Drumroll please,

I'm RIGHT AND YOU'RE WRONG. NANNER NANNER NANNER.
(I have for your witness a picture of danica taken in turkey from 2004. boo-YAH)

Dear Penelope,

Hello you.
Thanks for your commiseration about the chin hair issue. As it turns out there were no nut-thins to eat the other night. That was sad. It was a specific cheddary crunchyness I was craving. I think i compromised by having a stale rice cake. I did eventually straighten the books on the top shelves, 3 stacks of them reaching and wedged to the ceiling. And I threw another 7" of paper away. They were old bound copies of books, articles, notes, short stories, analysis- from film theory, an ethos and eros course, someones thesis, history of the presidency, art history... classes I really liked or some just provoking. There was something I attached to all that xeroxed paper. Time, expense, an accumulation of thoughts, a certain gesture of the professor to communicate a truth, an idea, or some joy about words, all of it compiled nicely, gathered together. It was hard to part with then. Easier now. I stared at the articles blankly. Kept one collection of short plays from a korean author. Your thesis. A book on world religions. Parts of life are an accumulation and simultaneously a distillation. We shake and filter and sort and add. An endless meditation on what makes up memory and sentiment and aesthetic taste.

The vial of sand from the volcano caught in the wires along with that same small vial of wisdom teeth removed. The flask labeled 'schu' and a dried out orange from some birthday. The etruscan miniature horse from the getty, teal and lovely. The costume jewelry from that dumpster, the candleholder from spain, the ceramic angel and the wooden shoe ornament. The lego man I found buried in the dirt along with an old glass bottle top. My match collection and that vermont teddy bear... for now. My 3 baby blankets and my pound puppy and all those boxes I have in the attic. Nevermind about those.

Yesterday I went to the opera. Which for all its lovilness is essentially tedious. An exercise in patience and excavation like reading Proust or going through all your keepsakes. Your mind wanders, things catch, and if you are very lucky you have gone away somewhere and come back with something to hold.

Now I'm going to go back to watching xfiles and thinking about writing those personal essays for talbot. I did apply to that job I didn't want yesterday. So that was good. Next up temp agencies? Or more job sites? The acupuncturist? Yoga? Swimming? Maybe episodes of 24.

Arizona in my Mind

I was going to hold off until I got a better scan of it but this will have to do for now. I love this photo. It is currently my most favoritist photo of right this moment. And it's even better cuz i'm in it. There are surprisingly not many photos of my brother and I together and even less where we are so epically posed. I found it while I was going through a trunk full of photos from 1977 onward, that my mom has NEVER put in albums, and is only because of me that they are now centrally located and NOT dispersed thru the house in various drawers, stacks, dusty boxes and bundles. If you are this person, stop immediately. Either honor your memories or stop the pretense. Digital files are even worse because who ever looks at those and are they organized by year and month and outing?!. Sure it's cute and like loose, devil may care, when you're in your 20's but not unlike hanging on to vesitages of youth into your 40's and 50's it's seriously just irritating. Okay, I'm cranky. It took me 2 years to organize my grandmothers photos and she had over 20ALBUMS. (aka not thrown in a box disorganized)... So in my last organizational fit (they occur very often) I began to go thru the photos because why not start now opposed to when I'm medicated and single and old and my mom isn't there anymore. You don't need photos of car shows or flower shows or faded zoo photos. Is all I'm saying.

It's beginning to effect my own photo efforts as now I am slowly behind- I can see it happening to me. I know I'm not immune. And I appreciate that my family loves to take pictures and I also take pictures of zoo animals and flowers and sunsets and trees and my cats- I can't stop myself. So maybe this post is a word of warning to me. But also an encouragement. There is after all a story you're creating. Photos are not idle. They're interpreted. They radiate impressions, and eras and class and disposition and you can only hope that when you die somebody might look on an album or a particular photo as something like personal and historical archeology- something that makes you laugh or cry or any myriad of human emotions I haven't the inclination to describe.