Lots of Monkeys

I’ve always liked paper.  The feel of the blank lined page, the promise of filling it up through the manual process of writing.  I have boxes of empty notebooks.

I also have a box, filled with not empty notebooks.

June 5, 1997

Usually, about the most exciting thing that happens to me is the drive to the Metro station.  Why?  Well, it’s usually because I can smell the beer on my boss’s breath.

Man.  That is a great entry.  Also, this one:

(9/22/90)  Ooops!  Missed a day.  Fortunately nothing much happened yesterday.  Except that Phil, Arcelio, and Josh are thinking about going to Homecoming together and they invited me.  Unfortunately, I don’t have anyone to ask.  Oh, well that’s about it.  I don’t think much is going to happen today.

Riveting. And I have pages of this writing goldmine all at my fingertips.

I’ve been doing the 365 project on Flickr, although it’s been more of a take photos every day and post the ones I like.  So far, I think that I’ve gotten used to the idea of carrying the camera around everywhere and seeing things differently.  Which is a good thing.  Opportunities are numerous, but I have to leave my apartment in order to see them.  I think I’m about ready to transition over to the 18-55mm to have a few more options while shooting.

I like the way that they days are transitioning.  How the great white swatches of snow have become these grey monstrosities on the sides of roads.  I like to think that in the future, you’ll be able to recreate the entire Washington DC landscape just from the pictures people took during the Blizzard of 2010.

I have also purchased some light stands for my strobes.  I’ll need them eventually for some of the portrait work that I want to start doing.  I’m working more with flash and manual settings.  Trying out different styles of lighting to see what works and what doesn’t.  The camera has glitched once during this period, which resulted in two glitch photos and about three irrecoverable files that just didn’t write correctly.  I’ll have to pick up another card to see if it is really card related, but it seems to have happened on both of the cards that I swap every other day.

There is that slender graceful moment.  When the wind dies down and you see it.  For that half second everything becomes clear.  There is a subtle movement of the head, the neck, the upper body positioning moves in slow motion, but without hesitation and you just know that everything is going to work out.

You stop, open your mouth, stick your tongue out, and catch a snowflake.

Over the last few months I’ve written down some of my dreams that flutter from behind my eyelids.  Here are a few:

• Matrix “Burly Brawl” style fight where I take on dozens and dozens of balloon people.
• High school anti drug church function featuring skateboarding and a Silent Hill themed bathroom.
• Very fast party boat that turned into an inflatable mattress that dropped me off at a swanky lake house.
• Drawing artwork on a whiteboard.
• Getting caught stealing from a coke machine, but Dwight from the Office was blamed immediately, even though my arm was stuck in the machine.  Doubly funny because I’ve never watched The Office.
• Sparring with someone and watching them die of exhaustion.
• I was buying photography equipment.  Oh, wait.
• I was so fantastically wealthy I was tipping people with large carat diamonds.
• Work relocated all of us to a disused prison and our cubicles were in cells.  Still trying to figure that one out.
• Rescuing someone from a pelican, in between eating chicken tenders, while wearing no pants.

I’m done with the snow.

I pass by walks unshoveled, crosswalks blocked, tree branches broken, and cars buried.  I tread carefully on still buried sidewalks, detour around mountains of ice my height, and wear heavier jackets.

Most of all, I await the arrival of spring and its longer, warmer days.  I listen to the trickle of water into the storm drains and I think that maybe, fluid ounce by fluid ounce, this ugly crystalline inconvenience can finally be over.