Alright, so. I've edited all of my photos from yesterday, and even though I had camera problems (I'm looking at you, foggy 70-200, you dirty old bastard), and the orphanage felt uninspiring...which, come to think of it, is kind of a fucked up way to describe an abandoned orphanage...I did get a few shots that I don't hate.
Whether you're ready or not, here they come (who's got the rice??)!
This is in the...uh...third building of the orphanage, I think. There used to be seven, but two of them are demolished, and honestly, I don't think they were numbered to begin with. So third building it is. But a tree has sprouted up in the doorway. Kind of wonderful, if you ask me.
I really like monochromatic images, even if black and white completely defeats the purpose of butterflies aesthetically.
However, this fellow is handsome as ever.
Orchids are my very favorite flower in the world. My very, very favorite. Purple ones, in particular, but these white and purple dendrobium orchids are a very close second.
I have no idea what these are. I'd feel silly if they were some kind of orchid. But I like them because they're purple and pointy and interesting.
Half of that owl's face sprouted legs and just dove off.
Just a tiny little thing! I loved him. Her. That butterfly.
Abandoned ice skate at the orphanage. Quite sad, in context.
Welcome home, huh? I'm going to take a hard, HARD pass on that and leave, thank you very much.
Another sad find among the rubble that's even more sad when you sit and think this is an abandoned orphanage.
I can't drag these photos and put them in sequential order, which is a bit of a bummer. But it's alright. Anyway, here they all are! Putting them in here is so much easier than emailing them. Gmail is a bit stingy on the space allotment for attachments.
So, one of the things I do when I have nothing better TO do is browse for things online. Dresses, shoes, purses, baubles....I create lists in my head of things I want so I can go back and get them later. Of course, I generally forget about them, which works out well for my proverbial wallet. One thing I never, ever forget is jewelry. I am the mooniest-eyed magpie ever ever ever. I love jewelry, rings in particular. I only own two rings that mean anything to me, and one of them is kept in the safest of places, worn only on very, very special occasions. I have two pieces of gaudy costume-type jewelry that I wear whenever the mood strikes me, one being a chunky mint green bracelet, and the other being a ring that looks like an oval portrait frame, with a pale blue stone inside of it. It's huge. It takes up most of my finger. I like my odd taste in jewelry. I've yet to see anybody wear the same things I wear (I think some might try and make the case that that's because I have just the worst taste, and I need to tone down the ugly a bit), and I take that in stride. But I've strayed fairly far from the point.
I've been browsing today. I google things like "interesting jewelry", and I find designers that I wouldn't have otherwise heard of. A few weeks ago, such a thing happened, and I found this ring:
I love it. I don't know what place sells this particular designer, and I haven't really done any digging to find out where, but one day, it might be important.
I hadn't actually bothered to look through his other designs, so I did today. And...in complete fairness, 98% of them are fucking awful. They're just these art deco monstrosities that I feel like people would only buy or wear as a statement piece (that statement being FUCK YOU, AESTHETICS, but that's neither here nor there). But, there were two more that I liked:
I don't know where I got this obsession with sparkly things. For the most part, I just like to look and covet a little bit before moving on to the next sparkly thing. Though, looking at that sparkly thing and coveting it usually goes down like this:
I've accepted that I'm Jeremy, and that's ok. both because I love Don Bluth movies AND I loved this book (I loved the sequels, too! While I didn't care for Frisbee as a name, I did name my first rat Brisby as homage to the book and the movie), and because I'm fairly fucking sure that's really how I look when I see something sparkly. My eyes turn colors, and I stop speaking coherent English.
My pants are way too big for me. If I pull them all the way up to the top of my ribs, they look pretty alright, but they fall down and look like crap the moment I do anything. This shirt is too big, as well. I look like I'm wearing a tent. I think I might be. My plan was to have them tailored, because I wanted the jeans and the shirt, but they only came in smalls and extra larges (both of them. What a cruel coincidence), but this morning I just decided, fuck it, you'll be fine, just throw a belt on! And then I remembered I don't have belts, because I'm not adult enough for them, and I had no way of making this shirt anything but insanely billowy, but I came to work in this, anyway. Clearly I make good choices. I should have just worn a pencil skirt and a button down. Damn foolish of me.
I may update this AGAIN later this evening. I have photos to edit and post, and I'm feeling very anxious, and like writing is where it's at.
So, I went to sleep kind of late last night. I didn't sleep very well, to boot. When I woke up at 7:30 this morning, I was initially annoyed. Then, I looked at my blinds, and the small spaces in between them were glowing an incredibly intense shade of pink. I batted them open and saw this:
which I obviously went on to take an incredibly shitty picture of. Some people are good at phone photos...I am not one of them. Other people are not so fucking lazy that they will get up and go outside to take a better picture...I'm not one of those people, either.
I went out adventuring yesterday. I went to the Brighton Orphanage, which wasn't as good as I'd hoped it would be; I went to an abandoned corn packing plant that I couldn't really get into because I'll need to be dropped off so I can sneak in. There's no actual place to park my car that doesn't scream out HEY YOU GUYS, SOMEONE IS TRESPASSING. GET HER!!!!! Even parking further down the road would have been a five or so mile walk, and I wasn't interested in it THAT much. Well...I mean, that's true, but I am quite interested in getting in there. It looks amazing. After I gave up on the corn packing plant, the initial plan was to go to 16th street, but I went to the Butterfly Pavilion instead. I wanted to interject a bit of color into my day, and what better way than butterflies? It was humid and miserable in there, and my lens fogged up, but other than that, I had a lovely time. I sat on a bench nestled in a bush and watched the butterflies flutter all about the thing. It made me happy, and I'm glad I went.
