I got an email from my first love this morning. He has been deployed in Afganastan for an entire year now. Usually his emails are full of shennagin tales, trips outside the wire, and the bliss that is PT. But today's message contained more longing for home and hearth than usual. He was telling this short story about wild dogs and how they wouldn't really listen to his reasonable suggestions-- but all I could picture was my friend looking sad in his desert gear with his big ole gun in his arms.
Contrast this experience with this weekend's princess burphday party that we threw for T (she turns 30 tomorrow!). We were making pipe cleaner crowns, and eating junk food, and listening to music in the kitchen-- as though life was just peachy for everyone out there. I beleive this sentiment I am feeling this morning can be neatly rounded up in this quote that I have been including in my emails for months now:
> "If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to change the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."
~~ E.B. White <
When R announced (the second time) that he really was joining up I was more than a little upset. Not only did it require me to put a real (and beloved) face on a war that I would not get my head around, but it also asked me to support my freind who was making a choice I NEVER would have expected in a million years! It was a rocky time for me. But as the years of this have marched forward I have grown more...supple. Is this not the job of a true friend: to require continued mental and love flexibility of us? I can admit freely that it is unlikely I would require it of myself, being naturally incined to stubobrness as I am. Perhaps this is a shard of the meaning we all seek?
Monday, February 25, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Digital Media
When I was a tadpole trapsing around with my carmera and my doc martins, smoking camels and listening to The Cure there was very little more satisfying to me than making images that felt beautiful and then going to the darkroom for a few hours of magic. Since high school there have been too-brief stints where I had access to a darkroom so I could burn-n-dodge to my little heart's content. Sadly those days seem to be over for me.
Yesterday I spent a little time in Iris looking at the digital SLR's and listening to the very informed guy there tell me all about image stabalization, lens compadibility, battery types and lives, and relative costs and qualities. These cameras have almost no delay between the depression of the shutter and the image capture, there is one that is even "weather-sealed" (though likely not for paddling trips or long hikes). Insert here any petulant little noise, punctuated with a "but..."
I don't know yau'll-- at the start of my photography carrear it was serious this question of where does "documentation" end and "art photography" begin. And I beleive that this question burns hotter and brighter now than it ever did when it was just me and my K-1000 stromping the world. Perhaps I am simply resistant to change (why did I bother with that perhaps), and maybe it is an issue of capital (I ain't got it), but possibly it is something bigger. The PHYSICAL, CHEMiCAL, and (frankly) magical acts of film photography are quite different from digital media. The quality of light is quite flat and unrealistic in a digital image--is this perhaps what the analog recording artists are yapping about?
When i was a kid I had this strange fascination with making things "last". I would write dates on things, I would cover paper trasures in plastic tape, and I would THINK about wanting "it all" (whatever "it" was) to last for good. And then later when I met photography this fell in wonderfully with my already developed quest for the permanant. What you have in a negative is the ability to recreate an image over and over no matter how many prints you give away, ruin, or lose. But-- and this is what appeals to the Taurean in my methinks-- it is still a physical item, the negative. And tragically therefore, being physical, can be eventually, or acctidentally, or ruthlessly destroyed.
As I have encountered more ideas on the subject, I have now grown fascinated with the idea that impermanance just might be what causes the temporary state known as ballance. How about them apples. So, all this dithering about digital vs. film: what's the point? Would I even be making a fuss if I could afford that $800 Pentax K-whatever I saw on sale at Iris yesterday and just test it out for myself? Probably. Any philanthropists out there reading one lone girl's blog? Wanna fund an experiment?
Yesterday I spent a little time in Iris looking at the digital SLR's and listening to the very informed guy there tell me all about image stabalization, lens compadibility, battery types and lives, and relative costs and qualities. These cameras have almost no delay between the depression of the shutter and the image capture, there is one that is even "weather-sealed" (though likely not for paddling trips or long hikes). Insert here any petulant little noise, punctuated with a "but..."
