Multitasking Monothinking

I am in my usual “doing too many things at one time” mode. In the process of printing the snaps made this summer – the platinotypes, the colour digital and the snaps of people that I spoke to – I find that I can look at the black and white images with a detachment where I can – I think – determine whether the snaps were good or not. This is the case with both the platinotypes and the snaps of people – which once again I say should stop as some of them just get beyond the snapshot stage. While those snaps will make it no farther than the cataloguing phase I could have saved some film in not turning the endeavour into a conceptual exercise – I blame the ‘tute for this.

The colour ones though – the ones made as records of the trip to be posted here – end that detachment. Looking at those I remember Bonne Bay vividly and stop to try to imagine that I was in a place so breath takingly beautiful. The colour brings back the reality that I am supposedly beyond as we all know that photographs aren’t real.

They are bringing the minutiae of the place and I have to imagine less about the time spent there – the tickle from Curzon Village, the gulch, dinner at the picnic table even the poorly stitched together panoramas are more direct memory aids than the black and whites. I don’t know whether this is a good thing or not.

Seeing them however brings up my second favourite pastime, looking for real estate on the rock. On the Avalon I can go through pages of places worthy of consideration – my favourite right now is in Witless Bay overlooking the ocean for $69.000. I find almost nothing along the Great Northern and when I do I realise that I cannot afford it.

I also realise that I don’t know how people who live there can afford to stay. Bonne Bay is being overwhelmed by people like… well me. I think about the regulars at the Seabreeze and wonder if their days are numbered. I remember the conversation at Edward’s shanty where he was debating whether the nearby resettled town Chimney Cove would be re-inhabited at least he could afford it. I remember Elaine telling me that she sold property in Trout River overlooking the ocean for $5000 and now someone trying to sell land overlooking Bailey’s Point for at least ten times that amount. I could afford it – yeah right – but could those who actually live there?

When there, we were remarking about the parks people and the townies and how they seem to be in parallel universes, looking through the real estate section I am beginning to see that the park is winning.

I am gobsmacked every time I look at the colour snaps, like being at the end of the road in Woody Point and would like to hanging around the place, but more people like me moving in can only hasten the change of the area.