I took myself to Sweet Tomatoes, because I have some sort of insane love of that place that nobody really understands. But that's ok, they don't have to. However, if you're playing the home game, I'm pretty sure it's the carbs. I love bread and muffins and bread and muffins.
I haven't really edited any of my photos yet. I'll probably do that when I get home this afternoon, but I'm at work until 4. I have to go home, go work out, and then I'll have the time to edit photos. I edited one yesterday, but it didn't really turn out the way I'd hoped.
I put the camera on burst mode and set up the bracketing function so I could attempt to HDR the picture, but it looks fucking heinous that way. I'm not so sure it doesn't look heinous this way, either, however. So there's that.
There's absolutely nothing going on at work right now, and I'm the only person here. I don't know why I didn't think to bring a book. Oh, well. That'll teach me.
I was supposed to spend the evening editing photos. What I did instead was the following:
Bought sushi from Sprouts, that I later sat and ate in peace and quiet in my car...like a bulimic that hides the fact that they binge eat. I am neither bulimic nor a binge eater, but sitting in my warm car at the park and eating my bargain bin sushi (just kidding, it was delicious) seemed like a good idea at the time.
Came back home, and watched the last episode of Black Mirror. And by watched the last episode of Black Mirror, I mean I fell asleep ten minutes in and woke up two and a half hours later. Which was three hours ago. And I'm already tired again.
After waking up from my nap, I went into my room to edit photos and got sidetracked by everything else. Mostly listening to music (mostly 60s and 70s music. Ambrosia's How Much I Feel was my jam for a solid hour, much to the displeasure of my roommate) and looking through A Softer World (I love the alt-text on that one. On all of them, really). I've finally buckled down (mostly) and gotten a few more photos done. I am hoping to have them all done by tomorrow night, so I can reformat Lightroom and delete all of these silly fucking photos. I'm so excited for Brighton.
I'm listening to this song right now, and I love it so much. Listen to it...it's beautiful.
Today has been an interesting roller coaster, to be sure.
Tomorrow is work, and then Saturday is Brighton!! Hooray! Abandoned orphanage (I've seen this horror movie, but I make it out alive, so I'm not that worried), AND abandoned corn packing plant. Yippeee!!!!!
I took this the other day while feeling fairly sorry for myself. The moment passed, and I'm better now, but the picture pretty well captures that feeling. Which sounds fucking lame, now that it's written out, but so it goes.
I'm about to take myself to sushi for dinner, and then spend the rest of the night processing more photos. I hate that part of photo gigs. It's the worst.
Is it time yet for me to be whisked away to Costa Rica for an indefinite amount of time by someone amazingly handsome and engaging?
Because I'm exhausted, and I want to be in Costa Rica.
I finished my final today in seventeen minutes. You read that correctly. Seventeen. And what's more, I know I aced it. I have one final left tomorrow evening, and then I'm done for the next four weeks. And just like last semester, I have no idea what I'm going to do with myself with all of this upcoming free time. I suppose I'll sleep through a good deal of it. I feel like I could sleep forever right now.
I'm doing my final presentation tomorrow night on photography. I had initially planned on urban and rural abandonment, but I couldn't get into Longmont Sugar Mill in time (thanks for responding to my emails, pricks!), and I didn't want to go to Gilman alone, since it's so very far away, and it requires a hike into it, and more than likely camping out for the night. It would have been absolutely amazing...if I had a social life to speak of, and friends nutty enough to do this sort of thing based solely on my wild whims. Photography will suit me just fine, however. Narcissism is real, my friends, and I am using all of my own photos in this ten minute long presentation. Fuck. Yes. This is a move that surprises no one.
I have a very small photo job this Sunday, and I'm pretty excited. I'm going to take family photos for a friend of mine, and she was lovely enough to offer to pay me for it. I would have done it for free. What a sucker.
She's not a sucker. She offered, despite my protestation that she didn't have to pay me.
I'm close enough to done that I don't feel bad about taking this small break to write in my blog. But I should get back to the project so I can finish it, and maybe catch an episode of Black Mirror before I pass out.
Friday? Day drinking in my panties. Because if I'm not being handsomely escorted to Costa Rica, god dammit, I'm going to make myself too drunk to care.
I love Bukowski. I love him so much. I'm reading his poetry to make myself feel better (since I own everything that's been published by him, anthology wise. I don't care much for his novels). I have no real reason to feel down, but I suppose that's just the nature of the beast sometimes.
Anyway, I found a couple that I'm reading over and over and over, and I'm going to share them.
you can die now.
you can die as
people were meant to
die;
great,
victorious,
being the music,
hearing the music,
roaring,
roaring,
roaring.
Just wonderful. And then there's this one, which has long been a personal favorite of mine:
your life is your life
don't let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can't beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous,
the gods wait to delight
in you.
Those last three lines are solid gold. They make the entire piece shine.
Here's another, which is another poem that I've read so many times that I know it by heart:
I want to
let her know
though
that all the nights
sleeping
beside her
even the useless
arguments
were things
ever splendid
and the hard
words
I ever feared to
say
can now be
said:
I love
you.
And then we come to the last of his that I'll be posting, and it isn't really so much a poem as it is an open letter (an open letter NOW. It once had a recipient, but it's no longer solely theirs). There's some debate about whether or not the very first line of this is actually Bukowski's, but for me, that's not even the sum total of what this piece is worth. He wrote the other things, to the absolute best of my digging, and that's what I care about.
My dear,
Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you and let it devour your remains.
For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it's much better to be killed by a lover.
