i like my women how i like my shirts

double breasted and transparent

at home

filmed last winter by trot.

nederland, co

happy holidays

my turf

wow, this is my 100th blog post! but in dork-years i'm still only 6 months old, so that's good news.

i thought for a second about saving the 100th post and coming up with something really great, but i lack both self-control and something really great. so, i just got this film back and thought i'd put it up. these are from the winery's crushpad, where i spent all my october.

this post also works to mark the end of my time working at Starmont, as yesterday was my last day. looks like i might be headed to Argentina pretty soon here.

the southern crossing

under a bridge in napa, 5:45am

installment 2.5

When I read things, my writing especially, I read in my coolest voice. Now you read in yours.

CHAPTER 3

I arrive at a building with a sign in front that reads Zoologisches. I go up the steps and through two sets of glass doors and standing there in the foyer is a Polar Bear, arms up overhead, his mouth wide open. I look up, thumbs at my chest tucked beneath the straps of my backpack, my mouth open too, just a little. He’s at least twelve feet tall. I approach for a closer look. Really just a skin stretched over a foam mannequin, glass eyes glued in place, he poses no threat to me. But I imagine otherwise. Of course, in the wild, it would be different.

The polar bear, I discover, is the most carnivorous of all bears, and the largest carnivore on land. They feed mostly on seals. I learn that despite spending months of the year in the open waters, polar bears make the majority of their kills elsewhere – where water, ice, and air converge. Scientists call it still-hunting. The white bear keeps motionless beside a black hole in the ice. He waits patiently. He knows that eventually a seal will come up for air, and after a little while one does. The bear bites it by the head, flips it onto land. He drags the seal, its gleaming flesh against ice crust - drags it away from the water’s edge to where nothing else can get at it, and with his massive jaws he crushes its skull and feeds.

I slow-walk loops around all the rooms of the museum, across the animal kingdom, through varying levels of complexity, and past points in evolution. The bones of a woolly mammoth, a creature now long extinct, have been put back together again, and it stands alone roped off in a room’s center. There are birds arranged in glass boxes on branches, with pink heads and black wings and green backs and blue bellies. A fox looks alert against a wall painted to resemble the sky, and tufts of grass come up from the floor. Dozens of butterflies are pinned to a board and still absolutely brilliant in their symmetry and coloration.

After an hour I’ve had my fill and leave.

Outside the museum I see a staircase that climbs the building’s exterior clear to the roof. I take the stairs up and at the top I find all grass, a well-manicured lawn for a roof. I walk to its edge and from there I look out over Zurich, the city no longer all gray, down upon the park with people roaming, and out across the lake back toward Italy. I feel energized in a way. It’s a beautiful collection they have in there. Maybe, “a concentrated expression of life on earth.” But I can’t get over this feeling that, despite being as comprehensive as it is, it lacks something. I don’t know what exactly. But a vague sadness lingers there.

idiotz

wow, scott cooper made this little video and it made my little day

chapter deux

Where do I go now? Without even a hint of any plan, I walk in the direction I’m already pointed. Out the bottom of the staircase I connect with another street, and I walk a stone path, and a few blocks down there’s a canal, the Limmat River. Inside the city it comes to me as a great relief. It’s something to which I can direct my attention. I can hold onto the Limmat. Surely it will take me somewhere.

I follow the river and observe swans swimming in circles, and I stop to take pictures. After that I find a smoke shop and go in for a look. But really, what I want is to find out is whether marijuana is legal, but I chicken out and don’t ask. Instead I look at all the pipes, don’t say a word, make eye contact with the shop-owner and then suddenly break it, and then leave. He probably thought I was planning on robbing him.

A few blocks down I meet the river’s source where it opens wide to Lake Zurich. The lake is massive and calm. Along its shore there runs an arboretum, what any normal person would call a park. There are a few vendors there. I have a beer and a hot dog and go to the end of a pier and let my feet hang out over the water. As I sit there the day thaws. The clouds break. I go for another beer, and then onto the grass where I take my shoes and shirt off and from my backpack I take my hacky-sack and I kick it around for a while. The air warms up. After a while I sit and pull at the grass. From the middle of that field I look around.

