Galavantin'

Good times with Eddie in the city, keeping New York eminently discoverable.

Our Pale Blue Dot

This narrow-angle color image of the Earth, dubbed ‘Pale Blue Dot’, is a part of the first ever ‘portrait’ of the solar system taken by Voyager 1. The spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar system from a distance of more than 4 billion miles from Earth and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic. From Voyager's great distance Earth is a mere point of light, less than the size of a picture element even in the narrow-angle camera. Earth was a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size. Coincidentally, Earth lies right in the center of one of the scattered light rays resulting from taking the image so close to the sun. This blown-up image of the Earth was taken through three color filters – violet, blue and green – and recombined to produce the color image. The background features in the image are artifacts resulting from the magnification.

One Credo After Another or On Recognizing Bottomlessness

There is one thing that separates us from animals. I know we have opposable thumbs and stock markets and hybrid SUVs. But the most essential line of demarcation between human beings and, say, squirrels, is the stories we can tell. Animals don't have narrative. They can't turn the arc of their experience into a reoccurring tale. They know the scent of danger, but can't describe it. The narrative is the ideal housing for significance and it is significance that makes meaning and meaning that makes us matter.

I once worked at a publishing company reading the slush pile of unsolicited manuscriptes and it was tragic and awe-inspiring how many people felt they had important stories to tell. But that is because we are pathological narrative-makers. Put any two objects on your desk, choose two random words out of the dictionary, and a story will start to flow from them, the way any two musical notes form a third harmony. Some inspired cocktail of 3-D vision and powerful memory gets the ball rolling. "The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new," begins Samuel Beckett's Murphy. There is no more reluctant beginning to a novel, but human beings are so hardwired to discover significance , that even this ornery opening growls like an MGM lion, and sends us on our way. The sun shone. Yes it did. And does. We want meaning, and we find it everywhere.

I am a photographer, and can't help noticing how potent the search for significance is. The absurd task of imposing a rectangle on the flow of the world, and calling that rectangle important, seems to have no end and no zenith. The world's things are only integers, with infinite other numbers between them, infinite narratives. If you put an orange on a table, and ask 15 college freshman to photograph it - as I do every year - you will end up with 15 different sets of significance, 15 meanings. The camera is mechanical and horny; it doesn't care what you put in front of it. But it loves everything thoroughly, from only one vantage point, so there are as many expressions of that camera's love as there are points in space to photograph from. The narrative flow appears to be bottomless.

I think what makes us tragic, as a species, is the inability to recognize that bottomlessness. We tend to privilege one narrative over another, declaring one religion's creation myth, one nation's constitution, the one true story, shutting our ears to the narratives leaking from every arc of the globe. Narrative can instantly calcify into dogma, and when it does, the natural resource that is our scent, our taste, our ear, our mind for narrative, starts to dry up. In a time when narratives of our failure to survive as a species are spreading from church to science journal, I believe the tolerance and openness we can gain from listening hard to as many sets of significance as possible, will help the sun keep shining, with endless alternative, on something new.

-Tim Davis

Face Balance

Drempt I had the unique ability to tell, to the exact percentages, what side - left, right, or middle - people slept on. For example, I'd see a person and say, "Forty two percent left side, twenty eight percent middle, and thirty percent right".

Here's a photo of Mountain Girl, Jerry Garcia's widow when she was in town supporting the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's renditions of Grateful Dead music. I'm not sure what side she sleeps on.

So Many Tings!

Here's a little tidbit of amazement with TINGS from Dalia on our taxi ride a few months back. M and I (and now others) have carried on her proclamation of overwhelmingness..."So many tings!"

Which reminds me...this always continues to fetch wonders within.

Make Peace with Your Limitations

Happyhouse II

I think I lucked out on the serendipitous combining of elements on the first video...this one took awhile longer to put together. Nonetheless, here's a month-on update with one notable omission - Matt helped tear up the tile on what turned out to be one of the hottest, sweatiest days of the year so far. And with respirators on, allergies dripping, and asbestos crumbling, it was one of the more trying projects. Thanks dude.

Pages 57 and 58

From the esteemed "Working On Your House" magazine.

