December 2004 Archives

Growing up in south Texas, it always seemed to be a tossup whether we'd be able to wear sweaters on Christmas Day. We're known for our temperate winters, and true to form, more years than not, Christmas Day is a good day for a hike or a birdwatching expedition. I've spent, to the best of my memory, every Christmas of my life in Corpus Christi.

I say this all as background, so that you'll understand my excitement about the weather. All week, the meteorologists have been making dire forecasts about wintry weather, which in south Texas, generally means that the weather is dropping below 70F. They've been prompting us for days, for instance, that pets should be sheltered from the weather, and that layers are warmer than one coat, because honestly, we're all weather-retarded around here.

But for all the snow predictions that I've heard in Corpus Christi, and I hear one every few years or so, I can't remember actually seeing snow on the ground. I've seen sleet. I've seen icicles, but the snow never follows through.

So the fact that it's snowing right now in Corpus Christi, Texas, makes this a momentous occasion. I'm not just talking flurries, either -- the weathermen came through for once, and we've even got a couple of inches of accumulation.

Pictures will follow, naturally.

I've fallen a bit off the wagon, in terms of Holidailies, haven't I? I never have been good at finding words when I have nothing to say.

I bought some decent new hiking shoes yesterday. The ones I had before were starting to wear out, and the heels rubbed me the wrong way. It seemed like good timing -- the weather's been nice the last few days, and I've got a couple of months to wear them in really well before I go to Mexico.

I set out today to go for a hike, but instead, I went on a little photographic expedition, as I often do. I drove out to Webberville, east of Austin, and found a park with a nice picnic bench to sit at. I took some pictures, but I haven't looked yet to see how they came out. It's that sort of day, I guess.

I came upon two realizations today, which seem to conflict with one another. I haven't really been able to reconcile them together yet, but I suppose there's still time for that.

The first is that photography is in many ways much like fishing. Sometimes, all you can do is find an interesting spot and make yourself comfortable, and hope something interesting will come to you. If it does, you can try to catch it. Sometimes, something wonderful comes; other times, you catch a nap. The trick, I think, is in being able to accept that.

The second realization, hardly new, is that life is fragile and fleeting, and that I still don't know exactly what I want to do with mine. The question remains: is napping on a picnic bench on a sunny day in December, next to a babbling river a waste of a day?

It's fairly safe to say that I tend to be a music snob. I'll listen to the radio when that's the best option, but I like the music I like, and that almost never includes the Top-40 stuff. My computers at work and at home are chock-full of the folky and funky alternative stuff that I like to listen to, and I seldom have to subject myself to the whims of the twelve-year old listening public.

When the iTunes Music Store first came out, it was fairly empty of the kind of music that I like. Over time, the selection has gotten much, much better, but it was slim pickings in those early days. So when I found the music video selection of the iTunes store, I wasn't terribly hopeful. And truthfully, the first videos they streamed were often genres I don't care about, like hip hop, rap, and r&b. Over time, they've posted a lot of really great videos there, like Rachael Yamagata's Worn Me Down and Mindy Smith's Come to Jesus, along with a lot of not-so-great Top 40 stuff with catchy videos.

I'm addicted to this service, I swear. Why else would I have (repeatedly) watched the JoJo Leave (Get Out) video? It's not like it's a good song, but it's catchy as hell. I'm in love with the live video of Curbside Prophet, by Jason Mraz, and I've discovered the incredible voice of Hayley Westenra, who's a teenager from New Zealand. I spent weeks watching No Doubt's cover of It's My Life on constant loop, and I discovered the awesomeness that is the Scissor Sisters.

Don't get me wrong, there's some laughably bad stuff there. There should be a rule against actors like Lindsay Lohan, Robert Downey, Jr., and Minnie Driver recording albums, and I'm convinced that one of the later circles of hell has that awful, awful Easy Breezy songs playing in a continual loop. But sometimes, even the awful stuff is catchy.

