In The Short Rows...

Traipse through your days with a lens aloft and people will naturally assume you care. More times than not, you don't, for after awhile the homicides, new brides and camel rides all blend together, until a choice parking spot outside your favorite diner thrills you far more than the meth-lab bloodbath just down the road. It's why I try to keep a low profile... head down, eyes up, deadline in the middle distance. It's a crucial insouciance, the kind you find in Waffle House waitresses, cab drivers and other hollow-eyed zombies. See, only the brain-dead know what a dozen-yard stare will do for your outlook. It also comes in damn handy when you're trying to blend into a crowd of strangers with a fancycam for a face.

That's where I found myself last week, navigating through stacks of tobacco, before briefly traveling back in time. I should have seen it coming, I suppose. But who can spot a rip in the time-space continuum with one eye shut and twenty men trying to step on your feet? I can't even find my car keys most mornings. So is it any wonder I backed right into a portal of sorts, a distorted corridor where the tobacco glowed, my own hair bristled with thickness and '1999' was still just a futuristic Prince jam. Back then, opening day at any self-respecting warehouse was a gala event. Growers, buyers, beauty queens and politicians, all soaking in the aroma of the selling floor. There would be speeches and ice cream and high noon live shots. That's where you'd find me, scanning the crowd for flashes of pageantry and the free Krispy-Kremes...

 I hovered there for awhile, watching my twenty-something self almost slip on the canvas corners of now obsolete tobacco sheets. It's there I first perfected my back-pedal, that languid lope you try to fall into as the prisoner/politician/pervert at the center of your screen tries to walk right through your pupils. I faltered at first, but after getting trampled a time or ten by men with tobacco spit on their chins, I learned to get the hell out of the way. These days, my biggest obstacles are flashbacks, time warps and the occasional urge to break-dance like no one's watching. Yes, middle age isn't pretty. Neither is the view that ensued I returned to my corporeal form... The crowd was smaller, the golden leaf moldy and I ... I, was still a freakin' cameraman...

This gig really should come with a Surgeon General's Warning.