This Would Only Happen To Me

So there I was, minding my own business. I'd slept in, showered, gotten dressed, was ready to head out to run some errands. Felt pretty good, bounce in my step, beautiful day, sunny and bright and cheerful.

I opened the back door to go out to the garage. Maybe I'm even whistling a little bit. Then I heard this sound, saw movement out of the corner of my eye. A split second later, I realize that the sound is a grasshopper being startled by the door and launching itself in the air. Let me pause here and note for the record that grasshoppers are neither graceful nor aerodynamic, but when they get to flappin', they can get up to speed pretty damn fast.

Two things happen now. The first is that the VERY LARGE grasshopper hits me in the side of the face. It felt like getting nailed by a kumquat. The second thing is that I instinctively ducked, and yes, I'm not ashamed to say it, I yelled.

And then I yelled some more, and hopped around a little bit, because the grasshopper was still flailing around ON MY FACE. The reason for this is that its leg had gotten stuck IN MY EARRING. It couldn't escape, it was freaking out, I was freaking out and doing a weird sort of dance that involved moving my head around a lot and flailing my arms, but nowhere NEAR my face, because hey, I DON'T WANT TO TOUCH IT.

This lasted for a good five seconds, until I realized that I was going to have to do something more drastic. This involved a fast sweeping motion with my hand in the vicinity of my ear. When the arc was complete, the grasshopper was in midair, my face was free of insects, and a grasshopper leg was on the ground near my feet.

Then I ran inside and boiled my ear.

Even the Faceless Kachina Has Something to Say

I woke up this morning thinking about kachina dolls. These are small wooden figurines of Hopi spirits that are carved from wood, sometimes adorned with feathers and always bright paint, signed on the bottom, accompanied by a slip of paper with a brief history of the god and what he or she stands for, and they are generally sold to tourists who like to collect that sort of thing and kids who hope that they might be real.

Having this sort of thing in my head when I wake up is somewhat normal for me. I very rarely remember my dreams, so it's possible that the strange things that are sometimes swimming around my head when I wake up are the vestigial appendages of whatever I was dreaming about. Maybe a fin, or a tail, or a toe. Maybe the kachina doll is the toe of some sort of Indian Voltron that will one day assemble itself from the millions of crappy little tchotchkes that have been made since white people decided they were worth collecting, and maybe this giant accretion of tribal culture will sweep everything into the sea, leaving only reservations untouched.

It could happen. But as usual, I digress. I think I liked kachina dolls because of the detail. They were made by Hopi to represent the spirits that inhabited the bodies of men during certain ceremonies, and that's the sort of thing that lends itself to detail. There might be rainclouds on the cape, or a long slash of a mouth with jagged teeth, or it might carry a rattle or a bough from a certain kind of tree. Without these details, the kachina loses meaning, and is just another piece of brightly colored wood.

I've always had a tendency to lose myself in detail. I loved kachinas as a kid because they told a story. They had meaning beyond the typical soulless transaction that Americans have with their own culture. Stories are everything, but detail is just a vehicle to get to meaning, and I sometimes forget that.

I've Been Thinking AND Drinking

(Sorry, Huey). I think I can safely say that the last week has been one of the strangest I've experienced. Seven days ago, I was still expecting to work for another 4 months, and now I'm making plans to move by the end of April. It's freaky, but it's good.

I spent a nice weekend up in Santa Cruz, just cruising around (ha ha) and trying to get the lay of the land. I drove a lot, I walked a lot, I read a lot of newspapers and almost finished the book I'm working on (The Life of Pi). I also realized how much I love the smell of eucalyptus after rainfall.

I had a great conversation on Monday night over drinks, and it sort of changed my thinking about my plans a little bit. As excited as I've gotten recently about photography, writing is still my first love, and I think I'd be selling myself a bit short if I just jumped straight into photography and left my writing on the back burner.

So I think I'm going to put off any HARDCORE traveling for a little while. Not TOO long, since I need and want to do it, but I think it would be good for me to settle in to the new place, relax, just takes things easy and write. And take pictures. I'm thinking that maybe the best plan would be to sign a six month lease and see what happens. I can always pack my crap up and put it in storage if I want to travel for an extended period of time after that. Besides, I think that there will be many roadtrips to keep the wanderlust satisfied until I pull the trigger on jumping into a much larger and scarier pond. I've found that wriggling out of my comfort zone is a really good thing for me.

