King's Crossing

the crickets were out last night chirping, i was even over there for awhile and i sat outside near that garden i worked on while waiting for chuck to come down for the first time, every star in the sky was out and visible. felt how tired i am of everything. of course the mind extrapolates from the past and the low times are jettisoned and i thought of that night we were up til who knows when and chuck led the expidition for the last piece of the earthcaller and the absolute disbelief when the thing was acquired, there were crickets that night too. all of our buddies were there and

you understood me,

maybe more than i did myself. i am so incredibly weary. i'm tired. of not being able to find things, of the house being a mess, of the constant clamoring for activity, of the forced small talk and the air of disappointment.

i know, how i began and how i'll end.

i got
a new hat that i found outside and a monkey bottle full of water that smells like summer. today would be a good day for a cigarette if i were a smoker. last night you would have joined me and said to hell with the hustle bustle, but it's not even a consideration and i've simply got to stop thinking that way. just a fond farewell i guess, to a life that i'm not done loving yet.

You Kids And Your Rock Music.

I can't believe I didn't realize this sooner.

Shutter priority mode takes the user defined shutter speed as static, and determines aperture setting accordingly. So if you know that you want your shutter speed to be, say, 1/500, to capture a drop of water making contact with the surface of something, set your camera to "S" and set the shutter to 500. Your camera will determine the aperture you need for the lighting conditions. (gasp!)

Aperture priority mode works exactly the same way. If you know what level of background detail you want, set the aperture and click your mode over to "A." The camera will determine the shutter speed from here.

Everybody go buy a Nikon. Oh, I recently got a wide angle lens for a present (18-35mm.) I can't remember being this excited about a present. It's like being a kid and getting that coveted Thundercats Liono action figure, and waking up every few hours at night just to look at it, to remember that it's yours, it's beautiful, and it's yours! Yeah. And imagining all of the fun you're going to have with it. As soon as I locate the scanner in this building, get ready for some cool ass lookin' weird wide angle pixures to appear on this blog. Not that anyone is reading..! ::Yoda voice:: But you will be.... you..... will be......

And my flash bracket is almost complete, so as soon as it gets warmer get ready for some cool ass lookin' weird moth pixures. Yeah, you like it. Photography is a drug. Don't start unless you have free access to lots of cool and varied gear, cause otherwise you're going to end up spending a LOT of money. As I was hunting around for pictures last Saturday, I realized that I had around $2,000 worth of gear strapped to me. I started looking at all passersby with the "shifty-eye" after this realization was made.

I move into the new place on Friday. I hate moving, but this place is going to rock. Send me your fortitude and "staving off the crankiness of moving" vibes that afternoon. A few coronas and an evening barbecue wouldn't hurt either, heh.

I can't believe I didn't realize this sooner.

Shutter priority mode takes the user defined shutter speed as static, and determines aperture setting accordingly. So if you know that you want your shutter speed to be, say, 1/500, to capture a drop of water making contact with the surface of something, set your camera to "S" and set the shutter to 500. Your camera will determine the aperture you need for the lighting conditions. (gasp!)

Aperture priority mode works exactly the same way. If you know what level of background detail you want, set the aperture and click your mode over to "A." The camera will determine the shutter speed from here.

Everybody go buy a Nikon. Oh, I recently got a wide angle lens for a present (18-35mm.) I can't remember being this excited about a present. It's like being a kid and getting that coveted Thundercats Lionel action figure, and waking up every few hours at night just to look at it, to remember that it's yours, it's beautiful, and it's yours! Yeah. And imagining all of the fun you're going to have with it. As soon as I locate the scanner in this building, get ready for some cool ass lookin' weird wide angle pixures to appear on this blog. Not that anyone is reading..! ::Yoda voice:: But you will be.... you..... will be......