God help me, I'm addicted to Kelly Clarkson's video, Since U Been Gone. This is wrong on so many levels. First and foremost, she's an American Idol, which means she exemplifies everything that's wrong in music today, the innate embodiment of twelve-year old whim. Secondly, I have a moral opposition to songs with "U" in place of "You" in the title. On principle, you understand. But I've been watching this video, over and over again. I've picked out all these brief moments that I like, in the same way that I scope out a scene for a photograph. I know that if I had heard the song on the radio, I wouldn't care at all, but there we are.

iTunes is evil.

In somewhat related news, I had that godawful Easy Breezy song stuck in my head all afternoon. It was horrible -- torture. The song that finally ejected it from my head wound up not being one of the iTunes songs at all; it was the song that went along with this goofy Flash movie that Jael posted a link to. The first time I saw it, this weekend, I didn't think anything of it, but I watched it again tonight with subtitles and realized that the song was in Romanian.

I'm sad that Claudia isn't around for me to share this piece of information with. I'm not sure she's even been reading lately -- she hasn't left a comment in a while. But I think she'd find it amusing that I'm walking around the house singing, 'nu ma, nu ma iei, nu ma, nu ma, nu ma iei...'

I hiked into paradise this morning, in the scrubland of the Texas Hill Country.

Hidden near Hamilton Pool, Westcave Preserve is less-known and more regulated than its neighbor, but it was Travis County's first nature preserve, established in 1976 when the land was purchased from a private owner.

The preserve itself is the lifework of the two men who run the place. Interesting guys, both of them, they seem the sort far more comfortable communing with plants and rocks than with people, despite working with them almost every day of the year.

You can't wander through this preserve as you might Hamilton Pool or Wild Basin. The only way you can see it is on one of the weekend tours, or by reservation during the week, but it's well worth the hassle. The tour starts at the top of a gorge, with a view overlooking the Pedernales River. Even in December, the trees held enough leaves that I couldn't get an entirely clear view of the river, much less a decent picture.

From there, the path winds around to a downward path into the canyon, divided into steps that pass between huge boulders and rock walls. At the bottom, there's a creek that flows nicely, clear and unspoiled, through the limestone. The path follows upstream along the creek until it reaches its source, a grotto with moss-covered rocks and towering trees that climb past the canyon walls to the sunlight. Water seeps through the springs at the top of the grotto and into a small waterfall, not as magnificent as Hamilton Pool, but lovely and delicate all the same.

Near the grotto, a path leads to a small cave, damp and fairly well lit, with stalactites and stalagmites forming around of the main walkway. Hidden in tiny crevices in the ceiling were two incredibly small bats, sleeping the late autumn morning away.

The hike up and out of the gorge wasn't particularly long, but it was entirely uphill, back up the steep staircase to the main visitors area. This time of year, most of the picturesque vegetation is dying off, but in the springtime, the gulch is said to be full of wildflowers.

It seems the sort of place to visit in every season, to see what the passing months have lent to the beauty of it, this hidden little paradise in the Hill Country.

It occurred to me today, perhaps a bit belatedly, that I needed to find my passport sometime soon, since I'm planning to leave the country in about two months. Then I realized I hadn't seen it in a while. In fact, it's been about a year and a half since I last used it, and a year and a half is plenty of time to lose something so well that it can't be found. I spent about twenty minutes, off and on, on semi-panicked searching, and I found it finally, in the small space between my dresser and my computer desk -- not really the sort of place I would think to look for it, so I consider myself very lucky.

I love passports. They're fascinating things -- tangible reminders of both heritage and travel, colorful yet official, and full of stories untold. Once I found my passport, I spent a while flipping through it and reminiscing.

I had my passport renewed in February of 2001, in preparation for Claudia's and my trip to Ireland. We were both in graduate school at the time. I had a passport previously, that I'd gotten in high school when I hoped to study abroad for a year, but my plans fell through, so it went unused. This passport had to be obtained quickly, as we only decided to go to Ireland for spring break about a month before the trip, so I had my passport pictures made at a place across the street from campus, then filled out the forms at the campus post office and sent it off with the expedited fee.

