Because you probably don’t want your dashboard flooded with scans of my old beaten-up negatives, I am putting them here: http://cargocollective.com/alabasteralabaster instead :)
Well I’m not surprised that I never made good on my promise to myself to post all my favorite photos of 2010 before the year ended. I also never posted all those photos from my parents’ lives in Africa. Oh well. Some day, I will. But for now, I am immersed in a new project: scanning all my old negatives from the second half of the first decade of the third millennium. I will soon share with you these 35mm film relics of my misguided early 20s, where I spent my time romping in the hills, drinking wine and scribbling and singing and dancing and generally avoiding all real world responsibility in favor of pursuing a “higher”, um, pursuit. Which, of course, never really panned out the way I imagined … which led to the abandonment of my poetic nature in order to become a cold hard scientist. Though it was refreshing for a while to spend my days studying numbers and elements and making calculation after calculation, that old creative force bubbled up and brewed ever so strongly inside of me until I could not fight it anymore and I created the ultimate creation (with some help, of course): a human life. And in this new life I have found the perfect balance of science and art.
But it is never out of season to protest against that coarse familiarity with sacred things which is busy on the lip, and idle in the heart; or against the confounding of Christianity with any class of persons who, in the words of Swift, have just enough religion to make them hate, and not enough to make them love, one another.
-Charles Dickens, Preface to The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
The Two Travelers and the Farmer
A traveler came upon an old farmer hoeing in his field beside the road. Eager to rest his feet, the wanderer hailed the countryman, who seemed happy enough to straighten his back and talk for a moment.
“What sort of people live in the next town?” asked the stranger.
“What were the people like where you’ve come from?” replied the farmer, answering the question with another question.
“They were a bad lot. Troublemakers all, and lazy too. The most selfish people in the world, and not a one of them to be trusted. I’m happy to be leaving the scoundrels.”
“Is that so?” replied the old farmer. “Well, I’m afraid that you’ll find the same sort in the next town.
Disappointed, the traveler trudged on his way, and the farmer returned to his work.
Some time later another stranger, coming from the same direction, hailed the farmer, and they stopped to talk. “What sort of people live in the next town?” he asked.
“What were the people like where you’ve come from?” replied the farmer once again.
“They were the best people in the world. Hard working, honest, and friendly. I’m sorry to be leaving them.”
“Fear not,” said the farmer. “You’ll find the same sort in the next town.”
February 2010
X-tra X-treme log walking
February 2010
I…
woke up to this view every day.
studied Biometrics in the library between classes.
started drawing again.
studied Biometrics at the beach.
walked under my favorite Eucalyptus trees to the mouth of the Mad River and watched the sun set over the Pacific Ocean.
watched my brother marry a beautiful woman.
driving up Fickle Hill at night
January 2010
I moved to a secluded little shack on Fickle Hill. A bad decision, for many reasons. But I don’t exactly regret it. It was a beautiful temporary dwelling place, despite the grave isolation. I got pretty good at making fires and was often comforted by the sight of deer grazing in my back yard.
