side 3: 3:33 am

Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera - Y.K.

September 14, 2005

“What are you thinking about, Matt?”

I shook out of my thoughts and blinked at Lara, unable to talk. I fought to clear the emotional knot from my throat. Some momentary revelation of a fundamental layer of my life had appeared, unbidden, and it was leaving me speechless. This was our family dinner, the five of us seated in the great room of our Catskills house, a night not unlike many others. It was around six o’clock, right near the average time at which we might usually push back our chairs to adjourn for our evening activities. There was neither holiday nor birthday on the present month’s calendar to create sentiment, just the usual flow of life with all its wonder and surprise. And so perhaps this wash of feeling was just another ripple in the stream, another wave on the ocean.

“I was just looking at the four of you,” I finally murmured. “And I was realizing that I’d be perfectly happy spending every second of the rest of my life just watching you all.”

Lara, Heather, Alana and Shannon all gave me various looks. The two younger sets of eyes were naturally irreverent, not in tune with the significance of such a pronouncement. To them, seen through their lens of literal innocence, my words were completely ridiculous.

“That’s dumb. You would have to go to sleep eventually!” Alana reminded me.

“And pee!” Shannon added.

The pair of six-year-olds giggled, soon dragging their mothers into their spell of amusement. Still, Heather and Lara gazed at me as they laughed. In their eyes I could see a true reflection of my words.

“I suppose you ladies are right,” I conceded, my thoughtful mood already buoyed toward joviality by the girls’ laughter. A magical sound...

“We are right,” Shannon agreed.

“So maybe I should’ve said, every waking and ... non-peeing second?”

The two girls rolled their eyes with decided familiarity. Damn, they grow up fast...

“I think you’d get bored,” Alana remarked as a matter of fact.

“Yeah, really. And why would you want to stare at people?” her sister chided. “That’s not polite!”

I grinned at Lara and Heather. “I’m blaming this on you two,” I said quietly as the girls continued issuing various permutations of silliness to each other.

“Us?” Heather protested innocently.

“Hey, if you don’t recognize where this kind of cheeky behavior comes from, then I can’t help you,” I said.

The two bundles of energy took their plates to the sink.

“We’re going to go build more of our fort!” Alana announced, hooking her arm into Shannon’s as they made for the back door.

“Hey, don’t forget I’m going to need the cabin in a few days for a shoot!” I called out. “You build it, you—”

The door slammed halfway through my sentence.

“ ... clean it up,” I finished with a sigh.

“Have you seen their construction?” Lara asked.

“Not yet. I’ll give them a bit to settle in and then I’ll go check it out before we head out.”

“It’s pretty awesome,” Heather said.

“I’m sure it is, even if a bunch of our gear seems to be missing lately.”

The phone rang, and Heather rose to answer it since she was seated nearest.

“Hello... ? Hi... ! No problem, we still have plenty of time. I mean, Matt hasn’t even started getting dressed yet, and you know how long he takes...”

I didn’t even bother making a face at her.

“All right, sounds good. See you soon.”

Heather hung up and returned to her seat. “They just got off the highway. The usual traffic for a weeknight.”

“Well, I’m going to go visit the fort,” I said. “And then I guess I better start getting ready,” I added, raising a brow at a certain someone.

“You should, because all your clothes are in Lara’s closet,” Heather remarked, gaining a snigger from my sister.

“Endless,” I said, standing up. “All right, let’s see what they’ve been up to for the last week.”

“Can we come too?”

“Of course,” I replied.

As we cleaned up the rest of the dishes, my thoughts stayed with the little ones. A bit over six years ago, I found myself confronted with double the usual female energy in the house, as Lara and Heather birthed what so far seemed to be diminutive copies of themselves. They were mischievous little teasers through and through, apparently having none of my character. Which, admittedly, was for the best. The world could only tolerate so many indecisive doofuses, after all.

