Gemeinschaftsgefühl Revisited

One thing that has always bothered me is when people don’t show up.  I’m just trying to accomplish something beautiful with my life.  In order for me to do that, in my little philosophy of what is actually beautiful, I need people to participate.  I don’t live in a time like Cartier-Bresson, where you could shoot random people on the street doing random things.  While that would technically satisfy my creative desire, it is considered in my time to be an invasion of privacy, and I don’t have the social prowess to reassure people that I’m not just some creeper on the streets shooting the wrong thing, plus, everyone with things as mindlessly passive as a cell phone are already doing that.  

All that is just more on the list of things that people don’t understand about me.  I need a more intimate connection with who I’m shooting so I’m not a shy, backward, dork who fucks up the photos because I’m basically having a very well disguised panic attack… I am an actor.  People have said, “you’re an actor; why can’t you just act friendly.”  I do; that is primarily what I do.  Right now I am sitting on a rock on my mountain, with my computer and a beer.  That’s my safe place.  If someone else wandered into my setting, I wouldn’t very well say, “fuck off, I was here first.” 

I would be as friendly as I can be, which for those who know me is definitely a debatable definition of friendly, and I would pack up my silly little car and, instead of finding a new place, I would probably just go home and abandon what I’m writing, because that doesn’t just interfere with what I’m doing, it completely derails my train.  Somewhere there is a list of things that people don’t understand about me.  Oh, these weird tangents I go on.  I’m a stupid social retard.  That has been the number one reason I haven’t accomplished anything with my life.  Well, maybe a close second to my past habits of total and complete self destruction. 

So, yeah, I actually need willing participants to accomplish what I’m trying to accomplish, but for the most part all I can find is people who want to be a part of the beautiful that I’m attempting to accomplish, but don’t show up.  There’s always a viable-ish reason, but it’s usually just basic things that make life what it is, or underlying fear.  One thorn that has been in my side has been this little mountain town that my parents moved me to when I was 12.  It sells itself as a free, open, art community, but all I have ever found is a very conservative, terrified of everything community. 

I hear stories about the interesting, open people, but they have never been in my social circle, if such a thing exists for me.  That could be explained by the painfully obvious reality that people either really don’t like me, which is pretty easy when there’s a list of things people don’t understand about me, or people are afraid of me; forget what I do, or what I’m trying to do, straight up afraid of me, like I'm some psycho serial killer.  Each and every person I know could easily fit into either category, or both.  I am absolutely surrounded by free, open, spiritual, beautiful people, who have little to no interest in actually being any of those things, and are terrified to just BE beautiful, which will always require nothing more complicated than simply being. 

It truly baffles me how few people understand that.  Maybe they do understand it, but they just don’t want to share it with me, because they don’t like me or are afraid of me?  In the meantime, I’m just sitting here waiting for people to show up; people who not only agreed to show up, but pushed the case.  I am fortunate to have my beautiful family to document; I am grateful for that; and while they are my figurative world, it is incredibly difficult to see so much beauty in the literal world, and be denied access to capture it.  This is all relative, of course; I have communicated with little to no models who weren't interested in working with me, but that is always stomped out by location, time, and money, in which case I was usually the one who disappeared from the conversation because it’s so fucking depressing.  I am surrounded by beauty, though.  It is everywhere.  It exists primarily in places that are incapable of realizing it.  It is a basic truth that people don’t understand.  We have these amazing minds that keep us from understanding the blatantly obvious, primarily because we are surrounded by amazing minds that can’t see past the petty, stupid shit, and our potentially beautiful, amazing minds settle for the worth of their wasted potential of maybe one day realizing how amazing all of this is. 

We are a beautiful animal, who has no idea how beautiful we are, before we do anything to BE beautiful.  The sun is setting…the moon’s out…no one to shoot.  Story of my life.  All you had to do was be here.  You’ve got more important things, though, or you don’t like me, or you’re scared of me, or you are terrified to be beautiful.

I have fallen so deep into my mind at this point that I can hardly function.  I feel like I'm living in the foggy aftermath of wasted potential.  I am pretty confident that I've typed that line a number of times in the past.

So...gemeinschaftsgefühl...you elusive bitch...you invisible ideal.  Where are these beautiful souls who just are?  Why must everything come with a laundry list of bullshit delusions?  Why can't people just be?  Why am I asking so many questions that I already know the answer to?