I took the 101 down the coast on my way home yesterday. I meandered and took my time, because there was nowhere that I needed to be. I stopped at Pismo Beach and took some photos, and I stopped again in Santa Barbara. I walked down State Street after an afternoon rain shower, and the sun had come out again just as I stepped out of the parking garage. Everything was painted with gold. One strawberry smoothie and some excellent sushi later, I was back on the road.

Now it's time to get on the stick and wrap things up here...

The only bad thing about all of this? I fucking HATE moving.

But it's a small price to pay!

Photo Dump:

Starting Over Again

I'm sitting in a motel room in Santa Cruz as I write this. There's a fridge in the corner with 4 bottles of Guinness in it, the bed is unmade, there are horrible pastel prints on the walls, and it's overcast outside. Doves' Lost Souls album is playing at half volume, and I'm thinking about breakfast. Not yet, though - I have news to share.

It's done. I'm officially off the rails and in unknown territory. I was free less than 24 hours after I gave my notice. I was given the choice to continue to work the two weeks that I gave in my resignation letter, or I could go RIGHT THEN and they would pay me for the two weeks anyway. Not much of a decision to be made there. I took the offer. I still haven't packed my desk - I'll have to do that after hours tomorrow when I get home, under the watchful eye of an HR manager. Just in case I try to take something that isn't mine.

I left a lot of work unfinished. The guy they hired last week to replace me isn't quite as qualified as they were hoping...he'll need a lot of training before he can start picking up the slack. He's a friend of the supervisor's, so no one checked his technical skills. Don't get me wrong, I wish them well, but it's nice to think that I'm not easily replaceable.

Now that I'm officially unemployed (or, as I like to call it, a "freelance writer and photographer"), I find myself wondering what my next step is. I came up here to look for places to live, as my need for that is more immediate than I expected just a few days ago, but I'm also wondering if this would be a good time to get some traveling done before I have to pay rent again. Maybe a few weeks in Europe, a few in Asia, maybe Australia or New Zealand? I have enough frequent flier miles saved up to get myself a free ticket to almost anywhere. And a complimentary companion ticket! Ladies?

I'm not sure what I'll end up doing, exactly. What I do know is that it feels like my whole life has been leading up to this point. I put in my time in a cube, I invested wisely, and now I find myself in complete control of my own future. It's not as terrifying as I thought it would be, and I'm genuinely excited about my prospects.

I've been thinking a lot about how to get started as a photographer (I know what I need to do to get started as a writer). I've got a catalog of about 10,000 photos so far, and I take hundreds more whenever I go somewhere new. I'm finding that landscapes are what I'm best at, and those can be pretty lucrative if sold through stock photography sites. There's still so much for me to learn about photography, but I'm submitting sample work to a few sites anyway, just to see if they think I've got the chops. We'll see what happens. I'll also be opening up a little site to sell some of my photos as prints (framed or otherwise). I'll put a link up here when it's done so you can check it out. Also, I need some new equipment! 1 new camera body and 1 new lens ought to do the trick. Anyone in the market for a used and much loved Canon 10D? Not the lens, though...I'll be taking that to the grave with me, thank you very much.

Hobo OUT!

Photo Dump:

Well, This Changes Things a Bit

I just gave my notice at work. Sometimes self-respect has to take priority.

Grey Lines

It could be the weather, alternately gauzy and grey and hammered with sunlight. It could be the crushing loneliness that sometimes stalks me through this empty house, ghosts of warm bodies and laughter and twenty clicky little nails on hardwood floors. Maybe it's all of those things, or maybe it's none, but things are changing.

