Greetings, and welcome to the November 2013 Sampler essay. You will recall from the “August-September-October 2013 Sampler” essay that I took almost no SLR-camera pictures in August, September, and October 2013, and most that I did take were of lettuce that I was growing!
It was a very difficult time for me, as would be subsequent times, though I had still two and a half years before I learned that I was autistic.
The photography drought ended in dramatically copious fashion on the second day of November, as I got out and took plenty of pictures on the first weekend after I buried my last grandparent, my way of dealing with the terrible grief that I felt, not so much at losing her but at losing a sense of my own future.
Saturday, The 2nd
I remember this day well, and you can see all of the images at the full blog article of that day’s outing.
Here is CSX’s morningly transfer run to and from the Canadian National Railway in the New Orleans Gateway returning to Gentilly Yard with CN interchange traffic at Alvar Street.
‘Twas appropriate for me to photograph that train and photograph it on this location on a day on which I was recovering my own sanity, as I was on this day.
I wouldn’t take out the camera gain for more than three weeks, though.
Monday, The 25th
It was the holiday week for a profession that I was overdue for leaving, and I was feeling quite uninspired and lethargic. Appropriately, this scene presented itself to me for me to record.
Five years to the day prior, in happier times and with clearer skies, I was in this same place getting pictures that I published here on Jimbaux’s Journal on the day that I took this foggy image.
Thursday, The 28th
This was Thanksgiving Day. What am I doing in Hammond?
It was not pleasant, I will just say for now, but it took me until the Trump Phenomenon a couple of years later to really understand why.
Friday, The 29th
This was such a difficult day, and, while I cannot know for sure, it probably was far more difficult for me than it was for the other dozen or so participants in the gathering.
Cleaning out the home of an ancestor is so difficult when life already is so damn difficult.
Again, I realized that autism – or society’s intolerance to autism – was a big factor here.
That is all. The “December 2013 Sampler” essay will be better. Stay tuned.
Merci.
Jim