I used to exist to make you feel beautiful, or even loved, for just a brief moment in a world that drowns you in feeling like you have to do more than what you were born with.  Now I feel like I'm harassing people to make them feel better about themselves.

Maybe I'm just a crazy psychopath.

There's a list.

Love your life.

Live it.

Why can't I document it?

Here's Hoping

 This is how I feel right now.

I was going to post a little something last night, after I got home from closing my restaurant for the first time in about a year.  I'm glad I didn't.  Posts after midnight never leave a good taste.  I'm not going to pretend like I want to get off work at midnight, especially on days where I start at the brewery at 6 or 7am, but I am doing what I need to do, and while I might not always be a ray of sunshine, shit will get done, and each day will be beautiful.  This should actually free up my weekdays a little to get something accomplished, but that will take some getting used to.

I mentioned that last Sunday was my last Sunday off; turns out it's tomorrow, so something might still happen on my last official Sunday off.  I actually asked for my first Sunday working off, if that makes any sense, to go shoot a little something in SD, which would make my first Sunday actually working the 18th... the day we are celebrating my not so tyrannical toddler's birthday, which is actually on the 17th, also my father's birthday, and Beethoven's unofficial birthday, whose 3rd symphony I named my second daughter after.

My head hurts.

Tomorrow, though.  Maybe.

One More Weak

 Everything changes today.  I actually had to ask my boss if I work tomorrow, or what time I work on Friday.  He asked me why I wasn't on Hotschedules, and I simply mentioned that I've had the same schedule for like the last ten months, which, while my job description has changed, has really been even longer than that. I've worked every day but Sunday for about a year.  I've never really needed to look at a schedule.  Now, my restaurant is closed for lunch during the week, my shift.  To compensate, I'll be working Fri/Sat/Sun...closing Sunday.  The second job has apparently leveled off.  We ironically filled all our tanks with beer, plus one 5 barrel tank which will have to be kegged (that's 10 kegs of Belgian Tripel), right about the same time my work schedule will be freed up for the weekdays I should have been brewing beer.  Up to this point, I was going to the brewery in the wee hours of the morning to help out with the mill and prepping the fermentation tanks on brew days, then heading to my restaurant to work the rest of the day.  I've really only helped out on one complete batch (a double batch), and even then I technically left early after helping clean out the mash tun around hour 14.

 I feel like I'm giving the average reader way too much information to digest here.  While I do talk a lot about the realities of my life, in general, I don't really talk much about the fact that I'm a cook, not really the romanticized writer or photographer that I pretend to be.  I am a cook, and now an assistant brewmaster, but still a cook, with a lot less to cook now.  Shit, I'm not even a cook, I'm on the cold line; I make pretty salads.  Lately I've been doing more pizzas, but I'm the salad guy.  Well, I'm the prep guy who does salads.  Then again, until recently I've had to spend most of my weekdays doing dishes, so I guess I'm a dishwasher who does prep and makes salads and pizzas.

 I'm a glorified dishwasher, who somehow managed to land a gig as the assistant brewmaster at the local brewery that has been gradually opening for a couple years.  I keep getting promoted, but I have to keep doing all the things I did before.  That's complicated.  Obviously, things are not as dramatic as I write (kind of), but things right now are pretty traumatic in my mind.  I am used to being on a schedule; whether I am really happy with it or not, I continue to show up until someone tells me to stop.  I have basically been told to stop, but am yet to really have something else to do, aside from the new sporadic job that basically doesn't need me anymore, and I've got mouths to feed.

 There is a sense of panic.  This starts tomorrow.  I have a Thursday off that isn't a holiday, but I'll probably still go in for a couple hours to put the truck away because no one else wants to do it.  I know everything will be fine, it always is, but I can't help but pretend that I didn't fantasize about the new job completely easing any sort of financial shortcomings of my now being the sole provider for a family of four.  If only the praise that we received for our work payed the bills.  I feel like I should get back to that distraction.

 Last Tuesday was our first frost.  I know that because I wake up every morning as soon as it's light enough to read on my little deck.  On this particular Tuesday I was not waking up to read, but already on my way out to lug 50 pound bags of grain up a little ladder and pour into a mill.  I wrote a lot in my little journal about the significance of walking out onto my deck at about 5:30am to discover a sheet of ice over the wood.  The reality of the usefulness of my silly little car set in, and I basically had to come to terms with the fact that I would spend a significant number of days in the next four months walking to and from work in the icy dark.

