I Woke Up This Morning And Went Here/ Homeless In America
Table of contents for Homeless In America
- My Hopes For A New Day/ After The Party Is Over
- I Woke Up This Morning And Went Here/ Homeless In America
, originally uploaded by Davidlind.
We are back in Richmond tonight. Here’s a photo from this morning. I woke up about 4:30 and the person next to me was still sleeping. I slipped out and walked down to the beach. Nothing was on my mind. I was blank. And I was watching this ship on the horizon. After awhile it reached a point where the horizon started to glow a little bit and I thought “this must be where the sun is going to arrive”.
And then the ship burst into flame. Or so it seemed.
This photo is so dark. I tried to lighten it up. But nothing works. This is the way the camera felt things were at this moment. Does it seem ill-formed to you?
Time passed and I found other things to shoot. What is a good way to describe what you are doing when you take a picture? Shoot seems too much like NRA material.
There was a large woman sleeping in the sand. She had been there the day before. Later when the sun arrived she was there wrapped in her black clothing smoking a cigarette. Someone started talking about a beached whale.
I didn’t find this particularly funny. What is it like to spend your day lying in the sand? Do you talk to the sand? Do you pray to the sky?
I wanted to take her photo. But I didn’t want to invade her privacy. Everyone in the photos I took today saw her there. Nobody spoke to her. She was in a separate world. A separate universe. And I couldn’t take anything from her. So no photos.
After awhile I returned to the sky where we live. I returned to the bed that catches the breezes as they enter the room from the balcony. And I pulled the clean sheet up over my shoulder to evade the chill. My brain settled into a dream . And the woman next to me pressed her body against my back.
And the beach below received the waves and held the spirit of a large woman in a small nest.
Perhaps I will meet her in my dream. Because in the light of day the gulf is too wide and I find it too difficult to communicate with her.
