Friday, November 18, 2022

Dyadic Encounter

Underexposed black-and-white photograph of a woman looking towards frame right, practically in complete silhouette against the light coming through a window across the room
Patty Haffner, Bowling Green State University Student Union, circa 1979

It's an underexposed photograph, taken with the very first 35mm camera I ever owned, a Nikkormat FTN that I'd bought from my roommate, Lou Perlaky, who had gotten it from his father. I still have the camera; it still has Lou's dad's Social Security number etched into the baseplate. I had lots to learn about photography at that time, and because I relied on the in-camera light meter, which in this case was fooled by all the light coming through the windows in the background, I underexposed the film.

Recently, I have been going through the thousands of photographs I've uploaded to Google Photos over the last fifteen years or so. At the beginning, there was no limit to the number of photos one could upload, but that has changed, and as my available storage space nears its 15GB limit, I've been deleting work photos that I had archived. Along the way, I've come across photos I'd somewhat forgotten about, including those which I scanned from my old negatives. The above is one such photo, and my mind drifted back to those halcyon days.

I met Patty Haffner (I think she spelled it Patti at the time) at Bowling Green State University sometime in the spring of 1977. She was a dorm mate of my then-girlfriend Lisa Salisbury, whom I'd met the previous winter in a Popular Culture class. Because it was spring, there was a lot of sunbathing going on after classes, so I met many of Lisa's Ashley Hall friends as we all soaked in rays at the southwest corner of Kreischer Quadrangle.

Lisa and I stopped seeing each other in the fall when it became clear to me that I was her on-the-side guy, but I remained in touch with a few of her friends. Before the break-up, in fact, I went to see Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger with Karen Klemencic at Blossom, an outdoor concert venue near Akron, Ohio. Karen lived in Mentor, to the east of Cleveland, which was sort of near Blossom, so I asked her to accompany me. (Now that I think about it, I think she and Patty were dorm mates). I went to see Jackson Browne (and The Section) at Pine Knob, near Detroit, with Renaee Crippen, another friend of Lisa's who lived somewhat near me in Perrysburg.

But I digress…

Patty was somewhat… mousey, I guess, is the term.* She was small-ish in stature, had a quiet-ish voice, and an almost nervous demeanor. A great giggle. At the time we met, her hair was mid-back long, but — as the photo shows — she had it cut shorter as she neared graduation. (I recall thinking, "NOOOOO!" at the time.) She also was a smoker, which was annoying and kind of heartbreaking, and I have no doubt that I chided her about it from time to time. But I was still drawn to her.

During the winter quarter of 1979, I took Speech 102, a required course for my major in Visual Communications Technology. One of our assignments was to engage in two dyadic encounters, and then write a paper on our experiences. Patty was one of the two people I'd asked to participate, the other being a woman I'd just met in a photography class. (I'm pretty sure that the assignment required meeting with one stranger and someone with whom we were familiar.) As a matter of refreshing my memory about the assignment — as well as to see what I'd written about my encounter with Patty — I dug up the paper this morning.

The paper got a B, and deservedly so. A lot of my observations were not as developed as they could have been. This many years later, I find myself critiquing my own shortcomings as a writer, and completely agreeing with my instructor's comments that I appeared "to be ‘hiding' personal feelings and more in-depth analysis."

Photo of a section of a page from my paper, 'Could Someone Raise the Mirror: The Dyadic Experience,' about my dyadic encounters.

(Also, I have never again used the word expurgation.)

I wish I'd saved the ten or so questions, or prompts, that comprised the exercise (apparently, I don't save everything!) as it would be nice to have a clearer idea of the assignment. On one of the pages, though (see photo), I made note of one of the prompts:

"I think you should know…"

Reading this for the first time in years, I was somewhat surprised that I'd told Patty of my "deep, deep feelings for her." I was quite fond of her, but I don't recall the "deep, deep" part. It surprised me, too, that — as I wrote in the prelude — she had "come to be my closest friend in recent weeks." I tend to have a pretty good memory with regard to my relationships with certain people, so I guess that in the span of almost forty-five years, I've forgotten most of the details that made up our relationship. I can say with almost a hundred percent certainty, however, that there were no hours-long phone conversations, no poems of yearning, no clumsy attempts to kiss her. There was never an ‘I love you as a friend but…' conversation. Maybe I didn't really want to know the truth — that she wasn't interested — so I let it lie. Maybe I was sincere when I said that I didn't want my feelings to "get in the way of our friendship." Maybe that was all just pretend to avoid an eventual broken heart.

