seven days late

today is the day that i was supposed to leave for Copenhagen.

but i missed my flight...

by a week.

how could this happen? i’ve been asking myself all morning. i’m a NOONAN! airline schedules run in our bloodline! i was probably conceived on an airplane!

i’m so embarrassed.

granted, when i bought the ticket over a month ago, there was a lot going on. i had a lot on my mind and i was a little confused over what was going on during which week and so forth. so my ticket was for last Thursday... but i did somehow manage to take leave on the right days.

i woke up this morning at 5am so that i’d have time to pack and get some food in me before running a slew of errands on the way to the airport. at approximately 0615, i decided to check my email really quick while i was making coffee to see if there were any last minute notes from my cousin Elijah, who i’m going to meet up there.

Lo and behold, there were... she was asking me to look at the dates of the itinerary that i had emailed her to make sure they were correct... she was making sure that i hadn’t bought my plane tickets for the week prior, when i was most clearly NOT in copenhagen.

silly cousin, of course i bought them for last week.

shit.

the airline and cheaptickets.com were not very sympathetic. to them, i was case number AP270301XZQJ2UJN. they had all the sympathy of an insurance adjuster who was working on saturday.

it was 6:30 in the morning and i already wanted to fall in a heap on the floor. a moaning heap with no bones.

well, what’s 350 bucks among friends really?... besides two (small) starbucks coffees (no milk or anything) a week for a year. or two months of gasoline in italy. or a flight to copenhagen. i’ll just see if there is another ticket available last minute... oh, here we go...

only 800 pounds sterling... nope, that’s not gonna work.

finally, at about 3pm, i came across a fare that was roughly similar to the original price and i said, ‘what the hell, i want to see elijah.’

now, thanks to mastercard, i’ll be departing venice at o’dark thirty tomorrow morning for the great nation of denmark.

AND i have a whole free day to do whatever i need around the house... like... laundry.

i’m so excited.

SCAD

so it arrived today...

the Savannah College of Art and Design catalog...

i requested one on a whim. i’ll probably look around at other schools as well, we shall see. i’m not sure how much graduate school fits into my grown up life, but it’s a nice idea anyway, and one that is fun to entertain.

the idea of an M.F.A. is kind of scary after having a ‘career’ now for a few years now. i’ve gotten used to a regular paycheck and the feeling that i can afford whatever kinds of groceries i might desire... instead of top ramen and chili-mac again.

the whole idea is at least six years away (minimum), but it’s a nice idea. another way that it is scary is the whole idea of a body of work. of a focus. of a definitive direction to my photography:

oh there's patrick, he's that (fill in the blank) photographer...

it’s kind of intimidating. for the time being, i just shoot, and whatever comes out is what i have. sometimes it’s landscape... sometimes people. sometimes formal, sometimes informal. that’s all fine if one is an extremely prolific photographer, but i only take between 400-1100 pictures a month.

these are the things that are intimidating:
going ‘incomeless’ for about three years
student loans
leaving behind a possibly lucrative career that might afford me the time to accomplish the same thing without an M.F.A.

these are the things that are attractive:
unabashed focus on the craft
the opportunity to surround myself with artist and art-minded people once again
the opportunity to find that focus and that definitive direction
the fact that i have the GI bill that would pay for the brunt of it

it sounds like a risk of course. but what is life if not risk and reward? what is a life passion if you risk none of your life for it? what good is a bucketful of what-ifs on your deathbed?

perhaps it is even more than six years away... i’ve got sixteen (minimum) until the GI bill runs out. perhaps i could find that direction ahead of time (with enough hard work and motivation) and then i could use those three years to refine it, instead of searching for it.

today, a pleasant daydream... tomorrow... who knows? certainly not me, although i have some sneaky suspicions.

sweet dreams love

all things oktober

it's about that time again... oktoberfest.

this was from last year, at the end of the night. the three of us drove up on a thursday night and camped in a soccer stadium.

i don't know how the hell i managed to take this picture. i had already lost my favorite sunglasses. i'm surprised i still had my camera with me. i sat down on the ground, totally wasted, told them to stand still and took a three second handheld exposure on Bulb... since my camera only goes to 1 sec.

better lucky than good, i suppose.

anyways. this picture is to restimulate the mood of oktoberfest. may everyone go at least once.

mmm, makes me want to grab a beer... mmmm

you should know these people:

dear reader, may i introduce you to Nico and Fairlight:

fantastic people they are. truly wonderful. favorites even. back when this picture was taken, there were but two of them, but they have since multiplied... and there is now zoe.

i have known fairlight for many moons. since the days of santa cruz. since the days of baskin art studios. she is artist and mother of zoe. when she isn't creating stained glass masterpieces or honing her photography, she contemplates the nature of the universe and goes on walks in the woods above her home, or on the beach by the bay, or she flies off to canada or mexico or countries-near-florida-with-whom-we-have-trade-embargoes.

burritos and beers are the standard reunion custom. it harks back to the days when i was a sleepless student in the art department at santa cruz. she would find my miserably hungry existence in the darkroom or painting studio after some inhumanely long period of time that most likely began the day before, and we'd roll down to mission st and grab a burrito and a beer and catch up on life.

she most likely saved my life... otherwise i might still be up there... developing just one more roll... toning just one more print.

you never can tell.

vortices

so these are old memories. from a time in sedona. i was just walkin down memory lane earlier, as i have a penchant for that kind of thing... from time to time

dogs

so i used to have a dog... i've had a couple of them acutally... by 'having a dog' i mean that my parents had dogs and i played with them and picked up dog poop in the backyard... when i was older i even fed them... but the primary dog-rearing was done by the primary child-rearers... the dogs themselves put up with me more than anything else.

