kjbulils' photostream

Conversation With Jeanne

by Czeslaw Milosz

Let us not talk philosophy, drop it, Jeanne.
So many words, so much paper, who can stand it.
I told you the truth about my distancing myself.
I've stopped worrying about my misshapen life.
It was no better and no worse than the usual human tragedies.

For over thirty years we have been waging our dispute
As we do now, on the island under the skies of the tropics.
We flee a downpour, in an instant the bright sun again,
And I grow dumb, dazzled by the emerald essence of the leaves.

We submerge in foam at the line of the surf,
We swim far, to where the horizon is a tangle of banana bush,
With little windmills of palms.
And I am under accusation: That I am not up to my oeuvre,
That I do not demand enough from myself,
As I could have learned from Karl Jaspers,
That my scorn for the opinions of this age grows slack.

I roll on a wave and look at white clouds.

You are right, Jeanne, I don't know how to care about the salvation of my soul.
Some are called, others manage as well as they can.
I accept it, what has befallen me is just.
I don't pretend to the dignity of a wise old age.
Untranslatable into words, I chose my home in what is now,
In things of this world, which exist and, for that reason, delight us:
Nakedness of women on the beach, coppery cones of their breasts,
Hibiscus, alamanda, a red lily, devouring
With my eyes, lips, tongue, the guava juice, the juice of la prune de Cythère,
Rum with ice and syrup, lianas-orchids
In a rain forest, where trees stand on the stilts of their roots.

Death, you say, mine and yours, closer and closer,
We suffered and this poor earth was not enough.
The purple-black earth of vegetable gardens
Will be here, either looked at or not.
The sea, as today, will breathe from its depths.
Growing small, I disappear in the immense, more and more free.


Camera History
My first camera was a polaroid I picked up at a garage sale for $5. It came with flash cubes.

Since then I've had a 110, a 35mm point and shoot I bought in Malaysia while I was living in the Philippines. I borrowed a Pentax SLR I from my dad, then I bought a Vivitar all-manual SLR with a loud, satisfying shutter release for a college photography class. It came with a 50 mm, and I borrowed my dad's telephoto zoom for the class. I bought a used Pentax ZX-M because I needed auto exposure to shoot a friend's wedding.

Since then friends' weddings have been great excuses to buy more equipment. That's why I bought my first flash, moved from using just a 50mm to having a 28-80 Sigma. My ZX-M broke, so I bought a ZX-30--with autofocus, so I could get more keepers at friends' weddings. Then I bought what was my favorite lens for a long time, a Tamron 70-300 with a 1.4x teleconverter and macro. Great for candids. Not the sharpest lens, but light and easy to walk around with.

Meanwhile I got a free digital camera by signing up for Earthlink dial-up. It took lousy pictures, but at least they were free. That broke, and my wife and I bought a Kodak EasyShare.

I wanted to take more pictures with my ZX-30, but film and developing were expensive, and at the time decent digital SLRs were, too. I took the plunge to digital a couple of years ago, at the same time I stopped teaching college composition and went to MIT to get a degree in science writing. That was a Pentax *ist DS, which was in the first wave of almost affordable digital SLRs--I bought it to go with my lenses. That was life changing. I took to walking the streets as often as I could.

Then I met my friend Curtis, and we went out shooting together. He bought the Canon Digital Rebel XT, and one day I took a few shots with his 35mm L. The fast, silent autofocus converted me almost at once (okay, I did agonize, but really, I knew almost at once that I'd never be satisfied with my Pentax again).

I got a job and sold my Pentax kit, and jumped on the Canon triple rebate. I bought the Digital Rebel XT with a 70-200 f/4 (I miss the extra 100 zoom and the size of my Tamron, but I love the new sharpness and speedy focus) and a 100mm true macro lens. I needed a fast lens for inside, so I bought the cheap and wonderful 50mm 1.8. And I got a 580EX flash for another friend's wedding (you can see those pictures in my sets). For that, I borrowed the 24-105 IS f/4 from Curtis. I didn't think I'd like the range--not wide enough or close enough, but I ended up using that lens for almost every shot of the wedding and reception. I just ordered that lens, in honor of my 1 year anniversary as a working science journalist and the coming of my tax refund. Curtis says I now have an awesome, well-balanced kit, but I may be addicted now. I keep eyeing the 10-22 and another 580EX to set up studio shots.

. . .

I just bought the Canon 70-200 f/2.8 IS. A beast of a lens. An obtrusive cannon, and an annoyingly long minimum focus distance. But I've taken some pictures with it that I couldn't have done otherwise, which I suppose makes it worth it.