fireflies

I had never seen a firefly until I was about thirty years-old. I was in Tennessee to attend the wedding of my brother-in-law and we were having a barbecue in the backyard of a fine Southern home that overlooked a lake. It was dusk when the dancing, magical lights appeared around us, little flickers of light that glowed briefly, disappeared, then reappeared in a delightful display of playfulness inspired by the courtship behavior of these beetle-related insects. It was like a Disney movie come to life. Sadly, more than ten years passed before I was to see them again.

My next encounter with these creatures transpired when we moved to Connecticut for Joni to attend Yale Law School. I had rented a condominium for us in the small blue-collar town of Wallingford, ideally positioned between New Haven, where Yale is located and Farmington, where my new office was based. The condominium complex bordered a golf course that was on the outskirts of the town proper. From the freeway exit, we had to traverse largely undeveloped land to get to our condo. There was a small wooded area where the road bisected a pond filled with peepers and of course, fireflies. At night, the pond area looked as though it had been strung with hundreds of tiny blinking lights. The water of the pond reflected those lights doubling the effect, creating the illusion of floating inside a small universe of animated stars.

Another amazing firefly sighting occurred as we drove to Spartanburg, So. Carolina one night. The fireflies hovered above car level on the unlit freeway. They appeared as streams of light much like the depiction of jumping into hyperspace in the Star Wars movies. Their contrails surrounded us as we sped quietly through the night.

in memories or dreams

I've had some rare experiences that now remain but are somewhat faded or obscured by my previously mentioned failing memory casting doubts on whether these experiences were really memories or just dreams. One such instance occurred while on a trip in Colorado. Although based in Denver, I recall we had wandered miles from the city to sample some of the more remote outlying areas. It was late in the day and I had a terrible headache. We had miles to go to return to Denver and we were heading through a mountainous area. Joni, my wife, had fallen asleep next to me. The car labored perceptibly as it climbed the ascending grade of the road. A fog had somehow risen almost in perfect rhythm to the setting sun. And then it happened. Suddenly, in the middle of the road was a wild burro. I had to step on the brake and swerve to avoid hitting it. It had just appeared from the swirling fog. I continued down the road, now creeping slowly and there on my left was another, then two. More appeared to my right and I could suddenly see I was amidst a herd of wild burros who stood calmly like statues placed randomly for some kind of quirky exhibition. They were neither disturbed nor remotely interested in the presence of the car moving among them. We could have been invisible to them for the total lack of reaction we elicited. I followed the road as the almost mythical creatures surrounded us in that swatch of billowing fog. And then it was over. I had passed through them and the road began to descend, the fog disappearing slowly as it thinned out into first wisps, then nothing.

Recently I asked Joni if she remembered that incident, but of course she did not. She had remained in a peaceful state of sleep throughout that portion of the drive home. She could not validate whether that magical moment had actually occurred or whether it was just a dream. I'm almost sure it had happened. I would not have dreamed of wild burros appearing in the midst of a mysterious fog on a lonely mountain road in Colorado at dusk. It does not seem like something that my subconscious would ever conjure up . . . or would it?

design - the aston martin one-77

The limited edition (to 77) Aston Martin One-77. Need I say more?

lost in translation - an update

I successfully received my Digital Holga from my friend in Japan, one week after the confirmation of shipment notification. The camera is befitting the Digital Holga moniker as it is constructed of cheap plastic and exhibits the same featherweight heft (or lack thereof) of the original Holga. It is much more compact however, and boasts an impressive array of features comparable to most of the digital point and shoots on the market. Primarily, it has the LCD viewing screen on the back with a respectable amount of adjustable settings accessed via the menu function. Regrettably, the image quality is quite good for a plastic lens. Damn technology! Evidently, gone are the days of mediocrity (at least, as far as cheap optics are concerned). Below is the first image taken with the Digital Holga.

Besides adjusting the color rendition (everything seems to have a greenish-cast), the image is pretty much intact. I did create a sepia version of the image which looks pretty nice, but again, the quality is superior to that of a Holga.

