big smoke

If you pare away all the fuss, the embellishments, the puns and brightly colored metaphors, what remains of a good story are observations and connections, musings on seemingly unrelated incidents that fit together perfectly if one just bothers to look the right way. Looking and seeing are thus the fundamental skills for crafting a compelling story.

London is full of stories. They develop and unfold constantly, blooming and erupting in front of our eyes. Nevertheless, most go unnoticed. As people rush home from work, they stare into the comfort of infinity instead of reading the material that's alive around them. They take the bus and bury their eyes in books. They hurry through the city, listening for the twentieth time to their Favorite Songs playlist.

One man begs to differ. Matt Haynes is the creator of Smoke, a London particular, as the tag line reads. For the last five years or so, he's been putting his talents for seeing and writing to good use, producing a handy magazine that combines outstanding local writing with artful black-and-white photography. The periodic "love-letter to London" contains local history and fiction, trivia and personal stories, blended skilfully to capture the essence of the city. The Big Smoke has never looked better.

I've grown partial to Smoke over the last year or so, purchasing issues as they appeared, at their own unpredictable pace. I bought a few eagerly, but never got around to reading them entirely. Every piece in the book, as well as in Matt's blog, seems to have a bus ride in it, thus inspiring me to read on the top deck. Problem is I'm hardly ever on a bus. I spend a lot of time riding my bike to work, but there's not enough time for reading, not even on the eternal red light blocking Upper Addison Gardens. And so it came to pass that before I could ever finish the magazines, I found myself deprived of them.

One I gave to a colleague who has a proud history of composing scientific posters entirely in iambic pentameters, baffling her audience more than any Gaelic symbolistic balladeer could, while the other somehow left on its own, unnoticed, and never returned. To this day, I carry a small black handkerchief of sadness.

The other day, as is my habit, I went to the Oxfam store on Gloucester Road. From its wooden counter heavy with used books shone, in cyan and scarlet, the cover of the latest Smoke. Just barely could I hang on to myself and keep myself from bagging it. Haiti is dissolving in unaccountable meteorological catastrophe and homegrown violence, and my money must serve to allay the suffering. With the proceeds going to charity, I bought Downriver by Iain Sinclair instead, a novel as local as Smoke but unfortunately without photos.

I could go out and take my own; the Thames a short walk from my house. But the last time I crossed the river, returning from Vauxhall, it was without my camera, which I had left at a camera shop tucked away nearly invisible behind a white, unmarked storefront next to a gas station off Kennington Lane. I took it there two days ago because of erratic overexposure issues that made half of my shots look as if I had pointed the camera straight into the blinding sun – impossible, as I haven't seen the sun in months now.

Today I got a quote for the repair and learned the cause of the problems. The sequencing unit needed replacing. Whatever that is, it costs plenty of money to effect and is a complicated procedure, the photographic equivalent of open-heart surgery if YouTube is to be trusted. After much cutting and patching and stitching, I was assured, the patient would behave as if reborn.

I hope I'll get the camera back before the weekend comes around, repaired and recuperated, convalesced and ready to shoot. Rumor has it that the thick grey blanket between London and the sky will rip open for a few moments. It would be a shame to miss the light. And if I won't have my camera back I'll go out and collect a few stories.