Light Pollution

This morning, on NPR's Perspectives segment, I heard about "light pollution." Think of it... the notion of polluting the night skies with light to the point where there will no longer be any spaces of depth or darkness, no reprieve for the eyes. The fireflies will no longer fly, frogs won't mate discerningly (what does that mean?), and we won't be able to discern what is lightness anymore. How do we distinguish star from star? Everywhere, there are citylights. From beneath the ocean up to the stars, we would pollute ourselves with lights, with lightness, with lamps and posts and bright bulbs pointed towards the heavens. What would it be like to surrounded by such an absence of deep, rich black? So much lightness that it would hurt...

Modotti Seeing

Saturday, Sep. 16th. Visited the SF MOMA to view the Tina Modotti and Edward Weston exhibit. She photographs, among other things, telephone wires and telegraph wires stretched on poles. He photographs images of her self, studies in nude. She shows workers carrying hay and straw on their backs, concrete ladened on their spines, women with various items on their shoulders, heads, backs. She sees a small boy squatting in the dry heat, women laundering clothes on rocks, women kneeling outside a church. She sees roses, up close and wiltering, heady, subtle but aromatic. She sees...