I'm finally learning what makes me happy, what I want to do with my life. I want to write my stories and take my pictures, because it gives me great pleasure. I used to think of it in terms of "capturing", that I'm freezing moments or ideas in photographic or literary amber, but that's entirely the wrong feeling. When I take a photo, it's a composition. It's art. I see something that's interesting to me, and I arrange it in a way that satisfies me. It makes me happy that I have the ability to do that, and it especially makes me happy to see other people enjoying it. When someone looks at a photo I've taken, or a story I've written, and it makes them think, or it makes them smile, or maybe just say "wow", that has a profound effect on me. I'm realizing that I really love it when something I've done makes someone else happy, even if it's only for a moment or two.

I have a profound respect for those moments, because it sometimes seems as though my life has been a long grey line, straight and even, end point nowhere in sight, but punctuated by a series of bright spots. Those are my escape points, the moments that catapult me off the track and into unknown territory. Photos can do that for a moment, but when I write, I'm there for hours at a time, immersed in something that I created, and I know what it's like to be on the receiving end of that. I remember being the 12 year old in a sleeping bag in the closet, reading a science fiction book with a flashlight and a box of crackers and individually wrapped cheese slices, escaping to that fantastic world for an hour or two before I had to go back to the grey line again.

I want to hijack my own grey line. I'm not happy with my life, or what I'm doing. It's not making any difference in the world. I work in a microscopic business eco-system, and the things I create there have no impact. No one but other people in my company see them, and they teach people how to use business software. I'm not saying it's not important, but it isn't fulfilling in any way, and it does not leave me with any time or energy to make a difference in any other way.

Making a difference is something that I need. I don't just want to put hiccups in my own grey line, I want to do it to others, too. That's what makes me happy, if only for a moment.

And sometimes, a moment is all you need.

Space Nakji and the Case of the Horrible Hobo

This was posted about a year ago on Space Nakji's blog, but never here. Enjoy!

P.S.: "nakji" is Korean for octopus. The story may be less confusing if you know this.

-----

Do you know what 87 molars look like? I do. I'm Space Nakji, Dental Detective.

The night fell dark and ominous, like a cloud of soot expelled from a chimney sweep's lungs. I was angry, because if there's one thing in this world that I hate more than sparrows, it's chimney sweeps. "Chim chim cherie?" Please. Let's leave the forbidden love between Frenchman and monkey in the bedroom where it belongs.

I woke up in my chair and thought the room had been slashed to ribbons, but it was only the streetlight shining through the blinds. I flailed around a little trying to get my bearings, then spent the next 20 minutes trying to get little bits of paper off of my tentacles and back on my desk. Having suckers on your appendages is like coating your fingers in rubber cement. Except less messy, and marginally less rubbery.

The knock on my door was like a stucco tattoo, in that it was fast and tappy and it annoyed me. At least there was no glitter involved. I hate glitter, too. I once disemboweled a pixie when it looked a little twitchy with its glitter bag.

A shadow was painted on the frosted glass of my door, right below where it said "evitceteD latneD ,ijkaN ecapS". It wore a hat. I put three bullets through the window, just out of spite. I go through a lot of windows.

A figure crawled through the window, brushing broken glass off of a filthy watchman's cap. It stood there for a moment, swaying slightly, then pointed a grimy finger at me.

It watched the tip of the finger bob and weave for a moment, then shook itself and said "PHPOW! No, wait. HELLO!"

I watched it warily, one tentacle reloading my revolver, one tentacle surreptitiously shoving sugar-free candy in my beak, one tentacle stroking what I thought of as my chin in a knowing fashion, one tentacle changing channels on the radio that only received Portuguese vampire dramas, one tentacle helping another one try to remove a stray Post-It Note, one tentacle nervously opening and closing a desk drawer, and one tentacle attempting to solve Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle with a crayon and a piece of sandpaper.

The figure fell over sideways and crushed a small model of a Degas Dancer that I'd made out of toothpicks. It flung itself upright again and said "SHORRY! I seem to have crushed your tiny dancer!" He blinked owlishly at me, then shrieked and ran around the room while my owl (Bicuspid) tried to have sex with his face.

When he'd successfully fended off the winged menace, he staggered to my desk and put his hands on the edge to steady himself. He breathed hard in my face, and black spots danced before my eyes. I wondered if it was possible to get the plague if someone who'd eaten plague rats breathed on you. I shot him with my stun gun to get him to back off a little, and he flopped over backwards again.