But this:

"It was at this time she felt perhaps the same way as I, or that she was willing to discuss so much more…

Which is not to suggest that she actually had similar feelings, but perhaps that the door was slightly open to something. She had suggested a second meeting to talk about things she said she hadn't adequately discussed, but I refused. So…? That I dismissed a follow-up meeting is another surprise to me as — considering what I'd revealed to her — I think I would have jumped at the chance to see her again. So, now, just as my instructor wrote in her notes, "I don't understand, there seems to be something underlying this."

She had been in a relationship when I met her, so that might have been part of my hesitance. That I had romantic notions suggests to me that her relationship was a little shaky, but I don't recall ever talking with her about it at any length. I don't recall having ever met her boyfriend, although he might have shown up at an event that our little circle had attended, and I didn't know much about him other than that he was a teacher. (There actually is more that I won't get into.) It might have been one of those nebulous (to me, at least) on-again-off-again things in which she had expressed doubts about him but that they weren't strong enough to end it.

Moving on from the wouldacouldashouldas…

The most vivid memory I have of Patty and of being in her company (besides the above frozen-in-time photograph) is of an evening she came to my apartment in probably February or early March of 1979. (That my paper is dated 21 January bears that out somewhat.) I don't recall the occasion. We probably drank some wine. If we had dinner, it was likely pizza. We sat on the floor, our backs against the front of the couch, with music playing as we talked. I recall turning all the lights off specifically so that we could listen in the dark to Graham Nash's haunting "Cathedral" on the Crosby, Stills & Nash record, CSN. (There are some songs that require total darkness, Tom Waits' "Putnam County" is another.)

It very possibly was the last time I saw her. I visited her once in Olmsted Falls, Ohio, but I think that was two years earlier, while on my way to or from the aforementioned Arlo Guthrie show. Since I didn't take photos as obsessively back then (yay, cellphones!), I don't have any record of my day-to-day activities. I scribbled occasional thoughts and mostly lame poetry into a blank book, but it wasn't anything resembling a journal. I found an entry today that might have had something to do with her as it was addressed, "Dear friend," but I can't say for sure.

Thanks to a Newspapers.com search I found that she'd gotten her marriage license the last week of March 1979, and a search at Ancestry revealed her marriage date as 7 April. Eventually, she moved to the Houston, Texas area, where she taught, had two daughters, got divorced, and then remarried. I've gathered that she was a step-mom, too. I sent her the photo via Facebook shortly after I had scanned it, but she didn't respond. I also sent her a note not long after Lisa Salisbury died since I figured she wouldn't have known. Again, nothing.

So, today, when I came across the photo again, I opened Messenger to look up when it was that I sent it to her — nine years ago! My second note, about Lisa, was dated February of 2016. When I clicked through to her Facebook page to see if there were any recent updates, I found that it had become a memorial page. Patty had died. Based on comments her daughter made on a photo, she died in the spring of 2017. Her last public post was on 21 May of that year — a picture of her granddaughter. I couldn't find an obituary for her anywhere. Scrolling through her Facebook posts, I found she had been diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, and had other health issues, but a few of the photos she posted of herself suggest she might also have had cancer. Which makes me think of all the cigarettes she smoked.

In addition to the picture of Patty, I took a "still life" photograph that day of her cigarette butts in an ashtray, her coffee cup, her mini-stack of books (and what looks to be a pack of cigarettes), and her legal pad. I can only make out "Computer" and "Data" at the top of the pad, and maybe "March."

Photo of an ashtray, legal pad with pen, a coffee cup
Patty’s butts, notes, books, and coffee cup.

