Ok, Ok.

We were celebrating and I have a million or so photos, but then we were relaxing and then, you know, one thing leads to another and three months go by and here I am excusing myself, yet again to you.



We were celebrating Emily & Ryan's wedding in Delaware. Here they are, wife and husband:


Helping your best friends get married is so much fun. So much fun, in fact, that we spent two weeks recovering after we got back. Going to bed at 9:30 for a week is actually pretty epic, in its own, underrated sort of way. A more complete recap is in order, but not just yet.

Remember Summer?

Last night after a rainy afternoon and the glow of our soccer game wore off, I felt the first chill of fall settle in. I'm fairly ready for it. November is a great month, in my book. I feel more focused, more motivated, well-rested. And Thanksgiving at the end? November is a dream.







But I do miss the light of summer, the lazy dusk that stretches itself across hours, dinners out of doors and the surprising brightness of an overcast day. These prints, all taken June through September, were nice reminders of that so very summer quality of life. Nothing like the familiar warmth in a stack of photos to soften this chill.

Oh yes.

And I forgot to tell you about how this year I got so many birthday presents. Truly, a full recap should follow because it felt like Christmas in October (I'm fairly sure that's what heaven will be: alternating months of Christmas and October, forever, bliss!) (Where again did I find such nice friends? I have no idea.) And oh yes, as I was saying, I'll get to all the nice things I got for my birthday from other people, but the spendiest one was the one I bought for my self, happy birthday to me, and it arrived only last weekend in the mail. Shiny and fancy and new: a Canon T1i.


Still getting used to it, but look! Oooh la la.

Still Life, in Camera

I wanted to post this quick series while it was still fresh in my brain, some shots I took yesterday trying to figure out how to do an inspired still life for my drawing class at Berkeley City College. The final drawing came out just as boring as ever and I'm now officially convinced that the Still Life as a genre is dead entirely, but photos are still alive and well. Thank goodness.












These are all from somewhere in West Oakland, but many from the intersection of 17th and Campbell.

Glimpses

Trying to find a subject for my drawing class assignment has turned out to be more difficult than I had anticipated, but sitting on the train tonight I caught these two subjects that would have been perfect.




The first, a woman named Lupe, who was mopping the platform at Embarcadero and the second, a man dressed to the nines in a long black evening jacket with red and green plaid trousers, patent leather shoes and even a flower in his lapel. You can see him striding away between the shoulders of those two girls in the foreground. I'm not quite brave enough yet for asking strangers to take their picture, but I am sneaky and shameless enough to take their pictures anyway however quickly through the car's closing doors. Someday I'll bring you splendid portraits, I promise.

Adventures, of late

I've been withholding a minor detail of my state of mind from you people. I have what you might call an elephant in every room right now. He's really terribly enormous and invasive and he seems to whisper, always, the things I should be working on. Drawings, research, letters of recommendation. It being August, it is the beginning of application season, for those of us who dare to apply for graduate school. And this year, of course, that means me.

But last week Miriam had the good idea to take a bike ride out to the furthest point west, in the East Bay, to the port of Oakland for some exploring. It was a great way to ease my mind against its tendency to become overwhelmed and subsequently useless, but also a good time to just pedal and think and formulate. It had been too long since I'd visited a place unknown and it made me want to hop in the car and just drive somewhere new. Maybe with my next visitor, I'll enforce this plan.

Here are some of the parts of our journey that were best suited for a quick picture:










I'm a kid in a candy store, when it comes to industrial landscapes, because they offer such intense contrasts in color and texture. I wish I had a nicer camera, for times like this more than ever, because some of the lines get a little muddy with further distance. The scale is harder to convey, but in case you were wondering, those white cranes behind the shipping containers are bigger than anything with moving parts you've probably ever seen.

Speaking of Hikes at the Park

The parks out here never cease to amaze me. They are far more breathtaking, far more extravagant and far more exciting than any Local Nature I've explored in the past. Sure the Hudson Valley is nice enough, and certainly Pennsylvania has its moments, but it's really an entirely separate league out here. If these various Natures were college sports, we're talking Division I and Division III. They aren't even in the same championship.

So I find that every time I go hiking out here--something that I've never done voluntarily before--I am caught up by the minutiae of it all. That is, the redwood forests, the ocean, the mountains. You know, the big dogs of landscape. All of a sudden, I'm grossly captivated by the tiny parts of that great majestic whole and standing there, mouth open and zoned out. Maybe it's my own little test to see if the grand vista holds up to my awesome scrutiny. In any case, I lose track of myself and have to jog to catch up to my fellow hikers. And it feels so healthy to do that, I also can't help myself but get lost in it.






California Nature, I'm telling you, is an endlessly unfolding book of wonder. Because not only were all of these moments from one single hike, but captured in one single spot.

