"Have you seen my servant Job?"

New Worlds

2011-01-31T15:33:00.000-08:00

There is little reason for me to keep a blog. I do have one. I had forgotten. Here is a new picture at least. Someday there may be new words, though I am unsure how much I care to have this be my forum for communicating.

Alameda

2006-10-04T01:13:00.000-07:00

So I've moved again. Who knows how long this will last?

One good thing immediately is the wealth of night photography subjects around here. This old base is littered with light pockets and some are really great. Plus the conditions vary depending on the weather. That has been a nice thing. Of course it usually means going out creeping reaaaaally late (or early.) My sleep schedule is for poop right now.

A friend of mine is having a baby soon. It's going to be very big!

Aperture

2006-06-14T03:35:00.000-07:00

Life has saturated me for so long that sometimes I don't even notice it anymore. Lately I've been able to start seeing through different lenses. It has been too long since I had a decent hobby. So now I stay up late listening to the music of suicides and editing and posting digital files. It is great to be young and healthy in both mind and body.

Let my existence be the warning label on a pack of cigarettes. Too late.

Time

2006-05-15T22:55:00.000-07:00

Officially older today. I worked underneath a house all day. I got really dirty. It was great fun. It looks like I'll be doing some steady work for the next couple of weeks. Nice to know.

I've got my sights set on my next camera already. I'll be moving into the world of the SLR before the end of the year if I have anything to say about it.

Here is a sweet picture of a sweet horse.

Slip Slidin'

2006-05-01T16:06:00.000-07:00

Today I hiked around looking for a decent vantage point of the slide on I-80 near my house. It is hard to get near. This one is pretty good size. All you who drive roads that have this type of retaining wall should take notice. There have been at least three similar slides on I-80 in my area this year. civil engineers are maybe using the trial and error method for design. This is expected to take weeks to clear up.

Stayin' Alive

2006-04-27T18:21:00.000-07:00

I'm so happy to have had work for the past two weeks that I celebrated by getting my haircut for the first time in about 6 months. I always remember how nice short hair is when I have it.

I'm starting to get to the point where photography really appeals to me. Now I just have to work out how to make some money by doing it. I had an interesting talk last week with a professional photographer who was quite helpful. The upshot:
making money is never easy even if you like what you are doing.

Regardless of reality I will pursue my enjoyment. Maybe someday I will learn enough to take better pictures of the things I see and of the things that I want to see.

Cloudbreak

2006-04-13T01:51:00.000-07:00

Woe is me.

I have this recurring theme. I don't know what my blockage is, but it is starting to ge annoying.

I almost feel close to breaking out of this cycle. Close to my inspiration. That is now what I think I have been missing all these years. It is a hard thing to track. I get feelings from things when I am close. Clues if you will. Inklings. Life is structured normally to divert the impulse to inspiration. The whimsy that can be so powerfully driving is often marginalized by the pragmatic furniture of the ordinary life.

I've been staring blankly at the furniture for so long that sometimes I feel like I don't know myself.

But I do know myself.
Why have I been burying myself prematurely? Some bad homage to Edgar Allan Poe? Fine. That is part of who I am. Always a bit close to the darkness, yet within me a strong light burns. Passion. So close to the surface, SO CLOSE, but often not shining through quite strongly enough. And the sun is getting on its way.

Let this post accompany the picture it is tied to. The brief break in the clouds before the rain returns again. The darkness pressing back in.

But we know there is sun.

Stillness

2006-03-29T12:50:00.000-08:00

I finally thought of something that I want to do, but so late that my resources have mostly been squandered doing other ridiculous things. We'll see how it transpires. In the meantime I have some great computers that I can sell. What am I bid for the Pentium 3 1000? And for the 650 AMD with Windows 98? Anyone...?

Not such a great business model. If there was an effective way of marketing my actual skills that didn't include people wanting to know about my time in prison it would be much nicer for me. I don't really think prison has a whole lot of relevance anymore. That was about ten years ago..... wow. Time flies when you are having such great fun.

Wind

2006-03-18T23:38:00.000-08:00

All my recent complaining has led me to consider something that has been right under my nose for a while. Now I just need facts to make my plans. I don't want to talk too much about specifics until I can figure for sure whether my current dream is my path, but it sure does make me feel a whole lot better.