I need a place to sleep tonight, and this park must have something to offer. I take a look around. Small dirt paths meander like game trails through bushes and trees along the lakeshore. I find areas where I can spread out on the ground, recesses behind sculpted hedges and hideouts beneath low-lying branches. And then I see it, tucked back behind tall and wispy trees, hardly visible at all, a small concrete structure. I approach it for a closer look. It’s seven or eight feet tall, with a flat roof, probably storage space for parks maintenance. I go through the trees and stand beside the building. I pull myself on top of it, and immediately I can tell that this is where I will spend tonight. It’s hidden from sight and elevated, up and away from critters. And it isn’t far from the lake, from the sound of the water lapping at the shore.

I stow my sleeping bag in a nearby bush and set off to wander aimlessly.

For a few hours I zig-zag my way through tall buildings downtown, through an area of cafes and fancy shoe stores. There are vintage clothing shops and new-agey knick knacks for sale. I walk through the red light district. On the side of one building there are large legs crossed in fishnet stockings and stilettos, and everywhere, “X-X-X” across marquees. For lunch I have a mediocre sandwich in a ritzy part of town, and later I stop for a cup of ice cream. In the time I eat my ice cream I watch a kid in big pants and a cockeyed hat covertly sell dime bags of weed. I finish my dessert and approach him and ask if he’s got any for me. He’s just sold his last, he tells me, but I can go around the corner and buy some at the store.

Inside the store it’s dark, all brown and saffron colored. The walls are covered in Buddhist things, hanging medallions and beads. Incense burns and the smoke fills the air. There are shelves of jars filled with various roots and powders and herbs. I ask the girl at the counter, “Can I buy some weed?”

She puts a finger to her lips and goes “Shhhhhhh!!!” She whispers, “Call it tea.”

“Sorry,” I whisper back. “Can I buy some tea?”

From there I go into the hills in search of a place to smoke. I find a set of benches behind a church and roll a joint. I get super high. My mind drifts from one place to the next, to Italy, to Massachusetts, to California, and back to Switzerland.

I take to the streets again, almost always choosing to walk uphill, up and away from the city below.

i worrry

..jesus christ.

I have some stories that I've been poking at for the last few years. I think that if I use this blog as a tool - a source for pressure, like keeping everyone tuned in - I can chip away at stories one "chapter" at a time, thus not allowing myself to revise, thus... finishing something.
And it's like what a lot of authors have done in the past, releasing pieces one section at a time, a one-part-per-publication sort of thing.

This story goes back furthest. If you've ever been around a campfire with me you've probably heard it. I've written it on five or six occasions, all of which have been really terrible. I want to finish it, and put it behind me.

My writing makes me think of two things:

1) How self-involved I am,

and,

2) This article from the Onion, headline: "Commas, Turning Up, Everywhere."

So goes...

CHAPTER 1

I think Zurich, but really, I have no idea where I am headed. I just haven’t realized this yet.

Just a couple of weeks ago I arrived in Italy to live for three months, to attend an art school of almost all Americans, to have some experiences, to see the world, find some direction, put college off.

Not long ago – only four months ago – I was at an east coast prep school. It was a good school out in the cuts of Massachusetts, where the winters were long, the hills piled high with snow and the trees tall and thin and sad looking. My friends and I, we frequently hid in those trees, knee-deep in the snow, and we smoked joints and cigarettes, and the tree limbs were encased in a flawless ice covering. Back at the dorm I applied Visine and in bed slogged through Kerouac, enamored.

I am on a train to Switzerland. I just woke up after an all-night ride. It’s dark in the room. It’s quiet enough that I think the strange silent lady I share the cabin with is still asleep. On my back, from my bunk, I lift an arm up over my head to the window and pull the shade back. The cabin is lit up. I perk up, roll over to my stomach, and see that the train is moving fast through a steep green canyon, and then there are blue waterfalls falls cascading down one after another, and then the walls fall backwards into rolling hills that stretch far, far off into the distance. I have arrived, I think.

Two days ago I decided I wanted to go to Switzerland. I don’t know much of anything about Switzerland. I’ve always imagined blonde-haired, fair-skinned women, lush green hills, and deep blue waterfalls. That’s enough. So I got on the internet, pulled up a map of Switzerland, and it couldn’t have been anymore rudimentary. It was marked with the names of only four, maybe five places. I saw Zurich, had heard of it, and decided that was where I’d go. I’d go alone. I’d travel light, like a beatnik, a vagabond with a rucksack. I went and got the ticket.