I remembered the great deliberations and worries we went through back then, as we thought about entering this new phase of life. Despite the symmetries of love the three of us shared, that didn’t lend itself quite so nicely to the realities of biology. And it was the asymmetries that kept us awake for many a night, at first.

Now, every time I looked at the girls and their mothers, I knew it was just another passage through mists. It was so easy to forget old lessons, about how words were merely that: words. Asymmetries were self-imposed. Who says it has to be all pat? And who says it can’t be different for a while?

Once we settled on the way forward, we ended up jumping quite easily. Lara went to live in the cabin while Heather and I spent almost a month holed up together in the main house, just the two of us, a veritable marathon of, well, plowing. It was around the time of year for first snowfalls, after all! Admittedly, I barely survived this spectacle of microclimates with the girl who has infinite energy. Especially since she was rather explicit about how to increase our chances of success. ‘Unless it’s dripping down my leg when I walk, then Matt the Splat is slacking... !’

“What are you smiling about?” Lara asked me.

I snapped out of it, grinning at them as I finished drying the last dish. “Oh, nothing. Just...”

“Living in the past,” Heather remarked knowingly, giving me an impish look.

“Sure, but which past?” I challenged.

She wasted not a moment in placing her hand on my crotch.

I grinned. Caught...

“Well, that narrows it down a little,” Heather said. “I’m guessing it’s the usual.”

Lara laughed. “The ‘month of exile’,” she chimed.

“That was a good time,” Heather said to her, with quiet excitement.

“Don’t even get me started,” Lara moaned, even as Heather pressed her lips heavily to hers. Heather’s hand still rubbed the front of my jeans.

“I hate to break up the party,” I said, “but remember that I need a few hours to get ready?”

The kiss broke up reluctantly as they giggled.

“Save it for tonight,” Heather teased Lara. “In the cabin—”

Lara’s eyes widened. “Heather! You are terrible!”

“Ready?” I said with amusement.

We slid outside, starting the short stroll up to the guest cabin arm in arm, Heather in the middle as was often but not always the case. I was looking forward to taking the proud tour that awaited us, but right away Heather veered off toward our studio, a new addition we’d built after purchasing the place from Sarah and Melissa some seven years ago when they had left the Catskills. An offer to open her own restaurant in New York City had been too much of a lure for Melissa. Sarah, while still as fit as ever, was increasingly being reminded of her two decades of hard skiing by her mildly protesting knees. And Frej was as happy as ever to be with them both, wherever the tide took them. When the announcement of our plans to expand the family came, the timing seemed right for passing the property on to Lara, Heather, and me. Fairly soon it became clear that the rustic darkroom that Heather and I had built as teenagers wasn’t going to support our growing photography business, so another building was erected. The sign over the doorway announced the names: Three Days Photography Studio and Four Days Graphic Design.

“What are we doing?” I asked.

“We just want to show you those proofs,” Heather replied.

“Oh, you finished them?”

“Of course we did,” Lara confirmed.

“And?” I pressed.

“Still not convinced!” Heather said.

I sniffed. “Well, I have to say that I enjoyed shooting almost nine-hundred pictures at that wedding last weekend without having to think about film changes, let alone the cost of it all! Plus I know I got the shots they wanted, without even waiting to develop.”

“True, true,” Heather conceded. “Still, it seems like we’re giving up a little piece of our souls.”

“Nah. We’ll always have the F2 and F5 for when we get nostalgic, Heather.”

“Hey, I haven’t said I’m giving them up yet!”

We pressed into the studio. Heather had pinned up a series of pairwise comparison shots.

“So I had to work a bit to match the frames, since that silly new camera crops everything.”

I rolled my eyes. “All right, let’s see. Don’t tell me which is which, though.”

I started perusing the makeshift gallery. As usual, the photographs were sublime, even though Heather had earlier said she’d fired them off as quick test shots. Yeah right.