I don't know yau'll-- at the start of my photography carrear it was serious this question of where does "documentation" end and "art photography" begin. And I beleive that this question burns hotter and brighter now than it ever did when it was just me and my K-1000 stromping the world. Perhaps I am simply resistant to change (why did I bother with that perhaps), and maybe it is an issue of capital (I ain't got it), but possibly it is something bigger. The PHYSICAL, CHEMiCAL, and (frankly) magical acts of film photography are quite different from digital media. The quality of light is quite flat and unrealistic in a digital image--is this perhaps what the analog recording artists are yapping about?
When i was a kid I had this strange fascination with making things "last". I would write dates on things, I would cover paper trasures in plastic tape, and I would THINK about wanting "it all" (whatever "it" was) to last for good. And then later when I met photography this fell in wonderfully with my already developed quest for the permanant. What you have in a negative is the ability to recreate an image over and over no matter how many prints you give away, ruin, or lose. But-- and this is what appeals to the Taurean in my methinks-- it is still a physical item, the negative. And tragically therefore, being physical, can be eventually, or acctidentally, or ruthlessly destroyed.
As I have encountered more ideas on the subject, I have now grown fascinated with the idea that impermanance just might be what causes the temporary state known as ballance. How about them apples. So, all this dithering about digital vs. film: what's the point? Would I even be making a fuss if I could afford that $800 Pentax K-whatever I saw on sale at Iris yesterday and just test it out for myself? Probably. Any philanthropists out there reading one lone girl's blog? Wanna fund an experiment?
Friday, February 15, 2008
Just Breathe
It's a staple sentence, this. Commonly found in yoga classes everywhere, my classroom when students are having a hard time, and in my head to myself on a regular basis. But yesterday it took on new meaning. I arrived to the hallowed halls of Rock-N-Roll High School to find a student back in class after an absence for a few days. I exclaimed to see him-- an unusually quiet young man, though a deep thinker and very responsible student. It became clear within two sentences that he had been absent because of a death in his family-- and then he began to weep.
There is this not-enforced rule that we are not to *touch* students-- you never really know how even casual and very innocent contact can impact a young person. However, once the waterworks began I put my arm around this kid's big ole heaving shoulders and held him while he cried. Between sobs the story came haltingly out that he had been with his grandma when she passed. He was describing her labored breathing, and how hard it was. "Just to see her like that--sob--and to see my grandfather loose---sob-- it. It was so hard for her to--sob-- breathe-- and--sob--when something like that happens you forget who you are--sob-- you just--and then she would try to breathe---sob-- and I don't know-- it was--sob--so hard..."
I wanted to say-- when you face mortality in the guise of a loved one you *have to see yourself differently. It alters not only your own life, not only how you see life, but also what you think is important in this life. Shit, what IS important in this life. Our expereince of this mortal coil is a finite expereince. Perhaps the pilosophers and spiritualists are right afterall, and there is more to our existance than just this human experience. But to SEE somebody giving up the ghost-- an oddly descriptive colloquiliasm-- you do forget who you are, a little. I think you forget because for just a second you cease to be the muscian, the student, the teenager-- and you are just a naked eyeball (as Ralph would say). These are the life-altering moments. They happen in the halls of high school and in the sick rooms of grandmas all over the place.
There is this not-enforced rule that we are not to *touch* students-- you never really know how even casual and very innocent contact can impact a young person. However, once the waterworks began I put my arm around this kid's big ole heaving shoulders and held him while he cried. Between sobs the story came haltingly out that he had been with his grandma when she passed. He was describing her labored breathing, and how hard it was. "Just to see her like that--sob--and to see my grandfather loose---sob-- it. It was so hard for her to--sob-- breathe-- and--sob--when something like that happens you forget who you are--sob-- you just--and then she would try to breathe---sob-- and I don't know-- it was--sob--so hard..."
