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A Place Called Paradise

Another random photo moment (previous vacation essays here)

a place called paradise

When we drove past this place - the sign says it's called Paradise Lake - I actually saw it in black and white.

When I have my camera in tow, I tend to view everything as a potential photograph and whatever I'm looking at in that moment is seen through not just my eyes, but my photographer mind. I see sepia tones, blurred visions, soft focus. In the instant it takes to scan, say, a field of flowers, my mind runs through the myriad options, like there's a copy of Photoshop in my head, and I see modes and colors that aren't there for anyone else. Very rarely does a photograph come out exactly as I viewed it in my mind. That's the beauty of digital photography, though. You can try, try, try again without wasting money or film.

So we drove past Paradise and I stuck my head out the window, snapped the camera and a rush of thoughts erupted with the one click. Black and white. This looks almost like a ghost town. No, a post-Armageddon town. No, something more desperate and bleak. Not so much the setting, but the juxtaposition of the word PARADISE with scenery that consisted of a battered barn-like building, a trailer, a dirt road and some cars.

Of course, all those things just might be someone's idea of paradise. Who's to say? What's bleak and depressing to me might be someone's escape from the things they find bleak and depressing. Maybe there's a guy - let's call him Larry - who lives just down the road apiece from Paradise Lake. He lives in a battered house that needs a new roof and better insulation. The yard is nothing more than dried hunks of brown grass growing between patches of rock and dirt. There are bills spread out on his kitchen table; utility, Exxon credit car, pharmacy. The phone's already been turned off. Electricity is next. On the wall is a picture of his wife Martha, who died last year from lung cancer. He's got a kid, a daughter, but she's off living with her grandparents, who give her things that he can't, like heat in the winter and a hot breakfast and new shoes.

So he doesn't want to look at the bills and his wife anymore. He doesn't want to stare at the thin walls that make him think of freezing winters even though right now it's summer, hot as hell summer, and the flies are coming in through the holes in the screen, gathering on the counter that hasn't been wiped clean in a week at least. He walks out the door - doesn't bother locking it because there's nothing worth stealing in the house - grabs his fishing pole and starts walking down to Paradise Lake.

Paradise Lake is stocked with trout. It's surrounded by mountains lush with greenery, bordered with wildflowers and dotted with water lilies. Larry finds his favorite place, where the water-beaten rocks, softened and smoothed by nature, jut out into the lake. He sits on the rock, casts his line and waits. He doesn't care if he catches a fish or not. In fact, he'll probably throw back whatever he catches. He just wants to sit there with the sun beating down on his shoulders, enveloping him in a warmth that seeps deep within his soul. He just wants to stare at the clouds that move across the sky, huge, pregnant clouds that remind him of childhood summers, and sometimes the sun will burst forth from behind those clouds, throwing spears of light rays towards the heavens and Larry thinks that Martha is talking to him then, saying hi from above, smiling at him even though he fucked things up so bad.

He smiles back.

A trout bites. A bullfrog leaps into the water, lands on a lily pad. From across the lake comes the shout of a young boy who has caught his first fish. The sun caresses his face. Paradise, indeed.

Comments

The wise Ms.Q (acatnamedpi.blogspot.com) said, "I am starting to figure out that what the Beatles said applies to blog love: The love you take is equal to the love you make."

So, I wanted to stop by today and just say "Hi" because I enjoy your blog, but don't stop often enough and leave a comment. Also, I wanted to invite you to contribute to my "Bloggers Summer Photo Album." Read more about it at mooalex.blogspot.com. I hope you'll want to share your summer fun!

(Yes, this is a "form comment," but I mean every word! I swear!)

Very nice.

Paradise indeed. So well written!. It really touched a vein. Thanks
Dave

I was thinking to myself as I read your description of paradise "just a beat up barn a trailer and a dirt road" that it sounded pretty much like pardise to me.
Then I srolled and read the rest. I think Larry need that bit of paradise more than me.
That was some powerful imagery.

Nice photo. Paradise, MI or PA