A Hub for a Fresh Time and Place
Hello and welcome to the new informational home of my creative writing and photography projects. I’m Richard Gylgayton, a former Information Technology professional now retired and living in the Pacific Northwest after three decades of toiling in the data centers of the San Francisco Bay Area. Before my day job as a technology worker I graduated from St. Mary’s College of California with a degree in English. During the subsequent decades I always pursued a part time creative life in the arts, and now that journey is a full time vocation. Thanks for stopping by.
I independently published the first in a series of memoirs, Winterland Nights – A Memoir of Rock in the Seventies, a remembrance of concerts presented by Bill Graham at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. That was a transformative time for me, and the book is a coming of age story that takes place during seven years of legendary performances by Pink Floyd, David Bowie, the Grateful Dead, Genesis, The Who, Bruce Springsteen and many others. More information and excerpts from the book are available at winterlandnights.com. The book is available in paperback and Kindle editions at this link.
I am also an avid photographer and my work is featured and available for purchase at imagerag.com. More information about the portfolios and galleries on that site can be perused here on the My Photography page (still under construction).
Current writing projects include a memoir of my father, also a photographer, and the life and love story of my parents who moved their three sons from the staid rural life of Pennsylvania to the lucent light of California in 1966. Tentatively titled 24 Exposures I’ll be featuring excerpts about that project here at imagerag.blog.
Many of my posts start as entries in my daily journal and are updated, polished, and added here when they embrace a more universal interest for like minded travelers. I write about music, photography, literature, and general spiritual wandering. There’s a category list on the right sidebar of the blog so that you can pick out specific subjects of interest. I maintained this blog for ten years on Blogger and have included some of those older here in addition to fresh content for 2021.
Thanks for reading! If you’d like to subscribe there’s a subscription widget at the bottom of this page.
Featured Posts
Winterland Nights – Update and New Website
Winterland Nights is available for sale in paperback and Kindle editions at this link. If you would like to sample the book there are excerpts posted at Winterlandnights.com. Thanks to the folks who assisted me in the project: · Jeff Dennis, whose memories are as good (or bad!) as mine. His help in Chapters 11 and…
Keep readingWhat Have You Been Doing All This Time?
Yes, I know, I know. It’s been three months since I last posted anything here. The lack of words does not mean I’ve not been occupied with creative projects! Here’s a quick summing up. I was distracted by baseball all the way from the All-Star break to the dismal ending of the San Francisco Giants…
Keep readingSomething Intimately at Hand
4.17.20 9:36 am Last Homely House “It has something to do with presence—not a future good outcome, but the immediate experience of being met, held in communion, by something intimately at hand.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Mystical Hope: Trusting in the Mercy of God (Cowley Publications: 2001) Outside my studio window the morning light emblazons the maple trees in…
Keep readingLong Walk at Dawn
Excerpt from Chapter 14 of Winterland Nights Those first few months in Bollinger Canyon I lived in a buffer zone, passing from one chapter to another. I trusted the experience. Any apprehension that I felt was not because of that greater spiritual picture. It was because I had to make a living, pay the rent,…
Keep readingRules of the Road
Think from the heart of the matter. Gaze in the rear-view mirror. As the past recedes—the road endures. No beginning and no end. Follow it.Let go. Hang on. Where there is safety there is silence. Slow down. Travel without moving—say nothingabout what you hear. Yesterday has already joinedthe geography of our passages. The past is…
Keep readingShadow Sutra
I talk about the Buddha with my shadow(a shadow is not a shadowthat is why it is a shadow).We agree on many thingsand disagree about othersthat don’t matter muchand we are amused by the factthat we cannot see each other’s face. He is a smart fellow, my shadow.He understands the mockingbird.He doesn’t mind inclement weather.When…
Keep readingRound Trip
Eight hundred miles north on Interstate 5traveling with my daughter.California parched and brown until Shastaand the clouds roll through one anotherghosts wrapped within ghosts. Twenty-one years ago this same roadwith my pregnant wife.Last vacation for the two of usbefore the kids arrived. Today Portland is clear and the sunslices the edges of the downtown skyline.The…
Keep readingGodzilla vs. Reptilicus
Now Godzilla he’s the friend of children.Didn’t start out that way at firsthe was a walking rage of nuclear fireand goggle eyed rubber angereating trains and nail factoriesand flossing his teeth with high tensionelectric wires until a celibate scientistdissolved him with an oxygen gadget. Later that all changed for some reason.Not only did he come…
Keep readingMyriad Things Awakening
August 12, 2021, late afternoon of a warm day in Oregon. I’m sitting in front of my television watching the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees play nine innings of baseball at the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa. The sun is setting there—the evening sky opulent. I visited that place nine years ago and…
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The Image RAG - Richard A. Gylgayton 