We left for our two-week vacation in early March. It was my first flight over the Atlantic, and it wasn't without drama. We were flying over Greenland when a woman on our plane got dangerously ill, and instead of continuing to London, which would have taken half an hour longer, the plane turned around and headed back to North America. I remember Claudia waking me up from a restless nap to tell me we were turning around -- she'd been watching on the monitor on the seatback in front of us.

We landed in Goose Bay, Canada, where the snow in March looked to be as high as the plane we flew in. We never left the plane, but the woman was removed, and what seemed like ages later, we continued on our way. We were supposed to land in London late in the morning, then fly to Dublin, arriving at noon. Instead, we left London at sunset, and landed in Dublin well after dark. So the first stamp in my passport is the British transit visa, and then on the next page is the Irish visa, just a purple ink stamp on my passport. Claudia had to apply for it ahead of time because she's Romanian, and when her application was approved, they stuck an ornate visa sticker in her passport. I was jealous of it, though not of the effort spent in obtaining it.

The vacation, though -- the vacation was wonderful. By the time our two weeks were up, neither of us wanted to leave, despite the chill and rain of Ireland in March. I spent months researching how I could move back to Ireland to work, but I never came up with anything substantive.

Next to my Irish stamp is the Canadian customs stamp from my weekend trip to Toronto with my kid sister (who's quickly outgrowing that moniker) in August of 2002. We made a whirlwind trip to attend the Hedwig convention and had a blast, and Toronto joined Dublin on my list of international cities in which I'd be willing to live. Aside from the convention, we spent a day and a half touring downtown Toronto and visiting every leather and lingerie shop we could find. Great, great trip.

I've got two more stamps from London from my stops through there in June and July of 2003. The British, it would seem, are meticulous about stamping passports. Hungarians and Austrians, not so meticulous, interestingly. I flew into Budapest from London, where I met Claudia, and we took the bus west to Vienna.

We both adored Vienna about as much as we had adored London and started making plans to move there. Logistics caused us to bypass a planned trip to Prague, but there was plenty to do in Vienna to keep us busy the extra days we stayed. Then we headed back through Hungarian customs to return to Budapest for a few days, where we roomed with some crazy Scots who'd recently had a nasty encounter with bedbugs and a pair of Norwegian boys who were on a monthlong crusade to travel without bathing. They were kind enough to wash their socks and their feet before we shared a room with them, though.

And then to Romania. I've got the Romanian stamps in my passport, though they seem to be fading -- or perhaps they were just faint to begin with. They're located several pages behind every other stamp in my passport. Those stamps remind me of these border crossings -- every one of them was slow going. Buses would line up in a single lane, and passports would be collected from each passenger, then taken to the customs booth to be scanned. It took hours sometimes, on cramped buses full of people who didn't speak my language and couldn't pronounce my name. I had to keep an eye out for the blue passport when they brought them back to redistribute, since the pronunciation of my name in Hungarian and Romanian isn't even remotely recognizable.

And yet, though I passed through Hungarian customs three times, there's no record of my ever being there, save for what I have in my memory, and the records I kept for myself, verbal and photographic.

I went through today and labeled the stamps in pencil with their countries of origin, so that I'll recognize them in the future, even if they've faded or I've forgotten. The stories my passport tells are as precious to me as the document itself.

Over the years, I've marked the passing of the years of adulthood by building for myself a moral roadmap by which to live. I consider myself a pretty nice person, on the whole. I think the Golden Rule is a good place to start when navigating by moral compass, and that we could all stand to do unto others a bit more like we would have them do unto us. But every now and then, I think of something that really needs to be codified. Bear with me as I try to put some of these things into words.

