photo muse

Blue smoke hissed in ribbons off a branded steer;
two glasses and a bottle
sentry on the tablecloth; 

a portrait pulled from silver halide pressed into a glass faced frame
dissolves its tannins through the pupil
deep into my wine sopped brain. . .

I used to despise London broil for its toughness.
But by leaning the knife to allow the face of the long carving blade
to slice at an angle roughly 18 to 27 degrees from perpendicular with respect to the top, flat surface of the char-broiled, perfectly blackened face,
the lowering blade,
in long, sensual sweeping motions, could then sever the strong, muscular fibers,
reducing each slice from the roast to a cross section of dissected fiber segments,
joined only by more easily chewed, coagulant tissue.
I now enjoy the London broil.

I have often been fascinated by balls;
“spheres”, to be more formal.
They are the one, single shape on God's stage
whose three dimensional appearance, from any vantage, remains unaltered when translated into two dimensions,
as in a drawing or photograph.
A cube, reproduced on the page will more often reveal itself as three trapezoids,
(or in one singular, isometric circumstance, as two trapezoids and a square.)
A circle or disc, when viewed from the slightest angle
from one’s line of vision perpendicular to its center-point
is transformed to an ellipse.
 
Anthropomorphic shapes when rotated require the graphic technique, the algebraic illusion
subsequently termed "foreshortening",
a relatively recent discovery employed by draftsmen
since only the fifteenth century,
(e.g.: “the dead Christ”, A. Mantegna)
to maintain the integrity of information,
by way of relationships,
seemingly available only to the roving human eye in a three dimensional world.

I once worked to free a ball from a box;
and began with the assumption that erasing the areas remaining outside a cylinder
described within the cube;
a cylinder whose four tangent lines,
those contact points where four of the cube’s sides and cylinder wall kiss,
I could begin the process of revealing an accurate portrait
of the one and only sphere
to which this cube could not deny paternity.
By repeating this process twice again,
by arranging two additional cylinders on axes perpendicular to the first
and then to one another,
. .(i.e.: axes “x, y and z”)
I discovered I had identified a shape,
much closer in nature to a sphere,
yet still beholden to the cube.

To conclude this work, I mistakenly believed
the alchemy of my ball's liberation
lay in the removal of all remaining material
not coincident
with the intersection of the cylinders.

I had forgotten, however,
my trigonometry and was finessed by sine,
whose influence stretched all distances, from either tangent to the corner,
outward from the cubic center
up to 1.414 times the same measurement
determined forty-five degrees rotation in either direction on the same plane.
 
I was and remain to some degree
disheartened.

I believed that I could solve the mystery of Cézanne’s painted oranges;
how they remained grounded in their rightful place on the table.
But so much more was gained.

I now love London broil,
carved properly.
I now know more secrets behind Pi, cubes, spheres and trig relationships
then I would have ever gleaned from books or school.

Which is why I love this wretched photograph;
those eyes, that chin.
 
Life, when sliced askew,
is how I now measure the true merit of center.
Here, with this fantastic stretch of the lens,
my dear muse, my good doctor
you have reminded me of how gravity assures me a proper place at life’s table;
and for this I thank you.

© Jeff Thomas 2009