Today my friend and I went to a park with a pioneer cemetery nearby. We got there a half hour before the park closed and I ran around like a freak trying to find the place, but it was a nice outing nonetheless. I took this picture there. Interesting tree. Colored by the blood of the coal miners who died?

Doldrums

2006-03-13T19:11:00.000-08:00

So why so little change? Where is my inspiration? Where's the cream filling as it were?

I don't know what the deal is these days. Tomorrow brings little promise. This is like being becalmed in the way of the oceanic explorers of old. Sailing the seas of fate with no wind. Yes I have a frame of reference, but things are not much better than the worst days of my life, it is just a different quality to the bad things. Certainly not much better. There is more good than stinky though. Just a lot of not-shiny spots. Indistinct color in the overall scene.

Still here. Saving my words for that thing that might be worth talking about.

Under the Stairs...

2006-03-04T11:43:00.000-08:00

Today I helped Mary Day clean some containers full of different glazes that she has stored underneath the stairs leading to the front door of her house. It wasn't too difficult. This was after I had reconfigured her email setting so she could send again. Turmoil caused by the big migration from Earthlink to att. It was somewhat interesting to see the different things, like barium, that are used for glazing pottery. Looks very healthy. Found a small creature that appears to be a salamander. It was under the stairs. Thought I had killed it, but apparently it was playing possum. I'd have been bummed if I'd killed it.

The company is nice, the work is okay, but let me not be distracted for too long from the fact that I am in a job crises and sending out resumes is for me almost as futile it seems as throwing a snowball into the infernal region. If I have to type a different cover letter for every place telling them how special I am for their particular job, it makes it harder to blanket as wide a number of employeers in as short a time. Cover letters are the icing on the snowballs that I throw into the infernal region.

It has been quite some time since I started out on my college journey. Will I ever have a career path? Heavens.

Here is the non-dead salamander.

Bloody Thursday

2006-03-02T23:57:00.000-08:00

Today was interesting. At the barn the cowboy was moving the herd that has been grazing on the EBMUD land adjacent. A horse in a paddock of the neighboring vintner became excited and tangled itself in a barbed wire fence. The UPS guy alerted the cowboy and then me. I grabbed a coworker and we headed over to find the cowboy keeping the horse still. UPS and I held the head while cowboy cut the fence. Once we rolled the horse and got him standing I walked him to a round pen in a drier area of the property just a few dozen yards away. That's when the arterial bleeding became apparent.

It's a strange thing; blood. If it is coming out at the right pressure it looks like a solid object and a thin geyser of the stuff is hard to differentiate from another natural object like a stick or piece of grass. A red stick. That's when the brain refocuses and says: "something isn't right here." Thankfully, horses have a lot more blood than humans do. In all my years I think this was the first time I dressed an arterial wound, and in the field no less. I asked my coworker , Brian, for a rag but he couldn't find one in the horse's owners tack trunk. I asked him to keep looking and suddenly he hands me a piece of a sock. The dude tore off his own sock! Awesome. So it worked out quite well, because I was able to fit the sock over the hoof. With the help of Brian's other sock we had ourselves a nicely improvised elastic field dressing. Reduced the arterial flow to almost nil. I waited for the owner and helped her trailer the poor critter. He seemed in good enough spirits. For a guy with two dirty,bloody socks tied around his ankle he was doing pretty well.

A mini-diatribe on the ills of rotational grazing by the cowboy, and one run-into-the-street-suicide-attempting dogs later I was in Berkeley at my class. Then I noticed that I hadn't *quite* washed all the blood from my hands. Never mind those boots of mine. Filthy.

Cowed

2006-02-27T18:00:00.000-08:00

I hate being in a situation where people that you don't like have leverage over you. This happened to me recently. Like, yesterday recently.

Trying to get something together to make it happen a little bit. Harder from the inside than the outside.

Leads would be nice in this case.

Sleep

2006-02-25T02:58:00.000-08:00

Taking a nap is satisfying, until you try to sleep at 2:30am and it doesn't go well.

The highlight of my day was taking a picture of the train. If I had waited a few more minutes I'd have had a great shot of two trains passing head on.

What am I; a Trainspotter?

Monsters

2006-02-23T11:00:00.000-08:00

Talking to my friend about the denial of parole for a convicted felon in California. The parole board recommends parole, but the governor denied it. Seventeen years in prison.

