Recently I received one of those “chain-letter-type” emails from a friend in Nevada (I was one of 25 who received the mailing); the message contained a series of silly personal questions, with the request that you delete the friend’s answers, fill in your own responses, and then send them out to a whole new series of contacts. I’m still thinking about whether I’m going to subject anybody I know to this exercise, so I haven’t forwarded the letter as of yet. However, one of the questions that got me thinking was: “what do you want to do before you die?”
My Las Vegas compatriot offered up a very good (and succinct) reply: “live.” Now, this is something I’ve been saying since my 30s: I’m going to live until I die. So, I smiled when I saw this answer.
However, that goal is pretty non-specific. It doesn’t say anything, exactly, about what you’re (I’m) going to do, or how you’re (I’m) going to do it. Or when. Or why.
So, how might I respond to this question? And say something that has a tad more meat? Well, I guess I’d offer: I’d like to take about a zillion more photographs.
For over thirty years now, I’ve been more-or-less obsessed with getting out there in the world, a camera hanging around my neck, and snapping away. Even after this much time, having attempted and then moved on from the life of a professional photographer long ago, and having changed the rest of my life, personally and professionally, over and over (and over yet) again, photography is one thing I just can’t let go of. As much as anything, I’d say this passion defines who I am.
Yes, for sure: I’m an academic. After four college degrees, how could that not be the case? I’m a researcher. A writer. A counselor. An administrator. A TechnoMonk. Yes, there are many different labels I could apply to myself, all of them apt.
The thing is, most days I wake up thinking, not about my day job, nor about my consulting work (the activities that pay the bills), but rather about picture-taking and camera equipment.
Weird.
I admit that even my other preoccupations, namely health and chronic-pain issues, are intimately linked to my thoughts about photography. I often describe my art as “wandering-around photography” – which means that I find a setting and simply walk about with my camera, seeking to discover some image that’s there waiting for me.
Obviously, I can’t really engage in such physical activity without a certain level of health. So, the healthier I am, the more I can wander around, and the more I wander around, the more photographs I can make. All the time and energy I throw into maintaining and improving my physical health are really investments to help me find the time and energy to pursue this one true passion.
I’m mystified by the individuals who, upon retiring, eventually seek to return to their former work because they don’t know what to do with themselves. That would never be the case with me. There are not enough hours in the day, not enough days in a lifetime, to do all the things I can imagine doing. I am a high-performer in my day job, but what that activity is really geared to is allowing me to finance the more interesting parts of life.
Yes, I’m going to live until I die. And during that time I’ll be wandering around: with the camera’s viewfinder glued to my left eyeball.
The daughter I never had lives in Eugene; she’s part of my “Oregon family.” I’ve known this young woman since she was a rebellious adolescent, though, in the present day, she’s an incredibly mature and talented, 27-year-old married college graduate who has two delightful kids herself (one of them little Gracie).
The absolute, without-a-doubt, best part of my existence the past two Christmas seasons has been the opportunity I’ve had to support and encourage “B’s” interest in photography. Last year, it took the form of proposing the idea to her (real) parents that we split the cost of purchasing a digital SLR camera for her holiday gift. The proposal was enthusiastically accepted and, incredibly, I was the one lucky enough to accompany her to the store when we picked up the camera. As we exited the store, she was smiling hugely while she gushed, “this is the best Christmas ever!”
She’s now had a full year with that particular piece of equipment, and has reportedly loved every minute of it. Late this year she purchased another lens for her system, indicating that she was ready, perhaps, to move up a notch in the technology hierarchy. So, this holiday season, as we talked about her wants and needs via email, I offered to sell her, at a hugely discounted price, my current digital SLR. It’s a camera body that’s still being manufactured, only nine months old, under warranty, and little-used by me this year due to a scarcity of personal time (what with all the changes I’ve made in my life recently). This year’s proposal also became a reality and she’s had the camera a little over a week now…luckily I was able to get it packed up and shipped out in time for Christmas. She’s currently busily, and happily, snapping away with this more ambitious piece of equipment.
I’ve teased her about her newly-acquired “addiction” and advised her of the dangers of said Nikon Acquisition Syndrome (NAS)…though I suspect she has not, yet, caught on to the full implications of my warnings. Still, I’ve told her, regarding NAS: there are many more dangerous and terrible maladies in this lifetime.
For me, I hope to get “out there” this year and produce many more photographs than I have in the last few months. That is, perhaps, my number-one ambition. (Thank goodness: it appears that I’ll not be engaged in a job search during 2008!) To support my goal, I’ve taken a couple of photographic steps myself lately. First, I’ve placed an order for the newly-introduced Nikon D300 (see the video below), just out in November to rave reviews, and currently in short supply. (I’ll be getting this camera body when my number comes up in the ordering queue.) Second, I’ve signed up for another full-day session at Nikon School. Hence, on January 27, I’ll be over in Berkeley, sitting a dark room with a few hundred other Nikon nuts, learning more about digital photography. And expecting to be inspired.
If this season is thinking about people you love, and making some plans for the future…well, I guess maybe there’s been a little of the holiday cheer for me this year after all.
Soundtrack Suggestion
Ev’ry time i see your face, It reminds me of the places we used to go. But all i got is a photograph And i realise you’re not coming back anymore.
For the time being, I’ve given up running and aerobics. Perhaps I am forever retired from the world of Jazzercise, who knows? Now I walk for my physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health.