 This is how I feel right now.

By the end of the week, a storm rolled in and we got our first snow.  Not much of a snow, but it stacked pretty quick, and I had to put chains on tires for the first time in seven years, with numb fingers, and spin my tires up one of the most treacherous roads on my little mountain, which I swore I would never live at the top of.  Again, not that much snow, and not really that cold, but my car is that silly, and the road to my house is that steep.

 Before any of that happened, I was set to shoot with another potentially beautiful soul on the proceeding Sunday, while my family was visiting grandma in AZ.  She cancelled last minute, and my family was already on their way home from grandma's because of... things.  There is still a struggle going on in this Universe, but I keep smiling... mostly.  Thursday was, of course, Thanksgiving, and we have made it our family tradition to go out and shoot (in our year of being a family).  We drove three hours to check out Algodones Dunes.  I had never been, and had wanted to check it out for years.  I was completely overwhelmed by the beauty of it, but also completely disappointed that we couldn't shoot it.  You could see the trailers and campers crammed into this little space from miles away.  Thanksgiving weekend.  Duh.  I could've easily done a little research, but decided to fly by faith, which lately has been kicking the ever loving shit out of me.  I still don't know if it was some kind of race, or event, or just a bunch of shit-kickers playin in the sand with their overpriced redneck dirt toys, but we were left to make the most of it, again, so we drove out on a nearby dirt road for a while and tried to do something beautiful before the already setting sun disappeared.

Eroica wouldn't take to the sling, so the beginning was ridden with fussy baby.  She finally decided to simply set her down in a soft patch of dirt, and the child was perfectly content just kicking it there while we shot.  The setting was beautiful in it's own right, but wasn't the dunes that we drove three hours to shoot.  She explored emotion a little deeper; I failed at getting my cut rate 50mm to focus a little deeper.  On top of all that, we were dealing with racing the sun because of an entirely mismanaged and disappointing day.  There is still a struggle going on in this Universe...

Breathe.

The day turned out like they all do: beautiful.  After Ero started to get fussy, we hung out in the afterglow and enjoyed a little Blonde to the soundtrack of a train passing on the tracks that she had just pulled a bunch of nails out of because we thought they were dead, having not seen a train all day.  Home.  Sleep.  Work.

Sunday was my last Sunday off.  We accomplished fighting.  This month I am set to make about a third of what I have been making.  Happy Holidays.

Carry Wood; Chop Water

 It's funny how much I write, in relation to what actually makes it onto these writing platforms.  For so long I would just ramble away with whatever happened to be spinning through my tired mind; for years I didn't write much in journals at all; this was my journal.  Now, I have to be much more guarded about what I write, so my focus has shifted back to journals that (mostly) don't get read.  When I started journaling thirty years ago, I imagined it would be easier to translate to a reading platform, but all I've really got is stacks of journals.

 I've written about this before: the stacks of journals; the boxes full of journals; and what it all really means.  Shit, at this point I feel like I've written about all of this before.  Maybe that's why I publish on this medium so rarely?  Also something I have written about: reading journals from high school that sound like I wrote them last week; nothing much has changed.  Well, nothing about the way I feel about things has changed.  Obviously, things have changed immensely just in this last year.  I am stuck in such a psychological whirlpool.

 I am tired.

The new job is still terrifying because I really have no idea what I'm doing; the old job is exhausting because people keep quitting, but at least business is slowing down a little for winter; home is full of emotion; life is swiftly speeding by; the holidays are here already; it's cold; while I'm lucky to have this much work in the winter months of a little mountain town, I'm not making enough; I am not enough; I keep going; I can't go on; I'll go on; ever tried, ever failed...

 Everything is fine.


I wish no one was paying attention.


I wish it was still ironically funny for me to say that.

 This girl is amazing.  She is right there trying to live up to what she thinks I need her to be, but she is already more than enough.  I can't pretend like this journey hasn't been a bit of a nightmare, but everything is beautiful...

Lavanyamaya.

... sometimes cleverly hidden in the reality of it all.

 I just want to go to bed.


I just want to sleep...and sleep...and sleep.