O.S. Fowler, who, among his skull-reading and other diverse hobbies, came to design octagonal homes, noted that the properly proportioned and configured house could bring about truly harmonious living. Because if not..."How much fretfulness and ill temper, as well as exhaustion and sickness, an unhandy house occasions. Nor does the evil end here. It often, generally, by perpetually irritating mothers, sours the tempers of their children, even before birth, thus rendering the whole family bad-dispositioned by nature, whereas a convenient one would have rendered them constitutionally amiable and good." So, in an effort to keep Earl well-dispositioned and friendly, we're going to give this project a really thorough think through.

New book tkaes humbug out of quotations

Today's batch of spam included this exquisitely composed image with the above subject line. Fantastic. It looks like one of those graphical data entry fields made to prevent spam, that's unexpectedly spawned new life.

It's America Time

Bloodied my knuckles strumming, over and over again, to the chorus of "It's America Time" as a mock band member in a Miller beer commercial. None of us really knew what the job entailed, other than its content (beer) and geographic marketing range (Southeast Asia). That, and we'd be getting paid $150 for an hour of lip-synching. Seen here is the second scene, in which we counted down in looping "three, two, one, cheers!" where we were scripted to laugh and clink our bottles (labels towards the camera) with the director yelling, "Into the light!". Photo credit: Steve Longley

Rilke

From the Second of the Duino Elegies:

Lovers, if they knew how, might utter
strange things in night air. Since it seems
everything hides us. Look, trees exist; houses,
we live in, still stand. Only we
pass everything by, like an exchange of air.
And all is at one, in keeping us secret, half out of
shame perhaps, half out of inexpressible hope.

Happyhouse

Working towards sompin' by undoing others work. Strange, but satisfying stuff, I say.

In an effort to unpile the mass of documentation that I accrue, and not get bogged down with the refining process, I had a ten minute time limit to put this one together and send it off to Mom. The iMovie template dealio, though sort of a cheezefest, helps cohere it together instantly.

Lesser Knowns Revisited

New Hampshire is home to a number of unique political traditions. Among those traditions is the open primary, which allows any citizen with $1000 dollars to appear on the ballot alongside the incumbent President and his high-powered challengers. With platforms ranging from abolishing the IRS to pumping hydrogen economy to having no discernible platform at all, the lesser-known candidates, as they prefer to call themselves, use the country's biggest political stage to air their beefs with Big Brother and to fight for their share of the electorate.

My friend and colleague Nathan and I, went up to New Hampshire first in 2004, then again in 2008 to take a look at the process and see what that whole "Live Free or Die" thing was about. At the time Nathan was working at TIME magazine, where we were fortunate to have found an audience.

Mexicoco

Wondrous wandering from Mexico City to Zihuatenajo to Cuernavaca for a wedding I was hired to document. So strange to hear now, about all of these places, just filled with the crazy jubilance that is Mexico, now quiet, as people hide their breath away. Looks like I've outlasted the incubation period, so I can safely say I'm pigflu-free. It's disconcerting to think of the all the repercussions, if entirely subconscious, that might keep people away from traveling there.

Friends and Family of Ola Belle Reed

A Saturday afternoon in Elkton, Maryland spent sharing stories and music inspired by Ola Belle Reed. Produced by Shane Carpenter in collaboration with Aaron Henkin of WYPR, and Cliff Murphy of the Maryland State Arts Council.

This is a special companion piece to Episode #27 of Tapestry of the Times. And for more information on Ola Belle Reed’s recordings, check out the Smithsonian Folkways website.

You may first need to download the latest version of Flash HERE for a consistent playback experience.

*In the bottom, right corner of the video, there are four little arrow dealios that will expand the display for a higher quality version.

Several Moments in Time

This music video for autistic hip hoppers would have been better tracked with Whitney Houston's "One Moment in Time" (racing with destiny...), but since Santogold's "Get it Up" was the song I was actually listening to when I saw the light flash from the red light camera it seemed more appropriate. I received the expected before and after red light citation in the mail, but I was surprised to also find a link to a website with video of my car traveling through the intersection. It reminded me of the nature of documentation, its pervasiveness and varied intents...how these images can serve as a both a reason to pay the city $75, and a snapshot of my happiness hurriedly going to the airport to pick up my girl.

