Trace the Sky

Nothing in the world has ever been so unearthly.

In the highest reaches of the Eastern Sierras, the desert lies so close to the sky. The air is so pure, but the beauty and lightness make the world dance with every step. It's oxygen deprivation, the say, but early people believed it was a mindset of the gods. Certainly the heart-stopping views lend validity to either or both of these notions.





Walking is a swish-swish of the feet, the sound replacing my breath that brings no release. It's so quiet here. I'm on the moon, a moon with gnomish trees. As I climb, chips of alabaster marble skitter down the hills, caught by the bare bones of ancient wood.



You wonder what lives up here: Moths, small deer, occasionally birds. Jittery gray jackrabbits with continental ears. Up here, the plants are low and prickly, sweetly scenting the air with fresh pungency. Tiny bright flowers, pushing with all their might for potent miniature displays. With no one here to sniff them, there seems to be an olfactory overabundance. Such a contrast to the subtleties of life, sound, and air.



The shape of the land is hard: First the gentle swoop of a lunar white landscape encrusted with jagged rocks. Pockets of tired snow hide in the shadows, and the rolling hills belie their stunning height.





A purple haze paints a backdrop to the blue mountain wall. A silent, swollen moon. No sound but the light whirr of hidden birds and the soft rush of the wind. Perhaps when the light is gone the lunar desert will teem with life, but I can never believe that such a pristine environment could ever be characterized as "busy."

Chimera

In the night he came for me; I don't know how I knew. I made my excuses and slipped away, and met him in the park. The lights were on, the storm was there, and lightning pricked the tarry sky. His quiet, his grin, and his cunning had not changed at all in many years. He was a traveler traveling light, but there he was. For me.

The smile I shared was not one familiar on my face, but time erases fault, guilt, and need. It was good to see him. It was good to slip to old comforts, feel the warmth of relief while starting new. Conversation was not lost in his reticence, and the night passed away.

Morning came, he left once more. I went home. I did not ask any questions of him to stain my present with our future.

Across the country he walked without a word. Ever traveling, ever light. I would dream of where he was, my angel of that night but never would I know for true. Slowly, my smiles grew cold and heavy again.

Somewhere, deep in darkness and miles away, he knew. Breaking laws of his nature he walked once more, back to me, my tears and my heart.

Was this a dream? Yes. Yes it was.

Encapsulated

For three months I lay dormant.



I feel like my head had been wrapped delicately in cotton and tucked into an ancient wooden chest. The cloth is complacency, the drawer my fear.

I have very little to say right now for this, except that it is a trap all too easily fallen. Inertia, the Enemy.

It's lonely here, being holed up in this drawer without much indication of light or sound outside. In a way, it's peaceful. But you don't pack things away to keep them there forever. A prison is a prison, regardless of the original agreement or intent.

I'll feel the air again, see smiles and faces and take opportunities alike. There's so much to do here if you look. Sometimes it's just hard to see.

Tonight, the quartet on Castro pulled on my strings... Come here. Their kind, innocent faces are so different from the buskers you would expect to find on the hardened streets. I've heard them before, beautiful Baroque notes sweetly drifting out of patio windows and reminding me of my own beloved violin, tucked away in green velvet in a wooden box. Sleeping, somewhere. Just like me.

Maybe they're local. Maybe they're roommates. Maybe they're students. Either way they remind me that even the most unassuming person can change the lives of others, and as I lay ticking off the weeks in my cotton, it's all just slipping by.

Now.

Act One

Post-Baltimore visit, my eyes are opened like they have never been opened before. They say that travel nourishes the soul and broadens the mind, but such lyricism rings true for the greatest and the smallest trips that one takes.

The goodness of quirky, familiar Baltimore aside, it's good to be back in Frisco. Today dawned gray and murky, warmer than expected which is always a bit of a disappointment. After sweltering in the swampy humidity of the East, everyone on board flight VX77 out of Dulles was looking forward to shivering in coats after we deplaned.

Washington DC and the suburbs are utterly walkable, but not in a way that I have experienced so far like in the Castro. With this mornings errand, I had scarcely been in California for 10 hours when the cast and characters of the Castro stage were played out before my very gaze:

Tree cuttings of the ornamental foliage on 17th. A friendly smile, a pre-emptive dive to cross the street as the PGE workers snipped and pruned high above. "Don't worry, ma'am, you can come this way!" What a beautiful smile he had, all lines and creases and his story etched upon his ebony face. A face that, while seen a million times in the southern charms of Baltimore, seemed so much more to me out here in the west.

A proud, willowy boy walking from the store, the gym, or maybe just from his apartment headed towards up Market. His strides were sure, his feet sang a swaying rhythm found only on the runway. While I am not proud enough to meet his eye and be caught admiring his glamorous surety, I knew, even dressed in tight jeans and a plain t-shirt that he was a queen. When night falls he's someone else entirely, someone whose preferred sunlight is the stage. Strut, stand, and turn. A girl could watch that forever.

The clean-cut, perfectly groomed 40-something businessmen. Like the retro-hip salarymen of Japan, this is what we have. Fine silvery scruff, too perfectly trimmed to truly be that, subtle stripes and patterns and cloth, accessorized just well enough to ride that line between casual and not. They are on the corner, in Peet's, outside the Muni, in the office, on their phones, meeting on the corners conferring with their chaps.

