R. I. - The poetry of the place

R.

Rock.

That's what the city's built on.

Or dust, that's what comes after.

Or water, that's what they took away,

Built over.

Rock, we forget it's there

Worn, like our teeth, they wear

Down.

Up, from the earth, it

Protrudes, a face

To be written on, a trace

                                                          
Of who was here.

Wolly, pure thing

Didn't have an "a", or

Maybe an animal, came before

Wolly, the wooly mammoth.

Before paint, and spray

The rock was there.

Now you build around it, toothpick

Homes, two car lot

Snow, and the wild words,

Cascade.

© 2011 Angela M. Counts

"Rock/Church"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

I.

Iglesia, Church

To you, tucked in

City walks, talks.

The voices we hear.

Iglesia, so much

Better than church,

revered, sacred.

Church crunches, explodes

In broken teeth. Iglesia

Too, broken bones and

Bonds, but still living on.

Tucked in between, found

on the sly. The spires,

Stone, hard streets,

Dark interior, soul.

Craving what's lost,

And found again.

You see what you are.

© 2011 Angela M. Counts

Creation/Destruction and the City

"...every act of creation is also an act of destruction."

--Ruben Gallo, The Mexico City Reader

C. is for Coffee and X. marks the spot

"C is everywhere, and I consume it" 

"The First Sip"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

"Waiting"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

City Feed and Supply, a neighborhood grocery/cafe/deli in Jamaica Plain, is one of those places reminiscent of Old Boston, Old New York, Old Mexico City -- any where, where vendors once hawked their wares, their food, in modest wooden crates. 

"This Just In"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

If I crop the pictures just so, it may even feel like a hundred years ago. 

C = care. C = caress. C = city-time. C = careful. C = see me. C = love. C = friendship. 

C = Neighborhood in the city. Jamaica Plain. 

Contentment. The city on a small scale. A wasting not of time, but a gathering of time and space, if only just for a moment. 

"0.0.3.6"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

X on the other hand is a mystery. 

In the English language it is rarely used at the beginning of words and not so much seen in the city, except perhaps in spray-painted X's that mark the spot in a series of ongoing Boston construction projects. 

We see X's on the packages of gum or antacids. X feels like the shorthand of doing more with less, or some ubiquitous device to draw our attention (X-tra, X-tra!).

"When The Money Didn't Come Out"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

But what of the city's visual culture can be found in the letter X and in Boston Metro no less? That's an X-cellent question. Perhaps one can ponder on "X" as an absence of something. 

Recently I started documenting the machines in the city that don't work. Money that doesn't come out of an ATM when it's supposed to. The meter that doesn't work, but takes your money anyway. The parking machine that charges your credit card twice. The city is full of what is X'd out, what isn't working, and what isn't seen. I must confess that I want to look into this concept more. X is truly intriguing.

A.M.E.N.

Front Cover of Centennial Celebration for 

Union United Methodist Church, South End, Boston

A.M.E.N.

Coming from African American Protestant Church roots, the letters A.M.E.N. call to mind the hands of my grandmother and her friends clapping together, the dark, veined hands of many Black people who brought their joy and pain through the doors of store fronts, large brick Gothic buildings, and modest wooden structures, to bow their heads, sing out load, have a silent cry and take their problems to the Lord.

From humble beginnings in working class Detroit, to Los Angeles, New York, and Boston, I look at these letters through new eyes, as an invitation into seeing the environs of the city in which I live more closely or more broadly, whatever it entails. Like the photographic dictionary of the grand, sprawling metropolis Mexico City -- ABC DF: Graphic Dictionary of Mexico City -- I will use the Spanish and English alphabet each week to examine the experience of the city more deeply. I use the term "city" to broadly mean those places literally, figuratively and imaginatively that surround Boston Metro, including the environs of Cambridge and surrounding areas as well.

"A"

America:
Boston Common
Freedom Trail
Faneuil Hall
African American History Museum
Union United Methodist Church and the Jazz Series "All Blues" by Angela Counts, honoring Boston Native Jimmy Slyde (2008)
Harriet Tubman Park, South End Boston

Excerpt from work in progress -- "Steppin" by Angela Counts

"M"

Mount Auburn Cemetery.

Morte/Death

Movie. I shot my first super 8 film on location in the cemetery. The following is a photo taken on my location scout. In the Garden: Silent Movie on Vimeo

"Althea Path, Mt. Auburn Cemetery"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

"E"

"The Way to Work"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

The Emerald Necklace. The parks that run through the city of Boston, designed by Frederick J. Olmstead. The iconic landscape artist who designed Central Park in New York is an obsession of mine. I learned about Olmstead while reading The White City, a fictionalized account of the Chicago's World Fair in the late 1800s. It tells of Olmstead's massive design of the park that housed the fair and a parrallel tale of a true life serial killer. 

The J.P. Pond and surrounding park is a park of the Emerald Necklace. The photo above was from my car window during the two winters that I drove through Jamaica Plain, past the Pond on my way to work. I was struck by how the Pond changed with the seasons and imagined how it must have undergone changes throughout the centuries. 

"N"

Nor'ester

Neighborhood

"Looking Out Her Window"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

This is a view outside of my window. The storms are unrelenting and at times create a blanket of quiet on the city. I look out and see art in the snow and the world outside. According to Wikipedia: A nor'easter is a type of macro-scale storm along the East Coast of the United States and Atlantic Canada, so named because the storm travels to the northeast from the south and the winds come from the northeast.