Nostalgia flooded me as I perused the images. It had been over fifteen years since Heather and I had started trading tips on that pier in Montauk. Well, mostly she schooled me, back then. In turn, we’d taught Lara technique as the three of us finished high school and then migrated to New York City to attend SVA. Between the use of our father’s old city apartment and the generous favor of a certain gentleman, we’d had a grand time.

But there was always a pull to return to the mountains, for all of us. These days, Lara was still instructing us on the ins and outs of digital processing, having taken earliest to the computer revolution that swept the world during the previous decade. She had long ago voted in favor of the future, having spent significant time starting in high school learning digital design. Now she anchored our business, doing everything related to post-processing, increasingly so as the world slowly let the analog arts decay to the fringe.

Hanging in the studio were pairs of nearly identical shots. This wasn’t the first time we’d tried digital cameras. Earlier tests had failed, in the end, and we’d returned happily to our trusty Nikon outfits, unable to improve on the quality of our film work with any newfangled tools.

But now ... I looked at a picture of the two kids embracing by our stream. Their eyes were flush with typical confidence as they grinned for Heather, displaying matching sets of tooth gaps. A similar photo hung right underneath. I fought hard to step away from the happiness of the subjects and focus on the differences in production quality.

“I like this one, but they’re both really fine.”

I moved along the row, indicating my preferred shot for each pair. Heather was stoic as she kept a mental tally.

The fifth set was mysteriously covered by a black cloth. Lara gave me an impish grin as she snatched the fabric off with a dramatic flourish. I immediately guffawed at the pictures.

“Feeling horny, Matt?” Heather asked.

“You two are so damn silly,” I scolded, shaking my head.

It was, of course, a reproduction of my arch-nemesis from our teen years. The Martins’ melamine furniture had recently been ‘passed on’ to us. During our recent summer visit to the Martins’ house in Montauk, Shannon and Alana had mysteriously taken a deep liking to the chairs and they had pleaded with Mairead and Aongus to let them have two of them for their play setup in the cabin back home. The Martins were nothing if not doting on the girls, so a pair of the chairs had been tied to the roof for the return journey.

Heather had denied that it was her doing. And yet, here were the chairs once again, posing so sexily. The prints were high-contrast replicas of some photos Heather had once taken to torment me during some outlandish game of hers. The originals had long ago disintegrated into silvery dust near our creek.

Not her doing ... Yeah right, Heather!

“I didn’t even know if you’d recognize it!” Heather cried between fits of laughter.

“It’s been a long time since you’ve brought that up,” I agreed. “But how can I ever forget that?”

I finished voting on the last few pairs and then turned to Heather expectantly.

“Well, four to four,” she announced.

“Tie, then,” I murmured. Another cusp... Once again reminiscence flooded me as the promise of future progress seemed to flow before my eyes. I had some idea of what it held, but I also knew that unexpected changes were coming. Lara and I would soon outvote Heather and our studio would start to invest heavily in digital. It was inevitable; the most skeptical among the three of us had just proved it with her comprehensive comparison shots.

“Yeah, tie,” Heather agreed softly. “Which only means that next time it’s going to be a win, huh?”

I shrugged amusedly. It was rare that I was out in front of Heather on anything. She was usually the one pushing the boundaries, destroying them, even. And she still did, in just about every area of her life. Lara and I were never lacking for surprises, constantly finding new strands of her infinitely large and interminably enjoyable net. When she and I worked shoots together for the business – when she wasn’t out on one of her intense solo projects – I was the steady hand covering the panoply of required shots. Heather inhabited the rarer angles, finding the invisible and somehow capturing it on her camera. The combined effect was synergistic and it was garnering us more business than we could hope for.

“I’m right on the edge, Heather,” I said with an apologetic grin.

“I’m not,” she replied, reflecting my smile.

“I know. But I have to say I’m voting with Lara on this one.”

Heather held my gaze. “I am too.”

I raised a brow at her in confusion. “Huh?”

Lara was grinning, I noticed.

“What?” I asked.

“You tell him,” Heather urged.

