November 2007 Archives

several walks today. variety of distances. several rolls of film. slowly getting used to shooting again. no i am not slowly getting used to shooting again. i have to relearn the most basic ways of seeing the connections that make decent pictures. finding that slideshow of some old photographs was a bit of a wake-up call. it would be a shame to just bumble through the days and not create enough, and then be upset with myself in the end. managed to make a little drawing as well. it will be published. soon. it was accepted. nice. the rest of the year is going to be very active. will most likely spend the days before christmas working. probably in los angeles. but it could end up being buenos aires for all i know. so making pictures now is part of a preparation. though everything is. i need to make more. much much more. writing this on a sunday evening. monday morning will look very different, with a large coffee in my stomach and a pile of challenges clawed into the calendar inside of my little master. glad that i am not living in one of those odd houses we saw today. their living rooms three floors high, their shoulders pressed right up against the property line. the porsche sitting on top of the cadillac, as if they were garden gnomes of the newly minted rich. scary thought. a few blocks from there are darkish alleys, with piles of trash gathering as memories of the just past thanksgiving. and the apartments on the ground floor remind me of the one in which i lived in the first year of my life or so. snippets of conversations that would seep through the cracks in the walls, the slightly opened windows. it was probably good for me to constantly hear fragments of conversations, pedestrians exchanging banalities as well as life altering information. for someone who already had the capacity to shape their own thoughts, such interference was pretty debilitating at times. random words pushing their way between one's own thoughts. sentences completed by strangers who did not even know their voice crawled into the ground floor apartments. saw a cart of a homeless man parked under the stairs of the elevated f train on 18th street in brooklyn. next to it was a cab with an ad on its roof: "stop the voices inside your head." (it was for some voicemail website.) i guess it must be much much worse when there is no floor, no wall, no window. just a cart to push under the stairs of a subway station. it is a lush feeling to be able to sit in a quiet room and to move the tip of a freshly sharpened pencil over a pristine sheet of paper. such amazing luxury. so i better turn of this box now.

many little fish in metal containers are now piled in the refrigerator. tonight will be a cold one and the jade plant that planted itself in the flower box outside will probably die. the little tree which planted itself is now ready for the winter. it lost almost all of its leaves. after turning them bright yellow, of course. i took no pictures. there is a big box with expired film in my fridge. i will just shoot right through it. somehow. it must be 200 rolls or so. it will be good. it usually takes me several days to come to my senses. almost there now. entering the darkish parts of the day. happy to be sad somehow. it could be worse. much worse. had some amazing soup for dinner. where do i start? what a year.