Who are you really, wanderer?

Sometimes I wonder how much of everything I'm faking.

Wine, a snowstorm, and my daddy in the kitchen (Dinah not included)

The last two days have been a snowy disaster. It's been incredibly disappointing to be trapped inside, unable to really take my dad anywhere. We had initially planned on going to Walsenburg and the Sand Dunes today, so I could show my daddy the places here that I love the most, take some photos, and spend hours on a road trip so we could talk and catch up and pal around. I've missed my daddy horribly. But instead, I am currently sitting in my room, drinking wine and doing homework while my daddy bangs away in the kitchen, flattening chicken for chicken marsala. I can't remember the last time I saw my daddy and he DIDN'T make this. It's kind of a tradition. He always, always, always gets way more mushrooms than he needs to, because he knows I'm going to come over and eat at least half of the ones he cooks before dinner is ready. That's just how it goes.

I took him to the abbey yesterday, we sampled every last wine they sell, and we each bought two bottles. I also shipped a bottle to Amber, because I think she'll love it. I honestly don't know when wine became so fucking popular. The only reason I'm drinking wine right now is because I'm doing homework, and I can't drink liquor and get good grades. Maybe that's why for everybody else, too.

I'm hoping to take my dad to Garden of the Gods tomorrow. I took him to the trains in Canon City yesterday before the storm came in. I took some photos, and I told my dad I'd do an HDR shot to show him how they look compared to regular shots. He hates it.

I don't mind it. I actually kind of like it. However, the HDR program I have sucks serious balls. Perhaps I'd like it even more if I had a better program.

I just got yelled at by my dad for stealing all the mushrooms. Welp. It's just like being home again.

What if...I DID have a book down my trousers?

I've been greatly weighing the idea of buying myself a new set up. I'm looking at a Canon 6D, three L-Series lenses (a 24-70, a 16-35, and a 50), a new tripod, a multi-reflector disc, and some filters. At the end of the day, it would run me about seven grand. But it's an excellent kit, and I do have a few upcoming shoots scheduled. Plus, it would have the added bonus of making The Fellow exceedingly envious, and for some sick reason, that would please me. Not that I wouldn't let him use it from time to time, or any of my lenses, for that matter. In truth, everything is kind of in a shared pool, really. We have six lenses between the both of us, and they're always being transferred from one bag or body to another.

I spent the evening sitting in the living room, looking carefully through my very favorite book. My daddy gave it to me years and years ago, after years of me begging for it. When I was a teenager, I would lock myself in my room and look through it for hours. For some reason, I didn't want to buy my own copy, I wanted my dad's. My daddy is my very favorite person on the planet, and I haven't spent enough time with him. So whatever things of his I can appropriate, the better off I am. I just like having things of his with me, because he's not. Anyway, it's a book called Eyewitness, and it's a compendium of the key photos from Time Magazine.

I always find new things to appreciate about different photos every time I browse through the book. It doesn't matter how many times I see them, something new jumps out at me. A new feeling, a new detail, a new appreciation for perspective and composition...something always strikes me. It's one of my favorite things about the book. But there are two pictures that always, always, always make me stop thumbing, and stop to pay attention. They are, without question, my two favorite photos in existence. I don't care about the widgets and bells and whistles on cameras now, because they don't matter for pictures like these.

Harlem, Leonard Freed

 This photo is called Harlem, and I don't know if anybody else will ever capture pure joy like this. It encapsulates freedom for me. Freedom and happiness, and knowing nothing of limits. This photo was taken in the heavy of the Civil Rights movement, and perhaps that's why those feelings ring through so loudly for me. Despite cruelty, and the denial of basic human kindness from the majority of the world they lived in, these children are just....they're happy. Nothing else matters but that moment, that water, and that relationship between the two of them. I have never in my life seen a photo more gorgeous, or more perfect for displaying how simple and wonderful we can be.

