You know how there are times when you want just one properly-shot photo for your own little memory archive? I couldn't get one of those here.
My time in Tacoma and access to Uncle Phil's work was too limited. When I did have the opportunity to get my hands on a knife, it was too dark out, I was too intoxicated to document it well. My focus was off.
I had dinner and drank with my uncle's best friends and my family the day after the funeral at a debatably-good restaurant, Duke's. The friends with us had one of Uncle Phil's knives on hand. They commissioned the knife for their 25th wedding anniversary and Uncle Phil built it for them at cost.
The knife begs to be held. The weight is overwhelming when held. It's a showpiece, an elegant object, but also potential weapon. It's equally, severely beautiful and dangerous in the hand. I feared it would slip. I worried I'd lose a finger. After taking some photos, I passed it back.
I didn't get the shot I wanted but I did get to know the man better over those beers. His friends were light-hearted ball busters, jokesters, old hippies from SoCal. I've been around enough to know it takes a particular sense of humor to hang with and to trade jabs with folks like that, a capacity to stay on your toes and take it all in stride. I could see who Uncle Phil was, "just a dude," as he would have described himself, in the conversations with them. And through that I could also see who Uncle Phil, eldest of four brothers, was to my dad, the second child.
My sister, who'd met Uncle Phil just a few months ago, said there were similarities in our dispositions, notably my slightly critical edge, dryness and stoicism. She said my being there, trading jabs over beers, might have been a comfort and reminder that the Boguszewski spirit is still out there.
I guess what I'm saying is that these shots are those images where the photos fail to show the picture.