Making Happy

Thin Line Between Play and Work

We rode our bikes to Wards Island yesterday for a much needed day off. That was the first recreational activity day I've had in a very long time. It was such a relief not to think about work or think about thinking about work. Although technically I did work because I took lots of plant and garden photos. There's a thin line, between play and work. I do enjoy my work, but it becomes cumbersome when there is no time for myself to just be a human.

The air on the island smelled nice and fresh. One highlight was the discovery of a pond filled with horsetail and squirmy black tadpoles. I haven't seen tadpoles since my childhood and the sight immediately brought me back to afternoons spent catching toad tadpoles in the pond behind TOWERS. I want to go back next week to see if they develop legs.

I've been posting digital photos here lately simply because I've got stacks of film that needs developing and no time to scan regardless.

Iris

I took a ton of photos in the garden this morning. Later in the afternoon I met a reporter at The Drake Coffeeshop for a two hour interview. I'm getting much better at self-promotion; talking about myself and what I do without The Awkwardness. For someone with such a massive interest in popular culture and cultural theory, I've been terribly slow in figuring out how this whole media/press thing works and how to make the best use of it without being a big whore about it.

Mind you, I have always been either really shy or really talkative. Never in between. In grade school I was painfully quiet and introverted yet at times this enthusiasm would burst out and I'd be reprimanded for excessive talking. Catch me in the right mood with the right topic and I can run at the mouth for days. I think the talkative mode is my true nature. The shy, introvert is a result of a ton of negative socialization. Thankfully I am slowly moving past that and getting a handle on who and how I am without the weight of that baggage holding me back.

Plant Burn Out

Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of gardening. For the first time I am actually burning out on plant talk.

Danger

I took the Mamiya out for lunch today. Have I mentioned that it weighs 4 pounds? I had to take a nap when I got back.

First Mamiya

I'm just now scanning the first roll from the Mamiya. As suspected most close-ups are way off due to parallax shift. Oops. I gotta get me one of them parallax adjuster-thingys.

On first glance I'd say the Mamiya does indeed take better photos than the Great Wall. I'm sure the lens is of better quality blah blah blah but I'd also say that part of the advantage is the super-clear viewfinder. I can actually see if I'm focussed whereas with the Great Wall I had to sorta-kinda cross my fingers a little bit.

To exemplify what I mean, my brother took one look through the Mamiya viewfinder and exclaimed, "That's clearer than life. Fucked up!"

My Camera's Heavier than Your Camera

Just so you'll know what a martyr I am for my art, I weighed the Mamiya yesterday. Turns out it weighs 4 pounds! For comparison I began weighing other cameras. The Great Wall weighs 2 pounds and the Lubitel 2 just over 1 pound. My right arm is going to be very muscular by the end of summer.

I finished a first roll in the camera. Barring the weight (which has practically broken my thin wrist) it's a gem to use. I took lots of close-ups and remembered about parallax shift after it was too late so who knows what I'll get.

Westlodge 2

Sick again. Not a virus, but a product of my illness. I'm back on the nasty concoction. This time I was flattened for the entire weekend. My body went through a scary range of symptoms Friday night but things are settling down enough for me to work in short spurts today. This really, truly could not be worse timing but I'm really not shocked by my current physical state considering the enormous stress and pressure I'm under and have felt for some time now.

I don't think I'll be posting much here in the next while. I have very little energy to spread around.

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Later. How to feel much, much better (if only momentarily): Have your new Mamiya C330 Professional F camera arrive in the mail unexpectedly. I'm either really weak from the illness or this sucker is fucking heavy! It has the clearest viewfinder ever. I can actually hold it at my waist and see things clearly and crisply. It's how a waist level finder is supposed to work.

Now all I need is a personal assistant, a small monkey or a special cart to carry this camera around with me.

Once Again

My newest thing is backyards. Walking through alleys as much as I do it was only a matter of time before I turned my camera on the backyards. This was a strange empty lot. It might have been someone's backyard at some point but now it is just another wastespace where people dump their crap and run.

Getting a bit closer.

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bell hooks is speaking in the city this Saturday. I'm not planning to go but coincidently had just picked "Where We Stand: Class Matters" back up again. Her book is about the intersection between class and race but I picked it up to re-read the chapter called "Crossing Class Boundries".

I've had a lot of thoughts about class recently. I've meant to bring it up here but have found it difficult to articulate anything meaningful with enough clarity. I'm going through a terrible self-protective phase of tongue-tiedness.