I wanted to say-- when you face mortality in the guise of a loved one you *have to see yourself differently. It alters not only your own life, not only how you see life, but also what you think is important in this life. Shit, what IS important in this life. Our expereince of this mortal coil is a finite expereince. Perhaps the pilosophers and spiritualists are right afterall, and there is more to our existance than just this human experience. But to SEE somebody giving up the ghost-- an oddly descriptive colloquiliasm-- you do forget who you are, a little. I think you forget because for just a second you cease to be the muscian, the student, the teenager-- and you are just a naked eyeball (as Ralph would say). These are the life-altering moments. They happen in the halls of high school and in the sick rooms of grandmas all over the place.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Yau'll ready for this can of worms?
It is still a man's world.
I have long held this view of our culture, privlidged and queer positive though mine may be up here in the Pioneer Valley. And nothing supports this opinion quite like the recent doings in politics. We have a very intriguing race in the dem. camp. It's like Political Celebrity Death Match-- the suffragists verus the abolitionists all over again! Geez-- will history teach us nothing?! Following rather lengthy conversations with my sister and my bestie I was inspired to do some research. I found these two paragraphs on this website:
http://www.iwantmyvote.com/recount/history/
"In 1866, the 14th Amendment to the federal Constitution was passed, guaranteeing citizenship to the former slaves and changing them in the eyes of the law from 3/5 of a person to whole persons. Then, in 1869, the 15th Amendment guaranteed the right to vote to black men, with most women of all races still unable to vote.
Initiatives to promote voting for women have been traced back to the 1770s, but the modern movement for a vote for women traces its beginning to the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, when supporters of a Constitutional Amendment to allow women to vote came together. While their movement was slowed during the Civil War years, the two major suffragist organizations united after the war and pushed forward with a movement that culminated, after many difficult years, in the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920."
1920, people! I will be the first person to point out that, while black men had the right to vote ON PAPER, voting rights IN PRACTICE were mostly nonexistant at first-- if not outright dangerous. I beleive this in indisputable. In fact, I will go further and say that even to this day people of color and poor people encounter challenges in their neighborhoods that I do not at my polling station. Regardless, if we are looking at prevailing cultural views by analyizing the laws (not the practice) it is clear as a river in the backcountry after weeks of happy weather-- it is a man's world.
I have long held this view of our culture, privlidged and queer positive though mine may be up here in the Pioneer Valley. And nothing supports this opinion quite like the recent doings in politics. We have a very intriguing race in the dem. camp. It's like Political Celebrity Death Match-- the suffragists verus the abolitionists all over again! Geez-- will history teach us nothing?! Following rather lengthy conversations with my sister and my bestie I was inspired to do some research. I found these two paragraphs on this website:
http://www.iwantmyvote.com/recount/history/
"In 1866, the 14th Amendment to the federal Constitution was passed, guaranteeing citizenship to the former slaves and changing them in the eyes of the law from 3/5 of a person to whole persons. Then, in 1869, the 15th Amendment guaranteed the right to vote to black men, with most women of all races still unable to vote.
Initiatives to promote voting for women have been traced back to the 1770s, but the modern movement for a vote for women traces its beginning to the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, when supporters of a Constitutional Amendment to allow women to vote came together. While their movement was slowed during the Civil War years, the two major suffragist organizations united after the war and pushed forward with a movement that culminated, after many difficult years, in the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920."
1920, people! I will be the first person to point out that, while black men had the right to vote ON PAPER, voting rights IN PRACTICE were mostly nonexistant at first-- if not outright dangerous. I beleive this in indisputable. In fact, I will go further and say that even to this day people of color and poor people encounter challenges in their neighborhoods that I do not at my polling station. Regardless, if we are looking at prevailing cultural views by analyizing the laws (not the practice) it is clear as a river in the backcountry after weeks of happy weather-- it is a man's world.