Lara gave me a smile. “Well, earlier, she made me mix up the prints so she could look at them without knowing which was which.”

“And?”

Heather delivered the conclusion. “I picked seven out of eight favorites as the digital ones.”

I laughed richly. So much for being out in front of Heather...

“Well, well. So then this is it, huh?” I mused.

Heather sighed as she reached over and picked up my dad’s old F2T, still a tank after all the years. The camera had captured so much that was the stuff of our youth. It had spent some years in Ireland before it had made its way back to us, at which point Heather claimed it for her own ... She turned it in her fingers with obvious affection, caressing the Noct-Nikkor 58mm lens, long her favorite tool to extract singular details from the muted side of life. She was a master at using its razor-thin depth of field to slice through a scene.

Although all our older Nikkor lenses were compatible with the new wave of digital SLRs, the infinitesimal focusing feedback needed for such a specialized lens was nowhere near possible on the newer equipment, given its more automated expectations. Technologies like spot-metering and auto-focus were slowly taking the burden of precision away from the human eye and hand. Admittedly, it often did better than we mortals could, and usually faster, at that.

But when you spend much of your life as Heather does, traveling paths no one has even been on before, then it’s always a crapshoot whether new designs will be useful or just limiting. This was, after all, the same girl who’d once spent thirteen months exclusively using a little cosmetic mirror as her light meter. It had started as an example of ‘useless beauty’ but it soon became her method of choice for metering her shots. By merely observing the scene for a bit and then checking the size of her pupils in the mirror, she got to the point where she could determine shutter speeds and apertures with supernatural precision. By the end of her ‘reflective period’, as she called it, she was using colored filters and specialized films to finesse her scotopic metering system, bringing out hidden landscapes of illumination. Just because she could.

I wasn’t worried, really. Heather would find novel ways to use the future, collect new cherished tools, and likely even keep her old favorites alive in the process. Such was life, at any rate. It was constant change that focused the unknown future onto the halides of memory, using the lens of experience. Without change, we’d have no need for photos, no need to remember anything. We’d have nothing to compare ourselves to.

In fact, without change, we’d have no need to be alive.

“It’ll be different,” Heather finally murmured, “but like you said, we still have our history for those days when we want to remember.”

I pulled the two of them into an embrace. “Of course it’ll be different. And you don’t have to give up all your favorite lenses anyway. But just like later tonight, there’s times when we just need to step into our future and face tomorrow, and all the days after that. With everything that it brings. I’m ready.”

“Me too,” Lara murmured.

Heather squeezed us tight. “Me too,” she finished.

“So speaking of the future, let’s go see what the monsters are up to, shall we?” I suggested.

Heather gave me a passionate kiss before anyone could answer. Lara received the same treatment a moment later. As Heather stepped back and placed the old Nikon onto the desk, her eyes shone. She couldn’t speak, but the message poured out and filled us with warmth.

“Can we come in?”

“Daddy!” came the dual excited calls. “Come on, we’ll show you your room!”

Before I squeezed into cardboard tunnels designed for smaller bodies, I managed a grin at Lara and Heather. “If I’m not out by Friday, send for help!”

The fort was absurdly impressive. Heather had apparently been feeding them reams of cardboard she’d been picking up from an appliance store. I’d known about one of the trips, but clearly there had been many more clandestine ones. Just about every fishing pole, guitar stand and camera tripod we owned had been pressed into service to provide either structure or flourish. My own room in the castle turned out to be quite nice, if a little cramped.

“Thanks for the cape,” I said, donning the pink swath of fabric. “It is getting a bit chilly ... Oh, a matching scarf! Wow, thank you!”

I heard Lara and Heather titter from beyond. “You’re wearing that the rest of the night!” Lara called.

“Yeah, good idea!” Shannon agreed happily.

“And you can use it this winter when you go out,” Alana said quite factually. “Here’s your tea.” She felt around for my hand and then pushed a little cup into my fingers.