Such sun.

Today's 80 degree weather got me, even scratch-throated and tea guzzling, out of doors. We took a trip together to buy vegetables and other short term non perishables because then we hit the park on the way back to read and do other relaxing sort of sunny-day things. Like picnic.


This little park we go to is really charming, Colby Park, at the center of a hidden cul de sac in Oakland, with a little playground and lots of grass and benches and very little else. Surrounded by modest bungalows, it's the perfect setting for sitting in the sun, more inviting than the gated communities up in the hills and less distracting than the hectic population over at Mosswood.

About half way through our sit in, an opportunity for eavesdropping presented itself and though our eyes stayed fixed on the books in our laps, our ears pricked up and caught some things that were mellow-harshing to say the least. A realtor, showing one of those aforementioned bungalows (turned out they were less modest than they first seemed, weighing in at 600k) was telling a prospective buyer that his 375k price range wouldn't get him what he wanted.

You can see the house in question over my shoulder in this picture, it was an adorable shade of green and white but certainly no bachelor pad.

They went back and forth for a little while like this. The realtor talking about some other properties in other tree-lined quiet neighborhoods near coffee shops to his 30-something buyer, who responded by explaining that he wasn't starting a family and didn't need something quite so quiet. After a few more exchanges, the buyer suggests looking in West Oakland, where he's heard its more affordable. And then the realtor pretty much loses it. "You don't want to be in West Oakland in the long term, it's no investment. Look, I've been chased out of some parts of West Oakland before. You're not going to want to stay there 15 years from now." Ultimately the buyer convinced him to show a place on 25th street (the horror!...8 blocks from our house) after much consternation on the realtor's part. And here they are peeling away in their fancy cars:


There are so many levels happening with this conversation, from the upselling, to the 'bro to bro' tone to the repetition of "You know what I mean?" but the real show stopper was that last bit about getting chased out of West Oakland. I've always found it to be remarkable how people who feel uncomfortable in a place seem to blame the people who live in the place for making them feel that way. They never consider that perhaps, they project their discomfort in the way of racial stereotyping and that the people living there have every right to defend their space against such visitors of a particular attitude. I'm pretty sure that I would chase that creep out of my neighborhood too if given the chance, especially if he called the place I call home a terrible investment. On that note we packed up and headed home.

And then since our picnicking was only halfhearted, scones and strawberries and tea, we made a big salad for lunch with a fried egg on top for each of us.

And then I ate some jelly beans.

Unemployment could be worse...

Modelesque

I went to take some pictures of the fava bean flowers today, they are really perfect right now. Deep purple centers and tender white petals, they look a little like a snap dragon with a downturned bottom lip and a rounded little head. If I were a planning a wedding, in a truly alternate universe, I'd work them into the floral arrangement somehow. They speak so gracefully of spring and promise.


Of course, while I was out there I couldn't help catching some of the other progress underway. The fancy beans still dragging their heels in opening up, dwarfed for now by the eager peas.



Baby kales,



And the arugula...

Escape to Wisconsin

A while ago, I think I alluded to my having taken more old fashioned photos and that I'd be putting them up here. In fact, I shot 4 rolls back in December while I was home at the holiday. Until a week ago, they'd been sitting on top of my dresser, waiting until my checking account could sign off on the cost of processing. I took them to the photo store amidst my slurry of sewing work and just a few days ago picked up the prints.

Mostly, I really can't use a camera. But it wasn't as important in this case for the pictures to be great. The purpose for me was just to make a record of a place where I spent most of my childhood, the workshop in my grandparents' basement.


Since Bumpa (Jack, to most) died four years ago, I've hardly been home to visit and even more seldom am I back at my grandmother's house. The basement has been left mostly in tact, preserved in time. Someday, it will be a terrific job to clear out. Every possible surface has become a drawer or a shelf or a storage mechanism for keeping tools and glues and paint and glass and wood and screws and nails and machinery. We used to joke that he could make anything in that basement. And he did. An elaborate dollhouse when I was young. And then a white writing desk when I was twelve. And in between he made little locomotives, paperweights, his kitchen table, a swing set and countless other things people wished aloud and that he would figure out and make. It was one of the first ways that I defined kindness.



He was a maker of things. Jack of all trades, literally. And you might say that I get my streak of inventiveness from him.

Yes, that's a gun. And yes, that's an NRA sticker above it.

I took these photos so that in the case that someday his workshop is dismantled, I'll be able to remember what exactly it was like. The calendar girls half-clothed beside power tools on the inside of the storeroom door. The drawer in his office filled with gumdrops and peanut M&M's. The can full of wax scraps leftover from the holly candles he made every Christmas. And what the shapes of his handwriting look like.




The four prints in the Bakerex frames in my previous post are also from this set.