Nothing I write at this point is really a fair representation of what is actually happening, though I want it to be, which is why I have always wished I could simply live in fiction.  I created this character to protect myself from the little mountain town that I am now fully immersed in, and while I had been planning my escape for over a decade, and managed to actually escape, on someone else's terms, for a couple years, but am now in a position where I actually want to be here.  This is all so confusing to me.  It is so much easier to just hate everything.


I still want to disappear, but I don't want to miss this.

I still want to walk the earth with my family and share the beauty that I see in this world, with the world, the best I am capable, but I keep showing up for work, and I keep doing my job, and I keep paying rent, and I keep smiling, and I keep crying, and fuck.


Eroica, the child I've been waiting a lifetime to have, which no one truly appreciates, is two months old... eight and a half weeks. What the fuck am I doing?


No matter.
Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better.

Stutter and Stammer

There are little moments in between the chaos where we can pretend that everything is fine.

Everything is fine.

Everything is beautiful.

I work a lot.

We're still alive.

This is happening.

I don't know if you've noticed, but I've become a tired old man.  30's are strange.  They tell you, at least as an actor, that this is your golden decade, where you are still young enough to play the fun leads, and not old enough to be forever tied up in the cliche characters, which really applies to the life cycle beautifully.  I did not really take much advantage of that.  30's leave you feeling young, but not as stupid; crazy, but practical.  You feel like you can still conquer the world, but you gradually feel that disconnect from the "younger" crowd, until, one day, you look at yourself in the mirror, and... shit.

It's gone.

Now we are on to another void.  Now we raise children and do what we can to prepare them for what we are gradually figuring out, but they won't listen, like we didn't listen.  We continue to try, and continue to doubt our ability to do even the simplest things competently.  A lot of people completely fail as parents because they had kids while they were too young.  Well, either you fail, or you are forced to grow up too quick, both of which create resentments and much deeper issues.  Most don't understand what being a parent really takes out of you.  The thought of cute babies drives people to have them.  The reality of tyrannical toddlers drives people to insanity, and in more cases than not, leads to at least a minor amount of psychological and emotional abuse.

This will always raise the question of whether or not there is a correct way to raise a child.  There are certainly more than enough documented cases of incorrect ways to raise children, but even brilliant children who are certainly not raised incorrectly often turn out to be seriously fucked in the head, if not straight up serial killers.  It's funny hearing people talk about their childhoods; there is always some sort of a complaint, and if there isn't, that is usually a sign of even deeper, underlying disfunction: "you bet your ass my dad beat me, and I'm glad he did."  OK.

I'm lucky to have a toddler that isn't too tyrannical, and a partner that pushes the boundaries of patience everyday.  Though both those boundaries often look like a time lapse of European and Asian borders over the course of thousands of years, we get along fine at the end of the day, and not just because I've been training my whole life to survive the tortures of the damned.  We make it work, because that's what people do who want it to work: they make it work.  Drinking a shit ton of amazing beers from around the world as research and development for my new job helps, a lot.

With me, as I'm sure you have already figured out, all that is really needed to hold on to some kind of sanity is shooting, or accomplishing something creative.  I am also lucky to have found someone who, while she has plenty of complaints about where her body is at (she not only just had a baby, but a second baby), is still willing to put herself out there for my photographic and creative necessities, and really allow anyone who is paying attention to my ramblings to watch as her, our, these bodies evolve, up and down in this beautiful, temporal cycle that we call life.  That was really all I was ever asking for on this silly little journey.  People gave me a lot of shit, and assumed horrible things, because I surrounded myself with 18-21 year old girls.  The truth that no one ever understood was that all I ever did was surround myself with souls who were willing to be shot.  I could give you an ever growing list of 25+ year olds who love my work but want nothing to do with being a part of it.  There were always very practical reasons for my shenanigans; above all else: accomplishment; accomplish something, everyday.  I know most don't understand, but it is who I am, who I've always been.  You can try to understand it, or you can go about your mundane business.

