I sleep well virtually anywhere: in cars, on the floor, on benches, on couches. When I visited my friend Paul in Athens for his senior photography show in the spring of 2002, he gave me his bedroom couch — what could otherwise be described as a faithfully rectangular, plaid mass of cushion. For one lying down, it functioned like an adjustable bed, which couches aren't supposed to do, but for three nights it was the best roughing-it sleep I've ever had.
The couch in Ed's entertainment room is a close second; every night during the three visits made over the past two years, I've closed my eyes, shifted a bit and awakened six to eight hours later. (Then run down the apartment's thirty foot hallway to the bathroom before I burst.) Wonderful.
The morning after Friday's grand adventure was no different. I was up by eight-twenty; Paul had already gone running and within fifteen minutes, the two of us walked a hundred feet down the road to a corner Stewart's store, purchased a coffee each and unholstered our respective cameras, shooting every inch of Ed's front lawn and porch.
The weather was as clear-blue and mild as the day before — perfect for shooting but even more fitting for those twenty or thirty minutes Paul and I spent while Ed snored inside, just flitting around and catching the light this way and that. Thinking back, it, like the entire Saturday, is a coveted memory of mine.
Ed's porch railing. I'm certain I've seen the first image on several hundred thousand greeting cards.
Taking this photograph, I was struck by a thought, one that returned as I compiled the picture for this collection: how many bushes, trees, leaves and edges of the porch can I capture without repeating myself? Unless the landscape is altered for my next visit, Paul and I covered just about everything. For a brief moment I felt a little wistful, reaching for that moment in time again before I realized we could simply grab a coffee and troll about the neighborhood — and never run out of scenes.
Eventually, Ed opened his front door, blinked at us a few times, gave us his patented why-in-the-hell-did-you-wake-up-three-hours-earlier-than-I-wanted-to look, smiled, and went back inside. Paul followed. I took a few more pictures before reentering the apartment myself.
We all got ready, ate breakfast — no, I ate breakfast, Ed and Paul pecked — and piled into Ed's car for a trip to nearby Saratoga Springs.
Saratoga Springs is the home of the eponymous racing track, apparently quite a draw for common and well-heeled horse-racing fans alike. That June weekend, it was also the site of biker's convention Americade 2004. No sooner did Ed turn off of the highway than traffic embraced us. Crowds, motorcycles and American flags were everywhere. A good half-hour later, Ed found a comfortable parking space well away from the throng and we headed into town.
Before sitting down for lunch in a little Indian restaurant, we three walked up and down a few streets. I took this picture as the mounted policeman trotted by, intending to frame the horse with the motorcycles, and the biker lady and child who were quite conscious of me behind them. Shuffling through images later, I discovered what an incredible peek into the day's bustle the photograph was.
The number and richness of each vignette seems as planned and placed as on a master work from any post-Renaissance painting. Suddenly, the crowd isn't one: it's a family, or a chance meeting, or a weekly lunch date with an old friend, or a funny story to be told for years to come.
Who are these people? — a question one never really takes time to ask while weaving through them on the sidewalk, face grimly forward. We may never know, but now we can tilt our heads and wonder.
After an unintentionally hearty lunch of spicy Indian cuisine — long story but suffice to say, be more precise when ordering food and gesturing to your colleagues — Paul, Ed and I strolled through the crowds again, stopped inside a toy store and then made our way east to Congress Park.
