There are times and places when - and where - one wishes the former would stop and the latter could be taken home. But time surely never stops and those places only follow us home on frozen photographs and wrapped up softly in our memories. It’s up to us, then, to match our pace to that of life around us and to make sure the memories live on and generate new dreams.

The Seawall is one of those places, and last Sunday night, one of those times.

I had noticed on my afternoon run that Kent Avery, the singular man behind the famous balanced stones, was at work on his regular spot half-way between Ferguson Point and Second Beach, and I’d decided to come back for sunset.

When I arrived, the sun was just dipping lazily behind the gentle mountains across English Bay, leaving us with nothing but a cloudless sky and a palette of colors that were still too dull to exploit. I would have to be patient.

As I was slowly setting Abe up on the tripod, a man rushed past me, headed towards the city, and said: « If you hurry up and turn around, there’s barely enough light left to get a shot of this. » He was pointing at the moon. I smiled to myself and muttered: « Dude, you have no idea how wrong you are. The light hasn’t even appeared yet. »

Kent was still around, balancing two last stones near the water’s edge. Eventually, seemingly satisfied with his work for the day, he came over and started talking with passers-by. After glancing at my camera, he asked in a melancholic tone: « Did you ever use Kodachrome? » It said nothing but said it all. I replied that I had been more of a Fujichrome fan and the conversation picked up. We talked about good old times vs the new, about the Photoshop lab we now have at home and about the ever-lasting need to still get it right from the start, in-camera. He mentioned he was working on a book of photos of his art and stories he’d accumulated during nine years of « being around ».

People were walking past us, commenting out loud, in admiration. « They look like little people » said someone. « I can’t understand how come they don’t fall down right away » added another. « This is so peaceful » said a small girl that could not have been older than 10 or 12. True, there was a peculiar stillness in the air and the balanced stones seemed suspended in space, defying gravity and our very understanding, as if painted unto the scenery and as such, immortal. They would, however, be short-lived. Tides and the wind have been making sure to keep Kent coming back week after week, and he does.

I was in no hurry to shoot anything, and neither was he. I knew that the magic was probably going to happen after most people had given up and gone home. There are, really, two golden hours. One is the painters’ favourite, late afternoon, when a low sun washes over a scene in warm orange tones and long shadows. The other is the photographer’s, or maybe just mine. The sun has already disappeared below the world, light is evening itself out, shadows give way to richer midtones, and if one is lucky, the sky puts up its most amazing display of colors as the sun’s rays are still reaching far up into the atmosphere. It’ll happen anywhere between a few minutes after sunset and a good hour later. As a rule of thumb, when people are getting chilly and leaving and I wonder what to do, I stay. It usually pays off.

As time passed, the Seawall was emptying itself of its human fleas. Darkness was gaining on a long day. People were fewer and fewer. At last, the light changed. Subtle nuances emerged in the sky and calm water by the shore began flirting with them. Abe came to life on her pedestal.

XXXX

It was getting late. Kent had finished taking shots of his open air temple on a small digital point-and-shoot and took leave. « Come by and show me your pictures some day, he said. » I was about to ask him where his office was when I remembered I was standing in it. « Sure, I replied, ‘be glad to. » Even he might be a little surprised by the results. It’s hard to believe that in the almost complete darkness which reigns an hour after sunset, so much light still exists for the sensor to record.

At such long exposure settings, the game is one of patience, of trial and error. Reciprocity failure kicks in and makes any precise calculations pretty much impossible. But nothing about Sunday night’s conditions was precise. It was the romantic hour, a time for fantasies and visions and dreams, for drifting thoughts and longing unleashed. I had to see the colors with my inner eye, the real ones having gone almost blind as Abe, even in manual focus and with my guidance, struggled to find her crisp edge.

And there, unavoidably, as the shots were stacking up unto the memory card and a silent night had fallen on the Seawall, I found myself connecting, to other places and different times, to memories and paths and directions, to the absent one who ought to have been standing there next to me, and soon would be, somehow, somewhere.

This blog is taking four days off while East meets West, and vice versa. Sonnez haubois résonnez musettes...

It’s been quite a while and they were getting dusty, but the best 90 South Africa pictures have made it into their own photo galleries. Nostalgic, eerie, beautiful, they will remain what they instantly became as the shutter was pressed: icons, timestamps, history been written and frozen in time. The two galleries are available from the main Photography menu above but to be sure you’ll visit, I’ll even include the links here:

South Africa Part 1 - South Africa Part 2

Don’t look for a particular sequence or logic, there is none but that of colors and moods. Of course most of these pictures have appeared in previous posts here on the blog in the On the Road Category, scattered between January 18th and April 18th. So while turmoil is once again gripping South Africa, here are glimpses of natural peace and harmony. Images of an extraordinary trip, in extraordinary company, for an extraordinary purpose.

