Monthly Archives: November 2007

things to ponder on this Monday a.m.

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#1 Son turns 13 on December 20th. We’re sitting together at the breakfast table the other day, and I’m reading this letter to the Spouse Unit written by this guy who happened to be around at a certain car dealership the day she decided to purchase her car, and who has apparently believed himself to be God’s Gift to Carbuyers for roughly the last two years. Anyway, it’s a one-page handwritten letter (very thoughtful and personal, of course), that in four sentences contains more spelling and grammatical errors than typically exist in one semester of assignments in a second-grade classroom. So, I read it over, hand it to #1 Son, and ask, “Okay, kiddo. What’s wrong with this letter?”

He reads through it, chuckling several times, thinks for a moment, then answers, “He didn’t have someone else type it for him so he wouldn’t look so stupid.”

Deadpan.

Yep, the boy annoys me sometimes, as all kids occasionally do, but Gawd I love ‘im.

this looks like a screwed-up photograph, but it isn’t. although i will admit it was difficult to keep the wind off the camera during the thirty seconds it took to take this photo at night. i don’t get to do as much late-night photography as i’d like (and i’ll readily admit that Nikon DSLR’s aren’t really the best tools for dark shots), but the color here is completely unretouched, taken at ISO 800, f/5.6, 30″ in the light of a nearly full moon. the camera is pointing roughly west, about 2.5 hours after sunset. even that long after sunset, there is still a noticeable gradient to the light falloff. i just kinda thought that was neat. sadly, the rest of that night shoot was pretty poopy, because i had to use longer lenses and the wind was such that it was impossible to keep them from shaking over such a long period. this one and a couple of others are all that are going to make it.

late night at Curtis' farm


well, i guess that’s about it today. best be shoving off to work, work, work!

we be leavin’

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but not on a jet-plane. and i DO know when we’ll be back again, even. it’ll be sometime after i leave. i promise!

but yes, we’re going to bail for a bit up to the in-laws place. in the meantime, visit the folks i just link-loved from here. gah. i need to update this blog’s blogroll. yeah, yeah. i have time for that. really. pfft.

oh yeah. it’s thanksgiving. supposedly we should give thanks for all the shit in our lives. so, at this time, i’d like to give thanks for all the shit in my life. and for all the non-shit. and maybe for all the people, but probably not for their shit. wow, i just used the word ‘shit’ in one paragraph four times. i must be the shit.

okay, maybe six.

anyway, i’m rambling because i have this tooth that desperately needs to be extracted and i have to wait all the way until the freakin’ 29th. it’s fun, let me tell you. especially when i’m about to go stuff my face all weekend. mmmmmm……i just can’t wait to go love me some dentist. eight days. shoot me.

okay, well, the last proof site i was trying to get uploaded finally uploaded so i’ll see you later. have fun!

You just never know

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{actually, as a side note, having just typed the title, the thought comes to mind that the English language, without punctuation, is a nefarious beast. because at this point, you don’t know if that statement is an imperative, or one of those second-person rhetoricals. for the record, it’s one of those second-person rhetoricals. i’m sure Bing or Morse would be able to supply the proper label to ‘second-person’ rhetorical, but i don’t even know if they read this blog, and i’ve been horrendously crappy about posting on otherwhirled.com lately. sigh.}

but yeah, anyway, you just never know how people are going to take things. i’ve had some trouble uploading files to my business site, which trouble came somewhat ironically (and mostly unrelatedly) in the midst of getting synthaetica.com launched. and since i’m done with getting synthaetica.com up and running, it was time to refocus my development efforts on the new version of the business website. out of convenience, i had my ISP point my old domain name shadowart.com at this new developmental site, and as a result, since i’ve had some trouble uploading files to shadowmoon.com, i went ahead and used shadowart.com for the online proofs of a couple of recent engagement sessions.

since shadowart.com is in development, i have it “invisible” to search engines, and the only people who know about it are those whom i’ve told (which i guess now includes you, who incidentally constitute the vast majority of “those whom i’ve told”) about it, the clients whose proof sites are up there, and a couple of wordpress developers whom i’ve asked for some assistance on beefing up some plugins so that the site could handle the selection of images for purchase—something we’ve been needing to have embedded in our business site for about a decade now.

so in the meantime, i’m building up the site, adding page, tweaking the site header image and other little things with the template, and realize that the site has begun to become rather slow for no apparent reason. out of curiosity, i go look at the stats, and was shocked to discover that there were (at the time) about 250 visits on one particular client’s proof site (over 300 now) .

now, i really don’t know (read,”bother to look”) how many people normally come look at an engagement proof site, but since the site is invisible and closed, it was obvious that those visits were by no means random. so, i called the client to ask how many people she had shared the site with, and it turns out that the number of visits is roughly equatable to the number of people she and her fiancé have shared the site with. go figure. the other engagement proof site on there, for what it’s worth, has totaled 24 visits. mine, of course, are not counted.

i have a suspicion that the latter number is the more expected one.

anyway, like i said, you just never know how some people are going to take things. i guess it means i did i good job?

maybe.

but since it beats the shit out of daily visits to my more established blogs, it does make you think {although by “you”, i probably just mean “me”. what a silly language we have….}

and now for something slightly different

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(and since i’m tied here running photoshop batches for another hour or so….)

forgiven

in the palm of my hand
lies the crystal shield
of compassion
it glimmers and glows
with a light of its own
caught recklessly
between the lights
of two worlds
it satiates the primal urge
to run and fly away

what nought but this
that seeks suppression
what further drawn
alleviates the burn

come closer now
and the thought shall linger
chill mansions rose
where no one dwelled
before