The night of my departure I showed up to the train station drunk. I looked to the rotary schedule up high on a wall and couldn’t figure the thing out. I didn’t see Zurich anywhere on it. Wafting over the crowd, over all the muddled noise, I heard women singing “California Dreamin’.” I went to watch and listen. There were about fifteen of them, all with blonde hair and milky-white skin and absolutely beautiful, and they sang the song in rounds, very well, and when they finished the crowd applauded and dispersed, and I approached and explained that I was from California. They seemed only mildly interested in this. But I told them that I was looking for a train to Zurich, and asked if they knew where it was. They told me that they were going to Zurich too, back home, and that it was time to go.

But the train doesn’t stop. It keeps galloping through the countryside, and it hits me, that Zurich, as one of four places on that map, is sure to be a city, and a large one at that. For a moment I consider deboarding at a small nameless village in the hills, but it’s raining and it all looks so inhospitable, and in the end I decide against it. We roll through wooded hills, and not long after, arrive.

As one of the world’s largest centers for offshore banking, and as home to the Swiss Stock Exchange, Zurich is Switzerland’s commercial center. Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland. Zurich is the wealthiest city in Europe. Zurich is a far cry from the hippy-dippy wilderness retreat I’d just barely aimed for.

I step off the train in a t-shirt and shorts and it is cold. Like, really cold. Should have packed a sweater. I exchange currency and exit the station, and the sky is a mat of gray. It seems that everything in this city is gray. I cross the gray street and there is a gray staircase and I go down it for a place to put some pants on. Halfway down I stop and scramble to get the pants out from my backpack and onto my body. For a moment I am naked from the waist down in the elbow of a twisted cement stairwell in Switzerland. I am in Zurich, but really – and this is when I realize – I have no idea where I am.

to be continued...

ricky raccoon

and so it goes. harvest continues. i'm tired.

but we've had rain, and this means that the season is winding down. the grape influx begins to peter out.

in the past i've compared the wine job to sailing - instead of ropes and sails and pulleys we have cords, hoses, and clamps. we have pumps and buckets and fans. we have to be fast and efficient and keep from becoming entangled.

in the rain it's like deadliest catch. it's pretty fun.

this morning, in the vines in the rain

and yesterday i bought a collection of poems by pablo neruda. one poem that got me excited, as it coincides with this stage in my life, is Ode to Wine. here's the part i like, the very end:

I love to have on the table,

while people are talking,

the light of a bottle

of intelligent wine,

and let the simple man learn,

in the rituals of his trade,

to remember the earth and his duties,

to propagate the canticle of the fruit.

i'm feeling angsty

i got home from work today and popped a bottle of pink wine with bubbles in it. and then i worked on the image down below. all small like that, it's hard to really see it. a photo, with some texture, with some line drawings, with some gaussian blur.



and i was just looking through a book that has kept me company for a few years now: Notebooks 1935-1942. These notebooks belonged to Albert Camus, writer and philosopher. I have never read a book by Camus, but for several summers in a row, during college, I picked the notebooks up wherever I'd left off the summer before. And it always seemed that wherever I was in the book, what Camus had to say always jived so well with where I was in life. The notebooks are full of quotations that make one feel, how do i say...bummed, or lost, or, no... inspired. in my mind, Camus points out how unaware we can be, how off-kilter we can be, what shallow fucks we can be, what little retards we can be - that i can rise higher and maybe one day meet my potential. on the other hand, camus seems to suggest we not think too hard about what we're doing, that we just go with it.

5 QUOTES from CAMUS

1.) "The peculiar vanity of man, who wants to believe and who wants other people to believe that he is seeking after truth, when in fact it is love that he is seeking this world to give him."

2.) "We haven't the time to be ourselves. All we have time for is happiness."

3.) "We do not have feelings which change us, but feelings that suggest to us the idea of change. Thus love does not purge us of selfishness, but makes us aware of it and gives us the idea of a distant country where this selfishness will disappear."

4.) "The most dangerous temptation: to be like nothing at all."

5.) "The demand for happiness and the patient quest for it. We need not banish our melancholy, but we must destroy our taste for difficult and fatal things. Be happy with our friends, in harmony with the world, and earn our happiness by following a path which nevertheless leads to death.
'You will tremble before death.'
'Yes, but I shall leave nothing unfulfilled in my mission, which is to live.' Don't give way to conformity and to office hours. Don't give up. Never give up - always demand more. But stay lucid, even during office hours. As soon as we are alone in its presence, strive after the nakedness into which the world rejects us. But above all, in order to be, never try to seem."