It got us talking about possible reasons that someone would not be released. My view is that some group has successfully lobbied to portray this person as a dangerous monster. How many real monsters are there in prison as opposed to human beings? What is the difference between a monster and a human? How do you tell? Who decides? I'm inclined to think that it is mostly people. Many of them deserve to be in prison, but how antiquated are our notions of justice that would allow us to value life based only on the behavior of the individual without a sense of our responsibility as a group to teach the correct behaviors?

I'm rambling.

Day

2006-02-18T21:38:00.000-08:00

It is nice when the rain stops for a bit of sun. Today was also a bit chilly. I accompanied a friend to IKEA. Good times.
I didn't do too much at the barn today. The horses were pretty good. The cats were cute.

I might have some web design business here soon. Would be nice for a change. Maybe even some money.

At some point I might begin to think again. It seems like a long time since I've done that. I do miss it occasionally. Torn between inaction and the things that pull me in the world. Somewhere I'd like to find my balance again.

I'm sure it is there.

Frozen

2006-02-17T19:16:00.000-08:00

Today was cold. About 33 degrees Farenheit when I got up at 7. It hasn't been much warmer since. A little rain. I've been frozen to this spot most of the day.

My resolution for tomorrow is to actually leave the house and get farther than the driveway.

Plus I can't get pictures from here.

Give me a life.

Remuneration

2006-02-15T22:13:00.000-08:00

So much of my time is spent traveling to somewhere and then not getting much done. Today someone asked me when the last time I had a "real" job was, and I had to think back pretty far. I guess it depends on what you mean, but we could both agree on that. Drawing a paycheck from an organization that has a separate department just devoted to payroll.

Over four years. Since then I've probably earned an average well below $20k a year. Considering my rent, transportation and food expenses total more than $12k a year it doesn't leave much more for other expenses like utilities or debts.

Today I earned $50.00

My laundry list of financial woes. Mostly it was just interesting to talk it out and see how far from ideal the scene is.

I'm sure that things will get better. I can hope for at least different.

Maybe I should be careful what I wish for.

Leary

2006-02-13T22:24:00.001-08:00

I was standing in my garage the other day before I left for work and I was flipping through a copy of King Lear that was there on top of a box of stuff. I was reading the ending and I was suddenly touched by strong emotion. Shakespeare often does that to me. I think a lot about my life when I read Shakespeare. A lot of the dreams that I had for myself when I was young are tied somehow to learning, and so I guess nothing more embodies my feelings about learning than Shakespeare. I always hated reading the stuff in high school, but remember when in a literature class at a junior college Shakespeare became something that I could understand rather than a tedious impenetrable mess of bad english. I really step outside myself when I read it.

My life is a much more mundane play than King Lear.

"Vex not his ghost: O, let him pass! he hates him much
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer."

Another picture from the parade.

Jobs

2006-02-12T12:06:00.000-08:00

I watched the Morgan Spurlock 30 Days tv program last night. He's the guy that did the McDonalds Super Size Me movie. He and his girlfriend took a month to try to get by working minimum wage jobs in Ohio. It was interesting, but it sucks to realize that you can't live on minimum wage.

I need a job. A real job that pays me more than $10 an hour. I can't really make all my bills for less than $15.

With all my great talents and work experience it shouldn't be that hard.

Dog Day

2006-02-11T21:18:00.000-08:00

So I got to the parade pretty late. I need to get better at planning these things. Still I had a good time. My batteries were dying and I apparently lost one of my rechargeables, so most of my pictures were without flash, which is good and bad. I don't mind a lot of the effect that I get when light is low. Flash often bothers me by being too bright, but clearly a lot of the pictures would have benefited by it.

This dragon is one of my favorites. I'm happy I went. It would have been nice to have some company, but what are you going to do sometimes.

Here's to the dogs.

Fast Forest

2006-02-11T12:32:00.000-08:00

On my way to my grandparents house last night I managed to take a few pictures. Some of them I really liked. This one came out surprisingly. Though dinner with my grandparents was good, the drive to dinner was a bit bumpy. My grandfather hit a curb while driving at about 40 mph. I think his days of driving at night are over. At least they should be.

I'm getting ready to go into the city for the parade. I hope to get hundreds of pictures. I'm excited by the idea of it. Let's see if I can park anywhere.

Lucre

2006-02-10T00:10:00.000-08:00

Over one week late. Finally have my rent. Working every day and visiting the credit union to make deposits. This has been an exhausting week. I'm looking forward to the weekend. This is the parade weekend. The camera is going for a walk on Saturday.