“Thanks. This is a killer fort,” I remarked.

“We’re not done yet,” Shannon dismissed. “But we wanted to make sure your room was ready so you could sleep.”

The girls fussed over me for a bit. Pretty soon I found myself the guest of honor at a party with some plush toys, complete with readings from Falling Up. The book was passed around, the girls helping Perry and Dave (yeah, I named the stuffed animals) to ‘read’ Headphone Harold and Stupid Pencil Maker. I, of course, had to recite Long Scarf to the sound of interminable giggling.

I felt bad that I might have to be the one to excuse myself because of the time, but fortunately it didn’t come to that.

“It’s way past your bedtime, Dad!” Alana chided.

“But I’m not done with my tea!” I protested.

Alana already had it out of my hand. “Too slow. Now get in bed! It’s after midnight!”

“What do you two know about staying up after midnight?” I asked.

“Get in bed!”

I chuckled, glancing at the cloth-covered dictionary that sat in the corner. “Oh, that pillow looks really comfy!”

“I can get you a stone from outside,” Heather called out.

I could only groan. As the girls tucked me in for my brief nap, I had a feeling I was going to be spending a good part of the weekend in this cardboard warren. It was really fun...

Our parents’ arrival turned out to be my alarm clock. Upon hearing their grandparents’ voices, the two girls quickly forgot all about me. Shannon took Alana’s hand and guided her through the labyrinth. I listened to their happy greetings as I crawled out of the fort and hugged my moms and Frej. After some brief catch up, Lara reminded us that we needed to go.

We said goodnight to the kids, returned to the house to change, and shortly thereafter we were in the car, making a familiar drive of about three-quarters of an hour.

The half-ruined stone pillars marking the entrance of the Castle looked a little more mythical every time we visited the place, which was surprisingly frequently, considering we didn’t play music there any more. Still, we were pleased to see the lawn full of cars already. Lara pulled into an open spot and we grinned at each other.

“This will be fun,” I said.

“It’s been a while,” Lara said.

I took her hand, and then Heather’s in my own. “Enjoy the show!”

I saw Jonah slowly making his way toward the stage as he chatted with various guests. It appeared that the concert would be starting soon. We were heading to our reserved front-row seats when a blue flash caught my eye. It was the instant of being caught in the swing of a lighthouse beam, the sparkle of a reflector through the night, a miniature cobalt flash bulb. I stared, only for a moment; but that was all I needed.

Impossible... ! And yet...

“Hey, give me a sec. I’ll be right there,” I said to Lara and Heather, before slipping off.

I walked along the side of the rows of seating, stopping near a woman who was standing there, talking to her friend. She gave me a little smile as she continued gabbing, her hazel eyes sparkling at me. After it was clear that I was there to speak to her, she trailed off.

“Hello,” she said, grinning questioningly. “Did you need something?”

“I just wanted to say that your necklace looks very nice on you.”

She smiled at the compliment, glancing down at the sapphire pendant. “Thank you!”

“Can I ask where you bought it?”

She made a strange face at her friend. “Um ... I didn’t ... buy it. It’s a bit of an odd story, actually.”

How delicious ... Oh, what was the name?

I started through the alphabet... A, B, Sea—Oh ... duh.

“Did a woman named Darya happen to give it to you out of the blue?”

Her eyes went wide. “What?”

“Just a wild guess,” I said impishly.

She shook her head in wonder. “How could you know that? A woman did give it to me! But her name, she—”

No, of course not...

“Ah, my bad. She wouldn’t tell you her name.”

Now she gaped at me like I truly was an alien.

I chuckled. “Anyway, it’s a beautiful necklace. Enjoy the concert!”

I turned to go, but the woman grabbed my arm. More than a touch of apprehension filled her eyes. “How could you know this?” she repeated quietly. “Do you know the woman?”

I sighed, suddenly feeling a familiar foolishness fill me. I looked down at the pendant for a moment.

