The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness

(Another view of Elvis, from Billboard magazine in 1958, stated, “In one aspect of America’s cultural life, integration has already taken place.”)

Expedition. Sets out to accomplish, discover, claim, explore. Sets out with an agenda.

If the 1970s accomplished anything, it was the realization that we actually wanted to go in a lot of different directions, not one.

The far edge of the world, at the back of the North Wind, east of the sun and west of the moon, as far as far, at the back of beyond, out of reach, out of touch, out of the ordinary, beyond the Arctic Circle, beyond so many things. Far.

My own dear city had long been the far edge of the country, not merely in geography, but in possibility, the left coast that presented alternatives and refuges from the mainstream; when Silicon Valley became a—and in some ways the—global power center, it became something else.

But when exactly do the abuses that have been tolerated for so long become intolerable? When does the fear evaporate and the rage generate action that produces joy?

Oscar Wilde once remarked, “To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.” This profound uncertainty has been the grounds for my own hope.

And in a way, they are honorable monuments to the idea that wars would involve direct confrontation and that the United States would face the dangers it imposed on other nations.

What will become of all those photographs? I took them too; it is a reflexive response to something exciting to look at, and sometimes to something not so exciting to look at but full of potential to mutate into a photograph worth looking at. There are problems with this, and pleasures too.

I worry about the withdrawal from public space and public life. Democracy was always a bodily experience, claimed and fought for and celebrated in actual places. You must be present to win.