It'd been calmed down since then, though, given the mechanics' equivalent of thorazine with some heavy twist ties and clamps to keep the tubing nice and snug. The truck was medicated. It rolled down the familiar mountainside, pumping out techno music at normally deafening levels. Yet its windows were rolled down and muffled the kick-drum beat with the steady, heady roar of wind and moisture. The truck was willing to do it's duty and so was I.

The 110 south crept on its belly until the 47 north interchange. Industrial cancer grew in my eyes, glowing and sumptuous and vain like God before the flood. I turned off, turned left and strolled over the two enormous girdered bridges that led to Long Beach and the port of Los Angeles. I wondered if I'd find my mind-meat there that night, my industrial shots, the last frontier of carnage.

The roads to the piers and berths perspired silence; they stink of it. They watch you move along slowly, tracking you, casually threatening with their decor and computerized signs. You are a pilgrim in an unknown world, clearly never meant to have discovered it, nor ever know its asphalt victuals or secluded activities.

I chose Pier T because most roads led to it. I had been there before. The lanes shifted, empty, crossing to the left on rare occasions. There was a car in front of me. I was immediately curious. At a stop sign a man and woman stepped out-- clearly the weekend party sort--and switched places. I followed them. Our destination was similar.

Eventually they turned right and away onto what looked like the loading docks themselves. I decided not to follow them, though. I turned right toward an initial checkpoint booth. Beyond it was a concourse of tollbooth-like huts and other checkpoints. I'd been afraid of approaching the whole the last few times I drove by. That night I'd finally decided it was the right time to find someone, some priest or acolyte of the Port Authority, who could tell me which areas were and were not restricted for the uninitiated.

I made my way toward what looked like a parking lot. I pulled a right past the initial checkpoint, past a severe, lightly browned black man adorned in a ticker-tapped orange caution vest. I was nervous. I fiddled with my camera in the driver's seat and deleted left-over pictures. He looked at me from his parked SUV, clearly annoyed and cautious. I finally decided to get out and talk to him just as he'd climbed into the thing. I may as well have been a mosquito from the way he looked at me.

Suffice it to say, the security guard didn't want me anywhere near the docks. Unless I had business, he said, everywhere was restricted--everywhere. I wasn't surprised. He was the type of man who would keep his work environment free of distractions like amateur photographers. I could imagine him making a schedule for his day and religiously following it. Anyway, I assumed he was just telling me Port Authority policy so I dodged back to the truck and drove around for a little over an hour. I never did find that wharf diner again (the only place I ever found that I could park at), but I didn't really care about doing a photo-shoot anymore. More and more I just wasn't seeing anything worth photographing. I eventually drove home in disgust.

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The rest of the weekend was relaxing and uneventful compared to last week. I edited more photos, caught up on writing dialogue for the game team I'm a part of, whittled away hours the d-land chatroom and helped mom run errands in exchange for coffee and food.

The only deviation I thought of was going on another photoshoot. I'd been running out of locations that I knew about, but I was certain there was a park near the local refinery. I eventually found parking and was met by the deafening roar of sub-sonic latin music and a slightly less deafening live mariachi band. The entire place was swamped, mostly with latinos but a few blacks and whites scattered around. I strolled through and around most of the place, but very little struck me as photograph-worthy. I did find a huge sewer tunnel marked with graffiti, though, so I at least had something to keep my hopes up until dusk.

Toward sunset I wandered to the far side of the park where the music died and people disappeared. In their place were strange men: one group of mexicans was shaving a guy's head, probably as a gang initiation ceremony. Another group of four was tucked underneath a tree, silently passing the time and gambling on dice. I kept my distance. Somehow I felt better when I saw they had two dogs there. If the animals trusted them, I hopefully didn't have much to worry about. On top of that, it wasn't a section of LA where looking white meant you got shit from people.

The north side of the park progressively felt more and more off in a menacing way. There was a section of willows that you could move through, but signs were scattered around it. The hours were from 10am-4pm. That didn't make any sense to me. Why couldn't you be there until sunset? Why just 4pm? I passed through clumps of the area anyway.

The ground was pock-marked with trash and garnished with bits of cloth, or random things like tote-bags. A perfectly good mattress was pushed back up against a tree. It was just beyond the where people could see from the main path. The man sleeping on top of the bed looked peaceful, almost dead. I saw another one lying in the thick green brush a little ways up. He was laying face up. He didn't move. I watched his chest. He didn't seem to be breathing. I took a few shots of him from a distance. I wanted to move closer to him, but I didn't think consequences were worth the effort.

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Photography

A few of the park photos should be up soon. In the meantime...

Apartment on Bear St.

Comment: I took this back last weekend at The Captain's apartment complex. The blue flourescents were originally a yellow-green, but you can do odd things to photographs.

Tungsten Falls 02

Comment: I decided to go with a blue/purple cast to the rocks and water. The waterfall is actually 20 feet to the right of the first one I photographed in the series.

Swerved

Comment: Since some of you might be curious what the hell this is, I decided to link the thumbnail/explanation part of the submission. I'm thinking about doing more of these in the future with alot more refraction. What do you think?

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