experiments in light and dark

I left the house with two letters and my camera in my backpack. I walked west to coffee and sat writing letters all late morning.

But first: my tulips:



And now, back to letters:


I love letters. I don't think we see enough of each other's handwriting anymore. There's a warmth to ball-point pen ink staggered out with human hands and formed into sentences. Your wrist pressed down and your fingers cramped and you misspelled things, crossed them out, spelled them again. You pressed hard enough into the shapes, embossing them on the next page. Your handwriting tilts to the left, to the right, tumbles unaccountably to one corner, widens as you swing into what you want to say, narrows as you think about what to write after an ominous "Although..." You chose to write on both sides of the paper; you chose to write on one side; you chose to fold the pages in half, in thirds, in quarters. Then you wrote out destinations and cities on an envelope, stamped it with a stamp, and entrusted all your effort and all your words to a mechanism made of strangers. Somehow your letter passed through a hundred hands and traveled a hundred (or two hundred) miles by truck, was sorted at different stations, and landed in my mail slot this morning. Miracles!



It was date day with the camera: day pictures and night pictures. I wanted to get my tulips and the gray day, but also the rain on the branches and the city at night.