As we age, it must be natural that we gradually begin to perceive new beauty in the world around us. The photos I publish are almost all in my inner-city backyard, not a particularly large or lovely place, but random and messy yet (to me at least) unbelievably rich with life.
Home Beautiful, California Home & Design, Sunset Magazine -- none of them will ever come calling. There is no effort to impress here, no carefully sculpted effect, no real investment. No outside consultants, no fertilizers, no pesticides.
The output of this urban garden might keep one small person alive for a few weeks, but it hardly qualifies as any kind of self-sustaining slice of land, or even anything anyone anywhere might care to emulate.
All it is, really, is a place where my spirit roams, and where my eye discovers endless beauties that compel me to snap my unprofessional photos, documenting the seasons.
Even in this modest place, every day is different. It will never be Thoreau's pond (which I have visited), but it is the here and now of my existence, and therefore the tiny piece of this globe most familiar to me these several years, as I struggle to recover enough physical, financial, and psychological health to migrate or immigrate to some sort of place where I can either grow much more food, see many more baseball games, or collect much more seaglass.
I would never claim that any reader would find these photos or these posts particularly relevant or meaningful. For me, this is mainly about appreciating what is within reach, because I am neither rich nor irresponsible enough to travel to the places where I would wish to spend my remaining years.
Many of us face this future, I imagine, especially when you consider that we Americans are the richest people on earth. What must be confusing to everyone else all over earth is that the great majority of us in this land are trapped by circumstances that preclude us living the easy life others may imagine we pursue. Our movies and our novels are fantasies, you see.
Our reality is feeding our kids, tending the modest homes where we reside (rarely our own), and eventually giving in to some passion or addiction or another, which plunges us immediately and permanently in debt to the credit card companies that control and dictate all aspects of mainstream American society.
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News Bulletin: Tonight, at China Basin, Barry Bonds hit HR #754, so he's now just one behind Hank Aaron's record. All of the players who have pursued the records originally set by Babe Ruth have faced terrible pressure -- check out the death threats Hank Aaron faced or the agony of Roger Maris when he hit 61 HRs in 1961, to break the Babe's sacred season mark of 60, a total no one could surpass for 34 years.
It was even longer until Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa both broke Maris's record, partially (as we now know) helped by "performance enhancing drugs." That, apparently was what provoked Bonds to also go down Steroid Highway.
Now, it seems like everyone hates Bonds, but that is only appropriate, given the American tradition of booing each man who approaches these sacred historical numbers.
As for me, I feel privileged to witness what Bonds is doing, which is in no way less valid that what the Babe, McGwire, Maris, Sosa, or the rest have done. Prediction: Alex Rodriguez will be the next "Bonds," and therefore the first Latino to surpass what is supposedly the most important record in sports, U.S.-style.
Will he face the same cultural anger now directed to Barry? I don't know, but I hope not, in that season, probably around 2017, when *he* becomes the greatest HR hitter of all time.
And then, of course, there will be another.
But, records are not only meant to be broken, plus they are in the custody of rich men, who determine who gets to play at all. In terms of gross numbers, regardless of that, the two greatest HR hitters of all time, worldwide, were probably Josh Gibson and Sadaharu Oh.
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* Need I even say it? Courtesy of the greatest band of all time, the Beatles.
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