Happy Accidents

It’s been over a month since I’ve posted anything on the blog. I’ve been inundated at my day job and working on some long-term writing projects in my off hours—plugging away in the messy, first-draft stage.

And in reviewing some old poems recently, I found a few that are my favorites. I thought I would share them.

They’re not the best poems in the world. I have no inflated sense about their worth.

But I love them because they were delivered to me almost in complete form, needing little revision. Instead of writing the poems, I merely served as a portal through which they could be born.

Phoenix landscape.

The first one I wrote under my carport in the parking lot at my apartment complex in Phoenix, Arizona (sometime between 1998 and 2001). I had been out driving late at night with the windows open, looking at the stars, smelling the desert sage, and listening to “Terrapin Station” by the Grateful Dead.

And these words came to me as I shut off the engine. I changed only two lines slightly in the final version.

Revelation (final)

A courtship of contempt,
filled with swirling fury and churning angst,
not halted by the hands of God.
Zealous rituals express unwavering faith,
and outstretched arms set hearts aflame.

Trees topple under a crescent moon—
a gleaming scythe that carves the frost-burnt night,
invoking stones to crush the gnarled root,
as fragments of identity rupture
into paralyzing self-hate.

Revelation (rough)

A courtship of contempt,
filled with swirling fury and churning angst,
not halted by the hands of God.
Zealous rituals express unwavering faith,
and outstretched arms set hearts aflame.

Trees topple under a crescent moon—
a gleaming scythe that carves the frost-burnt night,
invoking stones to crush the gnarled root,
as fragments of salvation disintegrate
into insurmountable self-hate.

Three other poems from that same Phoenix period follow. “Side Dish” emerged from one my evening walks before heading to work as a night shift news editor.

Inaudible Expression

A great sigh emitted,
arising and then dissipating,
but remaining forever unheard,
the echo of a soul reverberating,
in resignation of the inexorable.

The Feast of Life

Swallow the anguish.
Extract the juice
of this bitter fruit,
and expel the residue
upon the already
splattered canvas.

Side Dish

A mundane scene of modern living
played out one evening
while I walked along Ninth Street
near East Grovers Avenue in north Phoenix.

I heard the sound of a sliding glass door
opening from behind a retaining wall
running parallel to the sidewalk.

And although I had
no intention of eavesdropping,
I then overheard a woman call out:
“And now the great vegetable debate, green beans or corn?”

The question evoked a few seconds of silence,
followed by a man’s reply:
“Uh . . . both,” he said.

And as I turned the corner,
heading up the next block,
I was tempted to stop and ask the couple,
“Hey, what else is for dinner?”

The last poem popped into my head while driving eastbound on the New York State Thruway between Syracuse and Rome (sometime between 2006 and 2008).

Departure

Vagabond bones creakin’ down the road,
bound for somewhere in between,
a home-sweet-home dissenter,
relishing the unknown.

Refurbished Pentax K1000

I am excited about the restoration of my old Pentax K1000 camera. A few of my younger colleagues at work are avid photographers who practice analog photography; this interest extends beyond a hobby. When I mentioned my busted Pentax K1000, one of my co-workers, Shane, offered to repair the camera, and he and another co-worker, Josh, pitched in to process my first roll and scan the negatives. I had a lot of misfires, but I was also happy a few of the images came out—somewhat in focus and exposed properly.

Alley test shot, photo by Francis DiClemente.

The Pentax K1000 has a nostalgic pull for me. I bought a used one in 1995 from a copyeditor at The Venice Gondolier newspaper, my first employer in journalism. I cut my teeth covering symphony concerts, senior fashion shows, and garden party events.

Patch of Light, test shot; photo by Francis DiClemente.

And in a moment of complete stupidity, I picked up the camera and looked through the viewfinder while driving along the Tamiami Trail near Osprey, Florida, causing me to slam into the back of a car driven by an older lady. Fortunately, she wasn’t hurt. My Chevette was transferred to the auto graveyard, but the Pentax stayed with me.

Have A Nice Day, test shot; photo by Francis DiClemente.

Now we’ll see what new pictures I can produce with my heavy-duty camera. One thing I like about analog photography—you have to make your shots count. Using an old camera also reminds me that sometimes the best photos come from pure luck or a gift from the universe.