Albert Camus (1913-1960)

another picture from the last thing

scott noticed a swastika carving

merced

over the years i've shot lots of photos of swimming holes. swimming at a nice spot with good friends is hard to beat. one day i'll have to publish a book of these. here's the most recent, from just a few weeks ago.

merced river, yosemite, july 09

my cat died

dume got a solid nine under his belt

2000-2009

for kids

guess what

glennskin

glenn says he's immune to his ego. i don't buy it.

napa, week one: two story fragments

Four days ago I started as an intern at a winery in Napa. I'm working with twenty Mexicans. They're all very nice people, almost always smiling and joking around. They package and bottle and clean and drive forklifts. They work hard and don't complain. Some speak English, but most don't, and for that reason I'm sort of isolated, unable to say much.

So far I've had one major task. There are all these big silver tanks that sit atop steel stands. I work with this guy Juan, and all day we sand the rust and old, flaky paint off of the stands, then we give them two coats of blue paint. In the time I've been working there (forty hours) Juan and I have completed seven or eight tanks. It's hard.

A week and a half ago I wrote this in a notebook:

"I look forward to Napa - to be put to work & make some money, to be broken in."

Today I kept thinking about how in six months I'm not going to be the same as I am now. I will be different. In my life I've worked hard, and I've worked long, but this will be, by far, the first time that I've worked so hard, for so long. Right now I'm at forty hours a week. Not bad. But before long it will be seventy-two and up.

I go home at the end of the day and look in the mirror, and I'm so dirty that it looks as if I've been doing all the shoveling on a coal train. I have paint all down my arms and on my clothes and in my hair. I take a cold shower and have to scrub to get it all off my body. My hands are dry and rough from the sanding, and out in the country it's slow and I'm sort of lonely. Yesterday I had a piece of scrap paper and a pen and I wrote, "I can't help but wonder what it would feel like, for a beautiful girl, to have her bare ass grabbed by these hands."

The next six months will do something to me. They might sharpen me, or they could dull me to a block of wood. Whatever happens, it should be good.

Juan and I sit in the shade on pieces of cardboard beneath a tank. We wear goggles and respirators and sand the rust and old paint from the legs of a steel support. This fills the air with dust. Time passes slowly, but I try to think only about the task at hand, instead of counting down until the next break, or until lunch, or to the time when I can go to my car and leave.

Fortunately for me, Juan speaks more English than I do Spanish. Still, our conversations are strained and disjointed, and sometimes we just have to accept that we don't know what we're talking about, and drop it and move on to the next thing. But at the same time, it's as if this challenge in communicating grants us the freedom to talk about whatever the hell comes to mind. Rather than talking in depth on certain topics, we touch only the surface of ten times as many.

We sit beside each other and work on this thing and try not to splatter paint, and we work to better know each other's language. I tell him that I want to learn Spanish, and he asks why. I say, Me gusta Mexico, y me gusta la comida de Mexico, y me gusta chicas Mexicanas.

Juan is thirty-two, and has spent most his life in a small town in Mexico. He's a very curious guy, and although he's been in America for eight years now it's as if he's hardly ever spoken to an American, and that might just be the case.

Juan asks if I have ever been in a boat, and I say yes, and then I ask if he ever has. He hasn't. He doesn't know how to swim. He asks where the Titanic sank and I say I'm not sure, Europa, somewhere, I think.

He asks if I ride horses, and I say I haven't since I was poquito, and he corrects me, chiquito. He asks why, and I say that I don't have a horse. He saw a big horse dance once. It's hard to train a horse, he tells me. You need - he can't think of the word - patience, I tell him.

I ask if he has a wife, and he says no. He asks if I do, and I say no. He asks how old I am and I say twenty-four. He laughs and says that I'm too young to be married. He asks if I have a novia, and I say no, and he laughs and asks why not, and I say that I'm not sure.

Juan asks what kind of car I have and if I know how to fix it, and I say that I drive a Volvo and that I don't know anything about it. He asks how many miles I have on it and I say I can't remember, but I tell him that there was once a Volvo that drove a million miles, and he can hardly believe it.

He has a girlfriend, but she lives in Reno. He goes there every two weeks to see her. He asks if I've been to Reno and I say I've driven through once or twice. He asks if I've been to Las Vegas and I say no. I ask if he gambles, and he says that he doesn't have the money. And he likes the discos, but he doesn't have the money.

When Juan was younger and living in Mexico he used to break horses. He says that he looked into buying a horse in America but was surprised to find out it cost 35,000 dollars. I tell him they sometimes cost a million.

