Let’s everyone take a moment to contemplate this photo of my beautiful friend Kiley, engaged in her toilette:
I was at her house with some other friends playing dress-up when I took this photo. Dress-up is one of my favorite games and I haven’t done it in so long. I got to try wearing a corset for the first time, and went into oxygen deprivation without realizing it– it was a funny scene.
Man, I just really like this photo for some reason. Even the dirty mirror smudges.
Here’s a poem I wrote today… (I don’t remember the last time I wrote a poem).
Bee Hospice
Oh look, he says
I stop and turn around
He sets the grocery bags down
Is it dead? I ask, squatting
I poke it gently, with my thumbnail
It is not brittle
Maybe it is still alive
Not even an antenna moves
I pick a soft blackberry leaf off a vine growing out of the pavement
I think a moment, and pick another one
I study the bee, determining a good angle of approach
I carefully reposition
My underwear might be showing under my skirt
Using the small leaf, I scoop the bee onto the big leaf
She is sandwiched now, on her back
I step over to the grass
I invert the bee sandwich
I leave her hidden, on tired feet, in this tiny shelter
I stand up and he grabs our grocery bags
My face crumples as we walk
I begin to cry
I am glad for my sunglasses
Then I sob
I just finished reading “Kushiel’s Dart” by Jacqueline Carey. I picked it up because I thought the premise sounded good and trashy (and everyone is in need of a trashy novel now and then, right?), without having any idea that the novel would actually be good. It’s a truly epic tale involving long journeys, battles, espionage, treachery, etc. I usually don’t read “epic fantasies”, because even “Lord of the Rings” couldn’t hold my attention (oh, the shame), and I barely made it through the highly recommended “Game of Thrones” by George R. R. Martin. I have a really hard time remembering characters when the cast numbers more than, oh, say, twenty, especially if they have names derived from languages I don’t speak.
I won’t go into the plot of Kushiel’s Dart, because you can read about it on Amazon or a billion other places, but I just wanted to say that in spite of the heroine’s “shocking” sexual identification (she is masochistic), she is so lovable and real. I personally don’t find that uncommon (hey, I live on the west coast, we’re pretty chill about things like that here), but I saw some reviews warning of extremely graphic sex scenes, O reader beware! Anyway, I found myself earnestly cheering for this unlikely heroine, when normally a 912 page fantasy novel would have me snoozing by page 12.
I don’t know why I write about the books I read… I’m not deluded enough to think that I’m writing a “real review”, but I think that all the books one reads, especially well-written fiction books, can add something to your brain files– they can enhance your understanding of the human experience in a truly meaningful way. I absolutely think Kushiel’s Dart is one of those books, and I highly recommend it– especially to people who would find sadomasochistic sex scenes highly shocking.
I am seriously stressing about work. Last night I couldn’t sleep… I got up, took some extra pills from my well-stocked pharmacy (the joy of chronic illness!), downed a glass of ice water, knocked a bunch of stuff over next to the bed and woke Richard up, adjusted the rotary fan to point right at me, fussed with pillows, read some more, finally drifted off…
I woke up this morning feeling like a moldy sack of last year’s potatoes. Richard had left early, having a business breakfast somewhere at 8am. I sat outside in the heat and wished I could go back to bed. I remembered the nightmares I’d been having before I woke up– I dreamed that the Aliens were here, and when I died they were going to claim my soul unless I was proficient enough in astral techniques to escape them. I knew I wasn’t, and was full of anxiety. Of course in my dream, death was imminent.
Outside, in real life, I sat in the back yard with another glass of ice water, watching chickadees flit through the top of the giant lilac tree in the back yard, which has long spent its blossoms. The shasta daisies are done blooming, are falling over; the lilies have shed their petals and are forming strange geometrical seed pods. The first dahlia flower opened today; it is pink and yellow. The grapes are swelling.
To add some color to this page (because everyone knows a book with no pictures is very boring), I’m linking a photograph of Iris Elton, a friend of a friend who is leaving for Florida this weekend to try out for the 8th season of American Idol. I took some headshots for her, and I was so, so pleased with the results. Iris is incredibly, startlingly photogenic.
Check this out:
You can see the rest of the shots she approved here. I’ve never been into American Idol, but Iris is such a sweetie that I am fully rooting for her. Best wishes to you, Iris!
… I saw them– my first fallen leaves.
It rained all night last night, the denouement of our sad weather week– but this morning dawned absolutely brilliant and clear. When I stepped outside, the garden still sparkled with rain, and everything shone with that kind of pure color that only a night of hard rain brings.
As I was walking to the bus stop, I saw a birch tree, long branches swirling and tossing in a sassy (spring? summer? autumn? Who the hell knows what season it is in Seattle–) breeze, clusters of leaves coming off. I saw them on the ground all around me. They spoke to me in their yellowness and said, “You kind of had some nice weather in July. You live in Seattle. What did you expect– SUN-SHINE?” And then, overcome with grief, I fell to my knees and cried, and my tears just added to the rain, and upon realizing this I cried some more, and then… and then… okay that last part didn’t really happen.
Here’s a picture of some birch leaves that are still on their tree. I took it at a friend’s wedding a few weeks ago:
I love the 20×200 Project– I’ve gotten some great art, cheaply, that way. Today a couple prints by Todd Forsgren went up for sale, and they might be some of the best photos I’ve seen there yet– but I can’t buy them. They are too intense to go on my wall.
From the artist’s statement:
To create his paintings, John James Audubon shot birds and contorted their bodies into dramatic poses by wiring and pinning them onto boards. The quirky and flamboyant postures he used were not immediately popular with the scientific community, but today they are renowned.
