Yesterday. Yesterday I was inspired.

Of all the places to walk and be, it was “Hometown Girl” in Hampden that set my fire. I was browsing for a gift in that chintzy, tourist-trap of a store in one of the quirkiest neighborhoods in the city and I was knocked off my feet.

A Aubrey Bodine. Of course I’ve heard of him, although for the life of me I can’t remember how my familiarity with the name got started. I’ve seen his works before (I’m sure….) but I never noticed it before, if you know what I mean.

I saw, in the back corner between the snappy BlueQ lotions and the always-dark soda fountain cafe, a stack of matted black and white photos that caught my eye. The one in the front was interesting and appealing in that abstract cityscape kind of way, so I picked it up. I have been through enough art shops to know that local artists usually sell their works like this, and the photos are usually mediocre. I expected more of the same, except I was almost ready to see if this person had a website.

It was a simple photograph, but with wonderful range of tones all in grayscale. The outline of the classic Baltimore rowhomes’ white marble steps led the eye through a maze of order and chaos, squares, rectangles and right angles. Their Qbert-ishness led the eye right out of the frame, right to where tiny dark figures walked down the sidewalk in the corner.

It is a sight that no local of Baltimore could miss. It is a scene so commonplace we don’t even think about it anymore. Most of the time one sees such a sight, the air is filled with humid, choking heat, the growl of the MTA bus and usually the neck-prickling fear of getting shot in the back by a drug deal gone bad. The only thing that struck me about this photo was how clean it looked, how unchipped the stones appeared.

The date on the back of the card said 1945.

Looking up, I caught the tip of a Gothic church spire poking above several other thick white mats. I reached over and pulled it out. Stunning. The sequence of a lunar eclipse over the imposing silhouetted shape of the Washington Monument and the Methodist Church. Far, seemingly miles below the heavenly show were the foggy white trees and the sleeping boxy rowhomes. I didn’t know what to think. I have scorned living and photographing this place for years, and here was this man, a photographer active long before I was born was beating me to the creative punch even after his death.

Although I never do this, I bought two notecards of his work.

The first was the lunar eclipse – it made me miss living in the city, the tantalizing twinkle of streetlights always just outside my window, the whoosh! of cars that was never too noisy and sometimes completely silent. My favorite memories of school were sitting in the windowsill of our 6th-story dorm room at 2 AM, gazing out towards the red Domino sugar sign and wishing it was tomorrow. My love of urban nightscapes was borne from this era: always night, always orange, always cool. No matter how hot and sticky the days are, the nights are a blissful relief. Night is when you venture down into the lights and savor the laughter of friendship, smoke and mirrors until the sun pushes you home again. I wonder now how much I was missing in the celestial lights above, how many wonderful nocturnal vistas I could have captured if I had shifted my perspective just 50 feet higher.

The second was a street scene that could have been any residential neighborhood in Baltimore. A woman, her dress firmly anchoring her to any of the former two centuries smiling at the Arabber in the cart up the street. The houses have not changed one whit; the people both have and have not. You will never see women like her anymore, but the Arabbers have undergone a transformation. While they men in the cart bear a strict resemblance to their earlier counterparts, the horses are smaller, the carts are bigger… and there are far, far fewer of them. A very obscure, dying practice only unique now to Baltimore. Even here, many have no idea this trade exists, or has existed, but with the changing of society and the economy the need for street vendors (and the desire to purchase fresh produce) has vanished.

Although I am not technically a native to this city, it is difficult to see these things change so drastically in so little time and to not feel sad.

I want to get out there.
I want to shoot.
I will not be here forever.

You sure as hell never appreciate anything so much as when it is nearly gone, and I have only Bodine’s ghost to thank for making me realize just how much there is in this city that I have spent so many of my years.

I have a bit of a problem. Lately, I’ve realized that one of the most titillating things anyone can say to me is,

“Wanna go… shooting?”

Gasp. Breathe. Heart pounding. Smile coyly. Admit defeat.

“Yes.”

The thrill is even greater when it’s forbidden: On a school night. Ridiculously early. Sneaking out over the guilt of dog ownership. Creeping back into the house after midnight. Wasting gas to drive somewhere.

I’ll have all of the above, please.

That said, I experienced a bit of rooftopping late last night. I’ve only visited an abandonment at night once before, and it was pretty much an accident (the place was just too beautiful and too large to finish in one day). This time it was planned and completely intentional. And I was looking forward to it all day, polishing my gear, cleaning my sensor, packing, pacing, everything.

Once we were there, the weather and the view was gorgeous. It couldn’t have been even 70 degrees in the breeze up there, with clear skies and not a cloud in sight. I was in the Zone… sort of, but for once I wasn’t grabbing at it frantically. While waiting for my exposures it occurred to me that precisely a month ago I was still staring at the moon and stars, but while I was sitting back in the sand watching satellites sail silently by and worrying about nothing more than stray coyotes and rattlesnakes (joke), this time I could only see the bare outline of the big dipper if I squinted really hard.

How things change.