Obviously, with two kids and me working six days a week, we don't get accomplished what I would find ideal, in my clusterfuck of cerebral madness, but it is definitely enough.  Scouring the wilderness for a couple hours a week, or even stopping on the side of the road on the way to the store, is more than enough to keep me happy.  Things will become what they will become, and I'll really be happy regardless, but something would be severely missing from my life.  A lot of people don't realize that most of my photographs in the last year and a half have had a toddler just out of frame.  We make it work.  On my last day off we went out to explore Anza Borrego, an area that I am yet to touch.  The toddler was with her dad, but I had an infant strapped to me.  We make it work.  I am sure you are also sick of hearing about how little I'm accomplishing, as the girl in my photos is, when I am accomplishing plenty, but you have to understand the drive.  Give me a soul willing to be documented, and a season with the actual freedom to explore where ever, when ever, and I'll give you a book.  For the time being, we are tied to the social expectations that put food on the table and make our car payments.

I try to be a good dad, but it is usually prompted, to the point that she accuses me of not wanting to be a dad.  Fifteen years ago I didn't want to be stuck, so I left.  Today I don't want to be stuck, but I'm doing this.  "In the meantime," is the key to accomplishing something.  The daily routine is just that, and while it is often overwhelming, feeling like you are accomplishing surviving, it is something that billions of souls do on this planet everyday.  I can say that my brain is focused on bigger things, but what bigger things are there than raising souls?... so someone would say who focuses all their attention on the children.  It gets more and more difficult to focus on making the world a better place for my children to live in, when I am being forced to drink imaginary tea and pretending to eat food that is, in reality, wood carved into food like shapes and perpetually recycled into the imagination.

I don't think my inability to "play" makes me a bad parent or person, while some would argue otherwise, I've just got bigger things going on, which sometimes only makes sense to me.  I would rather my kids grew up seeing me accomplishing something, than grow up with an adult who indulges every childish whim.  That's what mothers are for *dodges thrown chair*.  Obviously it's not as simple as that.  I grew up with a father who was working; if he wasn't at work, he was at home, working.  Because of that I have a very strong work ethic.  If I had grown up with a father who was constantly not getting work done because he was playing with me, maybe I would be more apt to play.  In the meantime, it takes a lot out of me to play.  Even as a child, I didn't participate much in childish games, I was too busy playing out some epic story in my mind.  I've spent the better part of my life figuring out the enigma of myself, but I'll leave it to professionals to define, which could very well fit in to the aforementioned "deeper, underlying disfunction."  I, of course, am incapable of seeing a trait that I am proud of as something that is "wrong" with me, but I am ever closer to understanding that most of the things I hate about this world I'm stuck in are nothing more than my own inability to understand the simplicity of settling.

Does any of that make sense?  Does anything make sense?  More of my conundrum, sense being an entirely subjective object based on perception and understanding: you have to understand things to understand things, otherwise you basically just know things are there and understand what others want you to understand based of what they want out of you.

"...for paralysis will soon result from trying to remember whether we have remembered everything accurately.”

Believe it or not (I'm sure you believe it), this post was supposed to just be that first photo with attached rambling, scribbled while the family was napping.  A day later, this happens: endless trains of thought, twisting and turning through endless hills and deserts in my mind, and all colliding in the wreck of my reality, and beautiful as that is.  These are the things on the tip of my tongue at every moment in time, so I remain silent, mostly, to save you from this.  You should see my journals.  Seriously.  Something is wrong with me; something is right with me; I don't know; breathe.

I can't wait for my mid life crisis to start, so everything can just be delusionally fucking bad ass.

Decisive Moment

 I don't know about you, but when I imagine the whole labor process, I imagine an attitude like this.

She roused me at 6am on Monday, the 19th of September, the baby's due date, and talk like a pirate day (strange history with the day for me, obviously), and told me that her contractions were regular enough for her to want to head down to the birth center in San Diego.  My first mumbled question was, "did your water break?" No. Well, no hurry.  I let my boss know that I was taking my little leave, we gradually packed the car with pretty much everything we use, or might use, in case of an apocalypse... like you do, and we started the two and a half hour drive to the nearest ethical birth center we could find.  The drive was simple enough: beautiful music and calming conversation; plus the toddler was still half asleep, so not awake enough to be... well..... a toddler.  We stopped at one of our bathroom places.  I had a cigarette, and the little one stayed in her seat because she didn't need to go to the bathroom.  Two minutes after being back on the road she needed to go to the bathroom.

 A while later, approaching the next place we normally stop for a bathroom/cigarette break, I asked her if she was able to hold it and needed to stop and go.  She said she was fine, so we blew through to get to SD quicker.  A couple minutes later she said she needed to go to the bathroom.  Toddler problems.  She ended up holding it successfully until we were about fifteen minutes out from the center (not without some screaming), so props to her.

