It's Real

Canon Fire

I treated myself to a new camera earlier this week. I haven't had one of my own in years.

The Nikon was Peter's, and I encouraged him to take it with him when he left. When we met, he'd just decided to give up being a photographer in favor of a more practical field of study. Business economics is about as far away from the creative arts as you can get.

Over the years, I'd try to get him to pick the camera up and take pictures of anything. Everything. Just shoot. "It doesn't even cost money anymore, not like when we were kids and we had to buy film and paper and chemicals. Just go out there and press the shutter a few dozen times. See what happens!"

He couldn't do it, though. He had the photographer's version of writer's block. We'd go into the City for the day, and he'd take maybe half a dozen shots, then put the camera back in the bag. He just didn't feel it anymore. He loved being an artist, but he denied that part of himself for so long that I don't think he remembered what that passion felt like anymore. I sent the camera away with him in the hope that he'd get it back. I still hope for that for him.

The first thing I did after I unpacked my new Canon was race outside to get a good picture of the Molly Flowers. My phone camera can't capture red yarns or pink flowers without making them look like they're florescing, so I haven't been able to share them before now. They make me think of her. They make me happy.

The Camera Eye

"So," he said, running a hand through his hair and looking up at the ceiling, "I have a son with autism, and he's going to be coming out here to live with me."

Seven weeks later, he returned to California with Gothic.

One of his favorite things to do is to take pictures. Hardt says that some of them are gorgeous, but I wouldn't know. The boy keeps his art to himself.

"Did you get some good ones today, Gothic?"

"Yep."

"Can I see some of them?"

"No."

"I"ll show you the ones I took."

"'Kay."

"But I can't see yours?"

"No. They're for me."

"What if I take a whole bunch of pictures of you and I don't let you see them?"

"No!"

"Well, you can't stop me, Gothic. It's happening."

I hope someday he lets me see some of the pictures he takes. I would love to see at least a little bit of what he sees.

You Have to Be Looking for It

I was cleaning out my dryer vent a few months ago, and this curve caught my eye. I loved the subtle color changes, the satiny finish, the warm glow off of the metal. I spent several minutes trying to get a clear shot of it. The colors reminded me of a ball of Newton's Yarn Country that I have in my stash.

You can find it anywhere, sometimes in the most unexpected places. Beauty. But you have to be looking for it. You have to look.

Standing Up

It's been a little more than four years since my dad died.

A few weeks ago, on what would have been his 94th birthday, I found myself alone on my couch. Peter had said that he would go out with me for red meat and vodka, two of my dad's favorite things, but he'd canceled a couple of hours earlier. "The cold is still kicking my ass. I can try to rally later and maybe come by."

"No, don't do that," I wrote back. "I'm having a rough time, but it's just a day."

"You're stronger than me in that way. Well, thanks for understanding."

I'd wanted to text back that I wasn't strong, that I was tired of hearing how understanding I was being, that I didn't understand any of what he was doing. I wanted to break down and have him rush over to try to make me feel better. I wanted none of this to be happening. In lieu of any of that, I wanted someone to go out and talk about my dad with me, share funny memories of him. I was tempted to blurt all of that out and see if guilt would get me, at least temporarily, the tiniest bit of what I felt I needed.

I didn't do it, though. I told him to take care of himself and get some sleep. It was the right thing to do, even though it hurt. I guess that was what he meant about me being strong and understanding, even though I didn't feel it. All I felt was alone.

I wandered into the other room, turned on the television, and curled up on the couch. I laid there motionless for hours, so still that my ear went numb from being pressed into the cushion, watching second-rate episodes of Law and Order. It grew dark outside, and the house got cold. I pulled a dog blanket over myself and sighed.

Finally, I shook myself upright. "What are you doing sitting here in the dark? This isn't what Dad would do. Dad would have picked himself up and moved forward, not curled up in a ball feeling sorry for himself. Get up! You're being ridiculous." Right about that time, Ween invited me across the street for wine and popcorn. I got up, brushed my hair, tugged my dad's knit cap over my ears, and headed over to her house. I felt good about honoring his memory by pulling up hard on my own bootstraps.