Despite all the years of not being in touch, I've long cherished that we were friends at some point in our lives. I often wondered what became of her. Scrolling through her Facebook posts and seeing her daughters' comments, I can only guess that all in all, she had a pretty good post-Bowling Green life. But I'm sad that she's no longer in this world, regardless of whether or not we reconnected. And that's why, I guess, I've spent the better part of a day writing this, and another couple, now, making edits… to grieve a little, I suppose; to memorialize the relationship — whatever it might have been — in some way. Each of us passes in and out of so many people's lives — just as many others pass in and out of ours — that it wouldn't surprise me if Patty barely recognized my name when it showed up on Messenger in 2013, if she ever even saw the messages.

The thing is, regardless of the depth (or lack of depth) of the relationship, she existed in my life as I did in hers. We are forever changed in ways small or grand.

Whatever reason or reasons Patty had for not wanting to reconnect, she's gone now. I hate that. A lot.

Photograph of Patty Haffner circa 1985, lifted from her daughter's Facebook page.
Patty, circa 1985

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*After writing this, I looked at the few public photos Patty had on her Facebook page, and they reminded me that when she smiled, her narrow, angular face sort of took the shape of Italian puppet, Topo Gigio, including her slightly buck-y front teeth, so perhaps my description of her as mousey is indeed apt.

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Postscript (23 November 2022): While I was in the process of writing this tribute, I sent a note to one of Patty's daughters via Facebook, along with the photograph of her from 1979. I didn't really know what I expected to gain from that other than maybe thanks for having a photograph of her mom that she'd never seen before — I know that experience so well. Since we weren't connected on Facebook, however, I had no idea if she'd ever see the message much less respond. Today she did, and she clued me in on a few more details about Patty… that she taught Reading and English at various times to grades 8 through 12, that her date of death was 26 August 2017, that her cancer (leukemia) was indeed related to her years of smoking.

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Thursday, July 28, 2016

Flickr Binge

Photograph of my hand on a plastic seat at a Taco Bell restaurant with reflections of the Taco Bell neon sign reflecting off it in a distorted fashion so as to appear to be avoiding my hand.
Wave — ©2025 Patrick T. Power

I have been on somewhat of a creative tear of late, hence the scarce attention paid here...

Instead of focusing on articulating thoughts with words, I've drifted (constantly drifting!) to my photographic side with an intensity I've probably never known before. I probably will have to begin to settle that a bit for fear of burning it out in some supernova-like blast.

I have been involved in a photographic conversation with another flickr member, helveticaneue, which has fueled the blitz of photos I've been creating. Last week I discovered she had been inspired by a photograph of my fingers, which was quite a nice feeling. Posting these photographs for the world to see is a bit daunting at times, particularly when the talent pool at flickr is overflowing with amazingly gifted photographers — professional or not. That a photo of mine has served to inspire someone else's art is an awesome feeling.

And so began the conversation of photos and words that have been taking up a great deal of my creative energies for the past week. It has been nothing short of stimulating on so many levels. This exercise has been a combination of word association and photography, and the challenge for me has been to create my images by making prominent use of my fingers or hands. (Also, I'm using my Nikon CoolPix 3200 only, which has limited flexibility. So far, however, I've been making the most of it, I think.) The moment I post a photo, a surge of anticipation comes over me—a hope that the photo perfectly matches the word; a hope that the response is a gleefully smiling "well done!" The anticipation as to what I'm going to see next then starts to well up in me, and the whole cycle begins again.

Close-up photograph of my fingers.
Fingers — ©2025 Patrick T. Power

The interesting thing about it all is that I have also ripped off a series of haiku poems as a means by which I've commented on several of helveticaneue's images. And it hasn't stopped there... I've also begun to write verse in order to comment on other flickr members' photos.

Flickr seems to have become the conduit between me and my muse and I'm loving it.

wave

hands grip lucent skin
passing heat 'fore letting go
its glowing surface

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fingers

fingers sing and glide
they tickle then confound me
I wish for patience

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trace

alabaster-like
her skin reaches to the light
with each pensive breath

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fine


vines on a night walk–
like hairs so fine and tangled
sprawling 'cross his skin

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before

soothing waters close
gently 'round her anxious toes
probing like her heart

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after

golden in repose,
her fingers slip through the veil
guiding her passage

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division

it's not what you see—
it's how your feelings pull you.
all is bright within.