Monday, February 11, 2008
What really matters
"...things don't have to be important to be fascinating. And while your fascinations may not be contagious, your glee sure as hell is."
There is this other blog (gasp) that my friend K told me about forever ago-- and when I read the above sentence I had one of those "yes, that is just it!" early morning flashes. www.xtcian.com was talking about crazy passions, and how some of us are shamed out of them while others of us obsess unchecked and develop some fascinating interests. And it is perhaps just these geeky fascinations that we weave into other projects that mark us as truely unique. T and I have been talking about this idea on and off for years. Wondering if perhaps it is the lack of "hobbies" that sends so many folk into the noxious spirals of greed and addiction. How could we not spend every day just marking time inbetween sleep, food, work and sex if not for the camera, the iris, or the way sunlight is fractured through a prisim? Don't ge me wrong-- sleep/dreams and food and sex and teaching are certainly occupying a great many shelves in the library that is my head. I can obsess over sex like a pro-- let me tell you! And the amount of time I spend thinking about food and eating...well it's intense, friends. But there are other rooms full of mind-books, too. So in the spriit of Mr. xtc.ian here is my list of geeky passions:
35mm photography
perrenial flower gardening
trashy fantasy fiction (preferably with a cool pantheon of god/desses)
wind chimes
feminist re-tellings of myth and legend
prisims
beaded necklaces
collage
used bookstores
organizational systems
fountain pens
decorative painting
the view out of windows
There is this other blog (gasp) that my friend K told me about forever ago-- and when I read the above sentence I had one of those "yes, that is just it!" early morning flashes. www.xtcian.com was talking about crazy passions, and how some of us are shamed out of them while others of us obsess unchecked and develop some fascinating interests. And it is perhaps just these geeky fascinations that we weave into other projects that mark us as truely unique. T and I have been talking about this idea on and off for years. Wondering if perhaps it is the lack of "hobbies" that sends so many folk into the noxious spirals of greed and addiction. How could we not spend every day just marking time inbetween sleep, food, work and sex if not for the camera, the iris, or the way sunlight is fractured through a prisim? Don't ge me wrong-- sleep/dreams and food and sex and teaching are certainly occupying a great many shelves in the library that is my head. I can obsess over sex like a pro-- let me tell you! And the amount of time I spend thinking about food and eating...well it's intense, friends. But there are other rooms full of mind-books, too. So in the spriit of Mr. xtc.ian here is my list of geeky passions:
35mm photography
perrenial flower gardening
trashy fantasy fiction (preferably with a cool pantheon of god/desses)
wind chimes
feminist re-tellings of myth and legend
prisims
beaded necklaces
collage
used bookstores
organizational systems
fountain pens
decorative painting
the view out of windows
Friday, February 8, 2008
Belay off, good climb
Sadly, today marks the return to the salt mines for this intrepid English teacher. Paideia is officially over, and to celebrate my school is having a "Curriculum Day". This could be worthwhile, I suppose, but a day of meetings and thinking about the business and practice of teaching sounds like a depressing day to me; especially when it is contrasted with 6 hours in the climbing gym. I really wanted to climb that W4 again-- and not hang on the rope so much. I really wanted to climb, and climb, and climb with nery a paper to graade in sight...
Ah well, it is back to shaping young minds, negotiating the pot-holes of school politics, and tending to delicate young people. Some days I am sure that I was cut out for this business-- and then other days I think I have no idea what I am doing this for. It keeps the mind active, certainly. Teaching is humbling, of course. But is my true passion elsewhere? Perhaps on an empty page? Or maybe on a trail somehwere in the backcountry with a camera and my journal? Or maybe, just maybe, behind the helm of some creative and exciting community based project (whatever that means?).