Constituent Moments

Tom Dumm (what a great name for a philosopher) in conversation with Jill Stauffer in The Believer; got me extrapolatin' on their conversation from one of democracy in America to one of photography as society-builder. A stretch perhaps, but personally, that's what keeps me going with this dang craft...preventing a personal inverted totalitarianism.

Dumm: I worry that we don’t currently have a democracy in the United States. Instead we have what [political philosopher] Sheldon Wolin has recently labeled a sort of inverted totalitarianism.

BLVR: So, rather than being isolated because we have no public realm, as in totalitarianism, we have public space in which politics is replaced by consumerism—which doesn’t build social relationships—or in which political speech is discouraged or censured, as it has been post-9/11.

Dumm: Right. To my way of thinking, if we are to have a democracy, we must have the spirit of what Whitman was driving at when he spoke of a literature of many and one. The continued existence of such a literature might encourage the pursuit of what the French thinker Rancière has called “constituent moments,” that is, moments of public articulation which illustrate who we as a people are and can be, and that aren’t managed by corporate power or state force, but which bubble from unbidden spaces of our culture.

BLVR: By tapping into the power that results from people coming together, we avoid the social isolation that pushes us toward what has the feel of totalitarianism.

Dumm: Yes. Such moments were last seen in this country, imperfectly, I think, in the 1960s and early 1970s. At another level, however, these events may only be symptoms of a deeper problem in the devolution of our democracy. Worldwide, the twentieth century has seen the rise of extraordinary concentrations of economic and political power—evoking the people as the source of power while simultaneously privatizing its most meaningful exercise. Democracy always seems to be at least slightly elusive under such conditions.

Full Interview

Virgin Islands

Lucky getaway. Photos from St. Thomas and St. John, US Virgin Islands. Thanks again Mattolomew.

Silver Jews in a Cave

Buddy Ry and I down to Nashville for the last show of The Silver Jews - a band we've grown and nodded along with for years. The frontman, David Berman, wanted to quit while he was mostly ahead, among other things, and we wanted to see what a poetic death of a band sounds like from a cave.

So we rolled up to this far out "cabin" at Fall Creek Falls, which turned out to be a crazy mid-century modern dorm or something from years past. And here, livin' it up at the Hotel Tennessee, we stabbed at the air with our steely knives and debated whether Milky Way would indeed be a rodent if candy bars were animals. On to Cumberland Caverns where we entered the burial site, emerging a few hours later with an "aw shucks" and good verse on our dusty shoes. Lotsa nice folks down South.

You can see photos here.

Inauguration

A little bigger version here too.

I'll never forget the quiet jog along Constitution Avenue. I was trying to find a way onto the mall, but had to run 3 long blocks to 12th Street from Pennsylvania. Along the way were just a few people hovering over underground parking garage vents trying to keep warm, a family whose mother looked a little panic-stricken what with the crush of all the people, and a little old lady who looked to be out shopping for vegetables. Besides the swell of latent energy in the air, there was no indication that millions were assembled just a block away.

Not to minimize the epic sea change of the day, but it's worth noting that much of it was spent just trying to exist in the mobs of those corralled in central DC. Amazing really.

Barack

Jacob Emily Michael Isabella Ethan Emma Joshua Ava Daniel Madison Christopher Sophia Anthony Olivia William Abigail Matthew Hannah Andrew Elizabeth Alexander Addison David Samantha Joseph Ashley Noah Alyssa James Mia Ryan Chloe Logan Natalie Jayden Sarah John Alexis Nicholas Grace Tyler Ella Christian Brianna Jonathan Hailey Nathan Taylor Samuel Anna

Top 25 names of boys and girls from 2007.

Mechanical Boy

Feels a bit familiar after sitting at the computer editing for the last few days.

Baltimore is...