I can’t even follow the damn message when it’s right in front of my face. Idiot!

“I’m really sorry. I had a friend that used to have a necklace just like that, and I was just being silly. The rest was a crazy coincidence.”

“Coincidence?”

“Sure. Happens all the time. I didn’t mean to freak you out.”

She took a breath and nodded. “Just someone else with the same necklace.”

“Yeah, probably,” I said, grinning. “I’m sorry to have bothered you. Please, enjoy the show.”

I returned to my seat, calming myself.

“What was that about?” Heather asked as I sat next to her.

“Oh, nothing much. I remembered something from back in the days of Quiet Mile ... So I just had to go make a fool out of myself!”

“That much we already figured,” Lara joked.

“I swear, even after all this time I still get caught up in the craziness when I come to the Castle. One of these years I’ll learn!”

The girls laughed. “One of these years?” Lara said.

“By now, you should really start saying decades!” Heather added. “Ah, here’s Shannon and Colin!”

We were all smiles as we greeted our friends. We got together with them very often, but tonight it was a little different, as if we hadn’t seen each other in a long time. But, in a way, I suppose this was true. We were all reminiscing on old times, and the Shannon I hugged perhaps was the girl who had taken the photo of our album cover, and the Colin I shook hands with was surely about to pull his new five-string bass out and play up on that stage.

But of course, that was long ago...

“Good evening!” a voice bellowed.

After a moment of confusion since the microphone on stage was empty, I turned around and looked up, grinning.

And Jonah’s gone wireless at last... !

“Who’s ready for some music?” he called as he started descending the stairs.

The crowd cheered raucously. Perhaps in the early nineties I would have merely called it ‘enthusiastically’, since it wasn’t painfully loud. But we were all older these days, I supposed, so ‘raucously’ it was.

On Jonah’s arm was a most beautiful woman, dark auburn hair, flashing blue eyes, and a smile that could melt just about anyone. I had to grin even wider, because Miss Ellie was looking right at me.

“We’re so glad you’re here,” Jonah continued as they made their way to the stage. “This is going to be a very special night. Yeah, very special. But you’re going to have to wait a bit to find out exactly how special. How many of you know Miss Ellie?”

Now the noise really was old-school raucous!

“None of this would be happening without her, I’ll tell you. As co-director of the Castle, and the Foundation, and the concert series, and, well, other stuff...”

The crowd laughed knowingly.

“As co-director, she makes it all happen. To be honest, we should just go ahead and call her the director, but...”

Jonah shot me a grin as the mirth continued to spread.

“But the Queen lets me have a little slice of the cake, you know! All right, all right, she’s already giving me the nudge. ‘Jonah, don’t go on all night,’ she said on the stairs there. But that’s why she doesn’t have the microphone, see?”

The amusement mounted as Jonah hammed it up for a while.

“Let’s get right to it then. Tonight, we have a band that’s played here a few times over the years. But we’ll talk more about that after the show. Make sure you stick around, because we’ll have something fun for you all at the end, all right? So, without any more chatter, let’s get right to it. Please welcome, all the way from Ireland, Bealach!”

I got up and clapped and yelled and hooted as Muireann and Tommy walked out onto the stage, followed by their three band mates. Muireann spotted us right away, giving us a wide grin. She pointed her fiddle bow right at me, and for a moment, I was fifteen years old again, about to play a show in the Castle ... A time when the highest of highs blended with the lowest of lows, it seemed.

But then I looked at my dear friend, and I was thirty, and there existed only this moment now.

Good luck, Miss Miri...

As the crowd chanted for a second encore, Jonah hopped up to the stage. We cheered on as he tried in vain to quiet down the noise.

“All right, all right!” he called. “Feels like old times. Wooooo! At this rate we’ll be here all night! Come back up here, guys,” he waved, and Tommy, Muireann and the rest of Bealach returned to the stage once again. Jonah held his hands up in the air, pressing for quiet.