Tag Archives: road view

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June 17, 2013

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Excursion 5 (4/27/2013)

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Excursion 5, Part 1 (Head South, Young Man)

In which our intrepid hero encounters a mystery building…

One of the saddest things about life is that we can never re-live things we experience.  Do you remember a time when you were deep in the throes of a new love—how that person made you think, how it made you feel?   Do you remember the first time you saw your favorite movie and how it made you feel?   You can’t get those feelings back; you can only vaguely remember and appreciate what it was like to have them.  It’s a less illegal version of that first hit of heroin—even if you married that person you fell in love with and have been happily with that person for decades, you don’t physically feel the same way about them.  Literally, the chemistry is different.  And you can watch that movie again, but you won’t be scared or amused or moved to the same extent that were the first time.  The movie has worn grooves in your brain now; it is no longer as fresh.  You can’t get that “first time” back.

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June 11, 2013

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Excursion 4 (4/20/2013)

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Excursion 4, Part 7 (Visit to the Far Side)

In which our intrepid hero feels a sense of deja moo…

One of the sad things about driving around and taking photographs is that, even if the photographs turn out well, even if one of the photographs actually (purely by luck) turned out to be quite high quality, the person who sees that picture will still not have experienced the scene the way my eyes did.  There are times when I wish I could just invite people into my eyeballs so that they can see a scene in just the way my own eyes perceived it.

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June 9, 2013

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Excursion 4 (4/20/2013)

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Excursion 4, Part 5 (Take Me to the River, Drop Me in the Water)

In which our intrepid hero continues his journey towards the mystical Ohio river…

I am no student of architecture but anybody who looks at enough buildings, or pictures of buildings, will eventually begin to pick up on certain architectural styles from certain eras.  That is certainly true for mundane residences and businesses.  Often you can look at a house and pretty much know when it was likely to have been built, just from its appearance.  Leaving aside signs of aging, buildings go through fads and trends just like anything else.  One such trend certainly appeared in the 19th century.  If one looks at early photographs of American towns and farmhouses, certain types of brick structures appear so often that they are often a signature—though it is true that in the 20th century some buildings were constructed in a “retro” fashion, inspired by or duplicating that earlier style.

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June 4, 2013

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Excursion 3 (4/13/2013)

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Excursion 3, Part 4 (The Wreck of the Shenandoah)

In which our intrepid hero discovers the site of an American Icarus…

The oil and natural gas boom here in Ohio is interesting.  “Fracking,” as the process is called, promises huge amounts of natural gas, with all the accompanying benefits, yet offers possible dangers that range from earthquakes to drinking water contamination.  Properly regulated, the industry is something I could not really oppose, but in Republican-controlled Ohio, one can never guarantee that anything will be regulated at all.  All too often, Ohio learns the hard way.  The other reason I am cautiously supportive of fracking is that the deposits are in the poorest area of the state, Appalachian Ohio, which needs every bit of help it can get, although it won’t be the individual property owners who lease out their mineral rights who will really rake in the money.

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June 4, 2013

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Excursion 3 (4/13/2013)

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Excursion 3, Part 3 (Death and Grapes)

In which our intrepid hero provides veritas and vino, entirely coincidentally…

Farms interest me.  I am a city boy, through and through; I have spent virtually all of my life living in one of three cities:  El Paso, San Antonio, and Columbus.  But I do have a small amount of familiarity with farms, because relatives of mine owned a cotton farm near the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico and we visited often.  In fact, for a considerable number of years I was there pretty much every weekend, because my father bought a horse (for deer hunting purposes) and reached an agreement with my great-uncle to build a corral on his farm to house the horse and the horse of a family friend.  My dad went out each weekend to ride and brought me along to clean up the corral for him.  So I can say, if nothing else, that I shoveled tons and tons of manure on a cotton farm in my childhood.

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June 4, 2013

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Excursion 3 (4/13/2013)

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Excursion 3, Part 2 (I am Ozymandias, King of Kings)

In which our intrepid hero encounters a triumphantly twisted ruin…

There is something about things that are old, ungainly and decaying that fascinate me.  I’ve always been that way.  This is why I exult in the glorious truck-hulks that appear in the much underrated 1977 film Sorceror, for example, and one of the reasons I like movies that depict slums, ghettoes, or old buildings.  These sorts of things have always resonated very deeply with me—this notion of things that once were strong or great but are so no longer.

Percy Bysshe Shelley had it dead-on with his sonnet “Ozymandias”:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away

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June 4, 2013

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Excursion 3 (4/13/2013)

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Excursion 3, Part 1 (Yo Llama)

In which our intrepid hero llooks at llamas…

There are different types of driving and the way you feel with each type is very different.  For example, one type of driving is Getaway Driving.  Now, this is a type of driving with which I luckily have no experience, but I assume it is very distinct.  Mostly, we experience Driving from Here to There; that’s what we are familiar with.  It can make you anxious or relaxed, depending on the circumstances.  What I’ve discovered is that my excursions produce a very different set of feelings than Driving from Here to There.  First, because you do not have a final destination, you never feel, not even at the beginning, any particular sense of urgency.  There is no end goal; the drive itself is one of the desired results.   Moreover, the drive takes on a different intensity, because the environment I am in matters more.  I am not simply alert so that I do not run into another car or off the side of the road.  I am actively scanning my surroundings—looking for something interesting to photograph.  So I drive leisurely but very intently.  It is a good feeling, but it is definitely not the sort of zen state that you can reach while Driving from Here to There, where the middle doesn’t matter very much.

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May 26, 2013

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Excursion 2 (4/6/2013)

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Excursion 2, Part 3 (The Mystery Vase)

In which our intrepid hero discovers an intriguing and mysterious urn…

When some people drive alone for a distance, they are able somehow to tune themselves out.  Perhaps they immerse themselves in music from the radio, or CDs or MP3s.  Maybe they just focus on the road.  Sometimes I am able to do that, especially if I am weary, or if the traffic or weather is such that I really need to concentrate.  But all too often I am very conscious that I am with myself.  My thoughts roam far and wide.  This is a bad thing if you are depressed or if something unhappy just happened; your mind gets stuck in a loop and you endlessly replay conversations or are simply unable to get away from fears and anxieties.  But if you don’t have those monsters lurking inside you that day, your mind can instead be a “happy place,” where you can absorb and process what you see in a mindset of peace and serenity.  You can almost feel the dopamine kicking in when you get into such a contemplative, almost meditative mood.  When this happens, I find it more than relaxing; it is almost as if my cares are falling away from me as I speed down the road…

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May 25, 2013

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Excursion 2 (4/6/2013)

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Excursion 2, Part 1 (Spring Yet Unsprung)

In which our intrepid hero leaves the safe confines of his home and encounters an unexpected bit of Africa…

On my first excursion out of the city, on April 6, I decided to drive around southeast-central Ohio.  Although technically spring, it still seemed like winter.  The weather was brisk, the sky soon became somewhat overcast, and leaves were nowhere to be found.  Gray seemed to be the color of the day.

However, as I began to leave town driving east on East 5th Avenue, I soon encountered an unexpected splash of color.

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