Turn Out the Stars

One of my favorite photographs ever was taken by my friend Keith. In the photograph, a man stands in front of a marquee advertising The Exorcist. His face, marked with what looks like a huge knife scar, seems unbearably sad. It's almost night in the picture, my favorite time, the last of the twilight. It's clear that the man doesn't know he's being photographed (having been a subject of Keith's photographs myself, I can attest to the fact that the man can snap a shot before you even understand you have a camera near you). Some of Keith's pictures, including this one and another one I liked, were published in the Ontario Review, and I bought both of them because I liked looking at them.

For years, the man with the knife scar hung above my computer. I was going through a bad patch romantically speaking, and it came as no big surprise that I found out during the feng-shui craze of the late 90s that I had hung it dead center in what was classified as the love/relationship portion of my home. I often wondered what had happened to the man in the crowd since the picture -- it was almost thirty years later. Was he dead? Did he go see the movie, did his life take any turns? Mine would, exquisite and painful ones, that would leave me as mystified as my friend in the picture. If you were to trace his scar, you'd find it wasn't that big compared to everything else in the picture, but it's what you notice as the day turns into night.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"Photography is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality" -- Alfred Steiglitz

Cocktail Hour

Camera Obscura

1 shot glass of coffee liqueur served in hot chocolate.

Benedictions and Maledictions

Halloween movie selection for the weekend: Misery