Mondays with Mike: We are not what we own.

Chicago River piling. By Anthony Bruck. Click on image to enlarge.

Late last year our friend Laura was planning a trip to Paris to celebrate the arrival of 2020. (Remember when we could do such a thing? Remember when we thought there’d be  anything to celebrate about the coming of 2020?)

She decided to buy a camera — you know, a camera without a phone — so that she could travel and take pictures without the temptation of checking her phone for email or texts while on vacation.

That really stuck with me.

I like taking pictures — I started during journalism classes in college and strayed away during adulthood. When newfangled phones came out with cameras, I — in fairness, like many others — wondered why anyone would want to take a picture with their phone.

Welp. Over the past few years I found myself snapping pictures like the old days — except with my phone, not my trusted film camera of yore. That’s been fine but shooting with a phone has never been all that satisfying. And yeah, when it’s out of my pocket, I’m distracted by email, texts, or whatever.

With baseball absent and the world essentially closed, I knew early on in this quarantine siege that I’d have to find another pastime. And so, inspired by our friend’s idea, I endeavored to get a camera. I reasoned that, as I am wont to do in such quests, I would get consumed by the effort, and that it would fill some time. Plus, it would give me something to look forward to: taking walks with my phone pocketed and the camera around my neck.

I wrote in an earlier post about the generosity of our neighborhood friend Anthony — he loaned me one of his cameras to play with to get a handle on what might suit me best. Over our weeks in quarantine he’s responded to one question after another about cameras, about technique, and about digital photo processing. It’s been a lot of fun and I’ve learned a lot.

Anthony had also pointed me to some online resources. And lordy, the rabbit holes I went down. Every night for weeks, usually after Beth had retired for the evening, I pored over web sites, reviewing specs and lurking on user forums. (Anthony prefers the use of fora for the plural of forums. I’m sticking with forums).

There is something narcotic about going into deep consumer mode. It’s no accident: marketers invite us to identify with our purchases. You know, if I buy a professional level piece of equipment, I can be a professional. Or if I don’t buy high-end equipment, I’ll be selling myself short. If I buy this, I won’t be able to do that, but if I buy that I won’t be able to do this.

It’s like this for every industry. Motorcycles. Electronics. Camping equipment. My God, camping equipment. You can’t just buy a tent, it’s a defining decision!

During my camera quest, I recalled a passage from a novel called The Sportswriter. Author Richard Ford reminded me that consumer culture has been this way since long before the Internet and Amazon and Zappos. Ford  describes the protagonist and his wife grieving after the tragic death of their son and immersing themselves in the world of … catalogs.

From the book:

“During that time—it was summer—we spent at least one evening a week couched in the sun room or sitting in the breakfast nook leafing through the colorful pages, filling out order blanks with our Bankcard numbers (most of which we never mailed) and jotting down important toll-free numbers we might want to call.”

“I had animal-call catalogs, which brought a recording of a dying baby rabbit. Dog-collar catalogs. Catalogs for canvas luggage that would stand up to Africa. Catalogs for expeditions to foreign lands with single women. Catalogs for all manner of outerwear for every possible occasion, in every climate. I had rare-book catalogs, record catalogs, exotic hand-tool catalogs, lawn-ornament catalogs, catalogs from Italy, flower-seed catalogs, gun catalogs, sexual-implement catalogs, catalogs for hammocks, weather vanes, barbecue accessories, exotic animals, spurtles, slug catalogs.”

Frank, the protagonist, goes on to explain the allure:

“…there was something other than the mere ease of purchase in all this, in the hours going through pages seeking the most virtuous screwdriver or the beer bottle cap rehabilitator obtainable nowhere else but from a PO box in Nebraska. It was that the life portrayed in these catalogs seemed irresistible.”

Like I said, the marketers know what they’re doing, whether it’s in pixels or ink. And for the past few weeks I’ve kind of enjoyed being led along. I wanted my quest to last because I needed something to do besides watching covid reports or comedy shows about covid before I went to bed.

Years ago, I would’ve fallen for it all, probably bought something that ultimately was a lot more capable than I am, or simply more than I needed.

But like it or not, I’m older now. I ended up with a simple, elegant, and lightly used gem. It is not the latest or the greatest. In fact, I found pictures on the storage card dating from 2011. But it suits me to perfection. And I’ll tell you what it is …

… in some future blog post.

Meantime, I’ll leave you with another sample of our friend Anthony’s photography. He took it this past weekend on a long walk in downtown Chicago.

It gives me something to, well, shoot for.

By Anthony Bruck.