Fragments From Floyd

"If you're going to write about life, you have to have one."

This is pretty good advice for those like me who are cloistered comfortably on front porches in their slippers wondering what in the Sam Hill they have worth sharing in so many words. Sometimes it just helps to get off your haunches and strike out into the world and see what's there.

Twice last week I left the house for obligatory morning meetings, on a schedule, couldn't stop. And wouldn't you know it: the roadsides in the early light of morning were bejeweled with dewy spider webs and fall wildflowers glistening in the slanting sun, light against shadow--the most beautiful, natural compositions you could want to find--and I drove relentlessly past them all, on my way to appointed tasks. I vowed soon to make an intentional revisiting to those roads at those times of day. I made notes, I set alarms on the computer so I wouldn't forget. Yesterday, I left the house bound to retrace my travels with camera in hand and time to go slowly. But as I often observe, it's better to travel hopefully than to arrive.

Even at the same places at the same times of day, photographically, they were not the same. No morning dew, no spiders on webs (there were hundreds in the span of a half dozen fence posts just a few days ago!) and nothing to stop and go back for along Stonewall or Locust Grove. My pretense for making the drive of practical rather than just aesthetic purpose was to drop off something at the Check Post Office, which I did, crestfallen, and came straight home.

Even so, I had one shot in mind before I reached home. There is a derelict house between us and the hardtop. Every year we expect it to implode toward its rotten center where the roof let in water many years ago, and yet the walls still stand. It's impossible not to notice as it sits ON not near the road. This image here was taken with a standard lens, if that tells you anything. The sad, long-abandoned old place is not empty. No, it has become home to at least a half-dozen feral cats, and one huge raccoon who often swaggers on the front porch, a beast I take to be the pimp of the Goose Creek Cathouse.

As I left on my pointless mission and passed the house going out of the valley, there were three large cats arranged symmetrically in the two overstuffed chairs. Perfect! I thought, and knew at once that, while I couldn't stop now, I must stop on my way home AFTER I'd captured those perfect moments of light in the glistening spider webs up on the hardtop. And of course, when I returned, having traveled hopefully, there was one sad little ghetto-child kitten for my picture.

Moral: always take your camera with you. Always stop NOW. Never expect a repeat performance. And keep traveling hopefully--some day, you just might arrive.