-A bird feather in a flower pot.
-A conversation with a stranger.
-A conversation with a stranger about whether a motorized bike is a scooter or a motorcycle.
-A half-rusted, but mostly new bike in a stream below a bridge.
-A smile, unexpectedly silver.
-An erratic-acting, seemingly oblivious, older hampden woman, dressed like a teenager standing below a "Wiley and Sons" funeral advertisement.
-An uncooked, stepped-on chicken breast next to a band-aid affixed to the sidewalk.
-An artificial flower from a corner store glass crack pipe every 10 steps for two blocks.
-A man mowing his steep lawn by dropping his mower tied to a rope around his waist while drinking a Natty Boh.
-A man rolling down Maryland Avenue in a wheelchair blasting credit repair ads out of the boombox in his lap.
-A man with a megaphone praising Jesus on Valentine's Day with a 40 oz of beer in his hand.
-Discussing oyster anatomical diagrams with the bartender at "Bar" while drinking Sambuca that's been there, she says, for at least 20 years - "nobody drinks this shit".
-A man with an amazing voice singing colorful ribbons of gospel while walking down the street on grey winter day.
-A dude riding his bike, not skillfully, through traffic with a neck brace on.
-A man in Lexington Market finishing a chicken leg and, nonchalantly, throwing the bone up in the air and a seagull catching it!
-Sitting in traffic and looking over at a forlorn-seeming worker covered in dust sitting on the stoop of a house underneath graffiti that reads "Take my money" who gives you the thumbs up sign with the most rewarding, wide smile when your eyes meet.
-A man dragging his foot along, limping down the middle of the street on a windy day, drinking a steaming cup of coffee, as a plastic bag floats past he plucks it out of the air, then let's it go behind him as it and he continue their paths through the neighborhood.
-A double billboard with one side advertising whale watching in Maine, the other, a public service announcement about rape, above a Dr. Feel liquor store that appears to be out of business. All signs are peeling and deteriorated.

*To be continually added to...

Feeding the Subconscious

Feeling a bit less than tiptop, sore throat and achey, so I've been lazing about - napping, reading, watching movies.  I was reminded of an interview I'd read recently with design guru Phillippe Starck, paraphrased here:  

My creative process can be described as making my mind the printer of my subconscious.  It's the only way to work.  Today, the power of marketing is so strong.  If you work with your consciousness, then you are in the mainstream of thinking.  How can you have a fresh, original idea with this incredible weight on your shoulders?  The subconscious speaks less, but never lies.  Consciousness speaks a lot, but always lies.  To feed your subconscious and creativity, the best thing is to fill it with diversity, sleep, and sex.  

DPS

Want to see a cowboy surfer amidst Japanese calligraphy or Ned the guy who hangs out with Wendell?  www.douglaspaulsmith.com

How 'bout some artfully constructed and well-thought out stationary that flies?  www.intlgirl.com

You have been introduced.

Photography is Dumb

And when you really get into it and start documenting and having small, fleeting parties over every corner of your life, then watch those corners get dusty with distraction and other life-pursuits (sometimes photography itself), among other things, it breeds this nerdy compulsion to try to excel in the tool, the thing.  I suppose it's not unlike an Eddie Van Halen or something...breakin' out drills n stuffff.   Case in point.

Loch'n

Jauntin wit da homies inna trees n dirt.

Thanks for Singing

Singing may be the key to a long life indeed. Here's a great essay by the multiman, Brian Eno, on the key to heightened sexual attractiveness and a better sense of humor among other things. I think it also increases your appetite, helps with digesting buckets of food with friends, and may also improve your Catch Phrase skills.

Heard here is Ry, Kate, M, and myself tryin' it out.

Vaca Frita

Down South Florida way for a wedding at Vizcaya Museum and then on to a day or so of general galavanting with Yohan. Had an incredible Cuban meal, late night, after muchos mojitos at Puerto Sagua...Vaca Frita (fried cow). I eat beef about 4 times a year...this one might hold me over a little longer than most.

We chained up our bikes next to two Ferraris and a Rolls at the new Fontainebleau where they'd hosted their grand re-opening the night prior with a $500 million expansion and a Victoria's Secret fashion show. Ain't no recession in sight down here.

The Power of Things

This is the photo that my dad carried around in his wallet. It's from when he was in the army, stationed in Germany, where he learned some basic photography and darkroom skills between assignments. It is a photo he made himself - from the camera to the print. Needless to say, it's an important artifact for me given the few that remain. I used to carry it around in my wallet until it and I accidentally got wet while crossing a stream and I realized how ephemeral this thing was. Unlike a diamond or cuff links, or whatever it is that fathers pass along to their sons, I've come to cherish this mysterious, fleeting image of a dog with some sheep on the road in a foreign land.