Funny thing, though. That's not what my dad would have done. My dad would have stayed on the couch under the dog blanket, moping to the point of making himself physically ill. I'd seen him do it, wander around the house for days in a thin, cotton v-neck and sagging sweatpants because one of my brothers didn't call him on Father's Day, or because the Giants had just ended a losing season. He did not handle disappointment or sadness well. I can't remember ever hearing him tell anyone, including himself, to buck up and move forward.

I'd made up this story about how I got that strength from him, the perseverance and the drive. "You keep going, and you don't quit. That's how Dad would have done it. That's who he was and I'm just like him." I'd idealized him, and then congratulated myself on striving to achieve that ideal for myself.

The truth is simpler and more profound. I keep going and I don't quit because that's who I am. That's what I do.



The 'whether" in this story is a choice I am constantly making and reevaluating - whether to stand up or fall down. Whether to draw into the easy cocoon of my sofa, encasing myself in a velour blanket under a hundred pounds of dog, or to reach out and grab the hands that are being extended toward me, to go out into the world and live. The cocoon is easy. Pulling away from it is more challenging. Every couple of weeks, I fall down. The trick is to figure out how to stand back up again. I'm learning.

Garage Door

I saw this while I was out stomping around today. I don't know why it affected me as much as it did, but I stood in front of it for several minutes before I took the picture and moved on. As I walked away, I thought, "I am a miracle. I AM."

The Way We Get By

The man wasn't kidding. This is fantastically aromatic garlic.

The Joy of Making Doc Laugh

I don't know what they were talking about, because I was at the other end of the garage talking to my neighbors. Half of me wishes I were there, but the other half enjoys wondering. Sometimes the mystery is as good as the reveal.

Trione Winery, January 2011

I didn't make any resolutions this year, but if I had, this would be one of them. Take more pictures of us.

I go through phases where I really like pictures of myself. It's usually centered around events, like weddings or vacations. I used to think that it was due to the lighting in a particular spot, or that I'd taken extra care with my hair and makeup. It didn't occur to me until now that it was a matter of practice.

I have a friend, we'll call her Lazzie, who never seems to take a bad picture. She always looks good, never a weird look on her face, a droopy eyelid, never a head tilt that gives her three chins. Now, granted, she's taller and she weighs about a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, but that's not why. I figured out how she did it a few weeks ago. We were out on New Year's Eve, and I said that we should have someone take our pictures.

"Oh, wait!" she said. "I'll take it. I take the best pictures of me." She held her phone out as far from us as she could reach, and damned if she didn't take a really cute picture of herself. Me, not so much because of the aforementioned chin/eyelid combo, but she looked adorable and casual. She took a few more, and I started to look better by the third shot as well.

I watched her for the rest of the evening, and noted how she was doing it. When a camera pointed at her, she smiled, then adjusted her smile a little bit so that it wasn't overwhelming. She looked straight at the camera, then tilted her chin down just slightly so that it wasn't jutting forward toward the camera. She made tiny adjustments, not enough that you'd call it a pose, but enough that it wasn't completely candid. I don't know if she even knows she's doing it anymore, or if it's become second nature for her. Whichever the case, if she knows she's in a picture, she looks good in it.

Last weekend, we went wine tasting with Lazzie and her fiance. The first day, we took a series of "well, it's cute of everyone else, and it's a memory of the day, so......" pictures. It bummed me out.

The next morning, I took a few extra minutes getting ready. I put on the sweater I felt the most confident about, the reliable old Simple Knitted Bodice, and my favorite necklace. I made sure my lipstick was solid, brushed my bangs out of my eyes with a little bit of wax, and we were off. I felt good.