now that i'm almost a grown up myself, it is almost second nature to want to bring a little four legged buddy back into my life.

right now is not the time for this to happen. however, that is not to say that i can't prepare for the eventuality when this does happen.

so i bought a dog book... how to understand dogs and that kind of stuff. it was highly instructive, and very interesting. if anything, it reinforced the fact that right now is MOST DEFINITELY NOT the time to bring a dog into my life, but i think it has also brought me a few more steps towards dog-preparation.

one of the things that it has made me reconsider is what kind of dog to get. it is easy to pick out a breed based on what it looks like or what the breed is known for... i think a lot of people pick out dogs that reflect who they think they are.

the problem is that the dogs will probably reflect those attributes... but that might not be who that person is.

i'm all about optimism and projection, but there is most definitely a gap between the world where people think they live and the actual world they live in... myself included.

so who am it? what kind of dog would i best belong to?

i don't know. while driving down the road to the beach with a beautiful rhodesian ridgeback sticking his head out of the window of a vintage bio-diesel converted land cruiser may sound romantic, do i have the personality or lifestyle to adequately meet that animal's needs? (exercise, social time, regular schedule?)

i don't know.

then i ask myself... am i a purebred kind of guy? or a mutt kind of guy? am i a big dog guy? or medium or small? do i spend hours training my dog to do cool stuff like find the remote control? is it an outside or inside dog? am i the kind of guy who gets a puppy and raises it from scratch? or would i adopt an 8 year old dog from a shelter?

so many questions.

good thing it will be a long while before that day comes.

it's kind of like the equivalent of studying for the SAT when i'm in third grade.

i'm kind of fiending for a milkbone.

and sometimes...

and sometimes, after i finish dancing, my water goes out.

it's a strange thing to say, "my water goes out," unless you take it in the same way as, "my power went out," i.e. i have no water.

for anyone who has lived through a hurricane or tornado or severe earthquake, this may not seem so odd.

apparently, nor is it odd to anyone who lives in my town... it being wednesday and all.

gotta love italy.

i've got to go find a beer to brush my teeth with... ciao bella

sometimes

sometimes i dance.

i’m not embarrassed about it one bit. sometimes i dance.

sometimes i wave my arms in the air and run in place.

sometimes i throw back my head in a silent leaky-eyed howl.

sometimes i can’t stop smiling and with a flick of the wrist the master valve on my heart is turned full open and the flood surges through my muscles and bones to my fingertips and toes, shaking my soul with the vibrations of it’s release...

it does not matter if there is no one to see...

i still dance.

sometimes.

imagination and beef stew

no. i'm not in hawaii right now. but that isn't to say that i can't pretend i am.

i'm actually at home, cooking beef stew. it's taking a while, but i suppose that is because good things are hard to rush. my stomach, however, has been rapping against my abdominal cavity for quite some time. the last thing i ate was a sandwich around lunch time.

i'm somewhat locally famous for my sandwiches... not because they are delicious... although they are... but rather because they are hidden in various pockets on my person for emergency use throughout the day. people think it is humorous... i think it's practical.

you never know when you might need a sandwich... or a breakfast burrito for that matter... i have pockets for those too.

one can never have too many pockets for assorted sundries.

that's my thought of the day... from me... to you.

totally related side story to the previous post

starting with a totally unrelated side note:

this belgian beer is Damn good... that's with a capitol D, if you didn't get it. i suppose that's what you get when you get a bunch of monks together to make a 10% beer.

mmmm

anyway. so...

i'm driving on a side road to Tuscany last saturday. somehow, i managed to travel 160 miles in the first two hours and only one mile in the third hour. it seemed like a sign that i was supposed to take the road less travelled, and so i did.

the thing with italy is... there is a thing called "Riposo" where everything closes for a couple of hours in the afternoon... generally between noon and 2pm... but it could vary by a few hours in either direction.

so i'm driving on SS64, which is a small state route that runs through the hills/mountains of NW Tuscany. absolutely gorgeous drive. the road wound through the tiniest villages in along the deepest river gorge with little stone footbridges that connected the road to teeny houses across the river. were i more comfortable with my masculinity i might even say that it was something straight out of a fairy tale, complete with trolls and winged godmothers.

green green, everywhere there's green.

so anyways, i'm driving around a particularly turny turn and my car starts beeping at me.

that's fine, beep away, i thought. the only thing that worried me was the the beeping (which had started happening lately) was accompanied by the OIL light... and it didn't stop beeping for about 20 seconds.

it had come on in the previous month, but only when i went around a particularly agressive corner. being the dependable little VW POS that it is, i thought its german engineered oil system just couldn't handle the incredible lateral G-forces that i was able to command from the old squeeky tires.

nope... the oil was just low.

long story longer, i pulled into the first gas station i saw and asked the old guy that i came across if the station was open for business as i needed both fuel and possibly oil as well, if it wasn't too much trouble.

literally, i pointed at the gas station and said (in italian) "closed?"

my italian is that good.

that's when i noticed the old guy standing in the doorway with a padlock in his hand. i looked at my watch and realized that if i had shown up two minutes later they would have been closed.

so i get my gas and check my oil... that's funny... usually i can see some on the stick... i was going to buy two liters of oil, but i thought better of it and bought three... at 12 euro per liter... luckily our dollar is so strong and it only cost 50 dollars.

my suspicions were confirmed when the engine swallowed two litres without flinching.

that's the end of the story. the light and beeping have not returned. the little engine is quite happy with it's haute couture tuscan oil, and i made it the rest of the way.

man... this beer is good.