And my flash bracket is almost complete, so as soon as it gets warmer get ready for some cool ass lookin' weird moth pixures. Yeah, you like it. Photography is a drug. Don't start unless you have free access to lots of cool and varied gear, cause otherwise you're going to end up spending a LOT of money. As I was hunting around for pictures last Saturday, I realized that I had around $2,000 worth of gear strapped to me. I started looking at all passersby with the "shifty-eye" after this realization was made.

I move into the new place on Friday. I hate moving, but this place is going to rock. Send me your fortitude and "staving off the crankiness of moving" vibes that afternoon. A few coronas and an evening barbecue wouldn't hurt either, heh.

Before I Forget...

Sunny 16 rule:
At high noon on a sunny day, aperture should be set at f/16 and shutter speed should be set at 125. This is using 100 speed film, so stop down accordingly depending on the speed film you're using. (ie, with 200 speed film you would move either to one stop smaller aperture opening or one stop faster shutter.)

Oh god, there's too much to remember.

If you're taking a picture of something that has eyes, make sure that the eyes are what you're focusing on. Seems simple and logical, but many a potentially good photo has been fuxxored by not having the eyes in focus. Think about it. When you're looking at a photo of a human or animal, what's the first thing you look at? Eyeholes must be in sharp focus.

Aperture setting controls depth of field. The smaller the aperture, the more you have in focus. The bigger the opening, the shallower the depth of field.

You don't use the focus ring in macro. Instead move the camera physically closer to or further away from the subject, until it's in focus.

The minimum shutter speed for any given exposure should be approximately half the mm length of the lens you're using. So for instance, last night I was using the big gun (500mm zoom) to take photos of the moon. So the minimum shutter speed was 250. This compensates for camera shake... the greater the zoom, the worse the camera shake's going to be. Of course this formula won't be optimal in all situations, but it's generally a good rule of thumb. Right? Right. Obviously this heavily affects aperture setting in a weird light situation like that of shooting the moon. (haha.)

When using a polarizing filter, expose for one stop less that what your meter reads. A polarizer steals about one stop's worth of light. (But make sure that you check the direction of the polarizing lines, so that your filter is at the right angle to the sun when you're taking the shot.)

Now, somebody chip in to my Fuji Finepix s2 pro fund. Haha, no, seriously though. Cool macro close-ups of bugs will be your reward. Yeah babies. You know you want it.

Uber, Sam Adams, and You.

sometimes i wonder what i have left to experience in life. i have been low enough to understand the magnitude of this current high; i'm happy, i feel fulfilled by what i've done, what i've seen, what i've written about, who i've turned into, etc, thus far in life, and i wonder, what's really left that's new and different? and i think of who I was 5 years ago, and realize that each and every solitary second is a new life. that the possibilities are endless. that there is absolutely no way of knowing what's going to happen, and that this not knowing is what makes life so awesome, and exciting, and beautiful. the courage (or lack of) to fly into this unknown at a hundred miles per hour is what makes you (or breaks you) and really, you're never on the same planet twice. change is what the weak fear and what the wise have come to expect.

past is gone. future an illusion. the present sprawls ahead like a leviathan, unwritten and open to this hallmark of human existence: choice. free will. the ability to be excellent or obsequious. to face adversity with the grimace of one who's been defeated before the battle even begins, or with resolve. choice. and isn't that what life is, at its simplest definition? i am consistently amazed by the capacity for greatness within the human animal. (but this necessitates that the converse is also true. the price we pay for beauty.)

he asked what i think our end will be, and the words had truly never entered my mind until that moment. the brain went blank and i looked at him and immediately thought, "my death," because there is no certainty like the certainty i have in knowing that there will never be another one like him. not if i lived to be three thousand would i meet another person on this planet like him. and i thought about the night we were lying in bed and i was so sure that his hand upon my chest was my hand, that i was surprised when his movement revealed the truth.

end is subjective and a difficult concept to wrap a brain around when at present it seems so ugly and loathesome. i was thinking of a way to visualize it, and realized that, as part of nature, this human race is subject to the laws of nature, just like everything else. and i remembered from high school chemistry the law of conservation of energy, how energy can't be created or destroyed, but instead simply changes its form. everything made sense for an instant, and I thought how lucky I am, just for the simple fact of this existence.