Puerto Reeco

A quick birthday jaunt around the island(s)...A little bit of Old San Juan, El Yunque, then off to Culebra. Splendido Maximo.

New York

And a walk through the city for a day. Geez.

On Being an Artist

Saw this dude play last night: www.myspace.com/coalrockuhoner

He was an interesting hybrid of backwoods and no-woods, a sorta hip-hop hillbilly...A little bit of Hampden mixed in perhaps. While watching him the conversation turned to his authenticity because of, I guess, the disparity between his speaking voice and his affected singing voice...his not looking the part. Matt mentioned how Bob Dylan perhaps became his affection, what with much of his early work absent the idiosyncratic, nasal voice. But this other dude listening along just couldn't get past the delivery. The exchange reminded me of an essay by Brian Eno, On Being An Artist from his diary A Year With Swollen Appendices, where he talks about the 'frame' of the work, excerpted here:

To work inside is to deal with the internal conditions of the work - the melodies, the rhythms, the textures, the lyrics, the images: all the normal day-to-day things one imagines an artist does. To work outside is to deal with the world surrounding the work - the thoughts, assumptions, expectations, legends, histories, economic structures, critical responses, legal issues and so on and on. you might thing of these things as the frame of the work.

...when Madonna first appeared she was criticized because she seemed to be committing as much or more attention to the fashion and lifestyle considerations of what she was presenting as to her music. These criticisms tell you a lot about the expectations of the critics. Clearly they had in their minds a hierarchy of importance. Music should be at the centre, and then these other things should be seen as packaging, the wrapper. Like many of the things critics get heated about, this a very old idea dressed up in cool new language. Who said music should be at the centre of the experience? Why? Why isn't it acceptable to have an artist who works on a number of fronts, one of which is music? Why not, further, accept the idea that the music could itself become the package - an interesting way of presenting a series of modern haircuts, for example?

The biggest arguments about validity are almost always about this subject: whether or not certain things are allowed to be included as suitable areas for artistic attention, and whether or not certain others can be left out. Peter Schmidt used to have a phrase: 'to omit what no one else has though of leaving out'. In music, no one though of leaving out the music.

Charlottesville

Brent and the gang down Virginia way. Fried green tomatoes and one frisky little dude. Witness to a young family, then off with Yohan to the Shenandoah forest where I got M some "Bear Feet" socks. Ha.

Threshold

The magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded for a certain reaction, phenomenon, result, or condition to occur or be manifested. From a dream, respelled here in proper syntax...though I guess I was more thinking of the condition of being on the cusp of significant change...abstractly. Interesting to think of people (myself included) that occupy that space in small, gawking ways, others who are resolutely distanced from this, and just a few who mass catalyze...good and bad.

David Foster Wallace, Rest In Peace

On Getting Out Of The Kingdom

"And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing."

Read it all here: http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html Thanks Ry.

Great Great Great Uncle

Dakota
by Charles Carpenter
02.08.1888 - 01.02.1956

Dakota, land of sunshine, land of rain,
Land of droughts, and land of 'pain.
Your beautiful valleys, your scenery so fair,
Search where you may, none can compare.

You have to your credit, more wealth and more land,
Than the average mortal can well understand.
You're the scenic playground of the big world wide,
And the masses congregate, and with you abide.

The Rushmore Memorial, the only one known,
Was carved by a genius from a mammouth stone.
The 'needles and caves' are a wonder to behold,
But nothing compared, to the wonders of 'gold'.

The Sweepstake mines, that cost millions or more,
Are 'doing their stuff' to bring forth the rich ore.
The deer and the antelope, the buffalo rare,
Are the game that the hunters mutually share.

'Fishermans luck' is a bye word with all,
Be it in spring, summer or fall.
Beautiful schools and colleges great,
Abound in great numbers all over the state.

Farmers and ranchers, all over the west,
Stick with Dakota, they love it the best.
The badlands famous, for wonders untold,
Reveal to the tourist, relics of old.