1. THOU SHALT NOT knowingly park in a handicapped spot without a legitimate handicap. Even if thou only plans to be in the establishment for five minutes. Even if thou art only waiting to pick someone up.
2. THOU SHALT NOT maintain debts longer than though must. If thy coworker spots you cash for lunch, thou must reciprocate as soon as thou art able.
3. THOU SHALT use thy turn signal if there is someone able to see it. Even if thou art turning right.
4. THOU SHALT NOT jaywalk if thy jaywalking impedes the flow of traffic.
5. THOU SHALT NOT eat the food thou purchased for charity. Even if thou art hungry and on a road trip and thou dost not want to stop. If thou must eat thy charity food, thou must replace it at a ratio of two units per unit consumed.
6. If thou uses a public restroom, THOU SHALT wash your hands. Thoroughly. With soap.
7. THOU SHALT chew with your mouth closed.
8. THOU SHALT NOT leave thy grocery cart in the middle of the aisle, then forget about it while staring blankly at nineteen varieties of oatmeal while someone else needs to pass.
9. If thou enters a public restroom with four stalls, and one stall is occupied, assuming all other stalls to be equal, THOU SHALT NOT take a stall next to the occupied one. People need their personal space.
10. THOU SHALT treat thy waiters and waitresses with respect and courtesy and tip appropriately. Even if thou hadst a bad day.

I'm madly in love with my camera. No, really -- I still get all fluttery inside and have to fan myself a bit when I think about it.

I hit this point with my photography where my learning curve just skyrocketed. It's happened over the last three or four months, really, within the time I've had my new camera. I think it's because it's a dSLR. It's easy to set all the controls to manual and experiment to see what happens. I know my way around my camera without even looking, and I get instant feedback without having to wait until my film gets developed.

And as with any love affair, I've been noticing lately how different the world looks to me. I dig black and white photography a lot. I'm fairly good at it, I guess, and it's a different way of thinking, a bit like speaking a different language from the one I'm used to. It's just so hard for me to translate my photographic visions from color to black and white.

I've been rediscovering lately, especially on days of nice weather when the sky is rich blue, rather than the blazing white of summertime, how much I like the juxtaposition of rust-red Spanish tiles against a clear blue sky. And though they're frustratingly difficult to find around here, trees with color-changing foliage are stunning -- just beautiful. My best pictures, the ones I count among my favorites, almost all involve color in such a way that I think they'd lose something very important if I were to convert them to black and white.

I took this photo today at lunch, at Little City on the Drag. It's a bit embarrassing when there are photos that need to be taken -- need to be taken -- and I'm someplace with coworkers or friends. I always feel awkward about it, like I'm putting them out while I take pictures. But the light was beautiful from where we sat, so in the middle of the conversation, I got all distracted and antsy and started snapping shots.

I like this one. I dig the backlighting and the colors of the chairs and the placement of the bulbs at the top. And the guy is way hot. Check out that jawline. The lighting in the coffeeshop was beautiful, but not photographically ideal, yet I managed to make the photo look exactly as I remember the scene.

That's harder than it sounds.

Despite Romanian superstition to the contrary, 2004 hasn't been much of a traveling year for me. In 2003, I spent a few weeks in Europe over the summer, seeing the wonders of Vienna, Budapest, and Romania, and then went on went on a great road trip to California after Christmas, culminating in an entirely uneventful New Years Eve in Tucson, Arizona, where Claudia and I made ourselves nutty driving around the city and singing along at the top of our lungs with one catchy song on a loop.

Romanian superstition says that the way you spend New Years is the way you'll spend the coming year. While I'm grateful that the superstition fell apart in that I didn't have to spend any more time than necessary in Tucson, I hoped that at least living out of my suitcase that night would count for something, and that I'd do more traveling this year. Sadly, it's been mostly the "uneventful" part of the evening that's shaped my year.

Since returning from our road trip after New Years, I've left the state exactly twice, both times for short weekend jaunts to New Orleans. And while I enjoyed New Orleans, I really wanted to go back to Washington, where I haven't been in years and years, or to see some fall color in the northeast. But nope, nothing doing. For some reason, the money we kept in our pockets on New Years (to ensure we'd have money in our pockets all year round) didn't seem to stick over the past year, and going on a big trip wound up being out of my budget. (My new digital camera, you'll notice, wasn't out of my budget, but I refuse to accept that particular correlation.)