Longboardin'

So I rode around town on Ryan's longboard last night, dear jeebus, skateboarding is so much fun, and it gets into your blood, and the desire to go faster and be trickier will never be satiated. But turning on a longboard requires a FAR different set of physics than turning on a trick board. I didn't fall, but let's just say I was fortunate in the placement of a couple snowbanks.

By the end of the session I was whipping around the corners and felt that this was probably not too different than snowboarding. Feet position being the same and all... but so, there is a little trickboard in olympia that i am trying all of my jedi mind tricks on, to get it to fling itself 3000 miles back to the safety (the term is used loosely) of my commanding feetses!

Obstinate.

does somebody know a good lawyer. in england they call them solicitors. and it makes you wonder what exactly they're solicitors of... the tacit answer that everybody knows anyway but nobody says. though you see it in the polished shoes that float above marble floors, the european cut of the suit, the $900 eyeglasses, the $50 haircut. the belittling sneer and tone of placation. and it's not that money itself is the problem, but you look at the luckless fools sitting on benches waiting for their moment to come, sitting in their tattered jeans and cheap trenchcoats and walmart leather jackets. though the timbos are always brand new looking, polished, immaculate. anguish on their faces, the trained reaction to drama that's been honed in front of countless hours of jerry springer, or eyes too vacant and imbecilic to be granted even that much. something went wrong, somewhere. we wouldn't have waited those three hours, if he had money. and the realization kills me, completely. it's a circus, the courthouse, and everybody is an absolute characature.

"there are no guarantees," is the phrase I heard more than any other in that hallway. always said by the lawyer with a look of grave intention. there was a man sitting next to me while I read, we were the only two for about 30 minutes, with the exception of the occasional office worker who would walk through on her way back from lunch. "cold enough out there for ya," he would say as they passed by. "hey, here comes blondie!" and I hoped that he would continue to take no notice of me, lest I have to force a pained smile upon receiving the gift of a platitude. enter the deputy with white hair and blue eagle eyes, cold, intolerable, wicked. and he represented truth and justice or some type of noble thing, and when the prisoner couldn't sit down because of the pain, he laughed, and pointed it out to another deputy not far away, and they both laughed together. and i thought what a piss ant existence. what a disgrace it was at that moment, to be human.

so the continuances continue and i find myself completely losing any remnant of hope for what once seemed so infallible a justice system. and of course there is always a crime at the beginning of the trail (but is the beginning truly where it all starts?) but so far throughout the entire process there has been no discussion of motive or event or circumstance or change since or rehabilitation or anything that one assumes must simply be a part of the process. just: the shuffling of papers and scrambling of feet and waiting, the interminable waiting; waiting. it's folly, believing in anything. i feel run over.

we made 'merica jokes on the way over and laughed until there were tears, he put his hand on my collar and rubbed and out of the corner of my eye I saw the look that I couldn't allow myself to acknowledge fully, the look that would have made my chin quiver, the look that i would have shot those deputies for. i have never known honesty to be so cutting.

A Relevant Audience.

And so Wednesday it is, the day that might break me, the day that might be the price we pay for this sin of existence. There is a savings account in my soul, and there are certain memories that I deposit into it so that when my spirit starts to jettison I can remember the pride I've felt for simply being here, alive and human, on this earth, and the ability to appreciate the fact that I allow myself to feel pride for it. These past two weeks are in the account, comingling with nights on the deck and late night runs in search of Jaco's ghost, sleepy summer evenings as a ten year old begging for a few minutes more before bed to be spent playing ghost-in-the-graveyard with my sisters and Jon.