Heading north has always been the path to mystery, to silent eerie forests and shadow-filled canyons, to myths and legends beyond comprehension and to the cold bite of unforgiving winds or the penetrating humidity of endless fogs. As much as the South echoes in my mind of warm seas and aimless pursuits, the North is made of exploration and danger, and magic, and sorcery.

So when I headed across the Burrard Inlet last week-end in my quest for a few stamps, it was with the firm intention of balancing my time in touristland with time in the other world; the secret, often ignored and always quiet space that lies just at the edge of civilization, right next to our daily madness arena and yet so remote in the collective consciousness that it might as well not exist. It always puzzles me how easy it is to step from crowded paths into peaceful and haunting side tracks. They are there, all around us, all the time. One only needs the will to see them.

The Capilano Suspension Bridge was its usual self, popular, wobbly, long, overlooking its canyon from hundreds of feet up. I crossed it, got my stamp, came back, and walked up Capilano Rd for a few hundred meters to the branching left turn. Because I, was going down. Soon, I left the already quieter paved road and ventured onto a narrow hiking trail. I was alone, at last. It had been 29°C when I left the West End around 4:00 pm, this being the warmest day of the year so far. But as I pushed deeper into the forest and closer to the bottom of the gorge, and the roaring of water, the air chilled and I knew magic had begun. Sorcery too, maybe, but would I ever know?

The sun was about to dip behind the mountains to the east and had serious trouble reaching as deep down as the river. Shadows grew around me as I descended swiftly, taking deep breaths and smelling with great pleasure the pine trees and their moss. It wasn’t difficult, then, imagining a world of Elves and Goblins and Trolls, alive around me, watchful and whispering as I passed by. The city had moved back into my mind to the state of a theory, an abstraction merely remembered but not entirely possible. It might as well have been a thousand miles away.

Surprisingly, when I finally made out the white foam of rushing rapids below me, some light seemed to reappear. The river caused a relative clearing in the tall trees and a few late rays shone bravely enough to bring some gold back to the overwhelming green of the foliage and moss and water. I took a few pictures and walked upstream, 50 feet or so above the rapids on the steep eastern bank. Eventually, I reached a small wooden bridge over the Capilano river, which I didn’t cross. I knew exactly where I was, the salmon hatchery was up ahead to the right. Having found it, I took a last long look and walked back up slowly, leaving magic behind and re-acclimating myself to noise and people.

Back on Capilano Rd, I lazily hopped on the bus and kept going uphill to the bottom of the Skyride. Grouse would yield another stamp. While waiting for the next red cable car, I paid the poor wolves a visit and promised one to put his picture on my blog to cheer him up. I wasn’t sure, but having just come from the enchanted forest below, I thought he might have been an old king, caught off guard by some evil witch and held captive by a terrible spell, to his slow agony and our ignorant pleasure.

Then it was time to rise. The ground faded under my feet and the horizon grew wider and brighter. The sun was setting at precisely the moment we passed the second pylon and when we finally entered the summit station, it had disappeared behind the Lions. I walked around, aroused by so much fresh air, revived by the proximity of the mountains and mesmerized as always by the beauty of the scenery.

But I had a rendez-vous to attend and I sat down with a tall murky beer at the Altitudes Bistro, silent, lost in thoughts and ever so grateful. It was my first time back up since coming with Marie the previous fall. So much had been set in motion, then... I took a deep breath. Magic, it seemed, did not only live in mysterious woods. It had followed us up here, that night, and always would stay. I sensed it all around. It was talking to me. I answered and smiled, looking to the East. Then I finished my beer and headed back down. Magic followed. Or maybe it lead. I know where it’s going.

Like many yesterdays, today was high in stress, exclamation points, shocking surprises - mostly bad, very serious setbacks, crises (that’s a plural, mind you), dull rain, bad communication, ridiculous misunderstandings, obnoxious people, water leaks, wasted food, moody crews, scheduling problems, 12 1/2 hours at work, doubts, distance and loneliness.

But, erasing all this, topping it, nullifying it, I got not one, but many lovely smileys, zeros and ones of digital love. Straight from Brooklyn. What more could one ever ask for? I am, still and always, the luckiest guy in the world and dragons had better stand clear because I will fend them off.

