Grace
by Rhett Redelings
A few weeks ago, Smokey came by to take me to lunch for my birthday and to take a few pictures and say goodbye. He's been a part of my life since I was 7 or 8 and I feel I owe much of who I am, to him. When I was growing up, he was the boyfriend who, in the words of my mother, “came over and never left”. But he was more than that. For 6 or 7 formative years, Smokey was the father I never had. And, when I grew to a point where I didn't need that, he gracefully transitioned into being my friend. To this day, we talk, laugh and enjoy each other's company with an ease that I've too long taken for granted.
Smokey lives by his own rules and always has. On one hand, this has meant never having to compromise his values for a paycheck. On the other hand, he lives beneath the poverty line and can barely make ends meet. As I write this, I hear a memory of Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof saying “I realize, of course, it is no shame to be poor. But it is no great honor, either!”; I think that quote says it all because Smokey is one of the most proud people I have ever met. Poverty is something he endures but it doesn't define his sense of worth or self esteem. Articulate, anachronistic, compassionate and intelligent, Smokey taught me early on that money is not the same thing as virtue. People with money are not “good people”; any more than people without are “bad people”.
But Smokey, anachronistic and poor as he is, lives, as we all do, in a “punish the victim” society. Marin County, like most places in the world, isn't run by people who are looking out for the “little guy”, it's run by the rich, for the rich. And now, because Marin has finally become too expensive to live in, Smokey is leaving for a part of the world where he can live on his meager retirement with more than a hole in a wall to call his own.
I'm proud of him for finding a way to survive and take care of himself in his later years. But it saddens me to see him leave. In many ways, Smokey embodies the Marin County that I grew up in. Before the rock stars, movie stars, LucasFilm and all the developers, Marin was a funky little oasis. It was a little untamed and quite a bit slower than the big city to the south, across that big red bridge. Now, it's a place where you're either a millionaire or you work for one. And those of us who are not millionaires are having a harder and harder time staying here.
While it was my mother who bought me my first 35mm SLR, it was Smokey who taught me how to use the light meter and really brought photography into our lives in a tangible way. Some of my most fond memories are of getting to work with him and with my mother in our bathroom as converted into darkroom, with the amber light over the bath tub and the makeshift shelf he built for the developer, stop bath, fixer and wash trays. It felt high tech and cool and was, in a sense, like having a guest pass into the secret adult world of my parents. And while Smokey was teaching me the craft of photography, my mother's writing assignments for collector car trade magazines got me into situations where no other child would have been allowed. I shot my first published photo as a child and started building my confidence, such as it is, because of that. We were a family of photographers. It was a source of joy and something that bonded us together. To this day, I get a wave of nostalgia and warmth whenever I smell fixer, which is fairly often now that I'm back to processing my own black and white film. And I owe so much of it, to this man, who helped cultivate a rich internal, intellectual life in the little boy who wasn’t his own.
To me, Smokey represents not only a time that had, perhaps a little more grace, but grace itself as a way of life. He doesn't rush around or get caught up in the latest crazes and, to the best of his ability, he takes what's good from the mainstream and leaves what is not. He spends time in cafes and gives of his time to the people he encounters. He is a harmonious element woven into the fabric of his community in a way I that I envy. I've had the same mail delivery person for the last 12 years and have never bothered to learn her name but Smokey knows everyone in town and everyone in town, seems a bit happier when they see him. When Smokey goes, he will be missed. When I go, no one will notice. Why? Grace. It's something he has, is and does and probably something I should be working toward.
So it's with a sense of bitterness that I see who and what Smokey is and represents to me personally, become less welcome in the world we're living in. This isn't a place that takes care of the little guy. It's not a world that has time or appreciation for craft for craft’s sake. We aren’t willing to wait for a roll of film to be developed, dried and printed... we want it now and we don't care if it's a little unsatisfying. This is a time and place where competition rules the day. We rush, we push and we're driven by fear and ambition but we don't seem to be enjoying it. Sure, I'm seeing counter revolutions: The Steam Punk aesthetic, the “slow food” movement, the renewed interest in music on vinyl and, most relevant to me, the resurgence of film in photography. These movements, give me a little hope but I wonder if they will be enough.
Wasn't it Nietzsche who said the “world is the will to power -- and nothing besides”? I'm thinking Nietzsche knew what he was talking about. I wonder what will happen when all of us “little guys” are gone? Who will make the espresso drinks? Who do the dirty work? Who will do the heavy lifting?
Rhett Redelings on Flickr