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morning

morning's dim light blinks
its eyes awake
like a lover
smiling
from the other
pillow

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me.

the angle of view
that reveals so much of her
needs so little light

EDIT TO ADD (20 December 2025): I've removed the links to photographs from a number of the above poem titles as the photographs have either been deleted, made private, or the user has deleted his/her account.

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Sunday, June 23, 2013

Meeting Penny

First picture of Penny
Penny, circa July 1980 — ©2025 Patrick T. Power

This is, I'm quite sure, the first photograph I ever took of the woman I once was married to, Penny. The mother of my children. I don't like to use the term ex-wife, although sometimes I do. I never use the truncated version, ex. I've always felt that there is a certain animosity implied when a person uses either of the terms, and, well, I just don't use them. (Which is not to say that there isn't some animosity. Heh!)

I have been scanning a lot of photographs lately. Most of them have been photos I took with my first 35mm camera, a Nikkormat FTN, which I'd purchased from my college roommate, Lou Perlaky. He'd gotten it from his father, whose Social Security number is etched in the bottom plate of the camera. Lately, the negatives I've been so diligently, systematically scanning are from a portrait series I took in late 1994 and early 1995 for my first and only solo photographic exhibit, The Artist Project. The exhibition ran for a month in the spring of 1995 at the Lansing (Michigan) Art Gallery (Thank you, Karen Stock!), in its salon, and featured portraits of twenty-three Lansing-area visual artists, one of whom was Penny.

I scanned the negatives according to the date I'd created them, starting with Barb Morris on 19 December 1994 and ending with retakes of Mark Mehaffey on 31 March 1995. In somewhat of a twist of fate, I began scanning the next to last set of negatives—from Penny's session—sometime yesterday*. At some point, I happened to look at the clock on the computer and saw that the date was 22 June, the day that I met her in 1980. I would bet that she has no memory of the date that we met, but almost every year, for at least a moment, it occurs to me.

I was on an internship for school that summer, traveling around Ohio and Michigan photographing families at their churches for United Church Directories, an Ohio company. The churches would provide space to do the portraits and volunteers to assist with clerical stuff, and UCD would provide the photographer, a photographic church directory of its congregation, and (I think) one 8" x 10" photograph to each family, in the hopes that the families would buy additional prints, which, of course, they usually did.

Before actually doing any portraits on my own that summer, I had to go through a week's worth of training with an experienced UCD photographer, so I drove up from Toledo to Lansing, Michigan on the 20th to meet John Thompson, who had been with the company for some time. I took a room at the Red Roof Inn just off the northbound Jolly Road exit of US-127, then met John the next day to begin my training at a church in Mason, about twenty minutes south of Lansing. On the first day of training, I think I met John at the church. He lived in Grand Rapids, and so made an hour-and-a-half commute. On the second day, John and his wife, Karen, both met me at the motel. Karen made plans to spend the day in East Lansing with her best friend, Penny, so she drove a separate car. At some point during the day, it was decided that I would join John, Karen and Penny for dinner once John and I wrapped up for the day.

I didn't know anything about Penny, of course, so had no expectations. When John and I arrived at the now-defunct restaurant/nightclub at the Meridian Mall in Okemos, The Backstage (so named because of its location directly across from the cinemas at the mall), Karen and Penny were sitting at a table, as was another man, Rick, who I assumed to be Penny's boyfriend. About all I recall from the evening is that I was instantly smitten with her. I couldn't keep my eyes off her.

