, plastic imitations of art. If there's any artistry there, I'll show you some pimple-faced kid masturbating away with an XBOX game.

No, I think I see it the same way as the chap I quoted above. Instant gratification is a tempting thing, but learning to sublimate it is part of growing up

OK, digitheads, start taking shots.

A Meditation on the Passage of Time; Or, Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May

IT WAS October, 1978, and Halloween was coming. The girls and I spent a lovely warm afternoon at the picnic table in the back yard turning three of four pumpkins into Jack O'Lanterns, as you see on the right. Sadly, in our household, Halloween fell by the wayside that year, when Mom had a meltdown and fetched up in the hospital thanks to an unspeakably ugly episode with some members of her family a week or so earlier. The girls had their Halloween with my parents in the Philadelphia area while I minded the homestead on my own. I didn't revisit the Jack O'Lanterns until just before Thanksgiving that year. The only pumpkin not showing the ravages of decay and the passage of time was the one which had escaped the knife that lovely October afternoon. Funny thing, the passage of time. Sometimes we don't notice it until too late. In this case, life went on, and here I sit looking back at some pictures of a long-gone autumn, wistfully realizing I'll never get those moments back, except in the form of a pair of images formed as part of an interaction between light and a chemical process.

Clear as Eternity

The wind blew in straight from the Pole, or so it seemed. Not blade-sharp, but blunt and heavy, like a Kiowa war club. Dry leaves and snarling snow squalls hurried before, as if in haste to outrun it. The thickest sheepskin and greasewool were not enough to turn aside the assault of this wind; the stoutest fur-lined sealskin boots and mittens couldn’t keep feet and hands from aching and going numb. Life itself retreated into the depths of Sarah Dawson. She sensed only a spark of warmth deep inside her, cowering away from the sweep of the black roaring void which had snuffed the sun. The sudden temperature drop seemed a surprise at first. Surprise? No. Granny Synnestvedt had looked at the sky – when was that? Yesterday? This morning? Back in Canebrake. She’d looked at the sky with her cataract-fogged hazel eyes. “Blue Norther,” she’d said. “I smell it. Blue Norther. Comin’ down on us sure as hell fire. Winter ain’t over yet, chickadee. You best stay right where you’re at till she blows through.” She sniffed the wind and cackled like an old broody hen over the last egg she’d ever lay. But Granny Synnestvedt had got on Sarah’s nerves so bad it was going to take more than a late winter storm to keep her cooped up in that musty old bungalow in Canebrake. Shut up tight since the end of October, the place reeked of age, rancid cabbage and decay. Shades pulled down, even in daylight the interior was shadowy as the lukewarm shallows of a prehistoric sea, where Granny, a rippling transparent ctenophore, glided from room to room. For days on end, the only sound in the place was the keening of the prairie wind – and Granny’s chuckling as she talked to herself – or to someone Sarah couldn't see. Sarah Dawson announced she must leave, Blue Norther or no. “I’m warnin’ you, child. No, I’m beggin’ you.” Granny rubbed her hands together with a sound of grasshoppers’ wings. “Stay till the weather clears. I see a awful visitation of Satan’s angels comin’ on us. Stay another three days.” “I got to go, Granny. Been here too long. You was kind to put me up through the cold months, but I got family waitin’ on me. I’ll be fine. I’ve rode fence lines in a snowstorm before. Don’t you worry about me.” *** The roan mare rolled her eyes, showing the whites. She got skittish when Sarah tried to saddle her. Granny stood in the barn doorway and watched, her face closed up like a shuttered dark lantern. “Horse senses it,” she muttered. “Horse can already hear the wind a hundred mile away. Horse don’t want to die out there on the storm’s anvil.” Sarah finally backed the mare into a corner and threw the saddle over her back. It was a Spanish leather saddle, a gift from her father, with her initials tooled into the right stirrup flap.

“Quit it, Gran. Enough of that nonsense. Look at that sky. It’s as clear as eternity. Sun’s getting warmer every day. I’m going and that’s that.” The mare whinnied and stamped and rolled her eyes as Sarah cinched the saddle. “If you ain’t going to mind me, you should at least mind the horse,” Granny said. “Not another word.” “Horse knows. Oh, yes. Horse knows. You say that sky’s clear as eternity? Even with these old eyes I see the darkness in the north.” *** Sarah Dawson rode out that morning, Granny’s predictions notwithstanding – over the illusory flatness of the earth toward where the prairie and the sky made a straight line of demarcation between them, following the sun’s trajectory toward dusk. About ten miles out, Sarah looked to her right, startled, perhaps, by something she thought she heard – the suggestion of storm-tossed surf or a high-speed freight train in the distance. Sarah looked, saw nothing of interest in the near distance; then she gazed into the bright northern sky. And there it was: a thin band of purple just above the horizon – a bruise on the face of heaven. Bit of weather shaping up? Maybe. Sarah recalled Granny’s warnings and dug her heels into the mare’s flanks. “Git up, Gertie.” She clicked her tongue and slapped the reins against the horse’s withers. “We’ll make Yankton by nightfall.” Sarah shuddered slightly. The sun, she noticed, though still high in the sky – about an hour past noon, she figured – had lost a good bit of its warmth. She looked northward again. The thin band of purple now looked like a mountain ridge. She felt a puff of cold wind, a cat’s paw, like the first tentative probing of a boxer sizing up a sparring partner in the ring. The grass rippled, the blades showing their pale undersides. Then it hit. *** According to the almanac, the blizzard of March 18-19, 1903 “smote the Dakotas with the fury of an avenging angel.” When the earth re-emerged from beneath its mantle of ice in the second week of May, vultures feasted on acres of carcasses – a smorgasbord of bison, steer, bull, sheep, coyote and whatever else raised its stink into the springtime air. A wandering rodeo bum found a fine Spanish leather saddle and tack amid some maggot-crawling remains about fifteen miles west of Canebrake. The initials S.D. had been tooled into the leather, which came back nicely with lots of saddle soap and elbow grease. The cowpoke took a hot iron and obliterated the initials, substituting his own on the opposite flap. One breezy afternoon in June, Granny Synnestvedt sat on her front porch with her grandson Jad Parsons from the Lazy B Ranch. She sniffed the air. “Twisters.” Granny’s voice rasped as she lit her corncob pipe. “Twisters. Big ‘uns. And lightning. You best get your livestock under cover an’ pray for deliverance.” “Aw, come on, Gran,” Jad said. “There ain’t no twisters out there. Look at that sky. It’s clear as eternity.”