The camera thus falls in a perplexing twilight zone between "acceptable quality" digital and "excessively high quality" plastic camera imagery. I'll have to assess how to utilize my new toy to its maximum creative potential. I may either degrade the quality of the image with an application of Vaseline to the lens, which would not be a problem but for the beautiful reddish lens coating that screams "don't mess with me!" or instead, apply some trickery during the post processing stage. I'm leaning towards the former solution. If successful, I'll of course share the resulting images with all of you. After all, there's nothing better than a poor quality image.

faded photographs

I caught a snippet of an interview with Nora Ephron on NPR recently, discussing her book I Remember Nothing, in which she humorously shared the middle-aged phenomenon of a failing memory. She joked how grateful she was that we had the internet and Google to help us remember things we had forgotten. Don't laugh. I almost had to Google, "Sleepless in Seattle" to recapture Nora Ephron's name for this entry. Thankfully, some of the old synapses are still firing, so I was able to summon her name before heading for the iMac.

I can attest that Nora's experience is not isolated. Many of my friends have lapses during our conversations as they struggle to remember a name, a phrase, whatever. I, too have my lapses and an eavesdropper nearby would laugh at the stuttering silence that punctuates, no dominates many of our exchanges.

This reality was no more evident than during an encounter I had a while ago with an old girlfriend. She held memories of our past that I honestly had no memory of. Either she had fabricated them from a mixture of past events that did not involve me, or worse yet, that DID involve me but had slipped through the ever deteriorating neural net of my aging brain. Facing the choices, regardless of what the truth might be, I prefer to think the fault was hers. "Do you remember when . . . " she began many times during that encounter. I would suppress any outward manifestations of the wince that would invariably accompany this opening phrase. "Yes," I agreed much too quickly, far in advance of the memories she would relate. She would continue with her story, ignoring my ill-timed response. I would listen in horror to yet another unfamiliar story. I didn't know whether to be embarrassed for her or for me. When she completed her latest story, she looked at me expectantly, prompting me for a reassuring response of shared memories. "I remember everything that happened between us." I responded.

communion

In Austin, Texas, Amy's Ice Cream is the local favorite for enjoying a good old-fashioned ice cream cone, boasting a selection of over 100 flavors. Naturally this was a designated stop in our carefully planned itinerary when we recently visited this city for the first time.

We had arrived at dusk and began our wait in the small line, anxious for a sampling of the local culinary favorite. Behind me was a boy of about 5 or 6 years-old with his father. "Look," the boy said to me as I glanced at him. He proudly held up a twenty-dollar bill that his father had obviously given him to enable the boy to conduct the entire transaction on his own. "Do you have one of these?" He asked me. I produced a twenty-dollar bill from my wallet. "Yes, I have one too!" I exclaimed as I held it out stretched between both hands in the very same prideful way he displayed his. It matched his in its crispness and pristine condition. Two Andrew Jacksons stared warily at each other. He leaned forward to carefully assess my bill. "Hey, I have an idea," I said as I knelt down to face him Mano-a-Mano. "why don't we trade?" He looked pensive for a moment weighing whether this was a good idea or not. He evidently decided it was an acceptable proposition. "OK!" he said nodding. He slowly wrapped his fingers around my bill, allowing me to do the same so we could execute the exchange simultaneously. As we both released our original bills, the boy's father laughed aloud. The boy and I smiled at each other with delight.

As we looked at our newly-acquired bills, we both recognized that something more significant than a mere transaction had just transpired. Monetarily, we had neither lost nor gained anything, but psychologically we had both benefitted. A communion had occurred. We had made a connection, symbolically offering ourselves to each other and accepting this "gift," this token of our commonality and humanity, celebrating the shared experience we had jointly created at that particular time and place . And then, just as quickly as it had happened, the moment passed, and we waved goodbye to each other, licking our ice cream cones as we parted.

lost in translation

I recently discovered a new website www.thefancy.com. It features products ranging from automobiles to clothing, all selected for their innovative designs and unique esthetics. In short, it is the perfect vehicle to fuel my passion for conspicuous consumerism. Every day I anxiously visit the site to discover what new item I don't necessarily need but must have. I am Imelda Marcos in a shoe store. Thanks to fancy.com I came to realize that I had a long buried desire for watchmaker vials filled with tiny animal bones. And how could I know I wanted a miniature replica of the human heart cast in glass in a tiny bottle had I not seen it on thefancy website?

But, and here's the entree into the crux of this blog, my latest object of desire found on thefancy is a camera dubbed as the "Digital Holga." For those of you unfamiliar with the Holga, it is a plastic camera that replaced yet another plastic camera, famously known as the Diana. These cameras were prized for their mediocrity. Both sported plastic lenses that produced inferior images due to the poor optical quality of plastic versus glass. Both were notorious for their light leaks, often causing unwanted and unpredictable streaks of light across the final photographic images. Plastic cameras enjoyed (and still do) a cult following. The theory of shooting with a plastic camera is that any photographer can take exceptional photos with today's cameras.

