Jul 16 2008What I thought I’d do was…
Traverse the earth. I’d start by going to Los Angeles, and then I’d hitchhike to Phoenix, and by similar processes eventually wind up in North Carolina. Say hello to my mother, than head north to Michigan. Say hello to everyone else. Then, to Canada. Head to the coast and get on a boat and head across the pond. Stroll eastward through Europe and through Russia, go to Alaska. Head back into Canada. Go southwest towards Brazil, get on a boat to South Africa, go north through the Middle East, east into India and through China, maybe go through Japan starting at Okinawa and ending in Sapporo. I could keep going, but I think you get the idea.
I would have no money to my name to start off with, and I’d work as a short order chef in a shitty diner off of a highway if I needed money.
In the meantime, I would make work. You know, art. I am an artist, after all. Or a photographer, I guess. Some people make a distinction between the two. For good reason, sometimes.
Listen—I am interested in all of existence. All of it, I really mean it. It’s magnificent. Even insignificant things are fascinating. All those things, I want to make them my own. I want to internalize the entirety of existence. I do that by seeing something, by putting it into my head or into my camera, by making a mental or photographic document of it.
It’s hard for me to do all of that sitting in one place.
So I left.
I got to Los Angeles. I tried hitchhiking to Phoenix, but I didn’t have much luck. I got tired and slept in a sort-of-alley on a piece of particle board next to the freeway entrance I was trying to hitchhike at.
I woke up and tried again, and then went to Union Station. I spent ten dollars and fifty cents of the eleven dollars I had left on a train to Riverside, CA. It’s a while east of L.A., but still within driving distance.
I talked to people. I decided to come back. So it goes.
I’ll try again when the time is ripe, when I’m sure I can go through with it all the way and not have to deal with being defeated.
I was told to not look at it like that (as if it were admitting defeat), but it’s hard for me to see it any other way. I was gone for not even thirty-six hours, and I didn’t get terribly far. A failure on most accounts, I guess. I hate that. I hate being reminded that I am human, that I am not capable of anything I could possibly imagine just because I want to be.
I wasted twenty-four frames by rewinding a roll that’s been in my camera since March. I wanted a new roll in the camera for when I started my great departure. I might try to reuse/double expose the roll. Film isn’t vegan, so it’s important to me that it not go to waste.
I shaved my beard and my head. I’ve been shaving my head regularly since November, but I had gotten rather attached to my beard. I look like I am twelve, now. Stubble is coming in, now, but I’m impatient to have facial hair again. I like beards, my own especially.
Jul 15 2008things I’d like to do at the moment
- eat food
- circumnavigate the earth over and over until love or osteoporosis stops me, producing a body of documentary photographic work centered around that in the meantime
- go home
- find home
- get all the achievements in ninja gaiden two
- buy a motorcycle
- hit level seventy in world of warcraft
- finish final fantasy twelve because have you played it it’s pretty great
- grow my beard back
Jun 30 2008Ladri di biciclette
My primary means of transportation in this city is via public transit, namely the terrible bus system in Orange County which comes once an hour, if at all, and never past 11PM or so.
Sometimes, I will be out and I will see a bicycle which has no implementations to prevent it from being stolen . On one occasion, on a bike stand but with the cable lock wrapped snugly around the bicycle itself and not connecting it to the metal rack it was resting upon. On another, leaning up against the wall outside a bathroom at a bus station.
In these situations I am generally sent into a state of panic. Paranoid, I will examine my surroundings thoroughly to establish the lack of presence of witnesses, CCTV or otherwise. I will proceed to consider my possible escape routes, taking into account visibility and other obstacles which would perhaps belay pursuit.
On both occasions I deemed it easily possible to make away with the apparatus in question.
At present I am not in possession of a bicycle.
I considered lingering to converse with the rightful owners and explaining to them my temptations. Perhaps my honesty would be rewarded with the item I so coveted, part of me reasoned. I quickly told myself that such a notion was absurd and watched longingly as the owner came and wheeled their bicycle away.
Jun 28 2008Meth Labs for Fun & Profit
I have just moments ago purchased two pounds of powdered chemistry, divided equally between the following:
- K3[Fe(CN)6] - Potassium ferricyanide
- C6H8O7·nFe·nH3N - Ammonium ferric citrate
Just a heads up.
Postcards, among other things, are soon to follow.
