Corinne, 1996

Carrie, October 1992

Marching Band season 2011

Mutability

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly!--yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost forever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest.--A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise.--One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same!--For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley
The only constant is change. I Ching

Conflict is the root of all good literature, and at the heart of conflict is change. When some inciting incident upsets a beginning balance, the wheels of the protagonist begin to work, attempting to regain that beginning balance. Sometimes the balance is restored, although the protagonist should have grown as a character. Sometimes that balance is utterly destroyed. Even then, however, there is an unchangeable resolution. The book ends, the covers are closed, and the reader moves on to the next book on the list.
Conflict is also the critical element in living a full life. However, unlike in literature, there really is no beginning balance, and an inciting incident may be as insignificant as a dream or a single wandering thought. What then? If something small change change the future, how does one hold on to sanity or contentment or joy? Without a beginning balance, how can man find his way through 70 years of uncertainty?
What is the purpose of a goal, anyway? Why do men dream dreams and debate vision? If man has no control of the next moment, why plan? For what can he prepare?
Perhaps that is the point. Those who allow themselves to be so constrained by a particular plan never truly experience the spontaneity of adjustment. Those stiff-necked people who pretend to know the best definition of success cannot possibly work out unusual solutions to projects or adapt quickly to a new idea. The best and brightest of men are those who live on the edge,, welcoming each change as an opportunity to grow, to invent, and to create. That measure of success is not in some societal absolute, but in the satisfaction of personal achievement.
To live a boundless, unrestrained life is the beginning balance of the creative mind. The inciting incidents of change are merely the springboards to imagination. The rising action becomes an exciting and frustrating series of new applications and new ideas. Climax is that moment of revelation. Resolution comes with adaptation. There is no denouement in life because each resolution leads to another inciting incident. The story does not stop in a life fully lived. The covers of the book never close, and there is no need to find another life to live.  The man who chooses a full life embraces every change.

Happiness is...

A Card

I haven't made a card in FOREVER, so it felt good to actually sit down and create this one:

My brother is so cool

The dude second from left with the sunglasses on his head? Yeah, that's my baby brother.

Transcendentalist 1

I'm developing a new approach to teaching literature by making photography/digital design an essential element. The last few sessions we've studied the Transcendentalists with an emphasis on Whitman and Thoreau. Emerson became the source for journaling.

The students had to choose a selection from either Thoreau's Walden or a selection of Whitman's poetry (Dover has a little book of them, which oddly, leaves out some of my favorites.)

I pulled a section of Thoreau called "Solitude." It reads, in part:

 I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can "see the folks," and recreate, and as he thinks remunerate himself for his day's solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and "the blues"; but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it.

Thoreau was, of course, talking about the benefits of solitude. As an introvert, I identify with the idea that society can be exhausting and that a respite is refreshing. However, I also identify the idea that it is possible to be lonely in a crowd, and so I used that idea in my piece. I used a student from another class as my model and took a timed exposure (without a tripod, by the way), having her hold still while other class members walked around her. I desaturated her image and increased saturation on the background students. The digital papers are from my collection (mostly Faith Sisters and DigiDesignResort). Add some word art, play with blending modes, and done. It captures the essence of being lonely and I think illustrates Thoreau's concept of social fatigue.

New Necklaces

I've been busy making new necklaces for 3Cs Design. Here are a few, but check out the shop to see them all! They're only $25 (and there's a wedding coming up that needs funding!)

Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson was a strange bird, but she wrote beautiful (albeit sometimes morbid) poetry. Since I'm teaching a new class that I'm creating as I go, I'm experimenting more with incorporating poetry into my photo and digital projects. It can be particularly challenging, especially right now when my Muse is on vacation. Seriously, can't she vacation when I'm not in dire need of her? Ah well...the weather and seasons will change soon enough, and I'll be out, camera in hand again. Until then, I will read poetry. And plenty of it.