I imagined that this would be a lengthy process, maybe labor at her grandma's house in Chula Vista for a while. We wanted to stop by the birth center so they could check her out first.  After announcing how busy her day was with babies popping out all over the place (I blame Christmas), the awesome nurse told her to take her time with laboring, but after checking her out she told us to stay close and be back within the hour.  We opted to head down to her grandma's, unpack our apocalyptic preparations, and leave the toddler with her grandpa and great grandma so we could have a little laboring peace.

 We walked around the city park part of Balboa Park for a little bit.  I took a couple shots with my phone, but we mostly just talked and laughed.  Then she thought her water broke...maybe.  If you don't know then it didn't.  It didn't.  We headed back to the birth center and checked into one of their hotel suite type rooms.  She didn't labor that long before the nurse suggested she get in the tub.  She said she didn't feel like she was ready to push yet, but she got in the tub, had one hard contraction, then on her next one the baby was there. Done.

 It took me completely by surprise.  I was looking at the baby in the water, and an embarrassing amount of time went by before I even realized.....that's a baby! it's over.  Shit.  I felt like I totally missed it.  These last two photos are sequential: 5570 and 5571.  I took a quick photo while she was getting into the tub, the put the camera down to hold her hand and rub her back because she was having contractions.  Then the main nurse rushed in and they got her to settle back a little so I moved to the head of the tub, aaaaand baby.  Simple enough.  I rushed over to grab my camera and started shooting again, but it wasn't long before they were handing me scissors to cut the cord, then handing me baby to take care of mom.  I recorded the whole thing with my computer.  I have the baby coming at minute five, but they clocked her "pushing time" at four minutes, and logged the event as "spontaneous vaginal water birth."  I posted a photo to IG with the tagline, "Wait, I missed it. Do it again."  I wasn't making some petty joke about the pains of labor.  That actually happened.

I've been through this once before, mind you it was 16 years ago, but it went how they tell you it's supposed to go: she woke me up in the wee hours of the morning when her water broke, we drove to the hospital and still sat in the delivery room for 1000 hours until the baby came.  That was exhausting.  This was..... chill.  And her water didn't break until the baby was coming out.  No one told me that was an option.  I know second babies generally come quicker, but this was like a storybook labor.  I was not prepared for that.  At very least I expected some verbal abuse.

The whole day was just beautifully serene and peaceful.  After I cut the cord and took the baby into the other room, of which there are no photos, I just hummed to her and she stared at me, like she wasn't surprised by any of this either; like, "ok, this is what happens next."  She latched right away, and just stared at mom.  Then another nurse showed up to do the poking and prodding, joking about the talk downstairs of the ideal laboring couple taking care of things upstairs.

The day obviously went by pretty quick, even though I had to run downstairs every couple hours to move the car to a different parking meter so we didn't get a ticket.  We had planned to have the toddler there to be a part of the beautiful festivities, but decided to give grandpa a call closer to birth and have him bring her down so she wouldn't have to suffer through the hours of labor and be bored out of her mind.  Not only did the hours of labor not happen, but there wasn't even enough time to think to call.

Then we went to great grandma's house and just hung out for a couple days waiting for follow up appointments.  Some family came to visit.  We slept a lot.  The toddler took a little while to understand the fragility of babies, but she gradually settled in.  I took the toddler on a couple little adventures so everyone else could breathe.  There were a couple really nice talks with grandma about parenting and life.  It wasn't long before we just wanted to be home.

Her mom showed up Friday to help out for a couple weeks.  I went back to work on Saturday to chaos, and an eleven and a half hour shift.  I got up before the sun on Sunday to go brew beer with my new boss at his house, which he kept referring to as the "last home brew."  We brewed a double batch of a sour oatmeal stout, and he walked me through the process that I've been reading about for the last couple weeks.  Then we tasted some of his beers and talked about beer and life and music.  It was amazing.  I really look forward to working with him.  Last I heard, the brewery part of the pub will be finished by the end of the month (shit. that's in two days), but I don't know how soon I'll actually be in there.  It will be a beautiful journey for me and my family, and this town.  I am completely overwhelmed to have the opportunity to be a part of it.  Add that to my being overwhelmed by this new little perfect baby; and to the current job; and to having mom in law staying with us; and tOdDler!!!; and fuck.