Ah well, it is back to shaping young minds, negotiating the pot-holes of school politics, and tending to delicate young people. Some days I am sure that I was cut out for this business-- and then other days I think I have no idea what I am doing this for. It keeps the mind active, certainly. Teaching is humbling, of course. But is my true passion elsewhere? Perhaps on an empty page? Or maybe on a trail somehwere in the backcountry with a camera and my journal? Or maybe, just maybe, behind the helm of some creative and exciting community based project (whatever that means?).
Thursday, February 7, 2008
On why hair products suck
After climbing yesterday I traveled to Sunderland to get my hair did. All in all it was a lovely experience-- my racing stripes are no longer white but red and purple (more subtle than I had hoped, but c'est la vie). We were chatting, and she was cutting and thinking about symmetry and doing the magic that a hair artist does and at the last second she smeared this awfuly smelly gel all up in my newly coiffed hair! Yuck.
I was miserable on the way home-- walked in the door and, after tending to sylvester who was making the sounds of a squeekie toy, stripped down and jumped in the shower to wash the misery out of my hair. Let it be known that I was almost in a blinging headache from the smell, and clearly very distracted. But when I chucked all my clothes in the wash shortly after my shower my cell phone was still in the pocket of the fleece vest I was wearing. It went for a little swim.
I was miserable on the way home-- walked in the door and, after tending to sylvester who was making the sounds of a squeekie toy, stripped down and jumped in the shower to wash the misery out of my hair. Let it be known that I was almost in a blinging headache from the smell, and clearly very distracted. But when I chucked all my clothes in the wash shortly after my shower my cell phone was still in the pocket of the fleece vest I was wearing. It went for a little swim.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
What a piece of work is a man
Yesterday morning I awoke singing an old U2 song from The Joshua Tree album (Im hanging on/Youre all thats left to hold on to/Im still hanging/We see love slowly stripped away/Our love, has seen a better day) which even then struck me as a really maudlin way to begin the day. It turns out the day was not nearly the dramatic shit heap the day before was, but that is another story involving teenagers and their foibles (we called 911 once for an accidental head bump and then another kid locked himself in the bathroom and didn't come out 'till after the bus had left the climbing gym-- he and I were there too long for my liking waiting for his mom to come collect him and a coworker to come collect me). The story I am trying to tell here is the one about what our brains do when we aren't there to control them. Apparently mine sings old U2 songs to herself-- did hearing that piece on NPR about how the joshua trees are dying bring back this song? Am I worried about T and my love? (We have been fighting.) Have I never quite recoverd from my Bono obsession?
Hamlet:
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me—
nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.
Rosencrantz:
My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.
Unlike the prince of melancholia I am delighted by wo/man most of the time-- though admittedly the anonomous "men" who start wars and abuse childreren and value greed do not delight me. And also, unlike our rotten prince, I don not think wo/man is the beauty of the world nor the paragon of animals. We have a great deal to learn from the simple and profound symmetry of the world, and how animals take only what they really need to stay afloat, and not what they want and desire as well. animals don't emotionally eat, or hold grudges, or get so self-involved they forget to be kind.
Why must it always come back to Willy? I have professed loud and clear my distaste and discomfort for reading and teaching this guy, and yet his wrds still return to me in my dreams and in my early morning rumblings. Perhaps as my actress friend L has been telling me all these years he is one of our culture's repositories of wisdom. That, despite the difficult and somewhat antiquated diction, therein lies a great big pipeline to the collective counsciousness that we moderns get cut off from so easily in our cars and behind our computers. Certianly Mr. Orwell had Winston long for William as a symbol of what was lost...
Hamlet:
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me—
nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.
Rosencrantz:
My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.
Unlike the prince of melancholia I am delighted by wo/man most of the time-- though admittedly the anonomous "men" who start wars and abuse childreren and value greed do not delight me. And also, unlike our rotten prince, I don not think wo/man is the beauty of the world nor the paragon of animals. We have a great deal to learn from the simple and profound symmetry of the world, and how animals take only what they really need to stay afloat, and not what they want and desire as well. animals don't emotionally eat, or hold grudges, or get so self-involved they forget to be kind.