I feel connected to something good. It makes me happy. I hope it sustans itself in my life.

Ever the optimist am I. Not all clouds have silver linings. I wonder why that expression came about?

Here is proof that silver shines far less bright than the wispy shrouds of Atum.

And after that the dark...

2006-02-07T21:38:00.000-08:00

Today was strange. I feel hollow lately. I realized that I don't really have a job. I just do work for money. I am the obstacle. Maybe someday soon. Someday my dreams will all come true.

There are few things that are really pleasant to me that don't involve a considerable amount of wasted time on the computer. I sold something else on ebay. Inching toward the rent.

In the middle of waiting to do a favor for someone I managed to visit Indian Rock.
It was a beautiful evening.

Coyote

2006-02-06T02:17:00.000-08:00

I used to think about the importance of objects that were present in my life. Placing signifcance on the presence of a person, or word, or color and so on. It speaks to how far I have slipped away from myself that I now only remember as if it was something someone once said. Me. Who was that? Why did that ever matter? It's like warming up for death and just not believing.

Why a coyote on a day like today?

I really need some sleep.

Indulgence

2006-02-03T01:46:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I am just unwilling to forego those little sweets in the world. This does not bode well for my rent.

Here at least is a picture from the awful day.

I was pretty glad to have just made it to the door in time to see UPS leaving my $461 purchase on the front porch at 11am. Pretty good place to hide it I thought. Why need a signature?

Oh well.

Hope it works out.

Union

2006-02-01T20:42:00.000-08:00

Last night I went to a video display that an instructor of mine put on in San Francisco. It was a projection of the State of the Union speech on a wall in the Castro. Using a wide angle lens he distorted the features of the image from a television screen. It was an amusing way to watch the speech. I'm not terribly friendly to much of what was said by the speaker. Often I don't see the truth of the claims of the administration and last night was no exception. I did see a commercial recruiting for Border Patrol agents last night after the speech. It was the first time I'd ever seen something like that and since it was on Comedy Central I thought it was a joke. It wasn't. The Border Patrol might be the Peace Corps of the 21st Century.

What is the state of my union with the world? Certain things feel very good and hopeful. Certain other things very tenuous and frightening. I always envision my life as something so delicate that if any one part tears the rest will fall to pieces. I'm not sure if that is right, but it is how I feel most of the time. It doesn't prevent me from enjoying life. It must have some impact though.

Spending

2006-01-30T20:39:00.000-08:00

It doesn't pay to emulate the federal government. Run up huge deficits and cut your income. Yet here I am. Ever the good republican. Today I ordered my new digital camera which I can only afford by selling other items I own. Parting with stuff for money is easier when you have done it a number of times in life already. I'm not selling books yet. That is a good sign for now. I have some computers to liquidate.

The camera better be worth being late on rent. Thank god for the three day listing.

Bike in Berkeley at night and you may see this...

Nothing New Year

2006-01-18T23:11:00.000-08:00

After reading some of the rather inspired and literary musings on the new year and its signifigance, or lack of, by some in my "extended network," I have decided that I have little eloquence to lend to the topic. I've hardly noticed that the year has changed. If anything I'm waiting for the Chinese new year. Finally my year again.

Life isn't what I'd expected, but it is what I have come to expect.

I enjoy taking pictures. It will be nice to see if something that I enjoy doing can become something that I am also good at. Improving isn't painful when you can appreciate the change.

Here comes the Year of the Dog. To be punctuated with pictures of the dog.

Okay

2005-12-30T17:06:00.000-08:00

Let me get the hang of this first.
Today it rained pretty steadily. I worked at the barn and the mud reigns there. My friend the dog tore around on the hillside for a bit. She has since been cleaned.

I'm hoping. I watched a video the other night that reminded me of some important things about myself. What interests me and why I am less than enthused with my current status. I need to get clear of some of these old habits. It is time for me to get busy.

Taking pictures has been a rediscovered joy in my life this past year. I'm saving up for a new, much nicer, camera.

For now here is a picture from the barn today. Those who know me might appreciate the humor I see in this.

Starting Again

2005-12-07T20:52:00.000-08:00

Every day is like this. Was I always this confused and just too confused to realize it? Perhaps I need more coffee. I talked to a friend that drank so much coffee that it started making him tired. He laid off for a while and now drinks coffee in moderation.

I fear a life without coffee.

I want to read.