«  We think, sometimes, there’s not a dragon left. Not one brave knight, not a single princess gliding through secret forests, enchanting deer and butterflies with her smile. What a pleasure to be wrong. Princesses, knights, enchantments and dragons, mystery and adventure ...not only are they here-and-now, they’re all that ever lived on earth! Our century, they’ve changed clothes, of course. Dragons wear government-costumes, today, and failure-suits and disaster-outfits. Society’s demons screech, whirl down on us should we lift our eyes from the ground, dare we turn right at corners we’ve been told to turn left. So crafty have appearances become that princesses and knights can be hidden from each other, can be hidden from themselves.  »

Richard Bach - The Bridge Across Forever

It’s here again. I can feel its warm breath on my face, like a dragon’s caress; it comes and it goes but never fades for too long. It’s the colorful wind of change, it has returned. I was expecting it patiently, facing East where the bright star appears at last, so that I could catch the first glimpse of a whisper. And now I know it’s upon me, and I am bracing myself, and I will let go when it hits me, willingly and with such relief. This place that has seen me grow will become a memory among others, but it will remain forever the source of the fire that consumes me, it will turn to coals and glow in the dark, and I will rise in a new dawn. New footsteps will mark a path, and what seems blurry now will come into view, and it’s when the mountains ahead seem impassable that I’ll most remember having eagerly traveled towards them. And the only thing more extraordinary than what has happened is what now will. This is our time.

For Marie, in honor of the many amazing books that have contributed to shaping us into who we are, and in memory of our childhood, of which, undoubtedly, the best part is remembering.

In a childish, « I-wanna-do-like-mommy » reaction to many posts about books and reading, I suddenly find myself missing my own books. Looking up and around from the computer, my eyes wander to an annoyingly empty set of shelves and where books should be aligned, there is nothing more than filling - papers and DVDs and things and stuff. The books, you see, were left behind on so many occasions, so many extreme departures, so many radical moves. They were heavy and held me back, they equaled to more than a few suitcases, they were a ball at the end of a chain, despite all the affection I had for them. And so, slowly, I began drifting away from paper; because for some strange reason, I grow attached to good books and resent having to give them away or leave them behind. So I probably figured unconsciously that if I could no longer read, I would write instead.

My love of books goes back so far it becomes blurry and anecdotal. I began, as probably every child ever has, by liking images. But in my young specialist’s mind, the proper ratio of text versus photos had to be achieved in order to make a book valuable. Too much text and my interest was diluted. Too little and I felt cheated of the pertinent information to complement and explain the images. The first serious book I remember being given arrived on my 7th birthday. It was an photo encyclopedia of sharks written by Cdt. Jacques-Yves Cousteau. I treasured it and treated it with the utmost respect, reading it over and over again, learning to differentiate species and slowly understanding that sharks weren’t monsters but animals, like us. I still marvel at the fact that this very book might well have been a trigger and could in part be responsible for the 15 wonderful years I have spent working under the sea.

Then there were a series of even bigger color books on animals. Large format, bright shiny glossy paper and amazing full-page pictures, they were, for many years, the thing I wished for most at Christmas and on birthdays. I would open them only partially to protect the binding and treat them as if their pages had been made of silk, or maybe gold.

Later came a few real encyclopedias, not so elegantly illustrated but whose value and relevance was highly increased in my eyes by the amount of information they contained. This was long before the internet had even been thought of by a few brilliant minds and books were the ultimate source of information; the sense of power and knowledge gained from looking up a complicated word was a high. It was important. It was a ritual, about turning pages, looking up and down lists, selecting, analyzing, digesting, linking to more, and beyond.

There were many imageless books too, at first read out loud to us at bed time, then picked back up on my own and savored many times over. One of those, or rather three of those, were Marcel Pagnol’s trilogy of his childhood memories, Les souvenirs d’enfance: La gloire de mon père, Le château de ma mère, Le temps des secrets. My parents’ copies, which I held on to for so many years, were in a beautiful limited edition, hand cut, numbered in the 3000 range and printed on Velin paper. I have read them so many times I almost know them by heart. They echoed to my own childhood and populated it with healthy adventures and endless games that even the reading of Robinson Crusoe, White Fang, The Last of the Mohican’s and Ivanhoe haven’t matched.

