BLACKBIRD MORNING

California does sunshine rather well.

Which is probably why everyone keeps showing it.

Palms. Ocean. Bright light. That wonderful suggestion that life somehow gets easier if you just keep heading west.

Quite often, it does.

And then there are the other mornings.

Fog along the coast. Houses suddenly gone quiet. The ocean reduced to a suggestion. And in front of it all, this black bird — large, blurred, far too close.

Like a thought that has decided to become visible.

There is that old image of the black dog following us when the world feels heavier than it should.

Here, it has grown wings.

It is not sitting on your shoulder.

It is flying ahead.

And strangely, that does not make the image hopeless.

Quite the opposite.

The bird keeps moving.

Behind it remain the coast. The light. The morning.

Perhaps that is where the real strength of the photograph lies: it does not pretend the darker days do not exist.

It simply lets one fly through the frame.

BLACKBIRD MORNING shows a California that would probably perform rather badly on a postcard.

Good.

Even paradise has mornings when you simply have to wait for the bird to move on.