That evening, or perhaps it was the next, I was invited to stay with John and Karen at their apartment in Grand Rapids and simply make the commute with John each day. It seemed to make sense, I guess, even though my travel expenses would have been reimbursed by UCD. It gave me a chance to get to know John and Karen, so, I accepted the invitation. On the drives back and forth, I quizzed John a bit about this gorgeous woman. I joked (not really) about setting me up with her. I probably asked what the situation was with this Rick fellow, but he had little, if anything, to tell me. I do recall, however, John telling me that I didn't want to have anything to do with her. I didn't press him for the reasons, although I sensed he didn't want to share what he would have liked to tell me. Nonetheless, I didn't let it drop. During dinners, I would tease Karen about setting me up with Penny. She laughed it off.

It was during dinner, one night, that Penny called. After talking with Karen for a while, she asked to talk to me. Whoa! Heart, meet throat.

Something was going on here. It was one of those movie storylines that doesn't ever happen in real life, but was happening in real life.

One night that week, after work, the four of us met again at Rick's American Café, a basement bar in East Lansing. Supposedly, she was to meet her friend Rick there to celebrate his birthday. I don't know if that was true, and well, I didn't care. We drank and listened to the music of Newt and the Salamanders. I swung my knee over to bump hers and told her, "I kneed you." She laughed. Not the wonderfully raucous laugh I would eventually come to know and love, but a laugh nonetheless. Rick never showed. Before heading back to Grand Rapids, we kissed in the parking lot where once stood a theatre.

My training period with John was cut short by UCD, as there was a church in Bloomfield Hills that the company wanted me to cover. I don't know if a photographer had fallen ill, or if there was no one else available. Whatever the reason, I made plans to head east to the Detroit area, with an overnight stop in Lansing. Yes, with Penny.

After my one-day stint in Bloomfield Hills, I headed back home to Toledo, then photographed a church in St. Joseph, Michigan, and another in Decatur, I think, before getting the call to spend the better part of two weeks in Jackson, Michigan working at a rather large Catholic Church, St. Mary Star of The Sea. Penny offered to put me up for the duration—I accepted, of course—and on one of the very hot days (it was one of the hottest stretches of weather ever in Michigan, as I recall) came to meet me when my work for the day was finished. That's when I took the above photo (and she a couple of me) using the already positioned light set-up and company camera.

Many people associate smells with memories. I don't. I have never had much of a sense of smell. So, most of my memories seem to be related to and triggered by my sight, and very often by old photographs. So it was again this weekend as I scanned the negatives of portraits I'd taken during one of the most difficult periods of my life, only to see that I'd be scanning the last photographs I would take of Penny, on the anniversary of the day that I met her.

Penny | The Artist Project
Penny, 25 March 1995 — ©2025 Patrick T. Power

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*I actually began writing this late on the 22nd, not finishing it until sometime on the 24th.

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Monday, June 06, 2011

Paris

Eiffel et Caroussel
Eiffel et Caroussel ©2008 by Patrick T. Power. All rights reserved.

Friends of ours will be getting married in November in Vannes, France. I hope to be able to go, as well as spend a little time in the city I love so well.

Monday, May 18, 2009

L'amitié

Photograph of my feet resting on the railing of a balcony
L'amitié © 2025 Patrick T. Power. All rights reserved.

Dear friend,

I want to help you, not save you. I want to help you be whole, not just a little piece of yourself.

I want you to stop your self-destructive behaviour not because it's what I want, but because it will lead to an even better you. A you that I think is already quite wonderful—compassionate and warm and giving.

Love,
Me

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Saturday, May 16, 2009

Delma and Lupe Get Married

Delma & Lupe Get Married

I didn't attend this wedding. In fact, for a long time, I didn’t even know Delma existed. And she had lived right across the street from me!

Based on this slide's date imprint, this wedding likely occurred in May of 1967, so, I would have been about 11½.

Delma Estrada is the eldest daughter of Alfredo and Filiverta Estrada (we knew them as Freddie and Bertha) who lived in a house across the street from us when I was growing up. Freddie had two brothers who also moved into the neighbourhood at about the same time (one next door to him and the other two doors down in the other direction) and many of the children growing up in their households were the same age as my brothers and I, as well as every other kid on the block, so many of us — to use a term from those days — ran around together.