"Honey, quick! Take our picture before we go to the next winery." A.B. pointed the camera at us, and in the couple of seconds that it took him to find shutter button (I don't have the fancy iPhone with forward-facing camera), I took an quick inventory of my facial features and made a few adjustments. I smiled a little more softly so that I wouldn't look too gummy. I tried to keep my head a little more level so that I would look less like a really short person craning to get into the picture, which is usually how the A.B.-and-me self portraits turn out. I put a tiny bit more thought into it, instead of grinning like a fool and hoping for the best. It made a difference! I love this picture.

Now, if we can figure out how to stretch A.B.'s arm so that he doesn't look like he's leaning back to get in the shot, we'll be in business. I guess we could let other people take the pictures, but, you know, baby steps.

Worth a Thousand Words?

I started to write about color, but then I realized that I was saying the same things I said a couple of years ago, and I mean almost word for word. It was as though I were plagiarizing myself. It's no less true than it was back then, though. I get distracted all the time by things I find visually appealing.

A couple of weeks ago, it was the light from my desk lamp shining through these Haribo gummi bears. I spent several minutes trying to capture what I was seeing with my phone camera. I couldn't quite get the saturation I was seeing, so I ran the picture through a CameraBag filter to get it to look this rich.

Yesterday, it was a pattern in the carpet in front of me. I was supposed to be listening to employee survey results. I was in the front row, ten feet away from the man speaking, but instead of looking at him or at the projection screen behind him, I found myself mesmerized by some carpet splotches that started to look like the face of Simba the lion. "Does the pattern repeat? Do the other ones look like the Lion King, too? I wonder if I'd be able to get back in here later to check it out."

Lion Cub, MGM Las Vegas - Summer 1997

I've been having trouble with sitting down to blog every day. It's harder than I thought it would be to write something new each day, and getting harder every day I try. I have theories about why it's happening, most involving overexposure to social media and television. But my theorizing will have to wait. Mantracker's on.

So Long, Stinktown

Outside the AutoZone, Pacheco, California - November 2010

Our offices moved over the weekend, and I am just beside myself with the anxiety of change. How will I be able to do that drive every day again? How will I adjust to the new cubicle that sits at the intersection of two corridors and is so open that everyone can see what I'm doing all the time from 50 feet away? How will I live without the comfort of live plants near my desk? How will I get into the work mindset every morning without the ritual of stepping over the debris of the hobo camp as I walk up to the building?

I'll probably get over that last one pretty quickly. So long, Pacheco parking lot! You've pushed your last screw into my tires.

At a Cafe by the Sea

If Wishes Were Horses

Reflections

This is a thing of beauty. The light, the reflections, the cool tones of the garnish tray juxtaposed with warm glow the golden lager, and the rakish angles all combine to form an image that pleases my discerning eye. This picture is completely unretouched. I took it at this angle intentionally, to add to the feeling of cheerful disorientation. I look at it often and try to figure out what exactly about it I love so much.

Yes, I took this with my phone. I then emailed it to Accountant Boy with the following message: "We want the funk! Gotta have that funk! At the bar. You should stop what you're doing and get here immediamente. Love, Doc, the Chemist, and me."

I had a whole piece here in which I reflected on the knit-blogging community's abandonment of knitting in favor of sewing. It was full of introspective musings and longing for days of yore, back when knitting was the hot ticket, before everyone moved on and left me in the dust, surrounded by thousands and thousands of yards of unknit wool. I felt so alone. I then went through my bookmarks to find support for my disheartening theory, and discovered that I was skipping about three-quarters of the bookmarks in my list. My phone rearranged them in an odd way, and I go to most of the blogs through my phone because it's the only way I can browse at work, so I got out of the habit of visiting most of the sites I used to frequent. Long story short, most of us are still knitting. I actually look like the LEAST productive blogger I know. Uh...HOORAY! Yay, knitting!

Carry on.

The Strange Public Lives of Birds, Part 2

Remember when there were only two of them?