~ December 18, 1992

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

recalescence

those days . . . .
vitality and strength
and the will to continue on
how much else then rectifies
the waste of an eternity
so many days now long forgotten
unattended in the graveyards
of my mind
some shadowless subdivision
of the thoughtless reclamation
of the emotion of a starry night
. . . so long now passed
that like eternity reconciles
the pasted glimmer
of a thousand stars
that fade like water pours
from between my fingers

i would live again
if only in this allowance
could the tokens be recalled
i am paled by the significance of others
their flows surround me
their auras imprison me
and without escape
i must sequester myself
behind the walls of solace

silence is a form of compassion
have i lost myself
or is this glowing spark of regeneration
only now coming before my eyes
i would be dead without these things
but alive
sometimes they stifle me

and those days . . . .
once remembered
. . . remind that i have grown
into what i do not know
but in this
i find i flow again
with the will to live

~December 3, 1992

on marriage and betrothal

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my next-to-the-last wedding of the year is today. i’ve got a BAD sore throat. thus far in my career, i’ve managed not to have to work a wedding sick, so this will be first for me.

but i thought of this because of what my daughter said about staying away from guys right now and not getting married EVER. i SO felt the same way about women from time to time. several times, even. but in fact, i met the Spouse Unit just three weeks after i had TOTALLY given up on women. our meeting was completely unexpected, and our getting together was more than a surprise. so every time i shoot a wedding, i’m reminded of all the things that were pouring through my head ‘back then’ (positive and negative), and i’m still somewhat amazed that people actually want to get married, despite being happily married myself.

i was engaged three times in my life. sometimes when i look back, the acts of engagement were almost more significant than the acts of marriage that i’ve partaken in. they were emotional promissory notes that seemed to me to have more significant as a promise held in trust as opposed to the exercising of that trust. and if it weren’t for the exercising of Will, which is what a marriage ceremony is about, one of those earlier promises would still have been in effect.

which is not to belittle marriage in any way. there is something grand and inspirational about any marriage, as two people commit before witnesses to join their lives together, even when that joining is only a formality. i normally allow myself to get somewhat caught up in those emotions while i’m capturing wedding scenes, but with the way i feel today, i believe i’ll be more of an impartial observer. perhaps i’ll see some things today that alter my perception of this process.

regardless, every wedding i serve reminds me of my own wedding to the Spouse Unit and as such, during every wedding i serve, i silently renew my vows to her. it’s the least i can do, i suppose, since the weddings are part of what keeps me from spending more time with her and our children.

Hurpy Birfdee Ta Meh!

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Okee, so like I turn 41 today. Nifty. *yawn*

Unsurprisingly, it’s just another work day, and I say that with no chagrin whatsoever. I’ve allowed myself to get too far behind this autumn, so I’m going to be playing “catch-up” for another couple of weeks at least.

Sherri admonished me this morning: “…as you take time today to reflect back (and I know you will) on the many, many years you have spent on this earth, try NOT kicking your own ass for a change. Try acknowledging all that you have accomplished and all the good things in your life.” Easy enough for her to say, since she turns forty in five days and thus is 370 days shy of my ability to screw things up. But, I’ll try to give it a whirl while I’m letting a batch of photos run here.

Things I have accomplished in life:

  1. I have managed to live significantly past my 25th birthday, and not even in a wheel-chair or mental institution. Let me tell you, as I contemplated this fact on my 25th birthday, it was such an intellectual surprise that it became one of those “pivotal moments”.
  2. I have, for the most part, managed not to emulate my adoptive parents in the rearing of my own children. I haven’t chased my kids around the house with a belt yet, threatened them with relatively implausible bodily harm for disobedience, or attempted to shame them into compliance to such a degree that their self-esteem evaporated.
  3. I have not kicked, drowned, strangled, tossed off a balcony, dumped in the forest, or otherwise rid myself of the charming-but-annoying felines in my life who insist upon climbing up my leg to greet me, walking across the keyboard in the middle of a PhotoShop batch and stalling several hundred photos in process, sitting on my face in the middle of the night, randomly attacking my toes as I’m walking by, attempting to lay upon my feet while I’m walking (especially at the head of the stairs), bringing half-dead animals and insects into the house, shitting on the bed after we’ve been gone on vacation, peeing on our luggage before we leave for vacation, and playing war games across the entire house at full speed and volume in the middle of the night.
  4. I have remained faithful to my wife, but that’s less of an accomplishment as it is an acknowledgment that most other females in my life have had a better sense of discretion than she has, and I felt so lucky when she chose me that there was no way I was going to screw that up.
  5. I have tried new foods throughout my life. Some of them, I even liked.
  6. I quit smoking over a decade ago.
  7. My kids still think I’m relatively cool. I know it won’t last, but it’s still kind of neat if you ask me.

So there. That’s seven accomplishments I can at least be proud of. I had thought of a couple of others, but there was this g@dd@mn3d kitten crawling up my leg and it kind of distracted me. Besides that, I’m actually a bit sick today. Me and the Amoxicyllin are trying to kick a throat infection. Germs are bastards. Hence the wording of the title of this post. That’s about what I sound like right now.

this is becoming habitual

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of bluer skies and rain

and then like rain these fetters fall and crash upon the floor

windows on a world and pictures moving sway and tumble
come to me and sweet surrounded water-torn love me
sing to me your songs of love and unity and peace and joy
and i shall sing to you and cling forever like the dawn’s sun rising warm

when winter comes and covers me in cold and blanket screaming
warm me with your heart and soul and spirit and your strength
and like these cracking windows melt and break the chains that bind me

~ Abilene, Texas; September 1988
~ © 1988, 2003