E.T. Collinsworth III of Portal, Ariz., sent me a copy of his book Life on the Line: A Sense of Place. E.T. lives on the border, the line between two countries. The line between cultures is harder to find.
I’m fascinated by places and our ideas about place. So I’m interested in E.T.’s practice of collecting photographs and observations and publishing them in little books.
When I go outdoors to look at the place I call home, I look for tracks and other evidence of the creatures who live here or are just passing through. E.T. does too.
The game cameras on his and his neighbor’s places have captured images of people passing through. Some are migrants, trying to find a better life, what E.T. calls the mythical construction job in Phoenix. Some of the people are carrying loads of drugs. One photo shows a man carrying a rifle.
I looked at his words and images and realized that whatever else I’d imagined about his place, I’d hadn’t imagined the half of it.
Maybe that’s the human urge to communicate — to help someone else imagine what another place is like.
• Note: E.T. published a book about mules a couple of years ago. For a note on it, see “The powers of observation,” May 16, 2024. It’s here:
https://hebertaylor.blogspot.com/2024/05/the-powers-of-observation.html
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