Technologically, these cameras are capable of focusing and calculating the proper exposure settings (even recognizing when a person is smiling to trigger the shutter at that precise moment) for the photographer, essentially requiring him or her to simply point and shoot. Is it any wonder then, that the proliferation of images on the web on sites like Flickr continues to flourish exponentially? And, as a self-proclaimed discerning photographer, most of these images are "commonplace" lacking any artistic merit. But I digress.

The challenge and allure of plastic cameras is that only very skilled photographers can produce spectacular results with these crude and unpredictable tools. The concept is that abandoning a certain amount of control to the happenstance nature of cheap plastic cameras and concentrating on composition and the choice of subject matter is what distinguishes the true photographic artist from the rest of the pack. With today's digital technology and the gradual demise of film, many photographers have hoped for a digital alternative to the plastic cameras. As a result, a market for odd products targeted at this niche has emerged. Plastic lenses are now available to mount on digital SLRs as are specially constructed lenses like the Lensbaby, to produce out-of-focus, dream-like images that closely replicate the images of plastic cameras.

And thus my latest thefancy.com find. A camera produced under the Yashica name (an established brand-name that was abandoned when the company shut down, but was recently resurrected by another company that essentially bought the name) has recently been dubbed the "Digital Holga." The camera boasts a plastic lens and a plastic body like the Holga, while incorporating digital technology. Also, similar to the Holga, it offers a limited focus range, allowing you to set the lens to close-up or normal. But, sadly, it does not produce images akin to the Holga (which even though mediocre, was also a disappointment to me over the Diana as it produced relatively sharp photos, requiring an occasional smear of Vaseline in the lens to degrade its optical qualities).

The Yashica appears to produce better images than the Holga in spite of its plastic lens. The contrast is good (which is bad), the resolution is respectable (5 megapixels, which admittedly is small compared to the latest batch of digital point and shoots, but hey, the iPhone 4 is currently a 5 megapixel camera) and the build of the camera, though plastic appears to be relatively solid. So why my desire to possess this baby? It LOOKS like cameras produced in the 1960s and 70s (a la the Canon Canonet featured in John Water's move "Pecker," and yes, I have not one but three of these).

Specifically, it has an optical viewfinder, you know, those little windows you used to look through to take a photo versus the screens on the back. It is relatively compact and it does seem to lack a lot of the sophistication of today's cameras. At a cost of $75, with an insatiable desire to augment my already too large collection, I simply had to have it. Complicating matters however, is the fact that this camera is only available for purchase in Japan. Thanks to the power of Google though, this is an obstacle easily overcome.

I located a vendor that sells the camera, ordered it via the website and anxiously awaited my order confirmation and shipping confirmation. Interestingly, I thought all Japanese citizens had adopted English as their second language. This is not the case. Following is my e-mail correspondence with the store owner in Japan:

Thank you indeed for using our shop at this time. Because the carriage was paid, I will report the product ordered though much more rough price. Please continue your favors toward "order continuance" and reported externals when the carriage is confirmed and consented though is time. Whether sending out is possible by our shop on that will be examined and I will obtain it from the manufacturer. Please let me cancel the order when indeed I am sorry, there is no report. Until February 15.

My response:

I'm sorry. I don't understand. You must check with the manufacturer to see if it is available? Are you saying if it is not, you will cancel the order? Is the price firm or are you saying it is an estimate at this time? And what happens on February 15th? Thank you for contacting me. Is there anything I can do to make our e-mails easier for both of us to understand?

His response:

Having reported becomes the following content. Confirmation of carriage. Please contact me, saying that "Approval" when you can get to acknowledgement.

My response: OK. I will send approval when I receive the acknowledgement. I assume the acknowledgement will be via e-mail through the confirmation message.

So, I THINK I'm getting the camera sometime soon. It remains to be seen. I later discovered I could have ordered the camera through Amazon.com of Japan, which would have been much easier overall as I assume somebody with a command of the English language would have contacted me with the necessary details, etc. But, in retrospect, where is the fun in that? I figure if I DO receive the camera, I'll have earned it in way that goes beyond just charging it to my credit card. I've now had the opportunity to attempt to communicate with a man from my ancestral homeland with one of the most fundamental of interactions, the business transaction. Perhaps when I receive my camera, I can send him a thank you, encourage continued dialogue and who knows, maybe we can even become penpals?