It's very possible that Delma was already living on her own when the Estrada families moved onto Utah Street, which is why I wasn’t aware of her at the time. I think she was my brother Bob’s age (who is nine years older than I am), and he wasn’t living at home in 1967, so it’s very possible that she simply wasn’t around. Or… being eleven years old and all, I might have been too busy playing baseball or round-up (a more grown-up version of hide-and-seek) to have noticed her.

But as regards this photograph, Delma isn’t really the story. The story is her sister Olga.

Olga was a year older than I, and I knew her and would occasionally “play” with her around the neighbourhood. She was just another kid on the block, really, and since she was a girl, she didn’t take up much of my attention. And although she was Catholic, she attended public schools whereas I attended Catholic schools, so as we grew up, we saw less and less of each other on a daily basis.

Fast-forwarding to probably the summer of 1975… I would have been 19½ or so, and while washing my new-ish used 1974 Super Beetle on the street, I heard a voice (the sound of which I can still hear in my head… very Debra Winger-esque, raspy, squeaky) calling out to me and I turned to see Olga sitting on her porch swing, laughing at whatever it was she had just said.

I finished what I was doing and walked over to join her.

Quickly, we became the best of friends. We spent a lot of time together that summer, often just sitting on her porch swing talking and laughing. I shared my Martin Mull and Jackson Browne records with her and she tried unsuccessfully to turn me on to Uriah Heep.

She worked at St. Anthony Villa, a Catholic orphanage on the other side of town, and I was working at Commercial Aluminum Cookware (now Calphalon) when it was located in the heart of downtown Toledo. We each were making our ways in the world while still living under our respective parents’ roofs.

Indeed our friendship became very intense in the first couple of weeks as she intimated to me that she thought she might be pregnant. Until that point, I had no clue that she was seeing someone (he was a friend or roommate of her older sister Mina’s boyfriend), so I was rather crushed. It had been feeling like more than a friendship to me. I was seriously free-falling into love only to be provided an ACME anvil to cushion my landing.

She soon found out she wasn’t pregnant, and we went about business as usual on the friendship front. Unfortunately (for me), her relationship seemed to be developing. It was especially disconcerting since I often sat on my porch playing guitar, whence I could see when Steve or Dave or Thomas — or whatever the hell his name was* — came ‘round to pick her up. What further made things difficult for me were the stories she told about him… stories that painted the picture of a not-so-very-wonderful guy. It was killing me.

I can’t recall where in the chain of events it occurred, but we finally went out on what I believed was a date. (Maybe she’d stopped seeing what’s-his-name… maybe I thought she had… whatever.) I don’t recall much about the day except that we ended up at Inky's on the north side of Toledo. Inky’s is a family-run Italian restaurant near where my dad worked. As a family, we had pizza there once a month or so since my dad did work for, was friends with, and golfed regularly with the owner, Frank Incorvaia. Great people. Great food.

It was a nice night. We had fun. We went home. We kissed on her steps. I trembled.

I don’t know why, but we never went out again. I suppose that she sensed my inexperience. It might have been the third time in my life I’d kissed a girl, so no doubt there was no comparison between what transpired for her that night and, well, what almost gets one pregnant.

Still, I remained in pursuit, while at the same time being able to read the writing on the wall.

At the time, Commercial Aluminum Cookware shared a building with a few other businesses, one of which was National Super Service, a manufacturer of industrial vacuum cleaners. At some point, I’d heard that they were hiring and I suggested to Olga that she apply. She hadn’t been too happy at the orphanage and, I thought, wouldn’t it be great to work in the same building! She applied and was hired. And much to my chagrin, our relationship — whatever it was — began its decline (read: came to a screeching halt).

Not long after starting at NSS, she began seeing one of her co-workers, Jeff, a very quiet, likable guy. He and I didn’t interact all that much during working hours, but we were acquainted with each other. Sometime in 1977, they married. I had begun college by then and attended the wedding with my girlfriend, Lisa Salisbury, whom I’d met at school. I went to visit Olga and Jeff once after they’d been married and I think that was the last time I saw her. She eventually took a job with Jobst Institute (whose claim to fame was having manufactured space suits for NASA), in whose parking lot she died. Or so I was told. My mother mentioned it in passing to me over the phone while I was at school, so I never heard anything about what had happened. I’ve never had the opportunity to ask her sisters or cousins. When she was younger, she had injured her head in her high school swimming pool and I was led to believe that her death might have been somehow related to that. Her obituary noted she’d died after a long illness, so… cancer of some sort?