Worms will not eat living wood where the vital sap is flowing; rust will not hinder the opening of a gate when the hinges are used each day. Movement gives health and life. Stagnation brings disease and death.
So far here in Marin, most of my daily walking-time has been spent on one particular bikepath near my apartment. It’s a good route and very accessible. It quickly became known to me after I moved here. And it quite rapidly evolved into my routine.
And, of course: now it has become boring as well. I have been caught in a rut with no new scenery, no variation from the norm.
So, this last weekend, I decided to change all that. You know, mix things up a little bit…and live on the wild side!
On Saturday I drove down the road a little ways to the Natalie Coffin Greene Park in the Town of Ross – and actually found a place to park this time. Spots are very limited there (24 spaces or so), so on my previous visits, I had always ended up turning around to find someplace else to park and hike (namely my old standby path).
The trail leading from this park goes very quickly into the woods and splendid isolation along Phoenix Lake. It’s a beautiful place, rather hilly and secluded (except for other like-minded outdoor folk; see photo of bicyclists above), and I fell in love with the place immediately. I suspect that from now on I’ll wait my turn to park in the lot, just to be able to enjoy this amazing little getaway place so near home. (Perhaps it’ll be my new “Mt. Pisgah” – the favorite hiking spot of all time for me, right outside Eugene, OR.)
Then, on Sunday, I did something I had envisioned myself doing ever since I entertained the thought of moving to Marin: I walked the length of the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a cloudless and balmy afternoon, and I figured: it’s time! I discovered directions on the web about where to park, so I found my way to the Vista Point lot on the north side of the bridge. I walked the bridge from north to south, wandered around the visitor’s facilities at that end (i.e., the gift shop and café), then walked the span again back to my car.
What a totally perfect day to do this! I’ll have to go back again soon, though, when the photos will turn out with more “mood” associated with them.
Soundtrack Suggestion
I’m walkin’, yes indeed and I’m talkin’ ’bout you and me I’m hopin’ that you’ll come back to me, uh uh.
In keeping with the Boy Scout Motto, Marin County has initiated the “Get Ready Marin” campaign in order to raise awareness about how to best prepare for the next earthquake, flood, fire, landslide…or whatever other kind of disaster you can imagine. Hundreds of these bright yellow signs, such as the one above (shown here attached to the Larkspur Fire Department building), have been appearing all over the place to alert us to the effort.
Even though evidence of this campaign is difficult to avoid (there are tons of banners, signs, posters, Golden-Gate-Transit-bus advertisements, cocktail napkins, cable-television public-service announcements and, I’m told, even an airplane with a trailing banner), I hadn’t really been paying much attention (nor had I visited the website) until I read the article in the Marin Independent Journal this last weekend which explained the program. Finally, I got it: pay attention, TechnoMonk!
Apparently, there are free, two-hour-long disaster-preparedness classes that we can now sign up for to help us “get ready” for the Big One: all funded by a huge grant from the Department of Homeland Security.
I suppose I should attend. After all, what did I do when I decided to live in one of the most earthquake-prone parts of the world?
I rented an apartment located on the side of a cliff.
Soundtrack Suggestion
Well, shake it up, baby, now, (shake it up, baby) Twist and shout. (twist and shout) C’mon c’mon, c’mon, c’mon, baby, now, (come on baby) Come on and work it on out. (work it on out)
After receiving last week’s bad news, I desperately attempted to keep some semblance of normalcy in my life. For example, last Sunday I drove over to Berkeley to attend the city’s “How Berkeley Can You Be?” parade and festival. It sounded like it could be an afternoon of great fun, and I had expectations of displays of outrageousness from the citizenry there…reminiscent of the annual “out-there” behavior exhibited during the Eugene Celebration.
Now, perhaps it was my state-of-mind, but I was pretty disappointed. There were a smattering of laughs and “Berkeley-like” folk around (see the accompanying grandmother-for-peace photo), but my experience of the event was quite different from the all-out kind of effort that Eugene (for example) puts into its identity-defining celebrations. It seems to me that Eugene is more Berkeley-like than Berkeley is these days! Who woulda thunk?
My mood for this last week has been semi-dark. I seem to have been struggling with continuing issues of loss and change…or at least that’s the best explanation I have right now for the cloud I’m living under.
On one of my early-evening walks this week, I was trying to enjoy both the sunshine warming my face and the music coming from my iPod when, all of a sudden, I found both my hands clutching my chest as if I had pain there. But, it wasn’t really pain; actually, just momentarily, I was gasping for breath. I guess, maybe, I’d been forgetting to breathe. How weird.
But given my thoughts, not really too unusual. I had been dwelling on the loss of a friend to cancer; and the losses of jobs, attachments, familiar sights, and highly-significant people in Oregon: in essence, evidence of a total lack of control. While the changes I’ve made have also brought me meaningful gain, it’s the losses that have been my preoccupation. So much is gone. So much different.
This last week, I’ve been in a sleep-walk, a trance, moving in slow motion. As if this life I call mine is only some kind of surreal caricature of another’s.
Soundtrack Suggestion
While I was watching you did a slow dissolve… Did I imagine they held us hypnotized Did I imagine or do the walls have eyes…
Life in slow motion somehow it don’t feel real… Snowflakes are falling I’ll catch them in my hands Snowflakes are falling now you’re my long lost friend