Your smile, the frailty of being human, how sometimes in the morning my only hope is that you'll pull me closer and never let go, how when it happens it sustains me for the rest of the day. How sometimes your hand upon my heart is my hand. Just: thank you for the simple fact of your radiance and fearlessness. There is no prison sentence worse than being embarrassed simply to exist. Thank you for helping me to regain the sentinel.

Ode To Rugby.

His nose is always cold, and it always seeks out my hand. That look of his, like he can read your thoughts, like he would go crazy if you wanted, or just lay there with his hand on your hand, reminding you of the fleeting nature of each moment. And how his jaws lock on the end of your sleeve, playfully, when he doesn't want you to go anywhere. How he wants to go outside every 20 minutes to flirt with his girlfriend when really it's another male dog across the way. But I won't tell him.

I was laying on the bed reading last night and he crawled up and huddled himself close to me, stretched out like a human body. I put the book down and put my arm under his head, and he put his paw on my stomach and I rubbed his belly for ages. Dogs are so beautiful, and pure, and so free of all the spite and ill will we humans have to trudge through. My best friend is a chocolate lab, and he never asks me to be anything other than emily. As long as I get the food out at 9, 12, and 5, that is.

Who Is John Galt?

Judgment is the weakest extension of the faculty of awareness. The fallible mind relies upon it to form its beliefs and core consciousness. Live, and allow others to live as well.

We (each of us) all have our problems. And each is as tenably axiomatic as any other. You can't ever truly know where a person is coming from, or the things they've been through that have resulted them being where they are today. Life is about as easy as it is short (it's neither.) More Dagny Taggart than I am Seymour Glass. There is one who would never fail me, and she knows that laughter isn't real when it has that cynical sneer underneath it, that biting layer of damnation that says "I have the final say of what it is to be right." When it's all so incredibly subjective anyway.

03022005

stoke the burn of that sunken eye
drunken sunken eye

walked the plank at sundown
while I laughed and threw hope bones
down alleys to angels
crushing wings against buildings
against skull walls
licking them back to shine
with frightful intensity
with beats that throw your whole body 180
and land you in a
a new rythym
palm to fist.
palm to fist.

palm to my fist.

seem to have missed my chance at calm
in the midst of this
spin
we rise and fall in
like tires on transport to hell
blurred in the burn
of rubber

but in her mind's eye the world
was the speed of my breathing
and the destiny
was beneath the tireslap
of now

head in mercy's lap
weeping
broken like shore wreckage
(the seam of heaven and earth)
the devil blushing blue on red on bone
blushing red on blue on white
flame center blue
like eyes closed around a dream.
like skin around secrets
shaping vibrations
we are pushing
to the collapse.

our bodies split in two
like an apple
under the knife
to deliver pearls
new selves
like worlds
forming every second.

we are pushing
ripping apart
to push a dream through.

The Memo.

Whatever it is that you do, do it well. Do it unceasingly, without failure, without pompousness or granduer, or the infiltration of ego. Half-heartedness is weakness. Lasting fame is uncertain, and a foolish goal. Do now, not for lasting fame, but for the pleasure that doing what you are meant to do brings you. For being good at it. Your success will cause others to discount your methods, or downplay your talent, or talk about perceived imperfections in your character. Don't listen to these petty idiots, the human tendency is to muddy up what shines brightly in order to bring it to a dull and unnoticable level, a level that the majority can relate to. Greatness doesn't happen to a person, it must be rooted out, sought after, captured. You have to work, you can't be lazy.

It's within your reach, provided that you're willing to make sacrifices and acknowledge that the potential is within you. And to hell with the fools that would tell you that working doggedly for your own greatness is selfishness. The world would be a much different place if each person worked to cultivate and illuminate themselves. People want you to fail, or to be mediocre, or to be affected by the drama that so often defines human existence. Shock them by doing the opposite. True to your nature, true to your self.