Our office park has been overrun by turkeys. We stood in my soon-to-not-be-my-boss's office and counted them. Thirty-five birds had gathered on the patch of grass outside his window. They'd been out in the parking lot a few minutes earlier, a couple of the hens perched on the roof of a minivan, most of them wandering around the cars.


Of course, this meant that everyone in the building with a camera had to come out and take a picture, so then we had two flocks circling the parking lot, one flock of turkeys and one flock of people holding their cameras at arm's length to try to get the closest shot possible of a puffed-out tom.


The turkeys made a long circle through the parking lot and came back to the shaded grass. This might have seemed like a smart strategic move, because very few of us had cameras equipped to shoot in that light, so they'd found a way to be left alone. Then again, they're turkeys. I don't think they're capable of strategic thinking. Yes, I know, noble creature being underestimated by the arrogant humans and we don't understand animal intelligence and they probably evolved from dinosaurs so they've been around a lot longer than we have and blah blah blah, alright? Nothing against the turkeys, but it's not like they're going to form a war college or anything.


As evidence, I present this picture. This is what happens when turkeys turn and take flight and they don't see the five-story building in their path. This, friends, is turkey snot on a window.

"It literally smacked the snot out of itself. Why did Ben Franklin think that this should be our national bird?"

"Well, he (Franklin) was kind of heavy. Maybe he liked them because they were the only birds he could catch."


In other news, here's yesterday's progress on Ingenue. I'm halfway done with the increase section. It's not coming along as fast as KnottyGnome's, but it is coming along. I love the colors of hers. I wish I had more green in my stash.

Gems

Peep Joust - March 2002

I stumbled across this picture while poking through my network folder at work this morning. It intrigues me for a number of reasons.

How had it survived more than six year in my user folder without being purged? I've cleared out that folder several times, every time I think I might be leaving and every time I decide to rededicate myself to my work. How did the subfolder with this picture survive unscathed?

Further, whose hands are those? I can easily identify the hand at the upper right, because it's wearing the hideous wedding band that I slipped on my beloved Accountant Boy's finger a few years earlier. He lost that ring in the Arroyo Seco river in 2006, to our mutual relief. "I, uh, I never really liked it, honey." "Yeah, me neither. It cut into my fingers when I held your hand." This might be the only picture we have of the dreaded multifaceted metal ring. I know that hand is A.B.'s. The upper left hand is probably his as well. The fingernails are the same. Whose hands are holding the plate? Are they Falstaff's hands? Mr Wolf's hands? Someone else's?

What was the meaning of the hands behind the Peeps? Were they there for scale? As you may know, the act of jousting in the microwave severely distorts Peeps. Was this an attempt at a pre-joust measurement, and if so, where is the equivalent post-joust measurement shot? It's not in the folder. I have pictures of the aftermath, and A.B. and Falstaff eating their sugary champions, but not another one of the hands parallel to the plate. Why didn't we take that shot?

The strangest part about this is that I took this picture. I know, because it was with my Olympus almost-SLR, my first digital camera, and I didn't let anyone else use it. That's me behind the lens, so close to those Peeps that I can smell the sugar. Why don't I remember the answers to these questions?

My confusion not withstanding, I love this picture. I love the composition. I love the bright Peep bodies standing out from the more muted flesh tones of the hands and the shiny, deep black of the plate. Stumbling across it this morning was like tripping over a little piece of treasure while wandering through a dusty cave.

I haven't retrieved my current camera from A.B.'s luggage yet, so I don't have pictures of my ribbon crochet project. It's coming along nicely, though not as quickly as I'd hoped. If I had a few hours uninterrupted to work on it, it'd be done. Maybe this weekend.

Why I'm a Database Programmer, Part 1

I've been thinking about the nature of art. Specifically, I've been wondering what makes an object an objet d'art.