Why must it always come back to Willy? I have professed loud and clear my distaste and discomfort for reading and teaching this guy, and yet his wrds still return to me in my dreams and in my early morning rumblings. Perhaps as my actress friend L has been telling me all these years he is one of our culture's repositories of wisdom. That, despite the difficult and somewhat antiquated diction, therein lies a great big pipeline to the collective counsciousness that we moderns get cut off from so easily in our cars and behind our computers. Certianly Mr. Orwell had Winston long for William as a symbol of what was lost...
Monday, February 4, 2008
Congratulations! Now you're a woman...
Perhaps one of you can shed a little light on the mystery of the monthlies. Every month I write a little "?" on the calendar which is exactly 28 days after the previous month's "x" on the day the blood began. Some months it is exact, some months as many as 4 days before or after the happy event actually happens-- but either way it continues to be a damn surprise to see the red in ye olde underoos!
Before I started my period the first time my mom told me all about what would happen. She regailed me with tales of what she had to put in her drawers to catch the aforementioned uterus wall lining (the straps, the belt, the terrible rigamaroll of it all), and she bought me a box of pads with an adhesive strip and "wings" that folded around the backside of the pants to secure the whole bloody mess. So, when I got home from what was probably a miserable day of middle school (they all run together...) to discover that I had finally started my period I marched myself striaght to my parent's bathroom and promptly began my carrear as a bleeder (and potential breeder) with the first application of the self-adhesive, wing-having pad in the pants. I was pretty excited-- you know womanhood and all that-- but mostly because this meant that I would FinALLy get to have my ears pierced. Oh, boy!
So I am certainly happy to be here and be alive and all that stuff that the sight of blood is supposed to make one thankful for, but all I can think is that I am looking at a world of hurt today:
rock climbing harness (ode to the bloat...)
first meeting with R, the personal trainer/yoga teacher (I'm tiiiiired, I'm craaaaaaaampy)
the week before classes start for the spring term (can anyone say lesson plans, who has the focus!)
And if all that isn't enough, there is also the emotional fragility (read emotional eating, uncontrollable bitchiness, and irrational everything) associated with the days preeceeding and then the first day or so of the actualy bleeding... I swear-- it's like there is some correlation between emotional stability and volume of blood in the body. In any event, boy readers (even boi readers), take a moment to be thankful that this is not one of your challenges to meet today.
Before I started my period the first time my mom told me all about what would happen. She regailed me with tales of what she had to put in her drawers to catch the aforementioned uterus wall lining (the straps, the belt, the terrible rigamaroll of it all), and she bought me a box of pads with an adhesive strip and "wings" that folded around the backside of the pants to secure the whole bloody mess. So, when I got home from what was probably a miserable day of middle school (they all run together...) to discover that I had finally started my period I marched myself striaght to my parent's bathroom and promptly began my carrear as a bleeder (and potential breeder) with the first application of the self-adhesive, wing-having pad in the pants. I was pretty excited-- you know womanhood and all that-- but mostly because this meant that I would FinALLy get to have my ears pierced. Oh, boy!
So I am certainly happy to be here and be alive and all that stuff that the sight of blood is supposed to make one thankful for, but all I can think is that I am looking at a world of hurt today:
rock climbing harness (ode to the bloat...)
first meeting with R, the personal trainer/yoga teacher (I'm tiiiiired, I'm craaaaaaaampy)
the week before classes start for the spring term (can anyone say lesson plans, who has the focus!)
And if all that isn't enough, there is also the emotional fragility (read emotional eating, uncontrollable bitchiness, and irrational everything) associated with the days preeceeding and then the first day or so of the actualy bleeding... I swear-- it's like there is some correlation between emotional stability and volume of blood in the body. In any event, boy readers (even boi readers), take a moment to be thankful that this is not one of your challenges to meet today.
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