And because this photography experiment resurrected some memories, I want to share an essay I wrote about my Pentax K1000 in 2010. It was published in a now-defunct online magazine.

Outdated Image Maker

I can’t bring myself to betray my beloved Pentax K1000. We’ve been together for 14 years, the longest relationship I’ve had in my life. I know it sounds absurd. Digital technology is here to stay, and we need to evolve in order to grow. I am also not delusional. I know my Pentax is an inanimate object. It can’t reciprocate my love. Yet I still can’t give it up, not just yet.

Sam, a veteran copyeditor at The Venice Gondolier, a small newspaper in southwestern Florida, sold it to me in 1995 for a price of 100 dollars, including the flash. I needed it for my first job in journalism, as a feature reporter and editor at the paper.

I befriended the camera right away, and it helped me to cover symphony concerts, outdoor festivals, senior citizen fashion shows, and early bird suppers. It accompanied me on my journey to the Midwest, to the gritty environs of Toledo, Ohio. It snapped pictures of barns in rural Monroe County, Michigan, battered warehouses in downtown Toledo, and oak trees stripped of their leaves in late autumn.

Toledo Warehouse; photo by Francis DiClemente

It crossed the Continental Divide when I relocated to Phoenix, Arizona. In the Valley of the Sun, I took pictures of Sonoran cacti, the McDowell and Camelback mountain ranges, and breathtaking sunrises from the roof of an office building at the Scottsdale Airpark, after my night shift as a copyeditor. But in Phoenix, my camera was especially fond of dancing light patterns created by early morning or late afternoon sunlight in my small, first-floor apartment.

Kitchen Garbage Can; photo by Francis DiClemente.

It also snapped photos on top of the Space Needle and outside the Experience Music Project when I visited Seattle.

When I relocated to upstate New York in 2006, it captured my most treasured photo—the stoic picture of my father, weeks after he was diagnosed with terminal lung and liver cancer.

My late father, Francis DiClemente Sr.

I just love the weight and girth of the camera, the rough black metal, and the feel of the spool of film as it catches the sprockets when I load it.

I am not buying film in bulk, but if I’m in a drug store or other outlet that still sells film, I find myself picking up a roll or two—a necessity like Folgers coffee, smoked turkey, and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.

But it’s come to the point where almost all of the rolls of film I burn, particularly the black and white ones, need to be sent out for development.

I know the time will come soon when retail outlets will no longer sell or process film and manufacturers like Kodak and Fuji will stop making film altogether (if they haven’t already). But there are certain things we just can’t part with when the attachment remains so strong.

I guess that’s why I don’t want to sell my Pentax at some garage sale or on Craigslist and have it end up in someone’s attic or damp basement. As long as the K1000 works, I’ll still put it to use; and when it doesn’t, I will thank it profusely for its years of service and then clear a spot for the camera on my bookshelf, where it can retire with honor alongside the works of writers like Albert Camus, Raymond Chandler, and Thomas Wolfe.

Then I will not feel guilty about going out and buying a brand-new digital camera, which I imagine will be sleek, efficient, and devoid of shared personal history.

Goodbye Ford Focus

We said goodbye to a member of the family last weekend—my 2001 white Ford Focus, as I traded it in, fetching only $500, and bought a new-used vehicle, a 2007 Honda CR-V. The switch was long overdue. The Focus had outlived its time. It had rust, dings, scratches and a rotting subframe that my mechanic told me wouldn’t make it through another winter or pass another New York State inspection.

The Ford Focus

So after doing some online research, I decided to buy a used vehicle, as opposed to leasing. I went with the Honda CR-V because of its reliability and the all-wheel drive feature for the snow. Also, as a larger vehicle, it’s well suited for our small family that includes my wife, Pam, and my nearly six-month-old son, Colin Joe.

I test drove the CR-V a couple of weeks ago, and at first felt odd sitting in such a large vehicle. But after driving it on the highway and in my neighborhood, I felt more comfortable navigating the roads. I’m still not used to it yet, and I think parking may take me some time to master.

