Architecture of Cities: More Secrets

A celluloid capture is a result of logging many hours: Consider the information your eyes gather in route: Two souls become: The iridescent deep blue whale gathers Krill-The pigmy marmoset evades the raptor:

Gusts of wind are heard: waves play off western cliffs: A universe floats above: The shadow of my marmoset dances: The stealth blue whale submarines ahead:

I begin to direct my camera east: My eyes are clipped open like Clockwork Orange’s Alex: Do I hear Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or are my eyes attuned to something lilting softer:Joni’s Both Sides Now: Both are heard as if seen.

I know Los Angeles better than most: I know New York better than most: Most metropolises compel me to believe I am not in search, rather along for the ride:

Eyes ahead, we look south we gaze north: I am in the company of one: I could be in the company of millions:

My mother’s history is not mine: I look around the past: I imagine living in the present: I seek a future to become: My car pulls the roads forth: Dreams are realized: A mere seconds along the blvd: I am cushioned among two living histories: My mothers’ past is gone: Her share as we pause to go forward: We melodically are passengering to a place I may be looking for.

My dreams are always with eyes wide open: The fabulist in me mingles with the truth:  Stars like  satellites, real stars from the north illuminate the path: I am not chronicling every given moment along a blvd: This is a history of how cities seem in truth and fiction;

And the music plays.

My mother is today my guide to where families are from: The narrative like the navigation marry

as if one set of eyes are gangster like fast talking: The second set might pace voluminously like Lena Horne: Both sets are absorbing all as one history.

We were touring her first 20 odd years: All but two homes were captured: One might have been razed: The other was an apartment building that didn’t appeal to my sensibilities, but it was an image I should have snapped:

Los Angeles sometimes feels like you are living like a sardine on a highway: Everywhere to go everything to see: A little night music a bit of light: Back roads and over passes: Decades and almost centuries to capture: I shout Capitol Records: It might have been Disneyland or Mt Kilimanjaro: For my mother the narrator of this drive it did not matter:

Every home we passed was a landmark for conversational share: I would pull the car over: My mom would again query my interest in the history and stories: I would beg her to believe I was capturing a city: The story we made felt like a century of Scorsese and Coppola: D.W Griffith and John Ford: Cinematic storyboards became in my mother’s remembrances: Joan Didion’s murder and mayhem story from last week did not appear: Alas people were not murdering: families were sharing food and passionately appreciating getting ahead:

I found myself making stories in my mind about a city’s century:  My mom continued: My mind continued photographing: My history melded with hers: I listened: My mother’s  broadcast from her past now saddles alongside my camera’s present:

The pigmy marmoset scampers, the giant blue whale espies like a submarine: Slow and worthy my mother’s history is revealed:

I bring her eyes to my New York:  Various elixirs celebrate the captures in two cities and one hundred cities:

My mother’s secrets certainly become mine: The capture of cities is illuminating in various guises:

Dreams with eyes wide open.

Finally we arrive at the furthest point east: In maybe ten-thousand words I might be able to share almost one-hundred and fifty years of urban rise: I park the car: I see what my mother saw of her shy century: I will as promised share the lasting century my camera has to reveal.