too much time in airports

Look deal with it, I think about the Rock daily, I miss the Avalon – well except for certain parts just west of the capital - having the first sun in North America blind me in the morning, being bored with passing whales,icebergs, moose and caribou, pints to finish the day at the Duke, hating Route 20 to Pouch. I even miss the seclusion Bonne Bay and the emptiness of the Barrens, the Conception Trinity Bay loop, and can now even make a case for Corner Brook – but would be hard pressed. I want to revisit the pond ocean debate.

I am trying to make a quick trip up there so that 2006 will not pass without me having to set my watch to half past the hour - highly unlikely now.

I am hoping, planning to be up in Pouch in January – although mentioning this will probably jinx it – and while I do like trying to find real Newfoundlanders in the new terminal at Pearson’s, the first sighting of the island being darker than the Gulf and guessing what cities the lights below belong to, I want to drive.

While one can feel the distance flying, it is more or less due to the hassle of flying, not the feeling that one is going any place.

Driving in January is out of the question – I think this is that nasty thing called maturity talking, it cannot be that bad if one is patient. Ferries do run when they can tolerate the sea, and once through the Wreck House on the Trans Canada well it should be clear sailing. One needs time One cannot make time.

It could be due to the prodigal summer when while driving through Connecticut and Massachusetts was a pain, the anticipation of a world without “W”, the emptying out of people, and the symbols of safe harbour – Irving Mainways and Tim Horton’s – rejuvenated the passage through Maine.

It could be the nostalgia over taking the annoyances – I now think that the best night on the main land was Fredericton – things that at the time were bothersome are now remembered at surreal.

Nostalgia taking over again – for I swore that I would never kill myself toting a 10x8 with me anymore – but making books of the platinotypes for Amy and my evil twin is so soothing that I want to take something larger than medium format. I want to see what I have been making while there. Working digitally is not the same thing. There is no period of rest between tasks.

Mimicking the layout of the Parks House, I have this plan of turning Sullivan’s Loop into a hybrid work space, 19th century with a U.V. plate burner, and 21st with a scanner and an inkjet printer.

I want to reinitiate the slow photography movement. I want to travel around the bays and along the roads that go only to one place, Route 370 to Buchans, Route 360 to Harbour Breton making sure that I hit 361-365, 210 for the Burin Loop, 10-52 to St Shott’s. Am being realist and putting off 480 to Burgeo once again I’ll need a machine from T.J. I want to document the going not the destination as for the longest time the Republic was precisely that from trans-Atlantic flights to cable stations.

I want to do this in winter, as unlike down here people do not hide indoors, there are even fewer of them, I want the added land as ponds and other bodies of water freeze over, winters on the side that I shall be aren’t as bad as those in the upper Midwest, and I won’t sweat as much with the equipment.

Even though John Gushue has used it for his blog the series is potentially called “…” as in its double meaning it sums up what I am trying to do.

Face it I cannot approach the province from a point of ignorance anymore. I am going with a plan.

On top of everything risking my job and possibly tenure status at the greatest art school of time thanks to our fearless leader who if there were one should win the Warren G. Harding award for effectiveness in his position, I want to make content rich beautiful images. (Now using the word “images” I am going to get an e-mail from a Tulane grad candidate).

This distance and rampant nostalgia is effecting my work for at one time I wanted to return and make a series on Mount Pearl, Paradise and Conception Bay South.

Planes don’t know how to deal with plate film. They see sealed boxes and want to open them. They cannot comprehend film not in little metal canisters or at least in something. Even though it is sealed and passes through the x-rays they want to open those boxes.

Shipping them in the luggage is no longer an option. I don’t want to have to explain pyro chemistry. The only option is land based travel – remember that.

Remember talking to someone at the Deer Lake Irving when I travelled by DRL to Corner Brook who had made it up from the Boston States and was going to St. Anthony by coach. I know that I can take a train as far as Halifax and the DRL from Port-aux-Basques to the Avalon, but Halifax to North Sydney…

The series of rants started when I did some research. Three trains to Halifax – Chicago to Toronto, Toronto to Montréal, and Montréal Halifax which is only marginally faster than driving.

I long for the day when people get fed up with shoeless, liquid-less, remove everything from your pockets air travel and the return land/sea transport where the idea is to get someplace, the way the Empire Builder, Southern Crescent and Flying Scotsman did. I can negotiate planes, and feel so grown up when I do but I prefer the pent-up anticipation with the little milestones moving more slowly.

Finishing this rant, I know that this will have to be modified to turn it from a pipe dream. Another reason I like the Rock is the risks that I take, being where it is one has to commit, I just have to determine what of the above is necessity – being there - and what can be modified – everything else.