Sun Beams and Alchemy (and Photo Gallery) by Christopher J Ananias

When the world is a dark pit, and you find yourself locked up with lunatics. Sometimes, a person needs a slice of sunshine. So that’s what this series of photos will try to capture, but alas, it’s hard to catch a sunbeam.

Then again, I don’t need my baseball glove or butterfly net. Not when I have this magical weight around my neck. It’s left the dark room behind, this is true, but I have my own just in case.

I try to explain this alchemy, as if to a five-year-old or my giant German shepherd dog, to these folks on the ward, but they just cock their heads. I talk about apertures, f-stops, and blinking eyeballs.

No respondo, Ernesto just gazes away from me and talks to people who aren’t there. All of their heads turn, and I finally have an audience.

I’m free again, on Antabuse, so I’m back with the camera therapy of nature and sunshine. The technology that I couldn’t explain to them—resting in my hands. Like a thousand picture books.

The shutter is eager to slide over its mechanical eye, snapping pictures of the sun and everything under it, but you have to be careful taking so many pictures of God.

Caught up with the Camera: Words and Pictures by Christopher J Ananias

Taking pictures, being a photographer, whichever comes first? Peddling a ten-speed through the limbering trees.

Experimenting with light—always light—can’t do much in the dark. Besides: wink, hide, have nightmares, make mistakes, reproduce, and tend my ghost.

For me, the artistic eye sees what it sees. Assuming I have one, right? A brown eye that combs through the trash for artifacts. Hoping to see Van Gogh’s spirit glimmering schizophrenically off the jags of a beer bottle.

I’m ready… I’m harmless now. My ten-speed and me. Camera aimed. I got something good—a spiderweb.

I hike my bike by the cemetery’s gate. “Look at this Grandma.” I say over a tombstone, but say it anyway and show her—been a minute. SEE. She always had a dark-side.

I wander around and get interested in wind vanes and lightning rods.

Christopher J Ananias