The prairies, the forest, the mountains, the draws,
Proclaim Dakota 'the state without flaws'.
The rodeo show, given each year,
Draw mammouth throngs, from far and near.

Rapid City, 'the tourist town',
Won for itself great renown.
The museum Hall, that's second to none,
Contains ancient relics, that's as old as the sun.

If I were a poet, and in rhyme could write,
On this beautiful state, I could throw much light.
Not being so gifted, I'll bring to a close,
Perhaps can tell better, my story in prose.

Here or abroad, where 'er I may roam,
Dakota will always remain my dear home.
When my work on Earth is done, and I'm gone to my rest,
Enscribe on my tombstone, 'I love Dakota the best'!

Written April 24th, 1942

Sweet Spam Prose

Be legally welded just after commencement and running a store
at pretoria upon strictly cash i.ii.government, i.grant,
i.influence, i.line you ? stared at her with sudden hostility.
of several streams which run through the neighbouring of
paper, tins of paint, furniture, big wooden from bright
yellow at the lower portion to various down and dinah began
to speak, th' young un stood in one hour it will be baked,
serve it hot for that it was i who killed old babbington.
no, you with hugh and a good home and planting seven nasturtiums
was making his way into the house. We saw the.

Newbies

Ye ole babyfeet photo in my very own family portfolio...Who woulda ever guessed?! Congratulations to Bro and Jen on the remarkable new twin entities called Bonnie and Lucy!

Bunk

Season Five of The Wire just released! So excited to see Wendell Pierce AKA "Bunk" and the team, back in action. I was reminded of this photo from a Katrina Benefit I attended in Baltimore with New Orleans' Rebirth Brass Band tearing it up.

Goin Somewhere

Watched an Osprey poop in mid-flight while flying alongside the train at 40MPH over the water. Bird and excrement separated so gracefully, I knew this was going to be a good trip to Vermont. Stopped in with The Bread & Puppet Theater, The Back Shed String Band and Guests, Karme Choling, and some real nice Maine folk.

*Browsing Tip* You can use the arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate through the galleries.

Pole Vaulter

I was a pole vaulter in high school. It's unclear to me, now, why I chose the sport, but I think it had something to do with the whole running with the pole thing. Perhaps I was a jouster in a past life? I remember the feeling of great success when you got the pole to bend and actually help fling you over the bar, because so many high school pole vaulters (at least in South Dakota) were basically just launching themselves over with a straight stick. I started to get a bit cocky, what with my breaking of some school records (which turned out to exist solely because there were so few of us to actually make records), that when met with the challenge of trying to vault up onto the top of the gym's retractable bleachers, I obliged. Bets on my success or failure rolled in from the assembled hormone-rich 17 year olds with one goading onlooker saying that if I landed on my face he'd give me twenty bucks. I gave it my best, but my hand slipped off the pole, giving me a spring-loaded backhand which cut my eyebrow open, and knocked me to the floor in a gathering pool of blood. The bravado days soon took on a different form, and that jerk never gave me my twenty dollars. Amazing how these things inform us decades later, though it's a bit unclear as to exactly how.

Twin Prep

The countdown to family expansion looms...fathers, mothers, grandparents, sisters, and uncles to be!

Volcano

Volcano : Dream Interpretation Dictionary

Volcano stands for potential emotional outbursts, because of suppressed feelings and urges. Seeing a volcano in the dream denotes that dangerous passions are boiling, you'd better find an appropriate outlet, otherwise you'll have to pay consequences of bad choices. Volcano eruption represents a powerful process of self-cleansing. This process will be painful, because awareness does not come without pain. Geez.

Alien Lander

Helped a bit with Scat Poopingtons most excellent provider of alternate reality vessels for Artscape. The finished product was so freakin' cool.

Minnesota

Enter all things here.

TFOJ

Of all the sights and sounds, and considering this whole predilection towards seeing that I have, I think the smells of The Fourth of July are what stay with me longest. But now that I think of it, it's gotta be the sound. Or gosh, is it the sights? Geez, the senses are wonderful!

Friendride music by 99% Ry, 1% Me.

O'er the roofs of the world

Hitting the road!

Fixing Things

Chainsaw breakdown and babies on the way.

Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.

"Never give all the heart" by W.B. Yeats