"WHOO!" he said after a moment. "Thash wonner...winder...wiffle...FABULUSH! HEY!" He swayed at me for a moment, collecting what I assumed were thoughts, but may have been dust and/or lice. "You find things! Right?"

I gave him my best gimlet eye, even curling my lip up a little bit.

"WOW!" he exclaimed! "Your eye! Just like a gimlet! You." He put a finger to his chin, thought for a moment. I heard a sound like a meat grinder grinding another meat grinder. "Find things. Like teeth. You find teeth?" The last question was plaintive, like a kitten asking a unicorn if it was cute enough.

"I lost my grill!" He wailed. "I gots to find it again! I'll pay you!" He hunted through his pockets, pulled out a snake, put it back. Pulled out a faberge egg, put it back. Pulled out a stuffed armadillo, put it back. Pulled out a scale model of a cougar, which he stroked, looked me in the eye and said "This is great. Everyone should have one. Cougars are awesome!" and put it back. Then be pulled out a sack and tossed it on my desk. Well, it was clear that he meant to toss it on my desk, but he threw it over his shoulder instead. He retrieved it bashfully and put it on my desk with great care. Then he patted it.

"Open it up, it's all there."

I opened the bag. 87 creamy smooth molars glinted back at me. There was enough enamel in there to paint the inside of a toaster. I smiled, and shot the hobo.

I figured out a long time ago that it was easier to just shoot people who came in my door. It was faster than all of that mucking about with "solving things" and it paid the same. Sometimes more, depending on what they had in their pockets. Besides. People who are looking for teeth deserve to get bitten. So really, I'm just providing a service. I leaned back in my chair and waited for the next bite on my line.

The Curse of Being Stylish

Just so we're clear, I am not referring to myself. I am about as stylish as a can of peas with a fake mustache. And maybe a sombrero, because ALL the cool kids are wearing sombreros these days.

I am, of course, referring to Apple products. In particular, the Powerbook G4 15" aluminum laptop. It is my pride and joy. I have even affixed a sticker of a bat to it, for good luck. Sadly, the bat must hate me, as my lovely aluminum friend has died for the SECOND TIME in 10 months.

See, I love Apple. I love the design of my machine, the aesthetics and functionality of the OSX operating system, I even love the coy way it tries to burn my nuts off if I use it on my lap for too long. Saucy! But alas, while Apple has invested a significant amount of time and money in design and functionality, there's some bean counter somewhere who decided to take revenge on those turtleneck-wearing designwanks and shoehorned a really crappy hard drive in these things.

Seriously, NOTHING else has ever gone wrong with the thing. Just the hard drive. TWICE. They replaced it once under warranty, but that's expired now, so the dudes at the Genius Bar told me that a) Yes, my hard drive is well and truly fucked, and b) it would cost me about $400 to repair. I could buy an entire Mac Mini for not much more than that. After hearing this news, I sat back calmly, and then my head exploded. Politely, because that's how I am.

So I'll be cracking open my lil' pal and replacing the hard drive myself. It will cost me $135 and about 20 minutes of my time. I have high hopes for this endeavor, as I am confident in my ability to choose a hard drive that isn't made from twigs, old magazines, rust, juniper berries, and a vague disdain for people who want to actually DO THINGS with their expensively stylish aluminum friend. And yes, I will be wearing my fake mustache (over my real mustache) and a sombrero while I repair.

Bison-Thing Identification

As you may have read, Rekabek sent me some new friends recently. I have been referring to them as bison, but I am not sure that is correct. I am leaning more toward wildebeest at the moment. What do you think?

Here's a shot I managed to take of them while they were grazing in the yard. Apologies for the poor quality, but they've been charging me lately, so I was a little nervous...


Hi-res!

Photo Essay: Things My Friends Have Given Me Recently

OR: A Not Very Subtle Attempt To Get People To Give Me More Stuff

My pal Space Nakji gave me a scarf with an otter on it. Holla!



Rebecca gave me some CDs



And a map!



And some bison. I wasn't very sure about the bison at first.



But then we became friends and everything was ok.



I have awesome friends.