When we were in Amsterdam, going on six years ago now, we saw many great works of art. We also saw many, many mediocre pieces hung on walls, propped against pedestals, and projected on screens. Our biggest blunder was wandering into the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art. Maybe it was the depressive effects of the illicit muffin I'd had for breakfast, or maybe it was just an off day, but the Stedelijk saddened and angered me. I don't say this casually. I became profoundly depressed and enraged, and I was completely unable to externalize those feelings. Gallery after gallery, my rage and disgust grew as I trailed silently along after Accountant Boy.

Standing in the gift shop, I composed the following soliloquy. Skip the rest of this post if you're offended by cursing or profanity, you are a practicing artist, or you are Dutch.

"It's all a joke. A joke being played on us. We paid to get in here, so we've fallen for it. God, I hate artists. Twenty-six contrasty, poorly focused pictures of scaffolding hanging at waist height in a gallery with unpainted, cracked walls ISN'T ART! It's f&$king LAZY and I'm pissed off because, obviously, it's also F&$KING WORKING, since people, including us, have paid to see it."

I saw A.B. across the gift shop, browsing through a magazine. "Why doesn't he SEE MY SEETHING RAGE? If I go over and tell him, I'm just going to look like one of those tourists who 'just don't get it'. F&$K! How long is he going to look at that goddamn magazine? HONEY! It's NOT ART! It's SHIT! Wait, didn't some guy throw his own feces at a canvas and build a whole show around it? He was probably Dutch, too. I hate the Dutch. I hate modern art. I hate...Donatella? Donatella's a practicing artist. I bet she's in on it. They all are. They must sign a contract when they get their degrees. 'I promise to keep our secret - that we are really duping the public so that we don't have to get real jobs and contribute to a PRODUCTIVE SOCIETY - and never produce anything that takes more than ten minutes to slop on a canvas or print at the Costco photo lab.' Next time I see her, I'm going to tell her exactly what I think of her."

I turned my gaze to the book on which my hand was resting. The cover of this book consisted of four photographs and the artist's name, which I refuse to remember. The four photgraphs were - clockwise from upper left - three coils of wire on a sidewalk, a woman's naked breast, a leafless stick, and a dead bird. "Oh, holy F&$K ME RUNNING! I can't take it! How much longer can I stand here before I start overturning tables and screaming? Would that in itself be art? Performance art? THE STUPIDEST OF ALL ART FORMS? What the Hell is this place doing to me? Why does the music in here sound like a recording of a man pissing in a urinal? Oh, Christ. That's EXACTLY what it is! I HATE EVERYONE! WHAT WAS IN THAT MUFFIN?!?"

At that point, I lost the ability to think in words and became flooded with images of myself destroying the gift shop, a diminutive redheaded berserker in an Eddie Bauer cardigan. It was a fantastic short film - grainy and jumpy, complete with a soundtrack consisting entirely of a single note being played repeatedly on the cello - screening only in my own mind. When A.B. finally ambled over to me and saw my face, he dragged me out to the street.

The picture above was taken approximately twenty minutes before my breakdown.

I did tell Donatella what happened in the gift shop that day, and we laughed about it. I don't have the heart to ask her if she really believes that what she produces is art. I don't really want to know the answer.

I've been thinking about it since last weekend, when A.B. and I went to SFMOMA to see the Friedlander show. I love his work, and I wanted A.B. to see it and maybe get inspired to pick up a camera again. It was a great retrospective show, really showed the continuing evolution of his artistic style, and...see? Was it all of that? Or was it just several hundred photographs hung on a gallery wall? If you or I took thousands of pictures over the course of fifty years, would it be possible for someone to find several hundred of them good enough to hang in a gallery somewhere? Why is Friedlander more of an artist than you or I? If Belligero and I sit in front of a big, colorful canvas of painted soap boxes and A.B. takes our picture, does that become a new, distinct work, or are we simply adding a layer to the original piece? I've always loved that picture of us, but is it art?

I pondered this as A.B. and I walked away from the Friedlander exhibit. He went through the next gallery door before me, turned immediately and pushed me toward the stairs. "You don't want to go in there," he said. "We don't want another Stedelijk incident."