Safe Travels in COVID Time
Elders are known to reminisce and reflect. I fit the demographic. In my mid-70’s and at high risk during the global COVID pandemic, I hunker down, limiting travel to daily neighborhood walks and monthly forays nearby for provisions. Many Americans dream of retiring and taking trips away from familiar places. Instead, I make images with what is close at hand. I dig in my Seattle basement to excavate an old carousel projector and 35mm film slides I made many decades ago. I travel in my garden and in my laundry room by overlaying images that conjure up memories of times past. Projections from my deck to the neighbors’ trees remind me of a frigid 1971 December in Chartres Cathedral or in a Loire Valley chateau. Overlays on the washer take me to an intact Notre Dame Cathedral decades before the 2019 fire. Others in the laundry to a 1973 boat trip through the Golden Gate, and another on the water heater to the summit of Mt. Tateyama, Japan, at sunrise. Safe travels with renewed gratitude for home and memory.
