Photography
The Stone Scream
Excerpt
A Walk to the End of the Earth
"Corbels high above the entrance catch my eye. To view them, I use my camera’s telephoto capability. My exhausted arms shake as I hold the camera. One corbel depicts a beast with horns. Several depict human faces contorted with perturbation and abject sorrow. The most remarkable corbel depicts a man with hands on either side of his face, a distended jaw jut to one side, and an open mouth loosing a scream from the pain that torments his barren soul: the medieval stonemason’s version of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. I understand the scream. The scream ever wells within me.
No one notices the corbels."
The Sun Rises in Glory
Excerpt
A Walk to the End of the Earth
"Through corn tassels, on the edge of the horizon, the light of the sun glows in shades of gold, brightly polished and brilliant, dull and subdued. Above me, the light paints dark clouds in reds and purples. The sunrise is brief as if God thinks its beauty too great for man to behold for more than a moment. The sun rises higher, and glory dissipates into the flat light of day."
The pine tree pollen in South Carolina blows so thickly off trees that it billows in the wind. A lot of pollen fell into the pond at my farm, and the wind blew it to one end where it formed patterns that look like modern, impressionistic art.
So I photographed it.