the things we leave behind.

Walking to the Irving Park Blue Line station from my house on the way to Bucktown, a companion and I stopped in an alley where a dumpster sat filled with what looked like the remains of someone's life. There were toiletries, a broken box fan, chairs, tables, breakfast trays, the contents of a refrigerator, a bed and mattress and stacks and piles of paper and styrofoam. We snooped. There seemed to be nothing worth taking. The furniture was of a style you would find in a free clinic, ugly and worth nothing. Everything else was just garbage. Then My friend opened a recycling bin.

"Look at this," she said, and pulled out a book titled "Exploring the Human Aura."

I exclaimed something, this find being my dream, and rushed over greedily searching through the bin that was chock full of similarly titled books. We stood pulling out one after the other, creating a pile of keepers at our feet, not thinking of how we were going to carry all of them on public transportation. 

This problem came to light.

We sat in the alley by the bin looking through them, selecting the best ones, the ones that could not be left behind. 

"Exploring the Human Aura"

by

Nicholas M. Regush

in collaboration with

Jan Merta

"Leaving the Body"

by

D. Scott Rogo

"Amazing Secrets of the Mystic East"

by

Norvell

"The Secret of Spirit-Thought Magic"

by

Frank R. Young

We crammed these into my book bag, that was already full of books. We dove into these while we waited for the train to come. 

"Do you think they died?"

"Who?"

"Whoever's books these were,"

"Oh," I said. It seemed plausible. Why else would they be there, along with everything else that had been thrown out. Someone must have cleared out their apartment. 

"Look at this," said my friend, and showed me the title of a chapter in "The Secret of Spirit-Thought Magic": How to Apply Spirit-Thought to Capture and Rule the Person You Want Romantically.

"They must have been lonely," she said.

"Yeah."

The books had that musty and sweet smell of age (and possibly garbage). It made me think of my grandfather and the books he left me when he died. The novel he left unfinished. How I had looked up to him and sought to become him. There can only be so much achieved through life. I wonder if in the end we are left to decide what to keep and what to leave behind. 

a trip (part 2).

We walked to the shore the next day. There was a fog out; moisture clung to the air. A bridge pathway of rocks set out from the beach towards a watch-tower some 50 yards from where the water began. You could no longer see the sand from where the pathway ended.

Along the way, I met a fisherman.

"They bitin?"

"Wasat?"

"You catch anything?"

"Not much," he said, opening a small travel cooler and showing me a crumpled smelt fish at the bottom.

"Mind if I take a picture?"

"Go ahead," he told me.

I took up a few minutes of his time trying to understand his salty drawl but eventually gave up and moved on.

The end of the path. We made camp and caught the mist of crashing waves on our faces. I climbed the dubious watchtower. The bars that were its ladder were wet. I wore sneakers that slid and squeaked as I risked my life climbing to the top. Thankfully, I did not plummet to my death. And I believe this shot was worth the risk. The lad on the left is pissing.

When more stragglers showed up, a sing-a-long of The Kinks' "Picture Book" ensued. Strangers followed the music from the shore and sauntered away when they saw we were drunk.

a trip.

On the advent of Spring Break 2012, a company of 15 or so photographers, musicians, and debauched 20-somethings set out on a trip to New Buffalo, MI. There was no purpose to this trip.

These minstrels were one third of the group Magic-Ian (clever lads) and charmed us with clever Smashing Pumpkins covers and a heart melting rendition of "Girl From Ipanema" days before the trip. It won them their invitation which they obliged by soundtracking the entirety of a weekend. 

Strings and sing-a-longs accompanied a drunken stupor about the air. Soon, it grew dark.

Matt, a Ramen Noodle Monger, stole the simmering pot from the stove. I chased him outside and caught him in the act.

There was a ghost in this photo, I swear. She was underneath a blanket, standing upon those rocks. Somehow, her eyes showed through the fabric and glowed as menacing lights. The next day she was gone. 

Here.

Here is a blog.

Blogs are new to me.

I will be blogging all over this blog for blogs to come and more to end.

The purpose is to move forward while looking back. We are in an age of environmentalism and new technology. Where we step and and what we do has become the most important and least important of all things. Lives are spent on inter-webs and lost in a harum-scarum digital mess. We are at a point where we need to decide whether we are going to waste the digital invention exploiting ourselves, or embrace it and move forward. I am going to exploit it.

xo,

DR