Eroica wrapped in my baby blanket.

The girl wants me to talk about how I'm feeling, still.  Everything is just a bit overwhelming right now.  Plus she's still recovering from the inside of her body turning inside out and is a wee bit emotional.  I am having a hard enough time dealing with the constant contradiction of being good enough and not being good enough every couple minutes, ad infinitum.

I love it here

Everything is beautiful; lAvaNyamaya.

Shut the fuck up.

Everything is going to be fine.

Breathe.

The title of this post was supposed to be more relevant.  I had constructed a beautiful little introduction talking about Cartier-Bresson's philosophy on photography and life, but I don't remember what it was.  I've been writing this for three days, and the first day was deleted by a computer malfunction because I function in the online world on a dinosaur, because ... life.  I'm tired.  Maybe one day it will drift back through my sad little mind again?

I imagine my posts, which have already been sparse on this particular blog, will become even harder to come by.  I just don't have the energy to life any more, much less write.  I am also in a pretty deep funk because of the quality of the few photos I did get of what was supposed to be the most epically beautiful moment of my life, a second chance.  Everything is a little bit blurry.  I've gotten pretty good at blaming my cut rate equipment, but maybe I'm just a lousy photographer.  On top of that, I honestly feel like I missed it.  I still go to sleep at night with the feeling that she's going to wake me up and we're going to have to drive to SD for something that has already happened.  Everything really went that smoothly, like it was just another day or week in our lives.  I feel like this post was entirely uneventful; outside of my normal voice; cut and dry events, albeit beautiful, and epic, and....... maybe I'm just depressed because I've already put too much expectation on this poor little soul?  Most parents can't wait to find out what their children will become; I am already assuming extraordinary.  She's a week old.  Right now I'm just happy that someone on this planet finds so much comfort in my arms.

Waiting

 I suppose my farewell post a week and a half ago was a bit premature.  She still isn't due until Monday.  We are just a wee bit anxious to get this over with.  While strictly monitoring every little movement, and barely sleeping because she is doing so, she has since had two doctors appointments in San Diego, we had a beautiful little birthday dinner a la Michael Newberry and a small group of beautiful people last Friday, my mother has visited, her parents have visited, she's had a birthday, Sunday I went to a job interview type thing (I don't even know what to call it) for a position that would completely change the course of my life, as you may be able to tell from the look on my face that my girl captured shortly after,

 and the rest of the time has been spent feeling her belly and waiting...well...and working every day.  Summer is definitely over, which is never more evident than in my work hours.  I'm on day four of six this week, and am at 19 hours.  That's a little depressing, but I suppose all of that will be changing soon.  Che bella fortuna.

In the meantime, we are just waiting for this beautiful little soul to arrive.  She hasn't had much energy to shoot, but you know me.  Today cuddle bug stayed with her dad, so we went out to shoot at a location I meant to scout this last week for a shoot that isn't going to happen, which is a shame, but it is what it is.  I, naturally, passed the spot I've been to before, because I haven't been there in five years, so we were stuck on bumpy control roads for a while until we could find a spot to turn around.

 Bumpy roads and a girl who is monitoring every little cramp and wondering if it's a contraction don't go together well.  By the time I found a spot to turn around (I NEED A JEEP), and we got back to about where I think the spot was but is completely different because things change, both of us were ready to just go home.  We are creative monsters, though (at least I am), so we shot anyway.  I, in all my idiocracy, decided to shoot with a lens that was given to me a while back, an FD 135mm/2.8.  Sounds like a dream, and the shots in camera looked good, but the always mentioned fog was very noticeable once I got it into my computer.

The depth of field was very nice, but I can't be happy with a photo that doesn't have sharp focus, and I can't afford those professional lenses, so I'll just keep smiling and shooting with my more trusted, newer lenses, that are also fogged because I tend to shoot into the sun a lot, noticeable in the above photo with the triple rainbow flare (never seen that one before).  I have never been disappointed shooting into the sun.  I have no idea why so many people avoid it.  Lens hoods be damned!  Give me flare or give me death!  When I figure out how to accomplish that without fogging the lens, I'll let you know.

So....... just waiting for this baby to come.

I guess I'll go back to binge reading books on how to brew beer.

Bet ya didn't see that one coming.

Neither did I.

=)