"Sometimes I don't even know what I want until I find out I can't have it." -Meghan O'Rourke

She knew he was not going to call. She knew that after five years, her roof would need replacing. She knew that next Tuesday, at her favorite coffee spot, she would meet a woman who would become her naturopathic doctor and would cure her of the yet-to-be-realized burning-mouth-syndrome by recommending dietary changes that at first she would hate but then, in time, would come to love as much as the pastries and caffeine she consumes today with such gusto. And the more she looked at those lines and those wrinkles, the patterns and shapes; the more she discovered and found what was to be...  

There was a time when this was all delightful and amazing and wonderful and it all appeared so seamless as if this was the way everyone's life went - everyone could read the writing and hear the whispers and taste the subtle nuances of next Friday-to-be, the way the river will carry them to November.  

"It really isn't so bad knowing, come Saturday night, i'll get that table at La Rustica with the cute waiter who will eventually call me (three weeks later) but not for a dinner date, rather with questions about an ex-girlfriend and his next audition."

She had tried to convince herself it was OK knowing the turn of each road from the subtleties of her hands. Back then, it was enough to be surprised, to be startled, even to be a bit frightened, seeing it laid out in her palms. But discerning it there, predicted but, as yet, unrealized began to pale. She longed for the feel of her face forming a genuinely surprised expression at an unexpected meeting with friends - arms out-stretched in wonder, a spontaneous smile, and the glad lifting of eyebrows. And this brought to mind all the fake expressions worn at what seemed like the appropriate times... she sat there on her bed gazing out her window, following her clothes line; towels, underwear, the occasional un-paired sock, and came to realize how much she now despised her 'gift'.  

She now avoided looking at her owns hands. In anger, she attempted to thwart their predictions: They told of her walk home today after classes, the shop where a scarf would be found to go perfectly with the Harris-Tweed coat she bought at the Goodwill store - she took the bus instead, to the park where she purchased a kite and spent the afternoon attempting to fly (something she has not done since moving to the city). On Monday, the forecast called for a promotion at work, she walked in and quit on the spot... "Ha! let's see my damn hands cope with that!" And later, she really did have to see - but there was no contrariness there at all. WTF! - There were no prior mistakes, and yet now her hands told the tale of the kite flying, the search for a new job... Her sanity tilted just a bit - and it was just enough. She began buying gloves.

Decision made, her longing for the unknown was now her guiding light- the unknown, how delicious that sounded to her - to wake freely into a mystery, embrace surprise and risk skinned knees and embarrassment, doubt, quandary...

"Hmmm... i wonder what my palms are shouting now..."

A thought she dispelled... but with difficulty...

.

Notes about this image:

Inspired by a snippet of song lyric that got me to thinking about free-will and determinism and wanting the things i can't have...

The backdrop for the image is from a small park, Browns Point,  just north of Tacoma that contains a lighthouse and an old lighthouse-keepers house, beautifully and lovingly preserved. I wanted to get a shot looking down on the second-story window to 'put' my seer in her bed sleeping with fists tightly closed. The angle required sending the camera up on the end of a pole suspend by an adjustable-angle paint-roller handle that screwed onto the end of a 20-foot, telescoping aluminum pole (pretty cool, huh?).

On an overcast day, i made the drive to Browns Point. In the side-yard of the house, i assembled all my gear, attached the kite-cam-rig to the pole and extended same to its full length. I always expect imminent failure when trying this sort of thing and so i started taking pictures as quickly as i could. Smooth - i was taking images and turning the camera to get different views and hoisting it as far overhead as i could to get the down-view i was looking for and i was feeling like quite the clever fellow (which should have been a blatant warning of disaster).  

The paint-roller handle I was using was somewhat long and it arched out and away putting the camera about 18 inches from the top (read: connection point) of the pole (which was OK with me cuz then i could get the pole out of the image without too much effort). But, un-realized by yours truly, this long lever-arm was putting a significant strain on the plastic rod into which i had screwed the paint-roller handle. I was shooting away, feeling smug and smart, when the camera suddenly seemed to be turning on its own around the end of the pole...

"Hmm... that's odd. I don't ever remember it doing that before, maybe i didn't screw it down tight enough... "and from that point things started happening very quickly indeed: The odd spinning behavior accelerated into a spin i could neither slow down nor compensate for, no matter what i did (now i'm no longer concerned, i am reaching full panic), i grip the pole trying to slow the spin when the paint-roller arm, rig, and camera detach completely from the pole - i'm now in the process of dropping my camera, with kite-cam rig and lovely fish-eye lens from twenty-five feet.  HOLY SHIT!!  

OK, so here's the first of two lucky occurrences: if you look at the image, you see that concrete side walk below the window? well not moments before i had been standing on that concrete shooting images and had decided, on a whim (or maybe a higher power was already at work for me), that it might be a good idea to get a few shots a bit further from the house. I stepped off the concrete and onto lawn...

And the second bit of luck: Now the uncontrolled spinning has ended and the camera begins its fall.  I don't have time (or the forethought) to drop the pole and just go for the catch (how cool would that have been? Then i could have told you how fast my mind works and how i have the reflexes of an eighteen-year-old... alas) Instead, as my camera/rig flashed by me i stick out my leg, with no reasonable expectations except that i was hoping to deflect sideways some of that downward momentum with the foolish thought that it might help matters. But that didn't work out the way i'd envisioned either...

Driven by a madman's concoction of adrenaline, panic, despair, and optimism, my leg shot out from my vertical stance and i felt the camera and rig impact on my thigh just below the hip. I expected to feel the camera and rig bounce off into the unknown, but no...  pure dumb luck steps in and instead the kite-rig (with camera attached) somehow gets caught up and wrapped around my leg (it still baffles me how this one-in-a-million chance came about) and cinches snugly to my thigh as my leg swings out away from my body. My first thought (and this is like a flash through my mind): "Shit, this thing is gonna break my ankle or tear my leg to shreds." But no... the rig attaches to me in such a way that my leg now acts as a brake and, in the 32-inches from hip to foot, slows the camera and rig to a near-stop condition. It gently hits my foot, slides off my ankle and into the soft grass (not concrete) and... no damage - not a broken camera, not a scratch on the lens, not a destroyed kite-rig. I was incredulous. I looked around to see if anyone had witnessed this miracle... *sigh* no one about. I just stood there and reveled in my incredulity.  

The rest was fairly uneventful.  I borrowed gloves from friends, i scouted around only to find a psychic right in my neighborhood with a cool sign. The most difficulty i had was finding the damn pulley: it took me about a month of searching in antique stores and second hand tool stores. If i wasn't so stupidly anal about the thing, i could have settled for something long before but i had a particular pulley in-mind and i just couldn't seem to find it (and, truth be told, this isn't exactly what was in my mind's eye but even i will eventually succumb to reasonableness).  I found this one a wonderful vintage and antique furnishing store in Seattle. Yippee.

My palm-reader, of course, is my daughter with her fists shut tight (i ended up having to re-shoot her cuz the first time her fists just seemed too languid for my purposes... :)) The gloves on the clothes line were shot in my driveway. I put her in the upstairs lighthouse-keepers house with some straight-forward PS work, the backdrop is actually made up of two images shot during the ill-fated pole-cam experience and I held the pulley at arm's length as i photographed it in the antique store.

There you go.