He tells me that Napa is sort of boring, that there aren't many women. I tell him I thought that might be the case. He says that there are many women in Mexico, more women than men, and that if you have a nice car the women will like you. And I get excited about this. He's quick to remind that if you don't have a nice car the women don't care about you.

He asks me, Do you like Michael Yackson? Sí, sí, I tell him. And the Yackson Five? Sí, sí. And Carlos Santana? Sí.

Juan wants to know if I like milk, and I say sure, I like milk. But I like it more with chocolate. He tells me there's a tradition in Mexico where you squeeze milk straight from a cow's utter and into a glass, then mix in some chocolate and some alcohol. Sounds good, I tell him.

Juan turns to me all of a sudden with a big smile and says, Carlos, let's go to the rodeo!

Yeah? I ask, excited that he's just said this.

No, he says. Juan doesn't know of any rodeo, but he's been to one in San Jose.

Juan asks if I heard the news. No, I haven't. He tells me that his cousin lived twenty five miles north, in Calistoga, and that someone died, was shot, and for a while it's unclear who did the shooting and who was killed. At first it sounded like Juan's twenty-six-year-old cousin killed someone. But it turns out that it was his cousin who died. It happened a week and a half ago. It was over a girl. The killer fled.

It was eight days before his cousin's body was sent to Mexico for burial, and it cost 8,000 dollars.

As best as he can, Juan asks me how long Americans wait before burying the dead, and as best as I can I answer him. Two days, maybe.

Dos Días? he asks.

Sí. And in Mexico? I ask.

Two days, he says, and he looks at the ground.

Some time goes by. It's quiet.

Later, Juan turns to me and says, Carlos, let's go to Reno!

The man who killed Juan's cousin was arrested yesterday in Los Angeles. Juan asked me how long he'd be in jail and I told him 'forever.'

deer leg

suckin it

after a substantial absence from the blogosphere i am living alone in a rural setting. the chronicles are back and stout as fuck.

john gold inside the tantra pool, 2008

oakland psychedelia

recent foolings-around

take your spectacles off

since i've been back in CA: lost in the wood: a cell phone photo barrage

first thing i did when i got home was i picked up a salamander.

first thing the salamander did was pee down my wrist.

then i went to los angeles with my family. seen here is a photo of my mom and dad. then a photo of my mom.

but i was really just sneaking a shot of larry david sitting in the background.

then i got a job working for a woodworker named hank (this is not his real name, but this is what I'll call him). hank is an interesting guy. he makes really crazy ornate stuff, and this job that we were working together is one of epic proportions. hank's been working it for a year already and says he has at least another year to go.

the owner of the house is this really wealthy bachelor dork. he owns several houses around the world and will occasionally take off to africa for months at a time. this house of his has an african theme throughout, and in my opinion is totally over the top. over the top, like, life-sized giraffe heads made form copper coming out of the wall just above the toilet. over the top, like, rhino tusks attached to the walls, carved from old-growth redwood, for the purpose of hanging cook books from. 

the other day i went upstairs to work on a set of book shelves. the shelves are in the same room as the tv. on the ground there was an empty box of cracker jacks. on top of the tv, a box set of sailor moon dvd's.

so the owner of the house is pretty odd, as is hank, but hanky is odd in a cool way. more eccentric than odd, i guess. 

a friend's mom got me the job. she instructed me to not engage in any arguments with hank over political matters. i typically avoid political arguments at all costs, so i didn't make much of this advice.

hank and i didn't talk much at first. he went about his business and i went about mine. it wasn't until we discovered our mutual love for NPR that we began to talk more and get to know each other.

it was a great job. i was finishing all his projects. sanding, staining, and varnishing, all day long. boring? sometimes. tedious? yes, sometimes. incredibly laid back? yes. chock-full of zen teachings? yes! 

i could work outside, and i would do so in nothing but a pair of shorts, and i would have my headphones on, and i could borrow hank's bike to go get a cup of coffee whenever i felt like it.

hank took to calling me Sir Charles, and he referred to himself as Sir Lancelot.

masking tape coat

well, i know the guy who had my job before i did. his name is jamie and i'm currently subletting his room in oakland. jamie and i talked about hank a few times and he didn't seem to like hank much. i didn't get it. well, it turns out that one day jamie and hank got into a heated debate over gay rights, and hank was not on the gay side of things.

