Well?

So where's the Penelo-Baby? I left a message 2 hours ago and still no response. Do I call again. Possibloy.

Anyway a little bit about Joshua Tree and then back to the hum-drum of my jobless existence and my harsh and disapproving grandmother.

Joshua Tree was great, albiet a bit exasperating. The tiresome part comes with a whole bunch of guys, most my dads age and their gear talk. Talk about tripods, film, 8x10s, film, exposure times, lighting, the perfect shot, scouting locations... and then there's me glancing at my watch and thinking that the daylights burning- so we've got to go. And my eyes going wide when someone asks me about what kind of film or lenses. i feel stupid fairly fast. I will never be a technical photographer. They will never have the glorious prestine-ness of ansel adams or per volquartz (do ck out his phenomenal photos- the link is at the bottom right). Although there is always something to be learned from such things. Bcs they know how to make things work- and I do not. I did not know why my pinhole wasn't working, i barely knew how to load a polaroid holder. i didn't know the exposure times nor could i remember if less time meant a darker photograph or a lighter one- or more time meant it was overexposed. i do know about composition however and what makes a good photograph. that's my only saving grace.

my overwhelming question about landscape photography was: why. what makes it interesting and more than just beautiful or is the aesthetic of such gloriousness enough- and with an exceptional few it is- when something is just breathtaking. my own photos when i do this again will have to involve a complication. i'm decidedly too impatient to engineer a glorious photo- i'd much rather happen upon the circumstance than calculate it. but such mastery is a dying art.

i meditate over such things while staring at the stars: hypnotized. i meditate over such things while staring at the campfire: hypnotized.

the good weather brought out quite a few campers and a few dumb-ass kids. my favorite is from a girl who was old enough to know better call an infrequent sighting of a golden eagle a "pidgeon" and then for her younger brother to try and climb up and get it, (it was actually perched quite close) he, making lots of noise while doing so. my only amusement was that the eagle seemed unphased. my secret hope, that it would peck the kids eyes out or attack them in some larson-esque and comical way. and i would be there to testify to the childrens stupidty, their lack of parental supervision, and their startling lack of 1) awe 2) respect for nature. 3) being little fuckers.

sitting out in the semi-wilderness is never enough. one becomes restless and wants to explore during the day. so my mom and me embarked on a half-assed attempt to discover "something"- petroglyphs probably. although since we'd seen the petroglyphs in arizona and new mexico i somehow doubt i'd be much more amused. but it was something to do. except we were in fact losing daylight and the road was dirt and sand and bumpy. we weathered it fairly well, having enough of this absurd triangular path thru the desert and declared it over- having not gotten out of the car once.

earlier in the day after a hike (which was really fun) and another aborted attempt to "explore" a dam and some rusted cars- we were on another much less perilous dirt road and we saw 1) a male model on a shoot 2) a coyote trott by us on his journey who knows where. and as i pulled off the road to take some pictures of dead yucca trees, bcs it seemed to me something to do- this is where something truly curious happened. I was on picture #31 on my 35mm camera. i asked my mom if there was any more film and i started to make my way back to the car. I snapped picture #32. I paused. I said, well that's it. And i opened up the back of the camera, gasping as i see the film not rewound, and just laying there being bleached blank by the sun. i close the lid in confusion. it says error on the digital read out- why won't it rewind? i think well, maybe i can tuck the spoiled part of them film into the roll and salvage the problem. so i open it up again and PULL. but no, not just 3 pictures but the entire roll laid tightly coiled. realizing the disaster and perhaps secretly blaming technology and the fact that i'd been using a holga all day- i kept pulling, knowing that it was all lost anyway- mom only half guessing my madness said, well there are 36 pictures on the roll. not anymore mom! not anymore. pull. pull. pull. i saw my memory being erased in front of me. i thought- what were the 32 pictures on the roll. where did it start? what part of my day will i no longer be able to remember. perhaps i mused, i didn't want to have a visual record of them all along. perhaps i wanted to remember them the way my mind wanted to remember them. having pictures you become reliant on them to hold your memories. we become stupider by degrees i thought. pull. pull. pull. why did i think 32 and not 36. i felt betrayed by my mind for such a stupid action. why had i thought, it'd rewound? why. pull. pull. pull. erase. erase. erase.

my mind is already fragmenting the memory: animals i saw: 8 quails, 1 coyote, 15 king sparrows, 1 golden eagle, the tail of a kangaroo rat, 5 ground squirrals, 1 oriole, 9 ravens, 7 bunnies... many rocks, much scrub brush, 1 sunset, many stars: canis major, taurus, orion, gemini, the big dipper, the 7 virgins. 4 fires: how it burned, how hot it felt, how much wood it took, the noise it made, the wind, no wind... the ash dusting over the landscape. the chocolate pudding cups, the cold water, the toilet seat, the crunch of the gravel, the long winding roads, the kids who locked their keys in the trunk, burning a hole in our tent, the cold, the hot, the fire, the dark, the yelping coyotes, the drunk college students, the story of them trying to hitch a ride, the warmth of the sun, our triangular journey to nowhere but back from where we came, and the road home, and the windmills and the outlet mall and the indian reservation and the in/out burger and all the trucks, and the clear sky to hazy smog, to home and a shower and the dirt scrubbed from under my fingernails, to the tv and the internet and our animals: 2 dogs, 4 cats and rolls and rolls of used film. and to-do lists and to another day, more ordinary and nothing like the last.