I still have a piece of fabric that she gave me. At the time, sewing colourful fabric around the bottoms of the legs of bell-bottom jeans was a thing. It was something she did. It’s the only tactile reminder I have of her.

A candid picture of herself that she had given to me wore out years ago from being in my wallet, but just as I am able to hear her voice still, I am still able to see that picture of her beautifully big-toothed smiling face. It is a face and a picture that I have forever tied to Jackson Browne's "Fountain Of Sorrow"... from his all-too-hitting-close-to-home Late For The Sky record.

I think of Olga every October 13th, her birthday. Until I found the above high school photo, I conjured what I’d remembered in the long-lost photo I’d kept in my wallet for so long.

A few years after she died, I had a dream in which she spoke to me. "Don't worry," she said, "everything is just fine."

Now the things that I remember seem so distant, so small
Though it hasn't really been that long a time
What I was seeing wasn't what was happening at all
Although for a while, our path did seem to climb
— Jackson Browne (Fountain Of Sorrow)

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*Thinking now about this, I'm pretty sure it was George. (ptp, 2013)

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Friday, December 19, 2008

Trouble In The Dining Room

In the dining room of the house I use to live in, a rubber tree plant sat near the window that faced west. Almost every day of the year, I would see the shadows cast by the blinds onto the plant and I would think of the very photo-graphic opportunity it presented.

Photograph of a rubber tree plant

Of course, what looks pleasing to the eye doesn't always translate so well when photographed. In this case, it's possible that had I re-positioned the plant slightly, or had more than one lens available to me, I might have made a more interesting image.

So, as much as I liked what I saw in the late afternoon of my dining room, I couldn't quite create a print that was as striking. Thinking that cropping it might help, I tried a few variations

Photograph of a rubber tree plant (cropped version 1)

Photograph of a rubber tree plant (cropped version 2)

Photograph of a rubber tree plant (cropped version 3)

Then, I thought I'd try Photoshop's filters out...

I think I like this one best so far (click to enlarge)...

And even then, I don't like it all that much.

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Monday, February 18, 2008

Dried Rose

Dried Rose by Patrick T. Power
Dried Rose © Patrick T. Power

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Cooper Mini


Cooper Mini by Patrick T. Power
Cooper Mini © Patrick T. Power

Saturday, February 16, 2008

 


Zachary & Nina by Patrick T. Power
Zachary & Nina © Patrick T. Power

Friday, February 15, 2008

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Trampled

Photograph of a heart carved into snow

Trampled © Patrick T. Power

This reminded me of a time in seventh grade when I similarly drew my initials + those of a girl I'd been sweet on since third or fourth grade in snow on the playground – easily within view of our second story classroom window. It wasn't until I got back to the classroom that I realized everyone could see what I had done.

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Unless otherwise noted, all writings on this blog are copyright Patrick T. Power. All rights reserved.

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Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

 


Peinture De Nuit by Patrick T. Power
Peinture De Nuit © Patrick T. Power

I decided to play a little bit with this one, adding a dry brush techinique with Photoshop. For kicks.

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Edit to add (13 November 2024): it looks rather crappy to me now.

Edit to add (7 August 2025): hideous is really a better word for it.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Saturday, February 09, 2008

 


Crossbar by Patrick T. Power
Crossbar © Patrick T. Power

Friday, February 08, 2008

Thursday, February 07, 2008

Tree Line

Tree Line by Patrick T. Power
Tree Line © Patrick T. Power

Monday, January 28, 2008

Delay

I've been thinking of things other than this blog. I've suddenly gotten bored with flickr and have begun photoblogging elsewhere. So, I'll probably pick up here by the beginning of the month.

I know... you're on pins and needles!