Underfoot, the street life. Threaded between trendy shops and hip pink eateries, the ubiquitous individuals who seem constantly clad in drab green and black. Crusty, dirty, but social. They sleep on the street in plain sight, a curiosity to those who weave between their midnight powwows and their anarchic antics. I step over their fluids and excrement just like the next, wondering if all the strange stains and mysterious smells of the sidewalk are part of their day's work.

At this hour, the only people I do not see are the young and hip, eternally underfed and over-fashioned, riding their fixies deftly between trains, cars, and pedestrians. Perhaps they are at work, perhaps are in their apartments planning more elegant pursuits.

And then there is myself, never fitting and never speaking. A two-way trip down the street sees me first starry-eyed with epiphanal wonder, taking in all the colorful vignettes of this city. Then, flashing lights and chaos as a truck hits a motorcyclist -- ever my worst fear -- and finally pouring tears and sprinting for home.

Freshen Up

After forever, I finally got a kick in the pants to smooth out my site. New favicon (and now I even know how to say the word "favicon"), new banner on this blog, customized it a bit more to match my site, and even tweaked my slideshow.

In completely unrelated news, the lomography has been going well. It's a great little camera to carry around, although I am still trying to get over the lack of spontaneity of it all. Lomography is all about being in the moment and catching accidents that happen every second of your life. However, this whole philosophy flies in the face of the fact that you have to seek and then drop your film off at a pro lab just to get them developed, because Walgreens doesn't process 120 film or 35mm film with funky sprocket holes. (I found the hard way that your pro lab won't do this either, unless you ask nicely.)

Anyway, I still prefer to carry around my 5DmII, but there is something about the wait and the thrill of getting your negatives back that's really nice.

People who don't quite understand this joy have probably been shaking their heads about how I just pay more to take crappier photos. In a way that's true. And I'm sure my husband is one of them.



... But how can you resist the super-scary surprise of Cookie Monster in a dark Castro window? I never noticed him until I got this scan back. Freaky! And extra freaky for me, who is terrified of muppets. And refined sugar.

Thanks for the personal public message today, folks. My brain is apparently on hiatus, and I'm sure we'll be back to the deep florid entries when(ever) it returns.

Revisited

Hearing midnight always makes me think of College Park, staying in the shifty apartment waiting for something to happen. Eating whatever we could find around town, dodging sorority boys and girls, living the nights in alternating bouts of joy and misery.

I wonder where he is now. He moved to New Mexico, supposedly, a long time ago. But he never stayed with any plan for very long. I wonder if he's still there, or if he's even in still in this country? They teased me about it and I laughed and looked away. When you're so naive you worry about making the wrong move so much that you just don't move at all.

The other day I was at a bar. It was a subdued, antiquey kind of place, all tile and old wood and Tiffany-style lamps. The kind of place intellectuals hang out, but not those that strive to be seen. These ones have something to say to their friends. The guy at the end of the bar looked so familiar, just like the boy I knew in school. I wonder what happened to him, too; he was a really nice one. The only sane one I'd bothered to know.

I wish I'd had a heart at the time, had enough warmth in my broken chest to make an investment in our brief time. We ended (and maybe began) with a stupid misunderstanding, and maybe it was my own sangfroid for letting it all go. A shrug. Eh.

As we grow older we get more jaded but sometimes these ghosts never really leave you. They crawl out from the dark when you least expect it. So you finish your drink, and go home.

Santa Barbara

Beautiful Santa Barbara! If all drives began so sweetly, glorious afternoon sunlight and warm promise on the southern horizon. I'd driven this road before, but not alone. Having the clarity of solitude was something that I was looking forward to quite a lot, although part of it was a bit intimidating.


The road was twisty and turny, alternating busy and empty which was curious on a Friday. Echoes of familiarity blew across the mountains, and with a shock I realized that I was already out of urban territory. It hadn't seemed nearly so short last fall, but time does warp with experience.

Another stop in Soledad. The people here were still friendly, and still hinted that I was no longer in America. Onward, onward, down through more fields and flying bugs, moths and cars and trees and green grass turning to bright gold. The same stand of ancient twisted eucalyptus, swaying in the wind like the bendy green cones of an impressionist painting. The Madonna Inn was nothing but a vaguely tearful smile. Still garish now, but infinitely less exciting. Much more enticing was the glimmering turquoise waters of Pismo Beach, arcing beyond white hotels and the first palm trees for hours.


5 hours on the road will make you wonder if familiarity will ever find you in the end. I was lucky, meeting an equal mixture of comforting faces as well as new at my destination. This fact alone made it bearable, as well as the openly affable natures of my new friends. I said to her, "Being here now is so liberating." As much as I love this life I lead, I miss the solo journeys that made up so much of the last year.

Everything that I was missing in Scotland and both Utahs came back to me here. Over the last few years I have come to accept (slowly) that certain classic flavors of photography will never be my forte. For that alone I am grateful to Santa Barbara. Choose a direction and follow it, and listen to your heart. Pushing your boundaries is a worthwhile pursuit, but never one that should cause excessive grief.


I've already told the tale of our experiences before, but even more than that is the fact that no words would ever convey the true merriment of the two days. And so it was, and will continue to be in our photographs.

Santa Barbara in the Spring