Later as a teenager, I would devour Premier de Cordée and Annapurna, premier 8000, and then run outside and climb up the tallest pine tree in front of the house, anchor my double 8mm rope and repel from the top, using the classic method and burning my bottom and shoulders with sheer enthusiasm and a little too much speed. I would climb up the south face of the villa, hanging on to the window ledges and shutters, cut across to the overhang of the balcony, set my homemade artificial climbing ladders and work my way to the other side, suspended from the roof, pretending to be Gaston Rébuffat on the Drus in the middle of the cruelest storm, with « the bees » flying all around announcing the imminence of lightning strikes.

And here I am, missing all those books and writing about it. The first serious set back to my book collecting happened many years ago when I came back one day from the Caribbean to find that my storage place in Montreal had been broken into and my huge collection of vinyls and books was gone. I learned the hard way not to get too attached to things. But books have a habit of gathering around you any way, and as I attracted more to my shelves, I kept having to deal with departures and systematic change.

Most of what I still own in terms of bound paper and printed prose is now piled up in many boxes, in Beloeil, QC. Some day soon, I hope to finally be able to retrieve them. I wonder what I will think of them after so many years. I used to read mostly in French. It still is my favorite language for literature, even though one must accept that so much is only available in English it would be a shame ignoring it. But will Marcel Pagnol, Maurice Herzog, Reinhold Messner, René Barjavel, Robert Merle, Frison Roche, JRR Tolkien and the others still make me dream and travel in my mind to imaginary places, or have the world of internet and my own travels forever interfered with the inner voyage, and changed the flavor of words into a flavor of images?

Here are, in no particular order, pictures of a recent past that have been sitting in a folder waiting to be published. They show how disconnected I am right now. They’re not even that good. The subjects might be, though. I mentioned in my last post the doubts I am having about the whole blogging process. You don’t have to read on, I’m posting this for myself. These shots make me think. And dream. They remind me of an elusive reality which I am trying hard to materialize these days.

We begin not in Camargue or Greece but Knysna, South Africa.

Then, it’s Park Slope, at the end of a botanical afternoon.

Back to South Africa, somewhere in the Karoo...

Then New York again. If there’s a red phone for presidential emergencies, this must be the yellow phone behind the yellow line for those who have the blues...

But then again, the best remedy to the blues is exercise, no matter where the gym is located. Here, the yellow line of a garbage court of the NYC City Hall. Notice how happy the subject looks. That’s thanks to Momofuku’s Nigori.

Next, botanists obviously have a sense of humor. Interrupted growth? Where is the fern?

But someone has to photograph those rarities. With passion.

Passion being what drives one human up the Skeleton Gorge ladders and a few dogs to the slopes of Table Mountain and Silvermine.

Those are Gin & Tonic cups, by the way.

But the view is usually worth it.

So having sweated all the way up, one decides to freshen up.

Back in New York again, blissful flower bath. And the sweetest picture taken by a very willing butcher in his own store, at his own request - but he must have had a background in tourism.

It sounds like a movie title. It isn’t. It was a real Monday night, end of a trip and dawn of a week, as so many things in life morph from one into another... We walked east from Cobble Hill, leaving Henry Street behind and following Union Street towards and past the now ritual Gowanus bridge and its nearby strange sidewalk garden, and on to Park Slope. The air was crisp and we moved briskly, looking around us with pleasure, noticing small things like hints of spring and touches of tasteful caring on doorsteps. We turned right on 5th Avenue and kept going for a couple of blocks to the corner of Caroll. And there it was. The odd little lobby stuck out onto the sidewalk, antechamber of Al di Là’s cavern. As we eased through the outer door, we gave way to a lady stepping out while talking on her cell phone: « I don’t think we should eat at Al di Là, she was saying to someone invisible, there’s an hour wait to get a table. » We looked at each other, incredulous. This was Monday night, not Saturday.

But we pushed in, brushing past the heavy curtains that completely isolate the dinning room from the street, and were immediately immersed into the warm ambiance of the place. There stood Emiliano, greeting us and looking a bit discouraged as he smiled apologetically as if to say: « I know what you are going to ask, and you know what I’m going to answer. » We did know, but we asked any way. The room was buzzing with activity, conversations were loud and happy. « About an hour, he said. It’s so busy tonight. You could wait downstairs. » Neither one of us had brought a phone, but we headed downstairs any way, back outside and around the corner, to the low-ceiling little room they use as an overflow dining room, a bar, and a narrow waiting area.

