August 24, 2025

This image brings to mind the quote from Captain Jack Sparrow, "It's the pirate's life for me, Gibbs, I have no say in the matter, savvy?"

That speaks for me of cameras and photography. I had to be at this place above Death Valley almost twenty years ago. The things about which we "have no say in the matter," are the things we cherish and serve because we must. And those are the things that guide our boat on its path through the sea.

I fell in love with a 35mm single lens reflex camera in the mid-sixties and have belonged to photography ever since. That is a psychic phenomenon of life-transforming proportions, and is the basis of much that passes for religious practice, and belongs to the sphere of the God beyond theology. 

The conflux of the two Gods, the God of theology and the God of psychic phenomenon, has been a source of confusion and bewilderment from the beginning of human life, with us trying to make sense of our life experience in the grip of the psychological forces of projection and superstition--representing a powerful blend and the source of emotions quite beyond our comprehension and control--which we disregard and dismiss to our own loss and dismay over the course of our life.

When Psyche wants to have a word with us, it would behove us to listen. If we have a dream that repeats itself it represents a Psychic urgency to have our attention, and we would be wise to sit with the dream to explore and reflect on until realization dawns.