You Can Go Back But You Can Really Never Go Back.

Morro Bay, 2023

In 2015 I went to Morro Bay in California. I had never been there before. I knew nothing about its history or typography, so was somewhat struck by the hill rising out of the bay water. 

I did what I usually do at seaside locations. I chased the seagulls off the railings to capture that nature shot landscape magazines on the wooden racks in Barnes and Noble feature inside their pages; the bird in flight, pixel sharp eyes, the wings either frozen to iceberg perfection or a halo angel that blends into the bokeh behind their small humming bodies.

Of course, most of the photos I took in 2015 were with an iPhone, so good luck imitating a two-foot-long $5,000 lens.

I remember I took a panoramic and I remember it was striking, deep blue, red boat, descriptive clouds wielding a sort of white lightning. The quality of the photo was lacking, so I brought it into the app, Snapseed, so to speak, to glam it up by adding a preset recipe I had made that gave things a painterly rendition.

I remember but right now cannot find that particular photograph, didn’t even know I had others until I searched just recently. The two I share from 2015 give a little clue to what I saw back then. This may sound a bit dramatic, but it was magical because I caught some moments with a fairly crude device at the time.

Fast forward to the end of summer 2023. I was drawn back to Morro Bay these days, that remembered photograph guiding me. I packed an overnight bag with the intention of staying in the town, enjoying one last weekend in California before leaving the States for 6 months or more (or less— to be determined).

I was brought back because now I have better equipment, more skillful intent, a touch of whimsy and melancholy provided by being a shade older, relief that I actually get to travel again since healing from, of course, a broken heart and—new drama this time—the eradication of worry after a minor nip and tuck on the side of my face and two zaps of radiation to stop in its track a skin pimple that had the letter “C” in its name.

 I arrived in Morro Bay and learned a lesson. We go back to places and maybe back to thoughts remembering what was, and even for some of us, the pictures to prove it. Yet we really are unable to ever go back.
 
I didn’t stay the night. There were no clouds in the sky. The hill in the water seemed like the belly of a cadaver submerging into the water. The seagulls remembered me and refused to pose in quite the same way before. There was a power plant hugging the shore; of course, it had been there before, I just didn’t remember it since it escaped the periphery of my former pictures.

I felt out of sorts. I kept seeing another photograph in my head, the one I can’t show you now. You have to stitch the two I’ve shared together and imagine them more expansive with that shimmer sheen of a fairytale. I was so looking forward to kicking my Fujifilm into panoramic mode and snapping something similar but way better. It wasn’t going to happen. 

I felt deflated and I didn’t even want to go back to the ice cream shop that still sat on the corner. The place with the old-timey sign Ernst Haas or Saul Leiter would have eaten up with one of their signature mid-century vibe photos.

I sat and had a coffee. I let my noodle wander as it seems to do when a plan falls apart and I have to regroup thoughts. Where do I belong? This is an oft-asked inner question. Why do I sugar-diet but end up with more sweet belly rolls? You know, and you know these questions are never answered to our liking.

Part of me rued the fact I’d spent $60 round trip for gas for nothing. I should have spent the time back in Pacific Grove wrestling with my Vietnam photo book that had my hands tied behind my back; better mind time trying to untangle that mess than chase fantom shimmering nostalgic seashells on the seashore.

I finished my coffee, then forced myself to take a few photos. But I wasn’t feeling it. I retraced steps up the incline from the coast to the small city center and my car. On the incline, I turned around and snapped a few photographs, of course with that lonely water-surrounded hillock in the distance.

I didn’t think much about Morro Bay until days later. On my iPad, I scrolled through the pics. Nothing particularly interesting. I traveled there intent to capture once again a slice of romance. During that period in 2015 I was feeling quite good, living in Italy, traveling and seeing so many places in the world, and a solid relationship based on trust and mutual interests in full bloom with--I considered and called him all the time-- the Prince of La Serenissima. As if my world was eating oysters on the half-shell.

And even though this current year, 2023, I was much better than just mere months before, with new opportunities and focused intention returning to my art, I was still more clamshell closed with no pearls. 

But there were pearls, they were still growing, and I didn’t see it that day in Morro Bay. This is our truth, all of us. We can never go back and capture what was. And that’s a good thing. Because those moments are a culmination of what we knew up to that point. And going back, well, there is too much new stuff that has brought us the present, and it’s impossible— in this case— to make a photograph that doesn’t have the just-before part of the image.

This is good because the photo I shared with you at the top of this blog is the last one I took several weeks ago in Morro Bay. And it’s sort of wonderful. I’ll tell you why. The person who took that photo is not exactly the same as who snapped those other more ethereal shots in 2015. He’s become more cognizant of different types of photographers— in fact, as I now look at this photo more and more it reminds me of Stephen Shore and his quite boring but packed with minute details type of style. I look at my photo and I realize I have captured a moment in time that is more significant than the ones in 2015. This is not an ocean side of dreams but of more simple truths; commerce, industry, tourism. Nature and cultivation. It’s also a picture packed with people, but not one present. It is a photo about a place, less about dreams. And I think if ever there was a canon of my photographic output, this photo would have much more of a chance to be included than the one in my memory or, we can consider, these two as test shots in the style of romanticized memory.

Not every day does the sky add drama to help transport a place from the ground to the air. Most days our feet are planted firmly on Terra Firma.

I know now that some years in the future I will remember that day and that photo. The day I couldn’t go back in time. The day that I sliced out a new sliver of time. The photo will grow in its own type of romance because it is lovely to capture exactly what is.

What is my heart right now. Exactly ready to trudge up the incline, beep open my car door, sit, and drive. To what’s next.