It was Roger Tory Peterson who pioneered the idea of a field guide. His guides highlight observable marks, pointed out by carefully placed arrows, which allow for the identification of birds at a distance. Peterson painted thousands of systematic illustrations of birds in static poses based on photographs, bird skins, and field observations. Field guides have allowed hobbyists, artists, and scientists to identify birds with binoculars instead of a shotgun.
Ornithologists now use mist nets. These nearly invisible nets are set up like fences and function as huge spider webs, catching unsuspecting birds. The researcher carefully extracts the bird from the net. Each bird is measured, aged, sexed, and banded with an individually numbered anklet. Then the bird is released.
I photographed these birds while they are caught in mist nets, moments before the ornithologist extracts them. Here, the birds inhabit a fascinating space between our framework of the bush and the hand. It is a fragile and embarrassing moment before they disappear back into the woods, and into data.
It *is* too fragile and embarrassing to go on my wall. I couldn’t look at those birds, day after day, caught in those nets. I would definitely own a book of work by Forsgren, and look at the photos occasionally.
Anyway, if you love these birds, hurry hurry, because the prints will probably sell out very soon!
From Nature Biotechnology 26, 721 (2008) News:
UK passes hybrids
Nuala MoranThe UK Parliament has voted to allow the generation of human-animal hybrid embryos, creating the most liberal legal framework anywhere in the world for embryonic stem cell research. The move confirms that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority acted within its jurisdiction when it gave permission in January to scientists at King’s College London and Newcastle University to work on generating embryos by fusing enucleated animal oocytes with the nuclei of adult human cells (Nat. Biotechnol. 26, 252, 2008). Embryonic stem cell lines produced as a result cannot be used in therapies but are expected to be useful as disease models. One immediate beneficiary was ReNeuron, of Surrey, UK, which saw its share price double, although its products are based on fetal stem cell lines. CEO Michael Hunt said, “Our hope is that the UK’s reputation for supporting such pioneering early-stage stem cell research will be mirrored by further support for later-stage translational research activities.” In Germany, researchers no longer have to fear a possible prison sentence for working on human embryonic stem cell lines created after January 2002. The German Federal Parliament voted in April to allow scientists to use up to 500 stem cell lines from abroad, as opposed to the 20 previously allowed, extending the qualifying date for importing lines to May 1, 2007. Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled in May that scientists can lawfully conduct embryonic stem cell research, subject to certain caveats, such as not allowing the embryo to be destroyed.
For some reason this scares the pee out of me and is also highly intriguing. I honestly didn’t even know that people were working on human-animal hybrid embryos. Another sign that we may be catching up to the Future.
I shot a wedding this past weekend, and it was one of those wonderful LEARNING EXPERIENCES.
I was there as a guest, and a photographer, so I had to put on my imaginary photographer hat when I got there, reduce the urge to chat with all my friends, and take pictures. In my urge to not bias my sample of candid subjects solely towards people that I knew, I tried to remember to take pictures of strangers… it’s funny, that confused look people get when a stranger walks up to them with a big lens and they have no idea who you are.
I ended up creeping along the ground behind the bride and groom during the ceremony to get pictures. I remember thinking to myself, “Exactly how much am I distracting from the ceremony right now?” and deciding to just screw it and keep doing what I was doing. If I’d been thinking, I would’ve remembered that dude-in-a-gorilla-suit-on-a-basketball-court psychology experiment and deduced that probably none of the guests even saw me. I also started crying during the vows… thank god for image stabilization.
I would like to congratulate myself for getting good shots of the very strongly backlit bride and groom. We’re talking backlighting of -26.74 apparent magnitude. That was one freaking sunny day. It’s interesting to look at some of the pictures and see how much blue light from the sky and green light reflected from the grass and trees was hitting the subjects.
One unique aspect of this wedding was that there were so many people there with consumer-level DSLRs (probably most bettter/newer than mine) that I felt like I had backup. I couldn’t worry too much about missing something when there were 20 other nice cameras pointed at the same thing. This is just another sign that we ARE approaching The Future!
This is a strange day.
I woke up early(ish) and decided to go eat a real breakfast at a local cafe, since I am incapable of making one for myself. (Conclusion drawn from extensive past data.) I had a small pile of home fries, two eggs over-medium, an english muffin, a small glass of apple-berry juice, and several cups of coffee.
Then, I decided to update my blog with a link to a certain pair of Harley-Davidson brand mens’ shoes that I find particularly attractive. I have never blogged about shoes before. Have I?
Wait– the urge just passed. It’s probably for the best.
Instead, I’m going to post a drawing I did in December 2007– a portrait of my cat Newps, after the style of Louis Wain.
Death…
It is so complicated– I could write pages about it. In those pages I would mention how relatively little death has touched me, which is primarily a side effect of not being close to many people, including my family… But it’s also a side effect of living in an upper-middle class urban area, relatively safe from crime… A side effect of living in America, having plentiful food, sanitation, clean water…
A recent death has touched me, and I feel compelled to say something about it, but I don’t know what. There’s not much to say about death that hasn’t been said before– but that’s not really a reason to not say something.
The last few days also mark the anniversaries of some deaths which had a great effect on me–
so in that spirit, I offer condolences to those left behind, being convinced that those who have died are either completely (nonconsciously) at rest, or are conscious and experiencing something better than life on earth.
I raise a toast to those of us left living out our days on earth– may we take pleasure in the things we love, and be dazzled by the mazes of our minds.