This quote from the book is interesting:

"Slowly I began to understand fully that there was no place in academe for folks from working-class backgrounds who did not wish to leave the past behind. That was the price of the ticket."

And:

"...I had planted my feet on the path leading in the direction of class priviledge. There would always be contradictions to face. There would always be confrontations around the issue of class. I would always have to reexamine where I stand."

Yep.

Class Matters

I used to be obsessed with this highrise complex. I would take walks past it at night just to see it in the dark all lit up and foreboding. There's just something about it that effects me. I wouldn't want to live there.

Windows

Feels Like Summer

I knew when I was taking this photo that I should have lifted the tripod higher to see inside the ashytray but it was too late and it was also my last shot on the roll.
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Today's beautiful sunny, warm weather was overshadowed by one big shitty event. I'm overworked and overtired and now I'm just cranky and pissed off.

Still, it really felt like summer. After all the shit went down I just threw up my arms and went outside on the deck to get started on my carnivorous plant bog. I've cleaned under my nails and scrubbed my hands but they still reek of muck and rotten leaves. It's all dirt under the nails from here until October.
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New issue of YGG as well as these planty backgrounds I designed for the hell of it.

Madness

These last few days have been madness. My stomach is doing constant flip flops, my body is tense, and my mind is racing. This morning's dream was crazier than yesterday's. My former boss from a distant past (who is now a real estate agent and most likely still a big asshole) was hooking me up with paint and I was looking through a book of chips deciding on colour. This one is going to take some thinking to figure out.

Well, happily I'm finally allowed to say publically that I'm writing, photographing and designing a book on gardening to be out next spring. Someone fabulous is illustrating but I don't know if I'm allowed to make that part public yet. It was driving me mad holding this in as a big secret. During the weeks of negotiations my emotions were ranging from giddy excitment to freakout but I couldn't talk about it much. That was a big drag.

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And on another happy note, Bob surprised us with an insanely generous gift of cameras yesterday. How exciting is that?! There was an Olympus XA, a Seagull 203 (a medium format rangefinder!), and a Yashica rangefinder. It's sunny out. I'm going to have to schedule lunch at the Beaver as an excuse to get outside for pictures.

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Okay now I'm just procrastinating... Ran into Jenny Holzer's Truisms via Mint Tea. I love the truisms and used to have a poster from the show I saw at the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo back in like 1991/92.

Some of my faves:

RAISE BOYS AND GIRLS THE SAME WAY
CHILDREN ARE THE MOST CRUEL OF ALL
REVOLUTION BEGINS WITH CHANGES IN THE INDIVIDUAL
EVEN YOUR FAMILY CAN BETRAY YOU
WHEN SOMETHING TERRIBLE HAPPENS PEOPLE WAKE UP
EVERYONE'S WORK IS EQUALLY IMPORTANT
ALIENATION PRODUCES ECCENTRICS OR REVOLUTIONARIES
ALL THINGS ARE DELICATELY INTERCONNECTED
ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE
A LOT OF PROFESSIONALS ARE CRACKPOTS
A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE CAN GO A LONG WAY
SYMBOLS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN THINGS THEMSELVES
PLAYING IT SAFE CAN CAUSE A LOT OF HARM IN THE LONG RUN
DON'T PLACE TOO MUCH TRUST IN EXPERTS
IT'S JUST AN ACCIDENT THAT YOUR PARENTS ARE YOUR PARENTS
PAIN CAN BE A POSITIVE THING
CLASS STRUCTURE IS AS ARTIFICIAL AS PLASTIC
SOLITUDE IS ENRICHING
A SOLID HOME BASE BUILDS A SENSE OF SELF
EXPRESSING ANGER IS NECESSARY
A STRONG SENSE OF DUTY IMPRISONS YOU
YOU CAN'T FOOL OTHERS IF YOU'RE FOOLING YOURSELF

A Dream

This is one of those indoor pinholes I took on World Pinhole Day. The weather was really awful, forcing me to try something indoors. Basically I just turned a spotlight on this old Fisher Price toy. I don't like the harsh white spot on it's back. I also got a roll back from the Spartus pinhole and the pictures are crap. I was too lazy (and sick) to make a tripod. I was hoping for a nice, shakey softness, but instead I got crazy shakey blotches of nothing with a giant light flare down the side of each photo. Live and learn.

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This morning I awoke from a terrible anxiety-filled dream. In the dream I was art directing a photo shoot but it was way behind schedule. I had the idea to have the photo for a garden-related product ad taken in a discusting, dark stairwell -- the type of place I would take my usual photos. Interestingly enough I did figure out a way to use a tripod on stairs through the dream.