In an Insane Asylum, Turin Italy, Raymond Depardon

This. This is my favorite. I can't really explain why in a way that will seem rational, really, but I'll do my best. I've spent the better part of the last fifteen plus years trying my best to bury my own insanity. I've hidden it, I've medicated it, I've ignored it, I've denied it. But never once have I embraced it. I don't know if that would matter, really. All I remember from the times before my diagnoses was feeling terrified of what I heard, what I saw, what I thought, and how I felt. When I was 14, I was sent to spend a significant amount of time in a psych ward. I was more scared in there than I was outside, and I shoved everything down further in the vain attempt of getting out. I'm not really crazy, but saying I don't have a larger share of demons rattling around in my head and my heart, skittering about my thoughts and feelings like termites and eating all the way through me would be a false representation of who I am. I'm straying far from the point. What I'm trying to get at is, I've been a coward about the state of my mental health, and I've always tried to be something I'm not. This photo was taken inside of an insane asylum in Italy, and it's not sad to me. Perhaps I'm wrong in this assumption, but I think that most people would see this photo and, knowing the context, see a sad, crazy man hiding from the world in plain sight as best as he can. I see something different. I see a man being absolutely himself, and carrying on with as much bravery as someone in his state can muster. It's beautiful, really. And it's something I aspire to, in a very bizarre way. I'll be living with me forever...I might as well be as me as I am. Everybody is already covered.

I love photography. Perhaps I'm rubbish at it. Maybe I'm fairly good. People seem to love what I do for them, and they pay me quite well to capture things that matter to them. If I can take one photo that speaks as loudly to me as these photos do, and with as much honesty, I'll be incredibly happy.

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved...in secret, between the shadow and the soul

It's Valentine's Day.


I'm not really a Valentine's Day kind of girl. I think...in the history of my relationships, I've ever really only gotten fucking jazzed about ONE Valentine's day, and to be fair, it was fun as fuck. For me, anyway.


But, it's all the buzz on my Facebook feed right now, and while I should be working, I have instead been staring out the window, quietly rubbing my pendant, and drifting lazily between being lost in thought, and overly present.


I think, sometimes, there are things and people that just break you. Perhaps being shattered is what you need, and you don't see it until later, but most often, it's devastating. You can spend your entire life trying to pick up the pieces and put yourself back together, but the seams are obvious. The Japanese have a philosophy turned artform dedicated to this called Kintsugi. When something breaks, they highlight the broken bits by putting them back together and filling the cracks with gold. The bowl with cracks is far more beautiful than the one without. Cracks show history...they show that things have been used, and loved, and that the items had purpose. Being broken doesn't mean something can't be used for the exact same thing again.


I wonder what the bowls think of that.


I'm spending tonight with Allen and Stevie. I'm going to go buy us all footie pajamas, and something to make for dinner, and we'll sit at my house, do drugs, and watch movies. These are the people I love the most in the world (in the closest proximity, that is. Not to devalue them...they're fucking high on the list of people I love most in the world, regardless of distance), and I think it fits that we're spending Valentine's Day together.


Every once and awhile, I become very, very, VERY secretly sappy (I don't need Valentine's day to do it, either), and I read love letters from famous people, I look through Found for love letters from not famous people, and I just ravage poetry. I indulged a bit of that today, and felt slightly sad for a few moments. I've tried to stay away from the old, powerful favorites (I'm looking at you, Neruda), but they always get me, in the end. I once described reading the things I love over and over giving me an overwhelming feeling of coming home. More and more often, certain things feel like coming home to an empty house. It takes a lot of getting used to, and I don't have any gold to fill the emptiness with.


I think...I think everybody must have something like this. Maybe that's why Valentine's Day is such a big production for some people. It's just a way to fill the cracks and show off that you still work just like you used to.


Virginia Woolf once wrote, "Just in case you ever foolishly forget, I am never not thinking of you." And now I'm writing it, too.

Wine should not be spicy

I get to see my daddy in thirteen days. I'm so excited!

I don't even know where I'm going to take him, since he can't walk around much. But I got the time off of work, and that's the best thing. I'll have a week with my very favorite man in the whole wide world. I'm going to give him my autographed Michio Kaku book. I think he'll like it. And we'll cook food and drink booze and laugh and I can't wait. Today has been such a good day.

This morning kind of blew, but in a hilarious way. Can't get it all right all the time.

I'm going to this weekend to see Lauren in her dress, and maybe MY dress will have arrived in my color. And I'll try it on again, too, regardless of my actual dress being there.

Here it is!

Except mine is in cafe and ivory, and the hem line is longer. It's the most beautiful thing, I love it so much. I can't wait for my daddy to see me in it.

I booked my venue, and my photographer (who...I mean, honestly, there's no point in me being an event photographer anymore. He's that fucking good), and really, all I have left to do is buy flowers, and a cake.

This is all very bizarre.