At first, we felt like the last two onions squeezed into an already tightly stuffed turkey. No way to approach the bar, nowhere to sit, the waitresses looking frantic. But we’d been there before. Soon, as people having arrived ahead of us managed to grab a seat here and there, we were able to order our ritual glasses of Prosecco. Having claimed those, we retreated to a corner by the window and stood there toasting to us, and to them. When a couple sitting at the bar gave clear signals of preparing an exit, we made our move to replace them. But just as we took possession of our 2 square feet of bar space, the word came from above: our table was ready, no later than 20 minutes after we’d arrived. Maybe 15. There was magic in the air. Our drinks took a shortcut via steep inside stairs so that we wouldn’t have to carry them in the street; we walked back outside around the block, through the curtains, into the main dining room and sat down. Sigh. We had arrived.

Al di Là is a tradition. We’ll always come here once in a while and melt. « I love this place, says Marie, it has seen me through a lot, from way back in the beginning. And now you are here. Happy ending. » She is somehow wrong, though, it’s a happy beginning. But she is right to like Anna and Emiliano’s restaurant. There’s something in the air, here. Intangible, but very real. And the food is just superb.

So we picked up our menus and the wine list. Well, the wine is generally Marie’s baby. For my part, I had a rendez-vous with gnocchi and nervously glanced up and down the page, worried they might have disappeared. No, there they were, Malfatti, Swiss chard and ricotta gnocchi with brown butter and sage. I took a deep breath. Choosing a dish to compliment the malfatti was superfluous, but I did any way, because a hangar steak sounded like a funny choice for an Italian resto. Marie made love to her spring salad with peas and pea shoots and then had slow-cooked beef cheeks with green garlic and Jerusalem artichokes. Time flowed slowly, along with a bottle of pino nero. Eating at Al di Là is like embarking on a broken time machine; you know when you arrive but never really know when you’ll leave... In any case, my resolution is now strong. These gnocchi are the best thing I have ever eaten and next time, I’ll order a triple serving and nothing else.

We finished dinner by sharing an affogato di gelato. And then, still hypnotized by the company and confused by such delicious food, I think I messed up the tip. I’m quite happy doing maths while flying IFR but staring into amazing green eyes, it’s a whole other story.

We finally stood up and, having fetched our coats, headed for the door. Emiliano was eating dinner at a small corner table, alone, and gave us a smile and a wave as we were leaving. We waved back. Until next time...

Up at 5:00 am this morning, I looked back lovingly at my awful Grand-Canyon-like bed and sighed. It would be 40 hours until I saw a bed again. I then proceeded towards the kitchen, nailing my foot on the vacuum cleaner abandoned in the door way. Vacuum cleaners - who needs them, really? All I have to do is open the door and the sliding window at the same time to create a draft and all my dust returns to itself. Or the neighbor’s.

But I skipped coffee, still unable to focus sharply on anything smaller than the oven and unsure of my ability to handle Bialetti technology. I would get caffeine downtown. Getting dressed wasn’t so complicated because I’ve learned to execute my routine through the mists of the deepest early morning sleep. Once I figure which sock goes on which foot in order to avoid positioning the holes on the big toe - a wasteful and aggravating maneuver I’ve regretted many a time - the rest follows smoothly. Ok, I’ve only got one pair that’s this bad.

A glance at the outside thermometer to figure out if I could finally focus, a look at the mirror to make sure I was wearing pants, a frown at the open suitcase which by now should have been packed, a handful of dried apricots to get my hands sticky and avoid losing my bus pass, and I was out the door. I caught the first bus at the first stop, along with two or three other early birds and a raccoon. I don’t think they could focus much either.

I got off in front of Waves and went in for coffee. I had a couple of minutes to kill before it turned 6:00 am. There’s something degrading about arriving to work before 6:00; it’s like admitting being a slave, or having slept on the sidewalk. But at 6:01, it all changes. A new workday is born, there’s time and potential ahead and one feels smart by having beaten the crowds to their desk.

I like early morning. It’s a promising time. I wish English had an expression for it like Spanish does. La madrugada. It’s easy to get lost in thoughts, then.

So I sat down for a few minutes in this town of men with big mouths and no guts, thinking that some things we plan, we sit and we invent and we plot and cook up; others are works of inspiration, of poetry; and me, if you can believe this, I closed my eyes, actually praying, not to God above but to you, waiting in your dress, in your dress of blue; saying, thank you girl, thank you girl, I’ll love you till the end of the world...*

* Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - crafted from (I’ll Love You) Till the End of the World