My dad and stepmom were in town last Sunday, and I had a belated birthday dinner with them at the Clay Pit, which was very good, and they were suitably impressed. We spent the meal talking about photography and my two-year plan (the one wherein I prepare to leave the country by the time I turn 30). The two conversations overlap quite a bit, and the conclusion was that my dad offered to send me to a photographic workshop, if I found one I was interested in.

As luck would have it, one of the mailing lists that I subscribe to sent me a message the following morning -- not twelve hours later -- and mentioned a workshop that I was interested in. The topic is Documentary Portraiture. Nice, eh? I've been very inspired by photographers who take beautiful, touching images of people that tell a meaningful story, so finding one that appealed to me is great.

Oh, did I mention it's in February? In Oaxaca, Mexico. It's ten days long, and I'm so excited that I've been bouncy all week.

So far, 2005 is shaping up to be a good traveling year.

It's time again for my beloved Jette's Holidailies challenge, meaning I've got a month of trying to find something interesting to write about from day to day. Last year's Holidailies went really well. Claudia and I went on a road trip with a laptop, and I posted updates from the road. Yeah, that was cool... it's easy to post daily when you've got something to write about.

This year, I've got no interesting plans, really. Claudia's off in Romania, doing research and playing in the snow or something. I work a lot and never get much done. It gets dark at 5:15 every single evening. I made it a policy years ago not to write about work -- it could (theoretically) get me into trouble, and anyway, it isn't really all that interesting. So until Christmas eve, there'll be no work talk, not much play talk, and no Claudia talk, which leaves me with, what, photography and introspection?

It's not a challenge for nothing, right?

I've got some fairly exciting news to share (well, exciting to me, anyway), but I'm afraid of running out of things to talk about before the week is up, so I'll put that off until next time. This time, I'll show off a recent photo, instead.

One of the big limitations to the dark coming so early has been finding time to take pictures outside of work hours. A logical solution to this problem, of course, would be for me to start getting to work early some days, so that I could leave early and have more daylight at my disposal. I disapprove of that solution. Instead, I've been looking for ways to practice photography at night. I took this photo last night, at one of the houses on 37th, which have their lights up in typical beautiful gaudy display. It's a long exposure of a spinning light-wrapped fixture. It looks like a coiled spool of titanium to me, but I love the luminescence of it.

I see pictures I want to take all the time. Usually, they're fleeting things -- the play of the light through the trees, the grin of a young woman jogging toward someone she knows, the goofy bopping of someone in his car who doesn't realize he's being watched. All the time. And before I can even think of taking a picture, before I can even lift my camera, it's over, just the stuff of memories.

I've had a picture stuck in my head lately, just waiting to be taken. I see it every day on my way to work, as I pass by a shopping center near my house. Every single morning, there's a flock of pigeons that takes off just as I pass, makes a synchronized few swooping loops over the block, and then sets down again. Every single morning. And, I mean, they're pigeons, right? Pigeons aren't known for being photogenic, but there's something about the motion that takes my breath away on a daily basis.

I struggle with photography as an art form, from time to time. I've gotten pretty good at taking a good picture. In some sense, it's very clinical: pick the right lens, wait for the right light, add a bit of luck and some framing, and achieve a decent picture. And I can do that, mostly. I post about 2% of the photos I shoot. If I were more organized, I'd throw all the others away, but occasionally, I'll go back and find some among them that grow on me after a while, so perhaps it's better than I'm not organized, but that's a bit off-topic.

What I feel that I'm missing in my own art is passion. Not passion for the subject, because I've got that in spades, but passion in the subject, capturing that brief, perfect moment in time in a way that causes people to "get" it when they see it. I'm still learning how to do that. Without passion, it's just stock photography, right?

What's missing in my increasingly sizeable portfolio is passion, and I'm still learning how to capture that -- give me time.