Pandemic Pictures from the Car

A while back I found myself reflecting on how it would be to have to see the world only from the driver’s seat of my car.  I’ve spent much of my life listening to the dire prognostications of doctors.  Dead before college, one cautioned.  Bedridden at 25, another warned.  Six months to live, two convinced me, in tandem, twenty-two years ago. 

I believed each one.  It stood to reason that they would eventually get it right.  So how would it feel, being unable to pull myself even clumsily onto the sidewalk and walk along the edge of the field?  During my free time in my early California days, I drove around the islands here, taking pictures from my car.  I studied the images, trying to get a sense for the limit of that narrow focus.  It’s bound to happen, sooner or later, right?  If the spasticity doesn’t get me, won’t I fall and hurt myself too badly to regain ambulation?  Could I tolerate the eternal view from the window of my RAV?

This evening I drove home in the quiet of a pandemic world.  Few cars stirred the dust on the asphalt.  The sound of birds drifted down to me from high in the towering trees.  I raised my lens again and again, idling with the serene river on one side and the lush fields on the other.  A hawk turned its gaze on me, unconcerned.  A mother owl seemed to focus on the glint of my camera’s eye.  When I pulled into my lot, in front of my tiny house, I could not help feeling that somewhere in this awful situation, I have managed to find some good.

It’s the fifteenth day of the seventy-sixth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

2 thoughts on “Pandemic Pictures from the Car

  1. Jane

    Corrine, I am not a photographer. In fact, quite the opposite. However, from my untrained eye, you are becoming quite a good one!

    Reply
    1. ccorleyjd365 Post author

      My dear Jane, you are very kind. The photos are not at all technically sound, especially as I take them on “auto”. I have to adjust the light a bit on my computer because they are under- or over-exposed (mostly the latter). But I think the aspect to which you are responding might be more the framing. I am blessed to know some amazing photographers, including Penny Thieme, Genevieve Casey, Scott Anderson, Aneal Vohra (the videographer), Dave Michaels, Samantha Bessent, and my dear friend Kimberley Kellogg. By admiring and enjoying their works, I have absorbed a bit of a feeling of what framing pleases my own eye. I go for that and hopefully hit the mark for a few others, too. And, it must be said, I have so much around me to admire. This morning on the way to work I saw (but could not photograph — did not have my camera) a herd of sheep being . . herded. . heh heh . . around a levee road to get to a field. You really need to see this; breathtaking every time.

      Reply

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