jamie was fired the next day.

jamie told me that hank was not only a homophobe, but a racist too. this really threw me for a loop. 

but jamie pointed out that if i ever decided i couldn't or didn't want to work for hank anymore, all i had to do was casually mention my mexican boyfriend.

for a while after this realization i was a little uncomfortable with things. it didn't help that hank and i spent 99% our time working together, and in that time the radio was always tuned to NPR, and prop 8 had just gone back to the courts for another vote. i was feeling like i was walking on egg shells.  it wasn't that i was nervous that we'd argue, and that i'd be fired. the problem was this: i knew that if hank were to go off on a tirade in front of me, about those fuckin' fags, or whatever, i would instantly lose my respect for him. and i didn't want to lose my respect for him, because i really liked the guy.

well, it never came up. last friday was my last day. it was 5:30 in the afternoon. hank and i moved this big, heavy shelf back inside and set it down. we shook hands and he said, "Thank you, Sir Charles." and I said, "Thank you, Hank."

and i never even had to mention my mexican boyfriend.

one time i asked hank about what he did before he started working with wood. he scratched at his chin and gave it a thought, "Well... I was in the military... and then I was planning on going to school for journalism, in San Jose. I was in my front yard, and I had just finished building a desk that I would keep my books on. A girl walked by and she bought the desk from me. True story," he said.

This morning I looked Hank up on the internet, to see if I could find any pictures of his woodworking. I found no pictures of his work, but to my delight, I did find this picture of him in the military, back in 1952.

maybe hank has a problem with people of different skin colors, and maybe the thought of people of the same sex having sex and getting married doesn't sit so comfortably with him, but when i look at hank i don't see a homophobe or a racist. instead, i see someone who grew up in another time, and i don't doubt that in my life i'll come up against change that i'm not so comfortable with.

there was this one time when i had just started working for hank that i asked him where he lived, and he kind of hesitated and then said "Santa Cruz." I came to learn that he lives in his van, and while I don't doubt that he's pretty much totally content in that, I think it's safe to say he's somewhat self-conscious about the fact, that maybe he sometimes feels that someone his age who's been working for as long as he has should have a house like everybody else, and when he's lying down in there at night trying to fall asleep, maybe there's a slight sensation of hiding out, of hoping that the neighbors don't realize he's living in there.

i read a quote once, not sure where, but it went something like this: "take it easy on others, because everyone's fighting their own battle." 

rawdog on the river

I took a canoe trip this weekend with some folks. Good times on the Russian River. Got a lot of sun. Too much sun.

black dove moan

my buddy rob's band is recording a new album. i went to the studio to take some pictures. i wish i'd shot more, but i was nervous and wanted to keep out of the way. however, i'm pleased with the dozen or so shots that i did get.

they're called the moanin' dove, and their album is going to be super rad.

moving pictures

I decided to put this up. It's two rolls of film from my super 8. Didn't really edit anything. I think of it as a series of moving snap shots, which it is. Super lonesome music by Colleen. 

a great name tag

This is a photo Kyle took of me in San Francisco yesterday. Then he did some stuff to the texture on the wall, and the sidewalk I think, and I really like the look of it. Then Scott added the artsy cubes and put my name up there.

A great name tag.

miller ramp

OZ

tail end of lizard life ballet

long, long ago, i regularly made short movies on my bright orange iMac. this is one of my best, if not the best short film i ever made.

my cat had just put a lizard in two. i jumped at the chance to capture a few seconds of the not-yet-lifeless tail. 

Kika (2000 - ?)

no more toy cameras

I've got some more work to do on this but couldn't help putting it up. I have hundreds of negatives from 2003 and 04 that I never printed. Instead, I processed the film and held off on the prints because, "one day I'll print them myself!" Six years later and I'm taking my first real glance at them, and... it's some of the best stuff I've ever shot.

kettles with succulents, Santa Fe (2003)

Channeling Jim Morrison

Here's a Super 8 video I shot with friends at the Sand Dunes. The music is by Death Vessel.

prom

my date packed some heat

dear deer

this is neat.

Ride the Snake

This last weekend we took a trip to the dunes. It was a surreal place. The wind was a'whippin' and the sand a'blowin'. 

Upon arrival we headed to the flats for a round of Bocce Ball. Real good time.

The next morning we set out to summit the dunes. No small task.

Played Bocce Ball all the way up and down those things.

Made it to the top and celebrated with a cold beverage. Rode the snake back down.