Anyway, the shoot was just supposed to be the model, the photographer and myself, but everytime I turned around there were more people. Oh one other funny thing was when I got there no one was around but the camera was set up. The camera was this fancy, hi-end tlr. For some reason I set-up my Lubitel next to it. It looked pretty sad and pathetic sitting there next to that fancy schmancy camera.

So I realised the dark stairwell was a bad idea for a gardening product and decided to have the photos shot indoors (suddenly there was an indoor location) and in the bright, cheery lawn/garden that just happened to magically appear next to the dark stairwell. But then I realised I needed flowers. So I ran down the street to try and find a corner store that sold potted spring bulbs or pansies or something. But when I got to the corner there were no less then five stores but not one of them sold flowers. Instead they were those bleak "party stores" I saw in Detroit many years ago that were all bricked up with one tiny window and lots of bullet-proof glass. Oh I forgot to mention that the dream was set in New York City. So then I ran back to the set and when I got there the crew had expanded again! There were now at least twenty people sitting around complaining about how behind schedule we were but no one was doing anything but sitting. The rest of the dream was basically me running around acheiving nothing, the crew of ass-sitters growing larger and larger and the photographer and model somehow magically getting everything done that I was trying to do but with little effort.

Needless to say I know what the dream means. Not good.

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I was interviewed for this New York Times article on gardening a while back and it came out today. Madness.

Eleven

Today (approximately) is our eleven year anniversary. I tried to find a picture with both of us in it but since we both take photos we don't have any of those. Except a photobooth picture but I don't have time to scan.

Eleven years. I try to comprehend that but... it just doesn't seem like it's been that long. Life is very abstract that way. In some ways we're still like kids; older, smarter, wiser, more mature kids with crow's feet and grey hair (which suits Mr. Risk well). When I compare myself to people on TV I am always shocked by how young I seem in contrast to other people who are much younger than Mr. Risk and I. Who are these people you see on TLC's lunch time television? Are they the norm?

In some ways we have this hugely responsible, mature life, but at the same time we don't have the life we're "supposed" to have for people within our age bracket. We don't have a wedding album sitting on the coffee table, a house, kids, a car... none of that stuff that sterotypically defines "growing up". The older I get the more I discover that there is no norm. That sometimes people rush to acheive these milestones because they think they should be keeping up with an agenda that someone else has set. The older I get the more I want that agenda to be defined by me and no one else.

Anyways, damn, eleven years!

Stats n Stuff

A panoramic of this building.

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I wasn't going to post today but then I checked my stats. The search queries for this site are endlessly entertaining. It's most likely because I write about a variety of topics. Lately I've been getting searches for "Sierra California Grill", the "California-style" restaurant we went to on our suburban tour a month or so back. I imagine people looking online for a menu or a review of the restauarant and coming upon my site. Hilarious!

But today, there was a search for Faith Charlton, one of the "scurrying hostesses with headsets" who took our order. I suppose a search result on one's name that ended here might freak a person out a bit (although I'm positive those name tags were fake). And of course now that I've posted about all this a second time I'm guaranteed to move up from my current #3 placement in google which will assure more traffic here from the Sierra California Grill set.

Fourteen Inches

It is common practice in this neighbourhood for drug dealers to reach out to new customers by muttering their list of goods as people walk by. "Acid, coke, pot." I don't know who does acid anymore but someone must because it's been muttered to me.

This afternoon when I was walking back from a grocery excursion a guy muttered "Fourteen inches" as I passed him.

I suppose that just as someone out their is keeping acid on the market, someone else is picking up using insanely ridiculous strategies.

Pinkie's Truck

This photo is from the film set of Moss, shot back in January but I decided to post it today to commemorate the moving on of Pinkie's Truck. Over the weekend we did a walk along the tracks and discovered that one of our favourite picture-taking locations has been altered. They removed the truck, the tires, and the car filled with broken bikes. They also put fences up so we can no longer use that area as a shortcut. Damn them, whoever they are!

But as I said to Mr. Risk, the locals and the drunks will not be locked out from their routes. People have their habits and their routines and they generally don't take well to having them changed by authority. Someone will break those fences soon enough and it will be business as usual. The only thing that worries me is the possibility that they have gone to the trouble of cleaning up and fencing off in order to build on the lot. Just what we need, another friggin' loft/toft.

More Pinkie's Truck: pinhole, digital, digital 2, near the former location of the truck.

Kodak Instamatic 1985

Image two from my Kodak Instamatic. Most likely also from 1985. I'm fairly certain I didn't take this photo either.