The Honda CR-V

As for the Focus, I had mixed feelings as we parted ways. The car certainly didn’t owe me anything and had sustained a long—although at times troublesome—life.

I bought the Focus in November 2001 at Bell Ford in Phoenix, Arizona, where I used to reside, after a woman ran a red light and slammed into my used, root-beer colored Honda Accord, caving in the passenger side, causing damage too great to repair. I decided to go with an American car during the post 9-11 days when patriotic Americans felt the need to buy U.S.-made vehicles. In Arizona the car was perfect; it had air conditioning and got great gas mileage.

Ford Focus paperwork

I was single at the time with no kids. I was working an overnight shift at a news wire service in Scottsdale and made the half-hour, one-way commute from my apartment in Phoenix to the office park each night. Other than running errands and making occasional trips to Turf Paradise racetrack to watch the thoroughbreds and bet a few races, my driving was limited so I didn’t put a lot of miles on the car.

Turf Paradise in Phoenix. Photo credit: Q-Racing Journal

But the Focus had its share of problems:

The fuel pump died along the steep incline of State Route 87 northbound during a trip I made from Phoenix to Pine, Arizona. I was on my way to visit some friends who lived in Pine, and the vehicle started losing power, puttering along. I had to turn on my emergency flashers and the car finally died on the side of the road. The highway patrol came along, and I called a tow truck to tow me into Payson, where the car was left with a mechanic in town. My friend came to pick me up and I had to stay the weekend in Pine and wait until the fuel pump was replaced on Monday morning.

In 2006 I decided to relocate to upstate New York, and for a short time stayed with my mother and stepdad, Bill, at the their home in Rome. I left Phoenix on a clear, star-filled night and drove northbound on I-17 and then eastbound on I-40 into New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma—where I almost got washed off the road during a torrential thunderstorm in Tulsa.

In the early part of the winter of 2006-07, I drove from Rome to nearby Utica during a snowstorm. I had a job interview scheduled at WKTV-TV, but I never made it there because I had failed to realize that all-season tires on a small car would simply not perform well enough in the snow of a fierce central New York winter. My car kept sliding down Smith Hill Road, and I became so afraid that I would end up stuck on the side of the road that I just turned around and drove home, dejected.

Imagine my embarrassment when I called the operations manager to apologize for being a no-show and had to give the lame excuse that I couldn’t make it to the station in the snow.

Even after I put on new snow tires, the Focus still struggled in the snow. I had one scare where I did a 180 on Route 5 in Madison County during a snowstorm, with traffic coming at me in the opposite lane. Fortunately, the other motorists were driving slowly and they saw me ahead of time and were able brake and avoid a collision. I was able to steer back to my lane and keep going on my way.

Since the time I started working at Syracuse University in 2007, I have lived within walking distance to campus. So during the winter I would leave the car in my apartment parking space or in the University Avenue Garage a short distance away. I walk to work practically every day and only took out the car out in the winter for grocery shopping or other errands. I also rarely visit my family in Rome between Christmas and Easter because of the snow.

As a result of my limited driving, when I finally traded in the Focus, its mileage read about 87,000. Not bad for nearly 15 years of existence.

What else gave me headaches?

The car’s wheel bearings went another time. Then the power window on the driver’s side malfunctioned and wouldn’t go back up, getting stuck halfway in between.

One year the Focus failed the New York State inspection because the machine couldn’t read the mileage. The mechanic told me to just keep driving and bring it back. I ended up having to drive an additional 300 miles before the computer reset and the state inspection machine could read the mileage and run the test.

But the car had been paid off since 2006 and although I had to put some money into repairs, it had been a decent car for me for the past several years. Although I realized how small it was when our son came along and we had to add the car seat. It was always hard getting Colin situated in the car seat in the backseat because the Focus had just two doors. And I was always afraid I would trip while lifting his car seat and stepping out of the car.

So in many ways, I had no choice but to buy a new-used car, even though I didn’t want to have to carry a monthly car payment. I’m hoping I’ll get adjusted to the CR-V soon and will come to appreciate the added size. But I’ve also realized cars are finite machines, and eventually they all break down. I hope this one gives me a little life. It has about 97,000 miles on it and I’m hoping to stretch it to at least 160,000 to 200,000.

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